"On October 13, 2008, the New York Times published a news article entitled "Hindu Threat to Christians: Convert or Flee" by Somini Sengupta.  The full article can be found here.

This morning, the Hindu American Foundation submitted a Letter to the Editor as seen below.  This Letter to the Editor is the third in three months submitted by HAF to the New York Times without a response or publication.  Yet, HAF continues its persistence for accurate coverage for the Hindu American community.  As Hindu Americans, we urge all of you as individuals to write to the New York Times and insist upon fair and balanced coverage.

Dear Editor:

Re: "Hindu Threat to Christians: Convert or Flee," by Somini Sengupta, October 13, 2008.

Google wants the Unites States government to spend FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS on just alternative energy plans; how come they don't run for office, and why would officials say they don't include citizens or industries or Congress' own research into a thing before essentially not so much REALLY giving $4 trillion but "habitrail" control of a society run the way entrenched officials want it? In the spirit that there is absolutely no reason to pretend more ab inito non-existant cash needs to obfuscate for complete restructuring of human life, only the bitter and anecdotal even concerned and best shuttered up, I respectfully submit my endorsement of the balance of within text prepared by GOPUSA on grounds I think it would stifle the American way of competition and diversity (not to mention space FOR making fuels or jobs or farms et al, if all else just New Urban housing), said text being, to-wit:

"Coal alone accounts for 22 percent of our total energy supply and 46 percent of our electricity generation. Wind power and solar -- the renewables in which Google supposedly sees such potential -- represent only six percent of the renewable energy we produce and seven percent of the total energy we use. Even unprecedented progress in their development wouldn't bring them online in time to meet Google's schedule.

Today, natural market forces are bringing gas prices down and Congress has had the good sense to let the ban on offshore drilling expire. We're finally making some progress on energy, which is why we can't allow Google to dictate a national energy policy that will benefit the company at the expense of taxpayers.

Polls show that 70 percent of Americans support offshore drilling and the environmentally conscious development of America's energy reserves.

That's a solid, practical plan. Google's proposal would set us back and likely cause energy costs to spike.

They're just the latest in a line of corporate rent-seekers who want the federal government to pay for their projects. One of the key initiatives in this new plan, after all, is Google's own recently announced electricity grid.

American taxpayers are not interested in seeing their tax dollars subsidize Google's latest investment. I strongly urge you to do everything you can to reject this ridiculous proposal.

Like most Americans, I want a sensible energy policy that will make full use of all our domestic energy resources, including alternative and renewable fuels. I want more U.S. energy reserves taken off the "don't touch" list and lower taxes on energy to keep retail prices down.

It's intriguing that not only don't the Brokaws ask the questions on so many omnipartisan minds, as many VOLPAC posters within have noted, but notice not a single candidate or party for ANY office(s) ever sends out asking what THEIR supporters want answered in any debate or other format(s).

Given the political year baggage of Iraq, immigration, HR 1955/287g, UN anti-defamation activity of FUNDAMENTALIST Islam and leaders who support it, Darfur and Janjaweed, abortion, euthanasia, sterilization of the non-winners of bailout/tax and financial incentives of winners to have as many kids as they can proposed by some States, government criticisms of Christians despite at least 80% of population having Christian beliefs, and lack of just how exactly this bailout will THIS time save jobs/stop salary cuts/restore those now on reverse or regular mortgage brinks/promote great education/provide quality healthcare (all this just for starters), you'd think there could be SOMETHING in there any candidate for ANY office...let alone McCain or Obama...would just go ahead and weave their opinions on same into any anticipated debate answer.

While it's super-cool gas pump prices are falling every day, the failure of any candidates to talk about anything within aforementioned...which have not YET gone away, in some cases only recently arising...makes it seem like at best only "anecdotal pockets" of marginalized types would even ask them, thus they're not important to most voters any more than is how they'd be addressed ex officio, and thus why should any candidate or campaign or party or moderator/media anywhere even waste time on them.

If the goal is to sell to the Eastern Hemisphere all is perfect here and only bitter people not worth wasting your time worrying about will be toppled, it seems only fair to let the soon-to-be "toppled" so much as know they exist.

