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The wrong way to fight radical Islam |
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Written by Cisco
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Wednesday, 06 August 2008 |
 English translation - "No Surrender"
I fully agree with the Rand Corporation. I disagree with the rational in the column as to why we need to use different terms to describe the global war the United States and our allies are fighting.
The United States is not fighting a war on terror. We are fighting a "global war against radical Islam".
Terror is a military tactic. Great nations do not fight wars against military tactics. They fight wars, spill blood and expend national treasure to fight ideologies that are incompatible with their own. During the twentieth century the United States fought wars against Imperial Germany, Nazism, Fascism, Imperial Japan, and Communism. Each of these ideologies has fallen. They have fallen because the United States successfully used our military, political, and economic power to defeat, unconditionally, the enemy. The will of the American people prevailed, despite the cost in blood and treasure.
Today we face a new and much more dangerous enemy who is seeking access to weapons of mass destruction, access to our schools, to our financial institutions and our way of life. Their intent is simple - destroy the West.
We are facing nation states like Syria and Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Iran has the clear intention to use those weapons on the West. We have Saudi Arabia exporting its wahhabist ideas globally. We face a clear and present danger in our homeland from the gradual infiltration of radical beliefs, radicalized individuals, and terrorist groups willing to attack the very country that gives them food, shelter, safety, and comfort.
Newt Gingrich says it best in this compelling video, go here to view it.
In the homeland we must effectively use all the powers available to us to protect ourselves from attack. Attacks will be both overt and covert. An attack may be another 9/11 or worse. It may take the form of silencing those who speak out against radical Imams in local mosques for fear of being called an "Islamophobe" or fear of a law suit. It may be the establishment of an Islamist charter school that teaches hate of other religions or beliefs. It may be a sleeper cell in our own back yard waiting to strike our homeland.
The right way to fight radical Islam is first to recognize the threat. Europe ignored the threat and tried to appease Nazi Germany and we had WWII. The anti-war movement tried to appease the USSR and we got the Korean and Vietnam wars. Since the mid 1980s we tried to appease the radical Islamists and got 9/11, the Kobar tower attack, and the London, Madrid and Bali bombings. Israel tried to appease Arafat and got the intifada.
The right way to fight radical Islam is with every every fiber of our bodies, and every ounce of our will. To do otherwise is to capitulate. Insah'Allah! |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 09 August 2008 )
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Drill Here, Drill Now. |
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Written by Dr. Richard M. Swier
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Friday, 01 August 2008 |
 Our good friend Waldo Proffitt writes an interesting article about the pros of electricity provided by wind turbines in his column, " The Saudi Arabia of wind power". Why do we compare American resources to Saudi Arabia? Is Saudi Arabia the new gold standard for energy? I prefer to think about America being the gold standard. We have been and we are. Anyway, we agree with Waldo and T. Boone Pickens that we need to exploit wind power. That makes perfect sense. We need to find the optimal locations in America to place wind turbines and just do it. However, I am against subsidizing any form of energy production. T. Boone Pickens is asking tax payers to help fund his project with massive multi-billion dollar subsidies. As the Wall Street Journal points out, "Mr. Pickens figures that [his plan] would save the U.S. about $300 billion a year, in addition to cleaning up the environment. But there’s a vicious circle in place: Wind can’t become a bigger part of the electricity mix until there’s a new batch of transmission lines, and nobody is willing to foot the bill for new power lines until there’s a lot of juice to move. Plus, a lot of communities hate the idea of big power lines plowing across their land. Mr. Pickens says he’s ready to pay for his own private transmission lines to get his wind farm spinning... But to really take off nationwide, wind power needs a national solution, the Senate heard. Western governors are teaming up with counterparts in Mexico and Canada to build their own clean-energy networks across state boundaries. But so far, the patchwork of federal and state regulations and permits is acting as a brake on wind power’s growth. That means Washington has to act, Mr. Pickens said, by tackling prickly questions like eminent domain and right-of-way across big swathes of federal land." Now for a reality check. Paul Driessen, from TownHall.com, writes, "Hydrocarbon fuels created America, gave us the technologies and living standards we enjoy today, enabled us to eradicate diseases that plagued earlier generations, and boosted our life expectancy from 50 in 1900 to nearly 80 today. They still provide 85% of our energy, and we could greatly reduce our reliance on oil imports if we would simply end the outrageous policies that keep our nation’s abundant energy resources locked up. We have enough oil, natural gas, oil shale, coal and uranium to provide power for centuries. We have a growing consensus that we need to drill, onshore and off. But partisan intransigence and absurd environmental claims prevent us from utilizing them. Instead, we’re offered bromides like wind. Wind contributes more every year to our energy mix. However, it still provides