Mountain Views News          Saturday, February 7, 2015

15

OPINION 

Mountain Views-News Saturday, February 7, 2015 


Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

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Patricia Colonello

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WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Dr. Tina Paul

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett

LETTER TO THE EDITOR 

OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

Re: A PRESIDENT PRACTICING INSANITY by Greg Welborn, 1/24/15

 Ultimately, Mr. Welborn, please answer some questions; but for now, because 
most of your ilk begin your anti-President Obama diatribe/argument facts with 
the state of our Union, today, in going backward to when George W. Bush left 
office with two ILLEGAL wars raging, one of which ILLEGAL war he LIED to 
start! – one month after he left the White House, February, 2009, our National 
Debt was, 12.1-trillion dollars.

From, October, 2008, when it was, 11.3-trillion dollars.

From, July, 2008, when it was, 10.6-trillion dollars.

From, September, 2007, when it was, 9.8-trillion dollars.

From, March, 2006, when it was, 9-trillion dollars.

From, November, 2004, when it was, 8.2-trillion dollars.

From, May, 2003, when it was, 7.4-trillion dollars.

From, June, 2002, when it was, 6.4-trillion dollars.

 From, when George Walker Bush began his first term, with our National 
Debt at a steady 6.2-trillion dollars!

 Yes, 6.2-trillion dollars for nearly ALL of the previous President’s 8-years; 
plus, President Clinton left us and Bush a $100-million surplus! So, $6.2-trillion 
2001, to, $12.1-trillion 2009!

 But also during those subsequent eight Bush years, 6-million tax-paying U.S.-
citizens & many tax-paying non-U.S.-citizens lost their jobs, and their homes 
due to ‘derivative’ Wall Street/Banking/Home Loan Ponzi-scheme illegalities.

 So, in 2000, it was 47+million U.S.-citizens, probably including you, Mr. 
Welborn, who voted for Bush; while in Florida, Bush’s scheming governor 
brother, Jeb, was colluding with five scheming Right Wing Supreme Court 
judges: who then, UN-constitutionally, ‘elected’ George our president!

 Then, within months of those UN-constitutional activities, and on none 
other than George W. Bush’s watch, 19 terrorists ‘took-out’ the Trade Towers, 
hit the Pentagon and nearly got the White House.

 With the questions for you, Mr. Welborn and all Bush voters, what was Mr. 
Obama to do? What could anyone in his position have done? And, what would 
you, personally, have done with everything economic/banking/jobs in nearly-
total crumbling-disarray, PLUS, two TOTALLY-ILLEGAL wars were going at 
full pitch, and escalating!

 So, all of you Republican voters, for once, get the facts straight, and begin 
facing and telling the world, but especially, to thine own-self be honest, and 
admit, that, it was all of you, in 2000, then again, in 2004, “with everything 
economic/banking/jobs in nearly-total crumbling-disarray, PLUS, two 
TOTALLY-ILLEGAL wars were going at full pitch, and escalating!”, who 
produced and perpetuated all of our current messes!

 It’s actually you, since Ronald Reagan and 1st Bush who combined, raised 
our National Debt 5½-trillion dollars, then you continued nearly-stupidly & 
quite-insanely bringing us George W. Bush – with the question to all of you, 
which came first, your near-stupidity or the insanity?

 With the biggest, and possibly most-‘fair’ question: What might Barack 
Hussein Obama II have accomplished if he hadn’t had two ILLEGAL wars to 
deal with for the entire first six-years of his Presidency?

Mark O delAno

DON’T MESS WITH MY PEANUT 
BUTTER 

Normally, I am a rather calm, cool and collected person. Actually, creditors 
trying to collect things from me, mostly money, are responsible for this and I 
have been officially collected. If I could only just collect my thoughts, but the 
pieces are too small and too few.

 Anybody who knows me knows I am not easily rattled by anything, except a rattlesnake. I let the chips 
fall where they lay because I know from whence they came. I am not susceptible to the various rumors that 
make their way around on a regular basis.

 All the debate about global warming, for example, has not in the least disturbed my personal serenity. 
Some say the earth is getting warmer while others insist it is getting cooler. Who in the world are you to 
believe? One scientist frantically reported that if we do not do something quickly in 1500 years the earth is 
going to get 10° warmer than it is right now. One can only hope he was not a Rhodes Scholar.

