Most people can't resist listening to all the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-out they may be, and then quickly denounce any such theory as untrue... or even downright lunacy. (We also hear the term “unpatriotic” bandied about by the mass media, particularly when some theory involves activities of the far left.) Half-baked “experts” are marched out in droves to prove or disprove many of these theories, and usually do little more than confuse the issue, while simple common sense often appears to have been left far behind. It’s common for "hit pieces" to pick apart extremely fringe and not very popular theories, which in turn makes all conspiracies on a particular subject look crazy. Skeptics magazine and Popular Mechanics did this with their 9/11 investigation. Referring to less than 10% of the many ideas around, they picked the highly improbable points that only few people believed, and used them as a "final investigation" for looking into the disaster. With this, they again proved that the wilder the theory, the easier it is to debunk (and thus put a bad light on all theories about the subject).
“Conspiracy theory” was originally a term used to describe any unproven claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy. However, in recent times it has come to refer to any fringe idea which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot of almost superhuman power, authority, and/or cunning. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end." Thus, nearly any planning or activity can be properly described as a conspiracy if it is not held up to the light of day, and can range from two kids figuring out a way to heist a candy bar from the neighbor kid to a secret military, banking, and political action aimed at stealing power, money, and freedom from "the people". To many, conspiracy theories are nothing more than a component of human nature, for after all, not everyone is honest, hard working, and straightforward about their dealings or intentions. So how did “conspiracy theory” get grouped with fiction, fantasy and folklore? As one pundit says, “Maybe that’s a conspiracy”.
If we look into conspiracy theories, we’ll find that thinking about a conspiracy is usually considered somewhat akin to lunacy and paranoia by the establishment. Some people even consider it an illness. It’s not surprising to see people writing about conspiracy theories using with the words "crack pot," or "nut job" in their discourse and often say something along the lines of, "for these conspiracies to be true, you would need hundreds if not thousands of people to be involved. It's just not conceivable." Still, it’s odd that these writers assume there must be thousands of participants in a conspiracy when I can hardly believe that any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people could remain secret very long. True, thousands may unknowingly be involved, but actually only a very few really have any idea of what’s going on. Remember that the chance of anything remaining a secret is inversely proportional to the number of people who know about it.
The fact remains however, that there have been conspiracies, proven, and not made up, since time immemorial. The Roman Empire was little more than an open conspiracy to take over the world, and it very nearly succeeded. Remember the plot to kill Hitler? Or how about the “Business Plot” of 1933, wherein a group of wealthy American businessmen that included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against FDR, and install a dictatorship in the United States. Apparently none of the masterminds noticed that their point man was an active FDR supporter, who soon spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee acknowledged the existence of the conspiracy which had never gotten past the planning stage. In their report, the Congressional committee supported Butler's allegations, but for political reasons no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter largely was forgotten.
Humm… How many of today’s conspiracy theories are nothing more than oddball ideas… and how many others have a strong basis of truth? After all, if I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe that today’s far left is making every effort to drag us kicking and screaming into "one world government" and global socialism. If I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe they’re succeeding!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Divisive Troubles
As the political party currently in power, one would think that the Democrats could pass just about any legislation they desired. But, even with a Democrat sitting in the White House (well… maybe in Hawaii), and a democratic majority in both the Senate and House, it appears that an already difficult situation is getting worse as the 2010 political season begins. Four House Democrats have recently announced they would not seek re-election, bringing to 11 the retirements that leave Democratic-held seats vulnerable to Republicans, and even more are expected according to analysts. In the Senate, at least four Democrats, including Harry Reid and Chris Dodd are in serious trouble. The party could also lose its grip on the seats Obama held in Illinois and that Joe Biden occupied in Delaware. Over the holiday break, Democratic freshman Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama defected to the GOP as well, stating that "I can no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt." At present the Democrats hold a 257-178 majority in the House and an effective 60-40 majority in the Senate, including Independents who generally side with the Democrat line. The one thing that that cheers the Democrats is that most voters don't think much of the GOP either, which lacks money, an effective leader, and is facing a conservative revolt. Both parties should be concerned about a hostile electorate worried about the unemployment rate, the economy, who are weary of wars, and who are genuinely angry at nearly all politicians.
The Democrats will likely lose a lot of support (and power in Congress), because they have enraged much of the public with their refusal to listen when the voters say no to health care. The “Trillion Dollar President” can see his approval rating going by the wayside, and its decline is due to his insistence on an unpopular health care program, along with his program of printing a few trillion essentially worthless dollars, shipping them off to Wall Street, and shrugging at a skyrocketing deficit. Every initiative that the Democrats care about is now seriously threatened by the situation the far left “Crusaders” have put their fellow Democrats in.
Perhaps Mr. Obama should study a bit of history before he insists on even more socialist government. Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a recent study that New Deal policies stymied economic recovery for seven years! "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chairman of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies." Our political Right, and the Moderate center, have clearly said “NO” to the health care reform, just as they did to President Clinton’s health care plan.
But Crusaders won’t listen to words of caution or of warning. They are after all, on a mission from God. And the leaders of those Crusaders tell their followers to ignore the political cost, as this is a moral battle after all! But just maybe the mainstream Republicans are finally waking up to the facts of today’s political life. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is admitting where they've gone wrong in the past. Apparently recognizing that Regan and Goldwater haven’t gone away, he recently said that "Republicans gave in to big government, and we paid the price. It wasn't the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leaders to live up to them." Now, “we must return to the principles of the Founders, principles of small government, economic freedom, lower taxes and renewed commitment to personal responsibility for oneself and one's family.” The American people don't want socialized health care, invasive "green" initiatives, or burdensome new taxes, says Steele, and Republicans in Washington have to start listening.
We can only hope…
The Democrats will likely lose a lot of support (and power in Congress), because they have enraged much of the public with their refusal to listen when the voters say no to health care. The “Trillion Dollar President” can see his approval rating going by the wayside, and its decline is due to his insistence on an unpopular health care program, along with his program of printing a few trillion essentially worthless dollars, shipping them off to Wall Street, and shrugging at a skyrocketing deficit. Every initiative that the Democrats care about is now seriously threatened by the situation the far left “Crusaders” have put their fellow Democrats in.
Perhaps Mr. Obama should study a bit of history before he insists on even more socialist government. Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a recent study that New Deal policies stymied economic recovery for seven years! "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chairman of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies." Our political Right, and the Moderate center, have clearly said “NO” to the health care reform, just as they did to President Clinton’s health care plan.
But Crusaders won’t listen to words of caution or of warning. They are after all, on a mission from God. And the leaders of those Crusaders tell their followers to ignore the political cost, as this is a moral battle after all! But just maybe the mainstream Republicans are finally waking up to the facts of today’s political life. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is admitting where they've gone wrong in the past. Apparently recognizing that Regan and Goldwater haven’t gone away, he recently said that "Republicans gave in to big government, and we paid the price. It wasn't the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leaders to live up to them." Now, “we must return to the principles of the Founders, principles of small government, economic freedom, lower taxes and renewed commitment to personal responsibility for oneself and one's family.” The American people don't want socialized health care, invasive "green" initiatives, or burdensome new taxes, says Steele, and Republicans in Washington have to start listening.
We can only hope…
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Obamamania?
If you can believe the news reports, e-mails from assorted political organizations, and ordinary discussion with friends, neighbors, relatives, or even total strangers, Americans are getting completely fed-up with conditions in this country today. Politically we’re about as divided as we’ve ever been throughout our history, with a lot of serious talk of succession. We’re threatened by common criminals, Mexican drug cartels, and Moslem terrorists. Our government seems riddled with corruption and favoritism, while our elected representatives carry on like there’ll be no tomorrow (do they know something I don’t?). Morality seems a thing of the past, and we appear to be developing a hedonistic culture where anything goes. Our economy is on the rocks, unemployment is at record levels, the national deficit is skyrocketing, and we’re in the midst of yet another unpopular war. Personal income is plummeting while living expenses are out of sight and still increasing. Conservative and Liberal extremists are at each others throats, with even the moderates being forced to take sides. All in all, it’s not a very pretty picture, and our “bright and shining future” looks rather tarnished at the moment.
One of the reasons that I’m interested in history is that I like to know why things happen as they do, where we go from here, and what can be done about it. So what happened, or is happening? Judge Robert Bork considers the issue to be a combination of boredom brought about by technology, the weakening of religious beliefs, and the “Rise of the Olympians”, an intellectual elite that believes they are the enlightened few who are in business to spread their viewpoint to all “lower classes”, by force if necessary. This is of course a highly simplified version of his complex dissertation.
