I sort of heard through the grapevine that Barack Obama might be in the market for a new spiritual mentor.

Maybe Obama would benefit a lot from giving Governor and former Pastor Mike Huckabee a call.

Mike doesn't have a church anymore, since he left the ministry long ago to become a state Governor for 10 1/2 years. But he's still very spiritual. And Barack might really benefit from a chat with him.

On the one hand, Huckabee seems to care more about Obama as a person today than his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, does. Obama's old mentor doesn't seem to like him very much. On the other hand, Huckabee has always been complimentary of Obama even though they have very different ideas on politics and policies.

Wright seems to be doing everything he can to nuke Obama's campaign and to introduce racism into a conversation where race previously hadn't been an issue. On the other hand, when Obama was at his lowest and most vulnerable point following the disclosure of the  initial set of Wright's garbage rants, Huckabee took the high road and played peacemaker. While condemning the remarks themselves, the former Governor did not use the situation as an opportunity to pile on. And while not justifying Wright in any way, he encouraged people to try to understand the world from which he came, which is a world that Huckabee himself has some understanding of.

And it seems clear that Jeremiah Wright was spending so much time talking about conspiracy theories and America's wrongs that he might not have had time to talk about, you know, spiritual things. I'm betting Wright may not have spent that much time talking with Obama about the usual spiritual mentor topics ... God, the Bible, and things like that. Huckabee would make a much better mentor in this regard and can talk about both spiritual things and social issues at the same time. And Huck can do this without insulting anyone and without the need for prime-time coverage for himself.

And maybe while they're talking, Mike can share his perspective on Jeremiah 1:5 ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you ...") or Psalm 139:13 ("you knit me together in my mother's womb"). Since Obama is so respectful of people who disagree with him on abortion, maybe this conversation will help him to rethink his "judgement" on the topic. After all, many more Americans have died as the result of abortion than in Iraq. And of all the things Wright has mentioned as being harmful to black people, abortion is hurting us more.

Huckabee can even give Obama some political advice on some practical matters, such as holding a multi-racial and cross-spectrum coalition together in places where it can be hard to form them. You see, Huckabee earned the support of 48% of African American voters in Arkansas - unheard of for a white republican in the very heart of Clinton country. Also, since Huckabee knows quite a bit about balancing budgets and about helping the people to be healthier and have better schools - all without taxing people to death - he might be willing to share his notes on this as well.

Obama needs change in the type of people who give him spiritual advice. He seems open to having a conversation that crosses the traditional political, racial and geographic boundaries. And since he has an opening for a new spiritual mentor, he could learn a lot from taking some advice from a man from Hope who has shown him a lot more kindness and courtesy than the other man from Hope (or others who are on "his side"). This guy is definitely conservative, but, unlike Wright, he isn't mad about it or about anything else. He's already been fully vetted. He has a lot of experience as a Pastor and has a lot of good advice to offer. The new guy doesn't act as if he thinks the whole world revolves around him. And he doesn't throw anyone under the bus.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright's microphone runneth over. In the presence of Barack's enemies.

I have blogged before about how there is no such thing as "the black church" or "the white church" (God created "the church" not churches for every skin color). I've also made it clear that I'm not an Obama supporter (totally disagree with his positions on abortion among other issues). But watching this guy, the "Rev" just leaves me bewildered and feeling a little sorry for Obama, who has not personally tried to make race an issue in his campaign.

It's bad enough that he seemed to have spent a decent amount of time on Sunday mornings conveying his personal opinions when he should have been preaching the Word of God. And saying horrible things and saying them in such a crass manner that it really has no place happening in a house of worship. But now he is essentially waging war on the guy that did him the honor of going out of his way to not publicly humiliate him.

I don't think Barack Obama threw his Grandmother or his Pastor under the bus. But "Rev" Wright has already thrown Obama under the bus. And he's already started driving off. And honking. "Look at me!! I'm driving!!! WHAT?? You don't like me driving??"

From my standpoint, Wright seems totally consumed by his own ego. It seems like he just has to have the spotlight. And even more than all the negative political effects that Wright's continued presence has on Obama's campaign is the more fundamental issue that Wright is wrong about a lot of things.

For example, there are two types of churches but the distinction has nothing to do with skin color. There are church congregations that preach the Word of God and church congregations that don't. People in all colors go to both types of churches.

And we don't need a "liberation theology" that is specific to a particular race, because God has something better. A theology that liberates all of us regardless of our race - the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God made all of us. He loves all of us. He intended for all of us to have whatever skin colors we have and he values all of our differences equally. But God's intent isn't for different races to be divided. Because in the end, Heaven isn't racially/ethnically segregated. And neither is Hell.

And you can't complain about racism while simultaneously having a warm tone toward Louis Farrakhan.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I don't at all believe Barack Obama is a racist. He's half white. And although he's ultra liberal and I disagree with him on the issues (and won't vote for him for that reason), I think he's tried to run a positive campaign.

But this man, Wright, seems to be just in this for himself. And he seems deeply confused about a lot of things. Including about what God's desire is regarding His church, which is His desire to bring all of us together. Wright has shown no loyalty to someone who has shown loyalty to him. He's so theatrical that it seems that his first love is for the spotlight and all the great attention that the destruction of his congregant's campaign will bring. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised to see him on Dr. Phil's show tomorrow.

And in case you're wondering what's going on in "black churches," all I can say as that I've been in churches for thirty years. Most of the congregations have been mostly or all black in their membership (although in recent years, many congregations have become racially diverse - just as God intended). I've never heard anything like Rev. Wright in a church that I've gone to. But then again, I've gone to churches in the first category (churches that preached the Word of God).

I'm still trying to figure out how Karl Rove and/or Hillary Clinton got Wright to speak up again and re-inflame the whole issue. Maybe they've been praying.

I'm so glad I'm not a Democrat.

Barack Obama doesn't really need a Republican opponent. Those who are supposedly on his side are doing almost all the damage any political opponent could ever hope to do.

I have no idea why Jeremiah Wright continues to talk. It's as though he realizes that he's preached a sermon that has made gotten people incensed, gotten others calling him a heretic and gotten people in his church called names. But now he wants to stand up and give a lengthy benediction.

Meanwhile, Hillary, who claims that she doesn't want a Republican to win, has probably saved the RNC a bundle in opposition research. Both Boris and Natasha Clinton have been so aggressive in their attempts to strike at the very heart of Obama's electability that they have made John McCain's task considerably easier than it was just a few months ago. She is acting as if is her purpose to blow up the Democratic Party. And even if McCain wins in 2008 and she gets another crack in 2012, the question now is, will there be a party in existence for her to win the nomination. The Democratic coalition is falling apart.

Obama doesn't need any enemies. Those who claim to be on his side are doing all the damage on behalf of his enemies. His political enemies are in the position of possibly being able to relax this summer and enjoy the nice weather.

The funny thing is that when all is said and done, these same people will probably find a way to blame all of this on the Republicans.

[First ... a Public Service Announcement from "The Values Voter"]

People ... please pay your taxes. Many of us hate the current tax code and think it's oppressive and nonsensical. But, no matter how we dislike it, we still have to pay it. All of it. By April 15th every year. And don't forget to pay 90% of what you owe before the end of the previous year or else you'll get penalized as well. No matter how much you don't like a particular law, you can't break the law in order to protest it.

Got that out the way.

Now, I don't defend people who knowingly commit crimes and are punished for it. And I'm not writing this to make any kind of defense for Mr. Wesley Snipes. I don't know all the issues involved with his case, but he clearly has had numerous problems with taxes. The government doesn't give any of us an excuse for not paying our taxes. And if you do the crime, you very well might do some time. I like him and I feel bad for him, but he should have known better.

But what I will do is use this sad situation to talk about how the convictions of Snipes and others who get convicted of tax crimes effectively punishes those of us who do pay taxes even further. And, more importantly, I want to suggest a way that the government can get the money it needs, get it in a more cost-effective manner, and cut down on the number of people who have the opportunity to cheat the government out of the money that it needs.

Okay. So, now Wesley snipes has been convicted of three misdemeanors and sentenced to three years in prison. The government wanted to make an example of him and it did. I'm just positive that tax cheats from coast to coast are rushing out to Best Buy to grab the latest copy of Turbo Tax to get their taxes filed before sundown. Now we've got to be better off as a nation, right?

