Trying Terrorists in Our Courts and Who the heck needs a Super Rail System

Are terrorists common criminals? Or are they something else? Do the Democrats understand the difference between planes flying into the World Trade Center and a robbery at a bodega or a bank? Do enemy combatants deserve the guarentees of our constitution? If they do, why? Does an enemy combatant have the right to remain silent? What responsibilities does our government have when it detains an enemy soldier? The democrats never acknowledged the war between radical Islamists and this country, they won the election, so did they have an obligation to protect it against enemy combatants that they did not recognize as such? When President Obama declared the war was over, that he was repatriating enemy combatants, that there was no war on terror, because he said so, was he required to protect this country against the attacks that came after his declaration? Clearly, he saw no purpose in doing that, which is why he hired an incompetent to run Homeland Security and to coordinate the war that he did not believe existed. Is he absolved of blame in the Fort Hood masacre? What adjustments were made following that? Are there still no soldiers on domestic armed forces bases not carrying weapons? Where are the domestic heads that should have rolled in the case of the failed Christmas Attack? Do they get another chance to fail? Does a plane have to fall out of the sky before this president gets it? What about President Obama's visit to the Republican Caucus? What is the meaning of that? Did he accept any blame for the failures of the passed year, or did he just blame his opponents again? Where is the policy that will make us energy independent in five years? What is building a national railway about? Isn't it just another policy which will lock us into a level of dependence on government, that none of us wants. Some years ago, I read a NY Times article about the Railway system of the USSR, and it spoke about a rural province which had recquistioned an engine for its local line in 1948, the article was written in 1968, because of the bureaucracy in the USSR at that time, the engine never came because some intervening bureaucrat somewhere between Moscow and the rural province, would always appropriate the engine. When I read that article, I knew, as Ronald Reagan knew, that the Soviet Union was going to implode due to its top heavy infrastructure. This is what Mr. Obama has planned for us. Why? It hasn't worked, we watched the experiment for 75 years, it didn't work in Russia, why should it work here? Our system has enabled us to have the most choices of any country. I don't want a super rail system run by our government, that is not the solution to our national debt, that is not how Americans will get back to work. Our country is where it is because no large group can stop it, the dispersal of our goods and services happen because of independent truckers who run on fuel. Develop alternate fuel sources, allow the truckers to keep on trucking, develop better trucks, do not replace them with trains. If our trains go on strike, when they have run the trucks out of business, we will begin to experience the sorts of shortages that we have heard about in places like Russia and France, where nationalized railways, mean unions or centralized bureaucrats which have a monopoly on how goods are delivered can decide on what is expedient for areas that they don't know much about. This centralization is a death knell for efficient delivery of goods, this sort of centralization will kill the entrepreneurial spirit that inhabits every truck driver's cab. If one train engineer does the work that fifty truck drivers do, is that better for our economy? Goods might be delivered less expensively, but maybe not, if the system gets centralized what happens when some terrorist sabotages the system? How much does it cost then, if the only system you have is somehow shut down? In France or England, Unions periodically shut the country down for their own ends, do we need that sort of management here? What makes this country incredibly resilient is our super highways and our super independent truckers. If some truckers go on strike, there are others who will work, if one truck breaks down, another will pick up the produce. This does not only mean food stuffs, this is everything that is produced in this country, including furniture, clothes, computers, and anything else you can think of. Do we really want a centralized system with some sort of bureaucratic control over it? Thank you Mr. Obama, that's another one of your liberal thoughts that I don't particularly think will work here.

