JUNE 22, 2008
BEHIND THE SCENES, THE REAL STORY ABOUT ISRAEL AND HAMAS "DEAL".

It is one of those wonderful ironies that makes politics so interesting, and so ridiculous; Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has put his immediate political future into the hands of Israel's sworn enemy, Hamas.

The negotiated ceasefire with the government in Gaza - also Palestine's democratically elected leaders and a "terror organization" - is a desperate gamble, a last throw of the dice for the increasingly embattled Olmert, whose survival as premier now seems dependent on how Hamas responds.

The root of the problem is money - specifically, whether Olmert helped himself to a bit too much of it when he was mayor of Jerusalem. The corruption investigations have yet to reach a conclusion, but already the fragile ruling coalition is starting to crack under the strain.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the coalition's second-largest party, Labor, has threatened to bring down the government if Olmert doesn't resign, and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting impatiently in the wings to return to the top job.

Desperate, Olmert knows he needs something important to distract his detractors, to take the spotlight off his financial indiscretions. And so, like the bully who beats up the strange kid to cover up his own insecurities, Olmert turned on Palestine. But, perhaps sensing that the international community would not be too receptive to a full-scale invasion (and nervous to avoid a repeat of the bloody nose dished out by Hezbollah in Lebanon two years ago), Olmert eschewed the distracting pyrotechnics of tanks and missiles and pretty explosions. At least for now.

Rather than fireworks, Olmert chose sleight of hand, making Hamas an offer it was simply too tired and too hungry to refuse: stop the fighting, and Israel will open the supply lines, he told the Gazans via Egyptian mediators.

In itself, this was a pivotal moment in Israel-Hamas relations - by talking and agreeing with each other, even indirectly, both sides have conferred on the other the kind of legitimacy that betrays everything they stand for, but which finally recognizes the reality of the political situation. It is also a lesson that the US presidential candidates might take to heart, both of whom - Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain - have talked with varying levels of conviction of not engaging in dialogue with "terrorist organizations" and the like. Refusing to talk to them will not make them go away, however, and sometimes words can achieve more than guns and faulty intelligence.

All the same, the ceasefire is not expected to last. Certainly that is the mood among people from all walks of life in Israel's capital Jerusalem, and it is clearly the expectation of Olmert himself. "I have no illusions," he said in a recent speech. "What is called 'calm' is fragile and short-lived. Hamas has not changed its skin. These are blood-thirsty and despicable terrorists who even today are doing everything they can to harm Israeli civilians. Hamas ... will be responsible for any violation of the 'quiet'."

This last condition effectively sets Hamas up for a fall, for, contrary to perceptions, Hamas is itself not in full control of the Gaza Strip, which is home to numerous other militant groups which do not answer blindly to Hamas' commands. Olmert is effectively making Hamas responsible for the actions of people over whom they have little control; and by enforcing such a restrictive condition will greatly increase the chances of a violation of the ceasefire.

The depth of Hamas' lack of control was illustrated by the death on Tuesday of Army of Islam leader Muataz Durmush, killed in a targeted Israeli strike. According to The Jerusalem Post, Durmush had survived assassination attempts by both Fatah and Hamas over the past two years, and was considered by both parties to be "a thug and a murderer". In a rare alignment of interests, the Palestinians were just as happy as the Israelis to see him go.

Palestine is not a unified state, and Gaza not a unified territory; the chances are good that, however genuine the intentions of Hamas are, some other group will be responsible for violating the ceasefire. And should this happen in a dramatic enough fashion - should an Israeli be killed - then Olmert will find himself with plenty of justification in the eyes of those that matter (Israelis and the US government) to launch a full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip.

It would be a very brave Barak or Netanyahu then to dare topple the wartime leader of a country that would be riding the wave of nationalist fervor, and would at the very least grant Olmert something of a stay of execution; at best, with public support now behind him, the whole corruption investigation would fade quietly into the background.

However, should the ceasefire be broken in a minor fashion that would not provide legitimate cause for a full-scale offensive, Olmert would find himself back to square one with regards both to Gaza and his domestic situation. A return to the messy tit-for-tat of cross-border exchanges would do nothing for his popularity, and certainly would not deter his detractors. Instead, his critics would turn the guns on him, and it is unlikely his government would withstand the pressure. Step forward Netanyahu.

There is one other option, although it is a solution that is inconceivable to most Israelis (Arab or Jew); that the ceasefire is observed, and a semblance of peace and normality returns to Gaza and Israel's border areas. This will reflect well on Olmert, especially in the international community, although he will be fighting off the Egyptian mediators from taking all the credit.

But how peace will play out domestically is another matter. It should shore up popular support for Olmert, but is unlikely to stave off the corruption allegations, and could create more problems than it solves for the Israeli premier, particularly with the crucial conservative right-wing element of Israeli politics, which will see the legitimization of Hamas as a threat to the Israeli state.

A sustained peace is likely to see the government collapse, but this might not be a complete disaster for Olmert - his new, unaccustomed role as peacemaker will play out well in the polls, in the way that his current image as a venal, corrupt politician won't. (SA)

JUNE 23, 2008

BEHIND THE HEADLINES- INTEL BRIEFS.
For political and diplomatic reasons, it's not likely that the Israelis will get the credit they deserve for the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq. But it was Israeli concepts and tactics that helped bring IED (roadside bomb) casualties down from a high of 84 a month in May of 2007, to a low of 9 in May of 2008. While the new armored vehicles (MRAPs) and other technology (jammers and UAVs) played a role, it was the Israeli concept of going for the brains behind the bombs, that tore the heart out of the Islamic terrorist organizations in Iraq.

The armed forces of the U.S. and Israel have long worked together, to exchange tactics, techniques and technology. One of the items the Israelis shared was the tactics they developed to defeat a Palestinian suicide bombing campaign that began in 2000 (after Palestinian radicals refused to accept a recently negotiated peace deal).

The Palestinian terrorist groups still say they are going to destroy Israel. But as a practical matter, the current round of Palestinian terrorist violence is over. You can see this by the sharp decline in successful terrorist attacks, and the frequent pronouncements from the terrorists groups that they are going to behave, for a while anyway. What the terrorists really want is to avoid any more of the Israeli tactics that shot down their terrorist operations. This included going after terrorist leaders and technical specialists, and either capturing or (failing that) killing them. Raids and air attacks were made against buildings used by the terrorists, and tight security on Israelis borders were instituted. This last measure crushed the Palestinian economy, which put popular pressure on the terrorists to stop their attacks, and promise to keep it that way. The Israelis also set up an increasingly effective intelligence system inside Palestinian territories. What the Israelis did was "take the war to the enemy." This is an application of the old maxim, "the best defense is a good offense." This particular war is still going on, but the Israelis only adopted their winning tactics in 2003 and two years later the terrorists were rendered largely ineffective.

Similar campaigns were fought in Egypt and Algeria during the 1990s. The Egyptians defeated the Moslem Brotherhood (and the survivors fled to help found al Qaeda). Algeria finally defeated a similar movement only in the past year, the Egyptian campaign took most of the decade. Syria crushed the Moslem Brotherhood in the early 1980s, after five years of violence. These three Arab nations are all police states, and were able to deploy large numbers of police and soldiers that spoke the same language as the terrorists. Israel also had a large number of terrorists who spoke Arabic. Many had grown up in Arab countries, or had parents who had done so. What all these successful campaigns had in common was aggressive tactics that took the battle to the enemy.

For the rest of the world, treating terrorism as if it were just a police matter, allowed the terrorists to continue building support, and the ability to launch more attacks. By going into the terrorist neighborhoods, you disrupted their planning and recruiting efforts, and eventually destroyed the network of support. The United States clung to the police approach throughout the 1990s, and the attacks continued. Only after September 11, 2001, was the war carried to the terrorist heartland, and the attacks in the U.S., and against American targets elsewhere, ceased. The terrorists were forced to defend their base, and in doing so they killed many Moslems, and turned Moslem public opinion against them.

But going into Iraq worked a lot more effectively when the Israeli tactics were applied. This not only killed or captured key terrorist leaders and technicians, but demoralized many potential Islamic terrorists. Al Qaeda was exposed as a bunch of remorseless murderers who enthusiastically killed Moslems as well as infidels (non-Moslems). That cost al Qaeda their public support in the Moslem world, while the Israeli tactics cost al Qaeda its key people.
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RUSSIAN PILOTS FOR HIRE

The recent death of a Russian fighter pilot in Sudan, while flying a Sudanese MiG-29, brought to light the fact that Russian pilots, both active duty and retired, have been flying Sudan's 14 MiG-29s. This is because it has proven more difficult than expected to train Sudanese to do the job. One reason for this is that Sudan doesn't have many pilots to begin with, so the Sudanese MiG-29 pilots had to be recruited and trained from scratch. Since Sudan is a religious dictatorship, the leadership selected pilot trainees more for their loyalty than for their piloting potential. Many of these trainees proved inadequate as pilots, at least of high performance fighters like the MiG-29 (which is similar in size and capabilities to the U.S. F-16). Rather than have these expensive fighters sit around unused, the government hired more Russian "instructors" to not only devote more time to getting the Sudanese trainees in shape, but also to operate the MiG-29s.
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WHY IRAN NEEDS A WAR TO SAVE ITSELF FROM DISASTER
Underneath Iran's imperial ambitions and messianic pretensions percolates a patronage system that corrupts everyone who comes near it.

The system is rotten, and must either break down, or break out, that is, through military adventures. Western observers who hope for reduced tensions through replacing the feckless Ahmadinejad with Majlis (parliament) speaker Ali Larijani will be disappointed.

Iran's economic disaster looms large in the twilight war now in progress in the Middle East. Israel has just conducted the sort of public display of force that a nation does not do if it actually plans a surprise attack. Israel engages Syria, Egypt engages Hamas, and everyone else engages Iran - but to what end? It may be Sitzkrieg (sitting or phony war), but it is war nonetheless. Wars arise not from whim, but from circumstances that the prospective belligerents cannot bear. Iran has shown in the most vivid fashion that it cannot solve its internal problems. It is therefore likely to seek an external solution.

What happened to the US$35 billion of oil revenues that Iran's Shabab News, in a now notorious account, claims disappeared from official accounting during the year through March 2008? Half the country's oil revenues disappeared from the books.

During the past year, though, conspicuous consumption in the form of a luxury housing boom has absorbed even more of Iran's oil windfall. Luxury apartments in Tehran's better neighborhoods now sell for $15,000 per square meter, Agence France Presse reported May 26, equal to the best neighborhoods in Paris or New York. A 200-square-meter apartment in northern Tehran sells for about $1 million. Real estate prices in outlying suburbs and some provincial cities have doubled over the past year.

Corruption has metastasized, that is to say, for the scale of the property boom implies that tens of thousands of Iranians are taking six-to-seven figure bites out of the stolen oil budget. Rather than a handful of officials siphoning state funds into bank accounts in Dubai, an entire class of hangers-on of the Islamic revolution is spending sums beyond the dreams of the average Iranian, and in brazen public view.

