Category Archives: Politics

November 6, 2008 · 5:48 am

After the Euphoria

“Poor people have been voting for Democrats for fifty years and they’re still poor.”
Charles Barkley

So, history has been made. The first black man has been elected President of the US. Joining him are overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. Together they form the most left wing government ever to preside over the country. Sure, there have been times when the Democrats held both the White House and Congress. LBJ had it and brought forth the “Great Society”, a massive expenditure of money and social programs enacted to wipe out poverty.

It didn’t.

He also escalated the conflict in Vietnam started by Jack Kennedy into a full-fledged debacle. He wisely decided not to run for reelection.

Carter had Democrat majorities in both houses following the Nixon disaster and managed to make a muck of just about everything. Reagan tossed him out on his ass after one term. Though Reagan had a Democrat Congress to contend with, he was immensely popular and adept at taking his case directly to the people. He cut taxes, stifled inflation and brought on a generation of prosperity. He handed off the Presidency to Bush 1 who foolishly broke his “no new taxes” pledge and pissed off the Republicans. They broke ranks and voted for third party candidate, Ross Perot. That gave Clinton the White House and a solid Democrat majority. Bill and Hillary over-reached with tax increases, gays in the military and an attempt to take over the health care system. Two years into Clinton’s first term, Newt Gingrich engineered “The Contract with America” and swept the Democrats from power in the House and Senate.

From 1996 until 2006 The Republicans held Congress and with the election of Bush in 1998 had for a time complete control. They messed it up, abandoning their own conservative principles, spending money like drunken fools and shipping home pork. The Contract with America was forgotten in the hope of hanging on to power. The Democrats regained the House and Senate in the 2006 elections. But, with Bush’s veto and enough Republicans in the Senate to maintain a filibuster, they were able to hold off the worst impulses of Pelosi and Reed. Now that faint restraint is gone.

Any Republican would have had an uphill battle in this election. In the early going the country had grown tired of the war in Iraq and very tired of George Bush. As the surge succeeded that issue fell off the table only to be supplanted by the economy. While the bursting bubble of the housing debacle and the consequent financial fallout cannot really be blamed on Bush, he takes the heat. It’s normal.

Despite these obstacles, I think McCain would have won except for one simple fact: Obama is black. Of course, he is a gifted orator and clever at evading tough questions. But, had he been white and espoused his socialist claptrap, he would have come under greater scrutiny. The media, enamored with the narrative of a black man as President, ignored his flip-flops, gaffs and questionable associations with radicals and racists. They were completely disinterested in his massive and questionable fundraising. They ignored his close association with ACORN and chose not to investigate his missing birth certificate, school or medical records or those missing years in his biography. Consequently, the US has just elected, as Tom Brokow admitted on the Charlie Rose Show the other day, ‘a guy we don’t know’. Gee Tom, whose fault is that? You pompous assholes in the MSM were so busy with tingles going up and down your legs that you couldn’t vet this guy? It’s a bit late to worry about where he’s taking the country now.

Naturally, minorities turned out in massive numbers to vote for the black man. No surprise there. College students and the young also registered and voted for the first time. For the young and idealistic who toil over textbooks and ideas and not as taxpayers yet, Obama represented a celebrity. “Hope and Change.” Hope for what? Change to what? Doesn’t matter. In our You Tube culture he is the perfect candidate. White liberals and moderates who could demonstrate their lack of prejudice and assuage white guilt by lining up and voting for this charismatic black man joined them.

One of my three faithful readers emailed me today and said he was troubled by the adoration shining on the faces in the crowd as they listened to Obama’s acceptance speech. I agree. Since we do not really know who this guy is yet and what he will do, it seems a bit early for hero worship. After the euphoria wears off and the Democrats begin to “fundamentally change America” we will see if there’s any buyer’s remorse. And, Barkley is right….. The poor will still be poor.

