John Casias, right, and his wife Wanda Casias are shown in this undated photo provided by the Casias family. The couple from Texas who moved to a violence-plagued area of northern Mexico to run a Baptist church, were found slain at their ransacked home Tuesday, Feb 1, 2011, in Mexico.

EL CERCADO, Mexico (AP) — The bodies of John and Wanda Casias came one last time to the Baptist church they founded in a violence-plagued region of northern Mexico as mourners paid homage Thursday to the Texas couple who were discovered strangled in their home.

More than a dozen mourners passed to view the open caskets, one an American who came from Texas because John Casias officiated at his wedding. He did not want to give his name for security reasons.

Shawn Casias said he discovered the body of his mother at about 4 p.m. Tuesday when he went to their home in the town of Santiago to pick up a trailer.

He said she was lying on the floor with an electrical cord around her neck and a gash from a blunt object on her head.

The house had been ransacked and was missing a couple of computers, a plasma television and a safe that had been chiseled out of the wall.

The couple’s Chevrolet Suburban was also missing, and Casias said he initially thought his father had been kidnapped.

But about four or five hours later, he said, a forensic investigator informed him that the body of his father had been found in a storage room of a small building on the property. His father also had an electrical cord around his neck.

John and Wanda Casias were originally from Amarillo, Texas, but relatives said they moved to an area outside the city of Monterrey in the late 1970s or early 1980s and First Fundamentalist Independent Baptist Church.

Fighting between the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels has brought a surge of violence and other crimes to Monterrey and the surrounding region since 2010. In poorer suburbs, entire blocks have been held up by gunmen and young people snatched off the streets.

Another son, John Casias, said his parents had devoted 29 years of their lives to their ministry in Mexico and spent each day in prayer and saving souls.

They were well aware of the violence around them and the risks, but were so secure in their faith that they did not fear it, he said.

They spent Christmas with him in San Diego, and Casias said he told them, “It’s getting kind of rough there” and offered to let them stay at his home for awhile. They refused.

“We were called to Mexico,” Casias said his mother told him. “These are our people.”

Casias said he hoped the bodies would return to the U.S. later Thursday. He was organizing a service to be held at their home church in Lewisville, Texas.

Shawn Casias said a sister-in-law in Dallas had spoken to their mother around 11 a.m. Tuesday and everything was fine. So he believes there was about a five-hour window when the killings could have occurred before he showed up.

He said the killers did not take everything they could have, leaving two of the three TV sets. He said perhaps they were warned that he was coming, because anyone watching the winding road approaching the home could have alerted them.

“They’re scum. They’re not sophisticated,” he said.

Speaking from his parents’ home, about 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of the Texas border, Casias said the house was burglarized two years ago when the couple were on one of their periodic visits to the United States to talk at churches about their work in Mexico.

“We’re convinced that it’s somebody he knew,” Casias said of the killers. He said authorities had some leads based on people seen around the home.

John Casias was 76. He had recently priced a knee replacement because he couldn’t walk more than 100 yards (100 meters) without having to sit down, Shawn Casias said. Wanda Casias was 67.

Casias said his parents held services and prayer meetings at a church about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from their home.

The couple maintained a website, www.casias.org, with details of their lives and their missionary work

“The only hope for the Mexican people today is Jesus in them, the HOPE of glory,” they wrote in one dispatch from last summer. “I confess that it’s getting easier to witness to the wealthy, at least they are listening. The wealthy are fleeing to Canada and the USA for protection. The only problem is that when they return to renew their visas the cartel is waiting, and either kill them of (sic) kidnap them for thousands of dollars, in some cases millions. The cartel has NO mercy or value for life. They are ruthless murderers!”

It was the second slaying involving American missionaries in a year in the Mexican region bordering Texas.

In January 2011, a Texas couple who had been doing missionary work in Mexico for three decades were attacked at an illegal roadblock in one of the country’s most violent areas.

Nancy Davis, 59, was fatally shot in the head while her husband, Sam, sped away from suspected drug cartel gunmen who may have wanted to steal their pickup truck, authorities said.

The Davises were driving along the two-lane road that connects the city of San Fernando with the border city of Reynosa in the state of Tamaulipas, which borders Nuevo Leon.

Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

• Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

By David Rose, 29th January 2012

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

A painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many frost fairs on the River Thames during the mini ice age

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a  92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest  a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the  Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.

‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.

‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

FACT CHECK: Obama pushes plans that flopped before

Jan 24, 11:16 PM

By CALVIN WOODWARD

(AP) President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington,… Full Image

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STRONGEST CASE AGAINST ROMNEY A FEW SHEETS SHORT OF A REAM

Mitt Romney has spent more than 20 years in private enterprise, making thousands of business decisions affecting hundreds of companies that led to more than 100,000 new jobs and billions of dollars for employees and investors. So you can see why the left despises him.

Among Romney’s thousands of business decisions, the one I gather his opponents consider his absolute worst was the decision to close a paper plant in Marion, Ind. Which wasn’t his decision at all.

It was labor trouble at the Marion plant of a Bain-acquired company, Ampad, that formed the basis of Teddy Kennedy’s desperate 11th-hour attack on Romney in their 1994 Senate competition. Plant worker Randy Johnson was featured in Kennedy campaign commercials against Romney and disgruntled workers were lavished with Dickensian lachrymosity in The Boston Globe.

In the current presidential campaign, Democrats — and some Republicans — have returned to Ampad and the Marion plant as their case in chief against Romney.

The “King of Bain” movie that a pro-Newt Gingrich super-pac just bought with money donated by a gambling magnate (with money acquired honestly in the open market from people driven by their gambling addictions) cites only one company closed by Bain when Romney was even there.

Guess which one? That’s right: Ampad.

The Democratic National Committee has retained Johnson to go on tour in order to more fulsomely describe the horrors perpetrated by Bain Capital on workers at that plant. As salt-of-the-earth Johnson explains, he lost his job at Ampad because Romney “didn’t care about the worker.”

It is beyond journalistic malpractice for media outlets showcasing the bitter and lying Johnson to neglect to mention that he was the union president who led the strike that forced Ampad to close the plant.

And yet The New York Times, MSNBC and others who have publicized Johnson’s sob story regularly refuse to convey that crucial fact. This would be as if a judge excluded the fact that the defense’s principal witness is the defendant’s mother.

By 1994, the unionized Marion plant was becoming a losing operation to every company that owned it. It was a paper plant, and in the early 1990s, the paper business was beginning to go the way of the buggy whip, as the world became computerized.

(Randy Johnson suffered? Paper magnate Peter Brant nearly lost Stephanie Seymour over the collapse of the paper market.)

Bain Capital specialized in rescuing troubled companies, so in 1992, it bought the faltering paper-based office products business, Ampad, from the Mead paper company. Far from shutting down Ampad, Bain started buying up more firms in the industry to add to Ampad’s portfolio, hoping to create efficiencies and synergies.

In July 1994, Bain-controlled Ampad bought Smith-Corona’s struggling paper business — home to the famed Marion plant.

(Despite shedding its paper business, Smith-Corona went bankrupt the next year. Nobody uses typewriters anymore. Ironically, a century earlier, people said Smith-Corona typewriters would never replace the pen. They probably railed against Smith-Corona as “vulture capitalists” destroying the pen industry.)

Seeking to succeed where Smith-Corona had failed, Bain’s Ampad sought to renegotiate a suicide pact-union contract at the Marion plant. But instead of renegotiating, union president Randy Johnson thought it would be a great idea to immediately go on strike.

As long as the nation is still in the fifth stage of grief over Steve Jobs’ death, with gushing tributes to his contributions to our wonderful new world of computerized books, letters, memos, newspapers, CDs and classified ads, ask yourselves: Would the mid-1990s have been a good time for workers in an industry made vulnerable by the new, paperless information age to stage a long, acrimonious strike?

Union president Randy Johnson thought it was. The Democrats (and some Republicans) apparently do, too.

Romney wasn’t even at Bain during Ampad’s acquisition of the Smith-Corona business, much less for the strike at the Marion plant. He was on a leave of absence from Bain to run against Sen. Ted Kennedy. Nonetheless, a dozen workers fired from Ampad’s Marion plant showed up in Massachusetts to bird-dog Romney in the final months of his campaign.

It worked. Romney’s lead disappeared and, after celebrating with a few cocktails, Kennedy returned to the Senate to continue wrecking the country.

About six months later, Ampad closed the Marion plant for good. As Ampad’s president, Charles Hanson, explained at the time, the company had “sustained severe economic damage as a result of our inability to manufacture products at our Marion plant.” Apparently, the only thing this ruthless capitalist lackey cared about was that the factory actually produce product!

In any event, it’s highly unlikely that Bain would have anything to do with a day-to-day management decision to close a plant, anyway.

Bain led Ampad to thrive over the next few years, buying up more companies in 1995, hiring more workers and making investors nearly $100 million. By 1996, Ampad was being described in Chief Executive magazine as “a stronger, profitable competitor in a consolidating — and reviving — domestic industry.”