Technology, in the form of labor saving devices, has relieved us of dawn to dusk exertion of just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, “spare time” leads to boredom, when we fail to find something productive to occupy that time, and boredom inevitably leads to trouble. (Think teenagers with “nothing to do”.) With that technology comes the fact that fewer people are needed on the farms. So, the folks who used to be farm hands eventually migrate to the cities in search of work, and what used to be a hard working rural population becomes an urban population that may or may not be on the dole, and may or may not be spending their time in the local pub. At the same time, when your greatest worry is a temporary failure of the cable TV system instead of a potential crop failure and starvation, religion seems to hold little appeal to most people. And with the decline in religious beliefs comes a matching decline in morality.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, did a study of national demographics, and points out some interesting facts concerning last November's election, and the “who voted for who” differences:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..." In short, Obama territory was the densely populated crime ridden inner cities and their environs.
It would seem that today we’re no longer a hard working, churchgoing, mostly rural country. Today, well over half our population consists of urbanites. Professor Olson also believes the United States is presently somewhere between the "complacency” and the “apathy" phases of democracy, with nearly forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" stage, and things look to get a lot worse before they improve. ‘Course the “inevitable march of civilization” is a very ponderous, slow moving process, and in reality there isn’t much that can be done to alter the things we don’t like about it. On the bright side, from my viewpoint at least, civilization is something that evolves over thousands of years, and I don’t expect to be around to see whatever the next stage will be in its entirety. But for today, if we ignore political events, and don’t put up a fight, we’re certainly going to fall victim to that future civilization, long before it’s time.
One of the reasons that I’m interested in history is that I like to know why things happen as they do, where we go from here, and what can be done about it. So what happened, or is happening? Judge Robert Bork considers the issue to be a combination of boredom brought about by technology, the weakening of religious beliefs, and the “Rise of the Olympians”, an intellectual elite that believes they are the enlightened few who are in business to spread their viewpoint to all “lower classes”, by force if necessary. This is of course a highly simplified version of his complex dissertation.
Technology, in the form of labor saving devices, has relieved us of dawn to dusk exertion of just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, “spare time” leads to boredom, when we fail to find something productive to occupy that time, and boredom inevitably leads to trouble. (Think teenagers with “nothing to do”.) With that technology comes the fact that fewer people are needed on the farms. So, the folks who used to be farm hands eventually migrate to the cities in search of work, and what used to be a hard working rural population becomes an urban population that may or may not be on the dole, and may or may not be spending their time in the local pub. At the same time, when your greatest worry is a temporary failure of the cable TV system instead of a potential crop failure and starvation, religion seems to hold little appeal to most people. And with the decline in religious beliefs comes a matching decline in morality.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, did a study of national demographics, and points out some interesting facts concerning last November's election, and the “who voted for who” differences:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..." In short, Obama territory was the densely populated crime ridden inner cities and their environs.
It would seem that today we’re no longer a hard working, churchgoing, mostly rural country. Today, well over half our population consists of urbanites. Professor Olson also believes the United States is presently somewhere between the "complacency” and the “apathy" phases of democracy, with nearly forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" stage, and things look to get a lot worse before they improve. ‘Course the “inevitable march of civilization” is a very ponderous, slow moving process, and in reality there isn’t much that can be done to alter the things we don’t like about it. On the bright side, from my viewpoint at least, civilization is something that evolves over thousands of years, and I don’t expect to be around to see whatever the next stage will be in its entirety. But for today, if we ignore political events, and don’t put up a fight, we’re certainly going to fall victim to that future civilization, long before it’s time.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tanstaafl
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
For the founders or our nation, the preamble to our Constitution meant providing an environment where free men could strive and succeed, or they could also fail. In our modern day, that leads us to the question of entitlements. The U.S. Constitution (considered by many Leftists an annoying anachronism rather than the legal core of this Nation), contains the word "entitled" four times. Three of those refer to representation of the several States. Only one refers to individuals: “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” There is nothing said about free anything. And the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 thru 10 for those who slept through class) enshrine our Civil Rights, but they also say nothing about entitlements. The only "entitlements" that I recognize are Social Security/Medicare, and only because we’re forced to pay into the system during our working lives, along with VA benefits, which are paid for in advance, all too often in blood. There are also municipal and state services that our elected representatives have instituted. Thus, if you don't want fire protection, start objecting at your city council meetings. As to access to health care, we are entitled to access I’m sure, but nothing says it’s got to be free. In fact, you’re completely free to charge whatever you want for your services. And if the customer doesn’t want to pay what you charge, he’s equally free to go elsewhere in search of that service. But it all costs money, and that’s where the rub comes in.
Money is defined as anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services. It’s nothing more than medium of exchange and a store of value. Essentially it’s an indicator of work, in that, if I do an hours work at something, I will receive an agreed upon amount of “money” in exchange. Then, I can trade that money for the fruit of someone else’s work. (In this day and age however, an awful lot of work doesn’t seem to go very far!) The concept of “money” immediately leads to “Debt”, or “that which is owed”, usually referring to some sort of assets owed to someone. Debt is a means of using future purchasing power before the work has been done and the money for that work is received. A debt is created when a creditor lends a value to a debtor, in expectation of repayment, usually including interest. Debt allows people and organizations to do things that they would otherwise not be able to do with the cash on hand. Most folks commonly use debt to purchase fancy houses, SUV’s, big screen TV’s, and many other things too expensive to readily buy with whatever cash they have on hand. Business often uses debt to enable business expansion. For both companies and individuals, the cost of servicing the debt (paying the interest) can grow beyond the ability to pay due to either external events (income loss) or internal difficulties (poor management). Excess debt normally causes both individuals and governments to reduce their consumption of products and services, and utilizing the available money to pay off that debt and its interest.
Then however we often find those folks that think money grows on trees, or at least in one way or another is inexhaustible. Sometimes those folks get control of the government, where they spend the national treasure on assorted hairbrained schemes, and then raise the taxes to generate even more treasure that they can spend, and completely forget that debt HAS to be paid off, one way or another. That said, about 40% of the people in this country believe they're entitled to health care, food, shelter, and clothing, and that the government should provide it whatever the cost to the nation. Wrong, they’re entitled to access those things, but whether that access is easy or difficult depends on their life style, where they choose to live, what work they seek, and how well they perform it. After all, once you're an adult, you are solely responsible for those choices.
Historically, debt was responsible for the creation of debtor’s prisons, indentured servitude, and in worst case situations, the debtor was sold into chattel slavery. More commonly the debtor became a “wage slave”. Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, particularly when the dependency is total and immediate. When government gets too far into debt, really bad things happen. Governments can, and do, collapse economically, which leads to the fall of the government, civil wars, assorted foreign invasions, starvation, and a lot of death and destruction. Just ask the Romans.
Louis XIV's finance minister was once asked what to do about the severe national deficit, to which he replied, "Nothing, it's too serious." Well, history shows us that nothing got done, the deficit got worse, and ninety years later the French Revolution put an end to the problem… along with the French nobility and the government.
Our current leaders really need to recognize the one immutable law of economics, namely, the TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) law.
In the spirit of the season, I’ll wish everyone a Merry Christmas. If, due to “political Correctness”, you object to the word “Christmas”… tough. Have a Merry Christmas anyway.
For the founders or our nation, the preamble to our Constitution meant providing an environment where free men could strive and succeed, or they could also fail. In our modern day, that leads us to the question of entitlements. The U.S. Constitution (considered by many Leftists an annoying anachronism rather than the legal core of this Nation), contains the word "entitled" four times. Three of those refer to representation of the several States. Only one refers to individuals: “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” There is nothing said about free anything. And the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 thru 10 for those who slept through class) enshrine our Civil Rights, but they also say nothing about entitlements. The only "entitlements" that I recognize are Social Security/Medicare, and only because we’re forced to pay into the system during our working lives, along with VA benefits, which are paid for in advance, all too often in blood. There are also municipal and state services that our elected representatives have instituted. Thus, if you don't want fire protection, start objecting at your city council meetings. As to access to health care, we are entitled to access I’m sure, but nothing says it’s got to be free. In fact, you’re completely free to charge whatever you want for your services. And if the customer doesn’t want to pay what you charge, he’s equally free to go elsewhere in search of that service. But it all costs money, and that’s where the rub comes in.
