While you're at it, buy me a kitchen

In last night's press conference did you see that woman who, back in October, was gushing about how BO was going to buy her gas and pay for her house? She showed up again, wondering where her freebies are, and asking him to throw in a new car and a kitchen as well. After all, he's been in office for three weeks, so what's the holdup? Ok, maybe it was not the same woman. BO drones all share the pathetic stupidity of expecting the government to take care of all of their problems.

Now any reasonable person would have taken the opportunity to clear up some common misperceptions. In America if you want to improve your situation you go get educated, develop some marketable skills, work your tail off, and earn your own way. But BO didn't tell her that. He told her to talk to his staff and they'll see what they can do.

BO's vision of America is of a place where all good things come from government. The financial crisis is a result of government, and the solution is a massive expansion of government. Health care can only be accomplished by another massive expansion of government. And if you want to remodel your kitchen, talk to the President's staff.

Going against the flow

In the past four months there has been a record movement of funds inside 401(k) and IRA retirement accounts out of stock funds into "safe" bonds or money market funds. This move didn't happen before the plunge in stock prices of September, when it would have avoided the huge losses. Instead people sold their stock at the low price, essentially locking in the loss and missing the chance to take part in the recovery. The Hewitt Associates 401(k) Index indicates that in each of the last four months of 2008, 401(k) participants transferred nearly a billion dollars out of equities and into fixed income investments.

If you had moved your money out of stocks last summer, I would congratulate you on your unusual foresight. I've given up on trying to predict short-term stock market fluctuations years ago. Most people who try that game end up losing. In the ten years from 1998 to 2007, the S&P 500 returned 11.81% annually. "Safe" Treasury Bills returned 4.53%. The average 401(k) account returned 4.48%. People who try to "beat the market" or avoid down markets consistently do worse than they could do with a simple "buy and hold" discipline.

Today people are still doing the wrong thing. Two years ago there was a general agreement that stocks were a good buy, when stocks were priced at about $15 per dollar of earnings. Today stocks are "on sale" in search of buyers, with the price discounted to $9 per dollar of earnings. If stocks were a good buy at $15, shouldn't they be an even better buy at $9? I think so.

It is a mathematical certainty that $100 invested in stocks today will return more in the future than $100 invested two years ago. Historical data also supports my claim that today is a prime buying opportunity. Steven Leuthold studied the returns of stock bought at different valuation levels. He divided the initial price per earnings into deciles. Stocks bought in the top 10% of P/E lost 1.3% on average over the next five years, while stocks bought in the lowest 10% of valuations returned 19.3% annually, on average.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has heard the motto: Buy low, sell high.

Right now stocks are well below the average price per dollar of earnings. According to Leuthold, stocks bought at our current level of valuation have historically returned 14.1% over the next five years. Admittedly, it will take a majority of that upswing to recover the loss from the last year, but if you flee to safety now, you won't ever recover those losses.

"Buy low, sell high" is easy to understand but very hard to do, mainly because it requires that we not join in with the mania of the day. When everyone is abuzz about the killing they made in the latest craze, be it internet stocks, real estate, or tulip bulbs, remember that someone is going to be stuck with those when the bubble bursts, and you don't want to be that person. On the other end of the spectrum, when things look grim and the outlook for the future is doom and gloom as far as the eye can see, the emotional response is to get out. When you go with the flow you will always buy high and sell low.

Nathan Rothschild once said to "buy when the blood is running in the streets." But to actually do that requires a really strong stomach. In the late 1990's, people were buying up internet stocks, tech stocks, and telecom stocks with no regard for the fundamental value of the companies they were buying. The price per earnings of companies like Lucent Technologies soared as high as $300. Other companies were snatched up at even higher prices, and their P/E could not be calculated because they had no earnings. At the same time, the Asian stock market was in the tank, making today's S&P 500 look rosy by comparison. The Japanese index was down 80% in one year. Today Lucent no longer exists and most of the "internet" stocks are worthless, but investors who bought Japanese stock that year were rewarded with an average return of 21% annually for the next ten years.

So I am resolutely doing nothing. My retirement savings, what is left of them, are staying right where they are, and each week I continue to contribute eight percent of my paycheck to my 401(k), invested primarily in the same diversified assortment of stocks I have used for years. I am counting on a principle which has held true in the past: I don't know if today's stock price is high or low compared to tomorrow or next month, but it is certainly low compared to 2036, when I plan to start selling.

