How 'bout all them camels?

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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The krizmuz card

Letter to the editor;

Here’s this generic “krizmuz” card: Santa Claus and some magic flying reindeer wishing you happy holidays or some such innocuous greeting.

Here’s this other card, an actual Christian card: Let’s see, the really drafty wreckage of a former shack, camels, sheep, a donkey, a bunch of people in bathrobes -- and a baby. Much better. At least this card depicts what many people think might have happened.

Let us analyze the scene:

The Bible says Baby Jesus was laid in a manger. Not a word about the wreckage of a ramshackle stable. Joseph would have wisely rented someplace better than that. Maybe a stall in a fairly decent barn or carriage house? Anyway, some place out of the weather, with no fresh manure or swarms of flies.

Camels. Scratch camels. By the time the wise men got there, Joseph had rented a house. And, anyway, they were probably rabbis from across Jordan, and would have walked in – so probably no Persian kings and astrologers came in on camels at that time.

Sheep? No. No sheep. The Bible says at that time of year the shepherds were watching their sheep by night in the open fields nearby, not protecting them in buildings.

Donkey? Joseph was a carpenter. What would he need with a donkey to stand around all day eating up his wages? When Joseph bought lumber, he would have it delivered.

All those people in robes? That is fairly certain to be correct. However it is highly doubtful that lots and lots of them showed up all at the same time like that.

The Baby. Ah, YES, the Holy Child. The Son of God. The Savior of mankind.

Muslims know that child as Eess – a prophet of Allah to the Jews.

Jews don’t need to think a thing about that child. Hashem has something else for Jews.

Yoo Hoo, y’all who call yourselves Christians: Forget Santa Claus. Meet Baby Jesus.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Some guaranteed sure-thing 2009 predictions

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Sure-fire 2009 predictions

Letter to the editor;

I, the Great Glenn (“Sees all. Knows all.”) make my guaranteed predictions for 2009.

No matter who is finally inaugurated as President of the United States, hundreds of members of the Council on Foreign Relations (a private club) will be appointed to high positions in that administration.

However much money the government has been wasting, it will squander yet more.

The new administration will continue our illegal undeclared wars.

However many thousands of pages of foolish regulations they have saddled American commerce and industry with, they will write even more.

However many treaties against American interests the politicians have stacked up, they will present yet more for ratification.

Every time the politicians make an agreement to cripple this country, they will hail it on the front pages as a great diplomatic triumph.

They will make progress in their drive to submerge the United States, Canada and Mexico under an unelected and unresponsive continental government.

They will make progress on the highway, rail and pipeline “corridor” from Mexico to Canada right thru the heart of the United States.

And they will make significant progress in outlawing herbs, vitamin supplements, home-grown foods, firearms, ammunition, concealed carry, and/or independent contracting.

Politicians will continue to lie to us.

The majority will continue to vote for the politicians who lie the best.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The ultimate political pressure

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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The Angel and the politician

Letter to the editor;

(An Angel comes from Glory to straighten up a politician.)

“Fear Not!” (That's what the Bible says Angels say.)

“Uh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah – Oh, my GOD! I'm DEAD!”

“No. Not yet. And I’m not God. But I have a message for you from Him.”

“He wants me to stop voting for bills I haven’t read – doesn’t He?”

“Can you think of anything else?”

“Um, and vote no on bills about more than one thing?”

“And -- ?”

“And only bills that the Constitution authorizes?”

“Did someone else already talk to you about all this?”

“No. I, uh, um, er, ah, that is -- Why?”

“Because it didn't take long for you to guess. Have these issues been troubling you?”

“Er, well, a little, I guess.”

“Well, Mister Politician, that's the message. Now, whether you live forty days or forty years, you are responsible for what you said in your own words tonight.”

“Couldn't we talk this over? My party leaders would never understand . . . ”

“Lo, I have spoken.” Thus spake the Seraph, and forthwith ascended into heaven.

However, Angels hardly ever work politicians over like that, so it is up to us. Part of our civic duty is to remind our Beloved Leaders forcefully and often about these issues.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Morality and current events

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Evil deeds cause depression and captivity

Letter to the editor;

The Bible and the Book of Mormon both testify to us that the key to peace, prosperity and freedom is to obey the Commandments of the Lord.

You can check this out: When a critical mass of the people of any nation fall away from the morality of their ancestors, the innocent suffer with the guilty and the whole population falls into wars, depression and bad government. This is history.

We are taught that the way out of these bad situations is to take government handouts, create our own version of morality, invest correctly and vote for the lesser of two evils.

WRONG-O! The correct answer starts out, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy might and with all thy mind.

It includes Honor thy father and thy mother.

It goes on to list things NOT to do: Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s. There are more. You can look them up.

And it’s not enough to slavishly follow these Commandments. We have to have the right attitude about it.

The connection between morality and prosperity are not immediately apparent to the atheistic mind. The modern, politically-correct, sophisticated, college-educated mind is likely to scoff at this as antiquated, superstitious and simplistic.

However, it follows from “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
(Notice that it doesn’t say, “In the beginning, the self-existent elements sort of fell together at random and the earth and its atmosphere were the accidental results”.)

(However, if you want to take it from the atheistic perspective, you can still make the connection between morality and prosperity. It’s there, and it’s real.)

We are not going to get out from under this by electing magical politicians who can create wealth out of thin air. We should work, pray, be thrifty, read the Scriptures, take care of our families, grow gardens, sing hymns, patch our clothes and help our neighbors.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The new low-key wealth and social order

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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It will not always be easy for us

Letter to the editor;

The ancient Roman Empire was finished when wolves prowled in down-town Rome.

“But that was then and this is now. It just can’t happen in these modern times.” (Oh?!)

Some people know how to make whiskey, and some know how to make black powder.

We had all better learn how to grow grain and beans and corn and squash and tomatoes.

It will not be enough to patch our old clothes: We had better learn to spin and weave as well, or get used to wearing only the shreds of mop-rags thrown away by the poor.

In short, we can look forward to a New Great Depression that will be the gift of God to turn us toward a revival of American values.

By the Grace of God, the coming Great Depression will last until --

-- the Politically-Correct learn that evil actions MUST be harshly rejected;

-- Environmentalists learn that all our needs must be taken from the environment;

-- Leftists learn that government produces exactly NOTHING -- and that we can expect from government much less than it takes away from us first.

-- hedonists learn that food, shelter and clothing come before sex, booze and drugs;

-- the guys who hang around street-corners, leaning on lamp posts and annoying passers-by, learn that they must work or starve;

-- the violent-crime boys repent and work for their keep, or are maimed or killed by their intended victims;

-- lawyers learn that there is more to the Law than their slimy, dishonest, vile, sneaky end-runs around truth and justice; and MAINLY,

-- we learn ALL God knew what He was talking about when He said, "Thou shalt NOT . . . "

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Deliberately killing human beings

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Killing men and babies

Letter to the editor;

You probably think this is going to be a flaming polemical against abortion.