Money is defined as anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services. It’s nothing more than medium of exchange and a store of value. Essentially it’s an indicator of work, in that, if I do an hours work at something, I will receive an agreed upon amount of “money” in exchange. Then, I can trade that money for the fruit of someone else’s work. (In this day and age however, an awful lot of work doesn’t seem to go very far!) The concept of “money” immediately leads to “Debt”, or “that which is owed”, usually referring to some sort of assets owed to someone. Debt is a means of using future purchasing power before the work has been done and the money for that work is received. A debt is created when a creditor lends a value to a debtor, in expectation of repayment, usually including interest. Debt allows people and organizations to do things that they would otherwise not be able to do with the cash on hand. Most folks commonly use debt to purchase fancy houses, SUV’s, big screen TV’s, and many other things too expensive to readily buy with whatever cash they have on hand. Business often uses debt to enable business expansion. For both companies and individuals, the cost of servicing the debt (paying the interest) can grow beyond the ability to pay due to either external events (income loss) or internal difficulties (poor management). Excess debt normally causes both individuals and governments to reduce their consumption of products and services, and utilizing the available money to pay off that debt and its interest.
Then however we often find those folks that think money grows on trees, or at least in one way or another is inexhaustible. Sometimes those folks get control of the government, where they spend the national treasure on assorted hairbrained schemes, and then raise the taxes to generate even more treasure that they can spend, and completely forget that debt HAS to be paid off, one way or another. That said, about 40% of the people in this country believe they're entitled to health care, food, shelter, and clothing, and that the government should provide it whatever the cost to the nation. Wrong, they’re entitled to access those things, but whether that access is easy or difficult depends on their life style, where they choose to live, what work they seek, and how well they perform it. After all, once you're an adult, you are solely responsible for those choices.
Historically, debt was responsible for the creation of debtor’s prisons, indentured servitude, and in worst case situations, the debtor was sold into chattel slavery. More commonly the debtor became a “wage slave”. Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, particularly when the dependency is total and immediate. When government gets too far into debt, really bad things happen. Governments can, and do, collapse economically, which leads to the fall of the government, civil wars, assorted foreign invasions, starvation, and a lot of death and destruction. Just ask the Romans.
Louis XIV's finance minister was once asked what to do about the severe national deficit, to which he replied, "Nothing, it's too serious." Well, history shows us that nothing got done, the deficit got worse, and ninety years later the French Revolution put an end to the problem… along with the French nobility and the government.
Our current leaders really need to recognize the one immutable law of economics, namely, the TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) law.
In the spirit of the season, I’ll wish everyone a Merry Christmas. If, due to “political Correctness”, you object to the word “Christmas”… tough. Have a Merry Christmas anyway.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Climategate
Surprise, Surprise, scientists are disagreeing on the severity, causes, and eventual outcome of what's now called "climate change", or even if it exists at all. The idea of “Global Warming” seems to be based on our apparent global climatic change, a lot of junk science, the wistful thinking of the far left gloom and doom set, and research data modified to produce the desired outcome. There’s hardly any agreement among scientists with some knowledge of global warming, or of humanity's possible role in producing it, but you wouldn't know that if you listen to the Obama administration. As the Climate-gate controversy continues to grow amid numerous charges of manipulating data and suppressing research by opposition scientists who challenge the theory, there is one often repeated “defense”, in that other data-sets all show the same thing. "I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science ... I think that this notion that there's some debate . . . on the science is kind of silly," claims Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about the president's response to the University of East Anglia dataset that’s being questioned. In fact, Mr. Gibbs seems to be mostly angry with the hackers who exposed the scandal, but not at the scientists who falsified the data his statements hinge on! Despite the ongoing scandal, Britain's National Weather Service claims: "we remain completely confident in the data. The three independent data sets show a strong correlation is highlighting an increase in global temperatures."
The three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report came from the University of East Anglia, NASA, and the British Met Office. Even better, the Met Office apparently depends on the other two organizations to provide the hard research date they use, which is kept a deep dark secret from everybody else. Why are global warming advocates so secretive about their data? So far, the spotlight has been on the University of East Anglia and its refusal to release their surface temperature data, by far the most comprehensive long-term worldwide surface data available. Unfortunately, the problem of secretiveness is hardly limited to the UEA. Queens University in Belfast has amassed one of the longest-running data collections on tree rings, spanning 7000 years and covering 1,500 sites around the world. How much a tree grows each season can tell us a lot about temperatures and other climate related variables. You would expect that institute to be proud of all this data they have so diligently created, and expect them to share the data with anyone who is interested. Not so apparently, as some scholars have been trying for two-and-a-half years through the UK's Freedom of Information Acts to force Queen's University to release the data, all to no avail. Even NASA, which has been caught in other embarrassing “mistakes” regarding climate research, refuses to release its data so that others can figure out past temperature estimate inconsistencies. All that researchers really wanted from both Queen’s University and NASA, was the temperature data used in numerous papers that global warming advocates had already published. One of the most disturbing elements of the ongoing scandal suggests an worldwide organized effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics. It is not clear if any data was destroyed, but at least two U.S. researchers have denied that suggestion.
The purloined e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. That raises a science ethics question because free access to information is important to other scientists who can repeat experiments as a part of the scientific method. "I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them." When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."
NASA faces a particularly embarrassing situation. Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.org pointed out in 2007 that thru serious math errors in NASA’s published work, 1998 was not the warmest year on record, 1934 was. And the third hottest year was 1921, not 2006. Instead of the 10 hottest years occurring since 1990, six of the 10 had occurred before 1940. NASA finally released the corrected temperature estimates, but later recalculated yet again and somehow 1934 is again reported to be cooler than either 1998 or 2006. As with all these “errors”, how many more might be lurking in other estimates made at these institutions? On the other hand, perhaps the latest NASA revision was a merely a statistical "adjustment," similar to what apparently happened at East Anglia. Nobody outside a small group at NASA knows, but given the leftist political advocacy of James Hansen, NASA’s top climatologist, we might be somewhat suspicious. OK, so they’re “adjusting” scientific data to fit a set of predetermined conclusions. In my rather crude and un-scientific manner, I’d call that “cooking the books”, and if ‘ya do that at home the IRS gets really upset!
So why all the insistence on human caused global warming, to the extent of apparently falsifying research data? We could make a real good “conspiracy theory” out of this one! Socialist political theory demands the existence of a “one world” planet wide government to be successful. (So does the UN, but that’s a different theory.) This means that more and more government control of the world’s population is required, which is exactly what the Copenhagen accord is all about. In the guise of handling the “global warming” problem, government can control our energy usage (coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, and probably firewood as well), to the extent of regulating us back to a medieval sustenance type economy, where we can all share equally in the soon to be nonexistent wealth... with of course our socialist leaders being the Lord of the Manor and getting the lions share.
What does this have to do with falsifying scientific data? Well, most scientific research survives on government grants, and it’s always best to keep your employer happy if you like your comfortable high-paying job…
The three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report came from the University of East Anglia, NASA, and the British Met Office. Even better, the Met Office apparently depends on the other two organizations to provide the hard research date they use, which is kept a deep dark secret from everybody else. Why are global warming advocates so secretive about their data? So far, the spotlight has been on the University of East Anglia and its refusal to release their surface temperature data, by far the most comprehensive long-term worldwide surface data available. Unfortunately, the problem of secretiveness is hardly limited to the UEA. Queens University in Belfast has amassed one of the longest-running data collections on tree rings, spanning 7000 years and covering 1,500 sites around the world. How much a tree grows each season can tell us a lot about temperatures and other climate related variables. You would expect that institute to be proud of all this data they have so diligently created, and expect them to share the data with anyone who is interested. Not so apparently, as some scholars have been trying for two-and-a-half years through the UK's Freedom of Information Acts to force Queen's University to release the data, all to no avail. Even NASA, which has been caught in other embarrassing “mistakes” regarding climate research, refuses to release its data so that others can figure out past temperature estimate inconsistencies. All that researchers really wanted from both Queen’s University and NASA, was the temperature data used in numerous papers that global warming advocates had already published. One of the most disturbing elements of the ongoing scandal suggests an worldwide organized effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics. It is not clear if any data was destroyed, but at least two U.S. researchers have denied that suggestion.
The purloined e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. That raises a science ethics question because free access to information is important to other scientists who can repeat experiments as a part of the scientific method. "I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them." When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."
