Trial By Media

I am writing this before the Saint Louis County, Missouri Grand Jury decides whether to indict police officer Darren Wilson for shooting Michael Brown. It really doesn’t matter which way this goes, though. The news media have already indicted Officer Wilson and judged him guilty of murder.

Every mainstream newspaper and Television News program has told the story of a poor angelic black boy with his hands raised being shot in the back by a vicious racist police officer for no reason other than the boy was black. Whenever pictures of victim Michael Brown are shown, they are of a much younger Brown – before he became a low-life street thug.

Wilson is the latest victim of “Trial by media.” We may as well dismiss every criminal court and let the media decide a person’s guilt or innocence. As an added bonus, we won’t even need criminal attorneys.

The hapless Darren Wilson is not the first person to be tried and destroyed in the media. Recent high-profile cases include George Zimmerman (Trayvon Martin case), O.J. Simpson, and the officers in the Rodney King case. It seems the media aren’t happy without at least one every month or so.

I remember a woman (can’t remember her name, though) who drove her car into the ocean and drowned her three young children. The media did all but draw horns and a tail on her picture. It’s been a while, but I seem to recall that she was eventually convicted in a real court and received a relatively light sentence. When she got out of prison recently, she had to change her name and appearance then move to another state to keep from being hounded by people with hatred in their hearts. Of course, the media finally found her and publicized her location, new name, and even her picture. After all, they wouldn’t want the public to think she had paid for her crime.

By now, you might be thinking that I am trying to justify people getting away with crimes. Nothing could be further from the truth. I simply don’t believe that people should be tried in the media even before a crime has actually been determined. Especially by the left leaning media – which is most of them.

In the Wilson/Brown case, there are two radically differing stories being told of the occurrences that day. Each report of the happenings is slanted to one side or the other but mostly toward Brown’s side. What is the truth? Does it matter? A Grand Jury panel was convened August 20 to determine if there is enough evidence to try Officer Wilson for killing Brown. A decision was announced as forthcoming on November 24. It took that long to weigh all the evidence.

Nearly every day that this Grand Jury worked on the case, the news media had to shove the case in the face of the public. “Any day now the Saint Louis County Grand Jury will release its findings.” Every day this case festered and kept the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri in the front of the news. Every day some new “community organizer” would put his face out there and tell the crowd to be peaceful – wink, wink.

Ain’t riots grand? The rioters get free stuff, the print media sell more newspapers, contractors get paid to repair the burned and looted stores, more people watch TV news, Al and Jessie get more air time, talk shows have something to talk about, everyone makes money off them except the poor store owners that will take a big hit on their insurance premiums.

I have to wonder just how many other killings – Black-on-Black, White-on-White, or Black-on-White – have occurred during this time without the media stirring the pot of discontent. Maybe the news media didn’t think there would be enough emotion to stir up a good riot.

As I said, why even bother having courts? We could simply let the news media decide who is innocent or guilty. After that, vigilante justice could take over and lynch whomever the media decides is to blame.

Maybe I missed something when I read the first Amendment. Is there anything in it that gives the news media authority to try people for perceived crimes?

The Fifth Amendment says, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury…” Then again, the Forth Amendment is quite clear on the issue: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

I guess the constitution only applies in cases that don’t pique the attention of the Liberal media. Then again, Mr. Obama seems to think the Constitution is just a suggestion for the current ruler anyway. But I digress.

Emperor Obama the Not So Great

 I watched Obama’s address to the American people trying to justify his illegal executive action giving some five million illegal aliens amnesty. I have to say he did look regal with the red carpet and opulent furniture in the hall behind him. The only thing missing was his crown. Let’s face it, he is not just our country’s first black President, he also acts like America’s first Emperor.

When George Washington was asked how he should be addressed, he had to think about it. The country had just fought a hard and costly war for freedom from monarchical rule. Washington decided it would not do to have any trappings of royalty. He said simply refer to the holder of the presidential office as Mr. President.

Such has been the address of 43 Presidents. Will we now need to refer to Obama as Your Highness or Excellency? I’m sure he would like that.