Porkulus

I've been saying for a couple of weeks that BO's "stimulus" bill is little more than a huge barrel of pork handed out to his key Democrat special interest groups. Here is a rundown of all the stuff in the bill, very little of which creates real jobs or boosts the economy. A quarter of a billion dollars for film for Hollywood? $850 million for Amtrak? The bill is filled with wealth transfer programs, funding for various departments of the government, and loads of money to unviable "green energy" research which is likely to never amount to anything. In addition, the bill will transfer $79 billion from states who worked to balance their budget to states that didn't. In other words, from states run responsibly by Republicans to those run into the ground by Democrats.

Dead middle

The Brady Campaign just released their "State Scorecard Ranking" which rates each state's gun control laws based on which "sensible gun control laws" they implement. States can curry favor with Sarah Brady by restricting the sale of ugly or cheap weapons, by requiring various ridiculous gadgets be sold along with guns, by allowing cities to hold gun makers liable for shooting deaths, and by limiting, delaying, licensing, registering, and recording gun sales.

It is no surprise that The People's Republic of Kalifornia ranks first, with the most oppressive laws restricting your Second Amendment right to bear arms. Those liberal utopias of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Illinois, and Pennsylvania round out the top ten.

I was surprised to find where Texas, with it's wild west image, ranks on the list: Dead middle. We are tied with Vermont, Wyoming, and South Carolina for 27th. Indiana, Georgia, Kansas, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, and 15 other states all have more freedom than Texas.

Come on Texas, we can do better. Texas law does not permit licensed citizens who have undergone training and background checks to carry a concealled weapon on a college campus, even though they can carry it in most other public places. Employers are also allowed to ban the transport of a legally-owned firearm in the employee's car in the parking lot, which effectively forces the employee to travel to and from work without the protection of a firearm. The employer does not assume the liability for the safety of their disarmed employees. Why, in Texas of all places, is the government ensuring that criminals have access to large groups of disarmed targets?

Let your state lawmakers know that we can do better in these areas. Even better, exercise your rights by owning a handgun, knowing how to use it, getting a CHL, and joining GOA.

Love America, not the tumor

The left is in a tizzy about Rush Limbaugh daring to say something that I said a few days earlier: I hope that President Obama fails. They are out in full force, smelling blood in the water, DNC talking points telling them to attack conservative's patriotism. Frank Schaeffer starts out with a particularly absurd statement: both Limbaugh and Al-Qaeda want BO to fail. So Al-Qaeda hopes we stay in Iraq and keep killing their suicide bombers in droves. Obama bin Biden (oops, Freudian slip, I meant Osama bin Laden) is crossing his fingers and praying to Allah that BO fails to weaken America? Al-Qaeda operatives are lining up for waterboarding at Gitmo? It would just make the terrorist's day if we learned of their plans for mass carnage by listening in on their phone calls to terror cells operating in America, captured them and threw away the key? They are just begging for more bombs and less talk? If anyone is cheering for BO to succeed, it is Al-Qaeda.

I want BO to fail for the same reason that I want Al-Qaeda to fail: they are both seeking to do harm to America.

The liberal mantra that it is unpatriotic to oppose their messiah is based on the basic liberal fallacy that America's government is America and therefore love of country requires love of the government and everything that it does. I love America because it is the world's protector of freedom and liberty and a land of endless opportunity for every person. I respect the Constitution which protects those principles by limiting government's power to prevent it from becoming tyrannical, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to our military which fights to establish and defend freedom and liberty, both for America and for others.

To illustrate this dichotomy, let me tell you about a family I know at my Church. Their little daughter, Tory, has neuroblastoma, a form of cancer which attacks the brain and central nervous system. Her father, a pastor from Ukraine, brought her to Fort Worth for treatment. Having talked with Tory's mother and father I can tell you that they deeply love their daughter. They also hate the cancer that is choking the life out of her. They have gone through many rounds of chemotherapy and surgery to remove the cancer. It is a painful process and sometimes it takes Tory right to the edge of death.

You could say that they hope the cancer fails.

So does that mean that they hate their daughter? Of course not! They love their daughter and therefore they hate the cancer that is killing her.

