President's qualifications

10/17/08
Mr. O's qualifications?
I have asked myself why anyone would want to vote for Barack Obama?
To vote for any politician we need to consider a variety of personal and professional aspects about the individual in order to make a judgment of competence and personal character.
Break down those parameters into the following:
1 Obama's character, associations, judgment.
2 Experience, work, accomplishments
3 Credibility
4 What is he promising? Are those promises about critical, national priorities or just feel good "pandering" to the public? How much would it all cost and where would the money come from?
5 Would he make a credible candidate?
1 O's character is affected by an unsettled youth, lack of proper parental guidance, a mixed racial genealogy but with a good brain and a drive to succeed.
He has good personal self control, at least in public, doesn't rattle easily and of course speaks well, but frequently speaks in somewhat general terms, as if he really doesn't want to go into detail using examples from experience to highlight his opinions.
His early association with a variety of questionable characters has made him try to walk away from those contacts because they are no longer useful to him now. They were once.! His denials are suspect, particularly since he spent 20 years as a member of Jeremiah Wright's anti-American, anti-white, racist Chicago Church.
His work as a trainer of "community organizers" for ACORN encourages one to believe that in fact he is quite the opposite of what he claims to be. His credibility has suffered, at least in the eyes of some.
Most importantly, his people judgment is either atrocious or so cynically self-serving that one should question his ethics. Imagine what such a man would do if he had real power and could rid himself of anyone who disagreed with him.
2 His work experience should be considered completely inadequate as preparation for USA Commander in Chief. His ability to get himself elected to the Illinois State Senate and later to the US Senate only proves that he knows how to use people to succeed in the political world without ever having accomplished anything.
His objective all along was to become recognized at the national level of politics. He succeeded and gave a good speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004.
But does that constitute a credible professional career pattern qualifying one to become President of the USA?

It seems to me he still hasn't accomplished anything to benefit the country, only himself. And now he is 2 weeks away from the supreme prize, a stupendous feat for an individual who has no serious record of accomplishments anywhere.
3 As far as credibility is concerned I'd rate him an F. But for chutzpah an A+.
4 What Mr. Obama is promising the electorate is essentially more of the same socialist nonsense that has gotten us into trouble in the past. More government and higher taxes together with Democratic overbearing interference in our free market system are there, right now, for all to see. In case you had not noticed, Mr. Obama is just promising the "perfect" socialist moon but it could also be worse than that, more like the erstwhile "communist" moon.
Mr. Obama appears to have a singularly casual view of the world outside, particularly the world of our self-appointed enemies such as radical Islam, N-Korea, Sudan, Syria, Iran, Venezuela etc. And because he's a great talker he seems to think everything can be settled agreeably with a lot of talk. His knowledge of history appears neither very deep nor broad, nor well understood. This is not a promising background for a US President, in my opinion.
His thoughts on opening the credit spigot are disarmingly unpersuasive, but certainly will be very costly.
His promises to fix health care, the environment, global warming and the economy would appear to be unrealistic to anyone who can add 2 and 2. It makes for great speeches but will later turn out to be so much hot air if results do not measure up to expectations.
Consequently, I cannot divorce myself from believing that Mr. Obama is mostly pandering to the public.
5 The mantra that it is time to let an Afro-American become President is a slogan and not a valid reason of course for favoring Mr. Obama over any other candidate.
In sum, I cannot help but conclude that our country is likely to run a greater risk, in these perilous times, by electing someone like Mr. Obama, to become our next President and Commander in Chief. Mr. Obama certainly is a personally appealing individual but also lacks depth and experience and therefore might not be as qualified as he should be.
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I may be wrong, but the signs in favor of a successful Obama presidency do not appear propitious to me.