Okay, nearly every President has used executive orders and executive actions. Why is this action by Obama special? Even Obama has on several occasions stated that he did not have authority to take immigration actions of this nature.

This is not the first time Obama has ignored the law and acted on his own. This June he traded five high-level terrorists being held in Guantanamo for an Army deserter being held by the Taliban without the consent of congress. The law says he has to confer with congress before he can make such a trade.

Now he has circumvented congress and taken illegal actions to give illegal aliens immunity from deportation, i.e. amnesty.

He then told Congress they could submit their own bill to reform immigration. In other words, Obama has flipped the bird to congress and dared them to do something about it. This, my fellow Americans, is the act of an emperor. When a tyrant wants to strengthen his position, he dismisses peoples’ representatives. Caesar did it. Hitler did it, and Stalin did it.

Even if the new Republican controlled congress does manage to pass an immigration reform bill, without any language giving current illegal immigrants amnesty and an easy path to citizenship, Obama is certain to veto it.

Why are Obama and the Democrats so keen on amnesty? Votes! Sure, we know there are some illegal aliens voting in elections – and prosecution has been unbelievably lax – but by giving these people amnesty and a easy path to citizenship the Democrats can instantly get millions of legal votes. This would give the Democrats single party rule in our country.

So, Obama has given the finger to congress and the incoming Republicans. According to polls that I have seen, he may even be giving the finger to the majority of citizens in the country. What can be done about it?

The obvious solution would be to simply impeach this wannabe emperor. Would there be enough votes in the house and senate to get it done? Probably. Will they do it? I don’t see any movement in that direction. Even if the House votes to impeach, getting two-thirds votes for impeachment in the Senate is a very unlikely possibility. Would it make a difference? Think about it. The next in line is Joe Biden. Even if he could get his foot out of his mouth long enough to take the oath of office, there would be little hope the man with sub-room temperature IQ would ever sign any bills from a Republican controlled congress.

The ace-in-the hole for congress may be to overrule Obama’s executive order. Can this be done? It not only can be done, it must be done. Whether Obama likes it or not, ours is a constitutional republic. Obama needs to learn that there are three branches of our government. No matter how narcissistic this man is the people of this country will not stand for imperial rule.

One Joyous Occasion

 It has been 25 years since the notorious Berlin Wall fell and Germany became one country again. The media reports of joy and relief of the former East Germans doesn’t begin to tell the story. And those living in other countries cannot fully understand the ramifications of this action.

In the beginning, the NAZI regime managed to turn the suffering and starvation the of German people were experiencing at the end of WWI into a time of prosperity for most of the citizenry. This came at a horrendous price, however. Many of the German people were forced into what is today called the Holocaust. While ordinary Germans went about their lives giving little thought to what their government was up to, the Nazis, led by a dictator and his fanatics, consolidated control and undertook expansion of the borders. The result was WWII – an alliance of nations against the collection of fascist nations named the Axis.

As the Axis nations sought to expand into neighboring countries, many horrors were wrought upon the unfortunate population of their targets. When Hitler set his covetous eyes on the Eastern European countries and Russia, he set in motion a military action that he could not win. As the German army consolidated eastern territory, the fanatical aims of the Nazi party wrought havoc on the concurred people.

Inevitably, Germany simply ran out of resources and manpower to support Hitler’s drug-induced unrealistic plans. As the eastern front collapsed and began to shrink back on Germany, the Russian dictator, Stalin incited the Russian army to inflict horrors on the German civilians and captured prisoners. As the Russian army advanced into Germany, many of the civilians tried to head west into the arms of the Americans or British troops.

The German people, especially the women and girls, had good reason to fear the onslaught of the Russian army. Various accounts of the number of rapes exist, but most figures put it in the millions. The Russians would not just rape a women they would subject her to repeated rapes by gangs of men, then shoot her when they had to move on. In a small village of Strasburg, in the Ukermark, 175 women and young girls gathered in the town square and slit their wrists rather than be taken by the approaching Russians. Babies were killed by smashing their little heads on walls and concrete. Huge numbers of townspeople were simply rounded up and shot to death.