Actually, I am very much in favor of a certain variety of abortion.

Some men are so awfully evil that the only reasonable way to deal with them is to “cancel their birth certificates” and RETROACTIVELY abort them.

(Wow! Even from way back here, I can see the hackles rising on the politically-correct. There seems to be a correlation coefficient of about zero-point-nine between those who favor abortion and those who oppose capital punishment.)

Well, I also oppose capital punishment -- of two varieties: When the guilt of the defendant is not actually, truly, “proven beyond a reasonable doubt” – and when the “defendant” is too young to have done the crime, or even too young to be born, and is sentenced to death merely for being inconvenient.

We don’t need a Constitutional Amendment to take care of this. We already have the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. That is, we are all to be protected by law from being murdered – including those who are not yet born.

As for capital punishment, the same Amendment says no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. That indicates that States may deprive murderers of life, but only after due process of law. See? Retroactive abortion.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The duty of Congress to impeach bad apples

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Impeach often

Letter to the editor;

Congress should be watching the actions of every incoming President very closely. Should he break laws, violate the Constitution, or abuse his power, citizens should urge Congress, early and often, to start impeachment proceedings in earnest.

Realizing that Abraham Lincoln did not actually have TIME to say all the wise things that are attributed to him, he is reported to have said a President should be authorized to hang five men a year without having to answer a lot of questions.

A member of his Cabinet supposedly said that five was way too small a number.

Then Lincoln is alleged to have answered, "Yes, but we could get the word out to two or three hundred that they were being CONSIDERED for the honor."

Every President, Vice President, Supreme Court Justice, Member of Congress and federal bureaucrat ought to be continually under the pressure of "being considered for the honor" of impeachment.

It is not a Constitutional crisis to impeach a federal official. It is specifically provided for, in detail, in the Constitution. It even specifies that when the President is being impeached, the Chief Justice is to preside over the trial in the Senate.

A real Congress, representing the States and the People, ought to continually maintain itself ready to impeach somebody, and should, in fact, impeach some lying low-life politician or bureaucrat every few days just to keep in practice.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

A political parable

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Politico holidays

Letter to the editor;

[This was composed by Don Blaster just for a guest-rant in this space. It is a rather good political parable, and it applies to BOTH “Demlicans” and “Republicrats”.]

There are two holidays that are sacrosanct to politicians: Hallowe’en and Christmas!

Before any election it is Hallowe’en: They study which false-face to put on for the audience they will face. If that face does not produce the best results, they put on a different one. They may go so far as to change faces for each appearance and occasion. Al Gore even hired a shrink to give him a personality, remember.

Then, when one wins the election, it is Christmas time in D.C. They hand out all of our goodies they had to promise everyone in order to become Santa Claus.

Clinton's first act was to repay certain constituencies with bills that he had promised.

Johnson's first was to cancel the orders Kennedy had issued to bypass the Federal Reserve with legal currency. Also, he stopped the return of our troops from Viet Nam, and many thousands more lost their lives.

Obama is on record as stating his first act will reverse any progress made in limiting abortions. He will follow up on his bill for the U.N to tax the U.S. for 1.7% GDP to “support poorer nations” (maybe like the “Oil For Food” debacle in Iraq?) Since we are the “richest nation on Earth,” this should be easy enough to do - - once we repay our $11 Trillion of debt we “rich” enjoy. See how it works?

Better cover your chimney: Santa is coming -- with an empty bag to carry away what’s left of our republic. (Better still, build a hot log fire to discourage the demoGrinch from entering at all. Turn up the heat to get others out to vote.)

Don Blaster
Benton, Kentucky

That Third Party thing

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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“The lesser of two evils”? No WAY!

Letter to the editor;

Hitler and Stalin were running for King of the World.

Everyone was advised to choose the lesser of two evils.

It was pointed out that Hitler had excellent table manners and that Stalin was a slob; that Hitler talked way too long whenever he had an audience and that German mathematicians and engineers were generally superior to their Russian counterparts.

And the voters fell into line, ready to vote for Hitler or for Stalin, grasping at such trivialities to justify their votes.

A very few voters publicly said they would vote for anybody else on the ballot, or even write in the President of Switzerland or somebody.

They were hooted down with choruses of “You must choose the lesser of two evils!” (repeated thousands of times).

We are told our vote will not count unless it is for McCain or Obama.

I tell you your vote won't count unless it is for someone else. Anybody else.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

You politicians have betrayed us.

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Your attention, Congresscritters!

Letter to the editor:

The all-purpose letter to politicians

You promised clean government.

The people believed you, elected you and sent you to Congress.

When you got to Washington, the nice people there took you to seminars and dinners and speeches and you were taught that everything is not all that simple.

You were taught that you have to go along to get along, and that the more in debt we are, the richer we are.

You knew (and you still know) that this is a bunch of baloney. But you were with people who were used to spending the people's money like it was something nasty to get rid of.

Now the crew of you has bankrupted us. What will you do for an encore? For that matter, what can you do to keep the country afloat for a few more days?

I suggest, if it is not already eternally too late, that you read the Constitution and obey it and encourage others to obey it.

I suggest, if it is not already eternally too late, that you impeach the most spendthrift Members of Congress.

I suggest that you write your own bills, limit them to a single subject and cite whatever clause of the Constitution that authorizes that bill.

Then, on the other hand, it might be too late anyway.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The very long perspective

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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The really B – I – G picture

Letter to the editor;

This Earth orbits a star and receives life-giving light and heat from it.

There are thousands of millions of stars in this galaxy.

There are thousands of millions of other galaxies.

Each galaxy is neatly arranged to orbit around its own center.

The many galaxies “fall” away from each other so that they will never collide.

Any number of stars may be accompanied by planets. Any number of those planets may be habitable.

Either the Eternal King of Creation made all of those objects just to be passing the time, or He made them with a purpose.

Since the purpose of this planet is to provide spirits with a place to enjoy mortality, it may well be that untold millions (or perhaps even thousands of millions) of planets are, at any given time, not only habitable -- but inhabited.

Since the Lord G-d saw fit to create us in His image on this planet, it may well be that He would create man in His image on each suitable planet.

And why would He do this? For His own Glory, that's why!

Every religious person should form, within his or her own theology, a unified Plan of Salvation that includes not only this planet, but any number of planets that G-d has created, beatified, sanctified and made into homes for His children. (Atheists don’t need to bother with this issue.)