Sarah Palin

I listened to Fox the other day, and I am afraid the right doesn't get it either. We elected Obama, who is a dismal failure because of his lack of experience. His first year in office has uncovered his glaring lapses in judgement, and his inability to meter the pulse of the people who elected him. In retrospect, looking back at President Bush, he was also pretty green. President Bush was given a briefing by President Clinton and was told, explicitly, about Bin Laden and the threat that man and his organization posed. Mr. Bush was oblivious, and 9/11 happened. Mr. Clinton was in no position to deal with it, because he could not keep his pants buttoned, and as a result no one in congress was ready to approve any rush to war, because they felt that war would be just a kind of diversion from Mr. Clinton's problems. So, Mr. Bush a relatively green president is faced with something akin to what Roosevelt faced in his third term, a massive attack against this country. Mr. Bush made several glaring errors, probably due to his inexperience and defference to certain people in his administration. He got rid of Ashcroft and Powell, the two guys with the most experience in war and politics. He trusted, instead, Chaney and Rumsfeld, neither of whom had any idea how to win the peace in Iraq, or Afghanistan. The result was the catastrophy which we are witnessing now. Obama is truly a catastrophy, he did not realize for at least his first year in office, that we were in a hot war. He appointed idealogues to our highest security posts without regard to our security because he did not believe Clinton or Clinton's wife concerning the dire threats presented to us. Which brings me to Palin. Palin is an idealogue of another stripe. She is the darling of the conservative movement in this country. They like to compare her to Ronald Reagan. The major problem is while she may say most of what Reagan said, she is not perceived by the general population as having as much experience as he had. Is that important? Can a person who says all the correct things, become president in spite of a perceived lack of experience? Well, Fox News is really going to great lengths to accomplish this task. They are giving her the type of exposure to accomplish this. Exactly to what end? Can she win? Or, will she expose the weaknesses of the Republican Party again? Let's see, Bush, inexperience, 9/11, Obama, inexperience Fort Hood, Christmas Bomber, and who knows what else. Will the American People take another shot on inexperience just because she says the correct things? In 2008, Obama said all the correct things and got elected. What we found out, was that due to his lack of experience, we were at greater risk than we had been since the beginning of the Bush administration, when we didn't know how much risk we were in. The question is how does Obama play this in 2012 if he is running against Sarah Palin? And how does she respond if she is his opponent? And how do we hear the interchange? First, it is clear that the democrats will portray her as an inexperienced idealogue. Why should we run a candidate with that sort of vulnerability? Why run a candidate who can only, with any certainty, deliver Alaska? Why is Fox touting her as something like the second coming of Ronald Reagan? What they are setting us up for, is another loss, when it is most inopportune. The democrats will certainly pound into us, that her experience is questionable, while her views coincide with what many conservatives and republicans want, that level of experience will gnaw at their concience. They will convince themselves that she is okay, because she will be able to surround herself with advisors who will be able to help her through confusing times. The problem is, that is what we have now. We have a president who needs three days on the average to make a decision on anything. He needs that kind of time to guage the people's views (through polls) and to guage the views of his advisors. Bush did something similar, he usually made speeches off the cuff, before his advisors told him what to say, so he often made gaffes, but his policy was always to defer to his advisors. We need a different sort of president. We need a guy or gal who is an obscessive compulsive, hands on person. Someone who doesn't sleep until things are accomplished, and answers every question because he is personally involved with every aspect of his or her government. The only two candidates who I see like that, are Guilliani and Romney. There are other Republican rising stars who can fill that, and I feel that Palin might someday have that patina, but she does not have it yet. I fear, that her inexperience will cost us many votes that we would somehow get if we ran a person more experienced with the sort of track record that demonstrates a consistent accomplishment over decades. Sarah has accomplished a great deal in the short time she rose from mayor to governor to vice presidential candidate, however, her debate with Biden was a debacle, she treated him like a grandfather, and lost the debate and the election because she did not press her advantage in that confrontation. Her advantage was that she was a young woman, and any direct attack on the positions of Obama or Biden would have resulted in some sort of demeaning remark by him, which would have resulted in women and men feeling antipathy towards him. Instead, he got a pass, because she never attacked him. If Republicans want to win 2012, they must run the best candidate, not just a very good candidate. They must run someone who has delivered on promises, not just to a small constituency, but to a large one. They must run someone who can deliver a major state, not just one with three electoral votes. On every way of looking at this, the person with the most experience ought to run, learning on the job is not an option.

Hollyweird

I have noticed a trend in our movies and television shows. It is a rewriting of history and as they do it, they expect those of us who have lived through it to believe their version. Steven Spielburg seems to be very into this genre of film. His first effort at this was Shindler's List, a movie about a Nazi, who heroically saves the slave labor he is using. Shindler is a fascist capitalist, and through the movie, we are led to believe that at a great risk to himself, he protected the Jews who were given to him to work at his factory. For this, he is redefined as a hero. But, let me see if I understand this correctly, he saved Jews who would have been put to death, and he would have been given other Jews to work as slaves in his factory. So, what happened to the other Jews who were no longer needed to replace his Jews? Were they just liquidated? So, he didn't want to continually retrained slave labor, for that we should be thankful? For that he should be redefined by us as some sort of hero. Recently, a movie was made about the attempt on Hitler's life, another self serving piece of drek. About a year before WWII ended some of the men in Hitler's inner circle placed a bomb under a meeting table, he was not killed, and several dozen were put to death because of their part in the conspiracy. We are told that these men, were heros, and their attempt was an instance of supreme bravery. Their part in the atrocities of the Third Reich, should be somehow mitigated because of their part in this conspiracy. The truth is these men were Hitler's inner circle, they had been for about ten years. As long as he was winning the war, they might have grumbled, but they never spoke up or questioned his leadership. By the time they were ready to act, how the war would end, was a foregone conclusion, their action was to put it mildly perfunctory. If they had succeeded, they would have tried to negotiate a peace, perhaps shortening the war. But the real question, is was this the act of heros? Or what seems a whole lot more likely, the action of rats trying to desert a sinking ship. Why is Hollywood rewriting the history? Mr. Spielburg produced a movie called Munich, which was about the murder of Israeli Athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The story shows the horrific events, and then shows these Palestinians being hunted down by Israeli police, who appear as gestapo like characters, while the Palestinians are humanized throughout the movie. It is almost as if he is saying the terrorists became people, and the people seeking some sort of retribution for the crime, became terrorists. Well, my mind does not work like that, and I resent this blatant attempt to rewrite history so criminals somehow get transformed into heros. Nazis who used slave labor, were not heroes because they did not want to keep retraining their workers. Nazis in Hitler's inner circle were not heros because they got caught trying to murder him. And Palestinians do not become innocent victims after they murder unarmed Jewish Athletes. One has to wonder what the motivation is to write and film these sorts of stories. There were real heros during WWII, and there are stories to be told. When Eisenhower liberated one of the concentration camps, he had his photographers take pictures because he said that if they didn't take the photos, someday, someone would try to rewrite the history books, and say it never happened. Eisenhower was a hero. He documented the story. Spielburg is trying to rewrite the history, with his own documentation, however it is Hollywood, it is not real, and he ought to be asked why.