After the war, the Allies, of which Russia was a member, divided Germany into various sectors. Germany’s capital, Berlin, had also been divided into controlling sectors. The Russian dictator, Stalin stripped the Russian sector in the east of Germany of any useful industrial facilities and left the people to the devices of devout communists.

Although the Russian communists were convinced that communism would one day cover the world, they shut off their German sector from the “corrupting” influence of the West. Not content with controlling only the eastern portion of Germany, Stalin gobbled up most of the countries in eastern Europe that Germany had occupied, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, the Ukraine, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the newly minted East Germany. The result was named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Although rebuilding Germany was not high on the Soviet list of priorities, the German people dug themselves out of the rubble and by the ‘60s had become the most productive country within the Soviet sphere of influence.

In 1948, Stalin decided that since Berlin was completely enclosed within the Russian sector, that the entire city should be part of East Germany. He closed the borders in an attempt to starve the western sectors into submitting to his will. It didn’t work. The Americans airlifted food and supplies to the western sectors of Berlin.

In 1961, Stalin’s successor, Khrushchev got a bug up his rear, and decided to put a stop to the bleeding of young, productive people in East Germany to the West. Overnight, he closed all borders and erected barbed-wire barriers surrounding West Berlin. Not to keep the West Berliners out, but the keep the East Germans in. Eventually the fence was replaced with a fortified concrete wall. Mines and machine gun emplacements formed a kill-zone demarcation up to the wall on the East German side. All doors and windows along the border were cemented shut with concrete blocks.

Although the face of the East German government was that of Germans, the power behind it originated in Moscow. East Germans would dance to the communist tune of the Soviet Union until 1989. In that year, communism collapsed of its own repressive policies. The Soviet Union died along with the communist governments of its satellite nations.

The immediate events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall saw huge streams of people leaving East Germany for the West. Realizing the acute loss of manpower on the east would leave East Germany in tatters, the government collapsed and capitulated to form a unified Germany.

At last, families on both sides of the border – and there were thousands, maybe millions – could once more be united. It was a joyous time.

But how do you reconcile the unification of a prosperous modern nation with a depressed and relatively poor one. The infrastructure, industry, and total government had to be rebuilt in the East. The wage and income disparities had to be addressed.

Now that Germany was one nation, the people were now free to move wherever they liked. And they did. Today the lands of the former East Germany are all but devoid of young people. They crowd the cities of the west where education and employment opportunities abound.

Reconciliation would not be easy, but if any people could do it, the Germans would. And they have.

The anniversary of the fall of the wall may not be celebrated worldwide, but it should. That day symbolizes the death of failed Marxist-Leninist communist doctrine. It is a day the remaining communist leaning countries should take good notes on. Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, communism, socialism – whatever you prefer to call it – can not and will not work.

The people of Germany have good reason to rejoice on this day.

The EMP Threat: Real or Imagined?

 Here’s an idea. Let’s climb into our mental time machine and travel back to when our nation was being formed – say a nice summer day in 1776.

Here we see the horse being used to power most activities, transportation, industry, agriculture, and occasionally food. Speaking of food, in 1776, most of what is consumed is grown locally and distributed in the local market square in town. Water, that essential commodity for life, is usually drawn from a well by hand. The news comes from newspapers printed by hand, and communications take place in person or by a carrier on horseback.

Hop back in the time machine and travel to September 1, 1859. The industrial age brought many advances to our lifestyles. Natural gas lights the homes and streets, steam powered trains transport goods and people to and from far away places, giant steam powered machines turn out mass-produced items from wood and metal, food comes from places we have never been to, and water is pumped by steam engines to faucets inside our homes. Electricity has made communication much faster and over longer distances by using the telegraph.

On this particular date, an amazing phenomenon takes place. The night sky is filled with a glow of red, purple, and green that seems to dance among the stars. The Aurora Borealis is seen at all ends of the earth. Suddenly telegraphs throw sparks, some operators are electrocuted, telegraph wires and metal pipes emit “lightening”, and power supplies explode.