(Planets do not accidentally become habitable. It takes many miracles, over millions of years, to bring a proto-planet of molten iron to the condition of being able to hold oceans and atmosphere, make topsoil, grow grass and trees, and support ants and plankton, to say nothing of sharks, bears and human beings.)

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Criminal Congress

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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The biggest robbery in history!
Letter to our Congresscritters;If your bank were about to go under, would you go rob other banks in town for the money to strengthen it?No. You're a Member of Congress. You would never commit armed robbery. Instead, you VOTE a robbery. And who would you vote to rob? The entire population. Only there's not enough money among all of us for that. So you vote to rob our children and our grandchildren, too!

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

“This is the way we always do it.”

“This is an emergency.”

“This is for the good of the nation.”

“The mortgage outfit is too big to fail.”

Your cohorts spent generations putting the fatal pressure on the mortgage outfits by forcing them to lend money to people who could not possibly pay it back -- and to lend money on houses in areas you wouldn't dare to drive thru -- even during daylight hours.

What did anybody THINK would happen?

As near as I understand, the House narrowly voted down the biggest robbery in all of history. Therefore the Money-Boys leaned on y’all to vote on it again and again until you would give them what they wanted.

Italian Fascism showed us what happens when you intertwine government with enterprise. Now that YOU have done it on this gargantuan scale, you should go around apologizing to regular Fascists.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Stiffling news of protests

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Suppressing the news of protests

Letter to the editor;

(A guest-rant by Stu Young, former Deputy Leader of the American Fascist Party)

[Here’s] a disturbing trend. We supposedly have freedom of speech, and are free to choose between political parties with clearly different agendas and tactics.

Flying in the face of all this, award winning journalist and host of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, was arrested while covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention. Though clearly identified as press, Goodman was charged with “obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer.”

Please note that she was not participating in the protest: She was doing a story on it.

Suppressing non-violent protests is not new. It has been happening since the Patriot Acts were signed. (Incidentally, the wording of that legislation can be interpreted as defining as a terrorist any citizen who disagrees with the government.) We Americans are turning our backs on an increase of arrests, tear gas and club attacks on non-violent protesters.

In 2004, Ralph Nader, who had purchased a ticket to the last Presidential Debate, and was planning to attend like any other private citizen, was threatened with arrest if he entered the convention hall where the debate was held (this can be seen in the independent film, An Unreasonable Man). I guess the corporate-controlled organizers of the debate feared a potential protest, as though Ralph Nader, all by himself, could whip the crowd into a frenzy. But now, apparently, letting the public know that such protests are occurring has become intolerable to the [big-shots]. (For more info, I recommend the movie Why We Fight, available in the special interest section of Blockbuster.)

Think Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 are just science fiction books?

If you wonder what you can do, the following website offers [an] idea:
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/dont_arrest_journalists/?r_by=803-1636285-jDjWujx&rc=confemail

Otherwise, we can start memorizing the coming, new slogan of the “American Union” (a.k.a. “Security and Prosperity Partnership;” Google that if you haven’t heard of it):

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (Sound familiar?).

Stu Young

Generous victor

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From the wreckage of war

Letter to the editor; (A guest-rant by Don Blaster)

As I watched the Olympics, the thought came to my aging mind:

Q. Were it not for the dedication, hard work, sacrifice of life and treasure of the United States from 1941 until 1945, which of the countries represented at Beijing would be there, competing, in AD 2008? Starting with China; would it be China?

Then my mind expanded the vision to ask:

Would Korea still be Korea?

Would Mongolia have entered an athlete from Mongolia? Australia?

Would Poland be Poland? France? England? Scotland? Ireland? Norway?

Would Sweden be Sweden? Denmark? Austria? Finland? Greece?

Would Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania be themselves?

Then, again I broadened the view to ask: Would even Russia still be Russia?

Would Japan and Germany and Italy be the prosperous, sovereign nations they have become if the U.S. had used our power to confiscate their lands as all other conquering armies always did?

How many of their composite, Olympic minds ever gave the above a tiny thought as they enjoyed the various medals and acclaim they received?

Were we perfect then? Are we perfect now? Will we ever become perfect? Hardly! But, c'mon, World, be like the one leper who returned to thank Jesus for being cured. At least NOD a bit toward our flag as you hear our National Anthem played as an athletic victory is recognized.

God bless America. God heal America. God use America to accomplish His will.

Don Blaster
Benton, Kentucky

Telemarketing

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Cell-phone telemarketing?

Letter to the editor;

(Sound of phone ringing)

ME: Glenn Jacobs.

VOICE: This important message is to tell you that your vehicle warra . . . (click)

(Sound of phone ringing)

ME: Glenn Jacobs.

VOICE: There is nothing wrong with your credit card accounts. However, would you like for us to help you to reduce your interest rates and become debt-free?

ME: You said you wouldn’t call me again.

VOICE: We won’t. I will remove your name and number from our list.

ME: This is the seventh time you have promised exactly that.

Don Blaster, an old friend in Kentucky sends word that today (TODAY!) cell-phone numbers will be released to telemarketing companies all across the United States. He warns that now, when a person with an unidentifiable foreign accent calls you during supper to offer an “affordable” health plan – YOU get to pay for the call.

This has some of the earmarks of a hoax. I really don’t know if it’s true or not.

On the off chance that we start getting sales calls on our cell-phones, the antidote is supposed to be to call (from your cellphone!) 1-888-382-1222.

I just now called that number. A voice said it was the Federal Trade Commission Do-Not-Call Registry. (“To register your phone number, press one.”)

Then, thinking it over, I called the same number from my “land-line” home phone.

I still don’t know whether the problem (or the solution) is “for real”.

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona

Are governments above the law?

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The that government must obey

Letter to the editor;

Every level of government passes laws -- and forces people to obey them.

What law do governments have to obey?

Municipalities have to operate within the bounds of their charters.

States – and the national government – have to obey their constitutions.

They don’t obey. But they still have to. The fact that they daily violate their charters and constitutions does not nullify them. Those documents remain the law -- and the violations remain crimes. Only, nobody punishes crimes that are committed by governments.

Government agencies commit crimes against people they are supposed to protect.

Politicians foment wars against countries that never did us any harm.

Our Beloved Leaders make secret deals with foreign leaders in violation of the Constitution.

Judges get so friendly with prosecutors that defendants are utterly ignored in their courtrooms.

Municipal land-use bureaus get so interested in making their cities beautiful that they deliberately grind the faces of the poor to force them to move out of town.

Close decisions are decided by giving nice jobs (that do not involve showing up at work) to worthless, do-nothing relatives.

Judges decree that nobody has standing to challenge acts of government. Worse; they invented “judicial immunity” to protect themselves from accountability.

