There is a dangerous, growing climate of political Hatred in this country developing in this campaign season. I've never seen anything like it. At least not in this country. You sure never saw it in the Goldwater campaign, and I'm old enough to remember that. There is an appealing to the darker side of human nature rampent in both the Mc Cain and particularly the Palin speeches. The crowds who attend these gatherings are more like the crowds you'd see at a Reichstad rally in Germany with people yelling "Kill him" and "off with his head" and "he's a terrorist". The truth is a casualty in this campaign. I guess if you're a Christian, and not of the far right (which might these days be mutually exclusive terms) then you have to wonder what God thinks about all this hatred. But of course we know God will allow hatred to take place. If he didn't intervene to save his own son who was crusified 2000 years ago then I won't imagine he'll intervene to save Obama, should he actually be in physical danger. But now there are still other disturbing elements. We hear that the government has called back troops from foreign countries to be ready just in case Obama loses the election to handle potential Black rioting, much as there was in the second Rodney King, civil rights trial, where nothing ended up happening. You kind of have to wonder what sort of police state Mc Cain would "ideally" like to have were he chief executive. One supreme court decision I'd like to comment on (even if Palin won't) is the one involving 'enemies of the state' and denials of Habious Corpus. The Supreme Court rules five to four that "enemy combatents" had the right to Habius Corpus, or to know the nature of the crimes they are being charged with. Do you know how close we came to losing our freedom? If just one judge had gone the other way we would have lost these rights, perhaps for a generation. If for no other reason we cannot elect John Mc Cain as President, knowing the sort of person he'd appoint to the Supreme Court. Of course if you've seen that Keating Five vidio you know of Mc Cain's involvement in this scandal. Rush Limbaugh used to talk about the Keating Five, but if he had his old shows to do over again I bet he'd decline to discuss it now, knowing Mc Cain's involvement in a scheme not at all unlike the situation we are seeing with the banking system today. Lincoln Savings was driven into the ground and had to be bailed out by the government. For the life of me I do not know why Obama hasn't slipped this scandal in in one of the debates so far. The Keating Five scandal should be a "deal breaker" in its own right, precluding John Mc Cain from ever being thought of as a Presidential candidate.

One more topic never discussed in the debates is this whole area of N A F T A and the looming trade deficet and fair trade terrifs. We need to restore fair trade so that we can build up industries in this country. To listen to an Obama speech you'd never know that unfair foreign trade practices were a problem. Along with this we need to set some sort of immigration laws with real teeth in them- - not "because our culture is being undermined" as Pat Buchannon says but for (a) to restore respect for our laws in general and (b) to keep minorities from lowering the wage base in this country. If these people stayed in Mexico these "best and brightest" of that country could organize unions and such in their own country and improve everyone's lot who lives in Mexico. As Tom Hartman says, what the US is doing now is exporting polution by moving factories to other countries. I also personally wish Obama had not endourced this gigantic 700 Billion Wall Street bail out bill because I don't think we really needed it. As you know there has been no "stock market crash" of the perportions we had in the twenties. We aren't even close. It's inacurate to say people's funds are "wiped out". At worse they are down thirty percent. And if you wait a while they'll come back. Only people in the most dire emergency should think of cashing out now. We may well in fact be very near the all time lows in the stock market. Remember you heard us call the high first. We may be first to call the low. This is not the time for pessimisum or dire thinking. Countries around the world are taking unprecidented measures to prop up the banking system and cut interest rates on a world wide basis and get that cash flow going. In President Obama's inogural speech he may well be justified in talking about "The Audacity of Hope" once again. But untill we address our trade imballance problem I would continue to buy gold because the anxiety level through the world continues to be high and items on the horison won't make world tranquility any easier to invision.

In my personal life if you're curious as you know a friend loaned me some money a while back. Given the "deletion" of the renters rebate, I don't know how I am going to pay that money back. He has not brought up the subject but I've been thinking about it. Some of you may be wondering whether we'd have to do a little snipping of "Thick as a Brick" on our last posting to get the song listing to fit. The only other time the Federation has ever edited a song was the end of "In my time of dying" by Led Zeppeling, getting rid of all that stuff after the song is over.

There are a couple of other Supreme Court decisions I'd like to comment on, and I've already "tried out" in an E mail to the brother who is not a Christian. This concerns the ruling that states that people have the right to bear arms regardless of any local laws on the books. May I suggest that this is a violation of local sovreignty. Only in very specific, limited areas are state and local municipalities prohibited from passing whatever laws they wish. Clearly as I read it the second amendment is about limitations to the power of the Federal Government and Congress to abridge or eliminate the right to bear arms. In an urbanized area like Washington DC they have their own needs and they don't need street gangs wiping each other out throughout the city. In the same way some salloons even in the old west said "check your guns at the door". Because they didn't want any violence. But I would use this same local government sovreignty argument to overturn Roe verses Wade. Of course the basis of that decision was based on a previous bad ruling - that Griswald one on "privacy". The Griswald ruling overturned sodomy laws based on the idea that we all had a "right to privacy". The right to privacy isn't the Right to comit criminal acts in secret. Most blackmailing is done in secret but that doesn't make it any less immoral. But in the overall scheme of things- - I'd rather living in a world with abortions up the wazoo than one that's some sort of Fascist Police State, as Mc Cain dreams about fondly at night. It's a question for me anyhow, of priorities. As you know the Federation has not helped Obama in this campaign as it helped Kerry and Gore. But then again they both lost. In fact the Federation has stated that they'd rather see Obama murdered if it "has to happen to insure a greater good". Well, once again in God's oppinion God killing his son was preferable to the alternative of seeing Truth and Justice prevail in Palestine. So who can really tell with these Supernatural powers?