1 Comment

Filed under Obama, Politics

October 26, 2008 · 11:03 pm

The Politics of Personal Destruction

The recent vicious attacks and ridicule of VP candidate, Sarah Palin, sent me trundling down memory lane to the Clinton Administration where Hillary coined the above phrase. She was attempting to deflect moves by Republicans to impeach Bill for perjury and numerous charges of sexual harassment. While not as famous as her “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” quote, I found the “politics of personal destruction” line to be particularly ironic and even humorous considering she and her mates developed and perfected the technique.

Hillary’s team became quite adept at dealing with “Bimbo Eruptions”, women who came forward with charges of sexual harassment and rape. Remember Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and of course, Monica of blue dress fame? Hil and her BU team set out to publicly destroy these women using private investigators and by leaking false or misleading information to their friends and allies in the media. Trash them! That was the goal.

Hillary and her liberal-left fellow travelers in the media and Hollywood had already honed this skill in previous battles. She was, you may remember, one of the prosecutors in the Watergate trials that forced Nixon out. Later their techniques came to full flower in the fight over Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, giving rise to a new verb for the English language… “borking”. Bork had only one failing, other than being intelligent and principled, he was a conservative. They trashed the guy and it worked. They tried the same thing with Clarence Thomas and only failed because he stood up in front of the Senate hearing and called it what it was, “a high tech lynching”. An embarrassed Senate confirmed him… barely.

Of course, for the last eight years there has been a steady drumbeat of attack and ridicule on George Bush from the left, the media and entertainment figures. “Bush is stupid” is the mantra, although he has a degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard and had better grades than either Kerry or Dean. (Bill, Hillary and Obama have never released their college records). The hatred is quite amazing and cumulatively effective. Bush has the lowest approval rating of any President in recent history. Only two institutions have lower public approval ratings: Congress and the media. Hmmmmm?

Where does this hatred come from? The technique of teaching hatred is as old as Marxism itself. Karl Marx once boasted that “he was the greatest hater of the ‘so called positive’.” Lenin said, “We must teach our children to hate.” Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather-men, sixties bomber and admitted Marxist said, “Bring on the revolution, kill your parents, teach hatred.” He also is quoted as saying, “… the community organizer must first rub raw the resent-ments of the people and fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.” I wonder if this is what famous “community organizer”, B. Obama was doing in Chicago? Just a thought.

Dr. Mark Hendrickson in a Townhall.com piece opines that while it’s a hate crime to express distain or denigrate gays and minorities, it is not to show outright hatred for people on the right who disagree with you politically. He also points out that the flip side of hatred is inflated self-love and self-righteousness so extreme that respect for other human beings diminishes and feelings of moral superiority allow for any tactics.

The tactics employed by the liberal-left are credited to the late Saul Alinsky, the philosophical guru of the radical movement in the late sixties. Alinsky wrote an extremely popular book called The Rules for Radicals. He said, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

A brief summary of Alinsky’s rules clearly demonstrates that today’s leftists are operating right out of his handbook.

The only question about means is, do they work?
· Attack multiple issues.
· Target the middle class rather than the poor.
· Decisions are not necessarily driven by the good of mankind.
· Pretend morality
· Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
· Lead people to class based interpretations of their own grievances.
· Use the church to further your agenda.
· Pick a target, freeze it, and polarize it.
· Ridicule is the most powerful weapon.

Hillary was a big fan of Alinsky while at Wellesley and wrote her senior thesis on his book. Her paper entitled, “There is Only One Fight… An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” was kept under wraps while the Clintons were in the White House. Written in her senior year, 1969, it only became public in 2001. In her 92 page paper she made it clear she found much to admire in Alinsky’s work and at the same time was already thinking ahead. One observation that stands out was that “politics needs an enemy to mobilize against.” Or, as Amanda Carpenter pointed out in “Human Events”, “the village needs an enemy.”

If you look at the last two rules on Alinsky’s list you get a pretty good feel for what has been going on in the last eight years and during the current Presidential campaign. The liberal-left, including their allies in the media and Hollywood have selected targets and polarized them and using ridicule and fueled by hatred tried to destroy them. The list is long: Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rice, Gonzales, Karl Rove, Halliburton and Big Oil, Wall Street and “The Rich”.
It explains how, acting in lockstep, they can ridicule Palin and attack anyone as “racist” who questions Obama’s relationships with Ayers, Reverend Wright, Syrian convicted felon, Tony Rezko or Jew hater, Louis Farrakhan. Ayers, Hillary and Obama were all fans of Alinsky. BHO even worked for the Industrial Area Foundation, an organization founded by Alinsky and financially supported by Clinton. Saul can certainly be credited with originating The Politics of Personal Destruction. Today’s leftists only perfected it.