I don’t know how to hold government to account for disobeying the law. Does anyone? I want to know. Answer me at glenn3@frontiernet.net.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Peace thru distributed strength

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Big bombs prevent war

Letter to the editor; (a guest-rant by Don Blaster)

I hearby submit to you readers THE solution to eliminate ALL WARS ! (But does that defy the Bible which states that “There will always be wars and talk of wars”?)

THE solution, already tried as an experiment that froze the Cold War before it could ever get hot, is based upon “MAD,” the agreed-upon policy of Mutually Assured Destruction between the Soviet Union and the U.S. -- when we were the only (or main) owners of weaponry capable of destroying the Earth's population many times over. The scenario is that if one of the two attacks the other, there is so much latent revenge firepower provenly remaining that the one to attack would also be eliminated. It exists. It worked. It is proven.

NOW, what we do is get the entire world on the same MAD agreement, so that ANY nation that attacks another will be jumped upon by the others and turned into a cinder! Set it up! Mean it! If necessary, DO IT!

Since it forced the owners of thousands of nukes to hold their borders between them, why would it not work for all? Imagine -- no more plans to eliminate Israel, no more Tibets, no more Georgias, no more Iraqs, no more Viet Nams, no more Koreas, no more World Wars!

Countries like China can spend $43 Billion to prepare for the Olympics because they are not spending themselves into bankruptcy with wars at present.
I M A G I N E, if ALL countries could use their wealth and assets for such improvements, making for an Olympic Solution to poverty. disease, much crime, etc. !!!

Ahhh, “But all will not agree to such a solution,” you say, “because there are still enough countries and their Greedster leaders who covet the assets of other nations over which they have no control!” God, help us. God, let the world adopt THE solution to war, as stated above. Jihad is supposed to be internal improvement of self, not the forceful overtaking of others, their beliefs, their lands, their lives . . .

Don Blaster / Benton, Kentucky

[Hey! We could give about half-a-dozen nukes to each country in the world. The knowledge that all the neighboring nations have identical immense power might make the tin-pot dictators of the world behave themselves.]

The Holy Scriptures tell of war and provocation.

The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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War and the Holy Word

Letter to the editor;

Why do the Holy Scriptures contain so many chapters about war?

Is it because religious people need to know how to fight wars? No, a book cannot help anyone there, because every war is different from every previous war.

Is it because religious people need to know how to keep their countries out of wars? Maybe. Wars happen. But there remains a thread of hope that people can insist that their governments not stir up wars. (I don’t know of any instance of this.)

Possibly the Scriptures go on and on about war because wars are going to happen and our nations are going to be involved in them and people of faith need to survive mentally-whole as well as physically. The scant word of comfort is that this is not the first nor only time that millions of men (and women) have practiced with deadly weapons and deliberately organized to slaughter one another with them.

Nearly everyone agrees that every people be prepared to defend their nations and their nationalities. The problem comes when politicians tell them that the best defense is a good offense – the “pre-emptive attack”. (“They’re going to attack us sometime anyway. We’d better attack them first, before they can get ready.”)

For their own nefarious and unknown reasons, many American politicians practically salivated over the prospects of getting the US into World War One.

They flaunted the passenger ship Lusitania in the German face, shipping ammunition to England in open defiance of our declared neutrality. The Germans put a full-page ad in the New York Times pleading with people not to go for a ride on the Lusitania.

That ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean with destroyer escorts, zig-zagging and laying smoke screens. However, when they got to the area of maximum submarine activity, the Lusitania was sent alone, in a straight line. The Germans sank it to keep their enemies from receiving untold tons of ammunition.

You can check this out. It was a deliberate provocation to get us into that war. (The politicians liked it so much they actually called it “The Great War”.)

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona

Your papers please

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Federal ID

Letter to the editor;

Congress shouldn’t try to fix the REAL ID Act. They should just repeal it.

Here is my prediction of the horrible future to be inflicted on us by this Act.

Year One: Real-ID goes into effect. It is very easy to acquire the card, and 99% of those who apply get it the first or second time. You can still do anything without it.

Year Two: It is harder to get the card. Still, over half of those who apply receive one. Those who don't have a card are not allowed on airplanes. That’s all.

Year Three: It is practically impossible for adults to get the card. If they didn't get one already, there is a presumption that they must not be who they say. Those who don't have the card are not allowed to board a plane, a train or an inter-city bus. They are not allowed to start a bank account nor to apply for a job.

Year Four: It is finally, totally, absolutely impossible for about one in a thousand Americans to get the card. This is to say, about three hundred thousand Americans become “unpersons” -- reduced to scrounging out of dumpsters for food and clothing, and to sleeping in cardboard boxes.

Real-ID is not a problem to be fixed. It is an abomination to be repealed.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Good intentions. Abysmal results.

The law of opposite results

Letter to the editor;

Sometimes a government action ends up giving the opposite of the intended results.

Just to make up a silly example, let’s say Town Hall wants to encourage children to fly kites. So they write a regulation mandating that only genuine blue spruce may be used for kite sticks, that only parachute nylon may be used for the air-foil, and that only three-ply cord may be used for the string.

What they have done, according to the law of opposite results, is to make it so expensive to fly kites that children cannot afford to do so without adult sponsors.

Here’s a real one. Congress wanted to do something for disabled people, so it voted for an extreme number of pages that someone else wrote detailing wheelchair access to public places. Well, they were done with good intentions – but according to the law of opposite results, it made it exceedingly expensive to be disabled – and fantastically expensive to allow wheelchair-bound persons onto the premises.

A really terrible example of this is when the Maine sank in Havana Harbor, Congress was stampeded into a war that nobody has ever been able to justify. Worse: When the Maine was raised, it was obvious that the explosion had been on the inside.

Notice that this is not to say that everything any government does will end up with the opposite results. It just tends to happen that way when Congress, the Legislature, or City Hall lets itself be stampeded into voting for some pre-fabricated bill that they did not think of themselves, write themselves, or discuss among themselves.

The moral to this story is that legislative bodies ought to write their own bills, limit them to one subject and not let “Chicken Little” tell them “the sky is falling”.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

How nations ruin themselves

National suicide

Letter to the editor;

Looking at the history of the world, some historians have concluded that all great nations die by suicide.

How do nations commit suicide?

They borrow more than they can possibly pay back. Then they borrow yet more.

They engage in wars that do not directly concern them.

They pour tremendous sums into trying to buy foreign friends – and end up supporting the treasuries of rabid enemies.

They try to police the world.

They let in more immigrants than they can assimilate.

They let people immigrate who have no intention of becoming loyal citizens.

They make treaties undermining the nation and tying it to foreign governments.

Worse than all the idiocies by the government, the people lose their faith, their virtue and their sense of being one united people. This is what permits the rest.

(No. No. I’m not talking about our own country here. Um, ah, this is about all those OTHER ruined hulks of former nations in the dust-bin of history.)