only 1% of our electricity – compared to 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear and 7% for hydroelectric. Wind power is intermittent, unreliable, noisy and expensive (even with subsidies). Many modern turbines are 400 feet tall and carry 130-foot-long, 7-ton blades that slice up raptors and other birds. They operate only 8 hours a day, on average, compared to 85% of the time for coal, gas and nuclear plants. They rarely provide power during peak summer daytime hours, when air-conditioning demand is highest, but wind speed is low to nonexistent. Using wind to replace all gas-fired power plants would require some 300,000 1.5-MW turbines, covering Midwestern “wind belt” acreage equivalent to South Carolina. The noise, scenic impacts and bird kills caused by such an “eco-friendly” energy source defy imagination. Building and installing these turbines requires 5 to 10 times more steel and concrete than is needed to build far more reliable coal or nuclear plants to generate the same amount of electricity, says Berkeley engineer Per Peterson. Add in the financing, steel and cement needed to build transmission lines from distant wind farms to urban consumers, and the effects multiply. That means vastly more quarries, mines, cement plants and steel mills to supply those raw materials. But radical greens oppose such facilities. So under the Pickens proposal, we would likely import more steel and cement, instead of oil." I am not against wind farms. I am against those that want "only" wind farms. I have said time and time again that the United States in general and Florida in particular must look at all forms of energy production. Florida has potentially billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas just off of our coast lines. These natural resources belong to all Floridians. By tapping into these offshore resources and refining them we would bring billions of dollars into our economy, create high paying jobs, diversify our economy, increase tax revenues, and help America reduce its dependence on foreign oil. Nothing should be off of the table. Wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, oil, clean coal, oil shale, and biomass all have potential and must be developed. T. Boone Pickens is correct when he says we cannot drill our way out of this mess. We must drill, mine, build, invent, innovate, and use technology to get us out of this mess. For those concerned about the environmental impact of drilling offshore Deroy Murdock of the Seattle Post Intelligencer reports, "U.S. offshore oil drilling is not perfectly tidy. It's only 99.999 percent clean. Indeed, since 1980 -- as MMS figures indicate -- 101,997 barrels spilled from among the 11.855 billion barrels of American oil extracted offshore. This is a 0.001 percent pollution rate. While offshore drilling is not 100 percent spotless, this record should satisfy all but the terminally fastidious. Ironically, in terms of oil contamination, Mother Nature is 95 times dirtier than Man. Some 620,500 barrels of oil ooze organically from North America's ocean floors each year. Compare this to the average 6,555 barrels that oil companies have spilled annually since 1998, according to MMS." The Heritage Foundation states, "Congressman John Boehner of Ohio is set to introduce The American Energy Act, which will most importantly increase America’s energy supplies. The bill calls for leasing regulations for offshore natural gas by 2010, removing restrictions for outer continental shelf drilling, and opening up sections of ANWR for drilling.
As The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman has been arguing this even when gas prices were around $1 a gallon. More energy supplies, not more taxes and regulations, are what this country needs. It’s economics 101: expanding supply is the surest way to lower energy prices, and the quicker Congress moves to open up restricted areas, the quicker more resources will be available... Where Boehner’s bill falters is the support for renewable fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol. Ethanol has been a prime culprit for rising food prices not only in America but also globally. The federal government has been trying since the 1970s to pick winners and losers by subsidizing unsuccessful alternative sources of energy and these sources still only comprise a small fraction of America’s energy profile." Republicans have offered multiple bills in the Congress to develop all forms of energy. That is the best idea. That is the rational approach. That is what is best for the people. That is what we must do. Posted by Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC, U.S. Army (Ret.) at |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 August 2008 )
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Funny money? |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Tuesday, 29 July 2008 |
 In a July 10 installment of “The World According to Barack,” we discussed Obama’s phenomenal fundraising juggernaut. Obama boasts of having built a contributor base of 1.5 million people, each contributing $5, $10, $20… or, as Obama assures us, “whatever they could afford.” Please do the math with me.
The Obama campaign has disclosed that one-fourth, or $66.25 million of the $265 million raised as of May 31, 2008 (he has raised an additional $70 million during the month of June), came from those contributing $2,000, or more… some 3,300 people. This means that the remainder, or $198.75 million, was contributed by some 1.47 million people who made “modest” sized contributions.
But the numbers don’t add up. Obama attended grammar school in Indonesia where they may have been taught an archaic brand of mathematics, but $198.75 million dollars cannot be contributed by 1.47 million people in “$5, $10, or $20” amounts. Each of those 1.47 million people would have had to contribute, on average, $135 to create a pool of $198.75 million… and that simply does not happen. It has never happened before and, I assure you, it is not happening now.