You have just witnessed the power of an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) created naturally by massive coronal ejections from the sun – i.e. sunspots – aimed at earth. The effect happens when X-rays and Gamma rays strike oxygen atoms in our stratosphere. Most of the time, the solar rays are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field. Sometimes a small amount gets through and creates the beautiful Aurora Borealis seen in the far northern areas. On rare occasions, huge solar flares produce enough energy to overwhelm our magnetic field and an EMP is generated that is large enough to completely fry electrical and electronic devices.

The next time stop is the atomic age. As nuclear tests profierated, scientists observed some unexpected phenomena. In 1958, nuclear tests in the Pacific caused streetlights to fail hundreds of miles away in Hawaii, and disruption of radio signals happened in Australia. They determined the effect to be that of an Electro Magnetic Pulse generated by gamma rays from the atomic blast striking the stratosphere.

The discovery sparked research into weaponizing EMP.

Let’s bring our time machine back to today. Both Russia and the United States are known to have EMP weapons. They are considered humane because they won’t cause death directly, while disabling enemy activities that rely on electronic devices. There are nuclear EMP weapons and non-nuclear EMP weapons. The non-nuclear EMP weapons produce a focused small to medium sized (about city wide) EMP. The high-altitude nuclear EMP devices can affect a much wider range, perhaps enough to cause widespread electrical damage to an entire country.

When we leave the time machine, we see people everywhere with cell phones communicating not just with other people but also with computers that produce all sorts of information, both useful and entertaining.

At home, we have devices that bring us televised shows and video communications with each other. The comprehensive information on everything in the world is stored as data electronically on computers. The Internet is, by now, so common that we take its presence for granted. The vehicles we use for transporting goods and ourselves all rely on computers and other electronic devices to make them run.

Electricity powers all but very few of the things we need to survive in this day and age – the gas pump, refrigerator, freezer, air conditioning, heating, water pumps, and industrial machines. Cars, trucks airplanes, and trains all rely on electronic devices to make them go.

One good EMP attack would take all of that away from us and leave us in conditions not seen since the 18^th century. People would starve or die of thirst. There would be no transportation of any kind. Chaos would rule.

Are you ready for this scenario? Consider this: North Korea, ruled by what no one would believe is a stable dictator, has the atomic bomb. It’s a fact. According to Peter Vincent Pry, a member of the former Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (2001-2008), North Korea tested an EMP bomb last year by exploding a nuclear satellite over the South Pole.

Just recently, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, told reporters at the Pentagon that North Korea has succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear devices. While a miniature nuke is useful in a number of applications, its small size and light weight would make it ideal for an EMP bomb in a satellite.

Are you prepared for this? Is the US prepared for this? Congress has been warned. The reaction of most of our politicians has been to poo-poo the idea as a sci-fi dooms-day, Armageddon scare.

Well, folks, the threat is real. If our government can’t/won’t protect us from Ebola, what do you suppose they are planning for EMP bombs? And no, a tinfoil suit and foil on your windows won’t save you either.

Words of the Day

As a writer, I find it important to learn new words and expand my vocabulary. I subscribe to dictionary.com to receive a daily selection from word of the day. Many of the words are so esoteric that I have never heard them in use or even read them in print. Occasionally, though, a word – new to me – stands out as so appropriate to the time that I am surprised I have never heard it used.

Take the word deiform for example. Deiform, adjective: godlike or divine in form or nature. After the past six years, one might expect this to be a word used by Obama supporters to describe their idol. Well, maybe the reason we haven’t heard it used is that the lamestream media just aren’t all that literate. They use a more simple vocabulary of words like “great”, “wonderful”, and the biggest lie of all; “a leader.”

Here’s another word, more appropriate to the description of both Obama, and the lamestream media: mythomane. Mythomane, noun: a person with a strong or irresistible propensity for fantasizing, lying, or exaggerating. Yep, fits the occupant of the Oval Office to a Tee.

Let’s use these new words in a sentence. Barrack Obama describes his office in deiform terms, but in reality, he is simply a mythomane. Works for me!

Although other Presidents may have exercised the power of executive orders more times than Obama, he is the only one using his authority to circumvent Congress and the Constitution. Obama, in his deiform position deems the US Constitution old and outdated. This probably stems from his years of close association with subversive radicals.

