Promises, Promises

10/13/'12


PROMISES, PROMISES                        

 

We have heard it all, almost 4 years of “non-kept” promises:

 

to fix the economy, meaning growth and not stagnation,

to reduce unemployment from more than 9% to less than 6%,

to improve business conditions and not penalizing success,

to improve our energy situation, but not by throwing money at “green” energy boondoggles while reducing coal fired power plants by 30% and denying permits for nuclear power plants and drilling on Federal land for fossil fuels,

to adhere to well established Constitutional mandates in governing the Country in a bi-partisan way but instead adopting a brazen policy of ignoring history and legitimacy and essentially operating by fiat and crony-politics, etc. etc.

To this you might add the USA’s serious loss of international status and its quick march to national insolvency.

The results to date have been calamitous.

 

So! You want 4 more years of the same ??

 

Also don’t forget the false claims of things the President cannot claim credit for but are still taken up by the Media as truths.

     “his initiative killed Ben Laden” ??

 

And instead of showing some serious responsibility for its mistakes the current Administration is blithely asking voters for 4 more years of the same “leadership”, thereby showing a distinct contempt for a great majority of American voters’ ability to be fooled twice.

 

Instead, what we need is:

“Leadership” that is steeped in the lessons of our past 236 years of existence. Compared to any other country we should be proud of our history, just ask those who would love to immigrate if they could. But to get a successful “Leader” we must elect a really qualified individual with a relevant and credible managerial background. That candidate is now available and ready. But are our voters ready or will their lack of critical evaluation of the incumbent blind them once more to do the right thing??

 

While for many voters the past 4 years may well have been a painful disappointment it is certainly time for all of us, Americans, to realize the critical shape our Nation is in right now and decide to vote for the able and honorable candidate rather than for the one with the false promises who would make matters worse, not better.

 

November 6 shouldn’t even be a contest.

 

Frederik Engel

Redding, CT.

Presidential Hubris

6/28/2013 Presidential Hubris? Sometimes, when the President of the United States speeches about economic and technical subjects he cannot be taken seriously because he doesn’t appear to understand the subject well enough. That’s embarrassing. The latest one, about Global Warming, is a masterpiece of pure nonsense packaged as if the speaker has all the answers. It would be a joke if it wasn’t so serious. In my view, the Country just cannot afford a Chief Executive who is bound and determined to literally ruin the United States of America by denying our economy the “blood” it needs to function, i.e. cheap and abundant energy. It is all there for the taking but Mr.Obama doesn’t want us to have it. Who is he to decide that and on his own recognizance? Where are our Congressional representatives who should stand up and say: NO, Mr.President, that would be fundamentally destructive for the Country. Who is this man, who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” our Country? Is he faking it? Everyone knows that he loves to talk but his thinking about fundamental issues such as economics, energy, our deteriorating status in a dangerous world or our non-functional governmental operations is warbled, to put it mildly. For instance, he believes in the so-called coming “catastrophe” called Global Warming, without demonstrating even a simple understanding of the physics of climate variations. Whereas there is enough reliable scientific understanding available today to know that this “catastrophe”, due to the minor and natural increase in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, is nothing to get excited about. There is no catastrophe leering at us, only at those who fail to educate themselves a bit on this CO2 subject. Carbon dioxide is a perfectly harmless gas, which we inhale and exhale 24 hours per day, to stay alive. Nature loves it, as demonstrated lately by the lush growths of plants compared to previous years. But notwithstanding these benefits, CO2 is used by certain politicians, scientists and environmentalists to scare us out of our wits by encouraging our President to promote the idea that we must sacrifice and reduce our economic and national future to save the world. This is poppycock but is meant essentially to compromise our economy and world fatally. In fact, this presidential litany, of what he plans to do to “reduce” CO2 levels, rings like a pseudo religious tenet to make the USA a weaker and less-threatening member of the world’s larger countries. But the way I see this American President is that he cannot possibly reconcile his oath to the United States of America given the many actions he either has taken already or is still planning to take. Yet, as long as he can get away with it, the country is bound to suffer more, economically and politically, as a result. Little more than a century ago it wouldn’t have made much difference to the world what we did here at home, but since 1945 we reluctantly inherited large, mostly thankless, international responsibilities. While the costs of this mammoth new task grew over the years, our economy expanded with it and was able to handle them pretty well. As a consequence, our political influence world-wide became a crucial aspect of the post-war international arena. The USA was literally seen and mostly accepted as the World’s Policeman. Somebody needed to do that and by and large the world economy and most countries benefited from this situation for 60 years. But Mr.Obama doesn’t see it that way apparently, preferring instead for the United Nations to become the World’s Policeman. Unfortunately, he hasn’t spelled out the consequences for the USA and the world at large of this very questionable concept, but disaster looms. Hence, at this moment it looks as if we are bound to find out the hard way how this may hurt us unless enough people in power come to their senses soon to prevent our country from losing its unique and historic raison d’être. That would be a calamity. So much for hubris! Frederik Engel Redding, CT.

