Have you had enough?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
 
IRRELEVANT IN THE NEW YEAR

Lately I have been feeling more and more irrelevant. Seeking out the truth and conveying it to friends seems meaningless because we are powerless to stop the suicidal behavior of our national leaders. The farce called presidential campaigns orchestrated and choreographed by political consultants make it impossible to evaluate the people running for office. The daily disclosures of corruption, inaptitude, criminality are accelerated by the media’s appetite to “if it bleeds, it leeds” and “gotcha” editorial intent.
This morning I experienced another major blow to my relevancy. The newspapers listed the movies, the songs, and the names of newborn most popular in 2008. Here is my score:
Top 10 films for 2007- #1: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. Never heard of it nor did I ever hear or see any of the other top 10 films.
Here are the top 10 Itunes Downloads starting with #1: LOW, Flo Rida featuring T-Pain. Never heard of it , never heard it or any of the other top 10 downloads.
How about the top ten songs? #1 was KEEP THE CAR RUNNING' Artist: Arcade Fire. Don’t even ask. Never heard it nor the rest of the top ten.
Here are the top 10 baby names for 2007: #1. male name was Aiden. I never heard of anybody named Aiden, Jayden, or Caden, listed in the top ten, neither did my computer’s spelling directory. Of the top 10 female names you could have fooled me with Madison and Addison.
Add the selection of Vladimir Putin, an arch enemy of our country as “the Man of the Year” and my irrelevancy becomes depressing.


Jan 2

Pakistan is reeling in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's murder, as anger and overwhelming sadness drive its people towards hopelessness and violence. In the midst of all this, the government is foolishly trying to distort the facts surrounding Bhutto's killing by trying to shift the blame from its own incompetence and possible involvement. Without credible elections, restoration of the independent judiciary and effective curbs on the activities of the country's intelligence agencies, Pakistan cannot be rescued from a certain slide into more chaos.

Despite the crocodile tears shed in Washington and London over Bhutto's assassination, it was a disaster waiting to happen and therefore, was altogether expected. Those who believed, naively, that Bhutto's mission was to reinstate democracy in Pakistan and put its usurpers, the Pakistani military, in the background, do not realize why she was inserted into the scene, which was already rife with violence. Bhutto, no doubt, was a mass-based political leader, but she was a woman (an excuse used by the puppet Islamic jihadists to commit violence against a person), and she was goaded into the scene by the United States to serve Washington's purpose, which was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and force it to share power with a democratic politician. According to the master strategists in Washington, that is the best of both worlds—the Pakistani military stays friendly, while the United States shakes off its guilt of backing a military dictator.

It is not known what transpired in the telephone call between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Benazir Bhutto that led to Bhutto's decision to return. What promises were made will not be known unless Rice can shake off the national security garb and tell the truth. The one who knew, and could tell is gone. The purpose of inserting Benazir Bhutto into the scene, after eight years of self-imposed exile, at a time when law and order had completely broken down, and even the Pakistani military was coming under serious attacks from the Islamic militants, was deliberate. The first objective, which Bhutto achieved in no time, was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and generate demands in the street for the military to get back to barracks.

It is understood by the majority of Pakistanis, that despite the corruption that envelops the military, it is the only force in the nation that could, in the short term, maintain law and order, and fight the secessionists.

Once she put the Pakistani military on the defensive, Benazir did not become irrelevant. She became the designated sacrifice. The killing of Benazir Bhutto was intended to unleashed domestic violence. In the midst of grieving Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) activists and workers, who feel betrayed and orphaned, are the embedded killers whose objective is to challenge the military and postpone the Jan. 8 elections. They would like provoke the military to shoot at the people.
Making a political forecast is a hazardous speculation. The question now being asked after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is about the future of Pakistan and political and security future of the region.
However, several days after the assassination the main riddle as to who killed her is yet to be solved.

The FBI and US Homeland Security departments on Friday claimed that Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri masterminded the assassination.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat (the) mujahadeen,” said Al Qaeda commander and main representative Mustafa Abu Al Yazid the main Al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

Making a forecast about what is going to happen is absurd if we can not even determine what actually happened. Why was the crime scene washed and sanitized, no autopsy performed, the body hastily buried, contradicting and changing medical reports issued about the cause of death? Why were the bodyguards removed just minutes before the assassination? Why was the official video recording stopped or destroyed? More later.
I just thought you ought to know more than what appears in the media.
Jan 2

TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND?
A few weeks ago I called attention to the fact that when CitiBank recently went to Dubai to ask for a loan to save itself it received a large, high interest loan. What is not well known, however, that it was not received from Dubai or any financial institution of Dubai. It came from a new animal that is prowling the world financial markets - a Sovereign Wealth Fund. The recent spurt in the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves (running into several hundred billion dollars) in the past few years by countries in Asia, notably China, and oil exporting countries, has resulted in the creation of this new phenomena. The danger comes from the real owners of this fund and their intentions toward the US dollar and the US economy.
The ostensible purpose behind such a fund is to ensure increased return on such sovereign wealth primarily invested in United States treasury bonds thus far. With global interest rates shrinking, sovereign funds are now being used by countries having significant forex reserves, to invest in capital markets across the globe.
The US is now caught in a quagmire. It has to be constantly in good relationship with the Chinese and other Asian governments if it wants to avoid a sudden shock.
Countries that hold large US dollar-denominated forex reserves have a powerful tool in their arsenal -- they could wreck American financial markets at a mere click of a mouse. And that could instantaneously destroy the global financial system.
I reasoned several weeks ago that hopefully they may have no obvious intent to do so as it would be suicidal and would result in that could mean that forex assets that they are holding could diminish in value. But if they want, they could well blackmail the US to discuss political and other issues with them on their terms. The fear for the US obviously would be that should these countries dump their holdings of American treasuries on financial markets, they could probably cause a crash in the financial markets and a catastrophic depression in the US.
This is a new form of mutually assured destruction similar to the MAD years of the cold war that has quietly emerged over the last few years, but now we may have to deal with suicide bombers.

The Chinese government has recently proposed to inject $200 billion into a new government company that will buy assets abroad. Beijing calls this as an effort to make more profitable use of its $1.2 trillion forex reserves. What will distinguish this Chinese fund is not just its size, but that it will be a government entity owned and run by the government of China.
Perhaps learning from the likes of Dubai Ports World and CNOOC's bid for Unocal, China has proposed to take non-voting shares and voluntary restrict stakes to avoid blocked deals.

While China continues to hog the limelight more troubling is that two-thirds of the world's oil comes from trouble causing emerging economies. What is causing alarm in the US is the growing financial clout of Russia, Venezuela and Middle Eastern countries as a result of sustained high oil prices and their build-up of foreign assets.

Obviously many of these countries are not favorably disposed towards the US -- Venezuela or Iran or Russia, for instance -- they could easily be the potential candidates to destabilize the US financial markets, its economy and by extension the global economy.

The danger arises from the fact that capital emerging from these countries is much harder to track than Chinese capital, because such foreign assets are held not as official reserves but in secretive government investment funds.

Moreover, whereas China buys American treasury securities direct from American brokers or dealers, Middle Eastern purchases are typically channelled through intermediaries in London, hiding their true ownership. This way oil surpluses are flooding into equities, hedge funds, private equity and property. Nobody knows who is behind the bailout loan made to CitiBank or behind secretive purchases of US assets by these Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Chinese activities are the smaller problem. Since many of the countries hiding behind the SWFs consider themselves to be victims of American hegemony, in order to extract their revenge, these countries could eventually be using these financial assets to wreck the value of the US dollar.

It is likely that future wars by these countries with the US may well be fought in the global financial markets and thanks to the SWFs the US perhaps would not even know who the enemy is.

Obviously, all this is not just about economics, but about suicide bomber mentalities as secretly held SWFs use their assets to accomplish political goals.

It now has become imperative that the US establish safeguards and not be blinded by the influx of welcome capital coming from SWFs and carefully consider security and strategic issues, even if they conflict with the free flow of investment capital.

Would you consider this issue to be a major problem to be discussed by presidential candidates or are we too dumb to understand?
###
Jan 15

I decided to occasionally listen in on what the candidates say about the issues facing the nation. I picked the wrong time and decided not to listen in again for a little while. This answer from Hillary Clinton's "Meet the Press" interview came in response to host Tim Russert's question about the incident in which she showed emotion and almost teared up trying to show she was just a vulnerable woman after all. Here is the exchange:

Russert: In New Hampshire, now, the famous scene in Portsmouth where you showed some emotion, was that exhaustion, frustration? What was it?

Mrs. Clinton:” No. It was actually, Tim, a moment of real emotional connection. Those of us who are running for office and holding office, I know it may be hard to believe, we're also human beings. And when I spend my time out on the campaign trail, it's usually about what I can do for somebody else. You know, I'm very other directed. I don't like talking about myself, I don't like, you know, sort of the, the whole atmosphere of how people, you know, are judged in American politics too often as to, you know, what you say instead of what you do. And so for me it's always about what can I do for you? How can I help you? And I was very touched when that woman said, "Well, how are you doing? How do you get up in the morning?" Because really, the question is for so many of the people that I meet, how does anybody get up in the morning?

I just went door-to-door in Las Vegas. I met construction workers who've lost their jobs, I met a man who's been laid off from the casinos because the economy is beginning to go down. I meet people who can't get health care for their families, people who are just distressed over, you know, what is happening in our country. So when somebody asks me, "How do you get up?" it really triggered in me, you know, the feeling that, you know, that's what I, I want us all to think about each other. How do we get up? How do we, you know, pull on our shoes, go out and deal with the problems America faces. That's what I intend to do as president. “

In the course of an answer in which she claims that she is "very other directed" and doesn't like talking about herself, she manages to refer to herself at least 20 times and uses the irritating “you know” to make sure that we, you know, realize that she is just, you know, one of us, the great unwashed.###

Jan 29

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!
Here is a well remembered sound bite. It wasn’t too long ago when Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their cohorts were claiming that we had the worst economy in the last 50 years. It was a deliberate fraud, but they knew that it was easy to sell such an obvious and flagrant lie because a dumbed down public and their similarly dumbed down media does not even understand economic issues. They can not grasp it nor convey it unless it is in 30 second sound bites.

The Democrats are again attempting to rerun their 1992 campaign with the help of the media and with the fortuitous events caused by massive financial fraud in the credit and banking industry. Before we panic let us realize that the danger facing our economy is not the size of the housing collapse. Just last week Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke explained that even a $100 billion loss would only amount to 0.1% of the combined assets of US households and industrial corporations. Heck, I lost more than that last week just by buying a scratch-off lottery ticket!

In November 2006 following the elections I sent out an ON AND OFF THE RECORD in which I wrote that the dollar would crash 20%-30% in value within a year. Gold was selling then at $630. In November 2007 the price was $806 an increase of 28% or a loss of value of the dollar of 28%. I also stated that “I have been writing on this issue for years but I noticed the vacant looks and lack of reaction. I will not make it simple because I assume that you, my friends and readers, possess a degree of education and smarts to comprehend this issue.” Did you?

I know this is not much of a credential to believe in what I predict, but I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with two astute and well known friends and my fortune cookie read:
“YOU HAVE A NATURAL AWARENESS OF CURRENTS FLOWING UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE OF EVENTS.”
Now you have all my credentials. So here is my prediction: The dollar will continue to slide. Intervention by the government by injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the economy and giving money away in rebates, etc. will make matters worse and will further depreciate the value of the dollar. Our real inflation today is in double digits and only election year politics are keeping the truth from you. Inflation has always been the saviour of the real estate market so buy and hold real estate. If you don’t know what to invest in, call me. I just got the right ranch for you. A survival ranch.*
*What is a survival ranch?
It serves a dual purpose. In peacetime it is an amenity to be enjoyed. During natural and man-made emergencies it will provide a safe haven for you and your loved ones.
CAN YOU AFFORD NOT TO OWN ONE?
Feb 6

Sen McCain opposed the tax cut claiming it was unfair to the poor and giving the wealthy all the breaks. Obviously he is not a beer drinker otherwise he would understand this issue better. IF you want him to be president, you better send him a six-pack of Shiner Bock.