Haiti

HAITI?
1/24/2010
A news article written by Romain Raynaldi yesterday from Park City,
Utah tells us that the "catastrophe merchants" are still at it. An outfit called
Sundance Films is going to show a movie made by Michael Nash called
"Climate Refugees".
What motivated the filmmaker appears to be his deeply held belief about
man-made global warming and its so-called inevitable dire consequences for
humanity.
Based on the assumptions made by his frenetic mind he sees millions of
people forced to leave coastal areas because of sea levels rising, while other
millions will be drifting into the US looking for food and water and locals will be
forced to find shelter away from home because of more hurricanes, tornadoes
or mudslides.
Mr. Nash visited the recent Copenhagen conference which he thought
quite frustrating because nobody wanted to listen to his concerns about
migrations. Maybe he was at the wrong conference, because Copenhagen was
dealing with another perceived catastrophe, global warming, which is now
having its own very hard time about being believable.
I am sure Mr. Nash means well by agitating for the creation of yet
another organization, not the UN, to take care of humanitarian needs caused
by environmental disasters. You may well be right in thinking that this all
seems a bit redundant for organizing the distribution of funds directly to people
hurt by a disaster of some kind. The logistics at such a time just aren't very
helpful.
Finally, he condemns humankind in toto for the Haitian calamity
emphasizing that people in Haiti have been living without food for the last 3
years. Shame on us, he says.
One can have deep sympathy for the Haitian people in their utter misery
and hopelessness, yet at the same time insist that the world should help in a
way that will more effectively stop the continuation of poverty, illiteracy and
lack of opportunity in that strange little country.
Apparently, Mr. Nash is totally unaware of the billions of dollars in
contributions and time spent by many thousands of volunteers over a period of
decades, which efforts have never been able to really stabilize the country. But
notwithstanding this international largesse, self-serving activities by outsiders
have often perpetuated local corruption rather than the opposite.
Haiti is indeed a singular tragedy in more ways than one but is not
caused by a cruel world anymore than is Switzerland. It is mostly a self-made
series of tragedies.
One only has to look at the Dominican Republic next door to see what
could be made of Haiti if it decided to accept a strong, capable leader, possibly
educated abroad. The Dominicans also went through a long history of
dictatorships, strongmen, revolutions and annexations and finally put that
chapter behind itself about 30 years ago. But Haiti hasn't learned the same
lesson yet and the results are predictable. It cannot feed itself, support itself or
defend itself. It needs a strong and constructive guiding hand.
In my mind Haiti is currently politically and economically unviable and
really would be better off under another country's disciplined tutelage for a
long period of time. Afterwards and if results are convincingly attractive, give it
a choice of annexation with another country or independence. As a condition of
such long term assistance, most expatriated Haitians need to return home and
commit to rebuilding their country.
Nothing else will work there.
Agitating for the creation of yet another "do-good" organization as
proposed by Mr. Michael Nash just isn't the answer. That's all been done in the
past, many times. Mr. Nash would do the Haitians a real service by not
dramatizing the current tragedy there as a means to make other countries feel
guilty about something over which they have no control while pushing to create
yet another expensive and mostly ineffective bureaucracy onto a selfperpetuating
problem.
Sundance Films isn't helping either. It's time to call a spade a spade

Our determined enemy

Original date 11/1/2010

The USA faces a determined enemy.



It would be imprudent not to realize that little by little our murderous enemies, radical Islamists, are increasing their attacks on the US Homeland week after week.

And little by little, this pressure will build with the hopeful result that we might finally begin to realize in our country that we really are under siege, just like the people in Bagdad, Kabul and other such places.

Also never forget that, in the radical Islamists’ opinion, we are the “big Satan” and consequently we are the ultimate target.

The question is: “what are we (our Government) doing about this growing threat”.
In essence, not very much, it seems.

Sure we have improved our intelligence gathering somewhat, but as the recent 3 attempts at mayhem here have shown, they were nipped in the butt at the last minute by luck, more than by design. We are now forced to suspect most, if not all flights with a direct or indirect flight-plan from a foreign location. I question whether we have adequate, up to the minute intelligence to guide us to a problem flight. And what about cruise ships?
Now there’s a target!

Add to this not only chemical and biological threats but what of the noise levels in the media lately about Russian EMP weaponry, known as CLUB-X, that will shortly be available to any rogue state. These weapons can be concealed in trucks, ships, containers, RR cars etc. One might conclude that somebody, Russia, might believe there is a market for the use of these things. Potential targets: Israel and the United States. No one else counts.

Our dedicated enemies and their weapons’ suppliers are ready to execute, provided the money is available. May be we have more enemies than we realize and a government that is scared and unqualified to deal with these existential threats to our existence as a nation. So what options do we have? Few actually.


With only a mere handful of Arab speaking intelligence professionals we are utterly dependant on foreign sources, many of which of questionable loyalty and competence.
So far and more importantly, our Government has utterly failed to begin a systematic information campaign to bring the public up to speed about the rapidly growing fifth
column activities right here at home and what we should do about it. While there is no question about the fact that Islamic Radicalism, an offshoot of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia is determined to conquer the Western World for Islam, it is still a term few people are familiar with and may not even associate with our fighting in the Middle East. Everybody knows about terrorists, al-Qaeda types or Taliban types and the Muslim Brotherhood, but not where this fanaticism comes from. And until our government spells it out and connects the dots and the media regularly and truthfully report on this international evil, we will not be successful in coping with it definitively, at our peril.