on reading liberal blogs on what happened in Massachuesettes

A funny thing happened the other day. The machine candidate lost, and the fingers began to point, and the general concensus of the liberals was that Coakley had a lock, was a lousey campaigner and based on that she lost. Absolutely nothing in these liberal blogs was made of the thought that perhaps her message was problem. The general gist of the talk is that Obama's ideas are still great, and we can still push our agenda, and we must continue. Well, Harry Reid finally got the message, and he suggested that perhaps they have to pare down their original expectations. Mr. Obama got the message, at least his teleprompter did, and his reading of the message was something along the lines that the reason the voters weren't buying into his thoughts was the lack of transparency, do you think? He has made more addresses than any president in the last 40 years, his message is as plain as the nose on his face. He had his chance, and he blew it, but the key thought is, that he attempted to sell this by calling it something that it was not. By not carrying through on any of his promises, he lost the left as well as the right. The center sways with the breeze so to speak, and now he is in trouble, his ratings will continue to free fall. The die hard liberals will continue to support him, but he is done. The liberal commentators still do not get it, they think that a president can allow terrorists to attack this country and it has no effect. They think that if in some miraculous way the double digit unemployment bottoms out, things will change, but they do not understand, the president's job is provide a cover of security, if the perception is that he doesn't know what he's doing, he's gone. This president has allowed his advisors to set up terrorist trials in civilian courts, he has multiplied the threats, he has unilaterally released terrorists, who are now attempting to kill us again. He didn't know what he was doing a year ago, and he still is floundering. The reason is because his closest advisors are clueless, they are political appointees who for six or eight years did not listen or see what Bush was dealing with, they also felt that Clinton's attempts at dealing with stuff in the midst of his congressional difficulties, was a case of Wagging the dog, they felt Clinton was going to war with an imaginary foe (Bin Laden) and they didn't support him either. So, now, as the mistakes pile up, we finally see who we elected, a clueless ideologue, who just can't walk and chew gum... Now that it is apparent, that there really are no ideas for energy independence, that there really aren't any ideas for fixing the economics that Bush left him, that there really aren't any ideas for dealing with Iran, that because of these glaring deficits, Israel will end up destroying Iran at the behest of this government, because just like Neville Chamberlain, this president has declared peace in his time, without achieving anything. The Nobel people not withstanding seem clueless also. Perhaps, they give their awards out on expectations, not actions.

Obama and Haiti

Is it my imagination, or did the war in the Middle East end this week because of the catastrophy which occurred in Haiti. Secretary of State Clinton, found time to visit Haiti, and she dutifully rescued several stranded Americans. Obviously, anything pressing like Iran's push to get nuclear weapons can be placed on hold, while we focus our attention and resources on Haiti's natural catastrophy. Wasn't it this president who basically said he could walk and chew gum, unlike the previous administration. This president ran on a platform which said he could fix the economy and make peace with Iran at the same time. Well, let's see, he certainly did that, and more, we have peace with Iran, no? Our economy is running like a well oiled machine, no? Almost 20% of the people in this country are out of work, great economy. We do not seem to be any closer to getting Osama Bin Laden, and it appears that Iran is perhaps a year or two away from having a nuclear bomb, and Iran is not North Korea. North Korea likes to make believe it is a world power, so it flexes its muscles for the benefit of its people and for some of its neighbors. Iran was Persia in another century. It believes that it is its birthright to have hegemony over all the land of the Middle East. It is actively promoting terrorists within all of its neighbors. Iran supports suicide bombers and jihad. The leaders of North Korea are somewhat deluded; the leaders of Iran will give nuclear bombs to the terrorists whom they sponser. What is Obama and Hillary doing about this? Sanctions? Where is Janet Neapalitano? Because we are helping Haiti, have we brought Janet up to speed concerning terrorism? Have we forgotten her gaffes? Have we allowed Mr. Obama off the hook concerning Ft. Hood and the underware bomber, because Haiti happened? Where is Fox News, CNN, CNBC? 24/7 Haiti coverage, what happened to the rest of the world? Has our economy improved because of Haiti? This president ran on a platform of multitasking, will we need another plane bombing attempt or some other terrorist attack to remind us that the world has multiple things going on at the same time. President Obama probably has thanked God for Haiti, it diverted everyone from all the other things that haven't gone so well. We airlifted supplies to Berlin, and other countries sticken by natural disasters, but Haiti is different, the logistics have to be drawn out, for maximum effect. We can't help them too quickly because we have to point out how difficult and backward they are, because we must divert Americans from all the other issues for as long as possible. Perhaps, Americans will forgive and forget the dismal directions this president has pointed us in.