Alas, people kept using those damn computers and shopping for discount paper at Staples and similar stores, and in 1999, Ampad had to file for bankruptcy protection.

Contrary to every single news report on Bain’s involvement with Ampad, Bain did not drive the company to bankruptcy by looting it. To the contrary, Bain built up the company, added other companies to it, turned it into a “profitable competitor” that paid handsome dividends for a few years. (And by the way, the company would have gone bankrupt a lot sooner if it hadn’t closed down the non-producing Marion plant.)

But in the end, that wasn’t enough.

If years of furious acquisition, followed by bankruptcy nearly a decade later had been Bain’s secret plan all along, Bain would be the most ham-fisted looter in history.

Politicians’ morbid fear of technological advances in the free market has real-world consequences. You will recall that the mainstream media-adored FBI agent Colleen Rowley’s main indictment of the bureau after 9/11 was that the FBI had really old computers, preventing it from anticipating the greatest terrorist attack in world history.

In response to Rowley’s charges, for example, the Times’ Maureen Dowd denounced federal law enforcement agencies for being “antiquated,” “inept” and “bloated.” (She also said: “I want to see some agents lose their jobs.” Maureen Dowd: Inadvertent Romney Supporter.)

Of course, if the Democrats, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were running things, the FBI would still be using paper and pens — maybe quill pens — all in order to save Randy Johnson’s union job! Instead of a Xerox machine, they’d have a monk in the back room creating copies of documents by hand so as not to be accused of “vulture capitalism” for eliminating the monk’s job.

I don’t know how Mitt Romney is supposed to explain free market capitalism to career politicians, much less describe the intricacies of a thousand business decisions in two minutes during a debate.

But we know that Bain’s acquisition of Ampad is the left’s best shot against Romney’s business career. We may presume they don’t have anything better, or we’d be hearing about it.

The anti-Romney hysterics don’t get to come back later with another company allegedly looted by Bain that I’ll have to spend another week researching. Henceforth, I shall refer you back to the Ampad example — their smoking gun — which, as we have seen, is not even a water pistol.

Obama on Pace to Borrow $6.2T in One Term—More Than All Presidents from Washington Through Clinton Combined

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama has been increasing the national debt during his presidency by an average of $4.24 billion per day ($4,240,506,004.34) putting him on a pace to increase the national debt by $6.2 trillion ($6,195,379,272,340.74) by the end of his term on Jan. 20, 2013, according to the debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.

That $6.2 trillion is more debt than was accumulated by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined.

In fact, the U.S. national debt did not eclipse the $6.195 trillion level—the amount Obama is on pace to increase it in one term—until August 19, 2002, during President George W. Bush’s second year of office.

The national debt was $10.6 trillion ($10,626,877,048,913.08) on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated. As of the close of business on Jan. 11, 2012, it was $15.2 trillion ($15,236,307,075,631.58.) In Obama’s first 1,087 days in office, the debt increased $4.6 trillion ($4,609,430,026,718.50)—or an increase of $4.24 billion ($4,240,506,004.34) per day.

At that daily rate, the debt would increase a total of $6.2 trillion ($6,195,379,272,340.74) over the entire 1,461 days of Obama’s four year term.

At the close of business Aug. 19, 2002, the total national debt was $6.195 trillion.

Brown Seeks 7% California Spending Boost

California Governor Jerry Brown said he’ll spend much of 2012 campaigning for a ballot initiative to boost income taxes on those earning at least $250,000 and raise levies on sales to 7.75 percent from 7.25 percent, to erase the most-populous state’s $13 billion budget deficit. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California (STOCA1) Governor Jerry Brown proposed $92.6 billion in spending for the year starting in July, an increase of about 7 percent, which will count on voters approving $7 billion of higher taxes in November.

The spending plan foresees a deficit of $9.2 billion through the next 18 months. Almost half of that is in the current fiscal year, he said. He called for $4.2 billion in cuts, mostly to welfare and programs for the poor. If the tax increase isn’t passed, Brown’s plan would cut another $4.8 billion in support for public schools and community colleges.

“The state of California (STOCA1) is a very generous, compassionate political jurisdiction,” [generous with other peoples money] Brown said. “When we have to cut spending, that spending is going to come from programs that are doing a lot of good. It’s not nice. We don’t like it. But the economy and tax statutes of California make just so much money available.”

Brown, a 73-year-old Democrat, wants to raise income taxes on individuals making at least $250,000 a year to 10.3 percent from 9.3 percent, and would boost sales levies to 7.75 percent from 7.25 percent.