 Then there was the hullabaloo about how harmful chocolate was to a person only to discover later that 
it has marvelous health benefits. Pass me another bonbon.

 Others took potshots at coffee. Again, it was found that a morning cup of Joe is just the thing to get a 
person on the go.

 I took all of these things good-naturedly. I try not to let anything get my dander up. In fact, I am quite 
proud of the humble way in which I respond to all of these negativities. Usually, with a cup of coffee in one 
hand and a bonbon in the other.

 All was going well until one morning the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage rattled my cage. She takes 
great pleasure in doing this.

 “Have you seen the trouble they are having with peanut butter?” she said.

 `This actually caught me by surprise because I had not heard any such thing. My wife went on to explain 
that in some cases they were recalling certain peanut products. Personally, I know a few nuts that need to 
be recalled.

 I do not mind if they fool around with global warming, and recall every car on the planet. I care not 
what they say about chocolate and coffee, but I go by one simple rule; do not mess with my peanut butter!

 My basic philosophy is, man shall not live by bread alone, he needs a little bit of peanut butter to hold it 
all together.

 I am not sure who invented peanut butter... it might have been God himself... all I know it is the food of 
the gods. According to Wikipedia, there has never been a time in history when there was not some form of 
peanut butter.

 It is one of the few essential items in this world that nobody can get along without. I can hardly imagine 
a world without this marvelous concoction, either creamy or crunchy.

 Many things I can manage to get along without, but I cannot get along without my daily ration of 
peanut butter.

 Some people have chocolate as a comfort food. Some people’s comfort food of choice is a bag of salty 
potato chips. Others pamper their comfort with ice cream. And I say, to each one his own. My comfort 
food is simply peanut butter, preferably crunchy.

 The thing about peanut butter that is so amazing is it can be used in a variety of ways. I would guess the 
list is as close to limitless that a man can get. Hardly a month goes by that I do not discover a new way to 
enjoy peanut butter.

 There, of course, is the traditional peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Every thoughtful and loving 
mother starts her young brood off on a nutritious and delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If your 
mother was quite like my mother, she affectionately trimmed the edges, which made the peanut butter all 
the more delightful.

 Need I mention Peanut Butter Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudge, Southern Peanut Butter Soup with Pepper 
Jelly, Peanut Butter Cheesecake, Peanut Butter Candy and a Peanut Butter and Chocolate Sundae? 

 I am not alone in this appreciation. “To me, peanut butter is the breakfast of champions!” opined Greg 
Louganis, Olympic Diver. If anybody should know what a champion eats for breakfast, he should.

 Peanut butter can be used for breakfast, lunch and supper, not to mention all those snacks in between.

 Those who know the history of our country will remember that two Presidents of the United States were 
peanut farmers [Jefferson and Carter]. I am not sure of this, but I think it helped them deal with the nuts in 
Washington.

 Of all the ways to enjoy peanut butter there is one I prefer above all else. That is simply a nice tablespoon 
of peanut butter right out of the jar. If a tablespoon is not handy, several fingers will do the trick admirably. 

 Really, there is no bad way to enjoy the marvelous taste of peanut butter.

Speaking of comfort, the Bible has the perfect recipe. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalms 23:4).

 God has a marvelous way of taking our attention away from the trials of this world and feast our 
thoughts on Him.

 Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He 
lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.
net or website www.jamessnyderministries.com.

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LEFT TURN / RIGHT TURN

HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn


“The ‘job creators’ in this country are not the heads of corporations. They 
can’t sell products and services unless people have the income to buy 
them. The real job creators are those millions of Americans who every day 
go out and purchase goods and services – and if they don’t have adequate 
income, the economy suffers.”

- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

There are still those who, like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) responding to 
President Obama’s budget proposal, will throw out accusations of wealth 
“redistribution” and “class warfare”. Recently, however, from the likes of 
Mitt Romney, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Jeb Bush and Sarah Palin, we’ve 
heard increasing concern about income inequality and the struggling middle class. It’s as if 
they’ve jumped ship and signed on with Sens. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

 They’re trying to hone a message for 2016 – tapping into the frustration of Americans 
who feel the class war’s over, and the other side won. Republicans realize they probably won’t 
have any record of accomplishment from this current Congress to campaign on a year from 
now; especially from a House that just moved to take health insurance away from 19 million 
Americans by voting (for the 56th time) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. (A recent Kaiser poll 
shows that if the Supreme Court were to gut the ACA, two-thirds of Americans would want 
Congress to restore it.)