In a moment of undisguised chutzpa, Obama declared that he is raising his General Election funds outside the public funding system because that system is “broken,” and because his private fundraising… from ½ of 1% of the American people… represents (he said with a straight face) “true public financing.” We suggested, however, that Republicans should be hiring some of the world’s top investigators to find out who is providing more than a quarter of a billions dollars, behind the scenes, to literally “buy” the U.S. presidency for Obama.
Now, a July 22, 2008 article in The Nation magazine, titled, “Attack of the Global Pirate Bankers,” offers a possible answer to the mystery. According to the article by James S. Henry, the financial institution headed by Robert Wolf, who, along with George Soros serves as one of Obama’s top two money men, has been “outed” in six months of hearings conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).
Wolf serves as the CEO of UBS Americas, a subsidiary of UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank and the world’s largest private wealth manager, with $1.9 trillion in client assets. The Nation tells us, “Last week in Washington we got a rare look inside the global private banking industry, whose high purpose it is to gather up the assets of the world's wealthiest people and many of its worst villains, and shelter them from tax collectors, prosecutors, creditors, disgruntled business associates, family members, and each other.”
So what does this have to do, potentially, with Obama’s highly successful fundraising efforts?
According to a Statement of Facts in the recent criminal trial of former UBS executive Bradley Birkenfeld, UBS took significant steps to help American clients manage their Swiss accounts without alerting U.S. government authorities, which would have triggered Quarterly Income (QI) reporting. For example, the Statement of Facts describes how UBS advised American clients to withdraw funds from their accounts using Swiss credit cards that “could not be discovered by U.S. authorities,” to “destroy all off-shore banking records existing in the U.S.,” and to “misrepresent the receipt of funds from their Swiss accounts… as loans from the Swiss bank.”
The Nation reports that, “To achieve these results, UBS established an elaborate formal training program, which coached bankers on how to avoid surveillance by U.S. Customs and law enforcement, falsify visas, encrypt communications, secretly move money in and out of the country, and market security products even without broker/dealer licenses.
“Rich people the world over… are now free to opt into this sophisticated, secretive, utterly unprincipled global private banking industry. They can become, in effect, residents of nowhere for tax purposes, citizens of a brave new virtual country, which offers… unprecedented freedom from the taxes, regulations and moral restraints that the rest of us take for granted. They wield enormous political influence… merely by making contributions, threatening to withhold them – or better yet, threatening to abscond with their capital unless certain conditions are met…”
It is the perfect instrument for funneling illegal campaign contributions into the coffers of an ambitious and unscrupulous American politician.
Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that a billionaire international financier, wishing to influence the outcome of the American presidential elections, could transfer unlimited sums of money through this device. A U.S. recipient, such as the Obama campaign, could receive hundreds of thousands of individual contributions via Swiss credit card transfers, with fictitious payees being entered by teams of paid staffers working in a “boiler room” setting. The owners of the Swiss accounts would receive periodic statements indicating: a) debits of varying amounts, up to $2,300 each, and b) offsetting credits provided by the wealthy, but unnamed, "benefactor.”
For most of the super wealthy, especially those attempting to hide income and assets from U.S. authorities, an unexplained debit and credit of $2,300, or less, would not even raise an eyebrow. In super rich circles, $2,300 is “chump change.”
So who would ever know the source of such contributions? No one. Would such a plan be bold, audacious, perhaps insane? Absolutely! But then, the Obama campaign for President of the United States is itself… bold, audacious, and insane.
In 2004, former senator John Edwards (D-NC) raised some $31 million for his first presidential campaign, an unprecedented amount of money for a first-term member of Congress. Now, just four years later, another first-term Democrat, one with far less experience and far less substance than Edwards, has raised in excess of $335 million. Who owns Barack Obama? The American people need to know before they enter the voting booths in November. |
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Bailout! Watch your wallets! |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Sunday, 27 July 2008 |
 Congress has enacted recently legislation to resolve the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. This will be the government’s greatest effort to stabilize the mortgage and financial markets. The dice have been rolled for the fate of 300 million Americans.
The legislation has several key features: $300 billion program to refinance loans for struggling borrowers Dramatic rescue plan for embattled mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Creation of a new regulator for these Government Sponsored Enterprises Increase in the federal debt limit to $10.6 trillion Reform the Federal Housing Administration.
Wall Street Journal in an article July 24, 2008, “Housing Bill Will Extend Federal Role in Markets” highlighted the costs and expanded scope of the federal government. Tax Credits for first-time home buyers: $4.6 billion FHA insurance for up to $ 300 billion of home loans: $729 million Raised loan limits for FNMA and Freddie Mac to 115% of local area median home price, up to $ 625,000 Raised limit on federal debt to $10.6 trillion from $9.8 trillion Bill eliminated seller-funded down-payment assistance for loans backed by FHA. FHA has lost billions to date under this program
Ironically, twelve months ago, there was almost universal confidence in the American housing market as well as the public and private institutions that supported it. Alan Greenspan waxed enthusiastically about the rising percentage of American homeowners. He rebuffed critics. The past twelve months have been sobering. In April 2008 former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers predicted in testimony to a Senate Committee that What shattered the foundation of the American housing industry?