In the same way I hate the tumors of liberalism, of runaway government spending, of egalitarianism and collectivism, of socialism which chokes the life out of economies and kills freedom, of the soft tyranny which looks to government as the solution to every problem and justifies crippling taxation as necessary to achieve equality of outcome. I hate the cancer of all BO stands for because I love my country and I can't stand by and let the cancer run its disastrous course. BO is not America and their fates are not synonymous. I want BO's Presidency to fail because that is the only way that America can succeed.

Media in the Tank

We all have known for a long time that the media is way off the liberal deep end. The New York Times, Newsweek Magazine, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. are completely, one hundred percent in the tank for BO. So the recent news coverage is nothing surprising, but it does provide further confirmation, as if we needed any.

These t-shirts being hocked on CNN, presumably to make up for sagging revenues from their plunging audience numbers, are a prime example. The one pictured above features the headline from their gushing video of inauguration day, filled with people overcome with emotion by the wonderfulness of having another big-government liberal president.

If this one isn't enough to make you puke, there are plenty more:

• This is America happening
• Obama's era of change arrives
• Obama fever goes global as hopes rise
• 44th president is a 1st for the nation
• Obama's moment arrives
• Obama: It's time to remake America
• Change comes to Washington
• Obama: 'We have chosen hope'
• 'This is my moment too,' witness says
• Obama makes history
• Cheers great Obama on parade route
• One dad sees MLK's dream in Obama
• Lovey-dovey first couple melts hearts
• A long way since Jim Crow, Powell says
• Inaugural tickets hot, hot, hot
• Obama inspires historic victory
• Obama fever spreads around the world

You know, there is medicine for that fever.

Noticeably absent are:

"Obama shreads the Constitution"

"Obama weakens America"

"Obama capitulates to terrorists"

"Obama funds infanticide"

"Media reveals bias"

But do not fear, I am here to take up the slack. Right now on Zazzle.com you can find the missing headline tshirts. Don't miss your chance to buy a piece of history!

Cutting poor babies stimulates economy

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ George Stephanapolous Sunday that the Democrat’s economic stimulus bill, containing hundreds of millions of dollars for “family planning” services for the poor, will make real cuts in the number of low-income people, thereby saving taxpayer dollars, and increasing average income for everyone.

“Poor people are a luxury we just can’t afford,’ said Rep. Pelosi, “They cost us a lot of money to maintain; what with food stamps, housing and health care. So if we can rapidly reduce the number of poor people through contraception and abortion, that’s a net gain for federal and state budgets, and a fast track to economic recovery. Every poor baby prevented is like money in the bank.”

A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, the world’s leading abortion sales chain, confirmed Mrs. Pelosi’s assertion, noting that “even if the stimulus bill helps harvest only the low-hanging fruit by reducing live births among blacks and hispanics, that would be a major boost, since minorities comprise nearly 50 percent of those on Medicaid.”

Planned Parenthood continues to lobby Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration to include even more funding in the stimulus bill for better marketing efforts to attract minority women who have not yet considered abortion as “a viable lifestyle choice.”

“Despite our best efforts to date,” the source said, “only 1-in-5 pregnancies ends in abortion. We need the marketing money to spur growth in what we call our frequent-flier segment. Blacks make up only about 13 percent of the population, yet they have 40 percent of the abortions. We still think there’s real upside potential there.”

The spokesman added that, “Planned Parenthood, since its inception, has been the Sam’s Club of abortions for minority communities. We keep the product cheap so our customers can buy in large quantities. What we lose in profit per procedure we more than make up for in volume. Of course, our work also helps reduce racial tensions by adhering to time-tested Darwinian principles.”

So sorry to win

Yesterday The Covenant School of Dallas fired its girls basketball coach, Micah Grimes, because he would not apologize to Dallas Academy for his team's 100-0 victory.

On the coach's web site he posted a statement saying, "I respectfully disagree with the apology, especially the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel 'embarrassed' or 'ashamed,' " part of the post says. "We played the game as it was meant to be played and would not intentionally run up the score on any opponent. Although a wide-margin victory is never evidence of compassion, my girls played with honor and integrity and showed respect to Dallas Academy."

When the score was 25-0 three minutes into the game, the coach instructed the players to not play a full-court press. In the second quarter he put in his bench players. The winning team made only four 3-point shots, three of them in the first quarter. The coach noted the quarter-by-quarter score: 35, 24, 29, 12.