The Persian pocket empire never had a government or a civil society: it only had a court and a bazaar, which are incapable of managing the affairs of a modern society. There is no political party, no social movement, in fact no form of popular organization of any kind capable of handling $350 million a day of oil revenue at present prices.

"Regime change" is a buzzword among Western strategists, but it is not at all clear what sort of regime might replace the court-and-bazaar combination that has characterized Persian politics for the past 2,600 years. Apart from a thin crust of Western-oriented students in the larger cities, the Iranian population remains sullenly dependent on state subsidies as well as its own ingenuity to earn extra money.

Prostitution is the most lucrative source of extra household income. Some 300,000 prostitutes ply the streets of Tehran, or one out of 10 of the city's female population of child-bearing age.

In addition, tens of thousands of Iranian women are working as prostitutes abroad, notoriously in the Gulf States, but in Europe and Japan as well. The US State Department recently downgraded Iran to a "Level III" country, that is, one that does nothing to suppress the trade in female flesh.
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I hope the above trivia was not boring and may have expanded your horizons.
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JUNE 26, 2008

HOW THE MEDIA TAKES YOU FOR A FOOL

The headlines generated by AP reports claim that POLITICS were considered by the Bush Administration when hiring Justice Dept. lawyers and US Attorneys.

"The report issued Tuesday concluded that politics and ideology disqualified a significant number of newly graduated lawyers and summer interns seeking coveted Justice jobs in 2006. The investigation is one of several that examine accusations of White House political meddling within the Justice Department. Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006.
Democrats quickly seized on the report to bludgeon the Bush administration for playing politics with a department sworn to uphold the law fairly."

Poor George Bush. He tried to be fair with the Democ rats and all he got is grief. Its too late to learn for him, but will John McCain ever learn this lesson?

So here are a few facts to be remembered:

One of President Clinton’s very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving, — except one, Michael Chertoff, now Homeland Security secretary but then U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, who was kept on only because a powerful New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, specifically requested his retention.

Were the attorneys Clinton fired guilty of misconduct or incompetence? No. It was just politics, plain and simple.

Patronage is the chief spoil of electoral war. For a dozen years, Republicans had been in control of the White House, and, therefore of the appointment of all U.S. attorneys. President Clinton, as was his right, wanted his party’s own people in. So he got rid of the Republican appointees.

Such appointments are, and have always been political. Does it mean able people are relieved before their terms are up? Yes, but that is the way the game is played.

Incidentally contrary to Clinton, who unceremoniously cashiered all Reagan and Bush 41 appointees, George W. Bush was planning to fire his own appointees. Just compare this, a president to be rethinking his own choices versus Clinton's muscling out another administration’s choices in an act of blatant, in your face partisanship.

This is what the Chronicle said on 3/27/1993 in their editorial: "Attorney General Reno has demanded the prompt resignations of all 77 U.S. attorneys around the country, all of them appointees of either Bush or President Reagan. There is nothing improper about that, per se. It is what happens when administrations change.".

My, my, how times change. There is another big lesson to learn. With the advent of Google you can now go back and search the records and find what they said then and what they say now. This is not Swift Boating. This is Sgt. Friday saying: Just the facts, nothing but the facts.


JULY 5, 2008

GOOD NEEWS ON THE INTELLIGENCE SIDE OF THE WAR?

The United States now has thousands of spies inside Iraq. This didn't happen overnight. For the last five years, the U.S. has been building an informant network there. This sort of thing takes time, and knowledge of how Arab culture works, and how to work it. The U.S. Army Special Forces, the CIA, reservist cops and Israel were key components. The results (mostly classified) have been impressive. For example, last year, tips from Iraqis led to the discovery of 6,963 weapons caches, plus similar information on safe houses and terrorists themselves. During the first half of 2008, tips led to finding nearly 5,000 weapons caches.

Five years ago the CIA had a shortage of people with practical experience in setting up informant networks. That's mainly because media and Congressional pressure in the late 1970s caused the CIA to largely get out of the spy business. Too dangerous because of the nasty people you have to deal with while recruiting quality informants. Thus the reservist cops and Israel became two of the major sources of expertise in this area.

In the United States, it's quite common for police to join the reserves. They don't always end up doing police work, but they have their experience with them always. In Iraq, reservists who were detectives and police commanders quickly saw the need for databases and developing informant networks. That led to the Israeli connection. Israel had been at war with Palestinian terrorists since 2000, and had cranked up their already extensive informant network in the Palestinian territories, and throughout the Arab world. Israeli advice turned out to be critical.

The "surge offensive" of last year was largely possible because the informant network had grown to the point where commanders were confident that many Sunni Arab tribes were ready to switch sides. They knew this because the Special Forces had taught so many officers how to "drink tea" (sit down and talk with local Iraqi big shots). Israeli intel experts advised on how to work an Iraqi neighborhood to find people willing to talk, and how to persuade them to do it even in the face of terrorist threats.

U.S. intel troops, mainly U.S. Army and contractors persevered, and now that's paying off. You can tell by the confident pronouncements from U.S. generals about success in Iraq. It's career suicide to make such statements, unless you are very confident with your resources, especially your intelligence capabilities. Naturally, no one will talk openly about this stuff. Can't risk giving the enemy anything. But in a decade or so, if not sooner, lots of details will come out. It's quite an epic adventure. What is known, however, and what can be now discussed is the role of private contractors in the development of U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Discussing any aspect of the American intelligence community is always difficult. Agencies routinely offer no comment when asked for information. Unlike the New York Times, which would blatantly disclose any military secret, those of us who are able to gather some facts must always consider the harm such information may cause if disclosed. So after careful evaluation here is some information that must be quite well known to foreign intelligence organizations and therefore keeping it a secret serves really no purpose.

The successes of the CIA are primarily due to the fact that it is able to contract sensitive operations to private sector spooks, who are less likely to be harassed by Congressional hotheads and pseudo traitors whose sole intention is to embarrass the current administration regardless of the harm it may cause to the national interest.

The numbers speak for themselves. Intelligence contracting has become a $45 billion industry, taking up more than 70% of the $60 billion the US government spends annually on intelligence. The companies that make up this intelligence-industrial complex range from the very large like Lockheed Martin to tiny and obscures ones like SpecTal and Scitor. They work every phase of intel from analyzing signals gathered by the NSA to providing disguises and covers for CIA officers operating undercover.

Private sector involvement in government surveillance goes far beyond the telecommunications industry to include many of the nation's top information technology companies. At times as much as 75% of the people at NSA headquarters and its ground stations around the world are contractors.

Contractors have taken over the training of military interrogators at the US Army's Intelligence Center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. And around the world contractors are taking the place of government operatives. In Pakistan three-quarters of the officers at the CIA station in Islamabad since 9/11 have been private contractors. In Baghdad, contractors have sometimes outnumbered government employees and have taken supervisory positions overseeing CIA agents.

The key question is whether this outsourcing is really good or bad. Private intelligence contractors have a strategic role. They are part of the process that may generate the intelligence that decides whether a nation should go to a war. Remember the debates over Iraq concerning aluminum tubes, uranium from Niger, and mobile biological labs and then imagine if such information was generated by a private contractor interested in making a profit and therefore perhaps not as reliable as a CIA operative. Some people may also be bothered by the fact that interrogations of enemy prisoners are being carried out by contractors beyond the reach of congressional oversight committees.

So the question must be rephrased. Is outsourcing not just good, or bad but is it effective? At this moment of time when the nation is so divided that an entire political party is willing to risk the survival of the nation in order to gain power, I believe effectiveness must be the prime criteria. Will clean up the mess after we have won. I am hoping that those private contractors are performing to win and not just to make money.
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JULY 20, 2008

THE not so SECRET BACKGROUND OF THE COLOMBIAN RESCUE.
The Republican presidential nominee visits Colombia to meet with President Alvaro Uribe on the very day that the Colombian military pulls off a major public relations coup by rescuing former presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, three American mercenaries and a dozen more hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Is it all all a big coincidence?
Do you think George Bush did not tip off McCain to the impending operation, allowing him to don his Navy cap and strike a pose on a Columbian anti-narcotics military vessel, while basking in Uribe's international media limelight? Obviously the Obama blinded US media would not show it, but the rest of Latin America noticed it in a big way. This was a significant event that put McCain in the middle of classified talks about covert operations with the head of another government.
It is now known that the Bush administration helped plan the operation and provided material support. And Uribe even briefed McCain (and his traveling companion, Sen. Joseph Lieberman) on plans for the raid before it took place. Bogota admitted that a US AWACS surveillance, command and control plane took part in the operation; that there was American help with the electronic aspects of the operation, and that Israelis had helped to train the special hostage rescue force. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the involvement of dozens of Israelis via the Global CST mercenary corporation that's owned by Israeli reserve generals Israel Ziv and Yossi Kuperwasser. Ziv, who was in Colombia during the operation, described the rescue as "a Colombian Entebbe operation." The daily quoted a company source who claimed that "We helped them to plan operations and strategies and develop intelligence sources."
Israelis are justifiably proud to have learned that a sizable group of agents from the Mossad and the Shin Bet were involved in the dramatic and successful release of hostages in Colombia who had been imprisoned for five years.
Israeli TV Channels 2 and 10 broke the news , saying that for the first time it could be reported that the Israelis were 'intimately involved in great depth' in the successful liberation of the captives, along with their American counterparts.
Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombia politician who was restored to her family said in her statement to reporters after her release: 'I am not aware of a precedent to such a perfect mission. Maybe only the Israelis with their wonderful commandos may be reminiscent of the mission that took place here.'
Betancourt's reference to Israel 's military history is not by chance. Last year, a group of Israeli military advisors, receiving approval from the Israeli Defense Ministry, resided in Colombia in order to assist the army there and especially the special units.
The Israeli mission was focused mainly on intelligence issues, special operations and integration and coordination between different security elements. This was in order to prepare them for a coordinated and productive campaign within a short period of time. The group was headed by Major-General (Res.) Israel Ziv, who served as the head of operations in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit up until four years ago.
Ziv and at least some of his men have already returned to Israel but the assistance the Israeli team provided to the Colombian security forces assisted them in attaining the list of successes they have been achieving lately against the FARC rebel organization, most notably the 'perfect' rescue of the hostages.
The Israeli TV announcer said , 'The names of the agents involved will never be made public but they are in fact our anonymous heroes.'


JULY 25, 2008

I AM TRYING SOMETHING NEW. 30 SECOND SOUND BITES. THESE ARE TALKING POINTS YOU MAY USE IN YOUR DAILY LIVES AND THEY ARE SHORT ENOUGH TO BE DIGESTIBLE. And there are no commercials between the sound bites!