Housing Prices Can Decline!
On a national basis, until the last twelve months house prices had not dropped since the Great Depression. The National Association of Realtors reported that for the month ending June 2008 prices dropped 6.1% from one year ago.
Only a few critics recognized that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration, the supposed bulwark for our housing market were in dire financial straits themselves. Over the past thirty years, these institutions have become the dominant players in providing money or insurance for home mortgages. Specifically, Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA in the second quarter of 2008 accounted for 90% of the United States home mortgage origination. They either hold or guarantee $5.3 trillion of mortgage debt, covering about half the outstanding mortgages in the U.S. Democratic leaders such as Representative Barney Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman feel that the best solution to our present crisis was the establishment of a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and pouring billions of dollars into these institutions. Senator John McCain questions whether Fannie and Freddie can be effectively regulated. He wrote an editorial dated July 24, 2008 to the St. Petersburg Times “Take taxpayers off hook for rot at Fannie, Freddie.” McCain wrote that Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put United States taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's a tribute to what these two have bought with more than $170-million worth of lobbyists in the past decade. With combined obligations of roughly $5-trillion, the rapid failure of Fannie and Freddie would be a threat to mortgage markets and financial markets as a whole. Because of that threat, I support taking the unfortunate but necessary steps needed to keep the financial troubles at these two companies from further squeezing American families. Paul Gigot the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal argued in an editorial on April 21, 2008 “Too Political to Fail” that Fannie and Freddie have been able to purchase political immunity for decades by disguising their vast profit-making machine in the cloak of "affordable housing." To be more precise, Fan and Fred have been protected by an alliance of Capitol Hill and Wall Street even after overstating earnings by tens of billions of dollars.
In conclusion, we need to question whether American home ownership is best served by the market place or creating institutions “too big to fail” that have a taxpayer safety net. Hopefully, we have not resolved our current housing crisis by sowing the seeds of the next. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Remember how the Democrats, when they took control of Congress in 2006, pledged to get us out of the war in Iraq, cut the deficit, restore confidence in America, eliminate "ear marks", bring transparency to Congress, stop the strangle hold of lobbyists, and make our lives easier? Since Democrats took control in 2006 we have seen a housing market bust, a financial market meltdown, rising food and fuel prices, oil over $140 a barrel, a dollar in decline, Congress with a 9% approval rating, more inaction than action, and for the first time in history declining housing prices as noted by Doc Werlin. I have heard more and more people express outrage over bailing out banks, Fannie and Freddie. What do you think? |
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Which First Lady will you choose? |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Saturday, 26 July 2008 |
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 Michelle Robinson Obama was born in Chicago in January 1964. Following graduation from high school she attended Princeton University where she majored in Sociology and African American Studies. In her senior thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,”' she asserted that America was a nation founded on “crime and hatred” and that white Americans were “ineradicably racist.”
Moving on to Harvard Law School, she received her Juris Doctorate in 1988 and returned to Chicago. She joined the Sidley Austin law firm where, as part of her responsibilities, she was assigned to mentor a summer intern named Barack Hussein Obama, then a student at Harvard Law School.
After leaving the practice of law, she worked in Chicago city government, run by what has long been the most corrupt big-city Democratic machine in the country. She served as an assistant to Mayor Richard M. Daley and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1996, after working three years for a non-profit called Public Allies, and four years after marrying Barack Obama, she joined the University of Chicago as Associate Dean of Student Services, playing a major role in developing the university’s Community Service Center. In 2002 she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as Executive Director of Community Affairs and later as Vice President for External Affairs.
When it comes to “bringing home the bacon,” Hillary Clinton was a piker compared to Michelle Obama. When Bill Clinton became Governor of Arkansas, the general counsel for Tyson’s Foods, the state’s largest employer, mentored Hillary in a cattle futures trading venture. Mrs. Clinton opened an account with $1,000, and over the next ten months she turned that modest sum into a $100,000 nest egg… selling short in a bull market.
When Michelle Obama was promoted from executive director to vice president in 2005 she received an annual pay increase of $195,050, from $121,910 to $316,960… just three months after her husband was sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois.
This, of course, is a young black woman who not only enjoys a million dollar annual income, who lives in a multi-million dollar home in Chicago, who attended the most expensive Ivy League schools, all on someone else’s dollar, and who now concludes, according to a March 2008 interview in The New Yorker magazine that “… in America, in 2008, we’re a country that is just downright mean, we are guided by fear…”
 Cindy Hensley McCain was born in Phoenix, Arizona in May 1954. She attended the University of Southern California where she earned a B.A. in Education and an M.A. in Special Education.