Covenant School headmaster Kyle Queal announced the firing, saying "It is always good to spread the points around." He suggested a new "athletic justice" rule to take points from winning teams and award them to losing teams.

No word yet on when we can expect an apology from the Dallas Academy coach for stinking so bad.

Money wiz can't figure taxes

Today BO's financial wiz-kid blamed his failure to pay $33,500 in payroll taxes on Turbo Tax, a software package used successfully by 18 million average citizens every year.

Tim Geithner, BO's nominee for Treasury Secretary, said that Turbo Tax didn't tell him that he needed to pay social security and medicare taxes on his self-employment income, and the man slated to run the IRS said that he had no clue that he was supposed to pay those taxes.

Earlier he stated that failing to pay these taxes was "a common mistake". BO echoed this claim, saying, “It is an innocent mistake. It is a mistake that’s commonly made for people who are working internationally or for international institutions. It has been corrected. He’s paid the penalties.” However, the ethics department at the International Monetary Fund, the source of his untaxed income, found that only one of the 1,800 other IMF employees failed to report their income and pay the required taxes.

BO is unshaken in his conviction that Geithner is the man for the job, “My expectation is that Tim Geithner will be confirmed. And my expectation is that he is going to do an outstanding job on behalf of the American people.”

Senator Lindsey Graham said, "We need a new secretary of treasury who understands where this country is at financially and has a game plan to move forward. I think he’s the right guy.”

I am very relieved to hear that solving our nation's financial crisis is easier than filing your taxes.

BO is pro-life!

BO angered his pro-abortion base on Tuesday when he revealed his pro-life views which he had cleverly concealed throughout the campaign. BO used strong language in his inauguration speech to emphasize his support for all human life:

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

An outraged spokesman for Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider, said, "We can see through President Obama's thinly veiled rhetoric. You can't pass anything forward from generation to generation unless you are allowed to live, and to pursue their full measure of happiness, one must first successfully escape the womb. We are appalled that President Obama would wish this for anyone."

BO went on to promise swift justice to those who attempt to carry out abortions:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

All that remains is to see how BO intends to implement his pro-life views and overturn Roe-vs-Wade through legislation, by packing the Supreme Court with like-minded judges, or simply by using his rhetorical powers to get a majority of Americans to "hope" for "change".

I'm embarassed for her

I finally got around to watching the rest of the Inauguration last night.

You know, BO has a lot of gall to object to torture and then subject the nation to this poetry reading. I thought the Bill of Rights protected against cruel and unusual punishment.

Getting right to business

BO wasted no time getting right to work for the American people.

After listening to what most concerned average Americans and carefully considering all of the important tasks that lay ahead, he hit the ground running. BO tackled the most important and pressing issues facing every American. Using his new powers as leader of the Free World, BO acted decisively and swiftly to address the tough problems we face as a nation.

What did he do?

On his first day as President, he ordered the trials of the terrorists responsible for killing 3000 Americans on 9/11 to be stopped.

It is good to know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has an advocate in the White House.

Is this the "new tone"

Joseph Lowery, considered by some to be the "dean" of the civil rights movement, gave the benediction at yesterday's inauguration. He closed with this little ditty:

"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... When yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right."

Can anyone tell me how this is not a blatantly racist portrayal of minorities as helpless victims of evil white oppressors? You'd think he is stuck in 1958 Mississippi. The fact that BO was elected president proves that his depiction of America is way out of date.

Flubbing the oath

"And I will execute..." (Hey! Where is the teleprompter???)

What is success?

I got an email from a BO drone who had some questions for me:

Don't you know that Obama is our President? His election is a historic event. Don't you want his Presidency to succeed?

Let's take these one at a time.

The drone was a bit premature to declare Obama "our President", but at noon today that will be the case. BO will be the President of America. Unlike the Democrats, we are not going to question the legitimacy of his Presidency. He will have all of the powers the Constitution gives to the President. But that does not mean that we have to agree with everything he wants to do to America, and just step aside and let it happen. In fact, that is exactly what our Constitution was designed to avoid through its system of checks and balances. The Bill of Rights explicitly protects the God-given right of American citizens to raise grievances against the government, and you can count on me to take full advantage of that right.