The public at large does not have any idea about how much radical Islamists have already penetrated our US homeland. Many Governmental departments have relationships with Islamic front groups, like CAIR, who merely serve as the manageable tip of a potentially explosive radical Islamic volcano.

Some people ask, “if Islamic radicalism is so threatening why aren’t there people in the Muslim community who stand up and say that publicly”? The reason is simply that the better part of the Muslim community in this country is already under Sharia law which allows the radical men to make sure nobody complains and thus they maintain a “peaceful” façade to their American environment. This has been going on for many years already and may be seen as a growing fifth column brigade being made ready for the day when they all have to play their part in “conquering” the country. Our country.

And don’t believe that this is a preposterous idea! Our enemies are past masters at obfuscation and working underground, out of sight for many years to eventually gain their nefarious ends. Many years before, as well as during WW II, the Russian communists did the same thing by placing spies in places of interest to them in the USA, resulting in all the new nuclear technology we were developing in Chicago, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos etc. to reach Moscow in short order. No wonder it only took Moscow a few years after the war to explode their first A-bomb.

Today radical Muslims are spreading more deeply into our government’s most critical places not to forget the idiocy of NASA being charged to make nice with Muslims. Our government doesn’t want to hear anything critical about Islam. Why not? Because key people in our Administration protect Islam from criticism. That’s why you do not hear that Islam’s radicalized people are a threat to any western society and that it behooves us, to deal with this threat aggressively.

The head man of our enemy, Osama bin Laden, declared war on us in 1996 but our Government, does not think it sufficiently important to make sure that everyone knows the score. America is not the attacker but radical Islam is, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its various offspring, the Taliban and al-Qaeda operations that have been our deadly enemies for many years already. Those people are determined to destroy us and maybe themselves as well, although that doesn’t bother them. They “love death” they claim. Peculiar, unreliable and dangerous people and contrary to what many of our leading politicians have been saying their form of Islam is not peaceful.

We are now forced to suspect most, if not all flights with a direct or indirect trajectory from a foreign location. Because we only have a rare few qualified Arabic speaking, American intelligence gatherers in the Middle East we are very dependent on local English speaking sources, many of questionable loyalty and competence.

May be we have more enemies than we realize and a Government that is scared to tune in to these dangers because they would have to think about defending us against them. And that’s one subject our Administration does not consider important.

Not a pretty picture. Maybe the coming elections will shift the political power situation in Washington a bit to nudge the Government in doing what really needs to be done which is to publicly realize who our enemies are and take all necessary measures, domestically as well as internationally.

Immigration update

Immigration aspects. 6/13/2010
Rev.10/29/2010

Forbes’ June 28 issue carried a trio of articles on Immigration that caught my attention because of its range of views about this critical subject, from the bizarre to the realistic.

As a former immigrant myself (1953) I have been particularly sensitive to and chagrined by the abuse of our borders together with the slow but steady loosening of our cultural disciplines.

Why? Because the early 20-ieth century United States of America was a country with a deep belief in the lessons of its history going back to Founding Days. We lived within a growing, distinct and unique cultural environment.
A cultural environment that guided, not always successfully, our social, educational, political and economic activities. It molded its citizens into Americans. It was a very powerful national experience and became the envy of the world.
Natural born American citizens as well as new immigrants all wanted the same thing. To work hard, be honorable and generous to those who might need help while improving oneself. Immigrants assimilated within one generation and gained a better economic and social future for themselves and families. Welfare did not exist but charity flourished.

The world had never seen anything like it. For many in the outside world it seemed like paradise and the place to go. Including myself.

Shortly after the end of WW II, this country’s disciplined and unique cultural profile was still operational in America, our land borders were reasonably unmolested while the coasts were well guarded. I went through exhaustive interviews, tests (language, medical, background, education) to just obtain a 1-year visa for study in the USA in 1950-’51. Afterwards, in 1953 when I immigrated, the FBI also got into the act. And justifiably so, since I requested to enter the USA it had every right to determine if it wanted me as a prospective citizen. I have never been offended by this process and still believe every immigrant should be so treated.

Unfortunately, improving economic conditions in the post WW II period slowly began to attract seasonal labor from South of the Border. Those borders were essentially wide open and certainly Mexico made little effort to keep its citizens inside its own territory. As an aside and apart from very recent activities, actual border control was attempted systematically for the last time during the Eisenhower administration as far as I remember. The rest is history.