We should only learn something from their example already.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The world was assembled ON PURPOSE

Testimony

Letter to the editor;

I prayed before I started to write this. I felt impressed to pour forth a blazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the heavens and the earth.

Then the Yetzer Hara (“the evil inclination”) made me afraid that would offend my Jewish readers.

So I decided on an impassioned discourse attributing all the glories of Creation to Hashem (“The Name”) – who created it all. After all, I reasoned, They are one and the same.

The Yetzer Hara came on strong with reasonings that many of my readers are atheists, agnostics, evolutionists, “politically-correct,” scientific, post-modern sophisticated men and women, who would stop reading the second I mentioned a Creator along with the Creation.

So, taking a big step backward, I remembered the Star Wars series, and “The Force”. Ah! The Force organized all this pre-existing matter, in the pre-existing expanse of space, over the self-existing expanse of time. That gets us closer to the elusive “common denominator”. The impersonal Force brought all of this to pass.

But, no. Atheists and other sophisticated folk will say that is too close to a concept of a G-d. All right, let’s see how this goes: Random motion of self-existing sub-atomic particles brought about a very large number of random subassemblies, which fell together at random to make stars and planets – and living beings.

Forget THAT! Random motions get random results. Purposeful motions get purposeful results. When you see an aircraft or a watch or an automobile, you know someone made it on purpose. The physical Creation is much more complex. It is obvious on the face of it that Someone organized it on purpose. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Furthermore, knowledge of G-d has to come from G-d. If you want to know about G-d, you have to pray for understanding. (My testimony comes from the Holy Spirit, and not out of a laboratory.) If you don’t know by what Name to address Him, don’t let that stop you. He answers to any of His many, many Names.

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona

Plural wives

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Polygamy

Letter to the editor;

I am a Mormon. Not one of those Texas Ranch “Mormons”. A REAL Mormon. You know; with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. (We don’t do polygamy – now that it’s against the law.)

Let us talk a little about some aspects of a man having more than one wife. (Two or more women married to one husband.)

When we are born, there are about 105 boys for every hundred girls, I think.

Boys are wilder and more reckless. They fight more and take more chances. The bad ones are more likely to join criminal gangs. The good men are more likely to join the Army, the police or to become firefighters. As a result, men get killed and crippled in large numbers.

Men go into crime more than women. Many go to prison. Several criminals a day are killed or crippled by their intended victims.

Millions of boys just never become men. They get to be twenty or thirty or forty, they are still not men. They can be “fathers” but they refuse to be “daddies”. They won't work. They mooch their way thru life. Some might be “good guys,” but they are not good FOR anything. They never become real men.

Most women, on the other hand, want to be wives and mothers, and most women would be good at it – if they could only get a good husband. But there are not enough good ones to go around. “Monogamy” sticks the rest of the women with two choices: No husband at all, or a husband who is a worthless, lazy, drunken, addicted lout, and maybe mean into the bargain. That’s a bad pair of choices.

Polygamy, on the other hand gives every woman a chance to be a wife and mother, to be loved and cared for, to live in a stable family relationship and raise children.

A modern, liberated, educated, mature woman, after thinking things over, might well decide that she would have a better life sharing a good man -- than with total ownership of a worthless one.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Central Casting sends a candidate

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Why do they run such bad candidates?

Letter to the editor;

Major Party A and Major Party B choose candidates for President. They each start with a whole roomful and disqualify the good ones, one by one, until they each end up with the single most putrid, awful, stinking, liability of a candidate available.

“Central Casting? We need a worse candidate.”

“Worse than what we sent you? Who do you want? Dracula? Stalin? Satan?”

“Well, um, yeah. If they’re available.”

“Sorry. They’re all taken.”

“We want one as bad as the man you sent to the other party.”

“You wait til the other party bad-mouths the guy you got. He’ll look bad enough.”

“You sure about that?”

“That’s one sure bet. Look: Why do you want such horrid candidates? I’d think you’d want a combination of George Washington and Mother Teresa.”

“Third Party!”

“What about Third Party?”

“We Major Parties have to have such bad candidates that we can warn everyone not to waste their votes on Third Party candidates or they’ll throw the election to, um, You-Know-Who.”

“Let me see if I have this straight: Both you Major Parties choose bad candidates so you can scare the voters into choosing the lesser of two evils rather than to throw away their votes on a Third Party candidate?”

“You got it. And we can’t afford to put up good candidates, because one would win and that would be the end of the graft and wars and waste we depend on so much.”

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona

Degrees of the moral compass

Talk for First Ward Sacrament Meeting 29 June 2008

Just a few degrees.

Let’s see, degrees are pretty small.

They can’t matter much, can they?

Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 without knowing where he was going. When he arrived, he didn’t know where he was. (He was on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea. He didn’t know from straight up about Caribbean.)

But he had kept detailed written records of all the distances and directions he sailed. He was able to sail back across the trackless “Ocean-Sea” to Spain, right back to the very port where he started.

Furthermore, because he was very careful about each and every degree, Columbus was able to sail those thousands of miles later, again and again, back to that very same tiny island.

President Uchdorf told us in General Conference that in 1979 an airplane headed toward the South Pole for sightseeing was a “mere” two degrees off course. Instead of flying over flat country, it crashed into a mountain that the navigator thought was 28 miles away.

Every single one of the 257 people on board that plane was killed in the wreck.
Two degrees. A mere two degrees.

Fliers might say: “Taking off is OPTIONAL. Landing is MANDATORY.” Attention to degrees will determine WHERE you land – and maybe also whether you live or die.

Elder Uchdorf said a little detail like having your computer right out in the living room instead of in a spare bedroom can steer you right instead of wrong:

You will not be as likely to cave in to the temptation to look at things that you must not look at – if the whole family can see what you see. This detail is very important.

Your moral compass gives you a warning that feels to you like, “Be ready to delete this if anyone turns the doorknob”. It is really saying, “Delete this RIGHT NOW.”

Our Heavenly Father knows what drifts us “a few degrees” off our moral course. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

The Atonement, the Commandments and the Holy Ghost are gifts to us so that we “shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. They not only show us the right course; they ARE the right course. They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.

Our Creator said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” -- but, in addition He said,
“. . . nor do anything like it.” That points our way more precisely.

We might consider that He said, “Thou shalt not steal – nor do anything like it”.

And also, “Thou shalt not bear false witness – nor do anything like it”.

The ancient Mariner’s Compass had only eight degrees, or “points”. Navigators asked for more precision. Directions such as “Southeast by South” were invented.

Then, since there are 365 days in a year, the 360 degree circle was organized, giving us the modern compass.

You outdoor types will have noticed a circle of 6,400 “mils” surrounding the degree scale on your more advanced, more expensive compasses. That is because for certain operations you need more precision.