I hope that more candidates will at least quip about how great or small they think issues like security versus rights, probable cause versus "what if", jobs, religious freedom, and the like should occupy in any officeholder's policies and legislations. As it is, right now, believe it or not, as BRAC and recruitment office closures go petal to the metal, even puny runts like MyMood Alibabajihad are shooting down our USAF planes if close enough to him, with the only known USA officialdom reply seeming to be "shhhh!!!! Whatever you do or don't say will either provoke or support Islamic terror!Shhhhh!!! Be quiet, stare at your shoes, it'll improve if we think positive and agree it is, and say, can I have some more of your rights and cash to return it tenfold in ways I can't mention due to loose lips sinking ships "...in other words, Bush's Third Term, already.

As we hear more and more economists and scholars support what most of us already know...the trillion dollar USA bailout of all parties EXCEPT those (most of the nation) most in need to keep PAYING the "bailed out" is going to result in a Socialist-APPEARING society, yet operating with no more than rights and equity-abrogating totalists, both major parties, at best treating most everyday people as if they were in a habitrail owned by the totalists.
 
For example, already the brightest of the GOP, unchallenged by any other pols on notice of relevant GOP activity, are working to enact what they believe has the broadest support of officials everyhwere at every level, when it comes to how to handle all the growing and soon burgeoning number of people finding themselves out of homes and work, becoming reliant on parents or some State for survival until the "economy trickles down": sterilize all on "welfare" today, and anyone in future who needs a handout, but be "doing good works" as at least you'll give $1,000 to any man or woman who gets permanently sterilized (of course, give incentives for those WITH plenty of money, one day just the bailed out, to have as many children as they may)...source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=36907; at the same time, why not just let anybody found dead under circumstances more easily be labelled just some assisted suicide, as there are so many people who don't know how to kill themselves or express wishes to die on their own: source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=36910 ...and "cousin Ahnold" does have a majority Democrat Legislature who presented him that bill.

So mortgages, AGAIN, will back up this bailout to everybody except those already in mortgage dutch...notice not a single officeholder, Federal, State or Local anywhere, has said something like: "I guarantee this bill not cost jobs, hike prices/interest, require more cheaply made housing, or allow anyone to be kicked out of where they now live, nor will public salaries hike or we all require absolute nationalized say-so over your very existence, nor will we just issue 'okay' new serial numbers to yet-yo-come-only immigrants so THEY can get credit like happened before...if anything there is a lie, I'll resign, give back all money I made in my life, and forsake retirements so you don't have to!"

On a related note, FOX this Saturday morning ran an economist saying that in 2001 the national debt was 35% of the USA Gross National Product, as he said quote "before these shenangigans" (bailout) it was 50%, so we can assume now at least 75% of the GNP will be national debt.

Faith: worship or psychology? Can it help us out in any tangible ways, like world economics?
 
Over the ages, there have always been those who...for diverse personal reasons...mock the idea that life is not just a random cosmic accident, our laws of science in fact ruling out the possibility of any nature of so-called supernatural existence. Some today mock on grounds they're in the USA and want to test limits of free speech; others for diverse personal, financial, or political reasons.
 
A big current stratagem, worldwide, seems to be: "knock out the long-ago founders, knock out the religions and let brute human will be done without resistance". Resistance? Those who see peaceful devotions as some sort of Hogan's Heroes or A-Team surely don't understand basic faith in God.
 
For starters, when I say "God", I admit I'm a Christian; but "God" is my way of describing that Absolute which is capable of creating the first matter in a void, if not the void itself...and obviously capable of not being bound by our sciences, explanatory reductions, logic, and reason, yet intending lifeforms evolve where they have amid circumstances of their universe. Thus, God is the author of all that ever was, is, or ever could be. Why would it be bizarre for anyone to simply give thanks for the awe of the universe, natural earthly wonders, or existence?
 
Some concede as much, then protest: "but we're talking monkeys who grew a neocortex and God must want us to outwit each other in survival of the fittest". Okay, I'll not allude to Plato's "Phaedo" ( a discussion on the existence of the soul) or Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" (insofar as defining a soul), as such talks are opinions of the writers; I'll focus on but one set of scientific people shoring up that a soul exists and does better when seeking the Absolute's presence and universal order.
 