Americans need to think carefully before putting Obama, clearly a radical and likely Marxist in the White House.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Clinton, Marxism, Obama, Politics

September 30, 2008 · 6:36 am

What happened?

Yeah, quite a stunning day if you watched your stocks plummet.

Here’s my short theory on how this happened. Keep in mind that I am not an economist.

1). Congress has actively encouraged banks to give mortgages to the marginally qualified (and even to those not qualified based on usual credit scoring). Remember the term “Red lining”? Banks were sued for not granting loans in large enough numbers to people living in certain areas of the city.

2). Easy money by the Fed was a standard policy for way too long which encourages excesses in the markets (real estate in particular in this case). Recall the recent escalation of home values.

3). Congressional oversight of Freddie and Fanny was way too lax. F & F were generous with their campaign contributions and got a lot of slack…. too much. The WSJ and others (including McCain) were complaining about this for years. Zillions of dollars of the mortgages from #1 above were pawned off on F & F which everyone figured was safe as can be cause they are ostensibly backed by the US gov’t.

4). Following the Enron mess Congress in their enthusiasm to do something passed new accounting laws called Sarbanes-Oxley. This imposed a new rule called “mark to market” on how assets are valued.

5). The wizards on Wall Street figured out how to package the shaky mortgages into bond-like instruments that could be resold to banks and other institutions. And, like all manias everybody figured the dance would go on forever. But, the music stopped. When the bubble burst, the new mark to market rule made the mortgage assets worth essentially zero and put otherwise profitable and substantial businesses in (and this is a technical term) deep shit. Banks have strict capital ratios to maintain to be recognized as solvent in the eyes of the FDIC. Holding assets that become instantly worthless does not look good on the balance sheet.

Of course, in a big mess there is plenty of blame to go around. However, the guys who are escaping blame thus far are the guys who should get the lion’s share….. Congress. They have been essentially tossing money at this thing from the beginning (prob 700 or so billion) and now want to throw another 700 billion or more at the wall and see if that sticks. I am not at all convinced that the “bailout” is the right answer. However, in the final weeks of the election cycle it is clear that the politicians have made it their goal to use this situation as an opportunity to get elected or re-elected. And especially the Democrats who repeatedly blocked reforms of F & F and continue to encourage loans to the unqualified. Not good. Kind of like fiddling while Rome burns.

Unfortunately, I think Obama will get elected and prolong the misery. His many proposals mirror those of FDR who, if you analyze history honestly, prolonged the depression. (You can look this up). Obie thinks FDR was just great. McCain has not been swift on this crisis either.

Not fun.

More bailout discussion can be enjoyed (with a handful of Prozac) by reading Thomas Sowell’s article on Townhall.com. There’s also an interesting (although arguably incorrect in some aspects) article comparing the US economy to the Titanic.

1 Comment

Filed under Economy, Obama, Politics

September 10, 2008 · 4:13 pm

K-129

The recent brutal invasion of Georgia by the KGB dominated Russian government reminded me of a book I read about a year ago. I immediately put aside Elizabeth George’s latest mystery and trundled off to my bookshelves to find and re-read it. The author, Kenneth Sewell, is a nuclear engineer who served five years aboard the USS Parche, a fast attack submarine that was involved in a number of Cold War escapades. (Check out Blind Man’s Bluff for that story.) Sewell held top secret security clearances with the Departments of Defense and Energy and in 1991 gained access to recently declassified intelligence files of the US and Soviets. From these and interviews of many of the parties involved, Sewell wrote The Red Star Rogue, The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the US. It is, without a doubt, a sobering tale and should serve as a warning to those who do not think the KGB is alive and well in Russia and capable of anything. It ain’t a novel, folks. This really happened.