Haiti

For the last few days, I have been watching the stuff coming out of Haiti, a monumental catastrophy, and fascinating at the same time. I have known Haitians, when I was living in NY, I met a pretty remarkable fellow named Jacque. He used moxie and grit to form a Judo team which ran itself out of Brooklyn and Queens. He had no money, and was always looking for ways to finance it. He always needed space to practice, he needed money for meals for his athletes, he needed money for a week at a rural summer camp in which his athletes could intensely focus on their sport. He made friends with much more affluent clubs, who all rallied around him. He got doctors, like me, to donate my time to provide medical services at the judo tournaments. The tournaments were very competitive, the different clubs vying for the wins for their clubs. But, along with the competition was an obvious communal sort of energy, used in helping young people focus on an activity which was an alternative to street violence and drugs. A couple of his athletes got to represent the United States in the Olympics. One of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had was when he invited me to a Sunday Mass at his church. He invited me to recognise my contribution to his endeavor, my few hours of volunteering at a tourniment was a cause in his mind for recognition. If you ever get a chance to attend a Haitian Mass, go, it is incredibly enjoyable. They sing their hymns to Sousa march music, it is incredibly uplifting and fun. The energy of the singing, translates into a service which from start to finish is focused and a great tribute to God and fun. I don't speak French, and I am not Catholic, but fun is fun, and for about five minutes, this wonderful person, made me the center of attention in a church with about three thousand worshippers as he thanked me for my work with his kids. What is fascinating about the response to this catastrophy in Haiti, is that it is taking roughly the same amount of time of this president to respond as it took for Bush to respond to New Orleans. Perhaps, there are more diplomatic hurdles, however, the experience that Bush was dealing with was also novel, in that a major US city was destroyed in a few hours. Bush had to also deal with politicians with agendas, who did not consult him as quickly as perhaps they should have. In addition, Bush had an experience of national disasters in the US which were corrected by the individual states which experienced them, with belated help from the national government. All of these things resulted in a poor response. However, why did Mr. Obama take a day to figure this out? What are his excuses? His reaction, as was Bush's, is, we are doing everything we can. One wonders.

another stupid email

Did you hear the one about the mother who works long hard hours, comes home, her son asks her how much she makes per hour, she says $20 per hour; he then asks for $5, she gets angry, thinks about it, gives him the money, and then sees him counting the money along with other money he has. She asks him what he's doing, he informs her that he's saved $20 and can now pay her to come home an hour early so he can have dinner with her. How quaint, and now, because I should feel guilty, I should pass this to all my friends so they should feel guilty. Well, I'm 58 years old, my mom lives in NY, and my dad died some years ago. I live in Arizona, I call my mom often, usually every day (I miss sometimes). I take my son to the zoo twice a week, and to the jungle gym two or three times per week. My son sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, my wife needs to sleep, so I get up and entertain him for several hours. Sometimes I resent it all, but usually I figure, it's just being responsible. My guess is most folks do it something like me. I stopped feeling guilty long ago, I do what I'm supposed to, and I do not need my friends sending me this sort of drek (if you aren't Jewish, that is the Yiddish equivalent of dog droppings). My guess is that most folks are like me, and reading this stuff which we know is some sort of parable written by a hack who can't get published, is boorish at best. Please don't send it to me. Please don't copy it, and forward it, it is bad writing, and deserves an ignoble death, the writer does not deserve to see it coming around again.