Well, not exactly. Here's some reasons why.

According to the Internal Revenue Code section 7201, tax evaders are fined for the cost of prosecution. So at least we're not paying for that. However, now that he's been sentenced to a Federal prison for three years, we that do pay taxes have to pick up the tab for that time period. In 2003, it cost $25,327 per year per inmate for a Federal inmate. Assuming he serves all three years, us taxpayers are out $75,981. And since we're already in the hole by $9.3 trillion (owed to foreigners) and have an annual budget deficit of $240 billion bucks, this really isn't a good time for us to have to pay for Wes's hots and cots.

And let's think about what Wes will be doing with his time should he serve the three years. He might be making license plates or watching his old movies on taxpayer-funded cable television. But he won't be making movies. And even though he's no longer in the prime of his career, he still pulls in a decent Hollywood Salary. He earned $38 million bucks between 1999 and 2004. Let's say he could pull in half of that now, which of course would mean that the government would take half of that. I know he's reportedly had a thing about actually paying the taxes, but clearly, the government always wins that battle. But now that he'll probably be in prison for a few, he'll have no wages to tax. Half of the half of $38 million is $9.5 million. It's money that this nation will never see. And now that the government can't tax him because he'll have no wages to tax because he's going to be sitting in the cell that we're paying for, our leaders in Washington are going to want to take that money - and the taxes they don't get from others in the same position - from us.

The good folks in Washington are probably thinking that this high profile conviction will send the chill down the spine of anyone thinking about not paying their taxes. Now they'll all comply and the Federal Treasury will be full again. But this is not at all the first time someone famous has been convicted of tax evasion. And still, people continue to cheat. The IRS itself estimates that they're owed $300 billion more than they actually collect. And since they actually collect $2,518,680,000,000, this means that if they're right, they're missing nearly 12% of what they're owed. But I'm sure Wesley Snipes' conviction (which will ultimately cost us millions) will fix all of that.

I have a better idea for helping the government to get what it is owed, help us save some much-needed public money and at the same time to help the Wesley Snipes' of the world to stay out of jail. The Fair Tax. (It's not my idea).

Here's what could happen. Instead of our government spending $10 billion a year to operate an agency that at last count published 4,766 pages of complex (and hard to monitor) tax rules and which after that, still only manages to grab eight tenths of what it is owed, we could try something radically different. If we tax on what people spend, we will get the money that we need and we'll do it without punishing people for working. And heck, if Wesley wants to protest then and not pay any taxes, all he has to do is not buy anything.

We can spend a few billion less in playing cat and mouse games with the constantly scheming tax cheats and instead wait for them to come to the store. They've got to eat. Buy cars. Buy gas. Stay at hotels. Go to the movies. Instead of going after the money, we can wait for the money to come to us. And it won't cost us $10 billion a year. And we won't have to pay for prison accommodations for quite as many people who "don't feel like" paying taxes. And because we won't be taxing their income, they'll have lots of money to spend because they'll have their entire paychecks. The last time I watched the news, I think I heard the term "spending stimulates the economy" once or twice.

Hmm ... can I claim my portion of the cost of prosecuting and imprisoning tax cheats as a deduction? I'd better call the Club For Growth to ask.

The homecoming king and queen during better days

This piece isn't about chronological age. It's about being old in the more general sense.

Those of us who are sports fans are familiar with the sad situation where we see our former heroes, who were once strong and agile, skilled and vigorous, who over the course of the years became just a fraction of what they once had been. The saddest part of it is that sometimes, they don't know that they've deteriorated or that they no longer have "game." And either because they can't bear to face the truth that it's time for them to move on and do other things in their lives or because they think they still have what it takes to gut it out some more, they stay on the playing field. Even when they're hurting their team. Their teams, out of a sense of loyalty for their service over the years, stop short of benching them. So the aged athletes continue to be a drag on their team and an embarrassment to their image because of the mistaken belief that they're still able to live in an earlier point in time.

One of Bruce Springsteen's biggest hit records was the hit song Glory Days, which tells the story of people who were once on top of the world during their high school years and who, years later, can't stop talking about it and can't quell a desire to relive it. The way the lyrics are written, we are led to like these people but at the same time to feel sorry for them. Instead of mentally graduating from high school and going on to enjoy the new challenges life has brought them in their current world, they keep holding on in an unhealthy way to the days when they were "it." In hearing the song, we hope we don't end up like them and that we can learn to like new things in life as time goes by.

Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to me to be real-life examples of the people in that song. It's almost as if they jumped off the lyric sheet and in front of a CNN camera. They have accomplished more in terms of number of years in top-level power than almost any Americans in history. Bill served two years as Arkansas Attorney General, ten years as Arkansas Governor and eight years as U.S. President. Hillary has served seven years as a U.S. Senator. But now Hillary wants her eight years as President as well. These people love being in power. And they can't seem to let it go.

There are all kinds of interesting things that a couple can do after being in power for 26 years. Most normal people who have made a good living, who have adult kids and who have had a long career, you know ... go on vacation. Travel the world. Enjoy life a little bit. Spend some time outside of the spotlight. But these folks are determined to go back in time and relive the period in their lives where they were really popular. When everyone wanted to know what they thought. When everyone wanted to hang around them. When they got to be around all the other "cool people" - the Kings, Prime Ministers, Executives and Movie Stars.

They could do like most of us and find new ways of being happy, new experiences and new challenges. Most of us don't have to relive our glory days in order to feel important. Let's all hope that one day they finally graduate.

Let's look at this another way. Our first President took office in 1789. It's 2008 and the next President will finish his/her first term in 2013. That's 224 years.

We know that Bill Clinton served eight years in office. George H.W. Bush served four years and his son George will have served eight. That's twenty years of the President of the United States being a member of either the Clinton or Bush family. If Hillary serves a single term in office, this will mean that 24 of the 224 years that America has had a President by the end of the next term, a member of one of those two families will have been the President. That's more than ten percent of America's history of having a President.

But at least the Bush's aren't trying to extend the family run any more. Jeb's not running. Laura's not running. They seem satisfied that they've had a pretty good run. But the Clinton's aren't. Let's all hope that Bill and Hillary can find a new way to be happy. There are a lot of happy people in this country who aren't in charge of anything other than themselves.

Let's have a quick chat about surrogates (no, not the folks that Clinton and Obama are using to verbally attack each other - I mean the other type of surrogates). Let's revisit one of the main arguments that are used to support abortion in the context of surrogate parenting. And I would particularly direct the question to those who firmly believe that an unborn baby is part of her mother's body until birth.

We'll start out assuming that the pro-choice doctrine is true: that a baby is part of the mother's body up until the moment of birth and the mother has unquestioned, unlimited, Constitutional (never found that part of the Constitution - but we'll play along for now) authority to abort the baby for any reason and at any time. We will assume for now that this is the settled law of the land, that our Founding Fathers wanted it to be this way and that those of us who question it should feel ashamed of ourselves.

Now let's pretend that we have a couple (we'll call them the Williams Family) who wants to have a baby but can't get pregnant for some reason. The couple ultimately decides to use the services of a surrogate mother (we'll call her Rochelle). Their baby is conceived outside the mother's body and implanted into the Rochelle's womb. You now have a situation in which you have the biological child of the Williams that is developing in the body of another person.

So, before we go further, one question pops into my mind. Is the Williams' baby their baby because he/she is their biological offspring? According to the premise of pro-choice ideology, this must not be the case because, in that line of thinking, the Williams' baby is now in Rochelle's body and is now a part of her body. Rochelle technically has 100% authority over the Williams' child growing in her body. And the government shouldn't have a say against her aborting the baby any more than it would in her, for example, having a tonsillectomy.

The Williams' and Rochelle have a signed legal contract that Rochelle will carry the baby to term and then turn the baby back over to the Williams family. However, a couple of months into the pregnancy, Rochelle has serious second thoughts about whether or not she wants to be pregnant right now. Although she doesn't have to raise the baby after birth, she feels, after some agonizing deliberation, that being pregnant for the next seven months is no longer something that she feels comfortable with. And so Rochelle exercises her "constitutional right" to "terminate the pregnancy" - it is, after all, her body.