For those who drink beer and understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not drink beer and do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes,it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten of you now cost just $80.'

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share ?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings) .
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings) .
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
Yeah, that's right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
###
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Feb 19

IN ORDER TO BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS, I AM GATHERING SOME iINTEL THAT YOU WON'T FIND IN OUR MEDIA, BUT MAY CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE REAL WORLD WE LIVE IN:

DOHA: Delegates at a US-Islamic forum voiced support on Monday for US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, although some warned against expecting any radical policy change irrespective of who captures the White House. Obama won overwhelming support in a mock election by more than 200 American and Muslim delegates at the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha.

His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican candidates won a handful of votes.

About 280 public figures and academics from 32 countries, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, attended the fifth edition of the forum due to end in Qatar later Monday.

"The Indonesian people would love to see a [US] president who has studied at an elementary school in Jakarta," Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyya, one of Indonesia's largest Islamic organizations, said in a reference to Obama.

But Dhiya Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on terror groups, warned that US policy under the next president would be "a continuation of current policies, though in a less extreme way than the conservative Republican administration."

The Bush administration has "planted landmines everywhere" for its successor, making it impossible for the next president to suddenly reverse course, Rashwan said. "The arms industry will not give up these deals under any circumstances."

The Bush administration has also "imposed a phobia" against Islam on Americans, something US politicians will find difficult to change, he added.

Mehran Kamrava, a political science professor at the Qatar branch of Georgetown University, said he thought the next US cabinet would not "work hard for a rapprochement with the Islamic world, because Muslims are not a strong voice."
###
Iran predicts Hizbullah will soon destroy Israel
Jewish state deploys patriot air defense missiles near haifa as part of precautions
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Iran predicts Hizbullah will soon destroy Israel

Israel said on Monday it had "no illusions" about Iran's intentions after the head of the Revolutionary Guards said the Jewish state would be destroyed by Hizbullah. Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said he would not comment directly on the remarks by Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari, but added: "We are not harboring any illusions about the Tehran regime's true intentions nor its extremist agenda."

The remark by the head of Iran's elite force came in a condolence message to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah after the murder in Damascus last week of a top commander of the group, Imad Mughniyeh.

"In the near future, we will witness the destruction of Israel, the aggressor, this cancerous microbe Israel, at the able hands of the soldiers of the community of Hizbullah," Jafari said.

Hizbullah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has accused Israel of responsibility for Mughniyeh's death, something Israel has denied.

Israel blamed Mughniyeh for the 1992 bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 29 people. Argentina linked him to the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people.

He was also linked to bombings that killed hundreds of US military personnel in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

In other developments, Israel has deployed a battery of US-made Patriot air defense missiles near the northern port city of Haifa as part of precautions against a possible attack by Hizbullah in response to the Mughniyeh assassination.

The officials said the battery was put on standby Sunday for the first time since the Jewish state's month-long war on Lebanon in 2006, when Hizbullah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Patriot batteries were first deployed in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, but they failed to stop most of the 39 Scud missiles launched by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They were originally designed to intercept aircraft, and Israeli media reported their role in the current situation would be to shoot down bomb-laden pilotless planes as well as rockets.

The Israeli military said it was not its policy to comment on what a spokesman called "operational readiness."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel is "prepared on all fronts" for an attack.

Meanwhile, Britain's Times reported in its Sunday edition that the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, carried out the assassination of Mughniyeh in Damascus through an explosive planted in the headrest of the driver's seat.

The British newspaper said that Mughniyeh was attending a reception to mark the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution the night he was killed.

"He had grown accustomed to living dangerously and there was no reason he should have feared for his safety last Tuesday as he sipped fruit juice at the party at the Iranian cultural center. Mughniyeh was on fairly good terms with everybody present - almost all the leaders of the Damascus-based militant groups were represented" the newspaper said.

It added "at 10:35 p.m. he [Mughniyeh] decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.

"Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly."

"According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver's seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge" it said.
###
Iran, or, to be more precise, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), announced that they had flight tested a new, Iranian made, helicopter gunship. They also announced a new UAV with a range of 2,000 kilometers. Five months ago, the Iranians showed off a new Iranian made jet fighter, which appeared to be a make-work project for unemployed engineers. It's a bunch of rearranged parts on an old U.S. made F-5 (which was roughly equivalent to a 1950s era MiG-21). The new fighter, like so many other Iranian weapons projects, is more for PR than for improving military power.

If you go back and look at the many Iranian announcements of newly developed, high tech, weapons, all you find is a photo op for a prototype. Production versions of these weapons rarely show up. Iranians know that, while the clerics and politicians talk a tough game, they rarely do anything. Even Iranian support of Islamic terrorism has been far less effective than the rhetoric. The Iranians have always been cautious, which is one reason Arabs fear them. When the Iranians do make their move, it tends to be decisive. But at the moment, the Iranians have no means to make a decisive move. Their military is mostly myth, having been run down by decades of sanctions, and the disruptions of the 1980s war with Iraq. Their most effective weapon is bluster, and, so far, it appears to be working.

But the Iranians know that nuclear weapons would make their bluff and bluster even more muscular. Even the suspicion that they had nukes would be beneficial. And that appears to be the current plan. One new weapon the Iranians do put a lot of money and effort into are ballistic missiles. They are building an extended range (from 1,300 to 1,800 kilometer) version of their Shahab 3 ballistic missile. The new version puts all of Israel within range, even if fired from deep inside Iran. Chemical warheads (with nerve gas) are thought to be available for these missiles. But Israel has threatened to reply with nuclear weapons if the Iranians attack this way. Iran would probably get the worst of such an exchange, and the Iranians are aware of it.

Not all of the clerics that run the country are eager to go to war with Israel, or even threaten it. But because the clerical factions do not want to appear at odds with each other in public, the more radical leaders are allowed to rant away about attacking Israel. That's also the thinking behind the many IRGC press conferences announcing imaginary new weapons. The clerics are not going spend billions on mass production of second rate systems that are most notable for being designed in Iran.

###

A new report from the Federal Reserve has confirmed the non-borrowed reserves of U.S. banks plummeted to a negative $18 billion at a recent accounting, reflecting an apparently worsening situation from the negative $8.8 billion reported at the end of January.

The numbers appeared particularly alarming in that the Fed, going back to to 19591959, never before had reported that the non-borrowed reserves of depository institutions had been in the red.

The fact is that financial institutions would be bankrupt if the Fed did not provide billions in liquidity to prop up bank balance sheets.
###

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Feb 20

YOU SHOULD BE COMFORTABLE WITH THE IDEA THAT GOVERNMENT IS INCOMPETENT AND RIDDLED WITH CORRUPTION AND PLAIN STUPIDITY BECAUSE IT REPLACES JUDGEMENT WITH RULES. FORTUNATELY THIS APPLIES TO OUR ENEMIES AS WELL AS TO OUR OWN FOLKS. HERE ARE SOME REASSURING EXAMPLES:

CHINA
The booming Chinese economy has revealed a serious military weakness; the electricity supply. China has not been able to build power plants quickly enough to keep up with an economy that has been growing ten percent a year for several decades. The power production and distribution systems are ramshackle, prone to breakdowns and vulnerable to wartime attack. Knocking out a few plants and distribution facilities could cause widespread power outages and severe shortages. Since the Chinese military is very dependent on civilian infrastructure in wartime, these power disruptions would impair any military activities.

The government's efforts to battle corruption are hobbled by the lack of tools. The justice system does not favor independent investigation and prosecution of corrupt officials (who have a lot of power over the people and organizations that would investigate them.) Until China changes its justice system, attempts to root out corruption at the local level will be very difficult (as in "don't hold your breath waiting for it.")

China's Internet users are getting restless. There are increasing attacks on government websites by Chinese hackers annoyed at Chinese Internet censors. Moreover, about a quarter of all Chinese Internet users maintain blogs, and the government Internet police are having a hard time policing all these outspoken Internet users. The government still enjoys the loyalty of many hackers, and Australia became the latest Western country to openly complain of Internet based espionage from China. But the Chinese governments increasingly energetic attempts to control the flow of information on the Internet are encountering more and more resistance. It's liable to get even uglier this Summer, as China hosts the Summer Olympics, and plays hosts to thousands of foreign journalists. Chinese security police are compiling a list of international "troublemakers" (including journalists) who will either be barred from entering the country, or kept under close watch if they are let in.

In the United States, a Chinese spy ring was broken up, after nearly two decades of stealing classified data on the American Space Shuttle program. This appears to account for the many similarities between the U.S. and Chinese reusable space vehicle programs. But this works both ways. The new United States "spy sub", the USS Ohio (which carries commandos and over 150 cruise missiles) is visiting South Korea, and apparently planning a clandestine tour down the Chinese coast, to see how well prepared the Chinese are to deal with the kind of snooping this new type of American sub is capable of.

RUSSIA

Algeria is returning fifteen MiG-29 fighters to Russia, and refusing to accept the other 19 that were part of a purchase deal made two years ago. The Algerians complained of sub-standard components. The Russians dispute this, but the Algerians got a trade-in option when they purchased the MiG-29s. This means that they have to take more expensive (by a few million dollars per aircraft) MiG-29M2 models, or even newer MiG-35s. Then again, France has been desperate to get a first export customer for its new Rafale fighter, and the Algerians are making noises about being done with Russian jet fighters.

The Russians are not happy with the MiG-29s coming back. Since the 1970s, the Russians had developed a reputation for exporting substandard versions of their weapons ("monkey models" as the Russians themselves put it), and not providing adequate support for the exports either. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to overcome the curse of the monkey model. The Algerian accusations undo a lot of this effort, and the Russians are trying to do whatever they can to keep the Algerians happy, save some face, and not lose a lot of money.

USA

NROL-21 satellite was launched with a payload of about 3300 kg / 7300 lbs. The payload is believed to be the first of the Future Imagery Architecture [FIA] imaging radar spacecraft, designed to be the replacement for the operational Lacrosse/Vega/Onyx spacecraft that are believed to carry two elongated radar imaging dishes.

Soon after launch the NROL-21 satellite failed within hours of its launch and the solar arrays never deployed. On 19 January 2007 it was reported that US officials were unable to communicate with the reconnaissance satellite. "Efforts are continuing to reestablish communication with the classified satellite, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars," a defense official told the media. "They have not yet declared it a total loss."

As of 22 January 2008 Ted Molczan reported that NROL-21 had decayed to 271 x 282 km and was decaying at a rate of about 0.7 km per day, which would accelerate as it continued to spiral in.

On 26 January 2008 the Associated Press reported that the satellite would hit the Earth in late February or March, according to US government officials. "The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down," they said. "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause." Oops. The damage is still in orbit.
Feb 21

WAKE UP AMERICA!
By T W Weston


Have you lived under a Nazi regime? Have Nazis and Communists tried to kill you? Have you ever heard a Nazi or Communist leader speak? Do you have any idea what Nazis and Communists are about? Did you know Nazis are national SOCIALISTS and the communists are international SOCIALISTS? Do you recognize when you hear a speaker expounding Nazi or Communist doctrine? Have you ever lived in fear of tyrants, either fascist or communist? I CAN ANSWER YES TO ALL THESE QUESTIONS. I have personally experienced and survived cataclysmic historic events in my life, and I am more than qualified to recognize, just as most thinking people do, that our civilized world is trembling because we all know that a major change is coming. We fear that it will not be a change for the good, but a plunge backwards into medieval times of anarchy and barbarism. I hear the communists singing their treacherous Lorelei songs to entice us to the disaster they are preparing for us.