NASA faces a particularly embarrassing situation. Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.org pointed out in 2007 that thru serious math errors in NASA’s published work, 1998 was not the warmest year on record, 1934 was. And the third hottest year was 1921, not 2006. Instead of the 10 hottest years occurring since 1990, six of the 10 had occurred before 1940. NASA finally released the corrected temperature estimates, but later recalculated yet again and somehow 1934 is again reported to be cooler than either 1998 or 2006. As with all these “errors”, how many more might be lurking in other estimates made at these institutions? On the other hand, perhaps the latest NASA revision was a merely a statistical "adjustment," similar to what apparently happened at East Anglia. Nobody outside a small group at NASA knows, but given the leftist political advocacy of James Hansen, NASA’s top climatologist, we might be somewhat suspicious. OK, so they’re “adjusting” scientific data to fit a set of predetermined conclusions. In my rather crude and un-scientific manner, I’d call that “cooking the books”, and if ‘ya do that at home the IRS gets really upset!
So why all the insistence on human caused global warming, to the extent of apparently falsifying research data? We could make a real good “conspiracy theory” out of this one! Socialist political theory demands the existence of a “one world” planet wide government to be successful. (So does the UN, but that’s a different theory.) This means that more and more government control of the world’s population is required, which is exactly what the Copenhagen accord is all about. In the guise of handling the “global warming” problem, government can control our energy usage (coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, and probably firewood as well), to the extent of regulating us back to a medieval sustenance type economy, where we can all share equally in the soon to be nonexistent wealth... with of course our socialist leaders being the Lord of the Manor and getting the lions share.
What does this have to do with falsifying scientific data? Well, most scientific research survives on government grants, and it’s always best to keep your employer happy if you like your comfortable high-paying job…
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Another Surge
A man named Fehrenback once said that “you can fly over a territory, you can bombard it, you can blow it to hell, you can even sterilize it, but you don’t own it until you stand a seventeen year old kid with a rifle on top of it.” That statement is very true, and unfortunately it’s something that our nation’s leaders appear to have either forgotten, or that they never learned. As a result of that lapse, we’re today paying the butchers bill in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two days before Mr. Obama gave the speech at West Point in which he announced that we would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a Senate Committee report was released that blames an insufficient number of troops for bin Laden’s escape from American forces in 2001. The committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, implied that it was a lack of soldiers under the Bush administration that was responsible for “laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.” Yet it was our democratic Congress who repeatedly refused the troop buildup that would have given us the necessary soldiers today.
Increased troop numbers was Bush’s policy, and since we all know Bush was evil (just ask the mainstream media), the opposite policy must be good. The aggressiveness that we associate with President Bush is actually, in Mr. Obama’s hands, the righteous corrective to Bush’s evil actions. (Perhaps a Democrat can explain that one to me?) Mr. Obama is proving himself an expert manipulator of public opinion, capitalizing on the McChrystal and Eikenberry leaks to give the impression of deep deliberations over whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. He’s playing the old “good cop/bad cop” routine, with VP Joe Biden, who dutifully argued against more troops, overall a rather cynical act. And it’s almost uncanny to hear from the liberal Obama the same tales about nation-building and creating democratic institutions that led us into an undemocratic Iraq in the first place. Warlord-run Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq either, or any other civilized country for that matter. It’s more like warlord-run Somalia. Ahh… remember Somalia, with Bill Clinton’s hesitation to provide the military with the needed strength, and of course our rather hurried withdrawal? Today however the media is still using the word “surge” to describe the troop increase as if it’s only a temporary boost, when in truth it’s just another name for minimal “reinforcements”, which immediately brings to mind the image of a lost cause. Since the first day of combat action in Afghanistan we’ve heard calls for troop increases, with the latest being for forty to eighty thousand additional troops. Instead Mr. Obama decides to send only thirty thousand, with a large number of these being civilian contractors. One pundit commented, tongue-in-cheek I hope, that it’s too bad China isn’t in NATO, as their Army is big enough to stand shoulder to shoulder and march from Afghanistan to Iraq, cleaning up the whole mess! Quite so, but how do we get ‘em to go home afterwards?
Political writer Jacob Weisberg claims that one of Obama’s great accomplishments has been that, “after a much-disparaged period of review, he has announced a new strategy in Afghanistan.” But then, Weisberg praises Obama for “preventing a depression, remaking America's global image, and winning universal health insurance.” Never mind that unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades, and that any Democratic president with a Democratic majority in Congress could have passed a similar stimulus package. “Universal health care” is far from a done deal, and as for remaking America’s global image, well, images are made with actions, not words. But Obama is not Bush we are told, the people who dislike him are dreadful racists, the opposition is fierce, and, well, he’s the only game in town, etc, etc. No, Mr. Obama is not President Bush. If anything, he is solidly convinced that his radical liberalism is divinely guided, and that he holds “the truth” in his hands. Unlike President Bush however, Mr. Obama seems to withdraw into a blue funk whenever he fails to convince Americans that his is the truth of the ages.
It’s easy to say “pull out all the troops and let the Afghani’s deal with their own problems”. So if those issues spill over into America, what then? American troops cannot just pack up and leave with the snap of a finger. "Failure in Afghanistan would mean a Taliban takeover of much, if not most, of the country and likely a renewed civil war," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Taliban-ruled areas could in short order become, once again, a sanctuary for al-Qaeda as well as a staging area for resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan." (And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.) I'm sure that if we pulled out tomorrow, the people who strap bombs to themselves to blow up anyone who doesn't think that women are property, and that Jews and Christians should be wiped out, would happily join us in hammering our arms into plowshares. Ahh… our arms, not theirs.
But Obama has tied his decision ordering more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to a pledge that they'll start returning home in 2011. But he was rather quiet on his plans for the growing Afghan army, which still remains the best way to bring American soldiers home. As the 219th poorest nation in the world, Afghanistan simply can't afford to pay for a big military. Afghan forces today are largely slipshod and corrupt, professional U.S. officers say, capable of doing little more than basic operations. In fact, many U.S. officers say that Afghans have a "God-willing” mentality that "delays progress for all routine and major actions", and such tendencies “freeze subordinates into doing nothing until specifically ordered”.
One lesson we should learn from history is that soldiers seldom have much say in how their efforts are applied. Armed force is but a blunt instrument of politics, quite liable to do more harm than good unless aimed with exquisite precision. At best, all the military can do is buy time for the politicians to repair the political mistakes that left no choice but armed violence in the first place. Isn’t it nice to know that our man in the driver’s seat has absolutely no military experience, and apparently won’t listen to his advisors who do have that experience.
Increased troop numbers was Bush’s policy, and since we all know Bush was evil (just ask the mainstream media), the opposite policy must be good. The aggressiveness that we associate with President Bush is actually, in Mr. Obama’s hands, the righteous corrective to Bush’s evil actions. (Perhaps a Democrat can explain that one to me?) Mr. Obama is proving himself an expert manipulator of public opinion, capitalizing on the McChrystal and Eikenberry leaks to give the impression of deep deliberations over whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. He’s playing the old “good cop/bad cop” routine, with VP Joe Biden, who dutifully argued against more troops, overall a rather cynical act. And it’s almost uncanny to hear from the liberal Obama the same tales about nation-building and creating democratic institutions that led us into an undemocratic Iraq in the first place. Warlord-run Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq either, or any other civilized country for that matter. It’s more like warlord-run Somalia. Ahh… remember Somalia, with Bill Clinton’s hesitation to provide the military with the needed strength, and of course our rather hurried withdrawal? Today however the media is still using the word “surge” to describe the troop increase as if it’s only a temporary boost, when in truth it’s just another name for minimal “reinforcements”, which immediately brings to mind the image of a lost cause. Since the first day of combat action in Afghanistan we’ve heard calls for troop increases, with the latest being for forty to eighty thousand additional troops. Instead Mr. Obama decides to send only thirty thousand, with a large number of these being civilian contractors. One pundit commented, tongue-in-cheek I hope, that it’s too bad China isn’t in NATO, as their Army is big enough to stand shoulder to shoulder and march from Afghanistan to Iraq, cleaning up the whole mess! Quite so, but how do we get ‘em to go home afterwards?
Political writer Jacob Weisberg claims that one of Obama’s great accomplishments has been that, “after a much-disparaged period of review, he has announced a new strategy in Afghanistan.” But then, Weisberg praises Obama for “preventing a depression, remaking America's global image, and winning universal health insurance.” Never mind that unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades, and that any Democratic president with a Democratic majority in Congress could have passed a similar stimulus package. “Universal health care” is far from a done deal, and as for remaking America’s global image, well, images are made with actions, not words. But Obama is not Bush we are told, the people who dislike him are dreadful racists, the opposition is fierce, and, well, he’s the only game in town, etc, etc. No, Mr. Obama is not President Bush. If anything, he is solidly convinced that his radical liberalism is divinely guided, and that he holds “the truth” in his hands. Unlike President Bush however, Mr. Obama seems to withdraw into a blue funk whenever he fails to convince Americans that his is the truth of the ages.