In the artillery, we need to shoot over the hills and hit targets miles away that we cannot see. We stand two sticks to the left-front of each howitzer. The people who do those calculations read us a “deflection” – and we turn the guns exactly that many mils to the right of those sticks.

That means we could have six cannons in the parking lot here, and they could all fire on the same enemy truck convoy at the same time – on the highway down by the power plant turnoff, or way up past Nelson Rez.

It also means that artillerymen have to believe the tiny voice in their ears – and DO it. (“Deflection: 781. Elevation: 276.”)

YOU also have to listen to the tiny voice in your soul – and believe it -- and OBEY it. (“Don’t DO that. Never mind why. Just DON’T.”)

But your moral compass is not so you can destroy an enemy. It is for your personal uplifting, improvement, protection and education.

Your moral compass just needs enough precision so that you know when you are off course. You might say that The Ten Commandments is a moral compass of ten degrees. Well, sort of.


My late philosopher-uncle, Eliseo Baca, taught us moral direction by pretending to have only a one-point moral compass: “I have faithfully kept one Commandment:
I have never, NEVER, made unto myself a graven image.”

Tattoos may or may not be evil in and of themselves. However, they are a blazing neon sign to the world that the wearer thereof wants everyone to believe he or she recognizes no moral code.

Let’s see: You spend the rent to have an “artist” put into your skin an image of a grinning skull with a knife in one eye and a rattlesnake slithering out of the other.

Then you go to your sweet intended’s father and ask for her hand in marriage, proclaiming your pure and honorable intentions.

N-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!

Those beautiful pornographic pictures -- BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! You’re going the wrong way! You’re trading away your entire future happiness to fall in love with PICTURES.

Maybe your beliefs are only a few degrees different from the Church, but you’re headed for the fever swamps of heresy, false doctrine and apostasy.

Maybe your cravings are only a few degrees the wrong way, but you’re headed for life-long destructive addictions to tobacco, alcohol, chemicals and narcotics.

Maybe you are only a few degrees off of honesty, but you’re headed for a life of pilferage, theft, embezzlement, dishonesty, shame and guilt – with maybe some prison time thrown in for good measure.

Maybe only a few degrees off chastity, but you’re headed for divorce to live with someone who is headed for divorce in order to live with you.

You know what you get when you get someone who commits adultery with you? You get someone who commits adultery AGAINST you.
With any luck, who knows: You could even get yourself murdered.

Maybe only a few degrees the wrong way, but if you don’t repent, at the Last Judgment you will be among those praying for the rocks and the mountains to fall on you.

And rather than happily going to face your Maker, you will sneak off where you think you can hide from Him. You and your evil buddies will meet as far from God as y’all are able to get.

You will laughingly call your new residence “Hell, Incorporated” -- and stay there forever, of your own free will and choice, congratulating each other on how clever y’all are to be able to hide from God.

You start out making all efforts to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, and you bend your course by just a degree or two – and you end up separated from Him, and even, like Adam, trying to hide from Him.

Ships, planes and hikers correct their courses. You can do that, too. It is called “repentance”. It is made possible by Jesus Christ, and is called the Atonement.

There’s a lot more to this, but believing in Jesus and repenting are the first two course-corrections one can make. They are also the first two principles of the Everlasting Gospel.

Brothers and Sisters, you are saved by the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus accomplished this for all of us at four in the afternoon on Friday, the fourth of April, in the year 34, on a rocky hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

It’s a done-deal. The devil cannot “un-save” you.

But he can wreck you. He can ruin you forever.

He can lure you onto the rocks, if you let him drift you off course just a degree or two.

In the Holy Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The idiocy of hating "the Jews"

Hating “the Jews”

Letter to the editor;

Three times in years past, men have come to my home to convert me to the proposition that I really should dedicate all my time, effort and money to hating “the Jews”. Each of these men said with missionary zeal that “the Jews” killed Jesus, and that their descendants are the blasphemous enemies of Christ.

What does the Bible say about going to all that trouble to hate “the Jews”?

My Bible says Jesus was Himself a Jew. His mother and step-father were Jews.

His brothers and sisters were Jews. His friends and neighbors were Jews.

When Jesus worked with his step-dad, their suppliers and customers were Jews.

When Jesus began his ministry, He went to a Jew to be baptized.

His Apostles and disciples were Jews. His hearers and hecklers were Jews.

Except for that lone Samaritan, all the characters in His parables were Jews.

Except for that Phoenician woman (and one leper) all those He healed were Jews.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, untold thousands of Jews threw Him a parade. They lay their coats down for Him to ride over. They called Him the Son of David. They did their best to make Him King. (Who knows? Maybe they DID.)

The faction of Jews that arranged His death was so small and powerless that it had to act in the dark, by stealth and treachery, and hold an unlawful night “trial” in order to have a “case” to present to Pontius Pilate first thing in the morning – before the word got out and thousands of Jews would come to rescue Jesus.

No. I don’t find grounds in the Christian Bible to hate Jews. In fact, Saint Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament) said it is his highest hope that Israel might be saved. Yes, the Bible has hard words for certain Jews, but it does not teach us to hate Jews in general.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The mechanics of conspiracy theories

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Mechanics of conspiracy theory

Letter to the editor;

Five seconds after the second plane hit, many government people thought, “Oh. The Right Wing Extremists are certainly going to blame the government for this.”

As if on cue, without a scrap of evidence, we Right Wing Extremists blamed the government.

This shows the polarized American “Them” and “Us” mindset. Circle the wagons!

Then, very shortly, without a scrap of evidence, the government makes a statement; a ridiculous, physically-impossible fairy-tale.

About that time, ten million Right Wing Extremists make ten million conflicting statements, giving as proof the fact that the government is sticking to its version.

Government people hear that we Right Wing Extremists are indeed accusing the government. As far as they are concerned, to accuse the government is almost as dangerous as to “disrupt the Space-Time Continuum”.

Government people go to great lengths to destroy evidence in an effort to protect the government – just in case. They are not in on any conspiracy. It’s just how they do.

We Right Wing Extremists say destroying evidence proves that the government people know the government did it. (It actually proves nothing. That’s just how instinctively protective of government those government people are.)

Government people say the fact that ten million Right Wing Extremists have ten million different Conspiracy Theories proves that we are evil, crazy or both.

Then, to confound things, many, many absolutely impossible Conspiracy Theories are invented (in the Government Conspiracy Theory Workshop? In tiny, garage-based private conspiracy theory workshops?) in order to discredit all Conspiracy Theories. (You wondered where all that amazing footage came from showing strange, altered, unknown aircraft and missiles hitting those buildings?)