Our constitution may have been drafted over 200 years ago, but it is a dynamic document capable of being amended. Since the Constitution’s ratification in 1787, it has been amended 27 times, the latest in 1992. The Constitution of the United States is anything but an old and outdated document. It’s just too constraining for Obama’s deiform personality and socialist designs.

As for being a mythomane, well, what can I say? Did he tell the truth about Obama care, Benghazi, the current Ebola problem, the IRS scandal, the Ukraine situation, etc, etc? And I am still not convinced about his birth certificate.

As tit-for-tat, his supporters always point to Bush 43’s waging war in Iraq over what they claim is non-existent weapons of mass destruction. It’s the big lie that the left says caused us to wage war against Saddam Hussein. Well, the “big lie” is that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Our troops had been finding chemical weapons since the beginning of the war. The chemical weapons used in Syria were manufactured in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Did other presidents ever lie? Of course! Nixon lied about Watergate, and Clinton lied to congress about having sex with Monica Lewinski. Clinton and Nixon may have been pathological liars and sociopaths, but they didn’t intentionally mislead the people of this country into signing up for a destructive bait-and-switch tactic that will need to be undone by a future President.

If you have kept up with me this far, you are likely thinking, “this guy hates Obama.” Hate is a strong word. I hate driving the freeways. I hate airports. I hate Marxism disguised as socialism. Sometimes I hate getting up in the wee hours of the morning. It could be rightly said that I have a strong dislike for Barrack Obama and his brand of big government. I am certain he has earned the tag, worst President ever. The race-baiters, alla Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton, would call me racist for my views of our Commander-in-chief. In truth, though, race aside, I actually believe our country is acephalous, and the guy in the White House is a pretentious deiform mythomane.

There you have it folks, two more words you can use in reference to Barrack Obama. I also use other words in that reference, but they won’t print them in family newspapers.

Government Working in Our Best Interest?

 Ebola. The very name sends shivers up my spine. To catch Ebola is a death sentence. And like so many of the lethal diseases in the last 100 years, this too comes from Africa.

The director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Tom Frieden spent hours at a press conference trying to assure Americans that the spread of this horrendous disease can be stopped. When asked why he has not called for a halt to travel to and from the African nations where this disease is prevalent, he said it was not necessary and even claimed it would be counterproductive.

Are you convinced? I’m not.

I don’t want to be a fear monger, but didn’t the CDC make the same claim regarding AIDS? Yet, it spread from its origin in Africa to every corner of the world leaving a deadly path in its wake. Even Frieden admits that, “the only thing like this [Ebola] has been AIDS.” To which I might add, they not only failed to stop, they also continue to fail to control the spread.

According to the web site Avert (http://www.avert.org/), AIDS started in Africa some time between 1884 and 1924, then traveled to Haiti around 1966. Fifty-nine years later, we find AIDS in every village and hamlet in the country.

Can they really stop the spread of Ebola? Despite the Pollyanna attitude of the CDC, I’d have to say no to that too. At least our government hasn’t shown any positive steps to keep the disease out of our country.

The CDC recently announced steps taken at New York airports to screen for Ebola, but what about the hundreds of other international airports in America. And their idea of screening is limited to taking passengers’ temperatures. So, if you’re entering the country with the flu or having hot flashes, you’re going to the isolation ward.

Are there even effective screening procedures in place? According to an article from NBC News in New York, federal U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are saying they are not prepared, and have not been trained to implement the government’s new screening procedures. Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/health-workers-federal-agents-blow-whistle-nations-emergency-preparedness-prepared/#8Oza6HSJ5wspaAU2.99

And what is the World Health Organization (WHO) doing about the spread? Near as I can tell, that would be zilch. There are no restrictions on travel to or from the African countries where Ebola is epidemic.

And what about leadership from the Oval Office? Obama says, “you can’t get Ebola from setting next to someone on a bus.” Yet, the CDC advises to avoid public transportation.

This is yet another incidence where our chief executive has placed our country at serious risk. His refusal to disallow visitors from African nations with the Ebola epidemic, refusal to effectively secure our borders from terrorists or disease carrying illegal immigrants, and by allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country without health screening has opened the country up to horrendous consequences.