Crude Politics

3/15/2013 CRUDE POLITICS The Constitution of the USA requires the President to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the USA. It is part of the oath the new President commits to. So, keeping this fundamental commitment in focus can we truly say that our present incumbent has faithfully adhered to this pledge?? I think not. Actually, the rules of the Senate were allowed to be ignored whenever the President needed a decision that might not be readily approvable. Individual Senatorial loyalty to their own oath of office didn’t seem to count anymore. Recess appointments are the least of these transgressions. Although the House has primary responsibility to introduce budgets, the Senate must approve them before the President can sign off. So far, the Senate mostly reneged, so we plod along without budgets. Our Democrat controlled Senate never objected when the President commanded one stimulus bill after another, knowingly leading us to eventual national bankruptcy. There are many other instances of these irresponsible yet deliberate actions by our senior Government officials demanded by the President. The most shameful part of this charade has been the fact that Democratic Senators, with few exceptions, have allowed themselves to be taken advantage of by this President’s political maneuvers. Neither the Media nor critical observers have made much noise about these happenings, which suggests that a large part of the voting public apparently doesn’t mind our governmental operations to be treated just like another Chicago political power play. Who is scared of whom? Obviously key Senators have lost their honor and good sense the moment they became party to this illegal conduct of our Congressional operations. Unless WE, the American people, have decided to allow this “playful” but unconstitutional mode of Congressional activities to continue, we should call the President to order and if necessary consider impeaching him. After more than 4 years of this political boondoggling we should have enough evidence to question the real intentions of this government. We all know that this government needs: -to fix the economy, meaning growth and not stagnation, -to reduce unemployment from more than 9% to less than 6%, -to improve business conditions and not penalize success, -to improve our energy situation, but not by throwing money at green energy boondoggles, shutting down 30% of our coal fired power plants and denying permits for building pipelines and more nuclear power plants and drilling on Federal land for fossil fuels, -to adhere to well established Constitutional mandates in governing the Country in a bi-partisan way. And not in a brazen policy of ignoring history and legitimacy but essentially operating in single-party mode, by fiat and crony-politics, etc. etc. To this you might add the USA’s serious loss of international status together with its quick march to national insolvency. The results to date have been calamitous and are getting worse, notwithstanding a stock-market rise based on the gamble of “hope and change”, but not on serious expectations. Also don’t forget the false claims of things the President cannot claim credit for but are still taken up by the Media as truths. You would think that, instead of showing some mature responsibility for its mistakes, the current Administration could not blithely asked voters for 4 more years of the same “leadership”, thereby showing an uncanny disrespect for a majority of American voters’ ability to be fooled twice. The “Leadership” we need now should be steeped in the lessons of our past 236 years of existence. Compared to any other country we should be proud of our history, just ask those who would love to immigrate here if they could. But we failed to elect a successful “Leader”, a really qualified and patriotic individual with a relevant and credible managerial background. While for many voters the past 4 years may well have been a painful disappointment it is time for all of us, Americans, to realize the critical shape our Nation is in right now. The election results of this last November demonstrate clearly that large segments of our voting public do not appear to understand basic economics, nor know American history nor world history to appreciate that re-electing this President to a second term would be foolish in the extreme. The only advantage of our current Governmental situation is that it shows our Constitution has seen better days, while the concept of bi-partisan Presidential leadership is totally unpopular with the current incumbent of the White House. We have a President with a vision essentially contrary to what America expected and needs. But at least we now know that Washington is run the way politics is run in Chicago, winner takes all. This is also insane. Frederik Engel Redding, CT.

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