NEW YORK
Last week, The New York Times noted that the advertising industry is pulling back from green-themed marketing, having "grasped the public's growing skepticism" over ads with environmental messages. Look for politicians to figure out sometime around 2012 that everyone stopped listening to bogus global warming sermons in 2008.

LONDON
The Labour Party is gradually pricing the working and lower-middle classes out of their comfort zone. With these core voters counting the rising cost of green taxes, tariffs and restrictions, the Labour Party's chances of re-election are dwindling. Labour's fundamental miscalculation has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement and climate change anxiety in an attempt to "modernize" its agenda. Labour's climate policy, however, is now backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political liabilities. Britain's Labour government may believe that its climate policies are saving the planet. But in the process they are destroying the foundations of the party. For the first time in its history, Labour is losing the support not just of so-called Middle Britain but of a large swathe of its core working-class support. If repeated at the next general election, the enormous anti-Labour swing in Glasgow East would be enough to sweep away more than half the present parliamentary Labour Party. Scores of seats that were once ultra-safe for Labour are now highly marginal.

ISRAEL
"The Chosen People" have become a bad moral joke. The biblical nation of Israel aka Jews, who brought morality into the world, are now doing the exact opposite--capitulating to evil by releasing 5 living terrorists in exchange for 2 dead bodies. Had the Allies captured Nazis during WWII and the Germans proposed trading Adolf Eichmann, Himmler and Goebbels for the crematoria remains of 20 Lodz Jews, the world would have been shocked.

OBAMA
The revelation that Barak Obama is 43.75% Arab goes a long way to explain his political and business connections to Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, Joseph Aramanda, Louis Farrahkan, and other characters he relies on as contacts, advisors, campaign organizers and political contributors. Obama needed the black vote, so he wrote a book and created a fictional African-American profile for himself. His real dealings are with his true heritage, anti-Israel Arabs.

HOT AIR
It takes vastly more steel and concrete per kilowatt hour generated to build a wind farm than to build a relatively simple, clean-burning, coal-fired or gas-fired power generation facility.

OIL
The longest-lasting solution to our energy problems is going to be exploration and drilling for oil domestically. I would suggest that OUR production should be restricted from the world markets and earmarked for domestic use only as soon as our production volumes equal our consumption. Then, except for the strategic reserve, any excess productioncan be sold on the world market. That way, we can thumb our noses at OPEC and do THEM some economic damage for a change by driving down the world market price. We know that we have enough oil available in the form of shale oil and as recoverable crude in the outer continental shelf, in AMWR and even close-in off both the western and eastern seaboards and in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida. Estimates are that there's enough untapped oil in those places to supply all our oil needs for a couple of centuries! Not only that, but the U.S. has 24% of the world's supply of coal and the WW II Germans proved that coal CAN be made into "synthetic crude oil" at a cost that's MORE than competitive when "natural" crude oil markets for anything above $30 per barrel. That would increase our oil supply good for another 200 years. Certainly in the next 400 years, an economic substitute can be found and put into common use! If it can't, we're doomed as a species anyway because we'd be too stupid to survive.

HEALTH CARE
Obama has said, proudly and often, "I am going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage." But are they "Americans?"Care for illegals is the biggest unmet medical need in our nation, and Obama's program targets it squarely. But do we really want to give them federally paid coverage equal to what US senators get, as Obama proposes?
That would trigger severe rationing: bureaucrats deciding who gets to see an oncologist, who can have an MRI - and even who can have bypass surgery and who'd die for lack of it.
These decisions would be made not on the basis of legal status but on the brutal facts of triage: Treat the 37-year-old illegal with his whole life to live before you spend scarce resources on an overweight, diabetic, 80-year-old citizen with high blood pressure who smokes. (YOU?)

BIG GOVERNMENT
The GAO says we already face a shortfall of $53 trillion between what the government has promised in entitlement benefits and what the current tax structure is likely to take in.
"Imagine we decided to put aside and invest today enough to cover these promises tomorrow," then-Comptroller General David Walker told the Senate in January. "It would take approximately $455,000 per American household -- or $175,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States."

GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
Nearly 32,000 scientists have now signed the consensus-busting Oregon Petition, saying they see “no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. They have now been joined by the American Physical Society, which recently announced that it was reassessing its prior position – that evidence for global warming was “incontrovertible” – because many of its 50,000 physicist members disagree strongly with climate chaos claims.

NEWS MEDIA BIAS?
A review of federally required campaign donation determined that those who identify their occupation as media contributed $315,533 to Democrat presidential candidates, but only $3,150 to John McCain. You do not have to use a calculator to conclude that’s “a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.”

SUPREME COURT vs. PROPERTY RIGHTS FIASCO
Three years have passed since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the City of New London, Connecticut, allowing it to dispossess Susette Kelo of her home. In the name of tax-revenue maximization, Susette Kelo and 14 other property owners had to make way for the grand redevelopment plan of a 90-acre site. Ms. Kelo’s home was moved piece by piece about a mile from her original property. But a funny thing happened on the way to tax-revenue maximization —the underlying economics changed. Developer demand for vacant ground has diminished along with the property tax previously remitted by Ms. Kelo, et al. Where there were families maintaining homes there are now empty and overgrown lots.
Tax revenue=zilch!

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JULY 25, 2008

SOME NEWS REQUIRE MORE THAN A SOUND BITE. HERE ARE SOME. FROM FUNGUS, TO IRANIAN AIRCRAFT MECHANICS, AMONG US.

OLYMPIC SCANDALS COMING?

You may want to learn a new word: Yarchagumba. It is a fungus that grows on the head of some caterpillars in Himalayas. Yarchagumba's reputed revitalizing qualities have made it a key ingredient in Tibetan and Chinese medicine for over 1,500 years. Tibetan villagers add it to their soups and teas to boost stamina and endurance and improve lung capacity, kidney function and sexual performance.

Less than 20 years ago the fungus captured the world's attention. In August 1993, at the Stuttgart World Championships, a team of unknown peasant women from China's northeastern Liaoning province stunned the world with their spectacular feats in track and field events. They swept all three medals in the 3,000 meters and took gold and silver in the 10,000 meters.

A month later, at the Chinese national championships, they shattered several world records. Wang Junxia, who won the gold in the 10,000 meters at Stuttgart, took the gold in the 3,000 and 10,000 meters and set three world records in three races. Wang's time of 29:31:78 in the 10,000 meters was the first sub-30 minute performance ever by a woman, beating the former record by a staggering 42 seconds.

Ma Junren, the runners' coach, denied allegations that their eye-popping achievements were fueled by banned drugs. Ma attributed their speed and stamina to grueling training over tough terrain at high altitude. He also mentioned a certain cocktail made of turtle's blood and caterpillar fungus.

Over the past year, the demand for the fungus reached new highs. In 2007, it cost around $9,000 per kg. Now it sells for between $16,500 and $23,000 per kg.
There is no hard evidence that the spurt in demand and prices is connected to the onset of the Beijing Olympics, but smuggling to China has notably increased. The Olympics EXERCISES revived memories of the spectacular performances of Chinese athletes in the 1990s and with it has come a renewed interest in the now legendary Yarchagumba. There is no blood test for Yarchagumba.

IRANIAN BLOCKADE EXERCISES

Operational Brimstone, started Monday, July 21, aimed at giving military teeth to the two-week ultimatum the six world powers gave Iran in Geneva to accept the suspension of uranium enrichment or face harsh sanctions and isolation.

Taking part in the 10-day exercise in the Atlantic Ocean are more than a dozen ships, including the US carrier strike group Theodore Roosevelt and expeditionary strike group Iwo Jima; the French submarine Amethyste, and the British HMS Illustrious Carrier Strike Group, as well as a Brazilian frigate.

About 15,000 sailors will be involved in Operation Brimstone. Both the Roosevelt and Iwo Jima will be deployed in the Middle East in the coming months.

The exercise is scheduled to end July 31, two days before the US-European ultimatum to Iran expires. A partial blockade of Iran’s shores, a key element of the new sanctions, would be limited to withholding from Iran supplies of benzene and other refined oil products - not foodstuffs or other commodities. Short of refining capacity, Iran has to import 40 percent of its benzene consumption and will be forced to react to the stoppage.

A GLIMPSE AT THE IRAN YOU DON'T HEAR ABOUT

On July 7th, an Iranian F-5 fighter crashed during a training exercise. One could understand that, as the F5 was an American built jet fighter Iran bought over three decades ago. Spare parts have been hard to come by, but Iran has managed, sort of.

The big problem is not the loss of three decade old U.S. jet fighters, but the many other older transports and airliners that have been going down. In the last six years, there have been at least a dozen crashes, leaving about 700 passengers and crew dead. Most of the downed aircraft were not American. Many of the lost aircraft were Russian, a nation that has no problems selling Iran aircraft parts. So what's the problem? Simple. Iranian aircraft maintenance sucks. That's because a lousy economy and a really bothersome lifestyle police have caused many technically skilled people to flee the country. Plenty of competent Iranian aircraft mechanics and engineers in southern California, not so many in Iran.

To make matters worse, anything involving aviation in Iran, gets a lot of attention from the secret police. Anyone of questionable loyalty to the clerical theocracy (that runs the country) is not suitable for key jobs (be they technical or managerial.) As a result, many organizations in Iran, especially government controlled ones, are poorly run. That can be fatal for passengers in Iranian aircraft. There are plenty of dead bodies and aircraft wreckage to prove it. It also says a lot about the readiness and capabilities of the ships and aircraft of the Iranian armed forces.

JULY 29, 2008

THE OBAMA CANDIDACY - A TEXT BOOK DESIGN?

I have long wondered how and why Barack Obama was picked for the role he is now playing and what are the ground rules and concepts his creators are utilizing. I found the text book upon which his presidential run may have been based and I will quote to you liberally from the book.

“Those who would transform a nation cannot do so by just breeding discontent, or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes. They must know how to kindle and fan extravagant hope. They must know how to preach hope.

To plunge into an undertaking of change, people must have the feeling that with an infallible leader they will have access to a source of irresistible power. They must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved. Experience is a handicap.

Faith in a cause is to considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Many join in political movements to escape individual responsibility, to be free from freedom. They want to eliminate free competition to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.

Where freedom is real, equality is the demand of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

The attitude towards the family should be hostile and they should do everything to discredit and disrupt it. Undermine the authority of parents; facilitate divorce; take over the feeding, education and entertaining of children; encourage illegitimacy.

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. You can start without the belief in God, but never without belief in a devil. You do not look for allies when you love. You always look for allies when you hate.

