Puffs

“Operation Rescue” is a Pro-Life organization from Wichita, Kan. This week I’m going to use information directly from one of their writers, Cheryl Sullenger, to talk about elections.

It may seem strange to talk ‘elections’ here almost two years from the next one, but Cheryl brings up some important items that one needs to think about long before any of us go into that election booth. What follows is mostly from her.

“No matter what you believe happened on Election Day and the days that followed the 2020 Presidential Election last November, there can be no doubt that current election laws in many states leave vulnerabilities that can be exploited by the unscrupulous.

In fact, in the days following the election, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found about half of Republicans believed President Donald Trump had rightfully won re-election. A stunning 68 percent of Republicans expressed concern over “a ‘rigged’ vote counting process in favor of Joe Biden.

There were enough irregularities in the 2020 vote-counting process to prompt the Arizona State Senate to order a cyber-forensic audit of more than two million votes. That audit has been called the “gold standard” for auditing election results.  Legal attempts by Democrats to block or stop that audit have so far been unsuccessful. 

Since the Arizona audit has been in progress, at least 20 other states have sent delegates to Arizona to observe the process so they might make informed decisions about conducting similar cyber-forensic audits in their home states. They hope such audits will answer questions about the true extent of irregularities and help legislators determine how they can make elections more secure, accurate and trusted.

We often hear it said “elections have consequences.”  There is hardly an election in memorable history where the consequences to babies in the womb have been so great. After President Trump took significant steps to protect unborn babies and deny federal funding to abortionists and those who promote and refer for abortions worldwide, the Biden Administration has furiously worked to undo those protections.

For example, under the excuse of COVID-19, the Abortion Cartel lobbied the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 to lift federal restrictions on abortion-inducing drugs and allow them to be distributed via the telemedicine process through the U.S. Mail. The Trump Administration ordered the “pills by post” scheme stopped, and after legal efforts opposing the Trump policy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump Administration.  However, the damage was already done, and now states are reporting dramatic increases in abortions around the nation in 2020 after abortion numbers had been trending downward for years or even decades in some states.

When the Biden Administration assumed power, it was not long before the “pills by post” scheme was reinstituted.  As a result, abortion pill distribution businesses have popped up all over the Internet, reversing another decades-long trend of decreased numbers of abortion businesses.

We must wonder how many thousands of lives may have been saved if Trump had been declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election.

This makes election integrity a pro-life issue.

Cyber-forensic audits may yet let us know if enough irregularities existed to overturn the Presidential Election results. If so, what might be done about it remains to be seen.

Because innocent lives are on the line in our elections, it is important for pro-life supporters to work to ensure their states and counties have election laws in place that will guarantee secure and accurate elections.

“I recommend that every pro-life supporter get involved in voter integrity efforts at the state and county levels,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, who does not hide the fact he believes President Trump won the 2020 election if illegal votes and voting machine count tampering are removed from the equation.”

The article went on to talk about a wide variety of actions the average person could take. I’ve tried to limit this to the actions that might take place here in southcentral Nebraska. Consider the following:

* Contact your state and county officials to encourage them to make election integrity their highest priority. Be sure to mention ways to improve the election process.  Here is a list of things that can be done to ensure our elections are trustworthy:

* Insist that only paper ballots are used in voting because anything that is electronic can be hacked.

* Limit or end advance voting. 

* Stop the unsolicited distribution of ballots by mail and put specific limits on who can vote by absentee ballot. 

* Verify signatures on all absentee ballots.

* Ban the use of unattended ballot drop boxes.

* Outlaw ballot harvesting.

Not everything will apply to the way things happen in southcentral Nebraska, but in the more populated areas they may be very important.

A O

Summer is the time of the year that most outside ‘grilling’ takes place. Have you ever wondered where those charcoal briquettes come from? I’ll pass along the following story as it has information about the briquettes that I didn’t know. Happy grilling . . .

On June 16, 1903, the Ford Motor Company was established. Henry Ford was the founder. This was not his first rodeo, as he had previously operated the Henry Ford Company. He left that company and took his name with him. What became of the Henry Ford Company? They became known as the Cadillac Motor Company.

What does any of this have to do with the photo of a BBQ grill? Hang on.

Ford’s Model T, which would number in the millions sold, required 100 board feet of wood to build. Ford despised waste. His motto was, “Reduce, reuse, and recycle.” He was also a nature-lover, an environmentalist of his time. His escape from the stress of life was camping in the great outdoors.

Frustrated by the mountains of sawdust his lumber mills created, he and his partners sought a way to utilize the scrap wood and sawdust into a useful (and profitable) product.

An idea came to him one day as he was camped with some friends in the wilds of Michigan. After his party spent a long time collecting sufficient wood for a campfire, an idea spring in Ford’s mind. Upon returning back to the lumber mill, he shared the idea with some of his partners and set to work on it.

The idea? Lumping a fistful of sawdust and cornstarch with a bit of tar to form a briquette. After charring it, it performed exactly what Ford imagined it would. He then built a charcoal briquette factory adjacent to his lumber mill where the waste from one became the fuel for the other.

A new Model T was now frequently sold with a bonus bag of Ford Charcoal Briquettes, so you could drive into the woods to camp and not worry about finding campfire wood.

So now you know. Ford not only created the modern automobile industry which takes millions to work and back each workday, but he also created the weekend grilling and camping industries.

In 1951, the Ford Charcoal Briquette Company was sold. The new company was named after Ford’s real estate partner who helped him find the land to supply wood for building the early Ford automobiles- E.J. Kingsford.

Kingsford Charcoal is the largest producer of charcoal briquettes in the world.

A O