Ecology, Earth Day of another time,Air Force One is a luxury beyond our means

I had gone to a Hudson River Revival, I had volunteered, and I worked helping them prepare food for the masses of attendees. I was free labor for Pete Seeger's version of Earth Day. We believed in ecology, solar power, wind power and were against Nuclear Energy; we were for rights for women, against the Jim Crow in the South, and we were incredibly self righteous about our beliefs. Well, now, the same people are on a crusade against global warming. They are still for peace, but the reality is peace is really a euphimism for that other nations can attack the United States or Israel, and if we respond in any way, that is not peace. By the way, global warming has officially taken the place of dealing with water or air polution. You can purchase Green Credits, this means you are allowed to pollute as long as you pay someone else not to. You do not have to care about your own behavior, you can pay someone else to care. Aparthied now, means the way Israel applies its laws. Countries which are 95-99% Moslem, who castrate their women, who put to death believers who are not of their faith, are the great immancipators of our age. I remember listening to some person at that particular revival, ranting how John Denver was a sell out. I knew, I would not be coming to many more of those again, and I certainly was not going to volunteer again. John Denver was a sell out, because he was a loyal American who believed in ecology. I spoke to some folks that were trying to sell wind mills and solar power, I told them the key to getting Americans to buy into that stuff, was it had to be cheaper than the way they were getting their energy. The way alternative energy could work is if you gave it away before you sold it. You could only do that with a system that was decentralized. Government energy systems leant themselves to nuclear energy, centralized giant systems of distribution. Solar and wind are decentralized, the only way for these to find their way to the public was through small venture capitalists who would give people a cheaper alternative to the centralized system. The folks at this Hudson River Revival, who I talked to, shook their heads, but I knew, they were the sort who complain about stuff, and fix nothing. Kind of like the Obama administration, throw money at a problem, but never roll up your sleeves to fix it. Kind of like Al Gore and his private jet, complain about Global Warming, and personally take no responsibility. The mantra of liberals is let the government fix it. Pay the government to fix it, higher taxes means the government will fix it, you are absolved of your guilt. Well, that is not how we clean up the enviornment, while we can pay the government to do it, we must take personal responsibility as well. If you are flying around in a corporate jet, you are killing the enviornment. Mr. President, if you really cared about global warming, you would give up your Air Force 1, it is a luxury, and beyond our means. Along with Congress giving up their special medical care, I call on the president, in the interest of Global warming and ecology, to give up his private jet.

On Watching an Old CSI

I love watching CSI, the original, from out of Las Vegas. It's fun because they are not always successful. But to a large extent the way shows like that are written, the results are what the writers start with. So, they have to write the rest so, the investigators can be logically progressed to find out the precise answers. The show I watched today was about a plane full of passengers who collectively killed another passenger who had gone besserk. The show was clearly written before 9/11, I'm sure the producers would never have allowed a subject like this to be a story on the show, had it been written after. What was fascinating was how my attitude had changed. I knew at least two firemen who died in the towers. I knew at least ten or fifteen others who were there, or had put in loads of overtime in the next few months trying to find their comrades, or to simply make sense of what happened. Many of those guys who put in the overtime, retired after that year secondary to the debris in their lungs. While watching that particular CSI, the group figures out what happened, that the besserk passenger was suffering from an encephalitis which caused him to have an intractable headache, so he proceeded to pound on the cabin door, attempted to open the hatch and leave the plane, while it was in the air, and was abusive to the other passengers and crew. All of the passengers subdued him, and ultimately caused his death. The CSIs were dissappointed because the passengers were not prosecuted. Grissom, the curmudgeon among the investigators, sagely observes at the end, that if only someone would have asked this man what was wrong, they could have averted the death. How quaint, how sanctimonious we all once were, if only we knew what is in the mind of the shoe bomber, or the underware bomber, or the dozens of other suicide bombers who kill us. If only those CIA operatives knew what was in the mind of suicide bomber who killed seven of them. If only Dan Perl knew what was in the minds of people who abducted him and cut off his head. At this moment and in retrospect, it really is not relevant about is what on the mind of these terrorists. This is not about counselling would be bombers to find another line of work. We do not have the luxury that we had in 2000 when that particular CSI was shot. If someone acts erratic on a plane, they must be removed; if someone does not obey the flight crew, they are off the plane. If our National Security Advisor must finish a ski trip before he deals with a terrorist, he ought to be fired, because we do not have time to teach him his job. If our Director of Homeland Security has to redeploy her staff to refocus on a war that has been going on since 9/11/2001, she ought to be fired, because we do not have the luxury of her learning on the job. We hired a president who was green behind the ears, so what should we have expected? Shouldn't we give him time to get his sea legs? Aren't we being hard on him, isn't it racist to say that he isn't protecting us, and since he's black, aren't we being racist. Well, a famous president once said, "the buck stops here", and it meant that he was responcible for the choices and actions he took. This president assured us that his inexperience would not endanger us. That is not a black or white thing. That is not even a democrat/republican thing. That is a fact thing, he chose his staff, and he delegated a certain level of responsibility to them for protection of the American People. If they cannot do their jobs, they have to go. This is not a learn as we go sort of experience. Her system of an autopilot run homeland security system might not work the next time. Perhaps, the bomber will be smarter or more experienced, or the other passengers a bit more timid. Regardless, do you want a person in place who went in front of millions of Americans and assured us that the system worked, when she apparently had no knowledge of what had worked? Prior to 9/11, the CSI I watched, basically faulted the passengers for reacting. Now, our Homeland Security Director tells us, that the system worked, when the passengers saved themselves, interesting evolution of thought.