A change is coming that is more profound and dangerous that the period preceding the French or Hungarian Revolutions. We are not just talking about a revolution but a passing of a civilization, a decline from the heights of progress to the abyss of ignorance, brutality and barbarism. This is not a unique or unprecedented condition. It has occurred many times in the history of the world prior to the demise of major civilizations.

So let me take you on a dangerous intellectual trip that has kept me awake often in the recent past. Every previous civilization has been destroyed by the insurmountable gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” if the “have-nots” acquired the power to take from the “haves”. We have presidential candidates openly advocating taking power from the “rich” and giving it to the voting masses.

The most recent example of the Roman Empire is overwhelming. If you have not recognized the symptoms it is understandable. If you put a frog in a bowl of water and then start heating the water, the frog will boil to death, because it is unaware of the change in temperature of the water. Similarly you may recognize the symptoms of decline, or even consider them an advance, unless you have a historical perspective.

One of the critical symptoms is the advance of political and legal equality combined with unequal distribution of wealth and power. The disparity of these two forces becomes obvious when you give more and more voting power to people who are getting poorer as compared to the rich who are getting richer while their voting power diminishes. A democracy will ultimately become a dictatorship of the people who demand not just equal opportunity, but equal outcome.

It is a common election slogan in our country now to tax and plunder the rich and hand it to the poor. As the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” increases democratic elections become a sure way for unscrupulous politicians and charlatans to acquire power. History proves that equality of outcome can only be achieved at the point of a bayonet in a dictatorship. There has never been a country where all were equally rich, but there were many where everyone was equally poor. Trillions spent on the “War on Poverty” since the Johnson Administration have not diminished it, but destroyed the well established base of the nation – the family unit- by replacing the breadwinner with the Government.

Already the non-voting majority in the USA feels no connection to the government. Upset by their perceived poverty as compared to the rich, they are ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder or the demagogue leading the charge against the rich. Millions only see a class enjoying obscene wealth and are agitated in discontent waiting for a leader to take it from the rich and give it to them. We now have presidential candidates promising exactly that!

This concept applies even more to the world scene where most of the world considers the USA to be obscenely rich and ready to be plucked. Little do our “poor” realize that their standard of living, equal opportunity, liberty and freedom does not exist anywhere in the world and that in the eyes of the world our “poor” are the rich and enviable.

When, there is an inequality in the distribution of wealth, a democracy will self-destruct and turn into anarchy or a totalitarian barbaric state. To put the power of the vote into the hands of people embittered by poverty, powerlessness, or unscrupulously agitated envy is self-destructive.

Thus these voters become corrupt, voting not for ideas or principles, but for the highest bidder. A corrupt voting public creates corrupt political leaders. Men of high caliber or character no longer seek office because they do not want heir families go through the destructive campaign process. Those running are no longer running on principle, but on the advise of polls, handlers, spinmeisters, political hacks and hatchet men. Political parties can no longer be differentiated by principles or ideas because their primary purpose is to acquire power.

Politicians are now engaged in the obscene effort to import masses of a new underclass, uneducated immigrants, to bolster their electability by a new group of poor, uninformed voters. It all started 60 years ago by Vito Marcantonio, a communist candidate of the Labor Party. One of his favored election maneuvers was to bring in planeloads of Puerto Ricans before election time. All arrivals were provided apartments in East Harlem, often as many as 10-12 to an apartment and were put on welfare. They all voted to secure Marcantonio’s re-elections. The airfare of $80 per person was later collected from the Puerto Ricans’ s welfare payments.

Corruption brings to rise the “lobbyist”, the insiders and the wealthy king makers. They control votes, buy and sell offices, legislation, and courts. Through such men large corporations and powerful organization elect Senators and judges of their liking. They steal and if they are caught are punished to return part of the theft. Big thieves are celebrated and admired by their fellow uncaught thieves.

If you look for evidence of corruption just consider the complacency with corruption because most of the public believes there are no honest people in politics. Just look at the millions spent on an election and compare it with the salary of the elected official and his acquisition of wealth during his tenure in office.

Contempt for the law and the lawmakers is rampant. Abuse of the legal system by corrupt lawyers, and the corruption of the criminal justice system are an accepted way of doing business. We are spending more money on prisons than on education.

The arts become prostituted under the influence of a less cultured populace, which considers vulgarity admirable, and artists are eager to become stilted, grotesque to soothe the popular taste.

Throughout the land there is a strong feeling of disappointment in our leaders, our nation and humanity and a widespread feeling of unrest even a desire for some kind of a revolution. Unfortunately answers are not found and all this feeling and desire for a change is wasted in frustration because corrupt politicians do not bring change.

No one has the courage and the ability to explain that we are now seeing the consequences of past actions and inactions. No one has stepped up to point out how previous civilizations were destroyed and what, if anything, should be done to stop the destruction of this civilization. No leader points to history to teach us that we are not immune to its lessons. No leader talks of how rich we all are, even the poorest among us, as compared to the rest of the world. The best we can hope for is a leader, who can point to our executioner – radical Islam – with the hope of attempting to rally us against the invading horde of barbarians. Alas, that by itself did not work for Rome.

There are many forms of insanity but we are currently seeing the most common form of it engulfing our political system. INSANITY = doing the same thing and expecting different results. The current slogan is the same as it is every four years: CHANGE! They again promise change, but as soon as they are in power their habits, attitudes and behaviors prove that they are INSANE. And so are we. We are also doing the same thing, listen to the fraudulent sound bites, clap like idiots and accept their insanity proving that we are also insane.
Except now the consequences could be fatal. We may have reached the tipping point where we will become a self-destructing democracy.
If you are frustrated and angry, just consider how I feel who has SEEN THIS ALL BEFORE AND WAS LUCKY TO SURVIVE. ARE YOU FEELING LUCKY? LUCK WON’T BE ENOUGH. IT TAKES ACTION. IF NOT NOW, WHEN? IF NOT YOU, WHO?
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Mar 7

I AM RECEIVING A LOT OF ANTI OBAMA MESSAGES. SOME OF THEM ARE STUPID AND RACIST, OR WITHOUT ANY FACTS TO SUPPORT THEM. HERE ARE SOME FACTUAL OBAMA TIDBITS I HAD A CHANCE TO RESEARCH.


Yesterday’s edition of USA Today had a story about Barack Obama’s grandmother in Kenya, in which she slams the Clinton campaign for circulating photos of Obama in Muslim garb—and then states that she is a Christian: Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths’.

Obama’s grandfather had converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism and taken the name Hussein, Sarah Obama said, but his children had inherited only the name, not the religion. Each person should be able to choose how they worshipped, she said.

“In the world of today, children have different religions from their parents,” she said. She, too, is a Christian.

Just one little problem with this statement.

In April of last year, Sarah Hussein Obama told the New York Times she is a devout Muslim.

Sarah Hussein Obama, who is his step grandmother but whom Mr. Obama calls his grandmother, still rises at 5 a.m. to pray before tending to her crops and the three orphans she has taken in.

“I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith,” Ms. Obama, 85, said in a recent interview in Kenya.

OBAMA FARC CONNECTION?
Admittedly, it pales compared with other material from the dead thug's computer — such as FARC efforts to obtain uranium or Hugo Chavez's $300 million support.

But the little Obama reference within the 15 FARC letters released by the Colombian government signals a disturbing pattern of contacts with rogue actors. It's not the first time, and Obama has yet to distance himself.

In a Feb. 28 letter, FARC chieftain Raul Reyes cheerily reported to his inner circle that he met "two gringos" who assured him "the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support 'Plan Colombia' nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement)."

Aside from some interesting possibilities about who these "gringos" are — a congressional delegation did visit Ecuador and an international leftist "congress" was held in Quito around this time — the real question is why anyone secretly consorting with FARC would be able to speak for presidential candidate Obama.

Obama hasn't said a whole lot about Colombia other than to criticize President Bush's good relations with President Uribe. With this correspondence suggesting that FARC knows what he thinks, maybe the American voters have a right to know what he thinks, too. Five questions come to mind:

1. Is it true Obama would cut off Plan Colombia military aid to our ally, which would serve the terrorist group FARC's interests?

2. Does Obama still oppose a free trade agreement for Colombia, even though that puts him on the same side as FARC in the debate?

3. Does Obama know or care that one of his staffers or supporters is claiming to disclose his positions in secret meetings with FARC terrorists outside government channels?

4. Can he tell us why his supporters would pass on such information to terrorists, and what he or she could gain from it?

5. Will Obama, as president, treat FARC as the serious terrorists they are, given that they still hold three Americans hostage?

These aren't idle "gotcha" questions, by the way. Based on his campaign so far, Obama favors meeting and negotiating with rogue leaders without preconditions, passing secret messages to foreign countries at odds with his public positions and tolerating Che-flag wielding leftists among his supporters who advance a radical agenda in his name.

Now that FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama's campaign, maybe he ought to come tell voters what he really stands for.

REACHING ACROSS THE ISLE - THE GREAT UNITER

The Obama campaign has sent journalists eight pages of examples of his reaching across the aisle in the Senate. But these are small-bore items of almost no controversy -- more help for war veterans, reducing loose nukes in the former Soviet Union and the like. Bipartisan support for apple pie is hardly a profile in courage.

On the difficult compromises that required the political courage to challenge one's own political constituency, Obama flinched: the "gang of 14" compromise on judicial appointments, the immigration compromise to which Obama tried to append union-backed killer amendments, and, just last month, the compromise on warrantless eavesdropping that garnered 68 votes in the Senate. But not Obama's.

Who, in fact, supported all of these bipartisan deals, was a central player in two of them, and brokered the even more notorious McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform? John McCain, of course.

Yes, John McCain -- intemperate and rough-edged, of sharp elbows and even sharper tongue. Turns out that uniting is not a matter of rhetoric or manner, but of character and courage.
###


Mar 11

At the risk of being the first to call a spade a spade, let me inform you that I consider the $200 billion rescue package by the Feds a disaster. If it was not clear to anyone until now that the Fed decided to risk inflation in order to save the country from a recession, this move should make it it clear. I can now safely predict $4.00 gasoline prices and gold prices in excess of $1,200/ oz. Just multiply the price increase just for one week by 52 and you would come up with astonishing numbers. One can not diminish the value of the dollar and expect inflation not to increase. The jump in the stock exchange is not enough to make the stocks catch up with the loss attributable to the cheaper dollar. This is going to be a bankers nightmare. Loans will be paid back by cheaper dollars than the value the dollar had when the money was borrowed. Remember the Carter years when interest rates had to be desperately raised in order to catch up with inflation? If our inflation rate currently is really 10+% then any loan at a lower rate is a bargain for the borrower and a disaster for the lender.
We could have solved the subprime problem without federal interference and without destroying real estate values and the value of the dollar. Unfortunately this is an election year and economic moves are governed by political motivations. I am sorry to let you know that as an old fogy I consider today's massive federal interference in the free market a disaster, perhaps the straw that will brake the camel's back, as they say in the enemy camp. Here is a letter that I submitted to the Houston Business Journal for publication prior to the Fed Rescue:

FORECLOSURES - BANK FAILURES - DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN?

In 1985-1986 the Federal Government stepped in to “save” not just the S&L industry, but millions of borrowers, stockholders and real estate owners. They succeeded in turning an estimated $30 Billion loss into more than $300 billion direct loss to the tax payers and an estimated $1,300+ Billion indirect loss to be suffered by the public. The GAO estimated that recovering from that loss would take the country 10 years, even by using off budget accounting gimmicks and Creative Regulatory Accounting Practices.(CRAP).