Back in the 1990's, a doctor by the name of Larry Dossey used to make the New York Times bestseller list with writing and independent scientific studies into the healing benefits of prayer. Dr. Dossey had been a chief of staff at Humana Medical in Dallas, an executive editor of 'Alternative Therapies", and a co-chair of the Panel on Mind/Body interventions, Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. But a few of myriad clinical studies he cited were "Healing Research" in Munich, "The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography Of Systematic Reviews and Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects" by the National Institute for Healthcare Research, and Nobel physicist Brian Josephson of Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, who suggested, as noted in "Biological Utilization of Quantum Nonlocality" as part of "Foundations of Physics 21", that prayer even from afar can have positive results. Sorry to ramble, but the public has a right to know where even THIS windbag gets his ideas from.
 
In his book "Prayer Is Good Medicine", Dr. Dossey said prayer shows no changes if engaged in by one over another religion, or sometimes even if one has no religion, the success rate improving merely by attempting to communicate with the Absolute. He also indicated that those who found a religion, which for them best attuned with the Absolute, had the highest degree of successful prayer outcomes...casually praying people giving chance results, those with religious regimens and focused sincerity gave fewer than four chances out of ten thousand that positive results could be chance...did I mention that's PEACEFUL religious participation? Lastly, Dossey's book lays out that prayer is as successful at global distances as it is at a bedside, you don't even need to know who you pray for personally, and no specific form of energy has ever been identified. If that isn't circumstantial support for the existence of spiritual souls asking their Creator for help as God may will it, what is? The neocortex isn't sending energy, and for nonlocal quantum physics to explain it would mean that two people would have had to at least once touched each other physically...which strangers haven't.
 
And some will still say: "so there's a Creator, there are souls, and only those souls in harmony with some God requiring goodwill between people seem to be attractive to the Absolute, but even if they help, religions can be abused so it's the right thing to regulate or eradicate them, especially since nobody can prove Christ or whoever in any faith existed or was Divinely inspired".
 
Well, again, even if taken as but traditions, obviously peaceful religious prayer has best empowerment through ANY such faith...traditional, new, or small...which for followers stands up to the tests of time for worship. God doesn't throw ANY sincere prayer away, just because you used this or that identifier or language; God obviously intends we do pray; and if He abided negative prayers He would not isolate terrorists and dangerous or misanthropic people FOR psychiatric recognition by making them do their horrible deeds of their own volition and acts...how can such people thus be deemed "agents of their God" if God doesn't hear them? We wouldn't prohibit alcohol because a gangster drank, or cut  hands off all people because some heinous act involved use of hands, so why act invidiously toward any peaceful religion because someone angry at God or mercenary against peace or His Absoluteness popped their own cork?
 
Lastly, some will devolve to saying: "well, the New Testament, at least, outlaws women as spreaders of the Gospel, and says civil union parties are cursed from God, so at least we've got a reason to be rid of Christians". 
 
Well, I myself interpret 1 Romans:18-32 to not mean anything against certain people BORN a certain away; the context you get depends on whether you read a choppy passage line by line, or as an idea through its whole. To my reading, a group of subject people first turned to idols with specific intent to mock God, then undertook gossip, murder, debauchery, all sorts of incredibly objectivist things, including with hope that turning to their own genders would further enhance their own rebellion to the Absolute...sort of "how can we make EVERYTHING imaginable run counter-clockwise and prove man is at least as mighty as God?". To me it seems God simply chose to not even be available to them anymore and in such fashion they eventually fell apart. I do not push others to agree, especially since some would have the State begin a slippery slope of legislating for religious conduct due to non aggressive interpretation of a Bible ambiguity.
 
Likewise, my own opinion of the Samaritan woman in John 4:39-42 is that she is presented as a missionary, described in literally the same way as the Disciples, so no absolute bar to women as ministers seems to be in the faith tradition; at the same time, at 16 Romans:1-2, Phoebe is directly said to be a "diaknos", a minister of uncertain function in the early Church; again, I don't require others to accept my view of this ambiguity of a New Testament tradition. 
 
To sum up, to be in God's corner the only "resistance" one puts up is to doing inconsiderate things; a universal Creator exists; bona fide ambiguity is not a reason to have the State legislate religiosity; a few bad apples aren't cause to dissolve religions or anything else apples roll to; we have souls which flourish in God, fellowship, and prayer; and as long as that's a faith's point, no psychology for or against anything or anyone of this world is required.
 