It’s easy to say “pull out all the troops and let the Afghani’s deal with their own problems”. So if those issues spill over into America, what then? American troops cannot just pack up and leave with the snap of a finger. "Failure in Afghanistan would mean a Taliban takeover of much, if not most, of the country and likely a renewed civil war," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Taliban-ruled areas could in short order become, once again, a sanctuary for al-Qaeda as well as a staging area for resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan." (And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.) I'm sure that if we pulled out tomorrow, the people who strap bombs to themselves to blow up anyone who doesn't think that women are property, and that Jews and Christians should be wiped out, would happily join us in hammering our arms into plowshares. Ahh… our arms, not theirs.
But Obama has tied his decision ordering more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to a pledge that they'll start returning home in 2011. But he was rather quiet on his plans for the growing Afghan army, which still remains the best way to bring American soldiers home. As the 219th poorest nation in the world, Afghanistan simply can't afford to pay for a big military. Afghan forces today are largely slipshod and corrupt, professional U.S. officers say, capable of doing little more than basic operations. In fact, many U.S. officers say that Afghans have a "God-willing” mentality that "delays progress for all routine and major actions", and such tendencies “freeze subordinates into doing nothing until specifically ordered”.
One lesson we should learn from history is that soldiers seldom have much say in how their efforts are applied. Armed force is but a blunt instrument of politics, quite liable to do more harm than good unless aimed with exquisite precision. At best, all the military can do is buy time for the politicians to repair the political mistakes that left no choice but armed violence in the first place. Isn’t it nice to know that our man in the driver’s seat has absolutely no military experience, and apparently won’t listen to his advisors who do have that experience.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Plague
“Realpolitik” is defined as the belief that a pragmatic pursuit of self-interest and power, backed up by force when convenient, is the only realistic option for a great state. The term was coined in 1859 to describe German chancellor Bismarck’s policies. “Practical politics” are those based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations. That term comes from H.L. Mencken's definition: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." OK, I’ll agree that not all threats exploited by political leaders are imaginary, with a number of them being quite real, but generally they’re blown all out of proportion to where they become caricatures of reality. The current "public health crisis" over the prospect of a swine flu "pandemic" appears to fall into that category.
Although eight years have passed since 9-11, we need no reminder of the shock value of mass terrorism on the American population. 9-11 left us shocked and enraged, but it was still incidental to the everyday concerns of most Americans. It was an atrocity that didn't threaten the existence of American society, despite the efforts of political opportunists to describe the attack as apocalyptic. However, our political leaders have drawn tremendous political valuata from that attack, in that a major (and completely unnecessary) revolution in American political, legal, and strategic affairs was brought on by that one incident. Ten years ago, it would have been unimaginable that today’s mass media and our politicians would accept the idea that the President of the United States has the quasi-medieval authority to issue orders that have the effect of law, to lock-up people at will, and even have them tortured. But because of the practical politics of post-9/11 America that is what we now see. The possibility of nuclear annihilation is difficult to make real to the individual, unless it's part of a larger picture such as a war between superpowers, or the prospect of nukes in the hands of terrorists. With that said, The Bomb has little to offer in terms of "practical politics." The same can be said of the practical political value of environmentalism or “the collapse of the global biosphere” through various sorts of contamination. The “revenge of a poisoned planet” might make interesting science fiction stories, but other than that it’s little more than a certain political career crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize. Relatively few people other than those most likely to profit from it share Gore’s insistence that saving the environment should be the "central organizing principle" of human society. And despite the fact that they would force the rest of us to live like medieval serfs, they're willing to sacrifice none of the goodies that give them a huge "carbon footprint." Unlike the above threats, the prospect of a plague is completely terrifying in a personal sense. We all have memories of what it feels like to be sick and helpless, and likely have witnessed death from disease at one time or another. So, as a weapon of practical politics, microbes are far more serious than nuclear weapons. All of this should be kept in mind as we evaluate the seriousness of the "public health emergency" declared on April 26 by the UN's World Health Organization and shortly thereafter by the Obama administration over what is being described as the potential swine flu pandemic. Considering that over 30,000 people die in the US every year from the flu, it’s rather amusing to see all the panic over a relative handful of deaths. Still, most "public servants" are in jobs that thrive on alarmism, so we really shouldn't expect any sober risk assessments from them. It’s quite likely that what concerns the medical community is the genetic makeup of this new H1N1 virus that carries swine, avian, and spanish flu DNA. The question is, where did it come from? It is extremely unlikely that three different strains of flu virus could accidentally share genetic material without some sort of outside help in the process. Two strains perhaps, but I’d seriously doubt three. This leaves us with the possibility that the H1N1 virus, which, according to several well-credentialed medical experts appears to have been synthesized in a laboratory, and was deliberately released on the public. This would not necessarily have been the work of the US government; as it could have easily been carried out by any one of numerous other parties. I think the medical community is honestly concerned as they still don’t know what will happen if swine flu reached China and India, "where populations are so dense and health infrastructure is still insufficient.” The "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918 killed 583,000 Americans (approximately one tenth of one percent of the American population), and an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide, an overall figure that rivals the Black Death of the 14th Century. The virus causing the 1918 outbreak was quite similar to the H5N1 virus, better known as the "Bird Flu", and has been the center of a multi-billion-dollar international effort of development and store of what is hoped to be an effective vaccine.
Well, how many of these do you remember? The Oil Crisis (70's), the New Ice Age (70's), the Killer Bee invasion, the Ozone hole, Mad Cow Disease, SARS, Avian Flu, Y2K, Global Warming ... and now Swine Flu. The result is always the same - ever growing Statism. How many billions of dollars have we spent on these non-events? How many more billions are we going to spend on this latest event, and how much more freedom are we willing to lose?
Whatever else may occur we can expect the Obama administration to assume greater control over the emergency medical system. In the event that this emergency does turn into a legitimate pandemic, the “Obamatrons” will have the justification to mobilize Homeland Security. A memo issued by the DHS notes that "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines." Quarantine of course means disarming the public as we saw happen in New Orleans, and "isolating" us in our new confinment centers.
When the government’s involved, always ask yourself: qui bono? Who benefits?
Although eight years have passed since 9-11, we need no reminder of the shock value of mass terrorism on the American population. 9-11 left us shocked and enraged, but it was still incidental to the everyday concerns of most Americans. It was an atrocity that didn't threaten the existence of American society, despite the efforts of political opportunists to describe the attack as apocalyptic. However, our political leaders have drawn tremendous political valuata from that attack, in that a major (and completely unnecessary) revolution in American political, legal, and strategic affairs was brought on by that one incident. Ten years ago, it would have been unimaginable that today’s mass media and our politicians would accept the idea that the President of the United States has the quasi-medieval authority to issue orders that have the effect of law, to lock-up people at will, and even have them tortured. But because of the practical politics of post-9/11 America that is what we now see. The possibility of nuclear annihilation is difficult to make real to the individual, unless it's part of a larger picture such as a war between superpowers, or the prospect of nukes in the hands of terrorists. With that said, The Bomb has little to offer in terms of "practical politics." The same can be said of the practical political value of environmentalism or “the collapse of the global biosphere” through various sorts of contamination. The “revenge of a poisoned planet” might make interesting science fiction stories, but other than that it’s little more than a certain political career crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize. Relatively few people other than those most likely to profit from it share Gore’s insistence that saving the environment should be the "central organizing principle" of human society. And despite the fact that they would force the rest of us to live like medieval serfs, they're willing to sacrifice none of the goodies that give them a huge "carbon footprint." Unlike the above threats, the prospect of a plague is completely terrifying in a personal sense. We all have memories of what it feels like to be sick and helpless, and likely have witnessed death from disease at one time or another. So, as a weapon of practical politics, microbes are far more serious than nuclear weapons. All of this should be kept in mind as we evaluate the seriousness of the "public health emergency" declared on April 26 by the UN's World Health Organization and shortly thereafter by the Obama administration over what is being described as the potential swine flu pandemic. Considering that over 30,000 people die in the US every year from the flu, it’s rather amusing to see all the panic over a relative handful of deaths. Still, most "public servants" are in jobs that thrive on alarmism, so we really shouldn't expect any sober risk assessments from them. It’s quite likely that what concerns the medical community is the genetic makeup of this new H1N1 virus that carries swine, avian, and spanish flu DNA. The question is, where did it come from? It is extremely unlikely that three different strains of flu virus could accidentally share genetic material without some sort of outside help in the process. Two strains perhaps, but I’d seriously doubt three. This leaves us with the possibility that the H1N1 virus, which, according to several well-credentialed medical experts appears to have been synthesized in a laboratory, and was deliberately released on the public. This would not necessarily have been the work of the US government; as it could have easily been carried out by any one of numerous other parties. I think the medical community is honestly concerned as they still don’t know what will happen if swine flu reached China and India, "where populations are so dense and health infrastructure is still insufficient.” The "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918 killed 583,000 Americans (approximately one tenth of one percent of the American population), and an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide, an overall figure that rivals the Black Death of the 14th Century. The virus causing the 1918 outbreak was quite similar to the H5N1 virus, better known as the "Bird Flu", and has been the center of a multi-billion-dollar international effort of development and store of what is hoped to be an effective vaccine.