They succeeded in “socializing the losses” and “privatizing the profits” by dumping valuable real estate at pennies on the dollar to be picked up mostly by insiders, who even received financing from the politicians. There was a cynical political decision that created this tragic financial loss exceeding the cost of all the wars we fought prior to that date in the 20th Century. Politicians could not allow the losses to be disclosed until after the 1988 Presidential elections. They hired M. Danny Wall as president of the Federal Home Loan Bank, whose sole job was to duck and hide and misrepresent the losses until November 1988, when the newly elected president Bush “suddenly discovered” the disastrous losses and promised to punish the handful of S&L owners “guilty” of causing these losses.

There is no use in rehashing these tragic events except for the difficulties now faced by the real estate industry and millions of home owners whose dream home is about to become a nightmare. The Federal Government is again promising to “save” the industry, the real estate owners, the banks, stockholders and the public. If history can be relied upon, the coming disaster caused by inept and corrupt government interference will almost certainly increase the problems many fold. In the process government will again “socialize the losses” which means the taxpayers will pay for the disappearance of real estate values and you can be certain that cronies and insiders will become very rich in the process.

In an article published on December 7, 1987 in the Houston Business Journal (LESSONS TO BE LEARNED IN THE TEXAS THRIFT CRISIS) I outlined “ how to avoid the danger of total collapse and its first symptom - the loss of confidence.” We are at that dangerous fork in the road again with loss of confidence growing. There is still time to provide a private sector solution before we allow the mindless rule makers deprive us of using judgement instead of fiat.

In 1986 I proposed a simple solution that was widely hailed and accepted. It was the concept of asset warehousing so commonly used on a grand scale by government in the warehousing of many commodities in order to prevent the destruction of their market value.
Real estate is a substantially more important commodity than any other product be it butter, corn, wheat, etc, The public understands that real estate is also a cyclical commodity and that fluctuates in value pursuant to the supply and demand cycle.

Dumping real estate when its value is low has a cumulative, domino effect on all real estate values. It is a non stoppable avalanche hurting everyone. My organization, READY* ASSOCIATION proposed to acquire troubled assets and properties from financial institutions in exchange for 10 year zero coupon bonds. We would then have been able to warehouse these assets during the down cycle, enhance their value by qualified (non-governmental) management, that included our ability to participate in joint ventures, proper maintenance, repair and potential development, etc. Unlike government, READY would have been a profit oriented business enterprise to assure our ability to retire the zero-coupon bonds upon their maturity. In the housing market we would rent troubled or foreclosed houses with an option to buy, so that renters would get partial credit for the rent they pay in order to create an equity for future home ownership.
There was also a great accounting benefit to the banks. They could report the accruing interest on the bonds as income thus restoring their regulatory compliance.

Alas READY was doomed to fail, because we would only pay for the real estate what its market value was and not what the institutions carried it on their books. Paying an excessive price would have impaired the value of our bonds. Paying market value, however, would disclose the losses hidden on the books and that is what Washington could not allow to happen before the 1988 presidential elections. So they cynically delayed the disclosure for almost 2 years allowing the losses to mushroom.

This is an election year. Losses are again revealed using the old salami tactic - slice by slice - so that we do not panic. With the record of past governmental solutions to private sector problems, as best demonstrated in S&L and real estate collapse of the 1980s, are we again looking at the abyss of loss of confidence and the disaster beyond?


Mr. T.W. Tibby Weston is the retired president of *Real Estate Acquisition Development and Yield (READY) ASSOCIATION, an asset warehousing and enhancement organization which proposed a solution to the S&L and real estate crisis of the 1980s. He published several articles on the subject in HBJ and describes the history of READY in his book HOW TO MAKE MILLIONS IN REAL ESTATE AND LOSE IT.
Mar 16
Short agitations

Stupid Cubans
Seven members of Cuba's national soccer team, which tied the United States in an Olympic qualifying match Tuesday night, deserted the team in Florida before its match Thursday against Honduras.

These must be stupid people. Didn't they know about our terrible medical system as described in "Sicko"? Didn't they ever listen to Jimmy Carter, Danny Glover, Michael Moore who believe Cuba is paradise compared to the USA? Must be problem with their brain having hit too many balls with their head. Do you reckon they are in time to vote in November? At least we know they won't vote for Hillarama.

Obama's tax plan

Mr. Obama’s has a tax plan to increase social security revenues by collecting money from higher earners. Do you think high earners will just take it lying down and cough up all that new money. My company's motto for 40 years was "Real Estate at a Tax Advantage" so I know what will happen. Obama's plan would dramatically raise incentives for tax avoidance and evasion, further degrading revenue gains. Many high-earning individuals evade the Medicare payroll tax by setting up “S Corporations,” paying themselves in untaxed dividends rather than taxable wages. John Edwards avoided $590,000 in Medicare taxes this way in the 1990s. Under Mr. Obama’s plan, Mr. Edwards’s savings would have exceeded $3 million. With that much at stake, the incentive to follow Mr. Edwards lead will be that much greater.

Wrong about Wright?

It doesn’t seem to matter that there is more than enough evidence in Obama’s own memoirs and past interviews and puff pieces—as well as the common-sense deduction that one does not frequent a church that preaches hatred for 20 years and remain oblivious to the rantings of its preacher, and the attitude of the church—that Obama knew what went on.
Obama’s assertion he will stay on at the church due to Wright’s departure is is a joke, since Wright’s successor Otis Moss III, in a recent CNN interview, defended Wright and indicated that he and the church will not turn away from Wright's message.

Obama has no problem preaching a new unity and racial healing, because he understands where he came from: a church that preaches hatred of the US and love of Africa. The repugnant rhetoric comes from the Trinity Church and not just its former preacher. How long before Obama is going to resign from the church to attempt to blot out either his ignorance, that he did not know what the church stood for, or his connivance and approval of what Wright stood for?

A logical question: Should we just ignore this issue and vote for to the type of audacity of change envisioned by the Rev. Wright and made the title of Obama's autobiography?
Should we be concerned that an inexperienced leftist politician who comes from a background of close connection with extremists and terrorists could be president of this nation?

Israel's final agony?
As Israel's enemies see the Palestine problem, the Jewish state, with the weakest and most unpopular prime minister in its history and an army that failed in the second Lebanon war, is in political, military and public-relations free fall. Its military neither intimidates nor defeats its enemies. In spite of repeated assassinations, barrages and incursions, the terrorists continue to lob rockets and missiles into Israel at will. The principal reason, in their view, is Israel's paralytic fear of negative world opinion and of inflicting enemy civilian casualties. As Fouad Ajami of The Johns Hopkins University has observed, the terrorist "always works with the winks and nods of the society that gives him cover."
So, if the Jewish state does not conquer its fears and inflict more, not less, collateral damage in the places from which the terror emanates, it will surely die.

Come Mr. Taliban, tally me banana...but not my Yankee Magic!

The Taliban are having a bad Winter. The Pakistani army offensive against the Pakistani Taliban has cut off a source of reinforcements. Battles on the border, as Afghan and NATO troops catch Taliban crossing, have declined over a third. As a result, more foreign fighters are being found among dead and captured Taliban. The Taliban are also showing signs of being terrorized themselves. An example was a recent demand by Taliban around Kandahar, that cell phone companies shut down service at night. If not, the Taliban will attack cell phone towers. The Taliban believe the Americans use cell phone signals to track the Taliban at night, and guide smart bombs to where the Taliban are sleeping. Few in the Taliban seem to understand how ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) works, so these threats are simply a desperate reaction to many night time smart bomb attacks, or police raids, on houses where Taliban were spending the night. The Taliban themselves make heavy use of cell phones, at least in the few areas (mainly the large cities, like Kandahar) where there is cell phone service. The Taliban see such "Yankee Magic" as another sign that the Americans are in league with the devil.

This become more of an issue as cell phone service moves into rural areas. The cell phone companies make deals with the local tribal leaders, who want cell phone service. Not so much to call in the police, but to stay in touch with friends, family and the few government services that are available. This forced the Taliban to compromise, and not try and shut down rural cell phone service entirely. But even trying to shut it down at night becomes one more thing that makes the Taliban unpopular.
Mar 18

WAGING THE FINGER IN YOUR FACE

No I am not talking about Bill Clinton and his “not having sex with that woman” finger. This is Barack H. Obama telling you last Friday that he has “not having listened” to the hateful tirades on Rev. Wright. Over the weekend more evidence surfaced that he actually had listened to the sermons, accompanied by his small children. So what do we hear on Tuesday? Let me withdraw that finger and put another finger in your face about why I listened and why I understand the sermons. Here is a Bill Clinton, just as smooth but also really black, not just by acting black, as Ferraro pointed out. Here is an improved Bill Clinton, who capitalizes on the perceived guilt of white America. Up until the finger waving he was not the dangerous, easily hated and feared, in your face Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, but a clean, smooth, nice, black young man, with a nice oratorial voice and non threatening demeanor. His own book calls for a strategy of not making any bold or threatening moves.
Obama knew all about Rev Wright, his close friend, who had to be disinvited from his presidential announcement on Feb. 10, 2007 where he was supposed to be delivering an invocation. Care to guess why? By Obama’s own admission “because it did not want the church to face negative attention.” Wow! On February 10th Obama knew all about the hate mongering, Afrocentric, anti white record of his church, because he experienced it and participated in it for 20 years. So how did Rev. White react when asked why he was disinvited? “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.” This from Obama who denied until Tuesday March 17, 2008, that he ever heard any of those rough sermons.
Its a shame that Mr. Obama turned out to be just another scheming politician willing to do anything to grab power. He has made it even more difficult for future candidates to come forward and seek this high office. We will now suspect anybody who seems to be clean, smooth,and too good to be true. At least with Hillary we always knew what we were getting. Conniving, power hungry, ruthless some may say, but at least we knew her. Obama was a hope until we found out who he really is. Not a uniter, but a man with a record of fighting efforts to unite. He could not get rid of his white grandmother, who occasionally made racist statements, but nobody stopped him from getting rid of his close friend and spiritual advisor, an outspoken racist and America hater.
Now the democrats face the usual dilemma, that haunted them for decades. Decide between bad and worse. Did I hear Gore thinks there is an opportunity? Then it would be the choice between bad, worse and terrible.
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Mar 24

A MUTUAL FRIEND JUST RETURNED FROM A TRIP TO EGYPT AND ISRAEL. HERE ARE EXCERPTS FROM HER LETTER. READ AND BE WARNED!


