My first reaction to the Associated Press story about the proposed 9,000 hog confinement feeding operation to be located in close proximity to the YMCA Camp Tecumseh was just plain anger. Confinement Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are about as inhumane an agriculture practice that we do, but to locate one in a way that damages the YMCA camp environment is unconscionable.
Camp Tecumseh has been around for decades. It has been the experience of a life time for thousands of children and adults, too. In our times of asphalt, concrete, and electronics; having a place for an experience of nature is rare. The value is beyond measure.
I have to conclude the White County Commissioners are not the brightest lights on the block to have made a decision approving a hog farm of 9,000 animals to be within 800 yards of Tecumseh. Or could it be that Tecumseh is in Carroll County and White County Commissioners just don’t give a damn. They see only economic gain for White County.
Whatever the reasons, it is my hope and prayer that this project be ultimately defeated permanently. The lives of the children who benefit from the Tecumseh experience are more important than 9,000 hogs.
Keep Americans in the Dark Bill 4432
Your right to know what is in the food you purchase will become “keep them in the dark; they are too stupid” to know what is good for them if House Bill 4432 passes Congress. This bill is scheduled for its first reading in the House of Representatives on December 10th.
The fight is over whether you have a right to know if food you purchase at the grocery and feed to your family contains genetically modified ingredients, commonly referred to as GMOs. Sixty four countries, but not the United States, require foods to be labeled as having genetically engineered parts. Labeling is not required in the United States because giant chemical/seed companies such as Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont and others that sell genetically modified seed and the poisons used to kill weeds and insects don’t want you to know. You might choose not to buy GMO containing foods.
And why should you care if you eat genetically modified foods? One reason is the pesticides (poisons) used on the crops that become food for us or for livestock follow the crop. These poisons are referred to as pesticide residues, but call them what you may, they are poisons. The government has set allowed amounts of these poisons to be in foods and then tells us they are safe for us to eat. There is one genetically engineered corn that makes its own pesticide (poison) in every cell of the plant including in every kernel of corn. Studies have shown that all of us already carry around in our bodies a load of harmful chemicals. Some are cancer causing. Some are harmful to our livers, kidneys, and other organs including our brains. Some are harmful to our hormone system that controls all sorts of bodily development and function. But what we take in from pesticide residue is safe, if you believe the government.
Genetically engineered crops were simply declared safe by government decree. The government said there was no significant difference between standard crops and those that had been genetically engineered. The 64 other countries that require labeling decided there is a difference. In the US, there have been no long term safety studies on genetically engineered crops. However, evidence continues to emerge that calls safety into serious question — safety for consumption and safety for the environment.
The big deal about HR4432 is that it would prohibit any state in the United States from passing and enforcing legislation requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods. It would place all authority for such a requirement in the hands of the very agency that has failed us in the first place, the FDA. HR4432 would literally erase bills already passed in Vermont, Connecticut, and Maine. It would block labeling efforts ongoing in many other states. When legislation requiring labeling is proposed in a state, big chemical/seed and the large food processing companies pour millions of dollars into opposition advertising. Now they are concentrating efforts into the passage of HR4432.
Indiana has nine representatives in Congress. Two of them, Todd Rokita (R-District 4) and Martin Stutzman (R-District 3) have joined Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas in sponsoring HR 4432. This bill is titled “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014”, when it should be titled “Deny Americans the Right to Know Act of 2014”. Reps Rokita and Stutzman along with big chemical/seed and food processing companies, have decided you should stay in the dark.
Immigration Revisited…. Again!
There was a program on NPR this week that included an interview with an US Immigration Judge. She was a member of the National Association of Immigration Judges. I think it was Judge Dana Leigh Marks, the President of the Association. She reported there is a 400,000 case backlog presently. Further, she said that it is not uncommon for it to take up to five years before a case gets before an immigration court. These cases involve both legal and illegal immigrants; but mostly the illegal types.
I have no comprehension as to why cases take so long or really why there should be a case when immigration authorities catch individuals who have crossed the United States border and cannot prove they are citizens of this country. It should be a slam dunk….. turn them around and send them back to the country from which they came. No court. No rights. No case. It takes five minutes to make a decision if that long.
And immigration authorities should periodically make a sweep of meat packing plants, construction companies, landscapers, and agriculture to check the status of workers. All workers should be required to pass Everify before being hired. If an employer violates this requirement, the fines should be large and per diem per case. A couple of enforcements of that type would put a stop to the whole damned mess. Oh, and the other serious violators are those who come into the country on student visas, then stay and stay and stay without any intention of returning to their home country. Again, there are legal means to stay but just violation of the period of a visa is not one of them.
I am for limited immigration, but the legal way. You get in line with all of the other folks doing things according to law. Otherwise…. OUT! It is not fair to those seeking US citizenship or other legal entry into the USA. Currently, legal immigration limits are about 800,000 per year. A few decades ago, the limit was less than 200,000 per year. The USA needs to return to those lower limits. The population of this country needs to stabilize. Enough is enough.
President Barack Hussein Obama?
What is this man thinking about? There has been beheading now of two United States citizens by ISIS; the blood thirsty, insane Islamists. The President plays golf or goes off to raise funds for the Democratic Party. Unfathomable! He seems to be one hell-of-a community organizer and one very bad President. The world is coming apart and our homeland is threatened. The time to act is now; not days or weeks or months from now. People are being murdered by the crazies right and left. Christians are doomed as are even more moderate Muslims. 
Oh, we don’t want to offend anyone! I forgot. We don’t want to help Bashar al-Assad in Syria by attacking ISIS there. The President cannot seem to figure out there are no country boundaries between Iraq and Syria any more. The USA needs to unleash the fires of hell on ISIS. Any area under their thumb needs to become a parking lot fast. I have a feeling the cockroaches will run. If this helps Assad in the meanwhile, so be it. That can be dealt with later. Assad never threatened the United States of America.