In a recent Forbes (6/28/’10) article a commentator failed to mention the fact that what made America so successful and attractive was its very special 200 year culture. Today, it is easy to ridicule its fundamental beliefs and social practices but they were essential in melding its immigrant population into a cohesive national whole. America’s recognized generosity of spirit and action, its pride in improving itself through hard work and decent behavior became legendary and a magnet for more and more foreigners intent on finding a way to participate in this opportunity. This was a winning situation for both sides, the country and its immigrants but only as long as the immigrants were desirous to assimilate in this culture as soon as possible, by learning the language and working hard at any job, just to be here and improve oneself and the country.

Two developments spoiled this critical condition.
The 1930-ies Depression followed by WW II and our unique post war economic growth.
After WW II, this country’s admirable culture, compared to most others, started a slow and fundamental change. Exactly those aspects of it that might be considered most critical in molding millions of immigrants into a body of principled and dedicated citizens gave way to increased permissiveness and a loss of personal accountability. For instance, improving economic conditions slowly removed the need for children to earn money in support of the family’s needs or just for personal spending purposes thus diminishing the appreciation for hard work and sociability. Newspaper routes and mowing lawns went out of style among a variety of changes, and many parents increasingly could afford for their children to have a good time, do sports and have “fun”, allowing personal “hard work” to become unpopular.

In my old country there is a well known saying that goes like this: “it takes strong legs to support any wealth”. We did not heed this truth and the results are all around us.

Meanwhile, in the USA our shifting economic and social conditions encouraged immigration, particularly from south of the border, because that’s where cheap labor was plentiful and willing to pick fruit, mow lawns and do all kinds of other stoop labor. Most of it was illegal, because no one was watching the border and the immigrants became essential to several industries.

Eventually, well meaning people started programs to help these “immigrants” because they were “poor” in our eyes and particularly the children became objects of concern. As long as the total numbers of immigrants were small and seasonal, this condition, from a national security point of view, was essentially ignored. But by the time many of those immigrants turned into permanent “visitors” and second and third generation offspring invaded our traditional social, educational and business landscape, it became clear that their own political demands and social preferences were creating national political, economic and social conflicts.

Today, many people decry the fact that we did not control our borders when we should have. And I agree that as a country we were too busy with other priorities for many years to realize the problem we were growing in our midst as a consequence thereof.

From where I sit, as a former immigrant who went through all the necessary checks to qualify for a green-card, this whole “illegal” immigration problem is in fact a self-made dilemma. While it could have been prevented, possibly with harsh means in the beginning together with tough, bi-lateral agreements later, we failed to do anything effective.

But for a long time, post WW II, if I had been one of those poor and hungry people living so close to the accessible American Garden of Eden I would have gone for it too. And why not? Again, from a potential immigrant’s point of view it seemed that the people running the place did not to worry about it too much that foreigners were waltzing in and out of the place at any time.

But now that we have tens of millions of Hispanic immigrants, a large percentage of which never learned to speak decent English, including some 12 million “illegals”, there is a hue and a cry to turn back the clock. But that’s never possible and we better realize it.

If our American culture is to survive in the best tradition of its basic objectives we need to admit to having lost sight of some fundamentals and therefore make ourselves use the next election to choose representatives who have spine, understand economic fundamentals and together with honoring traditional American values are prepared to admit our own fault.

We need to admit that we made a very bad mistake years ago by neglecting our borders but now, in order to re-establish “control” of the current and future situation, we will have to make amends to most of the immigrants here now and willing to work. Although it bothers me to recommend that “law-breakers” will get away with it we really have no choice. To begin with we must ask ourselves: “are these people really “law-breakers or merely opportunists”??

Who wouldn’t have done the same thing given the prevailing circumstances. We left the door open and they came through. Can you blame them?? Maybe not! Maybe we should blame ourselves and get on with it.

So what do we do now.??

1 To make amends, we must provide a path to amnesty and potential citizenship for “illegals”, as of a certain date, but:
2 We demand that everyone who is here, legally or illegally, learns to speak and read decent English within 3 years or else will be repatriated without a second chance.
3 Kids will be required to go to school, all the way through high-school. Dropping out will be reason for repatriation permanently.
4 Offspring of legal marriages of immigrants will not be granted US citizenship even after parents have successfully become citizens. They will have to apply themselves later on at age 18. Only military service might make a difference. Only children born from US citizens will automatically become US citizens upon birth.
5 Spanish will be eliminated from all school texts and as a requirement of government and businesses to “facilitate” communication. Schools may continue courses in Spanish, but only for native Americans as a second language requirement. Immigrant children will learn English and nothing but until they are fluent. Government will do away with all Spanish in government operations, including all forms and rules requiring Spanish as a second official language.
6 English will be formally adopted as the national language of the USA.
7 We need to make immigrants understand that a path to citizenship must be earned and will not be “given”.
8 Immigrants who develop a criminal record will automatically forfeit any chance to become citizens and will be repatriated permanently.