When our hatred does not seem justified, the desire for allies becomes more pressing. It is chiefly the unreasonable hatreds that drive us to merge with those who hate as we do, and it is this kind of hatred that serves as one of the most effective cementing agents. Our hatred comes not from the wrong to us, but from the realization of our inadequacy and cowardice. When we feel superior to our tormentors, we are likely to despise them, even pity them, but not hate them. Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

What are the talents requisite for a leader? Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality are neither indispensable nor desirable. The main requirement seems to be audacity; contempt for the present; cunning estimate of human nature; unbounded brazenness; fanatical faith in his cause. Charlatanism is indispensable to effective leadership. You cannot lead without deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

The plan is to 1. to discredit prevailing institutions and detaching from them the allegiance of the people;2. by creating a hunger for faith, so that when the new faith is preached it finds an eager response among the disillusioned masses; 3. by furnishing new doctrine and slogans of hope and change; 4. by undermining the conviction of “better people” those who can get along without this new faith, so when the fanatics make their appearance they are without capacity to resist.

The fanatics wait for chaos, the collapse of the old order. Chaos is their element. The first phase of the new movement is to create chaos to allow the use of force and coercion.


There is much more. Somehow it reads like an instruction manual.
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JULY 30, 2008

OBAMA’S TRIP – WHAT YOU DON’T READ IN THE MEDIA

While in Jordan, he met with King Abdullah—-the meetings all private and off-the-record of course, except Abdullah and his fellow Arabs came away encouraged that Obama would be more “even-handed” in dealing with the Middle East (meaning more pro-Arab and less pro-Israel).
Charles Hurt in The New York Post writes that Obama opted for no photo ops with any regular Arabs. Can’t run the risk of reminding American voters that his father’s side of the family is Muslim.
On talking to apocalyptic Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this week’s version is that he’s “always said” that he’d be open to talking to rogue leaders if he thought those talks could produce results. One problem: that ISN’T what he’s “always” said. He’s “always” said that he’d be willing to talk to Ahmadinejad and other maniacs “without preconditions”.
In Israel, where he railed against the possibility of a nuclear Iran, calling it a “grave threat.” Just weeks ago, however, he dismissed Iran as a small, relatively insignificant country that certainly didn’t pose a threat of such gravity
“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.”–Barack Obama, May 18th, 2008
Here are the latest news about the above tiny countries:
–Iran. Unquestionably the world’s number one sponsor of international terrorism. Once again they have refused to halt their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Their stated intentions: the destruction of Israel and the United States. Serious threat? Not according to Barack Obama.
–Cuba. As of two days ago Russia has stated its desire to put nuclear bombers in that bastion of Soviet-style Communism–situated 90 miles from our coastline. How fast could they get here? Twenty minutes. Serious threat? Not according to Barack Obama.
–Venezuela Hugo Chavez has just concluded a series of deals with Russia to acquire billions of dollars of additional military equipment, adding to the $4 billion dollars worth of hardware purchased by Chavez between 2005 and 2007. Unconfirmed story: the Russians will be invited to establish a military base in that nation as well. Serious threat? Not according to Barack Obama.
The Media has no guts to ask a significant question.

THE SURGE AND WHY IT IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER ISSUE

Obama on the day the surge strategy was announced said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse."
In November, 2007, two months after there was a substantial drop in violence. Sen. Obama said then: "Not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."
It wasn't until a Democratic debate January 5 of this year that Sen. Obama acknowledged violence was diminishing: "I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully are troops perform, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.".
But Sen. Obama had said precisely the opposite at the time of the surge and for six months thereafter.
Obama provided a misleading answer to a previously dishonest answer, in an effort to cover up his spectacularly wrong prediction.
A man who admits no mistakes is far worse than a man who makes no mistakes. It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows a defect of character to refuse to admit it.

AUG 3, 2008
WHENEVER I TRY TO DISCUSS BANKING AND ECONOMICS, I CAN SEE MY READER’S EYES GLAZE OVER AND SOON I CAN HEAR SOME SNORING. I DECIDED TO USE THE SOUND BITE TECHNIQUE AND TRY TO DISCUSS SUCH ISSUES IN A VERY BRIEF FORM TO PREVENT LOSING MOST OF MY READERS. MY APOLOGIES TO THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE BETTER VERSED ON THESE ISSUES.

Here is a sample of what the American tax payer would understand: ”Wall Street got drunk," said President George W Bush. “The recent credit crisis on Wall Street should be blamed on its "fancy financial instruments". Don’t you believe it. There is far more involved in the current crisis than the drunken debauchery of brokers on Wall Street, or our economic life governed by an ideology of binge capitalism.
***

Over the past few decades, the United States has changed from a nation of producers to one of consumers. The change has been celebrated by politicians and economists but in reality, the development has depleted the nation of its hard-earned wealth, and has led us to the brink of ruin.

So how does our government and politicians react to our current economic problems? Instead of encouraging a return of America's productive energy, our government is responding to the growing economic crisis by simply trying to boost consumerism at all costs. Its strategy involves socializing losses among all citizens so that the loss of our wealth can't be easily observed and recognized..

***
America was blessed both with abundant natural resources and individual freedom, the backbone of enterprise. The combination rendered American productivity the envy of the world. Based on the strength of our industry and productivity, we became the world’s largest and wealthiest economy.
Look at the rest of the world and see the examples what happens if a nation chooses socialism as its economic way of life. The former Soviet block, much of Africa and Asia that curbed individual freedom and enterprise had led to economic decline and poverty.

***
Why are we abandoning successful capitalism for the proven loser of socialism?
Because the majority of our voting population is now in the service industry that depends on consumer spending which is now 72% of our Gross Domestic Product.

So what happens when consumer spending is declining? The government pumps billions of dollars into the economy. This led to two recent booms: the technology boom and the housing boom.

Obviously during these booms Wall Street and its profit driven operators go on a commission binge by pushing the envelope and inevitably causing the bubble to burst. When the bubble burst politicians will not allow the normally corrective mechanism of a recession to operate. They are trying to take the pain (recession) out of capitalism, while leaving only the pleasure. THIS cannot BE DONE WITHOUT DIRE CONSEQUENCES! Preventing a recession brings on inflation and the loss of value of the dollar. Oil today sells for the same amount of gold as it did 10 years ago. Protecting the economy from a recession has caused the the dollar to lose its value and $4 + gasoline prices.
***
50 Hedge fund managers received $26 billion in bonuses for earning their funds enormous profits betting that the subprime mortgage market would collapse. They knew what was coming. Don’t tell me the drunken Wall Street brokers and their blind federal regulators did not know that they were destroying the mortgage market.
***
BANKING 101

In the old days my banker told me that he lends money based on the rule of 3 Cs. Credit, Collateral and Character. Credit and Character are whatever is in the head of the banker after reading third party reports. The value of collateral is determined by the willingness, or desire to lend.

Maybe you think of a bank as a place where a senior citizen comes in to deposit his government pension check and later in the day, the bank, in order to earn the interest it has promised to pay the senior citizen, finds someone who is willing to borrow the money at a higher rate of interest than what it is paying on his deposit.

You're correct in assuming that this is the core of modern banking and finance, except that you've got the order in which these procedures occur in reverse. Modern financial institutions do not wait until the senior citizen hands his check to the teller before rushing onto the street to try to find someone to lend the money to. No, they're out there pounding their broadband data feeds looking for profitable investments that can be made even before they get the funds to make them. These can be in US and foreign Treasury securities, corporate bonds, stocks, warrants, futures, options — and horribile dictu - subprime mortgage paper.

If there would not be any regulation by the government these institutions would make these types of investments and would do this type of lending. This is what happened in capitalist economies in the 19th century until the introduction of modern central banking and bank regulation in the early 20th century. Banks would lend and lend and lend, all the while creating massive monetary liquidity based on nothing of any real value, until the bank would collapse. From boom to bust and then back to boom again economies would crazily swing, until government regulation came in and, stopped the roller coaster.

In what is called fractional reserve banking, banks and other financial institutions can make loans and investments only in set and defined multiples of what they actually have in the bank. It is called a reserve requirement.

So if the bank made a risky investment they are not waiting for the senior citizen to show up at the teller's window with his check so the bank can close the daily books in compliance with their reserve requirements. What the banks do is determine their reserve requirement shortage for that day, and then have their trading desk go out and get the funding.

If the bank finds it has a short-term, perhaps if only for one night, need to meet a reserve requirement it can borrow the funds it needs; the funds may be being lent by another institution that at the end of the day finds it has more in reserves than it needs. These are called repo loans and they can be in the range of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, and they are not insured by the Federal government. That's the problem. If you do an overnight loan of, say, $100 million, and the next day the bank you lent the money to is out of business, it'll be a long, long time before you ever see that money again. You'll get in line behind all the rest of the dead bank's creditors, and, since repo loans are unsecured, you'll be a long, long way from the front of the line as well.

Bear Sterns was unable to get repo loans because rumors spread by the media about their financial problems. The rest is history. Uncle Sam now holds billions of bad subprime mortgages as security for the loans they made to bail out one of drunks of Wall Street. And the dollar in your bank account is worth that much less.
###


AUG 4, 2008

This will appear in tomorrow's Washington Times. Professor Glick is one of our readers.

Will America's Jews pick the next president?

by Edward Bernard Glick

The Washington Times

August 4, 2008

Decades ago, the writer Milton Himmelfarb coined a famous phrase: “The Jews earn like Episcopalians, but vote like Puerto Ricans.”

Because of their liberal DNA, in the fall most American Jews will vote for Democratic Senator Barack Obama rather than for Republican Senator John McCain. Though only two percent of the U.S. population, if the presidential race is close, the Jews will determine its outcome, because so many of them live in California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas. These are the states with the largest number of electors in the Electoral College. As the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 proved — with or without a George W. Bush-Al Gore match-up — one wins the American presidency not by winning a majority of the popular vote, but by winning a majority of the votes cast in the Electoral College.

Before the Great Depression, the Jews voted Republican. But since the New-Deal days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they have voted Democratic no matter what.

In 1946 Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, the leader of American Zionism, warned that the Democrats would eventually take America's Jews for granted. This has come to pass. Today’s Democrats court Jewish votes and money, of course, but they ignore or rifle with issues that are of great concern to American Jewry. One issue is affirmative action and the role of merit, without which Jews cannot achieve and proper. Another issue is the safety and security of the State of Israel.

One of the decisions that American Jews will have to wrestle with between now and November is whether and the extent to which Senator Barack Obama favors Israel. A primary input in their decision is how they react to the fact that Senator Obama has surrounded himself with perceived anti-Israel counselors like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Bonior, who was the most anti-Israel member of the House of Representatives; Chuck Hagel, the most anti-Israel member of the American Senate; retired General Merrill McPeak, a former U.S. Air Force chief of staff; and Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, who, despite Iran’s threats to annihilate Israel, wants the latter to reduce or eliminate its nuclear capability. Obama's advisors don't seem to take seriously Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and the persistent threat of its president to wipe Israel off the map.

On non-Israel matters, American Jews will have to decide just how strongly they believe in vital national interests. Now, it may be that future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will decide that our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were wrongly conceived and wrongly acted upon. But in the world of the present, do contemporary American Jews agree with the Democratic Left that the United States has no national interests worth fighting for? Or do they accept the view that if we do have vital national interests, they must be subordinated to soft power and synchronized with the wishes of Europe, the United Nations, or world public opinion?