 They’d have a hard time explaining Speaker John Boehner’s nixing a proposed $2,000 tax 
credit for middle-class families and increasing the childcare credit, paid for by a 1% fee on Wall 
Street transactions and cutting tax breaks for the top 1% (average income $1.4 million); while a 
few weeks earlier he’d pushed $440 billion in corporate tax breaks – with the cost simply tacked 
onto our debt. 

 Republicans won’t be able to point to Republican-led states, either, as examples of sensitivity 
to those who missed out on the recovery. Assumed presidential contender Gov. Scott Walker 
(R-WI), for instance, is pushing to cut $300 million from his state’s public universities, while at 
the same calling on taxpayers to fork over $500 million for a new stadium for the Milwaukee 
Bucks. 

 They’ll continue expressing outrage over the shrinking middle class and wealth 
concentration at the top, while trying to pin the blame on President Obama. In doing so they’ll 
have to campaigning not only against Democrats, but against the historical record.

That record shows income disparity growing over the past thirty years, taking off during the 
Reagan administration. In the late-1960s, the middle class shrunk as more Americans moved 
into the upper brackets. Since 2000, the year of George W. Bush’s election, this has been 
reversed – with fewer Americans leaving the middle-class to become rich and more falling in 
the opposite direction.

 When President Obama came to office to lead the nation into recovery, he had to contend 
with Republicans in Congress determined to stop him. They tried to kill the $780 billion 
stimulus, though the record shows job growth taking off in January 2010 – the month the 
stimulus kicked in. 

 They wanted to “let Detroit go bankrupt”, in the words of Mitt Romney. They branded 
any attempt to rescue Chrysler and GM as “socialism” and Obama’s “war on capitalism”. The 
industry today employs 500,000 more workers than it did five years ago.

Republicans warned the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” policies would lead to 
“debasing the dollar” and an “inflation holocaust”. It didn’t happen – both interest rates and 
inflation remained negligible. Wrong again.

 As the economy picked up steam, they did all they could to destroy it in the summer of 2011 
by threatening to have our country renege on its debts. As former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul 
O’Neill put it, “They’re really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 
percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk.”

 The record shows that under President Obama, steadfastly opposed by Republicans, we’ve 
had 58 straight months of job growth – the longest in our history, with manufacturing leading 
the way. The fall in unemployment last year was the largest drop in thirty years. The 5% growth 
rate in the economy reported for third-quarter 2014 was the largest in a dozen years. The 
deficit’s been reduced by two-thirds since Obama took office – the fastest drop since the end of 
WWII.

 The focus is on the middle class in President Obama’s 2016 budget proposal. Millions 
of Americans would be put to work rebuilding our infrastructure; roads, bridges, ports, 
broadband, etc. (By contrast, the Keystone XL pipeline would directly result in an estimated 
total of 35 to 50 permanent full-time jobs.)

 Education is emphasized through universal pre-school, teacher training, tuition-free 
community college, simplified Pell grants and career-specific job training.

 Working families get a boost though additional tax credits for dual-income households and 
child care. It’ll be made easier and less costly to save for retirement. 

 Funding is made available to help homegrown start-ups, assist veterans in transitioning to 
the workplace and restoring sequestration cuts to research and development.

 Steps are taken to encourage some of that $2 trillion in corporate profits held offshore to be 
returned home. In a reversal, the incentive would now be to create jobs at home – not to ship 
them overseas.

 Republicans still insist that money going to the top will eventually “trickle down”, but the 
record shows the rich increasingly hoarding their cash in deposit accounts and money markets. 
A Bank of America survey shows that among those 56% of millionaires with “substantial cash”, 
only 16% plan to invest any in the next couple months, and only 40% in the next two years.

 In the opening quote, Sen. Sanders referred to an economy that’s 70% consumer-driven, 
that relies on those “millions of Americans” having money to go out and buy things. But as 
to Republicans’ professed concern for the middle class and income inequality, I don’t think 
anybody, regardless of income, is going to buy it. 