On 7 March 1968 at a precise intersection of latitude and longitude some 350 miles from Honolulu, the nuclear equipped Soviet submarine, K-129, surfaced in the dark of night, blew up and promptly sank to the ocean floor some three miles below. While many of the details of this incident still remain classified, Sewell unearthed enough facts to paint a very convincing picture of what occurred. But first, a few words about the geo-political situation in early 1968.
· The US was heavily involved in the Vietnam War, devoting much blood and treasure to that conflict while the populace at home became increasingly disenchanted.
· The Soviets were spending 50% of their GDP on their military and facing the prospect of financial ruin in the process. Supporting communist insurgencies around the world also helped drain their coffers.
· The KGB led by Andropov and the Soviet central government led by Brezhnev struggled for power.
· The KGB had control of all nuclear weapons held by the Soviets.
· China had emerged as a new military power with nuclear capabilities.
· China and the USSR were at each other’s throats for dominance of International Communism. They were fighting each other on their long mutual border and the Soviets had one half of their total forces arrayed along that border.
· Mao Tse-tung had China in turmoil with his Cultural Revolution and became increasingly belligerent with both the Soviets and the US. He had threatened all out nuclear war with the US, contending China with its huge size would survive and the US would not.
· All branches of the Soviet military had their own special operations troops known as “spetnaz”. The KGB had them as well and they were known as “osnaz”. The Osnaz were especially nasty lads who specialized in “wet ops” (kidnapping and murder). They were also trained in the handling of nuclear weapons and all types of military equipment, including submarines. They operated in ten man teams.

On February 24, 1968 the diesel-electric Golf Class Soviet submarine K-129 sailed on an unscheduled mission from its homeport at Vladivostok. At the last minute an additional 11 men boarded the sub making the cramped boat seriously over crowded. The Soviets, always anal about the chain of command, required that all subs report in to Moscow at predetermined locations along their course. After the first check point K-129 was never heard from again. When the Soviets finally launched a massive sea search for their sub they concentrated on an area some 800 miles north of where the sub actually sank. That was where K-129 was supposed to be patrolling.

A US satellite had noted the explosion off Hawaii and had not deemed it of strategic importance. A few days later a U of Hawaii research ship discovered a radioactive oil slick and alarm bells went off. The US, not wanting to tip off the Soviets, utilized their own sub towing a deeps submersible equipped with lights and cameras and found the K-129 in short order. Of course, they snapped lots of damning photos and used the mechanical arm of the submersible to recover the nuclear bombs and who knows what else from the wreckage.

It soon became clear what had happened and why. The K-129 had surfaced to fire a nuclear tipped rocket at Honolulu and although they possessed the launch codes, they were unaware of the super secret fail-safe device installed on the weapon. The US had given Soviet scientists the technology for the fail-safe device to prevent a rogue group from an unauthorized firing . From the damage to the sub it was evident that the nuclear device had self destructed, igniting the rocket fuel below and in the one next to it in a massive explosion that broke the back of K-129. It went to the bottom in seconds.

It quickly became obvious what had been intended and how it had been accomplished. The Captain and crew went to their deaths locked in a forward compartment, so the sub had been in the control of the 11 mysterious men who boarded as the sub set sail. The location of K-129 also offered some clues.

The Golf II was capable of firing from underwater and at ranges of 800 miles. The Chinese subs had to be on the surface to fire and within 400 miles of the target. They also had to be at the precise intersection of latitude and longitude lines to successfully navigate to the target. Obviously, the intention was to obliterate Honolulu including the vast military presence there, plus the residents and tourists, and blame the whole thing on the Chinese. The plot had been hatched by the cynical KGB trolls in Moscow to take out two enemies at one shot by starting a nuclear war between China and the US. The KGB lads knew that in the aftermath, the US would have no means or intention to occupy a country the size of China, so they would just march across the border and take over.

The info was damning and volatile. A Johnson Administration exhausted with the Vietnam debacle wanted no part of it. The newly installed Nixon Administration and the aggressive Henry Kissinger had no such reservations. A copy of the report and photos got slid under the door of the Soviet Embassy in Washington one dark night. Heads rolled in Moscow and the nuclear weapons got taken out of the hands of the KGB.