The most-populous state cut aid last year to universities, shifted responsibility for nonviolent prisoners to counties and dissolved local redevelopment agencies. Last month, Brown had to make $1 billion in additional cuts he built into the current year’s budget after revenue fell below his estimates. [Because productive Californians are leaving the state!]

Early Release

Brown had been scheduled to release his general-fund budget Jan. 10, but was forced to unveil it today after it was inadvertently posted to the Finance Department’s website.

The spending plan assumes the state will sell about $5.2 billion of municipal bonds through December, said Brown’s finance chief, Ana Matosantos.

California is Standard & Poor’s lowest-rated state, at A-, six levels below AAA. Moody’s Investment Service grades it A1, four steps below the top rating, tied with Illinois (STOIL1) for the worst credit rating among states.

California debt yields about 1.11 percentage points more than top-rated municipal debt, compared with a peak yield spread (165M10Y) in the past year of 1.47 percentage points in June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Obama to ask for debt limit hike: Treasury official

(Reuters) – The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.

Under the agreement struck in August during the showdown over the government’s debt limit, the cap is automatically raised unless Congress votes to block the debt-ceiling extension. Lawmakers have 15 days within receiving the request to vote, which is largely symbolic because the president can veto it and Congress would be unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority to override it. Moreover, the U.S. House of Representatives also is in recess until January 17.

The deal called for raising the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion to serve the nation’s borrowing needs into 2013 and also included mandatory cuts to the federal budget deficit. Since then, the extension has been increased twice by a total of $900 billion.

The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

Romney: What kind of society does America want?

In less than a year, the American people will go to the polls and choose a new president. A matter of great moment is at stake in this election. The question we will decide is this: Will the United States be an Entitlement Society or an Opportunity Society?

In an Entitlement Society, government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk. In an Opportunity Society, free people living under a limited government choose whether or not to pursue education, engage in hard work, and pursue the passion of their ideas and dreams. If they succeed, they merit the rewards they are able to enjoy.

Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an Entitlement Society. The federal government has insinuated itself more and more deeply into health care, finance, energy, industry, the environment and labor. As a result of one of the most dramatic expansions of Washington’s power in our nation’s history, federal spending under Obama is now nearly a quarter of our GDP, and has risen to the highest level since the national emergency of World War II.

With the growth of government has come an inevitable contraction of the private sphere. The American economy, once the envy of the world, has fallen into disrepute. Unemployment stuck over 8% for 34 months — the longest such spell since the Great Depression— is only one symptom of the profoundly disturbing transformation of American society that the Obama administration has pursued.

Glimpsing the future

If we continue on this course for another four years, we may pass the point of no return. We will have created a society that contains a sizable contingent of long-term jobless, dependent on government benefits for survival. Many more in the middle class will be pushed into poverty. And there is the special problem of America’s young people. What social and political path will newly minted college graduates follow when they are unable to find jobs in which to put their energy and talents to use? It will be a tragedy if we have to find out the answer.

It will not only be a tragedy; it will be a needless tragedy because we can extricate ourselves from this distress. America is a fabulously rich country. Yet our wealth consists not only of material things, but also our ideas and our traditions and our founding principles. These principles empower our people and have made America the strongest nation in the world.

Our first principle is freedom. If we remove the shackles of government, if we unburden ourselves from the mountain of debt that we have been saddled with, we can become the Opportunity Society that we once were. America has historically rewarded hard work, education, industry, thrift and daring. The Founders called this a God-given right to the “pursuit of happiness.” We call it opportunity.

Limited government

The first step in returning to an Opportunity Society is scaling back our vast federal government. I will put every single government program to a simple test: Is this program so critical to our nation’s future that we should borrow money from China to pay for it? But my objective is not merely to cut unnecessary spending. As president, I hope to accomplish something far larger.

America has tremendous dynamic potential. Just in the past decades, America pioneered the computer revolution and the Internet revolution that have profoundly changed the world. Equally important revolutions are under way in American laboratories in fields ranging from biotechnology to nanotechnology to energy. Our potential as a nation is boundless. We need to unleash it again.

Building ever costlier government entitlements is not the way to go about that. Quite the contrary; the dead hand of bureaucratic Washington can only stifle entrepreneurship. Government dependency can only foster passivity and sloth. We need to rein in government and unleash the extraordinary vitality and creativity of the American people.

We must not wait to suffer a crisis like Greece’s or Portugal’s to right the ship of state. With the proper policies and strong leadership, we can once again become a society that rewards merit, that welcomes innovators and new ideas, and is capable of creating undreamed of opportunities for all who seek them. That is what the election of 2012 is all about.

Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is seeking the Republican nomination for president.