The Williams' are devastated. They consider legal action. Some would consider it to be a breach of contract. Others might possibly argue that since Rochelle has a Constitutional right to an abortion and to control her own body, the Williams would not have a cause for a complaint.

But in any event, let's ask ourselves what happened to the Williams. Did they lose their property? Or did they lose their baby? Did Rochelle exercise her Constitutional right to control her own body? Or did she terminate the life of a developing baby that was the biological offspring of someone else? And a bonus question: how would you feel if you were the Williams?

If it is true that the baby is part of Rochelle's body while inside her, it would also be true that the Williams' gave Rochelle this part of her own body, or at least loaned it to her with the expectation that she would return it to them in the form of a fourth person nine months later. Although every other part of Rochelle's body has been with her since birth and will continue to be part of her until she dies (or has a body part medically removed), this one transient part, the Williams' baby, was formed from two other people, fused together in a laboratory, then became an inherent part of her body (a part that she has a Constitutional right to do anything she wants to do to) for nine months, and then became a fourth person.

Does this make any sense to you?

If you're having trouble making sense of this, you might, like I did some time back, be slowly making the transition from being "pro-choice" to "pro-life." Some things just can't be defended and just make no sense when you really dig into the arguments for them. And abortion is one of them.

(I know that I have a tendency to be really wordy. I'm trying to figure out who I inherited it from. My mom. Or her doctor)

"Before"	"After"

Former Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has accomplished something in politics that not many people have been successful in pulling off. In a span of a little more than two years, he has accomplished a near-total image makeover. Let's review Mitt's story, shall we?

At the end of 2005, the conservative publication Human Events listed the then Governor Romney as one of the Top 10 RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), in effect accusing him of not being a "real" Republican. But yet, just two years later, Romney managed to become the darling of conservative pundits everywhere and to earn the endorsements of leading conservative publications and media figures.

Maybe the disconnect is that he was badly misunderstood earlier and now people understand him much better. Or maybe he's learned to say all the right things in a way that has finally convinced enough of the right people. Or maybe he really underwent a radical inward change and the election cycle awoke the hibernation of that inner conservative that had been trapped underneath liberal statements and a liberal record on social issues. Regardless, in this edition, we're going to look at his story, and more importantly, learn how you can use these same successful principles to get your own new look and to make other people feel good about you.

The Background

Before Image - "RINO": To a self-respecting Republican, the term RINO is possibly the lowest form of insult (next to being called a "liberal") possible. It's similar to an African American being called an "Uncle Tom" or your typical heterosexual guy being called a "sissy." The implication of the term is that one is fundamentally misaligned, or is a player wearing the wrong uniform, so to speak. It's a fighting word (or, for Establishment Republicans, a word that might prompt a strongly worded letter). This really wasn't a list you wanted to be on in late 2005 if you wanted to win the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008.

After Image - "Reagan": Mitt managed to emerge from the depths of the RINO designation to become a bona-fide conservative media-approved "true conservative" (an honor second only to the prestigious term "Reagan Conservative"). He's pretty much their it-guy.

You can change as well! Do you have a deep inner need to become accepted by people who currently can't stand you? Let's extract some of the principles that made this work for Mitt and figure out how to use them to have an extreme makeover of our own.

STEP 1: Change your position(s)(s)(s)

We are nothing if not flexible. The first thing you need to change about yourself is your mind. Literally. Change your mind. If your beliefs and policies are causing a problem with the people who need to approve your image, you might consider reevaluating them. All of them.

Take a look in the mirror. What is it about what you believe that causes the people who you want to like you to not like you? Are you a defense hawk who wants to make nice with the MoveOn.org crowd? A Brady Bill adherent who longs to one day speak at the NRA convention? Be willing to reconsider the opinions that are offensive to your target audience. And ditch them. Worry about giving a conversion story later.

Mitt Romney did not allow his party's opposition to a number of his positions to get in his way. And there's no need for you to feel constrained by what you have historically stood for either. Do not allow your past positions and statements to keep you from the approval that you deserve.

STEP 2: Change your language

If you're going to be able to really pull off an extreme makeover, it's extremely important to know how to talk the talk in addition to looking the look. Do you know the language of the people whose approval you are seeking? Learn it! For example, if you want ultra-left liberals to take a liking to you, you might start using phrases such as "evil corporations," "carbon credits," and smiling warmly when talking about raising taxes. Want to fit in while hanging out with Establishment Republicans? Talk about "THE border" (even if you know we've got three of them), the importance of sticking with "the team," and beam with unabashed glee as you cite the latest poll that shows the team might win by a single electoral vote. It's all about knowing the lingo and body language.

Cliches are of particular importance as many in both political parties mindlessly cite them. Learn the set of cliches that get the side you want to impress fired up and learn to integrate them into every fibre of your daily conversation.

STEP 3: Change the meanings of words

Words have power. Especially if you change their meanings in a way that makes you look powerful. And looking back to the Republican Presidential Campaign season, isn't it funny that a guy who wanted to ban abortion and eliminate the Income Tax (Huckabee) became the "liberal"? At the same time, a guy who recently championed abortion and gay issues and opposed the Bush Tax cuts become the "conservative." So here is another principle in our extreme makeover: when the words that could be used to accurately describe you don't fit with your new image, change their meanings.

Are you a liberal but want to fit in with conservatives? A conservative who needs to hit it off with liberals? After learning to look the look and talk the talk, give yourself some extra padding by changing the terms so that they favor you. Or, more precisely, label your opponents with labels that make you look good in comparison.

"Economy Car"	"Gas Guzzler"

Even a car salesman can change the image of his product by the appropriate usage of labeling. It works.

STEP 4: Invest in yourself (literally)

Mitt showed us an important principle when he poured a then-record $6.3 million dollars of his own money into his 2002 Massachusetts Gubernatorial campaign, followed by $35 million of his own money into the 2008 Presidential Campaign. If you really want other people to like your look, you've got to be willing to invest in it yourself.

You might be saying to yourself "hey, TVV, I don't have forty million bucks!" Neither do I. But I tell you that you can still invest in yourself with whatever you do have. For example, let's say you are competing to become the next neighborhood Condo Board President. You should promote who you are today by printing out as many flyers as you can afford to and spread them all over the neighborhood. Put some of them in the neighbors' mailboxes and mail the rest to their best friends, co-workers and their next of kin. It also might help if you spend some of your money knocking down the competition (those "Jim's lawn has crabgrass" flyers might work). Spend as much as you can afford to on promoting your new look and bashing anyone who might draw away from the attention you deserve.

The point is this: it's up to you to let everyone else know how great you are and how much your competitors stink. Spend as much as you can afford to letting them know why you look awesome and everyone else looks pathetic.

STEP 5: Win friends who influence people

One of the most critical steps in winning people over is winning over the people whom they trust. Probably the biggest reason that so many conservatives would swear on a stack of Bibles that Romney is the second coming of Reagan is because so many of their most trusted conservative media personalities told them so. It works pretty much like being "vouched for" does in the Mafia. If you are a conservative and listen to Fox News or your local Clear Channel news talk station for any five minute period of time (even during the sports segments), you already know that they claim he is "a friend of ours."

So, you may ask, how do we apply this principle? Let's say that you are an ardent social conservative but you still want to advance far in Democratic political circles. Find a way to win favor of the folks at The Huffington Post and Air America. You'd be surprised at the impact of millions of people (or maybe a much smaller figure in the case of Air America) constantly hearing their beloved pundits swear to them that "Rick Santorum is the voice for progressives." or "Alan Keyes will bring about the change we liberals need!" The stuff really works.

VOILA!

Some wise person once said that "perception is reality." So, if you don't have the time to become a totally different person, just work on the perception!

Romney's remarkable evolution in perception is nearly unprecedented in politics. But that doesn't mean that the rest of us can't learn from his example and turn around our own public perceptions using the same techniques. These principles are tested and proven and will win the hearts and minds of those who don't look too closely. In fact, if Dick Cheney starts aggressively applying these principles today, he still has time to become the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2012.