A TERRIBLE LEGACY

By all accounts in Washington D.C., President Obama is sprinting to 
the finish line of his two terms desperately seeking to establish 
the legacy which will be his when the verdict of history is 
written. He believes it will be established on the domestic 
front where he has spent so much of his energy attempting to 
fundamentally transform America. Instead, the Obama legacy 
will bleed out from the events in the Middle East which he is 
almost uniquely incapable of influencing. His will be a legacy 
more terrible than any previous president’s, on par with, if not 
actually eclipsing that of, English Prime Minister Chamberlain as he allowed Europe 
to degenerate into World War II.

 This week ISIS brutally murdered a captured Jordanian pilot by burning him 
alive. Almost as ghastly as the actual execution is the fact, evidenced on video, that 
this young man seemed to almost casually saunter to the cage in which he would be 
locked and then set aflame. Can anyone imagine willingly walking to, and accepting 
without struggle, such a cruel death? Walking past armed ISIS soldiers, would 
not an attempt to flee or to fight have been more normal? Yes, such action would 
have ultimately resulted in death, but very likely the fairly quick painless death of 
automatic rifle fire. Is it not obvious to everyone that this Jordanian pilot must have 
been terribly tortured beforehand to motivate him to actively participate in his own 
immolation? 

 From this, and the immediate aftermath, we must draw two additional conclusions. 
First, it is an inescapable reality that ISIS represents a level of evil that must be 
destroyed, just as the Nazis had to be destroyed. There is no way to negotiate with 
such people. Second, the world is not yet taking this threat seriously, the fault for 
which lies squarely on the shoulders of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania 
Avenue.

 The manpower and weaponry available to the armies of the western powers, or 
even several of the Arab states, dwarf that of ISIS. With nothing greater than 50,000 
soldiers, using only captured munitions and huddled in ramshackle towns in Syria 
and Iraq, ISIS would not stand a chance against the west’s arsenal and armies, if 
they were mobilized and tasked with destroying these barbarians. But the west is 
not serious about defeating ISIS because the west lacks a leader to galvanize such 
commitment and to effectively lead such a mission.

 All eyes are on Barak Obama; leadership and strategy are needed, and yet all we get 
is “leading from behind” and confessions that “we don’t have a strategy yet”. Because 
of that, an ISIS state, a nuclear Iran, and hundreds of thousands more dead will be 
the legacy of Barak Obama. As gifted as he may be in playing domestic politics, he 
is equally inept on the world stage. He does not understand that a great world power 
is always needed to keep the peace and that a great world power leads in front with 
a well-considered and vetted strategy. He does not understand these things because 
he does not believe that America should be a world power. He is a man of the left, 
still so angry at his perceptions of America’s past sins that he is convinced America 
is morally unfit to lead in any part of the world, and so he does not strive to lead. 

 Instead, he pretends that Iran can be made to act reasonably, used as a proxy to 
keep a just peace in the Middle East and bribed into keeping its burgeoning nuclear 
weapons capability out of the hands of terrorists. These are the dreams of the 
unhinged, not the calculations of the wise. Barak Obama sees the world as he wants 
the world to be. He neither understands nor values the lessons of history. It is those 
lessons of history which tells us that rabid revolutionary regimes, such as Iran and 
ISIS today and Nazism and communism before, will not practice self-restraint. They 
are founded on deep faith in an exclusive understanding of moral supremacy. How 
can we expect them to compromise? How do you compromise what you believe 
Allah demands? How do you compromise the integrity of the German master race? 
How do you compromise the creation of a perfect Marxist man? The answer is, you 
don’t. For those who are animated by such all-consuming and exclusive faiths, they 
must either conquer or be conquered. They see no honor in compromise.

 ISIS will take more territory, capture more innocents and kill more brutally until 
it is vanquished. Iran will pursue and then use an atomic weapon unless its nuclear 
program is destroyed. Barak Obama’s legacy will be built in these two arenas. If he 
rises to the level of authentic world leadership and directs a true coalition of forces to 
destroy ISIS and force Iran to abandon its program, Obama’s legacy would arguably 
be among the greatest of modern presidents. Such a legacy would rival FDR’s and 
Reagan’s and perhaps even rise to Lincoln’s level. If he continues to dither, lecture 
and compromise, Obama’s legacy will fall to the other extreme. Becoming the worst 
president the United States has ever had would be sad. Allowing events to spiral ever 
more out of control to the point where thousands more will have to die to make it 
right would be a tragedy, terrible beyond any contemporary standard. One way or 
the other, Barak Obama will have his legacy.

 About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with 
his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@
gma/5l.com

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