Well, how many of these do you remember? The Oil Crisis (70's), the New Ice Age (70's), the Killer Bee invasion, the Ozone hole, Mad Cow Disease, SARS, Avian Flu, Y2K, Global Warming ... and now Swine Flu. The result is always the same - ever growing Statism. How many billions of dollars have we spent on these non-events? How many more billions are we going to spend on this latest event, and how much more freedom are we willing to lose?
Whatever else may occur we can expect the Obama administration to assume greater control over the emergency medical system. In the event that this emergency does turn into a legitimate pandemic, the “Obamatrons” will have the justification to mobilize Homeland Security. A memo issued by the DHS notes that "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines." Quarantine of course means disarming the public as we saw happen in New Orleans, and "isolating" us in our new confinment centers.
When the government’s involved, always ask yourself: qui bono? Who benefits?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
ADC
“COLORADO SPRINGS — The commander of military forces protecting North America has ordered a review of the costly air defenses intended to prevent another Sept. 11-style terrorism attack, an assessment aimed at determining whether the commitment of jet fighters, other aircraft and crews remains justified. Senior officers involved in the effort say the assessment is to gauge the likelihood that terrorists may succeed in hijacking an airliner or flying their own smaller craft into the United States or Canada. The study is focused on circumstances in which the attack would be aimed not at a public building or landmark but instead at a power plant or a critical link in the nation’s financial network, like a major electrical grid or a computer network hub.”
Of the 8 years I spent in the Air Force, ‘bout three quarters of them were in ADC (Air Defense Command), primarily assigned to fighter interceptor squadrons. Admittedly I was never a “senior officer” (actually I was little more than a mid-grade NCO), nor an expert on the subject, but I do tend to think that I have a fair working knowledge of intercepting intruding aircraft. A good many people will remember the Cold War days of the 1950’s and 60’s when the US air defenses consisted of radar sites scattered all over the country (there was one such site on Cottonwood Butte), and couple of thousand jet fighters in nearly a hundred fighter squadrons all across the nation. The Navy added to the effort with radar picket ships and planes on the high seas, while the Army had numerous anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles sited around every vital target they could think of. Established in March of 1946, ADC became Aerospace Defense Command in 1968 (reflecting the new emphasis on guided missiles), and was finally deactivated in 1979 as a cost cutting measure due to the steadily decreasing likelihood of a mass Soviet air attack. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is a joint venture of the United States and Canada that still exists, but today is primarily concerned with space operations. The fighters are gone, the anti-aircraft guns and missiles are gone, the radars have been taken over by the FAA (and are mostly gone). ADC cost us billions of dollars through its lifetime, but I’d say it was money well spent… or at least I never heard of a Soviet bomb falling on Kalamazoo, and I have no doubt the Soviet’s would have tried if they had ever thought they could get away with it. In comparison, only 14 aircraft at seven bases nationwide were on alert status before 9-11.
Today our air defenses are nearly nonexistent, consisting of little more than FAA radars that don’t cover the entire country, can’t see anything flying at less than 15,000 feet or so, and can’t even see an airliner if he’s got his transponder turned off! I understand that our fighter defense presently consists of a dozen or so National Guard F-16’s assigned a defense role in addition to everything else expected of them. Yet 9-11 aptly demonstrated that this country CAN be attacked from the air, and statistics provided by NORAD show that there were more than 1,000 “suspicious” air incidents in 2008, of which more than 200 actually required the scrambling of jet fighters. Yet in order to “save money” we’re considering eliminating even that miniscule effort!?
Granted that high-jacking an airliner today might be a bit more difficult than it was in 2001, and that terrorists are really quite ingenious at finding other ways to kill people, an assault by air is still one of the best means to do something in a spectacular manner. Remember that just about every Muslim country in the world has its own national airline, and most of them fly to the US on a regular basis. A 747, loaded to the ‘gunnels with explosives, and flown by a suicidal crew would make a jim-dandy kamikaze if it hit New York, Washington, Boston, Miami, or Los Angles. What might happen if one were targeted at one of the Columbia River Dams… or perhaps Hanford? Even worse would be one loaded with chemical or biological agents flying over one of our major cities. Smaller corporate jet aircraft are easy to come by, quick and agile, can fly to nearly anywhere, and generally carry a pretty fair payload. A nuclear artillery shell (if terrorists could steal one) can even be carried by the proverbial Piper Cub, and detonated by a suicidal pilot! Of course the next question is, how to get something like that into the country? Well… we don’t seem to be having much luck in stopping the flow of illegal drugs… or illegal immigrants…
If we must have a “stimulus program” handing out a trillion dollars or so (and probably Stimulus II as well), I’ll suggest that part of the money would be much better spent rebuilding a national air defense capability rather than just handing the money out at random. At least we’d have something to show for it. Nor do we need the $150 million each F-22 Raptor multi-role stealth fighter in an “at home” air defense role. In a purely air defense situation the 1980’s designed (at $15 million a copy) Northrop F-20 Tigershark air superiority fighter would be much better suited to the role. Perhaps we don’t need a system quite as extensive as that of the Cold War, but events have proven that we definitely do need the ability to defend ourselves from air attack, irregardless of whether or not the Generals want to spend the money. Of those two hundred aerial incidents that demanded a response? It only takes one… Are you listening Congress?
Of the 8 years I spent in the Air Force, ‘bout three quarters of them were in ADC (Air Defense Command), primarily assigned to fighter interceptor squadrons. Admittedly I was never a “senior officer” (actually I was little more than a mid-grade NCO), nor an expert on the subject, but I do tend to think that I have a fair working knowledge of intercepting intruding aircraft. A good many people will remember the Cold War days of the 1950’s and 60’s when the US air defenses consisted of radar sites scattered all over the country (there was one such site on Cottonwood Butte), and couple of thousand jet fighters in nearly a hundred fighter squadrons all across the nation. The Navy added to the effort with radar picket ships and planes on the high seas, while the Army had numerous anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles sited around every vital target they could think of. Established in March of 1946, ADC became Aerospace Defense Command in 1968 (reflecting the new emphasis on guided missiles), and was finally deactivated in 1979 as a cost cutting measure due to the steadily decreasing likelihood of a mass Soviet air attack. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is a joint venture of the United States and Canada that still exists, but today is primarily concerned with space operations. The fighters are gone, the anti-aircraft guns and missiles are gone, the radars have been taken over by the FAA (and are mostly gone). ADC cost us billions of dollars through its lifetime, but I’d say it was money well spent… or at least I never heard of a Soviet bomb falling on Kalamazoo, and I have no doubt the Soviet’s would have tried if they had ever thought they could get away with it. In comparison, only 14 aircraft at seven bases nationwide were on alert status before 9-11.
Today our air defenses are nearly nonexistent, consisting of little more than FAA radars that don’t cover the entire country, can’t see anything flying at less than 15,000 feet or so, and can’t even see an airliner if he’s got his transponder turned off! I understand that our fighter defense presently consists of a dozen or so National Guard F-16’s assigned a defense role in addition to everything else expected of them. Yet 9-11 aptly demonstrated that this country CAN be attacked from the air, and statistics provided by NORAD show that there were more than 1,000 “suspicious” air incidents in 2008, of which more than 200 actually required the scrambling of jet fighters. Yet in order to “save money” we’re considering eliminating even that miniscule effort!?