After graduation she worked for ten years as a special education teacher, working with children afflicted with Down syndrome. However, having witnessed the substandard medical facilities on Truk Lagoon in the Pacific in 1984, she used part of her family’s substantial wealth in 1988 to found the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), a non-profit organization that sponsored trips for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to Third World countries. AVMT provided emergency medical care for disaster-stricken and war-torn countries such as Bangladesh, India, El Salvador, Iraq, Kuwait, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. Between 1988 and 1995, Mrs. McCain personally led fifty-five such missions. While leading an AVMT mission at Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh in 1991, in the aftermath of that country’s devastating cyclone, she found two infant girls who needed medical care that could only be provided in the United States. The girls were brought to the United States and the McCains subsequently adopted one of the girls, their fourth child, whom they named Bridget. They then coordinated the adoption of the other child by a family friend. In 1989, following two spinal surgeries for ruptured discs, Cindy McCain became addicted to painkillers. And when her addiction was such that she was taking as many as twenty tablets a day, her parents staged an intervention. She entered a drug treatment facility and later received outpatient treatment. Her addiction lasted three years. Finally, in 1993, a hysterectomy brought an end to her chronic back pain. In 2001, Mrs. McCain became active in Operation Smile, an organization that provides free surgery for children born with cleft lip and palate, taking teams of surgeons and other medical personnel to Morocco, Vietnam, and India. In addition to serving as Chairman of Hensley & Company, one of the nation’s largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorships, she serves on the board of directors of Operation Smile, CARE, the HALO Trust, and several other charitable organizations. She has also participated in operations to locate and remove land mines in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola. In November, the people will decide which of these two women will enter the White House as First Lady. Who will it be… the hate-filled, “ineradicably racist” Michelle Obama, who has been given educational and job opportunities that are available to few poor and middle class white people, but who continues to see whites as her enemy? Will it be the Michelle Obama who wrote in her Princeton senior thesis that she will utilize all of her present and future resources to benefit the black community, first and foremost? Or will it be Cindy McCain, the classy lady from Arizona who spends so much of her time and resources serving mankind around the world… totally without regard for the color of their skin? |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 26 July 2008 )
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Media bias |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Saturday, 26 July 2008 |
 I received this letter from a fellow veteran who is disgusted with the biased journalism of the liberal media in general and our public broadcasting networks in particular. Douglass refers to in his letter to WEDU, the Tampa, FL based public television station.
The President and CEO of WEDU is Richard M. (Dick) Lobo. Dick Lobo and his wife Caren according to Federal Election Commission filings are heavy contributors to and strong supporters of the Democratic Party. According to the Huffington Post Dick Lobo is the highest Sarasota, FL contributor to Obama at $5,600. They have both contributed over the years to both Jan Schneider and Christine Jennings. Their contributions are in the tens of thousands of dollars. Since 2003 Caren alone has given $9,500 to Emily's List.
Mr. Geoffrey Simon, Chairman of the Board of WEDU is also a heavy contributor, according to the FEC, to both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Executive Committee of Florida. He donated to Al Gore in 2000.
While our good friend Douglass is outraged we all must understand that WEDU is rotten to the core with bias. It is palpable and consistent as reflected in the make up of the Florida Week panel. It is driven by liberal ideology. The vast majority of Americans know this and take it into account. That is why this blog stands against this kind of media bias, against using public funds to push a liberal agenda, and against their hiding behind a thin veneer of journalist impartiality. We ask Dick and Geoffrey to publicly admit they are in the tank for the Democrats and are using WEDU as a propaganda weapon to push their liberal agenda.
Douglass keep up the good fight. We are with you!
This is addressed to Rob Lorei, the editor of Florida This Week, a weekly political TV program on WEDU, a publicly funded broadcast station.
Strongly object to you using your public forum today to make time/to be part of a long-standing smear-campaign organized by the ultra-liberal New York Times via its wholly-owned Sarasota Herald Tribune against Congressman Vern Buchanan, the GPO incumbent -- for following reasons:
1. You did not disclose your guest's Jeremy Wallace's long standing venomous "reporting" on Buchanan.
2. You failed to disclose Wallace's paper's ownership by The New York Times.
3. You apparently stacked the deck against Buchanan further as the only GOP panel member (out of 6?) I was able to identify was quite unprepared to counter the smears against Buchanan as it seemed clear to me you did not brief her in advance about why Wallace was on the panel on that particular day.
4. One other Democrat panelist chimed in that he was present at Buchanan's first political campaign in 2006 and hopefully remarked that if the NYT/SHT smears "get any legs", Buchanan may be "in trouble" come next election day. In short, this panelist further tilted the balance against the GOP on your panel.