Some of our Presidential Candidates have been asked about when they think life begins. We want to help them explore the question more deeply by excluding some of the points that we know life hasn't begun so that they can look at the question from a different vantage point.

In the recent Presidential Compassion Forum, both Democratic Presidential hopefuls, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, were asked to explain if they believed life began at conception. Senator Obama stated that he wasn't sure and Senator Clinton stated that she thought that the potential for life began at conception. So, since the next President will be making a lot of decisions that will directly affect the fate of the unborn in one way or another, I took it upon myself to try to help them think about the issue from another point of view (and by the way, Barry and Hillary, thank you for very much for checking out the blog. I know you guys are very busy).

So, here are the ground rules. We are going to focus on scientifically verifiable biological facts instead of having a discussion on spiritual issues. Also, instead of offering my personal opinions about when life begins, let's use the opposite approach and list all the milestones that occur in the development of a human baby and eliminate all of the ones that can't be the point at which life begins. Then, we can help them form more definitive conclusions on when life starts based on the things that we know don't cause life to begin. Sound good? Great! Let's roll.

OUR STARTING POINT ("DAY ONE") - A NEWBORN BABY IS A HUMAN BEING. WHEN DID HE/SHE BECOME HUMAN?

Almost everybody believes that after birth, a human baby is actually human (I say almost everyone because I have talked online with very radical pro-abortion people who don't think babies are actually people until age 10 or so). So, let's make our starting point the agreement that a newborn baby is human. Let's go backwards in time from this point.

POSSIBILITY 1: LIFE BEGINS WHEN OUR BIRTH IS RECORDED AND CERTIFIED (normally 38-42 weeks after conception)

Some people think that that great moment in time that makes us an official human being is shortly after birth, when we are weighed, given Social Security numbers, and given a birth certificate. These people think that being "official" and having our identities recognized by the government are the things that certify our humanity. But we all know that many people live in this country who have no official records or documentation. In fact, in the time it took you to read this sentence, another human being has crossed into the United States without having a social security number or any official documentation by the government. Therefore, we can make our first elimination. Being officially documented is not the thing that makes us human. So, a baby is already human before he or she gets "recorded." So, let's keep going backwards in time.

Some people have actually suggested that the issuing of a birth certificate or other legal governmental certification of birth is what makes us human and starts our lives. But many people are in this country who don't have any documentation regarding their identity or birth. But yet they are all humans. So, documentation is not a prerequisite for humanity and we are human before we get documentation.

POSSIBILITY 2: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER PHYSICALLY CONNECTED TO OUR MOTHERS (38-42 weeks after conception)

So, other people think that what makes a baby a human is when the baby is no longer attached to his/her mother. At this point, say these people, the baby is now a "separate person" and this distinction is what makes life officially begin. However, let's remember that for the first moments after birth, a newborn baby is still attached to his/her mother through the umbilical cord, which is still in the mother's body. So, a newborn baby isn't technically physically independent of his/her mother. But a newborn baby is human. And therefore, by this counterexample, we know that physical independence from the mother is not the thing that makes life begin. Because a newborn baby, a human, isn't physically independent from mom for at least a couple of minutes after we've all agreed that they're already human. Let's go back some more.

For the first moments after a live baby is born, the baby remains physically connected to mom through a very tough umbilical cord attached to the placenta that is still inside of the mother. But yet we all agree the live baby is a human being already. And so the physical independence from the mother's body isn't the thing that makes them human.

POSSIBILITY 3: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER IN OUR MOTHER'S BODY (38-42 weeks after conception)

For many, the moment at which a baby leaves his/her mother's body is the point at which the person becomes a human. But anyone who has either experienced a birth or seen a live birth knows that there often isn't a "moment" but sometimes a very long set of "moments." So, let's consider the case of a baby who is on the way out of the womb - partially in the womb and partially on the outside. Such a baby simultaneously meets the criteria for being "part of its mother's body" and outside of his/her mother's body all at the same time. Is the baby a human when, for example, her head has emerged from the birth canal but the rest of her body is still inside of her mom? Or in a breech birth, the legs being out and the head still being in. Is the baby "part of the mother's body" or an independent person? Nothing about the baby really changes between the time the baby is on the way out and when the baby is out. And since we know that when the baby is out, the baby is already a human, and the baby can't be both an a human and bunch of cells in mom's body at the same exact time, we can conclude that the baby is also human when he/she is on the way out. And so we know that the baby is human before the baby leaves the mother's body. And so, a-back we still go.

If the argument is that a baby is human when outside the womb but "part of the mother's body" when inside of it, a baby being born is both at the same time. Part of the baby is inside the mother's body and part is outside. So, if the baby is a human when he/she is outside of the mother's body, that same full-term baby is a human when he/she is partially inside of the mother's body. And so we know that the baby became human before she completely left her mother's body.

POSSIBILITY 4: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE TAKE OUR FIRST BREATH (38-42 weeks after conception)

Some people might believe that the moment at when the baby takes his/her first breath is the moment in which they become a human and life begins. However, consider the case of babies who are born very prematurely and can't breathe on their own. These babies, who are born and whose birth and identity is legally certified by the government, sometimes need pulmonary surfactant to be administered to them and in some cases for breathing tubes to be inserted in their tracheas. Are they not yet human until their lungs develop enough to function properly enough for them to take their first unassisted breath? Of course not. In fact, their births have been certified, they are physically separate beings from their mothers, and are outside the womb. But they haven't yet really breathed on their own. So, therefore, we can conclude that the first breath is also not the thing that makes life begin. So we'll still keep tracing this thing backwards.

Many very premature babies cannot breathe on their own for a while after birth. But yet they are human. So, being able to breathe on your own is not the thing that makes our life begin or the thing that makes us human.

POSSIBILITY 5: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE REACH "FULL TERM" STATUS (35 weeks after conception)

So the next point to look back to is the point at which the unborn can be considered "full term," which technically happens after 35 weeks. Is there something about this point in time that defines the line at which we make that journey from being a bunch of cells to being a human? Apparently not, because nearly four months before Amillia Taylor had reached this point last year, she was certified to be a human being when she was born at 21 weeks. And although it is very rare for babies that young to survive outside the womb (although medical advances are allowing premature babies to survive earlier and earlier), the limit of viability (the point in time at which a baby has a 50% chance of surviving outside the womb) is 24 weeks. And the point here is that reaching the status of full-term is not the thing that causes life to begin. So, we can scratch this off the list. Human life begins long before we are full term.

Amillia Taylor was born last year at 21 weeks and 6 days gestation - three months before unborn babies reach "full term" status. She survived and did not even stay in the hospital for an extended period of time. Another baby, James Gill of Canada, was born in 1987 at 21 weeks and 5 days gestation. And in general, by the time an unborn baby is at 24 weeks gestation, the baby has roughly a 50% chance of survival outside the womb (although Roe v. Wade allows for unborn babies to be aborted up to 24 weeks for any reason). This disproves the theory that becoming "full term" is the thing that causes life to begin.

POSSIBILITY 6: LIFE BEGINS WHEN WE REACH THE "FETAL" STAGE (8 weeks after conception)

The funny thing about the term "fetus" (which is simply the Latin word for "offspring") is that by the time a baby gets to the fetal stage, at about 8 weeks after conception, a whole lot of the important things that make a human a human have already taken place. The baby's heart has started beating three weeks after conception. By seven weeks after conception, the unborn baby's brain waves are registering on an electroencephalograph (which is used on already-born people as a test for whether their brain is alive). And by the fetal stage, every organ that the baby will ever have is already formed and in place. Their ears have begun to form. Spontaneous limb movements can be detected by ultrasound. So there is no evidence that anything special happens to suddenly make the developing baby with the beating heart and the signaling brain and the limb movements and the hair buds to suddenly become human at the 8th week or at any other arbitrary moment during the pregnancy.

There is no evidence that at any arbitrary point in the human development cycle, including the point at which we stop calling that developing being an "embryo" (from Greek "that which grows") and start calling him/her a "fetus" (from Latin "offspring"), suddenly makes that developing being a human.

