Bump's Stump

This one almost went under my radar.  Obama has, as expected, stacked his administration with people that support his agenda. One is Eric Holder.  Mr. Holder is a calm, cool and smart  anti-American wingnut . As Atty. General he has already done substantial damage.  Holder is a serious political animal - and thoroughly believes in Obama's  ultra  liberal nonsense. While Holder was serving as number 2 in the Clinton justice department, nearly as many terrorists were pardoned as prosecuted. That should have been a clue. After the 9/11 terrorists were caught, Shiek Khalid Mohammed (the main guy) announced that he and his four pals wanted to plead guilty and be executed. That did not fit the Obama plan so  Holder, driven by liberal ideology and not by law and careful judgement - Holder  alone decided to transfer these terrorists from military custody at Guantanamo, where they were held as enemy combatants and charged with being war criminals . . . to New York for a civilia

. The benefits of WAR have changed so much that it's no longer effective. Shouldn't we accept the hard fact that in a war everyone loses? The United States has something like 8,000 atomic bombs in the cupboard, and Mother Russia probably has about the same in theirs. Certainly, between the two governments, there are enough to eliminate humanity. When is enough, enough? Forget for a moment, whether or not the war in Iraq was JUSTIFIED, and whether or not the subsequent war against Isalmic terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is NECESSARY to protect America. Just drop it. Think instead of the fact that there are enough powerful weapons present in the world to erase all of the people within these areas. Do we, or anyone else, really want to do that? Of couse not. It is insane. So what are we doing? We are fighting a limited and antiseptic (kill no civilians) war on the enemies turf - and - restricting the amount of power our side can bring to bear in the conflict. Instead

. Last November 7th I wrote about my daughter Susan's ex-husband David Pickels,  father of two of my grandchildren. He had just been informed that he was near the end of his life. Cancer had spread everywhere and there was little that doctors could do for him. Well, he hung on and had chemo and radiation treatments that may have slowed the cancer. We will never know for certain.  He was medicated to the point that he had very little pain over these recent months, but he was surely uncomfortable. When he died this morning it was a relief. He finally found peace, comfort and rest. Soft and safe to thee David, be thy resting place. Dixon

. I just finished reading Tom Degan's blog and came away feeling rather sad. Tom is one of those a liberal Democrats that still blame everything wrong on Bush and Cheney. In his view all of Mr. Obama's failures, and there are many, are attributable to the previous administration. It's not true - but it has become the mantra of many deluded, ENTITLEMENT  minded, Democrats. What is going on here? The recent health care legislation has  magnified the real problem.  Our methods of processing legislation are badly flawed and will get no better until we demand an end to the wholesale corruption of the system. We've allowed it to happen - and stopping it will be no easy task. Let's begin with ENTITLEMENTS .  The entitlements described in our founding documents  make sense. I'll not repeat them here - except to say that those entitlements NOT mentioned were supposed to be the responsiblity of the individual states. What ever happened to that idea? The federal gove

So it came to pass. (1)  Medicare will be cut 1/2 trillion dollars. Sure it will.       When was the last time you saw a federal entitlement program cut? (2) Doctors will be paid 20% less the first year and receive      no increase during the following ten years.      Boy, are they going to love that. (3) Virtually every opinion poll indicates a massive      disapproval of the legislation, less than 300 members      of the House and Senate have shoved the bill      down the throats of 300 million people.       So much for representing your interests. (4) Sadly, it is now estimated that fewer than 1 in 4 people       who voted to pass this thing have actually read it.       Party politics wins again. (5) The grand promises of transparency and compromise       turned out to be a lie.       This healthcare overhauling legislation has never been        examined, published or even written - which is in violation         of rules the legislators set themselves. (

The most recent Bush Administration was not overly popular from the get-go. Both political parties did everything they could to bend the voting results. The public was tired of both candidates prior to the announced election of Bush.  He was thought of as a silver spooned priveledged and spoiled young man that would never have been in position to be elected dog catcher if he didn't have family connections. The Democrats put up Gore because they had no other choice. The guy is such a loopy-whiner it's a wonder he became their candidate, and if the coin toss went his way - he could have been President. Now isn't that an ugly thought. But that's history now. When 2008 came along the populace was desperate for change. Bush no longer enjoyed their unquestioning trust, and Obama promised good speeches and lots of feel-good changes should he be elected. Despite being new and untested, Obama won by only a shadow - but he took that shadow as a mandate for revolution. His e