Get Neapolitano out of there

We are in a war that has been in progress for 1700 years. Mr. Clinton knew about it, he tried to deal with it. Republicans were so intent on catching him with his pants down, that they essentially prevented him from taking the action he should have taken against Bin Laden. When Clinton had his chance, Republicans had us believing that it was a case of "Wagging the Dog", that Dustin Hoffman movie. Yes, Clinton had his chance, yes, those guys had bombed our embassies and attempted to take down the World Trade Center, and he knew because of the intelligence that was available, who the enemy was, but the Republicans effectively castrated Clinton, and made it impossible for him to act without it appearing that the attack was merely a diversion from his problems. Bush was told by Clinton who to watch, and Bush essentially ignored all the signs, his most trusted advisors, Rumsfeld and Chaney urged him to take on Saddam before he finished the task in Afghanistan. Chaney's interest was clearly in the company he had been CEO of before he became Vice-President, he essentially wanted them to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld clearly had no conception of the tasks in Afghanistan or in Iraq, his mantras to the President, were, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that what our soldiers were doing was sufficient. This lack of reality cost the republicans, and they lost their pluralities in Congress and the Senate. Which brings us to Obama and the democrats. Bush informed Mr. Obama about the defense issues facing him. The democrats clearly felt that the war was a fabrication of Republican ideologues. And so, they attempted to do what Nixon did in Vietnam, declare peace and leave. The problem with this tact is, that unlike Vietnam, which was fought half a world away, they forgot that we were already attacked on our soil, already 3,000 non-combatants were killed, and that this enemy actually preferentially targets civilians. This lack of preparedness was manifested in Neapolitano's interviews over this passed weekend, in which she says something to the effect that the department that she heads, Homeland Security, will have to redirect its energy towards terrorism. Apparently, she thought that the bad guys had just gone away, apparently she thought that her job to coordinate our intelligence community was not her real job, and so when they screwed up, and the bomber slipped through non-existent constraints, her answer was, the system worked. The system has been on autopilot since she took over. The Obama administration has believed that this was Bush's war, and by being nice, it would be over. Well, now, they know different, it is time for them to get someone in there who actually understands what the problems are and is proactive from the first day they take office. We do not need an ecologist in this position, we need someone who understands that the twenty odd intelligence gathering departments need some sort of central clearing house for information, so they can coordinate their actions against our enemies. Ms. Neapolitano's actions are essentially a mindset that is pre 9/11, that was Bush's mindset prior to 9/11, that is hers now. Do we have the luxury of allowing her to grow into her job, I don't think so. Her wake up call could have been the killing spree in Virginia Tech, the young man had posted Koran sayings there. But, Bush who was the president then, made sure that this young man was seen as lunatic, not a Moslem. Her wake up call, could have been Fort Hood, but Obama's administration again characterized this man's mission as that of a lunatic. The young man who attempted to blow up the plane was also characterized as a lunatic. Well, perhaps we are at war with lunatics, but I don't think so. I honestly feel that attributing our psychiatric definitions to the behavior of people who have been indoctrinated by their culture to go to war and kill us, just blurs the fact that they are at war with us. Their tactics are using people as guided missiles, and the people who are used, believe that their actions are for some greater good. This is not the same as someone who is despondent in our culture, who attempts to fix it by killing him or herself. These suicide bombers are not despondent, they are self-actualizing. That is different, and applying our understanding of suicidal ideation, totally underestimates the joy and motivations they have in accomplishing their goals which is killing us.

On Boycotting Israel

I have watched with interest these sites on You Tube which advocate the Boycotting of Israel. This means that these people are for Jihad. They are for enslavement of women, and they are for the murdering of men and women who have homosexual proclivities. These people are for women no longer allowed to go to coed beaches and wear as little or as much as they please. These people are for a world in which women are no longer taught how to read and write. These people are for a world in which women are no longer thought of as people, but as possessions. All of these people are Pro choice here in the United States, however, that would not be an option if the folks they are supporting actually succeeded in destroying Israel. Those people are for a time when this instant communication which is the internet did not exist, because Intel, the company which supplies most of the computer chips would not exist, because it is an Israeli company. These people would have to rely on pay phones, because Intel also supplies most of the chips for cell phones. When they boycott Israel, they might as well go back to living in caves. And while they rely on all of the technological advances supplied by the Moslems, they might find themselves standing in a world depleted by the scourges of the third world, mired in medical delemmas which have no end because there is no longer the type of technological innovations which often figure out how to deal with them. The list of Israeli innovations is too vast to list, the list of Moslem innovations is difficult to find. The world needs new ways of looking at everything, we need all of the world's citizens to compete, and self actualize to permit their contributions. There are about 1 billion Moslems, but only the men in all but the most forward thinking of these nations are allowed to participate fully as citizens, this means that their innovative potential is stifled by their shria rules. So, as you boycott Israel, don't selectively boycott them, boycott all of Israel; please, stop using the medicines they've developed, please stop using the intel chips that power your phones and computers. Please do not read the reality of Israel's reaction to their enemies. Israel continues to supply Gaza with tons of Food Stuffs and tons of medicine, daily, this is in spite of the Hamas and Hezbollah inspired graft and war which is directed at Israel. What nation supplies its enemies with food and medicine? Why do they do this? Where is the rest of the Arab world when it comes to supplying food and medicine? What happens if Israel stops? What happens if your boycott is successful? If Israel fails, and falls, who will feed the starving population of Gaza? Why do you think Hezbollah or Hemas will treat their people any differently if there was no Israel? Israel and the United States are the only nations in the world that actually cares about collateral damage and tries to avoid it, the Islamic Jihadists actually attempt to cause as much collateral damage as they can, they target civilians, they use noncombatants as shields and they cut off the heads of journalists. The question might be, shouldn't we boycott Islamic Countries, the only thing they produce is oil, our country has more oil in it than the middle east (about three times more, in the form of shale,natural gas and coal which could be converted), we must become self reliant again, this means renewable, as well a nuclear and fossil fuels including oil and coal. What happened to Mr. Obama's great plan for getting us energy independent? How exactly does his plan work? When does he begin to implement it, was cash for clunkers part of it?