THE UNPOPULAR POSSIBILITY: CONCEPTION

There is only one biological event that every person's existence can be traced back to and that can be identified as the trigger for every other event in the person's life. Regardless of your faith, your race, your gender, your nationality or your age, your heart started beating 21 days after you were conceived. Your brain showed evidence of functioning starting about 42 days after you were conceived. If you were a full-term baby, you were probably born sometime between 245 days and 280 days after you were conceived. If you were born prematurely, you were probably born sometime between 153-245 days after you were conceived. You can almost figuratively set your clock to it.

If you had not been conceived you would not have been born. And once you were conceived and implanted in your biological mother's womb, your heart started beating about a week after she missed her period and has been beating continuously since then (unless at some point later in life your heart stopped beating and you were revived).

We know a newborn baby is a human being. We also know a lot of things that didn't cause that human baby to become a human and to have his/her life begin. Everyone will continue to have their own opinions of when life begins, including our Presidential candidates, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for a belief that life begins at some point after conception and lots of reason to believe that it does.

And although I haven't attempted at any point in time yet to tie in Scripture verses or other spiritual beliefs into the discussion, knowing that both Obama and Clinton go to church and are comfortable talking about the faith and values they've learned from their churches, I will throw in one Bible verse that maybe they hopefully will ponder as they think about questions like these. It is the Scripture Jeremiah 1:5 and it reads "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you ..." Since they consider themselves people full of faith and values maybe they can consider that along with all of the above.

In addition to the time that our buddies Doug and Deacon (from our example yesterday) spend working exclusively for the government - up until April at last count - they also, like us, need to spend time and money filling out the darned paperwork. And checking it twice. And buying computer programs, hiring accountants, digging through all their records, etc., in order to comply with the paperwork and either pony up more money to the government or get back the interest-free loan that some of us make to our government every year (otherwise known as a tax refund).

Lots of people outside the government make a fortune on our complex and antiquated income tax system. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people who really hope that the Fair Tax never happens because many have their meal tickets hitched to that great gravy train known as the Internal Revenue Service. The cost of preparing and filing business and personal tax returns, according to Wikipedia, is between $250-$300 billion each year, in addition to the trillions of dollars we spend in paying taxes on our income. And the same article states that Americans spend the equivalent of 20% of the amount of taxes that we all pay on the work of simply preparing to pay the taxes. This just makes no sense at all.

If we think of the U.S. Government as a business, the IRS is its cash register. The cash register machine was created to ensure that the government collected the money that it was due and that no one in effect cheated or stole from the business. And it is the job of the IRS to translate the decisions of policymakers into the specific rules that determine how much each one of us "customers" owes and to make sure that we pay it accurately.  But unlike almost every other type of business that has pricing rules that are somewhat easy to understand, the rules for how much individuals and businesses owe at the end of the year are insanely complex. To illustrate this, from 1913 until 2004, the length of the U.S. Tax Code, in pages, rose by 33,943%.

Like the IRS, here is another antiquated cash register

According to the IRS, in 2005, it cost the agency 44 cents in order to collect every $100 in taxes. This figure is based on the fact that they collected $2,268,895,122,000 in taxes that year and it cost the agency more than $10 billion to operate. With this money, the IRS created and printed its 4,766 pages of complex tax rules, invested in complex computer programs to catch a few of the many tax cheats, and ran expensive audits (harassing many non-cheats along the way). Some people think that this is just the cost of doing business. But no business could survive spending that much money in simply collecting revenue.

For example, Walmart lists on its income statement that it made $378.8 billion dollars in revenue. What if its cash register system cost it 44 cents for every $100 people spend there? In this situation, Walmart's registers would have cost the company $1.6 billion dollars. Per year. How long do you think their CEO would last if its shareholders found out about this?

What if McDonald's used this complex pricing scheme? Since the company has revenue of $22.7 billion a year, if Mickey-D's followed the IRS model, it would dole out $100 million dollars every year just to put the pricing on the menu and to operate the cash registers to collect the money from the customers.

On a smaller scale, the most excellent Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle rakes in $1.09 billion bucks from the hungry masses who love a great burrito. If it cost them 44 cents per every 100 dollars of income to simply compute the tab and collect the money from the customers, they'd be spending almost $4.8 million bucks every year just to collect the money from the customers.

The cash register and the pricing rules for the U.S. are so complex that it's very easy to make mistakes - either mistakes the government makes in not noticing when people cheat the system or mistakes that citizens make in overpaying or not paying enough. The cash register is so hard to operate that it has generated a quarter of a trillion dollar industry in training people how to use it (bear in mind that the entire U.S. Federal Budget for 2008 was less than three trillion dollars).

And let's look at it from the customer's point of view. Would any of us like to deal with a business where the pricing was so complex that we had to expend serious mental energy in figuring out the tab? Let's go back to the McDonald's example:

Quarter Pounder ----- Price TBD*

* Please complete the following worksheet to determine the price of the burger

1) Cost of the patty. Enter $2.00 in the space on the right.	___________
2) Did you ask to hold the mayo? If yes, go to step 4. Otherwise, continue with step 3a.
3a) Enter the number of teaspoons of mayonnaise applied to this sandwich (Please see the publication Food, Nutrition and Fitness for more definition on the number of teaspons of mayonnaise applied to your sandwich)	___________
3b) MULTIPLY the number in 3a by $0.10
3c) ADD the number you computed in step 3b to the number you entered in step 1
4) ADD the amounts in steps 1 through 3	_______
5) Did you ask for extra pickles? If not, move to step 7. Otherwise, proceed to step 6
6) Add $0.25 to the number calculated in step 4
7) Add $0.50 for the bun If you are on the Adkins diet and did not ask for a bun, please consult the individual at the register for further assistance.
8) CONGRATULATIONS! You have determined the price for your sandwich. Please pay the person at the register this amount. Please keep this worksheet for your records.	_______

 

But at least McDonalds gives us a receipt after we pay. The government unfortunately doesn't.

Whenever we hear a politician talk about income taxes we almost always in the same sentence hear the phrase "the rich." And any conversation about whether or not our tax policy makes any sense seems to sooner or later come back to talk about whether or not "the rich" are paying too much or too little. Let's take a different course today and let's talk about how the current tax policy, the 95-year-old Federal Income Tax, is unfair to all Americans, including the not-so-rich. And to talk about the not-so-rich, we'll use the example of our two favorite "regular guys" that we all know and love - Doug and Deacon from the awesome sitcom The King Of Queens. Let's have another look into the lives of these two guys and think about how the system affects them.

Our regular guys have regular jobs. They're not part of "the rich." In fact, because they're so regular, we're going to give each of their families the U.S. median household income (as of 2006) of $48,201.00. We're going to pretend that they live in the state with the average level of income taxes (which, according to my spreadsheet, would be 5.86%, something between Idaho and Indiana). Because Doug and his wife Kerry have no kids and Deacon and his wife Kelly have two kids, we're going to average it out and pretend that each guy has one kid. And we're going to assume that they earn their $48,201.00 evenly throughout the year, that they work every weekday, and that they get off weekends and federal holidays.

Now before we take a look at how hard these guys bust it for Uncle Sam, let's take a different viewpoint in how we think about money. We need to begin thinking about money in the context of the amount of time in our lives we need to invest in order to earn it. For example, if your family makes $50,000 a year, it means that it takes one year of your life to earn $50,000. It doesn't mean that your life is worth $50,000, because our worth as people is incalculable, equal, and has nothing to do with how much we make. However, if you earn this salary, $50,000 is equal to a year of your life in terms of time that you could otherwise be spending with friends, family, doing hobbies, or resting. In a sense, time really is money and visa versa.

So, if you were somehow subjected to a tax rate of 50%, another way of thinking about that would be that half of your year would be spent working to pay taxes. If this were your situation (all deductions aside), you would begin earning the money that you need in order to pay your mortgage, buy food and gas, clothe your family, etc, on June 30th. What about a 70% income tax rate (don't laugh - it happened in the 1970's - and the top income tax has been as high as 94% at one point)? In this case, you would be working to pay taxes until September 10th and would be able to live on what you earned from then until New Year's Eve.

So, here we come back to "the rich." Being as bright as you are, you already know that the 35% and 50% tax rates are associated with "the rich" and not regular guys like our pals Deak and Doug. So, let's figure out how hard and how long these guys work and for who.