RUSSIA'S IMPRESSIVE JUMBO / 2009 . I've been aware that Pravda, the official mouthpiece of Mother Russia, publishes garbage about America. Despite the end of the Cold War these folks still have a poisonous view of our nation. It disturbs me that collectively Russians condemn us - while individually they are doing their best to copy us. Does that make sense? Why does the world always have conflicts between people since most could care less about their neighbors - provided that neither intrudes on the other? Doesn't that point out that the LEADERSHIP of one or both is the troublemaker? Russia is doing it's best to DEMONIZE America (and so is radical Islam), but demoniuzation is not one sided. America's leadership regularly points out the failings of socialism-communism for example. And our government is critical of almost every political move by Russians. Our leadership also tells us how medieval, brutal,  and cowardly terrorist Muslim enemy is.  But our enem

Math isn't one of my strong suits. I have a problem with very large numbers. Perhaps you can help me.  The LAND AREA of the world is, according to the almanac, an area of about 57,800,000 square miles. That's length times width. 7600 L x 7600W = 57,760,000 sq. miles. How many SQUARE FEET is that?    7,600 L x 5280 = 40,128,000 feet.  Multiplied by itself 40.128 million feet by 40.128 million feet = 1,610,000,000,000 square feet. The ENTIRE HUMAN POPULATION is?   About 7,000,000,000 (almanac again). Assuming that each person stands on an area of 2 square feet , t he entire  population could stand on: 14,000,000,000 square feet.   5280 ft. x 5280 ft.  = 27,878,400 sq. ft. = 1 square mile.  14,000,000,000 square feet divided by 27,878,400 sq. feet =  502 ,000 square miles  502,000 sq. miles divided by 57,800,000 square miles (total land area) = about .00087% (IF CORRECT) OUR HUMAN POPULATION COULD THEORETICALLY  STAND ON  JUST .00087% OF THE TOTAL LAND AREA Q

. OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS BETRAYED OUR TRUST AGAIN. Whether we are Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, makes no difference at all. Our legislators voted according to "what's best for them". It was clear that the people want to reduce the costs and improve access to our overall health care system. It was also VERY CLEAR that they did not want the 2000 page legislative monstrosity that was produced by a small number of far left liberal Democrats, who worked behind closed doors to fashion a pork filled blunderbuss that virtually no one has been able to read, or discuss, or debate, or offer alternatives to specific unreasoned clauses. It is (now) a BAD BILL , passed by BAD POLITICIANS, that compose a BAD MINORITY segment of America's out-of-control government. AND WE HAVE NO LOGICAL WAY TO PAY FOR IT EITHER. The far left liberals like to point at  SOCIAL SECURITY   as a text book success. They are wrong and will not admit it despite the concrete evide

      Obama 2012 The proposed medical legislation is far to complicated for me to understand. Since it requires some 2400 closely typed pages of convoluted and cross referenced text - I am sure I would forget the first pages by the time I got to page 1019 or so.  Like me, many of you probably rely on the summaries and interpretations of others.   Unfortunately, they often tend to be politically biased. Somehow this legislation has been turned into a partisan issue when it never should have been. The matter of improving Amreica's health care is important to all of us and not just the Democrats. From the beginning it has been driven by the far, far left liberals with little, if any, input from the more conservative middle. The result is a bill that satisfies no one. I first thought that the legislation was so wildly expensive and that it should be shot down regardless of it's merit. I really objected to the WAY it was drawn up (liberal input only), and to the rush to pass it