Sarah Palin or how we got Obama

She is the darling of the right, a testament to motherhood, a woman who can do it all, the next coming of Ronald Reagan, verbal and intelligent, able to articulate every conservative value from the war in Afghanistan to the right to life, with a child with a severe impairment to prove it. Yet, the right is missing an opportunity. A person with every correct conservative value is not as important as a person who can win. Romney has an experience of carrying a liberal state, and running the state budget of Massachuesettes. Romney is more verbal in things important to liberal states, Romney can contest every state in the union, because he has an experience of running large corporations; but most importantly, there is a perception by all Americans, that he can do what he says. Guilliani is another Republican that can appeal to all Americans, and he has demonstrated quite effectively, that he can take an impossible task, and do it, he turned NYC around. However, Sarah Palin is touted as the darling of the right, the next candidate for president for the Republican Party. The reason why McCain lost, we are told, is that Palin was muzzled and not allowed to be herself, and as the conservative Fox media is constantly introducing her to us, we are told how wrong he was for doing that. But, the problem here is that no matter how you cut it, she was discounted as a serious candidate because of a perceived lack of experience. Her debate with Biden kind of clinched that perception, she treated him as if he was her grandfather, an elderly pundit on foreign affairs. She should have trounced Biden, all she had to do was speak her mind, and if he attacked her views, he would have been perceived as a bully and antiwomen, as it stood, I think that was a turning point in the election. Biden was on that night, and he cemented the perception she has been trying to overcome ever since, the question is does she really knows what she is talking about? So, the American People elected a person just as inexperienced as her, who gave them a perception of competence. We know better now, Obama was not ready for prime time either, when Iran's election results were in, he had an opportunity that Ronald Reagan had when he got the Russians to tear down the Berlin Wall. If Obama had taken advantage of the time, instead of waiting three days to react, he could have solved the Middle East once and for all, he didn't, so the quagmire gets worse. If he wanted to assist the dissidents in Iran, all he had to do was have some major military manuveers on the Eastern Border of Iraq, and mobilize a few of the Air Craft Carriers off of Iran's Coast, the show of force, would have forced Iran to mobilize defensively, and it would have forced them to negotiate with the other factions in their country, instead, we are witnessing a repeat of Tianiman Square, except there is no hope of this nation liberalizing anything. President Obama has two answers to every crisis that confronts him, Bush set up the system, and its failure is due to Bush's failure. The other answer to a crisis, is that folks are questioning his failures to fix problems because of his race. Clearly, there is a disconnect here. If Bush is still responsible for everything that is happening, why was a democratic congress and President elected? At what point do they take over? At what point do they adjust what is broken? Are they indefinitely not responsible? So far, last year, we have had two instances of terrorism on our soil. At what point does this President acknowledge that we are at war? If he does acknowledge that we are at war, at what point does he treat enemy combatants as soldiers, and not criminals? Will he continue to release our enemies so they can return to kill us? If this trial in NY does not go as planned, if the terrorist who planned 9/11 are placed on trial, and declared not guilty by a court of law, how will he treat the verdict? Won't that destroy our legal system, if he doesn't abide by the verdict? Will he blame this on Bush too? Lastly, Biden appears to embarrass this president every time he talks, so how could Palin lose to him in a debate, she is not the equivalent of Ronald Reagan, who clearly could be prepared to debate, and win.