5. You did not provide a seat for anyone to counter and to disclose (neither did you!) that the opponent of Buchanan spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of PUBLIC-dollars in a desperate effort to overturn the 2006 election result in her favor - this lasted for over a year during the course of which many Sarasotans became thoroughly disgusted with her sour-grapes desperate challenges, mightily helping, in my view, Buchanan's chance of reelection in the coming General Elections.
That the far-left crowd is regurgitating two years later, in the middle of a new campaign, the smear that Buchanan improperly "forced" 2 of his employees at his Ford dealership to contribute to his previous campaign in 2006, just seems to indicate to me how desperate the Buchanan haters have become!
Your PUBLIC TV program, with certain more prominent others, appears to be utilizing public funds to blatantly favor one party over the other - further lowering the already sadly declining standards of American journalism!
Do you agree with me that Buchanan deserves equal time on your program SOON!?
Namaste
Douglass Graem
Sarasota, Florida
WWII Disabled Veteran and Life Member of the Disabled American Veterans |
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Risk We Can Believe In? |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Friday, 25 July 2008 |
 Have you ever been at work and your boss says, "we have a consultant coming in to look at how we can change what we are doing for the better"? Remember the first thought in you mind? Was it: Oh no, am I going to lose my job? Did you think: Change why do we need to change? Did you resist the change because you knew from experience that it just would not work?
Well it seems that the "Change" candidate is morphing into the "Risky" candidate. Change is difficult at best and catastrophic at worst. Remember when you changed your hairdresser or barber. When you changed your mechanic of 20 years. When you changed to a new doctor. When you changed grades in school. Scary wasn't it.
Americans are now looking at Obama as the candidate whose change we don't want, or don't understand, which is even scarier.
According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll over half of American whites consider presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a "risky" choice for the White House, whereas two-thirds believe McCain as a "safe" pick, a new survey has revealed. The July survey showed that over half of Whites called 46-year-old Obama a "risky" choice for the top post, while two-thirds said McCain is a "safe" pick. Given all the media fawning over Obama, the large crowds he draws, and the great press he has been getting Gallop reports today that the race is a dead heat: Obama 46% and McCain 44%, all within the margin of error. The only answer for this is people are looking at the "messiah" and seeing he is not wearing any clothes. They are tiring of his change message and asking change what? Change who? Change me? Charles Krauthammer asks, "has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?" Is this the man we want to put in charge of changing all of us? A Wall Street Journal/NBC New poll found, "When voters were asked whether they could identify with the background and values of the two candidates, 58% said they could identify with Sen. McCain on that account, while 47% said the same of Sen. Obama. More than four in 10 said the Democratic contender doesn't have values and a background they can identify with." "Obama is going to be the point person in this election," says pollster Peter Hart, a Democrat who conducts the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll along with Republican Neil Newhouse. "Voters want to answer a simple question: Is Barack Obama safe?" Patti Carr, 59 years old, of Collierville, Tenn., outside Memphis, says she voted for Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. But she isn't yet sold on Barack Obama. His experience is giving her pause. "I see Obama as a very nice person but I don't believe he has the experience at this time to be president," she says. "He's new, he's young and he still has a lot to learn, I believe." She leans for now toward Sen. McCain, but is open to persuasion. Riki Frank, 44, a graphic artist and stay-at-home dad from Auburn, Wash., leans toward Sen. Obama, but hesitates because of his personal background. "I'm a white-bread American. I was raised in Iowa. I got the Midwestern work ethic," says Mr. Frank. "He's a black man. His name -- is unique. It's definitely not a Catholic name. He's kind of way off the pattern of the norm of what I grew up with. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because I can't relate to the person doesn't mean it's a bad thing." "I just don't think we're ready for a black president," says Donna Bender, 62, of Oshkosh, Wis., a retired credit clerk and registered Democrat. "I'm prejudiced." So I ask again, Is Obama the "risky" candidate? More and more Americans are beginning to think so. |
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Blackwater: a great American company |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
 The Sarasota Herald-Tribune attacks one of the most successful private security companies America has ever produced in their editorial, "Rethinking security contracts".
The company they attack is Blackwater Worldwide. Why would the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Democrat Senator Jim Webb want to force the Defense Department to "review of the use of private contractors like Blackwater Worldwide to provide training for combat and security?"
It is simple. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL, who attended the Naval Academy, graduated from Hillsdale College, and was an intern in George H.W. Bush's White House. Prince is a major financial supporter of Republican Party causes and candidates. Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, is also a former Navy SEAL. For work in Iraq, Blackwater draws contractors from their international pool of professionals, a database containing "21,000 former Special Forces operatives, soldiers, and retired law enforcement agents".