The same commentator mentioned above suggested that all USA borders should be open at all times. But this is not a serious thought. Just opening the door to everybody who wants to come here? In other words, opening te door would significantly change the dynamics of new immigrants arrival here because all restraints would be off. We would be inundated and back to the days of the early 19th century when neither passports, nor health certificates were required te enter here.

We would be overwhelmed and in relatively short order lose our American identity. The new arrivals, from heaven knows where, would coalesce into “tribal” configurations just for reasons of survival. Becoming Americans would be the last thing on their minds. But government help, à la Europe, would be expected and bankrupt us financially, politically and culturally.

There are billions of very poor people out there who would find ways to come here. Remember the Vietnam boat people. America is a desirable place to emigrate to because for a long time we enjoyed more personal freedom and the best opportunities for education and personal accomplishments. Although we are currently in the process of destroying some of these fundamentals, that may just be a temporary issue.

Given the options, let's resolve this issue in a common sense way and accept the fact that we must owe up to our own failure to prevent it from happening in the first place. We need to right this terrible immigration wrong, once and for all and we know how to do it if the will is there. Woe to us if we fail!!

Bully Pulpit

5/3/2010

Bully Pulpit?

The President of the United States probably has the best and also loudest "Bully Pulpit" in the country. When he says something it is guaranteed to hit the media, the blogosphere and all of its off-spring. His messages come through loud if not always clear. Even so, it's a great way to get your thoughts across. Of course there are multiple occasions, practically every day, a President needs to communicate his views or his decisions to the public or to more specific venues. All of these communications are just part of the job.

Naturally, it is expected that the President never loses his cool, in public. He is also expected to set a high standard of comity when dealing with others, foreign as well as domestic because his public behavior sets the tone for the way people communicate with each other, it reflects the media's manner of getting its stories across and for many of us also sets the tone for civil discourse.

But, during the past 16 months we have learned a few things about this President that were not obvious before, neither during the campaign nor in the early months of his Administration.

With the exception of the impact of natural disasters this President very much sets his own priorities, virtually ignoring issues considered by many to warrant his serious attention. And when he picks what motivates him he tells his staff to get things done. He doesn't really like to have to get into the hurly burly of a legislative controversy, he really expects his staff to handle it. But when actually necessary he is not afraid to get into the fight and use whatever methods to get his way. He brooks no contradiction and surely becomes more than testy during the process. "Obama Care" is the prime example.

Yes, the Obama Care process was a live demonstration of a President with 2 tin ears, neither really listening to opposite political views nor willing to pay the opposition the respect our political system has always accorded it. Whenever the opposition talked he ignored them. Similar approaches are to be expected with the coming Cap & Trade legislation, Green Energy, Immigration, Middle East conflicts, Nuclear proliferation or Free Markets.

In each case our country is or will be told what he wants and the executive system he has created in Washington is expected to do what he tells them to do. Never mind the confusion of legislative involvement or other contrary activities by opponents.

Mr. Obama doesn't really appear to be committed to our, albeit imperfect, political system, nor does he seem to care very much for its underlying historic uniqueness, nor our traditional tolerant, give and take approach to many national issues demanding attention and resolution.

He has a personal political agenda and his priorities stem directly from how he believes he will be able to change our political system as fast as possible into what he considers a more desirable one. A system with highly centralized political power, dictatorship?, a system that will be transformed economically to support his own political priorities and do away with fuzzy, self-serving things like "free markets". Control is the secret code.

To me, enough evidence is now available to understand why Mr. Obama has become testy, exhortatory, confrontational and abusive and with a growing tendency to demonize those who disagree with him. This is not the mark of a President of the United States. May be this plays well in Chicago but it should not be exercised nor tolerated in Washington D.C. or anywhere else for that matter.

It also tells me that Mr. Obama is not in fact a real leader. He is just a "party boss" with tough talk, impatience, if not intolerance and where different views and civil niceties have no place. His nature and attitude is to operate alone, above the fray, by making his unquestioning staff members do what has to be done to accomplish his objectives and never mind civil, legal, organizational or traditional objections, resistance or disagreement. What he wants is the only thing that counts. America be damned.

So without putting too fine a point on it, this is the first time in the history of the USA that the principal pulpit in this country is indeed occupied by a dangerous "bully".





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