  
 

I said I wouldn't post any new subjects, and I'm not, just making an addendum to the last few expressions of mine.
 
Per the first Presidential debate, it stood out that essentially Obama would treat Muslim aggressors without pre-conditions at any time for as long as it takes to stop terror worldwide from occurring even against other Muslims; McCain essentially conveyed no opinion on Islamic leadership but represented a strong fist will crush ANY nation striking out at the USA. Perhaps both campaigns forgot Doudou Diene and the UN anti-Islam defamation proposal, perhaps they didn't.
 
Now, a number of Muslim leaders, apologies to Monsiuer Diene, installed or inherited Islam as a STATE religion further with mandamus from such leaders...elected or otherwise...that THEY and successors are supreme in their lands...atheism, plurality, and such are death sentences, and like an old Soviet Kommissar asking "who (chik-chik) DOESN'T want to be in Communist Party, Comrades?", Muslims in such lands have no say or choice...indeed, who opinion-polls THEM in those lands on anything? And that most Muslims aren't fans of that theocracy is evident from how many "tunnel out" to Europe and elsewhere, ala Latin Americans tunnelling to El Norte to escape dictators and bad economic managers.
 
Western leaders for the most part either encourage or passively tolerate that because "a Muslim leader" of such State has wrapped his age-old secular power trip in the cloak of religion, all signs of Christianity...even Stoic good works...must be obliterated so as not to nationalistically, racially, or otherwise "offend the leader of ALL Muslims"...oddly enough, yes, even when say Muslim Bashir, an African, uses Islamic Janjaweed to kill in Darfur or the Taliban or whoever elsewhere; look how everyone bowed to Mushareff on such grounds, Pakistan created by partition out of India about sixty years ago and a STATE Muslim nation...yep, EVERY Pakisatani LOVED him and a number of his predecessors, and he probably stepped down recently due to old age. And to think, like MyMood Alibabajihad in Iran, he used Islam to claim Hindu-popular India was racist to Pakistanis and should...um...give him money and power to use as sees fit as a respected fatwa issuer against "uppity" Muslims in his land. Yep, that's even the long-ago 1999 origin of the "anti defamation of Islam" Mushareef launched; as if Doudou Diene isn't confusing enough as to how Islam is a "race" what with Asiatic, Middle Eastern, and African peoples its largest followers.
 
So McCain sounds better re the predictable "bomb you if you hit us", but that doesn't contain much address of why Obama is full of hooey that the West won't "gain respect of everyday Muslims" unless we let Muslim Bashirs and Ladens alone to do as they please even to other Muslims, and unless we rid the USA of any need to do reasonably right things under conscience and in fact laws (so we don't look Judeo-Christian or something). Like a MyMood wrapping his power trip in religion or anything else not necessary for it, some even in the USA sound like they're merely availing of irrelevant cloaks to get to do things the same way.
 
Through no "fault" of my own, I was born into the Christian faith via Roman Catholic parents. To my readings, Christ seemed to mean that all mankind from highest through lowest must bear anything, as He did, in doing the right things according to the Ten Commandments and His teachings, no matter how else they lead lives, and do so with humility not anger; for the life of me, I confess I can find no Christian or other Divine faith ab initio teachings which separate leaders from little guys re the need to not simply impose power over others because it's easy, yet many Western neo-evangelicals and even some traditional clergy, perhaps due to over-dependence on government for funding, existence, or both, seem to embrace "let dictators dictate and be God's appointed rulers".
 
McCain seems to infer Muslims all hate us irredeemably, why bother leaders unless they whack us; Obama seems to infer even Janjaweed in Darfur will stop if he's elected, a boast made upon stilted explanation of how many State-run religions operate; McCain has the better of two thin premises on that issue, but seemed to go about it in a way not challenging Obama's perception of underlying facts re State-run faiths including Islam and dictatorships hiding amid same. Maybe that's why local Comcast cable channel 53, CLTV, reported today Daley is getting millions to build MORE houses in place of Wamu branches Chase is closing in takeover, and Daley generally expects more immigration no matter who wins what where when or state of the national economy.