There you have it. You have a young Navy SEAL who took an inheritance and in 1997 formed a security company that has grown into the largest and best in the world. They have never lost a client, diplomat or member of Congress they have guarded. They are a highly successful entrepreneurial business, made up of former military men, and they are conservatives. A perfect target for Democrats and editorial boards like the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is quick to note the September 16, 2007 incident where Blackwater employees in Nisour Square, Baghdad shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians, at least 14 of whom were killed "without cause" according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No charges have been laid.
However, they fail to mention the March 31, 2004 incident where four Blackwater Security Consulting (BSC) employees were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, and their bodies were hung on a bridge to cheering Iraqi crowds.
The SH-T also does not tell you Blackwater was hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.
Dear Secretary Gates, Senator Webb and Tom Tryon: Blackwater does the work that others can't or won't do. That is why they are so successful. Let them do what they do best. Protect and defend those most vulnerable.
We need our troops to fight the radical Islamists, not guard diplomats, visiting dignitaries, State Department workers, and other civilian employees in Iraq. Our military troops are not police or security guards, they are war fighters and guardians of our liberty. In the homeland private security is second nature. Blackwater is doing great things in America and worldwide to protect those people and things that need protecting.
What we need to investigate is all the investigations that Congress requires of our war fighters and those that support them. It seems the Democrat Congress with a 9% approval rating and the SH-T losing readership daily would focus on something more important than a great company like Blackwater and the heroes that own and work for it.
A good friend of mine, Dr. Terri K. Wonder is going to Iraq to work for the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System. She will be conducting "needs assessments in various tribal areas about what the beleaguered victims of criminals, terrorists, and sectarian insurgents require in order to improve their lives in the aftermath of the bloodbaths, middle-class exodus, crop, and livestock destruction they experienced".
I have the greatest respect for women like Terri who will forgo personal safety for a higher calling, in this case the welfare of the Iraqi people. Terri is a true patriot. When she returns safely from Iraq we will welcome her home as a fellow "combat veteran". I hope that God and Blackwater watch over her.
I said to Terri when I last talked with her Insha'Allah, with God's help all will be well. |
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Prosperity or cut carbon emissions? That is the question. |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
 The Washington Post reported on July 9 that India was “balking” at the U.S approach to addressing CO2 emissions. India joined four other nations to call for “much steeper reductions” for developed nations.
Fact: India issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008 disputing man-made global warming fears and declared the country of one billion people had no intention of stopping its energy growth or cutting back its CO2 emissions.
An article in the Australian Herald on July 9 by Andrew Bolt, noted: “The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.”
The report declared: “No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.”
The report made clear that India has no plans to cut back energy usage. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. […] India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries."
The Australian Herald article noted that this declaration “means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes).”
The Australian Herald article continued: “What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our (Australia’s) Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why. Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming. In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all. Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts, floods, or rain: ‘The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . .’ It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: ‘While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses.’
In addition, in January 2008, Indian engineer and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who is the UN IPCC Chairman, announced that he was going “to look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.” (LINK) [Note: Global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to UN data. See: 'Global Warming Will Stop,' New Peer-Reviewed Study Says ]
Sampling of Indian Scientists Who Question Man-Made Global Warming Fears: ( See also: U.S. Senate Minority Report: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007” )
One of India's leading geologists, B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India, expressed man-made global warming skepticism in 2007. "We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles. We appear to be now only in the middle of an interglacial cycle showing a trend toward warming as warming and cooling are global and have occurred on such a scale when humans had not appeared on the planet,” Radhakrishna wrote in an August 23, 2007 essay. Radhakrishna said that there is doubt about “whether the steps that are proposed to be taken to reduce carbon emission will really bring down the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere and whether such attempts, even carried out on a global scale, will produce the desired effect. Warming of the climate, melting of glaciers, rise in sea levels and other marked changes in climate - these do not pose immediate threats and there is besides, no way of controlling such changes even if we want to. Exercises at mitigation of these likely disasters are, however, possible and mankind, in all likelihood, will gradually adjust itself to the changed conditions. This has happened before; men and animals have moved to greener pastures and adapted themselves to the changed situations," he added. (LINK)
VK Raina, India's leading Glaciologist, questioned the assertion that global warming was melting glaciers in India. "Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions," Raina told the Hindustan Times on February 11, 2007. The paper continued, "Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers. It is simple. The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalized by a few individuals, the septuagenarian Raina claimed. Throwing a gauntlet to the alarmist, he said the issue should be debated threadbare before drawing a conclusion." (LINK) |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 July 2008 )
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SNOB |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
 Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe writes, "JUST LIKE the Obama girl, Obama has a crush on Obama.