Kissinger also began negotiations with China. If you ever wondered how the hawk Nixon ever managed to be the guy to make the historic break through in US Chinese relations, you can be pretty sure the photos and report on the sinking of K-129 played a major part. “And now,” as Paul Harvey likes to say, “you know the rest of the story.”

Post Script:
During the Cold War the Soviets employed what is known as the “Brezhnev Doctrine” as exemplified by the brutal invasion of the Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia. Forty years later here we are again with Russian tanks rolling. You have to ask yourself: If the KGB was willing to instigate a nuclear war to further their ambitions, of what is the current KGB boss, Putin, capable?

2 Comments

Filed under KGB, Politics, USSR

August 17, 2008 · 10:14 pm

The Chinese and the Russians

The Chinese spent a mere $43 billion dollars to put a big happy face on their image at the Olympic games. Of course, there is something slightly obscene in spending that kind of money when many of your citizens live in abject poverty and the victims of the recent earthquake still suffer in the streets. (Editor’s note: $15 billion was spent by Greece on the Athens Olympics in 2004, and thousands of Chinese people were moved out of their homes to make way for the new state-of-the art stadiums.) The opening ceremonies were nothing short of spectacular and specifically designed to not only impress, but to give us a warm fuzzy feeling about the Chicoms. No one could disagree… amazing.

Once the euphoria of the ceremony had worn off, some irritating realities began to emerge.
· The draconian smog abatement program had not worked, a fact made clear to the world as the TV pictures of the early road cycling events traversed the globe.
· It turns out the darling little girl sweetly singing the song at the Olympic ceremony (I think it was entitled, “Workers Rise Up and Beat the Shit Out of the Capitalist Pigs”) was not actually singing the song. The girl doing the singing had been deemed not cute enough by the Chinese image-makers, so while her voice carried to the World, the cute one lip-synced the words. A unique Olympic Milli Vanilli moment.
· We also learned that to assure that the fireworks display went off perfectly, the broadcast images had been “digitally enhanced”.
· Journalists discovered that the remote parks specifically set aside to allow protesters to voice their objections remained curiously devoid of protesters… or anyone for that matter. Chinese officials calmly admitted that one required a permit to protest in the parks and that, regrettably, no permits had been issued. Well, that was neatly handled.
· We learned that despite public announcements, all the seats for the events were not sold. The Chinese brought in warm bodies off the streets to fill those empty seats.
· The gymnasts were spectacular, especially the tiny Chinese girls who flipped, twisted and tumbled with extraordinary ease. We later learned that these young girls had shown promise at age three and had been spirited away from their families to spend their childhood in gymnastics training camps. Some questions were also raised about their age since by Olympic rules the girls must be 16 years of age to compete. All of the sprites had the physical development of my 9 year-old grand daughter, but the Chinese assured us that the government issued passports for the girls all confirmed their legal status. Right. Looking at the US team and the Chinese girls side by side…. Well, the US girls had breasts, hips and the look one would expect from a mid to late teen young woman. The Chinese girls looked like 9 or 10 year olds. I thought back to the bad old days of the Cold War when the Romanian and Bulgarian gymnastic teams gave drugs to their teen women to prevent the onset of puberty. Had the Chicoms taken Vince Lombardi’s dictum to heart? (“Winning isn’t the most important thing, it’s the ONLY thing.”)

While the world’s attention focused on the exploits of Mike Phelps and the “Redeem Team” and with President Bush in the stands as First Fan, Russia decided this would be an excellent time to invade Georgia. Bush in the early days of his administration had badly misjudged Putin, declaring that ‘I have looked into his heart and see a man that I can deal with…’ or something like that). He should have looked into his eyes instead. Any businessman worth his salt would have gazed into those rattlesnake eyes and quickly concluded that they would trust this guy no further than they could throw a fully-loaded 737.