. President Obama may or may not be sincere. He is certainly wrong about economics and hasn't a clue about defending our country - but for a moment I'd like to put that kind of partisan bickering aside and concentrate on a bigger (non-partisan) problem.  Our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was begun with intelligence and promise, but from the start it has been deeply flawed. The founding fathers, often refered to as brilliant and far sighted, were in fact not perfect. The documents that became the foundation of our democratic government did not protect against the corruption and greed of our representatives. We elect people based on their record of achievement and promises for the future. It is our hope as voters that our elected representatives will honestly debate issues and generally follow their promises. It isn't happening. Politics is supposedly the art of compromise. In a perfect society it is a way of satisfying the most people, most of the time. The difficulty is tha

. When we are born our clock begins. Each new person has begun. There is growth in the first period of years, then at some time during middle age the count down begins. We, each one of us,  steadily begins to deteriorate. Finally, something important within us stops working and we die. The clock stops. This is more or less the normal sequence. It is not guaranteed and it may be interrupted or halted at any moment. There may be unpredictable influences that alter the norm. Things like genetics, bad luck, and accidents for example. But for most of us our lives will follow the course of the ticking clock.  Bill Gates has famously said:  "Life is not fair. Get over it". No matter how profound and no matter how correct - when we see hungry children without clothing or shelter we ask: "Why are we so fortunate, and why are they not?" .

The narrative is incredible . . . but true.   *** FINDING THE SCROLL . Last summer a farmer discovered an old pottery jar as he plowed a  field on Degania Bet land in Israel .  He opened the   jar and found an musty and apparently ancient fabric scroll someone had rolled on a wooden dowel and placed in the  jar.  His  plow exposed it and fortunately  didn't break it.  He wrapped the scroll in his coat and at the end of the work day he called the Israel Artifact Museum (I.A.M.). He was put through to  Julie Crawford the new Curator and after telling her how and where he found the scroll she asked him to carefully package it and send it to I.A.M. immediately. It arrived the next morning and laid it on her inspection table in the lab where she took a  picture of it. Then she removed the contents and unrolled about a yard of the fabric.  The characters printed on the scroll were of a language she didn't recognise. She stopped unrolling and  took more pictures. The te

. GRANTA is a magazine of  short stories worth recommending. New and interesting writers discuss (sometimes disturbing) topics from every part of the world. I just finished a story about Liberia that is terribly brutal. It's tells of human beings that have reverted to uncivilized behavior. They rape and murder their own people. They cut off heads and body parts, and stab women and children for fun and other stupidly invented reasons. This story is non-fiction , set in the time just before the Liberian President Samuel Noe was murdered and continueing through the rise of  Charles Taylor who became the nation's new leader. The corruption of Liberia is complete . The degradation of the people and the anti-human atrocities are unforgivable. The situation there is very difficult for a westerner to comprehend. The fact that violent behavior can surface within a desperate society is not easily digested.  Liberia is only one of many  African countries with no future. Their 

. Obama goes to Norway and gives one of his best speeches yet. It really was. I wonder who wrote it?  His PR people are going to have to slow down the teleprompters. The poor guy damn near broke his neck looking from one to the other.   Obama only used the word "I" 36 times - a new record  low.  Listening to him requires the rest of us genuflect carefully and applaud on cue. But we're not so dumb. If we bow low enough everything he lies about goes right overhead. Am I the only one getting tired of: Superbama?   Pinochiobama?  Moronobama? To be honest, for eight years I thought Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld could fib with the best of them. That was long before the King of Glib arrived on the scene. Now we have a real grand master in the house. Just listen:               I . . . saved America's economy.                I . . . am going to end the Iraq war.                I . . . am going to talk the Iranians into peace.                I . . . am going to ram Gov'

. Before writing anything on this topic I should admit to being a very skeptical Christian.  I find it hard to believe teachings that are illogical, miraculous, or unbelieveable for some other reason - yet I consider myself a Christian. That said, let's explore the impact of the church on American society.  It is easy to be critical. The history of the church is one of religious wars, abuse of parishoners, corrupt leadership, and so forth -  yet  most Christian churches are well meaning and charitable teachers that set standards for the morals, virtues, ethics and principles of humanity . Their preachers tell us that human beings are different from other animals because of our more highly developed brains, and they claim that God chose human beings to rule the world. The Holy Bible seems to support this contention, and  I can go along with most of these fundamental ideas. But, the church also says that the only way to God and Heaven is belief in Jesus Christ . That strikes me