(I say there was no conspiracy at all. One lone “mad scientist” type wired the buildings and flew the planes to their destruction by remote control. All by himself.)

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona

Violence and counter-violence

On violence

Letter to the editor;

“Violence does not solve everything.” (Authentic American proverb)

“Have we been told that ‘violence does not solve everything’ so often that we have come to believe that violence does not solve anything?” (The late Col. Jeff Cooper)

Generally, when no violence is offered, it is not a good thing to commit violence.

Generally, one must not commit violence. That is, if some “really bad dude” is saying bad words and moving in a manner suggestive of evil intentions, the best thing to do is to watch and wait.

However, if the bad guy goes from mere rhetoric to hurting people, it might be a good idea to hit him with a fist or a ball-bat or something. If he is killing people or making a really convincing show that he will kill someone in a second or two, it may be time “to initiate deadly force” – or maybe even shoot him.

The Arizona Legislature made it possible for responsible residents with clean records to carry concealed weapons: You and your predecessors knew violence.

Violence happens fairly often at schools. Mostly it is stopped by a school employee stepping in and saying words to the students involved.

But there is a kind of school violence that is beyond stopping with words and gestures. There is the dreaded “school-shooter,” who, driven by inner demons, comes prepared to kill as many children as possible. It takes the threat of deadly force, or perhaps even deadly force itself to stop such a disturbed man.

The fastest police force may be able to get there in a minute. (How many children will a school-shooter kill in a minute?) But every school can have a great number of responsible adults with guns in their hands IN ONE SECOND.

I recommend that the Arizona Legislature act to encourage Arizona schools to welcome those who have earned the Concealed Weapons Permit to carry their weapons on the school grounds – especially school employees.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The "logic" of "Liberalism"

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Spoofing “Liberalism”

Letter to the editor;

LIBERAL: We need a giant government program to make war on illiteracy.

ME: “War . . . ”?!

LIBERAL: Certainly. We can put a tax on books and newspapers and use the money to fund a National Literacy Agency with local headquarters in each . . .

ME: How about just teaching children the sounds of letters and lending them interesting reading material?

LIBERAL: “Sounds”?! Phonics?! You troglodyte! Phonics has been discredited in a thousand studies. Why, California outlawed phonics forty years ago! Whole-word recognition is the modern way to go.

ME: We all read by whole-word recognition – after we get to recognize a word. A few hours’ study of the sounds of letters and letter-combinations gives a child the ability to “sound-out” an unfamiliar word. English is not all that phonetic, but most words can be sounded out, and even a child can learn the sounds and the principles.

LIBERAL (changing the subject): And you probably carry a gun, too.

ME: Certainly. Does that disqualify me from the human race?

LIBERAL: Uncivilized! Uncouth! Murderer! Do you think this is the Wild West?

ME: None of the above. What’s your point?

LIBERAL: People in a proper civilized society shouldn’t have to worry about guns.

ME: People in a proper civilized society shouldn’t have to worry about kitchen fires, either, but I see that you keep a fire extinguisher by each door.

LIBERAL (changing the subject again): And you’re a Sunday-school teacher!

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Home production of food

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Victory gardens

Letter to the editor;

Anybody remember the yard-gardens during World War Two? (Slogan: “We will win the war with food!”) Many American women took part in the war by digging up their lawns and planting corn and peas and beans and squash from the street to the front door. (Others worked long hours at defense plants.)

Every bushel of produce they grew potentially released truck-and-tractor fuel from the farms to the battle front. Every door-garden potentially released farm-raised food to feed the troops. Every dollar not spent at the grocery stores was potentially available to buy war bonds to finance the war.

We have a different sort of war going on now, and we cannot even tell who the enemy is. There does not seem to be trouble feeding the fighters. But somehow that I cannot tell, this war is tangled up with the constantly rising prices of food and fuel. We may need to follow the sterling example of out mothers and grandmothers, raising a significant part of our food right on our private premises.

Every dollar we don’t spend on commercial groceries is at least potentially available toward paying off our obscene credit card debts. Every trip we don’t make to the store is a gallon or a quart of gasoline not bought and burned. And, who knows? It might even benefit our children and grandchildren to bring food into existence from earth, water, seeds and labor.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

When reading hurts

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Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Dis-education

Letter to the editor;

The most basic part of education is to learn to read. Reading is the key to a lifetime of self-education and enjoyment. What a shock it was, therefore, to hear that there exists a scientific method to teach school-children to dislike reading.

Aldus Huxley’s memorable book, Brave New World, depicts giving selected children electrical shocks when they touched beautiful, bright, illustrated books. The idea was to keep them from being attracted to books, getting educated on their own and therefore becoming unsatisfied with their assigned low-grade lot in life.

We can only speculate on what evil motives and/or stupidity might drive modern American school administrators to purchase “readers” deliberately designed to inflict emotional pain on children who read them.

Remember the “readers” of generations a-gone, with illustrated stories of pioneer families, victorious children, brave and assertive children, and young inventors?

The sad news I hear now is that these have been replaced to some degree by pitiful stories of losers, mocked and discouraged and forever failing in valueless endeavors. The stories are especially hard on children who make an individual effort on self-chosen projects.

The suspicion is that such emotional pain is inflicted deliberately on children who read this stuff so that they quit reading – except when forced to read by overwhelming authority. That is, they would not read for fun or information or inspiration.

Now, someone is going to respond that, why, um, these stories are furnished to prepare children for modern life. What? Prepare them for un-ending failure? How about a few shining examples to prepare them to detect problems, make corrections, push forward despite the obstacles, and succeed?

There are thousands of really good children’s books available. They can be borrowed for free from libraries or purchased outright. There is no reason to inflict emotional pain on children because of the choices of “educational” bureaucrats.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Suing about school bullies

[Ed: This is not a real case. It must not be taken as legal advice.
It was not prepared by a lawyer, but only by a mouthy kid with a typewriter. It is presented for your amusement and speculation.]

Ralph P. Citizen, in propria persona
Box 85 / GradeCurve, Attendance 12345-0085
Telephone 555-2345

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT
COUNTY OF PALMER, STATE OF ATTENDANCE

The Honorable Ed U. Cation, Presiding Judge

Ralph P. and Mary Citizen, ) Case No. ___________________
Plaintiffs, )
vs. ) CIVIL SUIT FOR
John H. Schoolman, ) NON-FEASANCE OF
____________Defendant. ______________ ) A PUBLIC OFFICIAL

Now come Ralph P. Citizen and Mary Citizen, of GradeCurve, County of Palmer, State of Attendance, complaining that John H. Schoolman, who has a statutory duty to protect their minor son, Tommy G. Citizen, over whom the said Schoolman claims to stand in loco parentis; repeatedly, often and consistently fails in said protective duty, to the said child’s great disadvantage, physical injury, pain and humiliation.