During Bush’s two terms Putin has consolidated the KGB control over Russia by boldly eliminating the private ownership of oil assets by jailing or evicting the executives of the companies and putting them under State control. He has also callously jailed offending journalists, executing an enemy in London by adding a dollop of plutonium to his won-ton soup and rigging an election to put his hand picked puppet, Medeved, in the President’s slot. Russian democracy my ass. Russia is now the World’s number two exporter of oil and they covet the oil pipeline that runs through Georgia. With that asset in hand they have a complete strangle hold on the entire region and can bring Europe to heel.

Candidate Obama, from his vacation headquarters in Hawaii, immediately called for the intervention of the UN. That should give anyone paying attention an indication of the depth of his foreign policy knowledge. The UN has been powerless and less than ineffective in stopping genocide or international crisis for decades. Think Rwanda, Darfur, the Sudan or the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal for that matter. He also missed that Russia holds a seat on the Security Council and an unconditional veto. The enemies of the US are licking their chops at the prospect of having this naive reincarnation of Jimmy Carter sitting in the White House.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress continue to plug their heads in the sand ostrich-style and ignore the realities of the strategic importance of the oil crisis. The newly-aggressive Russians and the less than friendly countries of the Middle East have the US in an extremely vulnerable position. With 70% of the US’s oil needs coming from foreign sources, they hold a gun to the head of the North American economy. And despite the optimism of T. Boone and others that alternative energy sources and conservation (inflate those tires folks!) is the ultimate answer, that nirvana is unlikely to arrive for at least a decade. Not drilling for domestic oil and fast-tracking nuclear power plants represents the most dangerous form of economic brinksmanship.

Speaking of T. Boone… I suggested in a recent piece (“This an’ That”, August 6) that someone should look into the possible economic benefit ol’ T-bone might have from his expensive ad campaign touting wind farms and natural gas. Voila! On cue author and journalist Michelle Malkin did just that in a piece entitled “Nan and the Big Wind Boondoggle”, August 13). Turns out, Pickens is the founder and principal stockholder of a company called Clean Energy Fuels Corporation (stock symbol CLNE) that is heavily into natural gas. He also founded a company called Mesa Power that (surprise, surprise) builds wind farms. Mesa has invested some $12 billion in a wind farm development in the Texas Panhandle. T-bone admits that these wind farms cannot be economically viable without government subsidies, so it should stun no one that he enthusiastically supports a bill in California to provide $10 billion in state and federal funds for renewal energy resources. Think wind and natural gas.

A liberal friend of mine frequently suggests that we should “follow the money” to ferret out the motives of our politicians. Yeah, let’s. Nancy Pelosi is a strong supporter of Mr. Pickens’s suggestions, often quoting his “We can’t drill our way out of this problem”. Does Nancy have a personal interest in this issue? Well, yes. She disclosed on her required financial forms that she had made up to $250,000 from her investment in Clean Energy Fuels Corp last year. She had been granted the right to purchase at the IPO $100,000 of CLNE stock.

If you’ve ever wondered how member of Congress can all retire as millionaires when they make a salary of $169,300, the IPO scam is the answer. It’s way better than taking the payoffs in cash and then hiding it in the freezer. In return for future favors Congressmen are invited to purchase blocks of companies about to go public and dump them right after the opening when the prices typically rise. Instant profit. Tom Foley of Washington, former Speaker of the House, over did this perk and it cost him his seat. Obviously, with a myopic press this quasi-legal method of lining the pockets of US politicians continues.

Don’t expect to see this cozy arrangement between T. Boone Pickens and Nancy Pelosi revealed anytime soon on the NBC Nightly News or the pages of the New York Times. Maybe the National Enquirer will get on the case. They were the only guys who picked up that John Edwards was screwing around on his cancer stricken wife and paying the mistress with campaign funds.

I guess I am just old fashioned in believing that responsible journalists would report the conflict of interest obvious in Pickens’s campaign and Pelosi’s clear involvement. Not likely. On the other hand, “USA Today” just layed off 3,000 people. Maybe, the public is catching on to the liberal bias in the mainstream media.

1 Comment

Filed under China, Environmentalism, Obama, Olympics, Politics, Soviets