Yes, Obama’s election is a historic event. BO is the first black man to be elected President. Well, not really. He is the first half black, half white man to be elected President. One must wonder why he chooses to identify himself with the bigamous, drunken, corrupt man who abandoned him and his mother rather than with the mother and grandparents who raised him and gave him all of the opportunities that allowed him to be where he is today. He proves that you can overcome the oppression of slavery and become President. Well, not really. His father was Kenyan, not the descendant of slaves. He proves that you can come from poverty and do anything. Except that he was raised in an affluent family and went to an elite private school in Hawaii before going off to Harvard. But it is a historic event. No one from Delaware has ever been elected Vice President. (While it is true that Biden lived in Pennsylvania for 11 years, he is 83% Delawarian, which gives him much more solid claim to the title than BO’s 50% blackness.)

Finally we come to the real question: “Don’t you want his Presidency to succeed?” The question suggests that if I answer “No” then I am wishing for harm on America. However, that all depends on how you define success.

Do I want BO to succeed in implementing his radical agenda to surrender to the terrorists, raise taxes sky high, nationalize huge portions of the private sector, and “spread the wealth around” through massive socialist redistribution programs? Of course not! I intend to see to it that those goals go down in smoke just like BJ Clinton’s medical takeover scheme crashed and burned when the American people rejected the huge government power grab.

If, as the drone suggests, success means doing what is good for America, then for BO to succeed he would have to come to some kind of epiphany. But I really don’t expect that some fine morning BO will wake up and realize that prosperity does not come from the Government, that free markets private sector innovation and productivity is the only way to create wealth and spread it around effectively, that corporations create jobs and government creates nothing, that terrorists won’t just leave us alone if we try to make nice with them, and that in most cases the best thing the government can do is get out of the way.

So I do hope that BO will succeed, but I’m not counting on it. America can prosper either way. We prospered in spite of BJ Clinton. Every economic cycle has a downturn and a recovery. BO will try to claim credit for it, but the industriousness of the American people is the engine driving American prosperity.

Thanks, Son

Dear Son,

I wish to thank you for a great gift you probably didn't even know you were giving me.

In 2008, the Federal Government committed a total of $8.5 trillion to the most massive bailout in history. Thank you, son.

You might wonder why I am thanking you?

Well, the government doesn't have a spare $8.5 trillion laying around. In fact, the Federal Government was already running a sizable deficit. So we will have to borrow that money and add it to the national debt. There is no way that we will ever pay off the debt, so you can count on paying interest on the money spent bailing out failed businesses for the rest of your life.

At a typical interest rate of six percent, this will cost $510 billion a year, forever. Your share of this cost will be $1,700 per year every year for the rest of your life, or $4.65 every day for the rest of your life. Odds are, you will be forced to pay more than your share, in the name of "fairness".

Like I said, Thanks.

It is good to know that we learned something as a nation from this fiasco. For instance, we learned that overextended debtors with a history of irresponsibility with money should not be taking out big 30-year ARM loans with no money down and no idea of how they are going to make the payments. Which is why our government, a model of financial irresponsibility, already saddled with more debt than they can ever pay off, is borrowing $8.5 trillion more. But if the government ever gets into real financial trouble, they can always just print more money to pay their way out of the problem. If you did that they would throw you in jail. When the government does that, it drives up prices and devalues your money, your life savings, and your income.

It's also good to know that government has learned their lesson about meddling with the free market. Their policies, starting with Jimmy Carter, strengthened under Bill Clinton, and continued under George Bush encouraged mortgage companies to loan money to uncreditworthy borrowers. Government chartered organizations, Fannie and Freddie, guaranteed hundreds of billions of dollars of risky loans, packaged them up and sold them as highly rated mortgage securities. So now the solution is for the government to nationalize vast additional portions of the financial industry, buying up failed insurance companies, mortgage companies, and banks which are in such bad shape that no one else would touch them. But it's all ok because we will just pass the bill on to you. By privatizing the profit and socializing the risk, we are sure to encourage companies to make prudent decisions in the future, certain that if things go badly the government will be there to bail them out.

I have taught you how to budget your money and account for what you spend. At any time you can tell me how much money you have and account for every penny of your allowance money. You carefully set aside saving money for long-term purchases. It is good to know that the politicians who have made a career out of using our money to buy votes, favors, and influence, are sure to be at least as careful with your money as you would be. As a matter of fact, they can't say exactly what happened to the first $350 billion that they passed out.