With their current household incomes of $48,201.00, married filing jointly, these guys have to pay $4,000 each in Federal Taxes. Not so bad. When you figure in holidays, these guys earn $190.52 per day and it takes 21 days for them to be able to pay their Federal Taxes. They work from January 2nd only until January 30th to do this (including weekends and holidays). Awesome! We're all feeling Heffer-vescent!

But now they've got to start working to pay their Social Security taxes (you know, the program that neither them or most of us will ever benefit from). They'll be working until February 21st to pay that. And before break time on the 21st, they've got to spend a couple of days working to pay their Medicare taxes. They're finally done with that on the 26th. But now they've got to pay their state taxes, which will have these guys working until quitting time on March 17th. All told, they've spent most of the first three months of the year working but not being able to keep what they earn, at the same time that the average living expenses are going up. They get to pay their mortgages, their rising gas and electricity bills, their food and clothing (as well as for Doug's cool big screen TV), with only the money they earn from the spring until the end of the year. And in many places, they have to work longer for the government as many cities impose hefty local taxes as well. It's far, far from ideal but it could be worse.

But here's how it could get worse. Anyone who watches television at 6 PM knows that these guys live in New York City. And in New York, if you want some of the things that "the rich" have - like running water and heat - you need to make more than you'd need to make in other cities. This is something the Internal Revenue Service doesn't take into account in determining who's rich and who's not. So, they decide to work time and a half throughout the year, raising their family incomes to a more New York-survivable $72,301.50. Now, what happens as a result is that they're now working more than a week later into the year (taking everything into account) just to pay their taxes.

Let's repeat something just for painful clarity. The problem is not just that by making more money they're paying more. It's that by making more money and by earning more per day, they spend more days a year working for the government and less days working for money that they get to keep. And when you get to the point at which you're spending more time working for the government than working for yourself (which can happen when the tax rate goes above 50%), the line gets blurry between being a citizen and being forced to be a servant.

And let's suppose that Deacon's wife Kelly gets a part-time job bringing in half the annual median salary - $24,100.50 - to help pay for the expensive gas she needs in order to drive the kids around. Now they're working into April. Just to pay the government. The more they work, the longer into the calendar year they have to work before they can keep the money that they're working harder to get.

And the real irony is that no matter how hard the guys work to pay the government, the government will spend even more than all of us together give it. The government maintains a annual budget deficit and our leaders have refused to pay down the $9.4 trillion dollars in debt that we owe. All of this put together means that their kids will someday be working even longer into the year just to pay down the debt that the government is creating today.

The harder they work, the longer they work for the government. And the longer they work for the government, the more the government will spend even more than they pay to it. And with the lesser and lesser amount of money they have left after paying the government, the higher and higher their living expenses rise. And hundreds of miles away, thousands of folks who look and dress like Doug and Deacon's boss, Supervisor O'Boyle, are working all day throughout the year to ensure that the guys comply with every nook and cranny of the tax code - a set of rules that has expanded from 14 pages long in 1913 to 4,766 pages long in 2004. It's even longer than their union regulations!! All of this may sound like an amusing plot for part of Season 12 (which sadly never came to be). But unfortunately, this is real life and it's the way our current system works for all of us. And it works this way for all of us regardless of whether we're "rich" or regular.

You may be thinking that their has to be a better way. And there is. We could generate revenue based on what people spend instead of what they make and in doing so, we could also capture federal revenue from everybody - including tourists and those who earn under the table - without punishing any of us for working harder or longer. It can be a win-win for the big guys and the little guys alike. Maybe Spence will think of that.

I guess if you've spent five years in solitary in a prison camp while in brave service to your country, you're entitled to a couple of days off here and there.

Still, if you're running for the job of President of the United States and at the same time are trying to quell thinking that you're too old for the job or that you don't care about certain types of voters (say for example, the Evangelical Christians, us good folks without whom no Republican has won national office in many decades), you have to be careful.

I saw the Compassion Forum Debate last night on CNN. And in addition to the painful attempts for Democrats to explain their positions on abortion (which, I've joked, is a little bit like seeing Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani host a forum on the importance of fidelity in marriage), something was missing from the debate last night. That something was Mr. McCain.

I'm sure he had something important to do. I'm just not sure what. I didn't get the indication anyone else in the media knew either.

I hope that this doesn't become a pattern. In February, McCain politely ducked out of a debate with his sole viable opponent, Mike Huckabee. Last fall, McCain (along with Romney, Giuliani and Thompson) all had better things to do than attend either the Values Voter debate or a GOP debate for African American voters (they were all represented in the latter by empty podiums). And he's unfortunately missed quite a few Senate votes during the same time as well, as have Obama and Clinton. It's got to be nice to have a dependable day gig (paid for by taxpayers) while you interview for a better job.

For the sake of McCain, who is not only an American Hero but also seems like a pretty decent guy, I hope he doesn't feel tempted to go the way of Fred Thompson, another decent and nice guy who didn't think that he had to continuously work hard at campaigning.

I know that our Republican friends are riding a high wave because of the latest set of Democratic implosions from the gang who haven't been able to shoot straight for most of the last thirty years. The combination of Wright ("HELLO, AMERICA!! I WANT TO SAY A FEW WORDS!!!"), Clinton ("Nominate me or I'll destroy the party!! On DAY ONE!!"), and the head Democrat, Howie Dean ("We're losing .... yeahhhhhhh!!") is almost enough to make Karl Rove breakdance. But it's way, way, way too early to think that the election is going to fall in one direction or the other - or to act as though you think that it will.

In football, there is a defensive strategy known as the Cover 2, in which in many cases, the team in the lead stops playing aggressive defense and just tries to hold on to their lead. Many times, such a strategy leads to a comeback - for the other team. A very easy way to lose something that you're winning is to act like you're already winning and to stop playing.

Senator McCain still has a lot to prove to a lot of people in the Republican Party. He has a record on many social issues that is far superior to that of his Democratic rivals. He should not have missed an opportunity to show this off as well as to speak to religious voters last night. He would have made his competitors look bad in comparison. Instead, his absence made them look stronger than they should have looked.

While many people talk about the large number of Americans who have lost their lives in service in the war in Iraq (4,041), we tend to be one-dimensional in our thinking about the numbers of the dead. I say this because many who are focused on the high numbers of deaths overseas in war are not noticing a huge tragedy that is unfolding right in front of them and at a faster rate.

According to the CDC, in 2004, 839,226 unborn American babies lost their lives in abortion (and the number was actually significantly larger, since four states, including California, refused to report the number of abortions performed there). This amounts to an average of at least 2,299 per day. And in the time that it took to spend two days of news cycles covering the testimony of General David Petraeus, the number of American unborn babies killed during that two-day cycle is higher than the number of Americans killed so far in Iraq.

From March 20, 2003 until April 10, 2008 (1,848 days) there have been 4,041 deaths of already-born Americans. This is an average of 2.18 tragic deaths per day in Iraq

As of the last known statistics, 839,226 unborn Americans are aborted in a year. This is an average of 2,299.24 tragic deaths per day on U.S. soil

I wish that many of the people who are outraged at the deaths overseas were also outraged at these deaths that we have in our country. After all, when either an already-born person dies or an unborn person dies, the future population is reduced by one. In either case there will be one human being who has incalculable value and ability to contribute and touch people's lives who will not be here to do so. And in almost every situation, an abortion involves the termination of a human life whose heart has already started beating (since the heart begins to beat one week after the first missed period).

But, unfortunately, a number of the people who have been the most vocal about the horrible deaths from the war have supported the process which has led to the far greater number of deaths of the unborn. And, from the math, in the same time period that 4,041 already-born Americans have tragically been killed in the war, about 4,249,012 unborn Americans have been killed through abortion. That's more than one thousand times as many!!

That's such a shocking number that I have to repeat it. Since the first bombs dropped on Iraq in the opening of the Iraq War on March 20, 2003, there have been more than 4.2 million abortions of unborn babies - just in the U.S alone.

Abortion doesn't happen for the reasons its proponents tell us it happens. Only a relatively small minority (20%) of abortion patients are under 20 years of age. Only an extremely small number (1-2%) are rape victims. Every bit of statistical evidence seems to suggest that, more than anything else, regardless of how much thought, agony or intense consideration goes into the decision to abort, the primary reasons for the huge number of abortions have to do with some level of personal convenience.

To support this observation, here is some context from the Time Almanac 2004 edition on page 549:

"On Average, women give at least three reasons for choosing abortion: three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school, or other responsibilities; about two-thirds say that they cannot afford a child; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner."

In addition, the following information was obtained from a report published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice organization, which cites a survey of abortion patients who were willing to provide information about why they were choosing to abort. The most common reasons cited by abortion proponents - rape/incest and the life or health of the mother being at stake - are among the least common reasons for abortion. Most abortion patients cited issues that dealt with the level of personal inconvenience that a pregnancy and rearing of a child would bring. And if the mothers chose to offer the babies for adoption instead of aborting, it's difficult to imagine that the impact many of the reasons ("can't afford a baby now", "done with childbearing," "not ready for a child") would not be diminished by the fact that the mother would not be raising the child after birth.

Reason Given Percentage of respondents who gave this reason for having an abortion Having a baby would dramatically change my life 74% Can't afford a baby now 73% Don't want to be a single mother/relationship problems 48% Done with childbearing 38% Not ready for a child (or another child) 32% Don't want people to know I had sex or am pregnant 25% Don't feel mature enough to raise a child (or another child) 22% Husband/partner wants me to abort 14% Possible health problem with my unborn baby 13% I have physical health problems 12% My parents want me to abort 6% I was a victim of rape 1% I was a victim of incest 0.5%

Furthermore, the CDC report mentions that from the information they gathered regarding previous abortions had by 2004 abortion patients, 25.2% of them had one previous abortion, 11% had two previous abortions 7.7% had three previous abortions and 2.4% had an unknown number of previous abortions. What this all adds up to is that for many who have abortions, the baby is an inconvenience and not a threat to their life or health. And for many, it appears that abortion is being treated as a form of birth control of last resort.

The point here isn't in any way to condemn people who have been involved in abortions in the past. It is probably true that most of us have some involvement in abortion (since nearly half of women of childbearing age either have had or will have abortions and it takes two people to conceive a child. And in some cases, these patients were coerced by others into having abortions). The people who do this are us, as well as our wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. This is a national problem and almost all of us have contributed to an environment that has allowed this to happen. And besides all of this, no one can go back in time and undo something that they later come to regret. None of us can go back in time and change anything that has happened in the past, just as we as a nation can't go back in time and undo a war. But what we can do is to reevaluate our perspectives on the controversial topic of abortion. Because most pro-choice and pro-life people can at least agree that abortion should not be happening at the rate that it is. Abortion may be "safe" (though not for the aborted child and not always for the mother) and legal. But abortion is anything but rare.

According to the 2004 rates, from today until the end of 2008, there will be 609,301 more unborn babies whose lives will be ended through abortion on U.S. soil. And to be morally consistent, if we're concerned about the lives of already-born Americans who are killed overseas, we must also be concerned about the lives of many more Americans who will be born within the next nine months if they are allowed to be.

We will be debating Iraq and all the horrible casualties for some time to come. But within a matter of  a mere couple of days, we are killing more of our own children than any insurgent in a foreign land could ever hope to do. And we need to stop.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor 

Today, President Bush, in awarding the Medal Of Honor to the family of Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, who gave his life to save his comrades, stated that "the Medal of Honor is awarded for an act of such courage that no one could rightly be expected to undertake it."

As reported in the article by MSNBC (and also referred to in the Bold Color Conservative blog), Monsoor had three options when a grenade came flying in his direction and endangering him and his comrades. He could: a) find safety for himself, b) try to toss it away and hope that no one got hurt, or c) throw himself on it to make sure that his fellow troops were safe. Guess which option he took?

May God Bless his family and God Bless America!

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13, NIV)

I can predict perfectly how some would reply to the statistics on the Impact of abortion on African Americans in the part where I note the "pro-choice" ratings for politicians such as Barack Obama, the CBC (and pretty much all Democrats in national politics and an increasing number of Republicans). The response would be simple. They're not pro-abortion. They're pro-choice!! And to the people who would reply this way, there is some huge difference in the two.

Let me try to quickly explain why there isn't really any.

My great-great grandfather was a slave. He was sold at least twice after childhood to two different families. My last name came from the final family he was sold to before slavery was outlawed.

Great-great grandpa was regularly whipped and beaten. Like all slaves, he was only allowed to do what his "masters" - who legally "owned" him - allowed. It was also common during that time period for slaves to be raped, killed, and to have their little children sold away so that they'd never see them again. It was all legal.

Great-great grandpa was an intelligent and brave human being who was made in God's image. In God's eyes, he had the exact same inherent value as a person as the family that "owned" him or any other white person. But great-great grandpa had no legal rights. He was considered the legal property of the family from which I got my last name. And many politicians felt that the government had no right to intrude upon that family's "right" to do whatever they wanted with him. They had a "choice" in whether or not to own slaves; my family, which were not considered to be fully human, did not have any choices. The original U.S. Constitution did not forbid him being treated that way. And the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, upheld the "rights" of great-granddaddy's "master." The whole question of his treatment was the "settled law of the land."

I don't think that most of the people who have abortions (which actually is most of us in one way or another) are intentionally being cruel. A lot of good people have and have had abortions. This entire generation has been taught the lie that abortion involves just getting rid of "a bunch of cells" that weren't human yet, just like the generation that "owned" my ancestors were taught the lie that we weren't human period. In the case of abortion, many good people are deceived into doing something that society hasn't yet recognized to be horribly evil.

There were a number of northern politicians, including our 13th, 14th, and 15th Presidents, who tried to take a moral middle ground on the issue. For the most part, these men claimed that they disliked slavery. Millard Fillmore went so far to say that he personally detested it. But they agreed that my great-great grandfather's "owners" and others who held slaves had the "right" to do these evil things to their property and that the government had no role in stopping it.

An example of a politician who was "pro-states rights" regarding slavery	An example of a politician who is "pro-choice" regarding abortion
President Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) He said: "God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil ... and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution."	Former Presidential Candidate John Kerry He said (during two different occasions): "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception" "...and I believe that the right of choice is a constitutional right. I don't intend to see it undone."
Not considered human in 1858 Had no rights Could be disposed or treated in any way by "owner" U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the government had no right to intervene	Not considered human in 2008 Has no rights Can have life terminated at any time during first 24 weeks at sole discretion of the mother U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the states do not have any right to set laws that restrict these "rights"

I'm trying to visualize one of these "pro-states rights" national leaders trying to explain their position to great-great grandpa, the one who didn't have a choice or a right:

"I strongly disapprove of your master whipping you, assaulting your family members, selling off your children, branding you, and the other cruel things that have been done to you.

But I have to defend your master's CHOICE to whip you, assault your family members, sell your children and brand you.

You DO understand the difference, DON'T YOU?"

I don't think great-great grandpa would understand. And I couldn't blame him. Because the differences in doing cruel things and approving for others to do cruel things are generally lost on the victims. Like my ancestors, abortion victims have no legal voice and their humanity is not legally recognized. But unlike my ancestors, abortion victims will never be able to speak for themselves in any way or have descendants to speak out on their behalf.

Evil is evil. And no one has legitimate "choice" to inflict it on another.

On the fortieth anniversary of the day that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated in the prime of his life, we face another tragedy in the African American community. A tragedy that many are not aware of and that rarely presents itself in any discussion of the challenges facing black people in America. A tragedy that many black elected leaders haven't voiced opposition to and have in many cases supported. And a tragedy that would undoubtedly greatly shock Dr. King if he were alive to see this day.

The tragedy is that for every two black babies born in the United States, one unborn African American baby in America is aborted.

Abortion, a topic that provokes deep emotion among people who are on all sides of the issue, is much more common than most of us think among people of all races. Across all races, for every five American babies born, there is an abortion of a sixth baby who is not permitted to be born. Many of the arguments that are used to defend the practice of abortion are presented in a way that obscures the true statistical facts that surround the practice. For example, although it is commonly believed that most abortions are had by very young people, the CDC reports that only approximately 20% of abortions are had by mothers under the age of 20. And though people who defend abortion often mention the issue of rape, it has been estimated that only about 1-2% of abortions involve a mother who is pregnant as the result of sexual assault or incest (in fact, even if every reported rape in the United States led to an unwanted pregnancy that was followed by an abortion, this would only amount to less than 10% of the abortions reported each year). In addition, there is considerable misinformation about the human development life cycle that leads many to have an improper understanding of what abortion is. Abortion is anything but rare and in almost all cases, involves the termination of a human life in development whose heart has already started beating (since the heart starts beating typically one week after the first missed period). In my opinion, abortion in general is a national shame.

But as bad as it is in general, the statistics on abortion get considerably worse when viewed with a focus on the African American community. Here are some simple, well-documented facts:

• Although African Americans make up 12.4 percent of the U.S. population we make up 35% of the abortions
• The abortion rate for black women is 2.9 times the rate for white women
• From 1989 until 2004, the abortion rate differential for black women increased from twice that of white women to 2.9 times as much.
• For every 1,000 black babies born, there are 472 unborn black babies aborted, which means that for every two black babies born, one black baby is aborted.

This chart is a graphical representation of the statistics. Excluding miscarriages and stillbirths, one third of black pregnancies ends in abortion. Black elected leaders in Congress (who are all members of the Democratic Party, which has made protection of the legality of abortion a key focal area for decades) have generally not only not made this a topic of discussion, but have, for the most part, voted to keep the practice of abortion for any reason legal.

Even though abortion usually happens as the result of a voluntary action by the expectant mother (but not always), it has long been suspected that certain organizations have encouraged blacks in particular to have abortions. In February, it was reported that The Advocate, a right-to-life student magazine at the University of California, tape recorded a phone conversation between an actor working for the organization and the Vice President of Development and Marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho. Here is an excerpt from the article that described the call:

On the recording provided by The Advocate, an actor portraying a donor said he wanted his money used to eliminate black unborn children because "the less black kids out there the better."

Kersey laughed nervously and said: "Understandable, understandable. ... Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited and want to make sure I don't leave anything out."

Planned Parenthood, which has long been suspected by many of placing its clinics in areas with high concentrations of African Americans, and whose founder once spoke at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and who spoke at another point with Nazi anthropologist Eugen Fischer, stated that it had taken "corrective action" against the individual.

Although a key difference in the thinking of many who call themselves pro-choice and those who call themselves pro-life is the question of when life begins, there is one fact that both sides should easily agree on. In both abortion of an unborn baby and the death of an already born person, the future population in either case is decreased by one. And while many black elected leaders and clergy members talk about the issues that cause many deaths among already born African Americans - AIDS, gun violence, and health issues among them, many of the same people refuse to talk about the epidemic level of abortion in the black community. The CDC reports that in 2004, 35% of the 839,226 abortions that occurred in the United States that year involved the termination of the lives of unborn African American babies. Multiplying these two numbers together, we end up with a rough total of 293,729 unborn African American babies that were aborted in 2004 (not including California, West Virginia, and New Hampshire, which refused to provide its numbers to the government). At the same time, another CDC report shows that in the entire United States in 2004, there were a total of 283,859 deaths of already born African Americans. So, there were more abortions of black babies than deaths of all already-born black people from all causes in the U.S. during that same time period. More black babies were aborted than the total number of all black people who died from cancer, heart disease, homicide, AIDS, diabetes, combat injuries, etc - all put together. And, based on these numbers, in a five day period, the number of black unborn babies whose lives are terminated through abortion (4,023) is greater than the total number of  U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq War (4,012) as of this writing.

Outgoing Maryland Congressman Albert Wynn celebrates the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and rallies for abortion rights with Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much outrage, discussion or dialogue regarding the issue of abortion. In fact, many who claim to represent the ethnic group most affected by abortion seem to be wholly in favor of changing nothing regarding its legality (in many cases for any reason and at any point in the pregnancy) and availability. And if thirty five years of abortion being promoted as a natural alternative to allowing an unborn baby to be born has shown a dramatic rise in the occurrence of abortion in the black community, one can only imagine how much more broadly African Americans might be affected by it in the future. According to NARAL Pro Choice America, every single member of the Congressional Black Caucus who was rated by the organization, including Senator Barack Obama, has a 100% Pro-Choice approval rating from them. It is difficult to understand why people who voice concern over how other social ills are affecting the lives of African Americans don't understand the incredibly high rate not only of abortion in general but the degree to which it is harming blacks in particular.

Like a whack-a-mole, every day, an idea pops forth from a different Beltway Republican. The idea that Mitt Romney would be the best Vice President since ... Dick Cheney. Since I've already used up a lot of words trying to help a lot of good but misguided people understand why this really isn't a good idea, I decided to just put together a few pictures.

Here's a map of where Romney won. I've added a little bit of extra information, including his personal connections to the places he generally won (for the most part, he either lived or governed in or near the states he won). Also, I put the number of electoral votes for the states that he won in parenthesis in yellow (you can see that he won a lot of very small states.) He won the states near where he lived in Utah, the states near where he grew up in Minnesota, as well as the state he governed and Maine, which is very nearby.

Now, here is a map of all the states in which Romney either came in third place (Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma), lost by ten points or more (Illinois, New York, Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware), or did both (Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma). The states that he lost really badly in are generally larger states than the states he won. In the south, he lost badly to Mike Huckabee and John McCain. In the north, he lost badly to John McCain.

(I disregarded the states which held contests after Romney withdrew but still had his name on the ballot. He also came in third in those states, but in fairness, those are not reflected on the map).

One of the things that we really need from the people who are running our governments is a little more creativity and imagination. The government needs to take a lesson from we the people. What do we do when we find yourselves with more bills than we have income? For one, we try to cut back on unnecessary expenditures where we can. And on the other hand, knowing that we can't keep asking our bosses for raises every time cash gets tight, we find other ways of making income. We get second jobs. We sell things on EBay. We start businesses. We try as hard as we can to diversify and increase our income while cutting back on our expenses.

The government, on the other hand, not only has refused to cut expenses, but has a natural tendency to come back to the boss - us - to ask for a raise over and over again. What if the government, like its people, tried to find additional sources of income from someone other than the boss?

Here's how the government gets its money:

See the problem? The government is too dependent on individual taxpayers - us - the bosses. And just as we can't continue to go to our bosses and ask for more money, neither can the government keep coming to us and asking for more money. We don't have that much more to give!

Someone is thinking "well, I know what to do ... let's tax the corporations more!" The problem with that is while most of us aren't going to leave the country if taxes go up, corporations most certainly will (another reason why the Fair Tax will benefit the economy - it will encourage more businesses to come here - but we'll go into all of that another time).

So, here's one way the government can get a "second job" or at least some other various sources of income. Remember the days before you used to see your favorite football team play at Raymond James Stadium, Heinz Field, or Gillette Stadium - back when stadiums were actually named after people? Was it annoying when the name changed and when you realized that you were being blitzed with yet another wave of unwanted subliminal advertising. Sure. Did you get over it? Yes, you probably did.

Professional sports franchises and mass transportation systems have reaped millions and millions of dollars from advertising sponsorships. So, why can't the government do the same thing with assets like the Federal Highway system? It would be annoying at first to drive down the "I-5/Coca Cola Freeway". But,  if the money earned from it were strictly spent on important things - like paying down the debt, helping the truly helpless needy (people who can't work - not people who choose not to) or simply balancing the budget, wouldn't you be able to get over it? Especially if the alternative was either you or your children eventually paying even more of the money you need to live on just to make up the national shortfall?

To keep things from getting out of hand, let's say that there were standards in place to make sure that no sponsors that were inappropriate for the family were able to sponsor a highway. Let's also say no alcoholic products either (would you really want to drive down the "Bud Light Expressway?" I'm not going to!) If the highway is named after important people, either hyphenate the name or just don't make those properties available for sponsorship. For the health conscious, substitute the "Coca Cola" Freeway with "Lean Cuisine" Highway. You get the general idea.

This may be a zany idea that has no merit. But at least it's an idea for how America can earn revenue without further overburdening the taxpaying public. We need Washington and the states to start coming up with some new wild ideas of their own. Because the boss can't keep giving out raises.