Do American Jews agree with the argument that there are no evil people in this world, only misunderstood and oppressed ones, and that our primary duty is to eradicate the “root causes” of their discontent? Do they believe that, no matter how bad things get in the twenty-first century, war is no longer an option?

While there is some anti-Semitism in the land, the Jews are now a respected and integral part of American society
Two Jews sit on the 9-member Supreme Court, 13 sit in the 100-member Senate, and 30 are in the 435-member House of Representatives. Yet, as dwellers in the Judaic Diaspora, they must always ask themselves if presidential candidates, besides being good for the United States, will be good for them and for the things they care about. If they conclude that Democratic Senator Obama isn’t good for them and for the country, then their votes will help Republican Senator John McCain become the next President of the United States.

(Edward Bernard Glick is a professor emeritus of political science at Temple University. Among his books is “The Triangular Connection: America, Israel, and American Jews.”)
##

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AUG 11, 2008

OBAMA SOUND BITES - short factoids based on thousands of facts.

ON ISLAM
While Obama articulates a full catalogue of American miscues, he has not tried to create a mandate to continue American leadership in the war with radical Islam. This issue will not go away. It will continue to be a defining element of American foreign policy for the next President. From what Obama has said and what he has not said, I conclude that his mind and heart are not in this fight. In the upcoming elections, who would the Islamic world prefer to win? It is reasonable to think that it would be the man who wants to surrender Iraq, make peace with and appease dictators who wish harm to the United States, and work within the United Nations and the radical blocs who dominate that institution.

ON INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS
Candidates for President like to talk about the marvelous, soaring future they will make for us all. Sometimes avoiding catastrophe needs to be a larger part of the campaign speech. This is one of those times we need a President who knows the reality of evil in international politics and who will continue a fight that will be unpopular with some, but essential for the survival of our country.

ON IRAQ
Obama has a peculiar optimism about the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq. A President Obama would argue that such a withdrawal was really in the American national interest. Yet if the United States does leave Iraq before it succeeds, radical Islamists , Shiites as well as Sunnis, in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and in many other places where radical Islam has adherents will all see this exit as the greatest victory for radical Islamism since the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the wake of an American defeat in Iraq, why would Ahmadinejad’s Iran feel any hesitation about proceeding even more quickly to development of nuclear weapons or intensifying its threats against Israel and, for that matter, the Arab states? What incentive would a President Obama create for Iran to change its ways? He is, in effect, directing America to defeat against al-Qaeda, which can only benefit and enable radical Islam to new heights globally.

ON JEREMIAH WRIGHT
The issue of Barack Obama’s willingness to sit in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church for over twenty years is not going to go away. Conspiracy theories are not only wicked and stupid. Conspiracy theories are also dangerous. Barack Obama is a sophisticated, highly educated person who must know how dangerous conspiracy theories and theorists are. Yet for twenty years he listened to them, yet uttered no public criticism. I his famous speech Sen. Barak Obama admitted after more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons that he had been aware of those sermons.
Wright has distinct political views that, as Obama acknowledged, badly distort the causes of the problems facing African-Americans. Obama has known of those views for many years and nevertheless decided to remain close to Wright. The question will linger: why did he continue to have a relationship, and a close relationship, with a man whose views he now finds unacceptable?
Rev. Wright, it will be remembered, referred to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as “Condoskeezza”, from the urban slang word “skeeze”, one of the most derogatory terms for a woman imaginable. He regularly refers to Justice Thomas as “Clarence Colon.” Here is real injustice to upstanding African-Americans, and the Senator never brought such things up at all. He generally slides out of perverse comments by Rev. Wright by invoking the First Amendment and then changing the subject. For Obama's association with Reverend Wright was a choice and it says a lot more about the man, his worldview, and his judgment than his charismatic personality and leadership skills seem to imply. The Senator may have figured out how to act like a moderate, how to charm people, and how to appeal to their disenchantment by invoking the slogan of "hope" and "change", but this new "unknown" relationship strips off some of that fine veneer. It is truly troubling that Obama knew about the Reverend Wright and that he was either 1. Too stupid to realize the political damage this fanatic could do to his campaign or 2. He thought we were too stupid to discover that his spiritual advisor is a fanatic, or that we wouldn’t care.

ON THE MORTGAGE CRISIS
He attacked predatory lenders , but has taken roughly 1.3 m in contribution from companies in that business.

ON THE POOR
He and his wife are quite well off with an estimate income of $1.2 million dollars from 2000 to 2004. But the man who preaches compassion and mutuality gave all of 1% of that income to charity in that period. (Running for President in 2007 they made $4.2 million and gave 5.7% to charity. George Bush made $720,000 and gave 22% to charity in 2007))

ON ETHICS
This the guy who says he represents ethics in government, but when given a chance to back reformers in Illinois, Obama supported the party hacks, including the current famously unethical governor who is under federal investigation and is likely to be indicted.

ON WALL STREET
He denounced in no uncertain terms the "special privileges" regarding the taxation of people on Wall Street (from whence he derives many funders) But when he had an opportunity to push the repeal of the privileged tax treatment of private equity firms as the matter was before Charles Grassley's Senate finance sub-committee, he disappeared into the wood work.

ON HIS WHITE GRANDMA
Obama would equate his white grandmother’s privately expressed fears of black men who passed her on the street with Jeremiah Wright’s public, political statements about, for example, the government’s responsibility for the spread of Aids in black neighborhoods.
As Obama knows very well, the overwhelming majority of the victims of crimes committed by blacks are other blacks. This is a fact that is most inconvenient for Obama to consider. From the mid-1960s to 2002, about 850,000 people have been murdered in the United States. Of them, about 220,000 were African-Americans. Over 90% of those murders were black-on-black crimes. By any measure this is the greatest catastrophe to befall African-Americans since slavery. The chances of a black man being a perpetrator or a victim of a violent crime were about 6 to 7 times greater than were those of whites. So the fear that Obama’s white grandmother expressed must be rather mild compared to the fully realistic fears of crime that African-Americans in the inner cities and now close in suburbs live with. This age of murder is one of the great disasters in the history of this country. The facts of these murders have been on the evening television news and in the local pages of newspapers in American cities for the past half-century. Not to express fear in the face of such a cataclysm would be a form of denial. So to equate Obama’s grandmother’s fears with the political views of Jeremiah Wright is a deliberate deception.

ON BEING A MUSLIM - POSITIVE
According to the law of the Koran, if your father is a Muslim, you are considered to be a Muslim, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a Muslim. In fact, if you do not assent to this ascribed religious identity, then in a literalist interpretation you are considered an apostate, the penalty for which is death. So by inference, we can surmise that a good proportion of the Muslim world considers Obama to be a Muslim and for many an apostate as well.
People in the world who live by the literal word of the Koran will have their own meanings as to what Barack Obama is that have very little to do with what he says he is, or what we in the US think he is. Now the consequences of this could play out in any number of ways. For many of the world's Muslims, an American President with a Muslim heritage could be seen as a source of pride, and the election of such an impressive man with a Muslim heritage could lead people to look at America in a different light and Obama could be an inspiration for many ordinary Muslims to reject the pernicious road that the Islamists fundamentalists have forced upon them. The most important positive consequence could be that "one of ours" has succeeded in becoming the leader of the nation that our leaders tell us is the "Great Satan." It would create a legitimation crisis of the first order for the Islamists who have hijacked Islam and done it such a great injustice in recent years. Liberal-minded and moderate Muslims could take great satisfaction in having such a role model interacting with Muslim leaders in the world, someone who represented American interests, but also would be seen as symbol of pride.

ON BEING A MUSLIM - NEGATIVE
There is the very real possibility that Obama could be labeled as an apostate and radical Islamist terrorists consider it right and just to kill any American, and we also know that apostates are a particular object of scorn. Surely, for the extremists, killing any American president would be the hallmark of glory, but killing an apostate would surely be a step even beyond that. If Obama were elected, would the radical Islamists issue a fatwah against him for the crime of defecting from his ascribed status as a Muslim? Would America become even more engorged with evil by virtue of being led by an apostate who serves the interest of America over the interests of the Muslim world? This to the Muslim world is a vitally important issue to raise. THerefore in a world where Islamic fundamentalism is ascendant, I think it is extremely important to consider the negative consequences of what it means to have a president who hundreds of millions of people think of in religious terms an apostate, over which a President Obama, or anyone else, would have little control.


AUG 11, 2008
THE RUSSIANS ON THE MOVE


The cold war has really never ended. The USSR morphed into a much smaller Russia, but the ambitions and pride have survived and leaders like Putin, the former KGB master, were chomping at the bit to find an opportunity to get even. While it re-gathered its forces after the collapse of the USSR, Russia remained silent, aloof and apart, a wounded animal, fearful of its future but preparing for its resurrection.
Still smarting from the Kosovo defeat Russia has now moved from covert actions to bold, in your face confrontations. Russia considers the time for this confrontation to be right because the West and the US are paralyzed due to self inflicted wounds. As Britain, Israel and Hungary learned in 1956, it is never smart to count on US action before a Presidential election. Russia is again a global actor. Much of the empire is gone but Russia’s aspirations remain. Today Russia is showing its muscles in a game of hazards and risks.

Just a few weeks ago after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would set a precedent for similar actions by other territories in the former USSR, such as South Ossetia. So the Russian regime stepped up its support by massing troops and tanks on the border and within South Ossetia. There are also some Russian troops, leftovers from Soviet Union era garrisons, still in the country. Georgia has been trying get all the Russian soldiers out since the Soviet Union collapsed (and Georgia became independent once more) in 1991. But the Russians have come up with a long string of excuses for delaying a final pullout. To make matters worse, several thousand of those troops are "peacekeepers" . To most Georgians, the Russian peacekeepers are there mainly to keep the rebel regions free of Georgian control.

Russian politicians have been playing the nationalism card, catering to widespread feelings that the Soviet Union should be restored. Most Russians never cared for the communist dictatorship, but they did like being a superpower. The Russians also feel that those fourteen nations that split off when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, left Russia surrounded by a lot of unstable and vulnerable nations. This sounds paternalistic and paranoid to Westerners, but not to Russians. And the Russians are willing to use force to back up these attitudes, as the Georgians just discovered. Russia still has nukes, and some Cold War attitudes that make for a potentially very dangerous situation.

The Russian ruling elite is seeking to reassert its grip over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This bitter rivalry between Washington and Moscow—the world’s two greatest nuclear powers—lends the fighting in the Caucasus a particularly explosive and dangerous character. The tensions between the two countries have been exacerbated in the recent period by the Bush administration’s attempt to incorporate Georgia into the NATO alliance, a move that Moscow sees as part of an attempt to establish a military encirclement of Russia.