Granted that high-jacking an airliner today might be a bit more difficult than it was in 2001, and that terrorists are really quite ingenious at finding other ways to kill people, an assault by air is still one of the best means to do something in a spectacular manner. Remember that just about every Muslim country in the world has its own national airline, and most of them fly to the US on a regular basis. A 747, loaded to the ‘gunnels with explosives, and flown by a suicidal crew would make a jim-dandy kamikaze if it hit New York, Washington, Boston, Miami, or Los Angles. What might happen if one were targeted at one of the Columbia River Dams… or perhaps Hanford? Even worse would be one loaded with chemical or biological agents flying over one of our major cities. Smaller corporate jet aircraft are easy to come by, quick and agile, can fly to nearly anywhere, and generally carry a pretty fair payload. A nuclear artillery shell (if terrorists could steal one) can even be carried by the proverbial Piper Cub, and detonated by a suicidal pilot! Of course the next question is, how to get something like that into the country? Well… we don’t seem to be having much luck in stopping the flow of illegal drugs… or illegal immigrants…
If we must have a “stimulus program” handing out a trillion dollars or so (and probably Stimulus II as well), I’ll suggest that part of the money would be much better spent rebuilding a national air defense capability rather than just handing the money out at random. At least we’d have something to show for it. Nor do we need the $150 million each F-22 Raptor multi-role stealth fighter in an “at home” air defense role. In a purely air defense situation the 1980’s designed (at $15 million a copy) Northrop F-20 Tigershark air superiority fighter would be much better suited to the role. Perhaps we don’t need a system quite as extensive as that of the Cold War, but events have proven that we definitely do need the ability to defend ourselves from air attack, irregardless of whether or not the Generals want to spend the money. Of those two hundred aerial incidents that demanded a response? It only takes one… Are you listening Congress?
Monday, November 23, 2009
Freedom Lost
Do you like living free? Oh? And just how free have you felt over the last few years?
We can't just sit back and allow the loss of our freedoms… or can we? We elect the government, and it works for us, or at least that’s the theory. Remember the famous phrase “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”? We are the government after all, and government is not supposed to be a mob of radicals (either far left, or far right) sitting in Washington giving every appearance of being completely disconnected from reality, and quite happily forcing their wishes on the rest of us. As we watch Obama’s plan for health care being rammed through an uncaring Congress despite overall public opposition, we can only ask how our government got so arrogant that it now presumes it can dictate how we live our personal lives. The House of Representatives voted (by only a five vote majority you may have noticed) to have the federal government manage the health care of every American. If this bill passes the Senate and becomes law, the federal government will be legally able to force you to buy medical insurance you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford. If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they think is right for you, the government may fine you up to a quarter million dollars, and even put you in jail for five years. I’ve often said than anyone who drives down the street without auto insurance is out of their mind, and in this day and age medical insurance is much the same. But I strenuously object to the government telling me the “what’s, where’s, and how’s” of insuring my little corner of the world! It is after all my corner, and MY choice! Actually this entire runaround is a good example of the socialist elite style of governing, “do what we tell you or go to jail."
In the aftermath of 9-11, the Bush administration hurriedly pushed the “Patriot Act” through a panicky Congress, and soon presented us with the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of fighting a war on terror and thus making us “safe”. With that, our government can declare anyone who disagrees with the official line a terrorist, spy on them, strip search them at the airport, search their home without permission or a search warrant, lock them away for an indefinite period without charges, restrict any financial dealing they might have (if they have any money left that is), restrict their travels, and even interfere with the enjoyment of various (potentially terrorist oriented I assume) hobbies! It restricts immigration and naturalization of those who would like to become American citizens, but doesn’t seem to have had any effect on the illegal immigration problem. It hasn’t had much effect on terrorism either, at least none that I can see.
Although I haven’t seen it yet, I understand there’s a provision in the upcoming “cap-and-trade” bill that will require you to have an EPA permit to sell your house, that’s intended to make sure that your home meets all the latest government energy standards. Anyone who has ever dealt with the FHA or VA should understand all the hoops that will require you to jump through.
Mr. Obama has proposed to double the national debt within one year, a debt that has taken us more than two centuries to accumulate, and additionally proposes to double the debt yet again within the next 10 years. Sen. Reid on the other hand is reportedly planning to cover the estimated $1.2 trillion dollar cost of Obamacare with increased payroll taxes on “the rich”. Just how many “rich folks” do they think we have in this country, and if their taxes keep going up, just how long will they remain that way?!
Strangely enough, the United States has more proven oil reserves in the ground than does Saudi Arabia, yet half-baked environmental regulations don’t allow us to extract or use that oil, effectively keeping us in economic thralldom to foreign nations. Environmental laws deny us the use or enjoyment of our own public lands. “Political correctness” determines what I can say, where I can say it, and even how I can say it.
Things were not supposed to be this way. Our founders determined that we would elect the government, and that it would work for us. How did things get so removed, so unbridled, that government thinks it can now tell us how to live our lives? “Freedoms lost” rarely comes upon us in one fell swoop, and liberty is rarely lost with one stroke of the pen. It happens gradually over time, through the years and decades. A little stretch of the rules here, a little oversight there, and powers are slowly taken from the states and the people. Before you know it, we have one massive government that recognizes no restraints, and claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses. Our nation’s founders did not give us the government we seem to have today. The government enacted by our Constitution was strictly limited in its powers, was to guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on private matters was supposed to keep its nose out of our business. When writing our Constitution, our nations Founders built in a series of checks and balances. If the Congress got out of hand, the states could restrain it. If the states stole our liberty or property, Congress could rein them in. If the President tried to become king, the Supreme Court would prevent it. And today?
So what can we now do about the loss of freedom? As Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano says, “For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care -- where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.” Sounds like good advice to me, as we sure can’t just sit back on our behinds and let government walk all over us.
I’m told that Americans are the freest people on Earth. If that’s the case, and looking back at what we’ve lost over the last thirty years, the rest of the world has my deepest sympathies!
We can't just sit back and allow the loss of our freedoms… or can we? We elect the government, and it works for us, or at least that’s the theory. Remember the famous phrase “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”? We are the government after all, and government is not supposed to be a mob of radicals (either far left, or far right) sitting in Washington giving every appearance of being completely disconnected from reality, and quite happily forcing their wishes on the rest of us. As we watch Obama’s plan for health care being rammed through an uncaring Congress despite overall public opposition, we can only ask how our government got so arrogant that it now presumes it can dictate how we live our personal lives. The House of Representatives voted (by only a five vote majority you may have noticed) to have the federal government manage the health care of every American. If this bill passes the Senate and becomes law, the federal government will be legally able to force you to buy medical insurance you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford. If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they think is right for you, the government may fine you up to a quarter million dollars, and even put you in jail for five years. I’ve often said than anyone who drives down the street without auto insurance is out of their mind, and in this day and age medical insurance is much the same. But I strenuously object to the government telling me the “what’s, where’s, and how’s” of insuring my little corner of the world! It is after all my corner, and MY choice! Actually this entire runaround is a good example of the socialist elite style of governing, “do what we tell you or go to jail."
In the aftermath of 9-11, the Bush administration hurriedly pushed the “Patriot Act” through a panicky Congress, and soon presented us with the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of fighting a war on terror and thus making us “safe”. With that, our government can declare anyone who disagrees with the official line a terrorist, spy on them, strip search them at the airport, search their home without permission or a search warrant, lock them away for an indefinite period without charges, restrict any financial dealing they might have (if they have any money left that is), restrict their travels, and even interfere with the enjoyment of various (potentially terrorist oriented I assume) hobbies! It restricts immigration and naturalization of those who would like to become American citizens, but doesn’t seem to have had any effect on the illegal immigration problem. It hasn’t had much effect on terrorism either, at least none that I can see.
Although I haven’t seen it yet, I understand there’s a provision in the upcoming “cap-and-trade” bill that will require you to have an EPA permit to sell your house, that’s intended to make sure that your home meets all the latest government energy standards. Anyone who has ever dealt with the FHA or VA should understand all the hoops that will require you to jump through.
Mr. Obama has proposed to double the national debt within one year, a debt that has taken us more than two centuries to accumulate, and additionally proposes to double the debt yet again within the next 10 years. Sen. Reid on the other hand is reportedly planning to cover the estimated $1.2 trillion dollar cost of Obamacare with increased payroll taxes on “the rich”. Just how many “rich folks” do they think we have in this country, and if their taxes keep going up, just how long will they remain that way?!
Strangely enough, the United States has more proven oil reserves in the ground than does Saudi Arabia, yet half-baked environmental regulations don’t allow us to extract or use that oil, effectively keeping us in economic thralldom to foreign nations. Environmental laws deny us the use or enjoyment of our own public lands. “Political correctness” determines what I can say, where I can say it, and even how I can say it.