Our trip was physically very hard. I lost 10 pounds and got sick. I
> am glad I went, but would not go back to Egypt. It is a dirty,
> ungodly country. The smog in Cairo Egypt was terrible. There are 17
> million people in that city and they just throw their trash in
> the streets. The Nile River is polluted. I don't know how such a
> people who built the pyramids regressed like they have. If the Arabs
> take over America, we will be a slum. And the noise pollution was
> terrible. They chant their muslim prayers all day.
Our tour guide was a Christian, and he was a fine young man, but the
> ungodliness of the population is everywhere. It was a real
> example of the difference of 'light' vs 'darkness.' Jesus is truly
> the Light!
Israel was clean and wonderful. We could eat the food and drink the
> water. They were kind and loved us. They may not believe in
> Jesus but you can tell that God is in that land.
We did go into Bethlehem. We had to let our Jewish guide out of the
> bus, and our Arab bus driver drove us through the security
> gate. That high wall that you have been hearing about on TV is there,
> dividing Palestine and Israel. We then got a Christian guide
> when we got into Bethlehem. I was there twice before, once in l980 and
> again in l999 and there is a stark difference in Bethlehem
> since the arabs have taken it over. There were hardly any tourists.
> We ate in a cafe on the square where I ate before which was
> packed with tourists, but today it was vacant except for us. They have
> killed their tourist trade. The Christians in Bethlehem asked us to
> pray for them, because they had no income now. The Arab men on the
> manger square glared at us. We did not feel safe
> and clung together. There were beggar boys everywhere. They hate
> Americans and Israel!!!!
>
> There is so much I could say about this trip. It has changed my life
> in some ways. I look at the lostness of the arabs and the darkness.
> I look at Israel; that tiny country amidst such turmoil. If America
> does not continue to support, Israel I believe God will
> judge us severely as Americans. The Israelite soldiers were such fine
> young men and women. They are clean and disciplined and have great love
> for their land which is something that is missing in America among some
> of our youth. I rode back to Lubbock from
> Dallas on airline with an American Air Force career soldier. He said
> the Israelite pilots were the best in the world. They can fly
> planes like no one else!
>
> Lastly, we were asked everywhere about the Presidential race in
> America. There was great interest. The Jews came up to us
> and asked us many questions. They said they do not want the Clintons
> again. They warned us that Obama is a muslim, not a Christian.
> In Egypt, the Arabs said the same thing to us; they said Obama is
> muslim and they are amazed that Americans would consider
> electing a muslim President of America!!


Mar 24

OBAMA MYSTERIES

THIS MAY NOT BE NEW TO MOST OF YOU, BUT TO ME IS SIGNIFICANT. RECITATION OF THE "ADHAN", WHICH IS THE CALL TO PRAYER IN ISLAM, ONE DECLARES HIMSELF A MUSLIM, ACCORDING TO THE KORAN AND MUSLIM TRADITION.

On February 27th, Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth."

In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."

The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:

"Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet... "

According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.

Obama knew this from his Quranic studies -- and he knew that the New York Times will publish this fact and it will be seen throughout the Islamic world.
Regardless of Obama's religion, what message is he sending the world's 1.2 billion Muslims?
THE PERCEPTION THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD IS THAT OBAMA IS A MUSLIM. HE ADMITS THAT HE WAS A MUSLIM FOR THE FIRST 27 YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
IF YOU NEED CONVINCING, PLEASE CHECK THE INTERNET. THERE ARE NO SITES "MUSLIMS AGAINST OBAMA" BUT THERE ARE SEVERAL "MUSLIMS FOR OBAMA". IF HE IS AN APOSTATE MUSLIM WHY ISN'T HE DENOUNCED, THREATENED WITH DEATH AND WHY ARE THEY NO RIOTS THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD?
HELP ME OUT AND FIND THE INFORMATION I COULD NOT. ALL I FIND IS A SERIES OF ENDORSEMENTS FROM MUSLIM LEADERS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
###


INCIDENTAL INTEL THAT YOU WON'T FIND IN THE MEDIA:

IRAN
The war in Iran is In the streets. In poor neighborhoods, drug addiction and unemployment supply a growing number of gangs with ruthless and brutal recruits. The police respond with public whippings and up to ten executions a day. So far this year, 48 have been executed, compared to 298 for all of last year. Opium and heroin continues to come in from Afghanistan, feeding millions of addicts. The war against the drug smugglers on the Afghan border leaves hundreds dead and wounded each year, as it has for a decade. The Afghan gangs have found it easier to bribe the border police, forcing the government to send more of its "Revolutionary Guards" (Islamic radicals forming a palace guard for the clerics running the country) to deal with the corrupt police as well as the well armed smugglers.

Meanwhile, police continue to expend a lot of effort on terrorizing the middle and upper class neighborhoods in the cities. Merchants, professionals and corrupt government officials still live pretty well, and their kids like to dress up. The Islamic lifestyle police are running into public resistance while enforcing conservative dress codes. Women, in particular, are getting more vocal in protesting the chador clad female police trying to haul them away for some clothing infraction. Now the police find themselves facing instant mobs of angry people intent on freeing well dressed, but religiously incorrect, prisoners. Soon enough, one of these incidents will escalate to rock throwing, tear gas and gunfire. Blood in the streets over a naked ankle?
***
AL QUEDA RECRUITING PROBLEM IN IRAQ
The sharp drop in suicide bombings in Iraq is partly due to the decline in foreign al Qaeda volunteers coming into Iraq. The recruiting, mostly in Saudi Arabia and North Africa, preys on the unique social conditions in those areas. Namely, high birth rates and high unemployment. This produces a lot of younger sons who are unemployed, unmarried and face a dim future. So the al Qaeda recruiter, often working out of a local mosque, makes a free trip to Iraq, ending in a glorious death for the cause, sound like a solution. But over the last year, the number of such volunteers has declined from 120 a month, to about 40. The main reason for this is bad news, and some survivors, coming back from Iraq. Not many of these losers make it back, but the word gets on to the Internet, and this has caused quite a commotion on pro-terrorist web sites and message boards. There's also been a sharp drop in pro-terrorist combat videos coming out of Iraq. This is largely due to the death or capture of the people responsible for getting those videos onto the Internet.

No one there wants to admit that al Qaeda has been beaten in Iraq, but the more first-hand accounts that show up, the more convincing the stories are. The truth is this. The al Qaeda volunteers have long been enticed by the prospect of killing American soldiers. That rarely happens, and survivor accounts always make that point, and the fact that al Qaeda is mostly killing Iraqis. Last year, most of the Sunni Arabs turned on al Qaeda, and this has been most difficult for the al Qaeda recruiters to deal with.

Some of the volunteers get no farther than Syria, where they find that you can't always get across the border, or that the contacts on the other side are not up to the task of delivering the foreigners to operational al Qaeda units in the interior. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been hammering the smugglers for several years, which leaves a lot of the al Qaeda volunteers stranded. Some of these guys have become so lost and despondent that they surrender to the Iraqi police. In any event, the majority of the foreign al Qaeda volunteers are used as cannon fodder. These fellows usually don't have any military experience, so they get minimal training with an AK-47, and often are useless in a firefight. Even against Iraqi police and soldiers, the foreign volunteers are only effective if in the company of a lot of experienced locals. For most of the last four years, the al Qaeda volunteers would go to Iraq and "die a glorious death." Now the trip tends to end in despair and humiliation. The word is getting around, and the recruiters don't like it.

Mar 25

I RECEIVED SEVERAL MESSAGES AND PHONE CALLS ABOUT THE AUTHENTICITY OF MY SHORT ITEM OBAMA MYSTERIES.
I CHECKED THE ACTUAL ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES. I HAVE ALSO FOUND AN INTERESTING TIME LINE OF OBAMA AND HIS RELIGION. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE CHECK http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_Obama/ObamaReligion.htm
AN INTERESTING QUESTION IS RAISED: WHEN AND WHERE WAS OBAMA BAPTIZED?
AN INTERESTING FACT IS DISCLOSED: TRINITY CHURCH HAS SEVERAL MUSLIM MEMBERS, WHO ARE STILL MUSLIM.
MORE INTERESTING: IN INDONESIA OBAMA IS STILL CONSIDERED A MUSLIM.
THE QUESTION I ASKED IS REPEATED: WHY ARE MUSLIMS SUPPORTING POLITICALLY AND WITH LOTS OF MONEY, A CONVERTED MUSLIM, WHO IS CONDEMNED AND FACES DEATH UNDER THE RULES OF THEIR RELIGION?
NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE.

PERCEPTIONS COUNT. THE MUSLIM WORLD PERCEIVES OBAMA AS A MUSLIM AND CONSIDERS HIS POTENTIAL PRESIDENCY AS A MAJOR VICTORY FOR ALLAH.

OBAMA SAYS HE WAS NEVER A "PRACTICING" MUSLIM. ALTHOUGH THE FACTS ARE DIFFERENT, THEY ARE IMMATERIAL. ISRAEL CONSIDERS "NON-PRACTICING" JEWS AS JEWS AND ADMITS THEM TO ISRAELI CITIZENSHIP. HITLER KILLED NON-PRACTICING JEWS. ISLAM CONSIDERS THE SON OF A MUSLIM MAN TO BE A MUSLIM. OBAMA FRATERNAL LINE IS ALL MUSLIM, SO IS HIS NIGERIAN FAMILY. THE MEDIA FORCED A MORMON OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE. WILL THEY TAKE A STAND ON THE RELIGIOUS ISSUE INVOLVING A DEMOCRAT?
DO WE HAVE A "MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE" WITH MONEY RAISED ON THE INTERNET FROM UNTRACEABLE SOURCES.

HERE IS A LETTER I RECEIVED FROM A READER WHO HAS SPENT DECADES IN ASIA , RUSSIA, UZBEKISTAN AND UNDERSTANDS BETTER THAN ANY OF US WHAT WE ARE FACING:

I'm with you 100% and if he gets in I will not be surprised to see it with the help of muslim $.

I just finished: WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM by the fictitious name Al Warraq. Meanwhile am reading EURABIA by Bat' Y'or. If I needed further convincing ( I don't) that the jihad mission is blessed and sanctified in the Koran, both these books by Koranic experts, have done it.

I feel most Americans are so hopelessly naive as to what is going on under their very noses-that and the collusion of those who DO know what's happening and hope to profit from it--that I wonder if our present democratic system will outlast my lifetime. FN

Apr 3 DNA AND JEWS

I was told in Europe that Adolph Hitler's hatred for the Jews originated by the fact that he may have had Jewish blood in him. He was born Alois Schickelgruber and it was never determined who his biological father was. His mother worked for various households. Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss had ordered the Austrian police to conduct a thorough investigation into the Hitler family. As a result of this investigation, a secret document proved that Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived her son. At that time, she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Salomon Mayer von Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy, she was sent back to her home in Spital where Hitler was born. If it is true that one of the Rothschilds is the real father of Alois Hitler, it would make Adolf a quarter Jewish. According to these sources, Adolf Hitler knew of the existence of this document and the evidence it contained. In order to obtain it, he precipitated events in Austria and initiated the assassination of Dollfuss. According to this story, he failed to obtain the document at that time, since Dollfuss had secreted it and had told Schuschnigg of its whereabouts so that, in the event of his death, the independence of Austria would remain assured. This information came from the high-level Gestapo officer, Hansjurgen Koehler. In 1940, Koehler published a book under the title Inside the Gestapo. Hitler's Shadows over the World. He writes about the investigations into Hitler's background carried out by the Austrian Chancellor, Dolfuss, in the family files of Hitler. Koehler actually viewed a copy of the Dolfuss documents which were given to him by Heydrich, the overlord of the Nazi Secret Service. The file, he wrote, "caused such havoc as no file in the world ever caused before."

The above little historical vignette is connected to the story attached above. Today for a small investment you can have your ancestry determined going back sometimes several thousand years. It may show what diseases you may have tendency for and may save someone's life in your family. Wouldn't be a hoot if someone would be able to test Hitler's DNA now and prove that he was really a Rothschild?

Apr 9

HOW TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING

I am not an expert on global warming. Neither are 80% of the so called scientists who proclaim that global warming is a man made problem. Nor are the politicians, regardless how much they weigh. I found out a few not very well known facts that are being kept from the public. So here they are and my proposal is sent to you to submit to your Congressman, or whoever has not been bought, or is a confirmed believer of "scientific" consensus.

The environmental community claims that global warming is one of the gravest threats to the planet. Unfortunately, they focus almost exclusively on abating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Domestic legislative efforts concentrate on raising fuel economy standards, capping CO2 emissions from power plants, and investing in alternative energy sources. Recommendations to consumers also focus on CO2: buy fuel-efficient cars and appliances, and minimize their use.

This is a serious miscalculation. Data published by Dr. James Hansen and others show that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of observed atmospheric warming. Who is Dr. Hansen: He is Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has been called “a grandfather of the global warming theory.” He is a longtime supporter of action against global warming, cited by Al Gore and often quoted by environmental organizations, who has argued against skeptics for subverting the scientific process.

Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

The primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2. The surprising result is that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term!

The fact is that sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we’re seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next fifty years. If we wish to curb global warming over the coming half century, we must look at strategies to address non-CO2 emissions. By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide are animal herds.

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled.

One of the largest methane producing sources are the more then 20,000 caribou roaming the Alaskan tundra. The best idea would be to drill all over Alaska and get all the oil possible hoping that it will kill some of the caribou. Just imagine killing two problems with one move. Less caribou - less methane gas - more oil - cheaper gasoline. Unfortunately we must be very careful doing it. Last time we drilled and put in a pipe line it increased the caribou population. So no more parks, feeding areas, nursing shelters. The more hunters - less farts. Isn’t it simple? Now if we could just use a similar concept with our Washington methane producers...

Apr 21

It is always amazing to realize how intelligent and educated the men were who created this country . Recently I have been watching the John Adams TV series and reading some of the writings and speeches of our founders. I now realize that the problem with our uneducated citizenry is not what they do not know; the problem is what people think they know just isn't so. It starts with the total misunderstanding that our form of government is a democracy. No wonder Hillary wants to do away with the Electoral College. Here is something I found that is not only profound but prophetic.

James Madison wrote a pro-constitution editorial (Federalist 10), that described in prescient terms precisely why political factions are dangerous. When there is liberty, he argued, some men will create more wealth than others. Property and class factions are the result. Members of these different economic classes are tempted to pass laws which help themselves at the expense of the overall public good... Ambitious men with rhetorical skill exploit these factions, rising through them to positions of power. In fact, these ambitious men need factions in order to gain what they want. Groups of politically alienated voters are ideally suited to a demagogue’s desire for power and prestige. The narcissists and the fanatics feed one another... Washington, following Madison’s lead, warned us in his Farewell Address that the power of party (his word for faction) tends to create convulsion and ‘false alarms’; that is social unrest and bizarre warnings about phantom dangers. According to Madison, eventually factions can gain so much power that they are able to promote laws which destroy the liberty of other citizens. For instance (and these examples are his, not mine) they may erasing debt obligations, or impose trade restrictions in order to protect certain interest groups from foreign competition, or perhaps impose special taxes on the numerically small propertied classes. Both Madison and Washington also warned future generations about the role of foreign powers in this process. Faction leaders often identify less with America than they do with their country of origin. For all of these reason, factions should be discouraged, and their effects minimized, said the men who met in Philadelphia. As I write this, I’m less and less clear whether I’m writing about Philadelphia in 1788 (when the constitution was implemented) or Philadelphia in 2008 (as I see it shredded). You probably are too.” —Jerry Bowyer

WARNING

PLEASE WATCH CAREFULLY FOR THE REPORTS ON THE UPCOMING APRIL 22ND MEETING ON THE MID-EAST SITUATION. WAR MAY HINGE AT THE OUTCOME!

Middle East sources report that Gazan Hamas leaders in secret conference with high Syrian and Iranian intelligence officers in the Syrian capital Sunday, April 20, decided to intensify the bombardment and attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip. Tehran and Damascus believe spasms of violence - not only on the Gaza-Israel border, but also in Iraq and Lebanon - will best serve their purpose at two important Middle East encounters this week, to be attended by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
CONFIDENTIAL
The discussions in Washington regarding any potential opening to Tehran have centered on boosting economic incentives in hope that larger economic carrots would compel a change in Iranian behavior. The idea of offering security guarantees has been considered in an effort to deprive Iran of incentives to develop a nuclear deterrence against the US. This would put the US in a position of protecting Iran against Israel. Look for the US granting Iran a dominant role in the region and begin focusing on how to influence Iranian behavior rather than how to roll back Iranian influence.

RELEVANT
The U.S. recently allowed its only Patriot battalion in Europe to hold a live fire exercise at a firing range on the island of Crete. The targets were four missiles, and two drone aircraft. All targets were destroyed. Seven PAC-3 missiles (costing $3.3 million each) were fired at the missiles, while three PAC-2 missiles (costing $2 million each) were fired at the unmanned aircraft. In most cases, two missiles are fired at each target, to ensure a kill. These days, Patriot units are more concerned with knocking down missiles, than aircraft.
Apr 23
Large US naval, air and marine forces are on their way to beef up the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and Middle East. They include two nuclear air carriers with assault troops on board.
###
Israel reopened all the Gaza crossings, and restored fuel supplies to the Gaza population. Israel forces were alerted to threat to Sufa crossing by armed bands as the trucks passed through.
This unilateral Israel gesture to Hamas to encourage the Palestinian terrorist group to accept the Egyptian-brokered arrangement for Gaza. This arrangement would lift the blockade on the Hamas-ruled enclave in return for its stopping missile fire on Israeli civilian communities and attacks on the border fence.
###
In the clearest indication yet that Israel now believes Iran's nuclear aspirations will be curbed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that efforts being undertaken by the international community will ensure that Tehran does not acquire nuclear capability.
In a series of interviews on the eve of the Passover holiday, Olmert stated: Iran will not get the bomb. "I want to tell the citizens of Israel: Iran will not have nuclear capability," he told the daily Ha'aretz newspaper."The international community is making an enormous effort - in which we have a part, but which is being led by the international community - so that Iran will not attain non-conventional capability. And I believe, and also know, that the bottom line of these efforts is that Iran will not be nuclear."
Until now, Israeli leaders have been far more equivocal when quizzed about Iran's nuclear program. A common reply has been that "all options" are on the table - a reference to the possibility that Israel might employ military means in trying to thwart Iran's nuclear drive.
###
The Kuwait conference was attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki who denied that his country, whose controversial nuclear drive has sparked a standoff with Washington, was helping Shiite militias in Iraq, and said his government backs the Iraqi government's crackdown on armed groups.
"There are armed groups in Iraq. A firm measure must be applied to disarm all these groups, without any exception," he told a news conference. "Weapons should be only in the hands of the Iraqi Army," added Mottaki. He denied accusations that Iran was assisting Shiite militias in Basra and interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.
"The ones who should be blamed are the foreign forces in Iraq," he said. "The Islamic Republic of Iran provides the strongest support to the Iraqi government and the political process and thus it is illogical to accuse us of supporting terrorist groups there."
###
Syrian news agency "Cham-Press" reported Wednesday morning that Olmert has relayed a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad affirming that he agrees to a full withdrawal from the Golan heights in exchange for peace with his nation.
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McCain, who visited rocket-bombarded Sderot, and expressed his identification, as a former prisoner of war, with the suffering of the families of the abducted IDF soldiers, represents a clear and firm line against terror. The Democrats are tottering after him in half silence: According to their view, Al-Qaida also certainly had a moderate wing, which on September 11 supported knocking down only one of the twin towers in Manhattan.
Khomeini chose Reagan, and freed the hostages the moment he was sworn in as president. Meshal, Jabari and Deif are now working for McCain. This may yet do some good for the hopes of peace.
###
McCain's campaign struck at Obama who in his debate with Clinton last week refused - as is his custom - to condemn Carter for meeting with "the Hamas terror group, a group is supported financially, politically and militarily by Iran." The same Iran whose president is calling for the destruction of Israel, accused McCain, and stole the headline from Hamas political leader Ahmed Yousef, who had said of his organization: "We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election."
The difference is clear, McCain said. He wanted to say, here is an evil square: Iran-Hamas-Carter-Obama. He also meant: If Obama is like Carter, the weak loser, then McCain is like Reagan, his idol, and all that is left is to rerun the election results from 1980.
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Apr 27

WHY OSAMA HAS NOT BEEN CAPTURED AND HOW DO YOU DO BUSINESS IN THE KHYBER PASS?

The Taliban and their al-Qaeda associates, in what they considered a master stroke, this year started to target the Western alliance's supply lines that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Their focal point was Khyber Pass, a key transit point for as much as 70% of the alliance's supplies needed to maintain its battle against the Afghan insurgency. The spectacular blowing up on March 20 of 40 gas tankers at the border crossing into Afghanistan sent shock waves through the NATO coalition. So much so that it made a deal for some supplies to transit through Russia, a much more arduous route.

This success was followed by a number of smaller attacks, and the Taliban's plan appeared to be going better than they could have expected Then came this week's incident in which the Taliban seized two members of the World Food Program (WFP) in Khyber Pass, and what happened afterwards put an end to the Taliban's master plan. When the Taliban's new tactic emerged, the CIA, which maintains its biggest South Asian presence in Pakistan - sprung into action and staged a coup of its own. The CIA was fully aware of the Taliban's designs on the Khyber Pass and invested a lot in the tribes to protect the route. In response, the Taliban threatened tribal chieftains, and launched a suicide attack on a meeting convened to discuss eradicating the Taliban from the area. Over 40 tribals were killed.

When US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte visited the Khyber Pass to meet with chiefs out of fear for the Taliban only six tribal elders showed up. It appeared the CIA had been outwitted, but their game was not over. A tribal leader by the name of Namdar came on board, offering to provide the Taliban with sanctuary for their men, arms and supplies along the main road leading to the border area. He gave these assurances to Taliban leaders in his own home. With the Taliban's arrangement with Namdar, the stage was set and they steadily stepped up their attacks on convoys heading for Afghanistan, leading to the capture of the two WFP members and their vehicle on Monday.

Then things suddenly started to go wrong. Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then the Taliban's ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked. The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized.
The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they assumed rightly that they had been sold out.
Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdar broke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, should surrender or face a "massacre," as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency meeting to review the situation. Al-Qaeda's investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdar and paid him $150,000 in local currency. The immediate result is that Taliban operations in Khyber Agency have been cut off. This in itself is a major setback, as the attacks on supply lines had hit a raw NATO nerve.

The above story is indicative of the complex situation in the area. The fear is that the various peace deals being signed now between the Islamabad government and selected tribal leaders could lead to a whole new batch of betrayals. The question is now obvious: Are those peace deals subject to betrayal to the highest bidder?
Apr 29

WHY BUYING GOODIES FROM WALMART INCREASES GAS AND FOOD PRICES?

It is very educational to occasionally talk to people and find out how they view the current economic difficulties we are facing. I had such a conversation with a friend while walking my dog.

D. Bush is a disaster. Why does he keep buying oil for the reserves? It just increases the price of oil. What he should do is release the reserves so that the price of gasoline would drop.

TWW. The amount of oil we are putting in the reserve is so small compared to what is being consumed, that stopping it would have no affect prices. The best way to illustrate it, we are one of 1,000 equal buyers of oil. If we stop buying, 999 would still buy and the price would not change. Besides that, the United States Congress on July 29, 2005 passed a law mandating the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1 billion barrels of oil. We are now about at 750 million barrels which is just enough to cover our consumption of oil for 60 days. If there is a war, or oil embargo, we would be out of oil instantly except for a mere 60 day supply of oil. That does not mean gasoline or jet fuel. The oil still has to be refined and thanks to the idiots in Congress our refining capacity has not increased in over twenty years.