Fear of encirclement has been a perennial Russian fear. They see encirclement of Russia everywhere. Last spring NATO’s new ally, Bulgaria, agreed to host three US military bases for 2,500 American troops, the first time in the 1,325 years of its history that foreign troops are stationed in Bulgaria. The heart of the agreement is that American soldiers can be sent from Bulgaria to third countries without specific permission from Bulgaria. And now the Czech Republic has agreed to host missile shield sites. Bulgaria and Czech Republic and Georgia and Kosovo as links in the chain around Russia that frightens Russia. So they decided to act openly.

They decided to “punish” the Czech Republic economically. On July 8, the supply of oil to the Czech Republic through the “Friendship” pipeline was cut by half and the Russian mass media unequivocally pointed to a direct linkage between this decision and the issue of the radar system in the Czech Republic.

It is not the first time that the Russian regime has used an “economic weapon” to exert pressure on its neighbors and partners. During the first days of 2005, gas supplies to Ukraine were halted for several days; similar threats were made against Belarussia. In the spring of 2006, a ban was placed on the import into Russia of Moldavian and Georgian wine, which painfully affected the economies of both republics.

Controlling energy is the main strategy in this confrontation. Last week the United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. From the details coming out of Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday to insure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports which also gives Iran an outlet to the European gas market.

Russia controls the energy supplies of most of Europe thus the European economies.
On top of that, Russian oil and gas companies are now moving into Latin America. During Chavez’s visit to Moscow on July 25, Russia’s big three energy companies, Gazprom, LUKoil and TNL-BP, signed agreements with the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company PDVSA to “replace” America oil biggies, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in Venezuela.
Combined that with the announcement that Russian nuclear bombers will be able to launch from Cuba and Venezuela

By observing the division of the US public and the defeatist, anti war attitude of the Democrat Party, Russia considers the timing for these actions most opportune at this time. In Iran and the Middle East for years they tested to US resolve by providing Iran with nuclear fuel, building a nuclear reactor, selling the most sophisticated weaponry, such as the S-3000 radar system.

The US media is waiting for instructions from the Democrats and the Obama campaign on how to react to these events.

AUG 19, 2008

LET’S CALL A SPADE A SPADE

Russia is threatening a nuclear attack on Poland. We are entering into an agreement to protect Poland from such an attack. We are putting Patriot missiles into Poland to protect them from such an attack. There are many underlying reasons that the world is facing a duplicate of events preceding World War II, but one of the factors have to do with the failed presidencies of the Bushes

In many respect the two Bush presidencies have been colossal failures. The decisions by both regarding our oil dependency seem to have been dictated by their Saudi relationships and have been a disgrace. To impose a presidential ban on offshore drilling in 1990, when all other countries with significant offshore reserves were drilling, and countries such as Britain and Norway were meeting the majority of their needs from offshore sources, was egregious enough, though typical of the vacillating president George H W Bush, but more likely was mandated by his Saudi connections.

However, to maintain the ban until 2008, for seven-and-a-half years of the term of the supposedly Republican President George W Bush, for the first six of which the Republicans controlled Congress, at a time of rocketing oil prices, was truly disgraceful. It was especially a disgrace as after September 2001 Bush declared a national emergency and conducted a military campaign expensive both in money and lives in the world's major oil-producing region. Lifting the drilling ban was an obvious step in reducing US dependency on the volatile Middle East. Had the ban, and that on drilling in that Arctic National Wildlife Reserve been lifted in 2001, as they could and should have been, the US could be producing substantial quantities of offshore and Alaskan North Slope oil today and thereby depressing global oil prices.

What would be the significant consequences of lower oil prices? Russia's export income would be halved, so its ability to finance a massive military buildup would be decimated. Meanwhile, its people would come to realize what a fraud the Putin/Medvedev regime has been; it has failed to provide more than a temporary lift to the living standards of the Russian people, but has instead engaged in kleptocracy and massive empire-building, funded by unearned oil revenues.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela would also suffer and would be unable to continue financing the export of his petty revolutions, and would soon be forced out by the Venezuelan populace, who would come to realize that, bad as were the traditional corrupt "democratic" rulers of Venezuela, Chavez has made things infinitely worse.

Iran too would feel the pinch; it might or might not continue developing nuclear weapons, but its limited democratic mechanisms would soon produce a less hostile and frightening government.

And less money would be finding its way from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to Islamic fanatics for their terror campaigns.

Just think how the world would be today had the Bushes acted to reduce oil prices by creating more domestic production, rather than protecting the Royal Saudi oil empire. The insidious connections between the Saudis and the Bushes have been known for a long time and have been fully documented. The current rising threat from Russia and the new cold war we find ourselves in, is but an unintended consequence of that relationship.


AUG. 20 2008
LETS CALL A SPADE A SPADE #2. Agonizing over the incompetency of our government.

Another farce has come to an end with possibly grievous unintended consequences.
Pres. Bush repeatedly praised Musharraf as the most loyal ally of the United States against terrorism, even though the Pakistani military was deeply involved with the Taliban and Pakistani Islamic militants. It is a well known fact that al-Qaeda originally was a creation of the Pakistani army acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The Clintonistas advised the Georgistas about this at the time of the 2000 transit.

Therefore when George Bush became president the new administration was fully aware of the intimate relationship between Musharraf’s regime and al-Queda, but in pre 9/11 Washington they ignored the threat al-Queda represented. For almost 8 years we have lived in a make believe world in which our "ally" was in effect helping our enemies.

After 9/11 Bush created a myth that Musharraf had joined the free world to fight the Taliban. The fact that was kept from the American public that on September 19, 2001, just a week after the 9/11 attack, Musharraf gave a televised speech in which he declared,”We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban.” In his memoirs published in 2006 Musharraf revealed the seven specific demands he had been given by the US and claimed that he had refused both "blanket overflight and landing rights" and the use of Pakistan's naval ports and air bases to conduct anti-terrorism operations.

Another of the mistakes made by the Bush administration involved the mishandling and cover up of the Musharraf regime's involvement in the activities of the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear technology export program. The Bush administration gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the Khan network's selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership and the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan's activities. But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA director George Tenet's memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan's operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.

The following January and early February, Khan's house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan's activities. Hidden part of the deal was the the US agreed not require Musharraf to allow US officials to interrogate Khan.

Meanwhile, Musharraf withdrew his military from South Waziristan, which gave the pro-Taliban forces allied with al-Qaeda in the region a free hand to recruit and train militants for war in Afghanistan. Yet Bush chose to reward Musharraf by designating Pakistan a "Major Non-NATO Ally" in 2004 and by agreeing to sell the Pakistani Air Force 36 advanced F-16 fighter planes. Prior to that, Pakistan had been denied US military technology for a decade.

Just three years later in 2007 the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda's "safe haven" was in Pakistan's tribal areas and that the terrorist organization had organized its "homeland attack capability" there. That estimate ended the fiction that the Musharraf regime was firmly committed to combating al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Had the Bush administration accurately portrayed Musharraf's policies rather than hiding them, it may not have avoided the al-Qaeda safe haven there, and may have forced us to expand our war, but it would have avoided the political vacuum and chaos now enveloping Pakistan. One of the key tactics of Islamic militants is to exploit political power vacuums, economic crises or any other problems to push a country towards disintegration.

Events of the last few days prove the point. The Taliban launched two of their most daring attacks in Afghanistan on the day that Musharraf resigned opening up a political vacuum in that country and throwing into doubt its continued cooperation in the United States' "war on terror".
I have no objection to government hiding their decisions in the national interest. I object, however, if they are hiding their stupidity. I wonder. Is there anything governments are capable of doing right?
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AUG 21, 2008

A few weeks ago one of the local newspapers, the 98 year old THE NEW ULM ENTERPRISE* published a glowing report by Sen. Hutchison about the great rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by our wise Congress. It prompted me to write a letter to the editor which they published.

“TO THE EDITOR:

Reading Senator Hutchison’s rosy accounting for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandal one would not guess that the solution created by Congress is worse than the problem. The budget-busting legislation described by her will hand the administration a blank check to prop up the ailing home lenders. The ultimate cost is anybody's guess. Though the government and Wall Street assure us that these bold moves will save the housing market, and the economy as a whole, from collapse, the reality is that the solution is far worse than the problem.

As painful as the failure of Freddie and Fannie would have been, bailing them out will hurt even more. In other words, it's not the disease that will kill us but the cure. Ironically, while government is rightly criticizing mortgage lenders for ditching lending standards during the boom, the new law will actually encourage lenders to be even more reckless than before.
By taking all of the risks out of mortgage lending, the government is telling lenders not to worry about the loans they make because if borrowers do not repay, the government will.

The rosy Fannie Mae history narrated by Senator Hutchinson fails to mention a few important facts. Fannie Mae has been a fraud, operating with fraudulent books, and was a much larger scandal than Enron. Does this sound familiar? A very large company reveals it has “accounting problems”. The CEO and five top executives are forced to resign. The losses run into billions. If you think I am describing Enron you are wrong. It is Fannie Mae , which fraudulently overstated earnings by $11 billion. Enron’s crooks overstated its earnings only by $567 million. That’s almost 20 to 1!

Remember Andy Fastow, now sitting in prison? He received $37 million in bonuses. The CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, received $39.6 million and the executives received $245 million. Much of these bonuses were tied to the performance of the companies and overstating the earnings made these crooks rich. Do you expect that Fannie Mae’s disgraced executives would be indicted or charged with any crime, or that the media would cover the scandal?

No such chance. These people are big time insiders in Washington politics. Former Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines was a director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and his name was mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary had Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) been elected president. His punishment? He was forced to resign his position as one of the financial advisors of the Obama campaign.

The results of the bailout of Fannie Mae can be observed by all of us every day at the gas pump, the grocery store, or if you have money in your savings account. The value of the dollar is shrinking. We live in a new world where nobody is supposed to suffer the consequences of their action. Uncle Sucker will step in and take away your pain. So if you can’t make your car payments, perhaps Senator Hutchinson and her colleagues will come up with another care package. After all, aren’t we all entitled to own a car?”


What I did not want to do is scare my neighbors too much by disclosing to them that the entire national debt of America was $5 trillion until in one weekend it was doubled to $10 trillion, which my friends is 10,000 billion dollars, or $10,000,000,000,000. Who did this to every family in America? The Federal Reserve, an unelected group of men none of us can fire, or punish.

If you ever read the brochures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac it clearly stated that they were not insured by the Federal Government. It was obviously a lie. Everything is now insured by Uncle Sucker, except the value of your dollar.
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* It has the best editorials in the nation! It reflects the values of REAL America.


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AUG. 23, 2008
GOOD SOUND BITES WITHOUT COMMERCIALS


WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR
Throughout the Arab world, al Qaeda's reputation has suffered greatly in the last five years. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major insult to al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to keeping infidels (especially heavily armed ones) out of the Middle East. The al Qaeda response was very violent, and it revealed two terrible truths about the organization. First, al Qaeda was not very good at killing armed infidels. This was suspected, as most of the Islamic radicals who flocked to Iraq after 2003, could have earlier gone after Israel. But that was generally recognized as suicidal and pointless.