Things were not supposed to be this way. Our founders determined that we would elect the government, and that it would work for us. How did things get so removed, so unbridled, that government thinks it can now tell us how to live our lives? “Freedoms lost” rarely comes upon us in one fell swoop, and liberty is rarely lost with one stroke of the pen. It happens gradually over time, through the years and decades. A little stretch of the rules here, a little oversight there, and powers are slowly taken from the states and the people. Before you know it, we have one massive government that recognizes no restraints, and claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses. Our nation’s founders did not give us the government we seem to have today. The government enacted by our Constitution was strictly limited in its powers, was to guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on private matters was supposed to keep its nose out of our business. When writing our Constitution, our nations Founders built in a series of checks and balances. If the Congress got out of hand, the states could restrain it. If the states stole our liberty or property, Congress could rein them in. If the President tried to become king, the Supreme Court would prevent it. And today?
So what can we now do about the loss of freedom? As Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano says, “For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care -- where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.” Sounds like good advice to me, as we sure can’t just sit back on our behinds and let government walk all over us.
I’m told that Americans are the freest people on Earth. If that’s the case, and looking back at what we’ve lost over the last thirty years, the rest of the world has my deepest sympathies!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
A Third Party?
American political parties aren’t dead, but they’ve both been doing a pretty creditable job of simulating just that for several decades now. The trouble with the Democratic Party is that they’ve been chasing after social theories and reading Marxist books instead of studying human nature. ‘Course the Republicans have been equally busy chasing after a centralized government since the first day they were organized. Both parties seem to have forgotten that the United States of America was founded on the precept of a maximum of individual liberty, and a minimum of government interference. Now, with both parties advocating big government, big spending and globalism, they have effectively merged in all but name. And both face a perhaps insurmountable challenge. Third party candidates are shaking things up in quite a few political races, and the success of those candidates is a warning shot across the bow of the “Republicrats”. Fired by voters angry and disillusioned by politics as usual, this points to an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment that could become quite serious by the 2010 congressional elections. "What it says is the public is looking for less self-interested parties and candidates who can reflect the needs of a very frustrated public," said Douglas Astolfi, a history professor at Florida's St. Leo University. "We have two wars and we're in a recession that neither party seems to address in any positive way. There's a deep sense that government has abandoned the common man. People are frustrated and angry." A recent news poll found that trust in government is at a 12-year low, and half of all Americans now support the creation of a new political party, even though we already have over two hundred registered parties in the United States. Nine of those splinter parties are registered as Communist/Marxist, and I often think the loony left ought to officially join that list! There are six Right wing parties, four centrist parties, six Left wing parties, five Libertarian parties, and a whole herd of small special interest groups.
Since the formation of organized political parties in the 1830s, this country has had a two party system in which the “winner take all” Electoral College makes “sharing” the governing power as we see in a Parliamentary system nearly impossible. Secondly, it’s extremely difficult for a third party to raise the funds needed to seriously challenge the primary parties. Ballot access laws make it very hard for third party candidates to even get on the ballot in all 50 states. Still, it can be done, and the candidates can make an impressive showing as was demonstrated by Teddy Roosevelt with his “Bull Moose” party, George Wallace and the American Independent Party, and most recently in 1992 when Ross Perot ran as an Independent. Although third parties never win nationally, and rarely win locally, they can certainly have an effect on elections. Third parties can draw attention to issues being ignored by the majority parties, and depending on voter response, one or both of the major parties may adopt the issue. Also, a third party may be used by the voter to cast a protest vote. Third parties may also help bring more people to the polls. Third party candidates at the top of the ticket can help to draw attention to other party candidates down the ballot, helping them to win local or state office. Most effectively, they act as “spoilers”, in that they draw off much of the voting strength of one or the other primary party. We saw that when Ross Perot drew so many voters away from George Bush in 1992, that he effectively handed the election to Bill Clinton.
At present the concern in this country is not an existing third party, but rather the potential splitting of the Republican Party into its conservative and moderate wings, which would be a blessing for the Democrats. In New York, a candidate chosen by GOP leaders was forced out of the race by a Conservative Party candidate. In the New Jersey governor's race, an independent has gone from afterthought to player in a contest pitting an unpopular incumbent against a Republican challenger. In numerous contests next year, conservatives furious at the Republican establishment are mounting even more challenges against mainstream candidates favored by the national party. On the other side of the street, Democratic strategists worry that progressives, disgusted by the bank bailout and disillusioned with Barack Obama's apparent lack of fight might keep many people from voting. That could cost Democrats a few seats across the ballot. And both parties ignore such sentiment at their peril.
While I often think I’d prefer having a third choice, considering the realities of the American political system a third political party really isn’t a viable solution. We’d be much better served if our existing parties (particularly the Republicans) would get off their respective high horses and work together for a change. Jacobin political policies have always been the curse of America. Now political operatives are keeping an eye on independent voters, an important and growing group that often decides elections. Both parties would do well to consider the wishes of those Independents as we enter a midterm election season and our nation considers who will be granted the honor of leading us in the days ahead. The Independents would do well to remember that the times in which we live demand that we choose wisely.
A few of those qualities desperately needed in our public leaders would include the courage to make hard decisions, along with the character and core values that would merit our trust. With those core values we could also expect to see a modicum of self discipline. A clear vision for the future and the flexibility to learn, improve and adjust is something we seldom see anymore, but none-the-less is sorely needed. A track record of placing the good of the people over personal ambition is a trait sadly lacking in most of our elected officials, and were it a required qualification for office would probably eliminate about 95% of the members of Congress. Finally, having the patience of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon would help I’d think.
Nations survive on the ability of their leaders. The quality of our leaders is dependent on us.
Since the formation of organized political parties in the 1830s, this country has had a two party system in which the “winner take all” Electoral College makes “sharing” the governing power as we see in a Parliamentary system nearly impossible. Secondly, it’s extremely difficult for a third party to raise the funds needed to seriously challenge the primary parties. Ballot access laws make it very hard for third party candidates to even get on the ballot in all 50 states. Still, it can be done, and the candidates can make an impressive showing as was demonstrated by Teddy Roosevelt with his “Bull Moose” party, George Wallace and the American Independent Party, and most recently in 1992 when Ross Perot ran as an Independent. Although third parties never win nationally, and rarely win locally, they can certainly have an effect on elections. Third parties can draw attention to issues being ignored by the majority parties, and depending on voter response, one or both of the major parties may adopt the issue. Also, a third party may be used by the voter to cast a protest vote. Third parties may also help bring more people to the polls. Third party candidates at the top of the ticket can help to draw attention to other party candidates down the ballot, helping them to win local or state office. Most effectively, they act as “spoilers”, in that they draw off much of the voting strength of one or the other primary party. We saw that when Ross Perot drew so many voters away from George Bush in 1992, that he effectively handed the election to Bill Clinton.
At present the concern in this country is not an existing third party, but rather the potential splitting of the Republican Party into its conservative and moderate wings, which would be a blessing for the Democrats. In New York, a candidate chosen by GOP leaders was forced out of the race by a Conservative Party candidate. In the New Jersey governor's race, an independent has gone from afterthought to player in a contest pitting an unpopular incumbent against a Republican challenger. In numerous contests next year, conservatives furious at the Republican establishment are mounting even more challenges against mainstream candidates favored by the national party. On the other side of the street, Democratic strategists worry that progressives, disgusted by the bank bailout and disillusioned with Barack Obama's apparent lack of fight might keep many people from voting. That could cost Democrats a few seats across the ballot. And both parties ignore such sentiment at their peril.
While I often think I’d prefer having a third choice, considering the realities of the American political system a third political party really isn’t a viable solution. We’d be much better served if our existing parties (particularly the Republicans) would get off their respective high horses and work together for a change. Jacobin political policies have always been the curse of America. Now political operatives are keeping an eye on independent voters, an important and growing group that often decides elections. Both parties would do well to consider the wishes of those Independents as we enter a midterm election season and our nation considers who will be granted the honor of leading us in the days ahead. The Independents would do well to remember that the times in which we live demand that we choose wisely.
A few of those qualities desperately needed in our public leaders would include the courage to make hard decisions, along with the character and core values that would merit our trust. With those core values we could also expect to see a modicum of self discipline. A clear vision for the future and the flexibility to learn, improve and adjust is something we seldom see anymore, but none-the-less is sorely needed. A track record of placing the good of the people over personal ambition is a trait sadly lacking in most of our elected officials, and were it a required qualification for office would probably eliminate about 95% of the members of Congress. Finally, having the patience of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon would help I’d think.
Nations survive on the ability of their leaders. The quality of our leaders is dependent on us.
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