Barack Obama always was a larger-than-life candidate with a healthy ego. Now he's turning into the A-Rod of politics. It's all about him.
He's giving his opponent something other than issues to attack him on: narcissism.
A convention hall isn't good enough for the presumptive Democratic nominee. He plans to deliver his acceptance speech in the 75,000 seat stadium where the Denver Broncos play. Before a vote is cast, he's embarking on a foreign policy tour that will use cheering Europeans - and America's top news anchors - as extras in his campaign. What do you expect from a candidate who already auditioned a quasi-presidential seal with the Latin inscription, "Vero possumus" - "Yes, we can"?
Obama finds criticism of his wife "infuriating" and doesn't want either of them to be the target of satire. Tell that to the Carters, the Reagans, the Clintons, and the Bushes, father and son.
There's no such thing as a humble politician. But when Obama looks into the mirror, he doesn't just see a president; he sees JFK.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy accepted his party's nomination with an outdoor speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum. But he waited until he was elected before going to Germany to declare "Ich bin ein Berliner."
The fashionistas have already noted Michelle Obama's affinity for chanelling Jackie. And it's hard to watch the Obama daughters "Access Hollywood" interview and not think about Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr. back in the days of Camelot.
So far, Dad is only promising to get the kids a dog, not a pony named Macaroni.
Republican John McCain has the opposite challenge. As a candidate, he's shrinking, thanks to a series of gaffes, stumbles, and generally uninspiring speeches.
But McCain has one thing going for him: the appearance of modesty.
Part of it is physical. McCain is stiff and awkward, the result of age and injuries from his years as a prisoner of war. That, too, is a contrast to Obama's sleek physique, the consequence of youth and a George W. Bush-like passion for working out.
But with McCain, there's also the sense of a man who made mistakes in life and acknowledges them.
McCain's humility comes through in his book, "Faith of my Fathers," which he wrote at age 63, after completing a career in the US Navy and moving onto politics. Obama wrote the more self-reverential "Dreams from My Father," after he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review.
The McCain campaign is beginning to jump on the ego issue. "I don't know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for The One," a McCain aide quipped in response to Obama's upcoming visit abroad.
The conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh regularly ridicules "The Messiah also known as Obama." And "The Audacity of Obama" is turning into a ready-made take-off on the title of the Democrat's second book, "The Audacity of Hope."
The downside for Obama is how much his ego stands to resonate beyond the political right.
Last January, the online Slate Magazine debuted "The Obama Messiah Watch."
In February, a blogger for the left-embracing Mother Jones commented on his uneasiness over the candidate's messianic complex: "Does this post play unhelpfully into the pernicious and growing Obamaism-as-cult . . . that we'll likely see repeated over and over by the right wing if Obama gets the nomination?" blogged Jonathan Stein.
"It does. Sorry. But Obama's rhetoric makes an undeniable suggestion: that his election, not an eight-year administration that successfully implements his vision for America, would represent a moment in America of the grandest, most transformative kind. And that's a bit much," Stein wrote.
When the Obama Girl video first surfaced, Obama told the Associated Press, "You do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families."
That's good advice. He should think more about the impact of his ego on voters.
A presidential candidate is supposed to get bigger on the national stage. That doesn't mean his head should, too.
Joan Vennochi can be reached at
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Obama seen as a Muslim? |
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Written by Dr. Rich Swier
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Tuesday, 22 July 2008 |
According to OneNewsNow , "A conservative political pundit believes a controversial magazine cover depicting Democratic presidential Barack Obama as a Muslim has some truth.
The New Yorker magazine cover shows Obama dressed as a Muslim, and his wife Michelle dressed in fatigues with an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder. The two are doing a fist bump in the Oval Office, a picture of Osama bin Laden hangs on the mantle, and an American flag burns in the fireplace.  While the magazine has stated the cover was meant to be a satirical lampoon of the caricature Obama's opponents have tried to create, an Obama campaign spokesman has called it "tasteless and offensive." John McCain's campaign spokesman agreed with that assessment. But Brigitte Gabriel, founder of Act for America, says the cover is actually an accurate portrayal of how Obama is viewed in the Muslim world. "The Muslim world does look at Obama as a Muslim," she contends.
 As for the picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall, she continues, Obama has been sponsored by al Qaida. "Al Qaida wants Obama to be president. The terrorist organizations around the world want Obama to be president," Gabriel notes.
Gabriel also contends that in the Muslim realm Obama is portrayed as someone who has no loyalty to the U.S., and someone who will defend the right to burn the American flag. She says she finds it ironic that so many people in America are offended by the magazine cover when it is actually how the Islamic world views the Democratic presidential candidate. |
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Our good friend Waldo Proffitt writes an interesting article about the pros of electricity provided by wind turbines in his column, "The Saudi Arabia of wind power".