Second, al Qaeda was very good at killing Moslem civilians. These two items ruined al Qaeda's reputation in the Islamic world, and destroyed the popularity they had built up over a decade of attacks on infidels in the West and India. The September 11, 2001 attacks were very popular throughout the Islamic world, but it was downhill after that. Al Qaeda has not come up with a way to fight the infidels inside Islamic nations, without killing lots of Moslems. Most Moslems understand why this is. Al Qaeda simply lacks the skills and resources to take on Western troops, or even the police in Western nations.

For many Moslems, al Qaeda is down, but not out. But for most Moslems, al Qaeda is finished, and openly despised. In most areas where al Qaeda still has some fighters in action, the terrorists are feared and hated. As a result of that, and the recent spread of cell phone service throughout the Islamic world, al Qaeda is fighting hard to survive in any form at all.

THE RUSSIAN "MENACE".

There is much talk about a return to the Cold War. But this time around, Russia is hardly a superpower. Russia has nuclear weapons, but beyond that, their military is decidedly second rate. Against a third rate opponent like Georgia, that's sufficient. But against the West, not so much. Russia's European neighbors appear ready to side with the West, even in the face of Russian threats. The Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians all promptly agreed to work with the West to improve their defenses against Russia, and the possibility of becoming "another Georgia". Europeans have been reminded that the Russian bully they have feared and despised, for so many centuries, is back in town. That could have interesting consequences down the road.

BUSH TRIED THE OBAMA WAY

U.S. policy toward Russia has relied on the personal diplomacy of President Bush rather than on U.S. national interest. Bush has stated repeatedly in the past that he believes world problems can be worked out when leaders have good personal relations and he specifically stated that his contact with former Russian President Vladimir Putin was the key to keeping Moscow from becoming a hostile, anti-democratic power. You hear this Obama? Do you think you'll do better because you are both Marxists?


NUTS IN THE TREE

Workers cut down two-dozen tree limbs and removed sleeping gear and other supplies today as UC Berkeley officials tried to coax four protesters down from a redwood tree near Cal's Memorial Stadium, but the tree-sitters defiantly refused to leave. leave.TheThe developments came as a judge is expected to rule soon whether to lift an order barring the campus from cutting down the redwood and 43 other trees in the stadium grove to build an athletic training center.
Protesters in varying numbers have been sitting in the trees since Dec. 1, 2006, saying they will not leave unless UC spares the grove.
"If you want me down, you're going to have to take me down dead," a male protester yelled from a platform at least 50 feet up the redwood as workers in two cherry-pickers carved off at least 16 branches from the tree and at least four limbs from two oak trees, a university spokesman said.
By this afternoon, workers had removed sleeping bags and other supplies from platforms and strung from the tree's limbs. One protester on the ground, identified as Susan Rodriguez, 54, was arrested after she refused to stop blocking traffic on a nearby street.
UC Berkeley police chief Victoria Harrison, in a basket suspended from a crane, asked the remaining protesters to come down but they refused, campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

CHINESE PARADISE

In Beijing cars with even numbered license plates are allowed to drive on even numbered days only. Odds drive on odd days. Politicians' limos are exempt. Foreigners are allowed only to drive on roads that have been carefully prepared with Potemkin walls that prevent anything beyond 100 yards from the road be observed. To deal with the “unsightly” residents the government could not expel from the city, it began building walls around the city’s less prosperous areas, to hide them from international cameras. The large masses of people who were evicted to reduce congestion during the Olympics were simply ordered out of town without any relocation or compensation. When 16,000 athletes and officials arrived they were be able to turn the taps and get drinkable water — something few Beijing residents ever have enjoyed. For the Olympics, the city is draining surrounding regions, depriving poor farmers of water and destroying their livelihood. Factories shut, workers laid off, no unemployment compensation of any kind.

OLYMPICS CHEATING

The miniature Chinese gymnasts Yang and He have passports and other documents issued by the Chinese government proving that they were at least 16 at the time of the Olympics. Registration lists previously posted, however, on the Web site of the General Administration of Sport of China that showed both He and Yang were too young to compete. He was born Jan. 1, 1994, according to the 2005, 2006 and 2007 registration lists. Yang was born Aug. 26, 1993, according to the 2004, 2005 and 2006 registration lists. In the 2007 registration list, however, her birthday has changed to Aug. 26, 1992. So go ahead and get a trial lawyer and sue them. Hah ha.
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AUG 24 2008
A PERSONAL MEMORY - FOR SPORT FANS ONLY.

Some of you watching Olympic events may have by chance seen some water polo games especially the gold medal game between the US and Hungary. Water polo is a brutal game requiring a combination of swimming and wrestling talent. Ability to avoid drowning is a prerequisite for this sport.

If you read my autobiography you may remember that I played water polo in my youth in Hungary. Unfortunately I was not strong and big enough to do the fierce underwater fighting and non-stop swimming a player must be able to perform in order to become a success at this game. I was very successful, however, as a goalie on several regional and local Hungarian teams. Hungary never failed to win a medal at the Olympics, and took home 6 of 10 possible gold medals between 1932 and 1976. In 2000 and 2004 and now in 2008 Hungary won three more gold medals. It can be called a national sport in Hungary and I was caught up in the national excitement in my youth.

Watching the game you may observe that the goalie treads water all the time and must be able to jump up high to catch balls. The law of gravity, however, makes it impossible to jump up and stay up. For this reason when the opposing players shoot at the goal they pretend to shoot to make the goalie jump up and then as he sinks they really let the ball fly, because the goalie can not get into reverse as he sinks.

I did not understand at the time why I was such a success as a goalie and why they had so much difficulty scoring against me. Now I know that my success as a goalie was due to my nearsightedness. Most goalies get “faked out” by the opponents who pretend to shoot at the goal causing the goalie to jump up to catch the ball. Due to my nearsightedness I could not see the activity beyond about 20 feet and therefore would not fall for the fake shots. I could, however, see the ball when it got to about 10’ from the goal and I could jump up in time to catch it.
Playing water polo had a fateful impact on my survival of World War 2. Here is a passage from my book:


It happened after I played on a water polo team representing my hometown against the military academy located in Köszeg, at the eastern slopes of the Alps. In unseasonably cold weather, the water temperature was less than ten degrees Celsius. (50F) The pool was part of a river cooled by melted snow from the Alps. Under the rules of water polo, you could not put oil on your body. The rest of my teammates were doing fine because they were swimming constantly, moving all the time, but I was the goalie, and as a goalie I had to stay in one place, treading water. The military academy's team was very bad, and my team overwhelmed them. During the entire game, only one time did the ball come near me. They threw it from a distance and I held up my hands to catch it, but my fingers and arms were so frozen that the ball slid right through them. The end result of the games was 10:1 in our favor.
At the end of the game, I had to be helped out of the water. My fingers and lips were blue, and I shook uncontrollably. It took a long time for me to warm up. On the way home on the train, I was still shivering and freezing. By that evening I had developed a fever. I had pneumonia. When I recovered, the doctor told me that I had a spot on my lungs, and to cure it, the best thing would be for me to spend the summer in the mountains of Köszeg.
So it came to pass. Spending the summer in the mountains gave me not only an excellent knowledge of the area, but also generated in me a love for outdoor life and hiking. By the end of the summer, I had recovered so well that I could run straight up the side of the mountain without losing my breath.
It was in the same mountains that I found temporary refuge a few years later during the war. My intimate familiarity with the forest, the terrain, the caves, the springs, the trails helped me survive.

As you may have guessed I enjoyed the water polo games of the 2008 Olympics. Especially the political implications of some of the games. Serbia vs. Croatia was especially brutal. A real war fought in the water. I felt bad for the goalies trying to stay in the air in an attempt to defy gravity. I know how they feel. And I was proud to see the US winning the silver medal in a tough and exciting game against the unbeatable Hungarians. Next time you are in a pool try to rise out of the deep water, hold your arms up in the air and stay up for a prolonged period fighting gravity and you will appreciate the difficulty. Perhaps they should recruit politicians as goalies. They are so full of hot air that they don't sink as easily.
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AUG 26, 2008
SOUND BITES WITHOUT COMMERCIALS

A LONELY VOICE FROM MY RANCH

The America I learned to love was an America that protected the world against Totalitarianism of the right, the fascists, and the left, the communists. It was not a land divided by multicultural borderlines and angry hyphenated Americans. It was a land of true Americans. We were proud to fly the American Flag and every community had their parade on July 4th. We stood with our hand on our hearts and lumps in our throat when the flag passed. It was a land of families with a mother, father and children. We knew right from wrong. We knew tomorrow will bring all of us closer to the American dream. We were unafraid of the times to come and the dissonant voices of the far left. We had equality of opportunity to become rich and famous without a handout from the government.
Tempus fugit and times change.
With it our lives changed. Gone are the conservative values of life, liberty, family and faith. What we now have are compromises with liberalism and conservatism morphed into something resembling leftists of old the days. We are now afraid of the times to come as the shrill dissonant voices of the far left dominate the air. The land of the free has turned into the land of people expecting everything free provided by the government. Politicians are unafraid to espouse Marxist ideology by simply replacing the old words of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the new division between the "rich" and those who are entitled to take from them.
We are watching a national suicide unless we speak up and act before it is too late. Our days are numbered. We have less than 70 days to act.

LAGOS

The head of the stock exchange organized a gala dinner in support of Barack Obama's U.S. presidential campaign, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ndi Okereke-Onyike, chairwoman of the "Africans for Obama" campaign group, organized the fundraising dinner in the commercial capital Lagos on August 11. A "platinum" ticket for a table of eight cost 2.5 million naira ($21,226).
It is illegal under U.S. law for foreign campaign groups to donate funds to political parties in the United States. The idea of a man with an African father attaining the world's most powerful political office has fueled "Obama-mania" across Africa over the past year and Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation, is no exception. Buses and cars in the crowded streets of Lagos carry "Obama '08" bumper stickers.

AFGHANISTAN COMMANDO OLYMPICS

Afghanistan has been called "the Commando Olympics," because so many nations have commando contingents there. While the different commando organizations aren't competing with each other, they are performing similar missions, using slightly different methods and equipment. Naturally, everyone compares notes and makes changes based on combat experience. That's the draw for commandoes, getting and using "combat experience." Training is great, but there's nothing like operating against an armed and hostile foe. This is all a real big thing, as the participating commandoes are becoming a lot more effective. But you can't get a photograph of this increased capability, and the commandoes aren't talking to the press. So it's all a big story you'll never hear much about, except in history books, many years from now.