Should we be scared? Well, I’m not going into doomsday mode – not yet. But we need to realize that our government is not always looking after our best interest, as it should. And when the government says everything is peachy, check the peach for worms.

One Good Man

 The other day I had a nice chat with Nathan Westphal. Nathan is the current President of the community group in my area called Residents Association of Greater Lake Mathews, RAGLM for short, and he has been a dynamic presence in our community. Nathan created and maintains the highly informative web site and on-line forum (www.raglm.org) that gives everyone in the community an opportunity to voice their concerns whether a RAGLM member or not.

RAGLM is a great organization that works to maintain a quality of lifestyle within the unincorporated areas of Lake Mathews, Gavilan Hills, Gavilan Springs, Mockingbird Canyon, and Woodcrest. Their motto is: "To keep the rural lifestyle, protect the open spaces, and to preserve the wildlife in our area known as Greater Lake Mathews." Their goal is to give our community a voice at the county level, and they have done an excellent job of it.

But Nathan Westphal is more than simply another community organizer. He has genuine concerns about many of the larger problems that face our county and state. Not just content to point out these problems, Nathan is one to take an active part in creating solutions for them.

A major problem within California and certainly within our county is water. Most of Southern California is served by a quasi-governmental agency, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) and it’s sister agencies the Eastern Metropolitan Water District (EMWD) and the Western Metropolitan Water District (WMWD). An elected board of directors controls each of these agencies.

Beyond the serious issue of water scarcity due to the drought, there are major issues of agency administration, water quality, and rates we all pay for the water we use. Nathan followed these issues with the WMWD very closely, and decided to run for a seat on the WMWD board of directors in this upcoming election.

The issues he finds with WMWD include (from his website http://nathanwestphal.com/):

Cost of Water:

The cost of water in our region is getting out of hand. Just since 2009, we have incurred two new charges on our bills (Water Reliability Charge, MWD Readiness-to-Serve Charge) as well as a new tier structure and pumping zone charges. In this same period, WMWD has built two new facilities as well as holding more than $14 million in customer reserves. I would ask if these charges are supposed to be set aside for emergency purposes, why then do we build elaborate facilities and continue to increase pay of employees? I will stand for the customers and fight these unnecessary fee increases to make sure your money is going where it is supposed to go and not just to the expansion of WMWD.

Restriction of Resources:

With ever expanding development in western Riverside County, it is imperative that we find new ways to deal with our already scarce resources. I believe that new developments should be held accountable to existing residents when it comes to resources. We cannot allow business as usual. We must stop planting high water use lawns in medians simply for cosmetic reasons. We need to partner with developers to find ways to develop smart ideas while continuing to expand our local economy. We cannot just continue to rezone and pack homes into areas already suffering from restricted resources. Currently, 'Will Serve' letters do not go through the board of directors for a vote, but get automatically sent upon request to new development. I would argue that will serve letters should be voted on by the board and will work hard to make this a reality.

Accountability:

Recently the board voted to give their GM a 2% pay and pension increase. The board just voted to increase sewer rates in the Murrieta area as well as adding an annual property tax in some areas to collect monies on top of the collections they already take in from ratepayers. Currently WMWD is working to implement a new ordinance to allow further restrictions on water usage, as they did in 2010. These new restrictions are more severe than the ones originally implemented by WMWD. Additionally, these new restrictions, as well as the previous ones, only affect residential ratepayers as commercial ratepayers are not subject to the same-tiered structure. Should we not all be treated equally? In August of 2013, when the Riverside Grand Jury recommended the board tie stipend decreases to rate increases, the current incumbent stated, "I do not make enough money to support my family. All the work we put in, we do not get paid for." Last time I checked this was a public service and not a career. Changes must be made at Western and I will fight to make positive changes without the prospect of increasing my own stipend or increasing rates.

Well, there you have it. Nathan Westphal has my vote. I am confident he has a thorough grasp of the issues and will fight to make a difference. On Tuesday, November 4^th I urge you exercise your right to vote, and if you are within the WMWD Division 3, please vote for Nathan Westphal.