ISIS understands only one thing: power. It is time to give it to them. Start at the top by decapitating the ISIS leadership now holed up in Syria.
Poison Spring
If you want a book that will open your eyes to the politics in the Environmental Protection Agency, “Poison Spring” is it. It is hard to believe how the chemical and big agriculture companies have corrupted this agency meant to protect us from the harm done by poisons called pesticides. We are poisoning the planet and ourselves at the same time. This is the big insane experiment!
At War
In case you have not noticed, we are in a world wide religious war. The Islamic ISIS radicals have vowed to raise the flag of Islam over the White House. They have proven to be barbaric, blood thirsty, and insane; yet claim to be carrying out the will of Allah in a war against infidels. In case you have not noticed, too, Islam is a religion of oppression of one kind or another where ever it dominates a society. The countries of Europe; particularly Germany, France, Spain, and England, have many problems from Islam believing immigrants. It can only get worse.
The United States has been spared so far. Why? Only because 3,000 miles of water separates us from the Eastern Hemisphere and because immigration has been limited. Yet, even in Muslim dominated communities in this country there is oppression of women, particularly. But, wait. The growing cancer will spread more to our hemisphere soon enough. The only hope is for our government and governments of other free countries to take decisive, firm, and aggressive military action against what is happening now in Iraq and Syria. If ISIS is not stopped there, there may be no stopping it.
American boots on the ground may not be needed, but intensive and aggressive air attacks with maned and drone aircraft must happen. We must arm the Kurds with modern 
weapons and use the airbase in their territory for our own aircraft. There is no room for being timid or being concerned about offending someone. The Kurds will fight if we arm them with superior weapons and give them as much air support as we can muster. If we don’t, we will eventually have American boots on the ground.
It is time to bring back napalm. This weapon may be one ISIS understands.They will respond to nothing but total destruction.
The Chinese Are Coming
Hang on to your farm land and your homes. The Chinese are on the move. In China, pollution has created an asthma epidemic, food safety scares are commonplace, and China’s economic pace ebbs. The country’s wealthiest are on the move and want a better life for themselves or their children. Over 9.3 million have immigrated in recent years.
The United States is the preferred destination. U.S. real estate has become the safe haven for wealth. In August, the largest real estate for sale database, Zillow, will begin publishing its information in Mandarin. Already, in 2013 Chinese buyers purchased about $11 billion of US properties.
In Manhattan, about half of all new condos are being purchased by Chinese nationals. They are purchasing businesses and agriculture land as well. One of the largest recent purchases was the snap up of Smithfield Foods, a giant US pork producer, by a Chinese company for $4.7 billion. Let’s face it, we owe the Chinese the company store. They are financing a huge amount of our country’s debt and climbing. There will come a day when they want their money back or will collect assets. Land is something they need for their overflowing population.
The Hellbender
You likely have never heard of the Hellbender salamander and just as likely don’t care. This critter is about as ugly as one could imagine. 
They grow to two or more feet long, are slimy looking, and live in swift-flowing streams, rocky rivers and streams. They live up to 30 years and are harmless to humans. And guess what….. they have more DNA than about anything else on the planet.
And they are a canary in the coal mine. Their populations are diminishing at alarming rates. The reasons are habitat degradation and water quality. The likely candidates for water quality problems are agriculture chemicals including fertilizers and toxic pesticides.
So, we have a heads up on what we are doing to nature. It is time to reverse course.
Israel
There has been much criticism around the world of what the Israel Defense Force is doing in Gaza. Our Secretary of Defense, John Kerry, is one of those critics. In two words, the critics should “ZIP IT!”
I cannot imagine what we would be doing in this country if thousands of rockets were being launched from Mexico into the United States. I think it would take about 5 minutes before our military would attack whomever and where ever launching would be happening. Israel has every right to seek out tunnels, people, rockets, and anything else that poses a threat to the people of that nation. They should not stop until all of the threat is destroyed. We wouldn’t.
No one wants innocents to perish. The problem is that Hamas is in control of that. All that would have happen is for the rockets to stop, the kidnappings to end, the tunneling to be collapsed, and the weapons to be melted down. Hamas has one goal: the destruction of Isreal. That is not going to happen.
The United States of America needs to quit mealy mouthing the situation and stand clearly and firmly with Israel. Period.
Illegals Again
There was a panel of talking heads on Fox News discussing the Mexican border mess. To a person, they severely criticized our vacationing “President” for lack of leadership. Obama is becoming so non-presidential it is cause for deep concern among people who do care about the United States of America and its government of, by, and for the people (allegedly).
The flood of people crossing the border must stop. We are told most are from south of Mexico and that they ride trains from the southern Mexican border north to the United States border where they easily cross. How about sending a couple of drones down the rail lines into southern Mexico and taking a couple of pot shots at the tracks the trains run on. This would put a quick and serious halt to train traffic. Of course, Mexico would not like this much, but at this point they are doing nothing but facilitating transit of people; so who cares what they might think or do. Are they going to invade us? Hardly.
One of these days, people who are terrorists in disguise will be among the crowd making it into the United States. It may take another catastrophe like 9/11 to get action.
Now we hear that in addition to the people crossing, they bring all sorts of diseases along with them like tuberculosis, scabies, chicken pox, and who knows what else; maybe even Ebola. And we are scattering people all over the country without health checks. If the illegal had a phone number with them, we are making the call for pickup. We do not even check the identity or legality of those doing the picking up.
Honestly, I think we may have gone insane. We are on a very self destructive path. If we don’t secure the border — and that means slam it shut — soon, it will be too late.