Badly Written emails

Have you ever received an email from a trusted friend, which had a tag at the end which said you simply had to forward the email to ten other people, if you did, you would be rewarded with riches beyond your wildest dreams, and if you didn't you would have a fate worse than death? Well, my practice has become to read these things, and trash them. I often send an email back to the person who sent it to me with an admonition that if he or she thought their karma was being affected by how they treated these emails, then they probably should not send them to me. The reason I like to read these things is that invariably there is some flaw in the reasoning of the writer, some flaw which gives away the writing for the trash that it is. Something which demonstrates that the story is concocted by a person and not a real event. So, why do people write like this? I think they want to be immortalized by eternally forwarded emails. I read one, which was supposed to be a tear jerker, in which some kids playing a baseball game allowed a mentally retarded child to play, and both teams recognised his limitations and he was allowed to participate. The story was obviously concocted because, if anyone who worked with retarded children know, that concepts such as baseball games are incredibly complex, a child walking onto a field would not have the capacity to understand all the intracacies of the game instantly, I might add, that even a person with normal intelligence, if he had never seen or played in a baseball game might have a problem playing; but, this child "understood" everything about baseball, including his position in right field and his turn at bat and which way to run after he "hit" the ball, simply fabulous, and unbelieveable. Anyone who worked with these children or adults, would have known that someone would have had to assist the child in every aspect of the game, a bogus story. Another one of these that I received, was a story about someone driving a motorcycle at 80 miles an hour, and crashing into a car pulling into traffic, the conclusion was that the driver should not have been talking into a cell phone, and the mangled vehicle was photographed. This was a bogus story too, it would have taken roughly 10 seconds for the bike to go a quarter of a mile. Whether the person driving had his attention on traffic or not, he would very likely have missed the detail of a motorcycle closing on him as fast as it did, it was either a residential area, or a commercial area, and a motorcycle driving at that rate of speed would not have been able to avoid any vehicle slowly pulling into traffic. Another one of those stories was about an 80 year old college student, another tear jerking bogus story, the writer did not write the name of the school, and added that the woman in the story died a year later. The point of this was there was no way to verify the story, and why? Because we are supposed to just blindly forward this crap, well, I refuse. If something is a fun photographic essay, or if something is well written, it does not need a tag imploring me to foreward it. The key information here is the tag, it gives away the poverty of the writing, or whatever is in the body of the email. Another tag which makes me boil, is "if you love our troops forward this". Well, I support the troops, that is not affected by an email I read or forward, or do not forward. If you read this, and if you write crap, then please put me on your do not send list. If you read this and you forward this sort of crap, please do not forward it to me; lastly, if you are like me and believe that your karma is not affected by whether you read or forward an email, then do what I do, kill the crap. Enjoy it for what it is, poorly written prose, look for the errors, that is fun, but do not foist it on the rest of us.

Peace in Our Time

Neville Chamberlain came back from a meeting with Hitler, and he told the anxious public after he had given the Sudaten Land, a part of Czeckoslovakia, to the Germans, that he had achieved "Peace in our time" shortly after, Hitler's Germany swallowed the rest of Czeckoslovakia, and half of Poland. Russia made their own pact with Hitler, and Neville Chamberlain was relegated to the rubbish heap of history, a failed politician who resigned from office in England's darkest hour. President Obama is in his second year as president. He has negociated in what he considered good faith with Iran. He has tried to make peace with Castro's Cuba, and Chavez's Venezuela. He has gone to great lengths to distance himself from Bush's policies, even to the point of declaring that there was no longer a war against terrorism. So, like Neville Chamberlain, this president essentially declared peace in his time, and just like Chamberlain, he was hailed as succeeding. A Ford Hood masacre and a failed attempt at exploding a commercial air plane, failed, but not because of anything this administration did, but because of the grit and spunk of other passengers on the plane who prevented the catastrophy, but in effect exploded any myth this administration had of making any difference with their approach to the confrontation that is before us. If anything, what is clear, is our enemies are emboldened due to our inattention to detail. You can say there are no terrorists, that does not make it so. Our president wants to place terrorists on trial in civilian courts, what will happen is this will be a bonanza for trial lawyers, it will ligitimize the terrorists, or it may allow them to walk out of court, declared innocent due to the unabashed responsibility of our courts to treat them fairly and to bar evidence gotten illegally. The Obama administration, after freeing these terrorists will point to our "fairness" to the Moslem countries he wants to impress, and they will be laughing as they redouble their efforts to kill us, with the very soldiers we let go. The recent attempted mass killer, the christmas bomber, has a lawyer, he does not have to testify against himself, he may know things that may allow us to find his friends, but we will never know, because he has a right against self incrimination. Hurray for the judicial process for terrorists. Hurray for a president who apparently needs three days to decide that perhaps his world view requires him to support Iranian students. Perhaps after hearing himself being compared to Bush by Chavez, in terms of a foul odor, perhaps he might reconsider his attempts at reconciliation, or perhaps, like Neville Chamberlain, when things are so screwed up, seemingly beyond repair, he could resign. The biggest problem if Obama did resign, is we'd have Biden, or Pelosi; neither one could be considered Churchill.