Most of these commando operations have been kept secret. This is typical for commando operations, but in this case, many of the nations involved don't want it known that they are involved. This has especially been the case with Arab nations and Israel that have contributed commando units. For many nations, this is the only combat experience any of their troops are receiving. These countries are often officially hostile to the U.S. effort in Iraq, and refuse to send combat troops to Afghanistan. But commandos in Afghanistan are another matter, partly because nearly all commandos are eager to go. Alas no Gold Medals, just body counts.

AUG 29 2008
OBAMA, THE AGENT OF CHANGE

Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most. From the beginning, Barack Obama's special appeal was his vow to remain an idealistic outsider, courageous and optimistic, and never to shift his positions for political expediency, or become captive of the Inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia, or kiss up to special interests and big money donors.

In recent weeks, though, Obama has done all those things.

Obama is running as an agent of 'change': he is constantly changing his position on taxes, trade, and the economy. When Obama says, “Change” he really means it and he can show you proof that he does what he preaches.

He changed pastors.
He changed churches.
He changed friends.
He changed spiritual advisors.
He changed his name. (NO Hussein allowed.)
He changed his position on NAFTA, CAFTA,
He changed his opinion on Free Trade Agreements.
He changed his position on gun control.
He changed his position on Jerusalem. (Within 24 hours!)
He changed, changed, and changed his position on Iraq.
He changed his position on public financing of campaign.
He changed his position on the death penalty.
He changed his position on extreme partisan campaign.
He changed his position from centrism.
He changed his position on the FISA.
He changed his position on abortion.
He changed his position on gay marriage.
He changed his position on Social Security taxes.
He changed his position on negotiating with rogue nations.
He changed his position on oil reserves.
He changed his position on offshore drilling.
He changed his position on troop withdrawal.
He changed his position on Rezko.
He changed his position on Ayers.
He changed his position (slightly) on Rev. Wright.
He changed his position on funding NASA.
He changed position on the National Petroleum Reserve.
He changed his opinion about wearing a flag pin.
He changed his opinion on taxes.
He changed his opinion about Islamic supporters.
He changed his position about town-hall meetings.
He changed his position about debating McCain.


Are these really changes? Or are they part of a fairy tale as per Bill Clinton?

Obama, like any politician, will say anything to anybody to get elected and will use his blackness and white guilt to do a “Clinton” on the uneducated masses.
Obama’s being “all things to all people” threatens to expose his campaign of change as a con game. He got himself onto a stage that’s so big that he can’t hide from his contradictions anymore.

Did John McCain shift positions? Of course he did, except his sole asset for running was not based on “Change” and “Hope” alone. We know John McCain and we know what we get. Now we see Obama and what he really is. We knew John Kennedy and he has no resemblance to Obama. Compared to Obama he was a conservative Republican. "Ask not what you can do for your country, but what the country can do for you?"
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SEPT 8, 2008
OMINOUS SOUND BITES - no need to read between the lines.

IRAN
A Dutch AIVD Secret Service ultra-secret operation underway in Iran in recent years has been halted and an agent recalled in view of “impending US plans to attack Iran,” within weeks, writes Joost de Haas in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. According to intelligence sources in the Netherlands, the US [or Israel] would decide within weeks to attack nuclear plants with unmanned aircraft to avoid endangering air crews. The Israeli air force would be held back to defend Israel against retaliation. Iranian Dep. Chief of General Staff Masus Jazairi said Saturday, Aug. 30, that any attack on Iran would mean the beginning of a new world war.

GEORGIA
In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter bombers in the event of preemptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would fly over Turkey. The Bush administration has so far resisted making military pledges to embattled ally Georgia, but as the conflict heats up as an election issue, advisors to US presidential candidate John McCain say Georgia should be supplied with advanced weaponry to deter Russia.

MOSCOW
Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov warned that for the West to support Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili would be a historic mistake.
Medvedev declared Moscow would no longer accept a situation whereby a single country, like the US, “sought global domination.”
Russia supplies the union with a third of its oil and 40 percent of its natural gas.
Germany relies on Russia for 34 percent of its oil imports and 36 percent of its natural gas consumption. Slovakia, Finland and Bulgaria depend on Russia for more than 90 percent of their gas. This dependency will increase as winter approaches.

AFGHANISTAN
in Afghanistan, areas outside Kabul that are under the control of the Taliban will likely expand in winter months. The lack of any new armed commitment to that country by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US means that by the time a new US president takes office, the Taliban conceivably will be back in control of Afghanistan. Rumors that Afghan president Karzai is on the drug gangs payroll has become more obvious, as he pushes for getting veto power over U.S. and NATO military operations. The reason is the "compensation" scam. Foreign troops will pay thousands of dollars (often over $5,000) in compensation for loss, per civilian killed during military operations. So Afghans have an incentive to claim as many dead as they can get away with. Afghan culture puts a premium on scamming foreigners. Any Afghan who doesn't try to hustle an outsider is looked down on. It's the ancient "us versus them" mentality, which applies even of the outsider is helping you.
President Karzai knows of these scams and how Afghans regard foreigners, but he is under pressure to get the military heat off the drug gangs. Foreign troops, particularly British and Canadian, have done lots of damage to heroin production in Helmand province (where most Afghan heroin is produced), and the gangs are putting pressure on the senior Afghan officials on the payroll to do something. One of the main sources of income for these gangs is the claim of civilian dead. Recently they claimed that 50 children were killed, but they were no bodies produced. It is alleged that Karzai attempts controlling military actions to protect the gangs and their scams.

PAKISTAN
Bleeding on its western flanks in military actions in the tribal areas and massing troops of its eastern border with India, the Pakistani military has limited options. Cooperating with the US or NATO in Afghanistan is unlikely in the current political climate, which ensures that increasing resources will be misspent on the lost war pursuing al-Qaeda. Quelling an internal rebellion would force the military to assume political power once again in the country, with all the problems such move usually brings.

VENEZUELA
President Hugo Chavez said during a visit to Moscow in July that Russian warships or warplanes were coming to the Carribean. Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that Russia is sending a naval mission to Venezuela which would include the nuclear-powered battle cruiser "Peter the Great", one of the world's largest combat warships, Moscow's most modern destroyer, the "Admiral Chabanenko", along with other ships, including a fuel tanker. The fleet will be backed up by an anti-submarine aircraft, based at a Venezuelan airfield. This move amounts to retaliation against the United States over its action in Georgia.

NATO
Although Georgia has not been able to join NATO, it has been able to link it's air defense radars with NATOs air defense system. NATO engineers and technicians recently devised ways to link the signals from the Russian made radars used in Georgia, to the monitoring systems used by the NATO air defense network. The signals from Georgia are sent by satellite to Europe, where NATO air defense controllers can see, in real time, what is going on over Georgia.

TOMORROW I PLAN TO SEND YOU GOOD NEWS SOUND BITES.

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SEPT 9, 2008

GOOD SOUND BITES WITHOUT COMMERCIALS.
You won't read this is the media.

US INTELLIGENCE OPS.
The CIA lost its soul, its heart, and most of its guts, in the late 1970s. Lots of brains are left, with big budgets to buy all manner of neat technology. But the bosses live fear of grandstanding politicians and headline hungry journalists. While the British, the Israelis, and most other nations, have managed to capture and retain the ability to do street level intelligence, the CIA has not. It now serves mainly to draw fire, while other organizations get the job done
So how does the United States gather needed intelligence? It does it in secret (from many in Congress and, most of all, the media). The other intelligence agencies, like the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) are being allowed to run with these operations. Of course, everyone understands that they could still be hung out to dry down the road. But there are more bosses in the DIA (compared to the CIA) that are willing to back up their operatives (some of whom will get screwed down the road, which is accepted as a risk of the job). Another solution is to outsource many intel operations. The men and women who work for contractors are working without a net (of full U.S. government backing, both diplomatically and militarily). Not all these operatives are even American, but they will do it for a combination of money, adventure, personal beliefs and some assurances that America will provide some support if things get nasty (if only to retrieve the information the agents have obtained.) CONGRESS IS FULL OF IDIOTS AND THE MEDIA IS FULL OF TRAITORS.

IRAQ
You won't have much trouble telling American and Iraqi hummers apart. This is partly because the Iraqis tend to treat their military vehicles like they do their civilian ones. That means all manner of decorations. Fur trim, sheep skin, the fuzzy dice, whatever near the drivers seat. On the outside, they like to apply stickers all over, as well as putting stuffed animals on the front of the vehicle or next to weapons. They don't try to repaint, but you can tell an Iraqi from an American hummer at a distance.

CALIFORNIA MUSLIMS
Muslim students at the University of Southern California are enraged by the school's recent decision to remove from a student group's website an Islamic text that encourages the murder of Jews.
Until recently, the website of the now-defunct Muslim Student Association, which is hosted on the university's servers, had featured the full text of the hadiths, the words of Mohammed that are not found in the Koran.
One of those hadiths calls on Muslims to "fight against the Jews and...kill them," and promises that even the stones and the trees will assist Muslims in that gruesome task.
A statement issued by the Muslim Student Union at USC suggested that the hadith was being taken out of context, and called the school's decision to remove it from the website "unprecedented and unconscionable."
The Muslim Student Union accused the USC administration of practicing unfair censorship.

INDIA
India has agreed to participate in a major exercise with the U.S. Navy in the Arabian Sea. Officials said this could mark the first step toward an Indian presence in the Gulf to ensure crude oil shipments. "India, particularly because of its location, could become a leading factor in Gulf security," an official said. In October 2008, Indian and U.S. warships are scheduled to conduct a 10-day naval exercise in the Arabian Sea.

FANNIE AND FREDDIE
There was no alternative. This weekend, the US government effectively nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was the right decision. It will save the world from a financial catastrophe. For now...
Fannie and Freddie’s debts are of global importance. They are widely held by foreign investors and central banks, and if they had been allowed to default there would have been a meltdown that would have threatened the credibility of the US government.
A collapse would also have led to a US housing market crisis. With the value of homes in free-fall, they backed more than four-fifths of recent US mortgages.
The world equity markets' reaction to the US government's rescue was ecstatic. Averaging out the world's major stock markets comes out with about a 2% gain for the day, with an estimated US$50 trillion in world stock market capitalization. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson just created about a trillion dollars in wealth in one day.
The Russian central bank held about $100 billion in Fannie/Freddie debt as of July. China held $376 billion. It was necessary to keep China and other central banks in the game and continuing to buy US agency debt. By selling China increasingly worthless debt in exchange for the very tangible products of its factories, China is, in essence, delivering a huge subsidy to the US government. The main reason that countries like Russia and China continue to invest in questionable US dollar-denominated debt products is that, with their great wealth so new and so recent, they know of very little else to do with their riches.
With this background, the necessity of Paulson to move on Fannie and Freddie became even more imperative. Had he allowed the two to fail, besides the dire domestic consequences, the international consequence would have been to send the message that the game was up - that there was no further reason to invest in US government-guaranteed obligations anymore, for the United States had no intention of standing behind its obligations.  ¶ 5:45 PM