So when Harry Reid, George Bush, and Nancy Pelosi lecture the auto makers on how the Government will demand financial responsibility and accountability as a condition of the auto industry bailout, maybe they ought to start by getting some for themselves. After all, it is not their own money that they are dishing out like candy on Halloween. It's your money and your future.

Love,

Your Dad

New mugshot fashion statement

Why Jesus is better than Santa

Some Christians seem to be staunchly anti-Santa. They think that any mention of Santa Claus in any situation is an attack on "The True Meaning of Christmas." These morons take the anti-Santa theme to a new low. Seriously guys, get help. Do you really believe that your vitriol points anyone to Jesus?

Personally, I don't mind Santa. After all, he is based on the real-life Christian, Saint Nicholas. Not a lot is known about him, but during the fierce persecution of Christians under Roman emperor Diocletian, his acts of generosity demonstrated Christian love and the spirit of Christmas, epitomized by God giving His only Son for us.

So I am not anti-Santa. I just recognize that Jesus is better than Santa. Here are a few reasons.

Santa may represent what Christmas is about, in his original form, but that meaning has mostly been lost in the current incarnation of Santa Claus, the fat jolly elf who drives a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Jesus, on the other hand, is what Christmas is all about. If Santa points to Jesus, than surely Jesus is greater than Santa. Nicholas' inspiration and motivation was all from Jesus, and any good Nicholas had was not from himself, but from Christ dwelling in him.

Christmas is named for Jesus Christ, not for Santa. Santa acts in honor of Christ's birth, not the other way around.

Santa's gift-giving is conditional. If you don't make the "Nice List" you get a lump of coal. Jesus gift of salvation is bought and paid for with no conditions. It is freely given to anyone who will take it. In I Timothy 1:15 Paul wrote: "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst." You don't have to be on the "Nice List" to be saved. Paul was not exagerating when he called himself the worst of sinners. Before he met Jesus, he arrested, imprisioned, and beat Christians and even oversaw their murder. It is very good news that we don't have to earn God's approval because none of us stand a chance of meeting His standard.

Santa hangs around at the North Pole most of the time, and travels around by sleigh propelled by flying caribou. Jesus is all-present and dwells in the hearts of those who allow him to enter. You don't have to go to the mall in December to talk to Jesus or make your requests known to Him. You can talk to Him any time, anywhere, about anything, and He promises to hear and answer.

Santa brings stuff which will ultimately wear out, break, or get lost. When we die, none of it will do us any good. But Jesus gave us an eternal gift which will never decay or wear out: everlasting life in a restored relationship with God. Anything Santa could give we could buy for ourselves with money, but money could never pay the penalty for my sins. God's Word is very clear that only blood can atone for sins. Santa didn't give his blood to redeem me. Only Jesus could do that, and only Jesus loved me enough to do it.

Saint Nicholas died 1700 years ago. What is left of his body is buried in Bari, Italy. Jesus, on the other hand, is alive and seated at the right hand of God where He intercedes on our behalf. After Jesus resurrection, the Jews or the Romans could have put to rest the testimony of the disciples who saw Jesus simply by producing his body. But they could not do it because He is alive. Neither the historical Nicholas or the mythical Santa has anything on that.

Finally, Jesus is superior to Santa because Jesus is God and Santa is not. Nicholas himself made that point when the father of the three girls whose dowry Nicholas secretly paid for discovered the source of the gifts, Nicholas asked for him to keep his identity secret because, Nicholas explained, "It is not I you should thank, but Christ alone."

Some people should not procreate

Heath and Deborah Campbell of Easton Pennsylvania are upset that the local "ShopRite" grocery store refuses to make a birthday cake for their three-year-old son with the boy's full name on it.

I feel sorry for this kid.

He didn't pick his name. It was his parents who decided to name their son "Adolph Hitler Campbell." Now the boy has to deal with that name, at least until he reaches the age where he can legally change his name. His siblings have a similar problem. JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, his sister turns two in a few months, and his baby sister Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell is six months old.

We named our firstborn son after a man who is noted several times in the Bible for loving God wholeheartedly. A name carries great significance. It embodies the hopes, aspirations, and heritage passed from the parents to the next generation of their family. Unfortunately, hatred and evil can be passed along instead of a positive legacy of faith, honor, love, and respect.

My main reason to have sympathy for this boy is not that he can't get a birthday cake. It is that his parents are raving idiots who have no business reproducing.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Finally we have proof that Al Gore really IS from another planet.