D. At least Bush should do something about the high prices of gas and food.

TWW. You can do more about that than Bush. The law of unintended consequences has raised its ugly head again. We have been buying cheap goodies from China and other foreign countries. It has sure raised our quality of life.
Unfortunately it also has raised the quality of life of a billion Chinese. With all the money coming in suddenly the poor workers started making a decent living and a new middle class has rapidly developed. Guess what this new middle class wants? One hundred million people now want more and better food; they want to drive a car and lo and behold they want the same goodies that you are enjoying. When more people want the same goodies the price will rise. So the price of food and gasoline is rising.
Even if he could do it, would you like Bush to prohibit you buying goodies from China, so that the Chinese won’t have the money to compete for more food and gasoline?
Governments have little affect on the world’s economy. Every time they try to interfere by creating new laws, ugly unintended consequences arise. Right now we are experiencing a deliberately designed interference. The Federal Reserve had to make a decision of how to handle the dual dangers faced by our economy. Recession and Inflation can be influenced by government action. Unfortunately both cannot be handled with the same measures.
The Federal Reserve had to choose which danger to tackle first and which would be allowed to become worse. They chose to fight a Recession and allow Inflation to get worse. As Inflation gets worse, the dollar becomes cheaper. Oil has not changed in price. If you would pay for oil in gold, it would still cost the same as it did years ago. If you pay for it it Euros, the money of Europe, oil would still be much cheaper than paying for it in Dollars, because our currency has become worth less.

D. So what do you think we should do?

TWW. When you get angry enough I ‘ll let you know.
May 2


ATTACK ON THE DOLLAR
by Tibby Weston


BACKGROUND
Those of you, who have been my readers for a long time, must recall that I often explained that the real reason behind the Gulf War was Saddam Hussein’s attempt to abandon the US dollar for payment for his oil. In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD.

The original deal that pegged the oil to the dollar started with the Marshall Plan. In exchange for rescuing and rebuilding war torn Europe and due to our post war military strength, and because we had most of the world’s physical gold, all nations accepted the dollar as their reserve currency. The dollar was “as good as gold,” Initially this was not a big deal until 1971 when Pres. Nixon removed gold as the backing for the dollar and created our current “fiat” money which the Federal Reserve now massively prints and refuses to disclose the quantity being printed.

We offered OPEC a deal they could not refuse. If they would accept the dollar as the sole currency for the sale of oil, we would protect them in a dangerous nuclear world.
Just imagine that anyone in the world had to acquire dollars in order to buy oil. In order to acquire dollars they had to sell us something of value they produced and we would give them a pice of paper without any apparent value of backing.

The value of the U.S. dollar is largely determined by the fact that oil must be paid for in dollars. If the payment changes to another currency, such as the euro, many countries would sell dollars and cause their central banks to shift their dollar reserves because they would no longer need dollars to buy oil and gas. This would weaken the dollar relative to the euro and a weaker dollar results in higher oil prices. This was and is the strongest motivation for the Gulf war and the current war in Iraq. It is just too complicated for the average uneducated American to understand this, because it cannot be done in 30 second sound bites.

Iran now does not accept US Dollars. This will give added reason for the U.S. to topple the Iranian regime as a means to revert Iran's oil transaction currency to USDs.
Again we are planning to use force to compel people to accept our dollars so we can maintain our fiction of prosperity and allow our politicians to maintain power by handing out our dollars to voters.

When Venezuela announced its intention to follow Iran’s example, an attempt was made to overthrow Chavez. This attempt was strongly supported by the US.
I have long predicted that our greatest danger is not from military force, but from an economic attack against us. We have been handing the ammunition for such an attack to our enemies: the paper dollar. Our doomsday will come day when oil-producing countries will demand gold for their oil rather than dollars or Euros.

NOW THE NEWS YOU WILL NOT HEAR MUCH ABOUT

History repeats itself. Following the abandonment of the gold standard for the dollar, the finance minister of Kuwait asked: “Why should we sell our black gold in exchange for un-guaranteed currency notes, the US dollars?” To avoid this crisis the US started getting more involved in the region, propping up friendly dictators, encouraging the war between Iraq and Iran and Saddams’ invasion of Kuwait. This is where the irony begins. Kuwait ought to be grateful for its liberation. Yet here is what happened yesterday.

On Thursday (May 1), the finance minister of Kuwait, Mustafa al-Shiwali, suggested that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were considering an idea to abandon their long-standing US dollar pegs. This is a major development, feared, but not unexpected.

Despite owing a debt of gratitude for getting their country back, it is interesting that Kuwait today is concerned more about domestic inflation that has run away to absurd levels, and less about kicking the US when it is down. This is the new and dangerous world we are living in and ignored by the presidential candidates.

The likely consequences of Gulf countries abandoning their US dollar pegs will be twofold. First, their overall holdings of US financial assets, such as government bonds and shares, will have to fall dramatically. We will see actual selling of US Treasury bonds that offer yields equal with official inflation and less than half of unofficial inflation figures.

The second consequence will be the increase of the price of oil. This will have a major impact on all oil importing countries throughout the world, including China and Japan. They would need to sell their US financial assets to convert it to a currency acceptable by the oil producers.

The new world will be looking for a currency with reserve value after abandoning the dollar. Money is wealth in transit. Commodities are wealth but they must
be converted to money to be traded. I can only see one solution. Return to the gold standard.
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May 9

TOU MAY WANT TO READ THIS ISSUE WHILE SIPPING SOME PINOT NOIR, WHICH IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH, TO OFFSET THE IMPACT OF THIS NEWSLETTER ABOUT
IDIOTS - ENERGY - INSANITY

I am sure you agree that the messages by the presidential candidates have been dumbed down to the idiot level. We hear carefully polled, researched and rehearsed stereotyped, inane messages about improving healthcare and education, finding an answer to the energy crisis and to global weather changes, homeland security and the war against terror as though those messages were an original revolutionary idea of the speaker. Shallow words without substance that does not allow anyone with a minimum insight and reasoning to analyze and understand what they would do if elected.

How sad it is to live in such great times yet have our lives governed by idiots, because by addressing the hapless idol loving audience on an idiot level makes a speaker an idiot by choice. Good old Shakespeare had it right:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

> From Macbeth, scene V.

When substance is replaced by the audacity of hope, it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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ENERGY OR SINKING OF A SUPER POWER

According to the latest data from the US Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year. This is a leading cause for the dollar's ongoing drop in value. If oil prices rise any higher — in response, perhaps, to a new crisis in the Middle East (as might be occasioned by US air strikes on Iran) — our annual import bill could quickly approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars or more per year.

While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil producers on whom we depend are depositing their mountains of accumulating petrodollars in "sovereign wealth funds" (SWFs) — state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth. At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.

If you recall my reporting last November when ADIA acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these are but the first of a series of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top American banks and corporations. Foreign ownership of key financial sectors of our economy is only one sign of fading American superpower status. Oil's impact on the military is another.

Every day, the average GI in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With US forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline.

When questioned about why Iraqis are paying almost a third less for oil than American forces in their country, senior Iraqi government officials scoff at any suggestion of impropriety. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi governmental expenditures. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are supposed to address superpower patrons. "It's totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues," said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't compute as far as I'm concerned." Senator, what does not compute with me is your inane and impotent observation.

Would you expect, however, that our allies in the region, especially the Sunni kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the growing power of Shi'ite Iran, are willing to help the Pentagon out by supplying US troops with free or deeply discounted petroleum. No such luck. All oil-producing US allies in the region charge us the market rate for petroleum. Take that Mr. Superpower ands show it!. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump — and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can then use to cherry-pick our prime assets.

What makes matters even worse is that the US military will need even more oil for the future wars. In the future US war machine will rely less on "boots on the ground" and ever more on technology. But technology requires much more oil. The average GI in Iraq now uses about seven times as much oil per day as GIs did in the first Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.
Just remember the memorable scene from the Battle of the Bulge when German troops withdraw in defeat, because their tanks had no fuel to move forward. Welcome to the Future Superpower suckers.
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THE SIGNS OF NATIONAL INSANITY. Part 1.
I think everyone is insane except you and me. And you ought to be worried about me.
Insanity has become a national pastime. All one has to do is to watch daytime television and the TV evening news, read the daily newspapers, the weekly tabloids, and the news magazines, listen to the rantings of politicians on C-Span, or get into a debate at a cocktail party. Insanity is all around us. It's permeated the Halls of Congress and the Halls of Justice.
Insanity has become contagious and is even affecting the youngest residents of our nation. It is dividing the country into groups of narrow-minded citizens, establishing hate, anger, and bigotry as the ordinary sentiments of daily life, causing uncivil behaviors to be the acceptable form of debate, and creating and implementing absolutely ridiculous socialist policies which have been proven nothing short of insane.
Insanity, while spreading rapidly across America during the past thirty years or so, can be stopped. There is a cure, an antidote, a means of treatment. It's not easy to get back to sanity today, but it can be done. Intellectual insanity is the abandonment of Objectivity and is primarily responsible for the political and cultural crisis this country is experiencing today. The leaders of today were taught by the leaders of yesterday. Teachers at all levels of education have abandoned Objectivity as the correct world-view and passed this on to their students who become, of course, future political and cultural leaders. This is why this type of intellectual insanity is contagious. It is passed on from person to person.

In our new insane world there are new rules:
* Reality either doesn't exist or if it does we can't really know anything about it and in the alternative "reality" can be "created" and one "reality" is as good as another;
*Truth is subjective and relative and there are no ways of knowing whether any proposition is objectively true or false;
* Moral principles and rules are subjective and relative and there is no way of knowing objectively whether an action is good or bad, right or wrong - matters of morals are matters of personal taste.

In this insane world anything goes. All that is needed for something to be true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, is for some "power to be" to declare it so. That power may be the opinion of the majority expressed by polls; the opinions of the “famous” as found in the National Enquirer, or the "authority" of the politicians in behalf of “ government”. I used to believe that wisdom was limited, but stupidity had no limits. I now believe that insanity is more dangerous than stupidity and the combination thereof can destroy a nation, the world and civilization.
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May 11

I AM FOR CHANGE. HERE ARE THE ISSUES THAT REQUIRE URGENT CHANGE.
PART 1.


I am not an expert on American history and watching the John Adams cable series was another eye opener for me about the quality of the founding generation of this country. Their foresight is almost unbelievable. They feared a centralized government that could bankrupt the people with unaccountable spending and imperil the people by entanglement in needless foreign wars.

They could not, however, foreseen a citizenry so disengaged from lessons of history and unable to muster a serious thought about reforms needed to stop our suicidal decline into becoming a has-been super power.

Civic involvement, and the value of American citizenship is at the lowest level in our history. The old affiliations that once allowed citizens to participate in distinct political parties, no longer exist, replaced by television game-show type elections that resemble American Idol more than any functioning political process of self-government.

Our politicians follow the well established political concept of “what you can sidestep to day might go away tomorrow.” Do you recall the song by the Texas Governor in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”?

http://www.videosift.com/video/Best-Little-Whorehouse-in-Texas-Dance-a-little-Sidestep

What they did not foresee, however, that the nation’s economy and the government itself would be captured by financial interests. Prosperity created banking and the financial system to handle wealth. Money is wealth in transit and Wall Street has become the agent of such transit into assets and in the process, by manipulating financial innovations, they done an end run around the banks.

With the blessing of politicians of both parties, the recipients of Wall Street largess in contributions, Wall Street created an unrealistic economy by running periodic Ponzi type machinations. The manic bubble and boom periods appeal to the weakness of human nature by promising untold wealth at small risk. Such a Ponzi scheme was the 1990s technology scam that made Wall Street wealthy but investors had to watch helplessly as their assets disappeared in the technology, telecommunication bust.

Enron thought that if Wall Street could become rich as merchants of wealth, Enron could do the same by becoming energy merchants. Another boom and bust.

Without much public awareness, the financial services sector - banks, broker-dealers, consumer finance, insurance, and mortgage finance - grew past manufacturing in the 1990s to become the largest sector of the US private economy. Larger than manufacturing, industrial, health and wholesale and retail.

Wall Street is the biggest political contributor to the political parties and has changed our entire system of government to form of government controlled by entrenched interests promoting legislation to create profit for themselves while ignoring the national need. Citizens are no longer capable, or willing to assume responsibility for their choice of legislators. We now have the politics of evasion, the “side step”, and a refusal to confront the challenges America faces, because it may interfere with profitability of their sponsors. The financiers of Wall Street have no patriotic relationship with America. At the drop of a chart they are ready to move their operations to Dubai, or any other place more suitable for profit making.

The uneducated public is further hampered by political correctness, religious fundamentalism, and other inhibitions that dumb down any national debate on these issues to the level of simpletons.

I am one of those simpletons who had not noticed until it was too late that

a. almost ten years ago the government started under-reporting inflation and over-reporting growth;
b. the Federal Reserve decided to keep secret how many dollars they print;
c. financial innovations praised by Alan Greenspan (derivatives, hedge funds, securitization) created assets out of thin air and defrauded the entire world;
d. the Federal Reserve’s first objective in an emergency was to save Wall Street and not the US dollar we need to buy food, clothing and shelter with;
e. Wall Street and the Government created “prosperity” for us by creating a mountain of debt for our children and grandchildren;
f. they stole the Social Security funds and converted them from money we owned, to money we owe.

Then came the housing and energy crisis.

May 19

Barack Obama said in his recent speech: " I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did." I assume all of you know that the statement was false. Neither Roosevelt or Truman ever talked to leaders of Germany or Japan. As to Kennedy, I'll get to that later.

Obviously Obama made that statement either out of ignorance or with the assumption that the dumbing down of the average American has reached such dimensions, that even obvious, in your face lies would not be recognized. Was Obama counting on the success of the educational establishment which eradicated American history from the curriculum?

If he spoke out of ignorance it should give you the shivers of what he might do out of ignorance if he ever becomes Commander in Chief and President of this country.
If he spoke out of political chicanery it should give you shivers of what he might do out of political chicanery and deceit if elected President.

Now lets look at the other side of the issue. What happens when an inexperienced president faces a shrewd and determined enemy. JFK indeed spoke to Khrushchev, our COLD WAR antagonist. Russia was not threataning to destroy us or our allies. We were involved in a world wide confrontation between our capitalistic republic and the communist ideology of the Soviet Union. We were substantially more powerful and Russia was not about the test our power. They were to test our resolve and will to use that power.
The Russians had a major problem at that time. The United States had placed nuclear missiles in Turkey that were able to reach Moscow within minutes. Mr. Khrushchev wanted desperately to remove this imminent threat.

New York Times columnist James Reston, who traveled to Vienna with President Kennedy, wrote: "Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs. He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him, but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed."

This created what we now charitably call the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev sent missiles to be placed in Cuba with a dual purpose. Either to establish a nuclear threat against the US similar to the one created by the missiles placed in Turkey by the US, or in the alternative force the US to remove their missiles from Turkey in exchange for not placing them in Cuba. Kennedy offered a three-part ''ultimatum'' to the Russians - that the missiles in Cuba be withdrawn, that the United States in return would not invade Cuba, and that the United States would pull the missiles out of Turkey. All this had to be worked in secret because most of the Kennedy advisers believed that a public trade of missiles could destroy NATO , because it would have been perceived as selling out a NATO ally (Turkey).
Khrushchev accomplished his goal. The inexperienced young president made a deal. Russia, do not place your missiles in Cuba and we will remove ours from Turkey and promise never to invade Cuba. Khrushchev's bluff worked. Kennedy retreated. Now you know why Fidel Castro lasted all these years. Do you think Khrushchev would have tried this trick with Reagan?

Chicanery or ignorance? Which one are you in favor of?
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May 22

STOP FOR A MOMENT OF SANITY - a moment of KISS.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said oil prices that surpassed $133 a barrel yesterday could not be explained away by normal supply and demand.
"The issue is simple," Mr. Leahy said. "People we represent are hurting; the companies you represent are profiting."

Here in a nutshell is the idiocy of Washington politicians and their deceit, grandstanding and impotence on display. Also on display at the hearings in Washington were the top executives of oil companies, who live in a rarified atmosphere of wealth and who cannot express themselves in a manner that the customers, the angry voters, would instantly comprehend and realize what is wrong and why the hearings before Congress are a farce. Let me give you an example of how to handle the media, the idiots in Washington and get the message across. A top executive said in answer to the demand for excess profits taxes: "Taxing us will not reduce the price of gas."

If I were an oil company executive my answer would be entirely different. "Senator, if we are willing to give up our profit and work for free, it would reduce the price of gasoline by 4 cents a gallon. How much of the 18 cents a gallon Federal Excise Tax are you willing to give up to ease the pain of hurting people? How much of the 48 cent State excise and sales taxes are local politicians willing to give up to help people who are hurting?"

We live in a world of sound bites and simple, aggressive, firm statements can be made, repeated over and over again, until even the biased media could not help but report them. The people who are hurting understand Jay Leno's one liner better than all the BS coming out of Washington: "The Democrats say drilling in Alaska won't reduce the price of gasoline for at least 10 years. Isn't this what they said 10 years ago?"

We need leaders in Washington who talk less, but with speak with conviction and force. How about this: "The Democrats want us to use alternative energy not oil, do not want to drill for oil, do not want us to produce oil out of coal, do not want us to build nuclear energy plants and 60 days ago proposed a 50c/gallon 50c/gallonfederalfederal tax to reduce consumption. They have a plan to make gasoline out of your food and it is working. Just look at your grocery prices. "

HOW ABOUT KISS AND IRAQ?

> You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? According to the Most Liberal Estimates the war has cost us so far over $540 Billion over six years. That adds up to the cost of the war in Iraq to be an average of $90 Billion per year. Let us put it perspective. U.S. defense spending is around all-time lows in relation to GNP: 4-5% and the amount spent on the effort in Iraq is only 1/5th of overall defense spending. This means ONE percent of our GNP. In the last year of World War Two, we spent over 40 percent of our GNP on that war in ONE YEAR!

You think we have too many troops there?
When we had only 140 million people in the US in 1946, yet we left 200,000 soldiers in Japan and Germany and some are still there today 60 years later.

Then came Korea. We left 100,000 troops there and some are still there today.

Then came Vietnam, created and mishandled by LBJ, with 600,000 troops.

Yet you think 130,000 soldiers out of 300+ million population is too much?
Too many are dead? More died on the first day of World War 2 than in the 6 years of the Iraq conflict.

If we walk away from Iraq and abandon it to the control of unfriendly oil producers, the resulting chaos and price increases in oil would be devastatingly costly to our economy. Every dollar increase in the price of gasoline costs us $150 Billion, far more than the cost of the war. Can you imagine $5.00 gasoline costing us $300 Billion a year more?

Now for a more accurate way to look at the war:
$90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
May 28

LITTLE HISTORY

1. Scott McClellan's father was a lawyer at a prominent law firm in Austin that had dealings with LBJ. His father claimed that LBJ orchestrated the Kennedy assassination. His accusations were the basis of one of the segments of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" aired by the History Channel a few years ago that the Johnson family demanded never be shown again. The senior McClellan was run out of the law firm. Perhaps, Scott is just a chip of the old block! (RL) http://www.rense.com/general40/thewnk.htm

2. I have not read the book, but neither Libby , nor Rove outed Valerie Plame as claimed by McClennan. Here are the facts from Wikipedia:
"Journalist Bob Woodward of The Washington Post revealed on November 15, 2005 that "a government official with no axe to grind" leaked to him the identity of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame in mid-June 2003. According to an April 2006 Vanity Fair article (published March 14, 2006), former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee said in an interview "that Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption," though Bradlee later told the Post that he "[did] not recall making that precise statement" in the interview.[10]

On March 2, 2006, bloggers discovered that "Richard Armitage" fit the spacing on a redacted court document, suggesting he was a source for the Plame leak.[11]

On August 21, 2006, the Associated Press published a story that revealed Armitage met with Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003. The information came from official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.[12]

In the September 4, 2006 issue of Newsweek magazine, in an article titled "The Man Who Said Too Much", journalist Michael Isikoff, quoting a "source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities", reported that Armitage was the "primary" source for Robert Novak's piece outing Plame. Armitage allegedly mentioned Ms. Wilson's CIA role to Novak in a July 8, 2003 interview after learning about her status from a State Department memo which made no reference to her undercover status.[13] Isikoff also reported that Armitage had also told Bob Woodward of Plame's identity in June 2003, and that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigated Armitage's role "aggressively", but did not charge Armitage with a crime because he "found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward".

Novak, in an August 27, 2006 appearance on Meet the Press, stated that although he still would not release the name of his source, he felt it was long overdue that the source reveal himself.[14]

Armitage has also reportedly been a cooperative and key witness in the investigation.[15] According to The Washington Note, Armitage has testified before the grand jury three times.[16]

On August 29, 2006 Neil A. Lewis of The New York Times reported that Armitage was the "initial and primary source" for columnist Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 article, which named Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" and which triggered the CIA leak investigation.[17] On August 30, 2006, CNN reported that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as leaking Ms. Wilson's CIA role in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak.[18] The New York Times, quoting people "familiar with his actions", reported that Armitage was unaware of Ms. Wilson's undercover status when he spoke to Novak.[19]

The Times claims that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was informed that Armitage was involved on October 2, 2003, but asked not to be told details. Patrick Fitzgerald began his grand jury investigation three months later knowing Armitage was a leaker (as did Attorney General John Ashcroft before turning over the investigation).

On March 6, 2007 a jury convicted Libby of "obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the FBI and perjuring himself, charges embodied in four of the five counts of the indictment".[20]

Fitzgerald has issued no statement about Armitage's involvement, and as of August 2006, the CIA leak investigation remains open.

On September 7, 2006, Armitage admitted to being the source in the CIA leak.[21] Armitage claims that Fitzgerald had originally asked him not to discuss publicly his role in the matter, but that on September 5 Armitage asked Fitzgerald if he could reveal his role to the public, and Fitzgerald consented.[21]

In a review of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, which hit book stores in early September 2006, Novak wrote: "I don't know precisely how Isikoff flushed out Armitage [as Novak's original source], but Hubris clearly points to two sources: Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage's political adviser, and William Taft IV, who was the State Department legal adviser when Armitage was deputy secretary."[22]
PS Just to remind you that Fitzgerals spent millions of dollars and 3 years "investigating" while knowing from day one who the leaker was. This is Washington where the truth is not important, the short term fame and publicity governs. What a bunch of lying crooks!
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Jun 6


OBAMA DOES WHAT POLITICIANS DO: HIS LATEST LIE TO JEWISH VOTERS

Barrack Obama stood before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Wednesday morning declaring: I want you to know that today I'll be speaking from my heart, and as a true friend of Israel and declared his complete, unqualified support for a Jewish Jerusalem. The Holy City, he said, "will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

The statement was greeted by obvious relief by the Jewish and evangelical communities which had been fearful of Obama's association with terrorists, with anti semites, racists, and Arab organizations. He received a rousing applause and I listened with wonderment: how long will it take before he would reverse, correct, deny his announcement? By now I know this man. He will do anything, say anything, and hopes to get away with it. A Bill Clinton duplicate, who has not discovered yet that in this world it is hard to point your finger and blatantly lie, because somebody is pointing a camera at you that will record your words.

My misgivings did not have to last too long.

In less than 24 hours he declared that he was misunderstood by the assembled naive Jews. On Thursday he was on CNN and said:
"Well, obviously it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues, and Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."

It turns out that despite the fancy rhetoric, an undivided Jerusalem has never been and is not the position of his campaign. Obama's real position is that in order to make progress on serious peace talks, the future of Jerusalem must be put on the table.

I am sure Jewish voters would be interested in finding out about the the true nature of Obama, before more revelations surface. Let them know.

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The insane are running the asylum. Examples permeating American society today. Scams, fraud, perjury, uncivilized behavior and other signs heralding the fall of the USA, unless you had enough.

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