JURISDICTION:
This court has jurisdiction to decide this case.

STATEMENT OF FACTS:
John Lifton, also known as “Little John;” and Don McQuellard, who likes to call himself “Mafia Don,” are enrolled in GradeCurve Elementary School. They are large for their age, over-age for their grade, mean, foul-smelling, foul-speaking, ignorant, dishonest, ugly, evil, cruel, thieving, lying bullies (and those are their good points). They have cursed, swindled, robbed, hit, kicked, slapped, tripped, shoved, pinched, punched, pantsed, poked and/or slugged nearly every child at GradeCurve, “just for the fun of it”.

Tommy G. Citizen is a minor child enrolled at GradeCurve Elementary School. He has been on the receiving end of the torments dished out by the aforementioned bullies on at least twenty occasions during this school year. He has suffered bruises, lacerations, pain and fear. They have forcibly robbed him of his lunch money on at least half a dozen occasions. They have thrown his schoolbooks in the toilet. They have pantsed him in public. The worst part is the continuing humiliation of it all.

John H. Schoolman is the Principal of GradeCurve Elementary School. All of the above facts have been reported to him many times, verbally and in writing. In fact, he is so tired of having this sort of facts reported to him that he has quit returning phone calls from irate parents. In spite of all this, he has not done a thing to reduce bullying at his school. He has not disciplined the bullies. He has not asked the school board to expel them. He has not called the police in on this issue. He has not filed criminal charges against the bullies. (Oh, he did call their parents once, but they said he was just picking on their boys, and hung up. That was the end of that.)

The Plaintiffs are not suing the School. The School did not fail to protect the child. They are not suing the School District. The School district has strict policies that require bullies to be kept in line. They are not suing the School Board. The School Board wrote and voted those policies. The Plaintiffs are suing the school Principal, John H. Schoolman, personally, only, solely, in his own personal capacity, for so signally failing to do his statutory duty to protect his charges from one another.

RELIEF REQUESTED:
The Plaintiffs request that Principal Schoolman be ordered to pay a thousand dollars in actual, general and punitive damages, out of his own pocket, so as to make him a fit example to all other in loco parentis school officials not to ignore their statutory duty to protect their students from one another.

_________________________________ ________________________________
(Ralph P. Citizen) (Mary Citizen)

Signed and submitted with all due respect this ____ day of _______, 20­­__.

A second original of this document is submitted to the Court for service to:
John H. Schoolman, Principal of GradeCurve Elementary School
422 Liberal Education Avenue / GradeCurve, Attendance 12345.
(A courtesy copy has already been mailed to him.)

Who should have guns at school?

Protect the children

Letter to the editor;

Let’s say the worst has happened: A school-shooter is killing children one after another. School employees with cell-phones have called the police.

The police are responding in strength; the lead car is already in sight, with lights and sirens. They have practiced for this call and expect to arrive in record time.

Also in our favor is the fact that the shooter is so hopping mad that he screams imprecations between shots: He can only kill one every two seconds, instead of one a second. BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!

(Getting back to root causes, maybe he would not have gone off like that if the school administration had protected him from humiliation by school bullies.)

Now, what everyone at the school wants, is lots of responsible adults with handguns.

The lead police car rams the chain-link fence, knocks it down, and drives right over the top of the wreckage. (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM! (expletive) BAM!

The officers are jumping out of the cars with their guns in their hands. The shooter surrenders. As we surmised, all anyone at school wanted was lots and lots of responsible adults with firearms.

WRONG! There was one thing more everyone at the school wanted: They wanted those people with guns RIGHT NOW!

There is a way for schools to have armed adults respond in ONE SECOND. That is to have some school employees carrying concealed weapons.

The man who clips the hedges and the lady who washes the windows, with guns, RIGHT NOW, is lots better than the entire police force thirty seconds from now.

I propose that schools be encouraged to honor State Concealed Carry permits – especially those held by their own employees.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

The Big Bang and all that

The origin of everything

Letter to the editor;

PLAN A: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) from available materials. The evidence in the rocks shows that this started about forty five hundred million years ago and continues to this day.

PLAN B: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (and life) out of nothing, starting just over six thousand years ago. (Just ignore the evidence in the rocks.

PLAN C: Random movement of subatomic particles brought forth great numbers of stars, which fusion-cooked them over billions of years into atoms of iron, hydrogen, carbon and so on, to fill up the Periodic Table of Elements. Random combinations of certain of these atoms brought forth all of the amino acids – and therefore eventually proteins – so that life was inevitably originated.

PLAN D: We don’t care how it all started. We are satisfied to eat, drink and party.

PLAN E: (other) specify: _________________________________________________

There are advantages to Plans C and D; No God to worship. No Commandments to obey. No meetings. No responsibilities. No prayers to pray nor psalms to sing. We get to make up our own rules as we go along.

However, if either A or B is true, then we are responsible to Our Heavenly Father for our treatment of each other. Jesus told us, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Whether you believe that Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, you have to know that He told us that principle correctly. (Atheists also believe we ought to be decent to one another.)

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona

Coaching the witness

Children don’t lie

Letter to the editor;

A little child sits on the witness chair and answers the prosecutor.
Yes, her uncle took off her panties and handled her genitals.
Yes, he did this more than once.

The uncle is found guilty and sentenced to two hundred years in prison.
He claims he was taking care of the little girl and was merely cleaning her up
after an “accident” in her pants.

But since a child would not lie, off to prison with him.

The little girl did not lie. She told what she believed.
But after being in the custody of experts for days on end and being
interrogated (“brain-washed”), she came to believe the clumsy clean-up
was actually a sexual assault – and that it was repeated.

Groups of prisoners of war have been “brain-washed” by the rigors of imprisonment -- combined with multiple repetitions of reasonable-sounding explanations of the beatific
intentions of their captors.

How much more will a lone child kept in strange surroundings yield to the words of
expert child-psychologists? “Gloria, we are almost finished here. You can go home
to your Momma and your Poppa just as soon as you clear up a few details for us.”
(Translation: “You’re staying right here until you tell us what we want to hear.”)

After enough repetitions, the child starts to “remember” things in a way that does not correspond with reality – and to “remember” things that did not happen at all.

You can check this out for yourself: When you are talking with your brother or sister about something that happened ten or twenty years ago, suddenly you realize that one of you remembers it happened on a bus in Denver and the other says it was on a passenger train crossing Kansas.

Given time and pressure, a good prosecution psychologist might have you both “remembering” that it was actually on a New York subway – even though neither one of you ever went to New York as a child.

There is more to the science of memory than we know at this time. Meanwhile, untold thousands of men and women grind out their lives in prison based on false memories; deliberately implanted memories; casually-acquired untrue memories.

Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona