Mitt Romney a viable republican presidential nominee

Might the third time be a charm for Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney said recently that "circumstances can change" when asked if he'd run for president in 2016. While he is not my favorite candidate, sometimes we have to play it safe to win, and I'd much rather have him than risk another Obama-type presidency.

A Romney-Ryan ticket would look appealing

I also like the concept of another Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket. I think that knowing right off the bat who the presidential and vice presidential candidates are would be a good seller.
Plus, and perhaps best of all, I think that all the dirt about Romney has already come out, of which there really isn't much other than the fact that he's run as a moderate republican and supported state-run healthcare while governor of Massachusetts.

However, he has the business and economic expertise from his past experience to run a country and get our economy running again.

So there's actually lots to like about the prospects of a Romney-Ryan ticket.  Now, we do not know for sure the he'd even choose Ryan again, but the prospects that he would sounds good anyway.

However, there are reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney, and one of the main ones was noted by Rush Limbaugh during his show on August 4, 2014.  He said:

If the Republicans nominate somebody that forced four million Republicans to sit home and not vote in this climate, why in the world are they thinking of doing it again?

He added:

A, Romneycare, Obamacare, they cancel each other out. But with the economy as bad as it was, with Obamacare lingering, with everything that was known -- Benghazi and everything that was known -- if poor Mitt was not able to capitalize on the absolute worst four years of a presidency we've had in my lifetime, what in the world makes people think he's gonna be able to do it again? I mean, history is history.

Rush said that one of the main reasons Romney lost was that he was afraid to attack the first black president, afraid to paint the first black president for who he really was: a failure.  People would call that racism, even though it's not.

During the last election Romney didn't have a chance, Rush said, because people didn't want to send the first black president packing, even though they had to know he was a failure.  And this time around, in 2016, Romney might be running against the first female presidential candidate, which would result in the same thing all over again.  Would Romney be able to paint Mrs. Clinton for who she really is: a hard-core-out-of-touch-with-common-Americans-liberal?

Rush also added a disclaimer about a Romney candidacy:

You won't find, in terms of just a nice man, you won't find anybody greater. Morality and family, you won't find anybody better. But it takes more than that. And there was a lot. Obama was screwing up left and right big time. There are some who think that 2012 should have been a slam dunk Republican landslide. And I'm close to being one of them. 

In the meantime, Rand Paul would best protect natural rights, and I think Rick Perry is the most presidential.  However, Paul would be a dark-horse candidate, and Perry already has people out to find dirt on him, even if they have to make it up.

So, the safe bet for 2016 might be an already run and tried Mitt Romney.  His skin has got to be tough as rubber by now, something that would help him retract all the mudslinging he'd face for being a republican president.

Austrian Economics creates prosperity

The names "austrian school," or "austrian economics," may not sound familiar to most Americans, yet if we call it by it's modern name, perhaps you'll recognize it. It's modern name is supply-side, or trickle down, economics. Perhaps a more fitting name for it is free market economics.

Ron Paul, in his book "Liberty Defined," describes the history of this economic philosophy:

The school of thought is named for the country of its modern founder, Carl Menger (1840-1921), an economist at the University of Vienna who made great contributions to the theory of value.  He wrote that economic value extends the human mind alone and is not something that exists as an inherent part of goods and services; valuation changes according to social needs and circumstances.  We need markets to reveal to us the valuations of consumers and producers in teh form of the price system that works within a market setting.  In saying these things, he was really recapturing lost wisdom that had earlier been understood by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), J.B. Say (1767-1832), A.R.J. Turgot (1727-1781), and many more throughout history.  But history needs people like Menger to rediscover forgotten wisdom.

Andrew Mellon and Jack Kemp were two economists who renewed interest in this philosophy, encouraging Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan respectively to adapt it.  Both Coolidge and Reagan reduced taxes and regulations, and with government out of the way, the American economies of the 1920s and the 1980s soared to its greatest heights in American history.

Paul continues:

The Austrian school champions private property, free markets, sound money, and the liberal society generally.  It provides a way of looking at economics that takes into account the unpredictability of human action (absolutely no one can quantitatively know the future) and the huge role of human choice in the way economies work (in markets, consumers drive decisions over production), and explains how it is that order can emerge out of the seeming chaos of individual action  In short, the ustrian School provies the most robust defense of the economic system of the free society that has ever been made.

The Austrian School "had achieved mainstream status before the so-called Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s swept away the older wisdom.

Hippocratic Oath required pledge not to perform abortions

Image of Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)
Prior to the ancient Greek philosophy,
it was common for physicians,
to use their knowledge to kill for money.
The Hippocratic oath was an effort,
to change the image of the profession.

Since the days of ancient Greece physicians were required to take an oath, therefore promising to do no harm, including a pledge not to perform abortions.  Since about 400 years before the birth of Christ this has been known as the Hippocratic Oath.

However, beginning in the 1960s, rather than face the issue, most medical-schools dropped the requirement that graduates site the pledge.

Just think, an oath that lasted through all the trials and trivializations of 2,500 years of history was ended over the abortion issue.

Today the pledge is voluntary, and the part about not doing abortion is not a part of it.  Sad.

Reference:

1. Paul, Ron, "Liberty Defined," 2011, 

Obama trying to use UN to force liberal agenda on world

As a former journalist who has kept up his skills in the blogosphere, I have for you a perfect example of journalism bias. It comes from Coral Davenport at the New York Times in her article "Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Leiu of Treaty."

First she states the facts:

The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.

In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.

The ultimate goal here is to punish countries who do not conform to the law, if it is passed, or to shame them into complying.  In other words, either you conform to the progressive agenda or you will be shamed and ridiculed until you do.

But then she goes on to blame republicans as the reason Obama is forced into such action.  She said:

Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill say there is no chance that the currently gridlocked Senate will ratify a climate change treaty in the near future, especially in a political environment where many Republican lawmakers remain skeptical of the established science of human-caused global warming.

For 30 years people have been claiming that mankind is causing global warming, and yet there has been no increase in global temperatures since 1998.  Because global warming has been disproved by said facts, they have changed the name of their theory to "climate change."  It appears they have too much invested in the myth to just give up on it now.

There is politics behind the myth, because if democrats can convince the world that humans are causing "global cooling" or "global warming" or "climate change," then perhaps they can use this "fear" to push forth their political agenda, which mainly results in more regulations and taxes that take away personal liberties and make nations poorer.

It appears that the only force against Obama's charge to force nations to accept global warming are republicans and poor countries.  However, once progressives like Obama get their way, all countries will be poor, as the only way to create equality, the progressive goal, is to redistribute wealth, thus eliminating the upper class.

It appears republicans and poor countries are the only folks who know the facts in this case, or at least care to heed the facts.  Coral Davenport is yet another journalist who fails to study history, learn the facts, nor report the truth.  She is yet another journalist who fails to comply with rule #1 of journalism: "report the truth, keep your opinion out of your writing."

Abortion: A sad state of affairs

If it wasn't bad enough the the Supreme Court found some inexplicable way to make abortions legal, now, under Obamacare, even people who do not support the horrendous act of violence are being forced to fund it.  This includes the Catholic Church, who has openly declared a war on abortion.

This is a sad state of affairs. If anything, if the Federal government were to rule on the abortion issue, it should rule on the side of life.  Now, not only is has it ruled on the side of death, it is now forcing the Catholic Church, of all things, to fund it.  This is not liberty. This is not freedom.  This is not justice. This is not moral. This is not legal.

Atlantic Ocean hiding global warming?

For many years now a few scientists have been trying to convince people that humanity is causing too much carbon dioxide (CO2) to be released into the atmosphere, and that this is causing global warming.  The problem with this theory is that the global temperatures have not increased since 1998.

It's gotten to the point that global warming activists had to come up with an excuse to explain the heat that didn't happen.  They are now claiming the ocean ate it; that it is hiding 700 feet below the surface.

This past week scientists released a study that explains where all the global warming has gone.  They say that it has been being sucked into the Atlantic Ocean, and is hiding about a mile down.  It's a natural occurring event that goes in cycles, and explains why the atmosphere is not warming.

The problem with this is it doesn't make sense, because warm air and warm water rise.  If you go down a mile under the ocean it will be cold.  If you want to feel warm water, you will go to the surface, where the water is warmed by the sun.  

Instead of spending their time and money trying to prove global warming, maybe it's time these scientists accept the notion that mankind is not causing it.  

The problem with the "Pro Choice" argument

A lot of people argue that a woman should have the right to choose whether to keep a pregnancy or to terminate it.  However, there are problems with this argument that need to be addressed.

Many argue that a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy.  However, few people on this side of the argument respect the natural rights of the infant.  An infant, thus, has a right not to be murdered.  It has a right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, among other natural rights.

Liberty, defined, means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others. By this definition abortion is not only murder, it's an obvious violation of the liberties of the infant.

It also diminishes the value of life.  It causes people to not even bat an eye, to not think twice, about killing a baby, thus ending a life, at the convenience of the mother. If anything, the Federal government should err on the side of protecting life, not taking it.

Diminishing the value of life has created certain social and moral issues, beginning with the idea of "when do you decide an infant is a viable human being."  How do you decide whether it begins at conception, three months, six months, or term?

Still, most pro choice proponents squirm at the thought of killing a baby in the 9th trimester.  Yet how is this any worse than killing a baby in the first trimester? If a mother is squirmish at the thought of ending a pregnancy near term, how is this any worse than ending it near conception?

If you decide it begins at term, then you are going to be aborting babies that could be viable human beings.  You could, then, take a kicking and screaming baby out of a mother, only to end it's life. Or is it only murder after a child is born?

Another problem with the pro choice argument is that many of the people who argue for the right of the mother to choose to have an abortion, they do not fight for her right to choose where to send their child to school, nor her right to choose what to put inside her body (narcotics, cigarette smoke, sugar, high fat foods, marijuana), nor can she choose to opt out of purchasing health insurance.  So in this regard, the pro-choice argument is hypocritical.

Technically speaking, there should be no argument of whether or not a woman can kill her baby.  Technically speaking, the argument should be the morality of killing an unborn infant.  Scientifically, the issue is solved.  Science has proven that a baby has a beating heart at an early age, and, if that heart is not stopped, a fetus will develop into a viable human being.

So, in my mind, a fetus is a viable human being at conception.  How this could be debated, how it could be argued as a matter of choice, is inhumane.

It is a sad thought that a physician can end a life and make a fee in the process.  how is it that a free and just society does not find a problem with this? Yet despite the moral and religious issue here, about three million human beings are aborted every year. This sends a signal to young people that we place a lower value on the small and the weak.

So most young people have an abortion for economic reasons. They kill their baby because it would cost too much to have one, and inconvenience their social lifestyles.  Most people choose abortions because they are not made aware that there baby has a beating heart.  Most women who have abortions grow to regret it, and this affects them for the rest of their lives.

For many young women, abortions is a simpler choice compared with taking responsibility for their actions, and making inconvenient changes in their lives that are necessary for the bearing and raising of children.

For something that impacts a young woman in such a negative way, and sends such a poor messages to young people, how could some people think this is okay?

Most people may not know this, but Spartan men were encouraged to rape.  If they were caught, they were made fun of.  Women were also encouraged to have abortions, and, although unsanitary and risky, many women had them.

The ancient Jews, the Hebrews, were aware of the moral issues caused by rape and abortion, and they sought to end it.  This is why their literature frowned on the practice, and forbade it.  So, if people thousands of years ago saw the problem with abortion, how could we not?

To solve the issue we need to defend and protect the liberties of the unborn children.  We need to educate young people as to when a heart starts beating, and we need to make abortions less convenient and less available.  We also need to encourage abstinence before marriage.

Obviously, regardless of the efforts made by society, there will still be abortions performed, many of them illegally.  Yet this should not stop us, as a moral and just society, from making an effort to end