America’s Town Meeting of the Air was a public affairs discussion broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1956. One of radio’s first talk shows, it began as a six-week experiment, and NBC didn’t expect much from it.

Broadcast live from New York City’s Town Hall, America’s Town Meeting of the Air debuted on Thursday May 30, 1935, and only 18 of NBC’s affiliates carried it.  The topic for that first show was “Which Way America: Fascism, Communism, Socialism or Democracy?”  The moderator was George V. Denny Jr., executive director of the League for Political Education, which produced the program. Denny moderated the program from 1935 to 1952 and had a major role in choosing weekly topics.  Denny and the League wanted to create a program that would replicate the Town Meetings that were held in the early days of the United States.  (Click here to read more.)

1935-06-14:  Will the demands of organized labor promote recovery?

1935-12-05:  Has the New Deal promoted or retarded business recovery?

1935-12-12:  Personal liberty and the modern state

1935-12-19:  Should we plan for Social Security?

1936-03-19:  The Supreme Court and the Constitution

1936-04-02:  Will unionization promote industrial recovery?

1936-04-16:  Will the machine dominate man?

1936-11-05:  Public opinion and the town meeting ideas

1936-11-26:  What does the public want in music?

1938-02-03:  What does democracy mean?

1938-12-01:  Is an economic plan for world peace available?

1938-12-08:  How should the democracies deal with the dictatorships?

1939-01-12:  Do we have a free press?

1939-02-16:  Reinhold Niebuhr on progress in Technology and morality (excerpt)

1939-03-02:  Are the schools doing their job?

1939-10-19:  What are the real issues in the European War?

1939-11-16:  Should we ignore racial differences?

1939-11-23:  What does American Democracy Mean to me? (excerpt)

1939-12-07:  Can business and government work together today?

1940-01-18:  Does America need compulsory health insurance?

1940-01-25:  Should the President’s National Defense Program be adopted?

1940-03-07:  What should America do for the Joads?

1940-04-11:  What are the essential differences between the Republican and Democratic parties?

1940-12-12:  What are we preparing to defend?

1940-12-26:  What is youth’s role in the defense of democracy?

1941-11-13:  What kind of peace must we have?  (clip)

1946-01-17:  What does the returning GI expect at home?  (excerpt)

1946-10-24:  Earl Browder on relationship between U.S. Communists and organized labor (excerpt)

1946-10-31:  Should the U.S. open it’s doors to displaced persons now?

1947-04-03:  Should the Communist party be outlawed in the United States?  (last 3/4 only)

1947-04-10:  Do we really elect our own president?  (first 1/4 only)

1947-09-23:  Should we accept the new fashions for women?

1947-10-07:  What can we do to improve race and religious relationships in America?

1948-03-23:  Should the president’s Civil Rights program be adopted?

1948-06-22:  Are you planning to grow old successfully?

1949-06-07:  Lemuel Boulware on profit sharing (excerpt)

1949-12-20:  Will a $100 pension provide real security?

1952-05-27:  Who are the troublemakers in our democracy?  (incomplete)

I think this idea is interesting and dangerous at the same time, but worth a discussion, because it is possible. 

Can Taiwan use guerrilla warfare?  I think the answer is yes.  But unfortunately it cannot be the principle strategy IMO, because:

• Taiwan’s territory is small, which makes guerrilla warfare much more difficult.
• Taiwan is an island, unlike Vietnam and Afghanistan, where smuggling operation is easier.  Vietnam use the neighboring countries territory, underground and jungle as cover, while Afghanistan has complex mountain terrain as cover.  Taiwan does not have those for continuing importing supply.
•  The only similar and successful scenario is the guerrilla war of Cuba.  But that one is overthrowing a domestic government, who cannot keep reinforcing the troops like what the US is doing now in Afghanistan.  China, on the other hand, can continuously throw in troops if they have the air and sea superiority, and by the way, they have a lot of troops.
• guerrilla warfare always means extremely higher casualties for the guerrilla ”winner.”  Yes, Afgan won over Soviet Union, and the Taliban seems to have a chance of winning now, and Vietnam won as well.  However, all those guerrilla winners suffer much higher casualties. 
• guerrilla war does not automatically result in winning, contrarily to what a lot of guerrilla war supporters think.  There are a lot of guerrilla war failures.  Recent one being the Tamil Tigers.

However, guerrilla war does have its merits.  Special forces etc a lot of times perform extremely well.  One can imagine a Taiwan filled with well equiped special forces and guerrilla militia who are more familiar with Taiwan’s terrain and streets giving Chinese army major headache.  However, I would oppose relying on guerrilla war as a principle strategy, because I think that will divert too much resources onto something that simply cannot win the war.  Remember, Chinese army is not the same as the US army or some 3rd rated police army of some small island.  Their army has superior quantity, unlike the US, and they are not afraid to sacrifice massive amount of their troops (ex. Korean War).  Furthermore, one can argue their soldiers could be more brutal and following less rule of engagement than the US soldiers.  Could guerrilla war win against such enemies?

Also, considering how Afghanistan won their war against Soviet Union.  guerrilla war?  or Stinger Missiles courtesy of the USA?  Probably both.  But it’s obvious that Afghan probably could not have won without the US support.  Similarly, who is to say the Taliban now does not have foreign supports of weapons etc?  Maybe it’s even Chinese who supply them those.  Therefore, I think guerrilla war is a good option in making Chinese invasion more difficult, but it alone cannot safe guard Taiwan.  Other conventional weapons such as helicopters and SAM cannot be discarded.

Another interesting idea related to this is the guerrilla war on the sea, written by some guy.  Although the idea is more of a concept, and its possibility requires more study and planning, the idea is fresh and interesting as well.  The pirates of Somalia certainly demonstrated the possibility of such idea.  However, again, this cannot be the principle strategy and main forces of Taiwanese military (even the author said this is more for a supporting role of the regular navy, if I read him correctly).

UPDATE: Forgot one point.  Even if Taiwan is to establish some form of guerrilla war units, they should probably not be modelled after the ones from Afghan and else where due to Taiwan’s unique environment:

• High urbanization: while Taiwan has a lot of forest and high mountains, it also has large numbers of cities and towns.  Some of the cities are highly developed.  This makes the environment very different from say Vietnam and Afghanistan.
• High Tech industries: Taiwan has one advantage over Vietnam and Afghanistan, and that is its high tech industries.  Taiwan manufactures or design computers components, cell phones, scooters, high quality cabin cruisers, fishing boats and countless other commercial products.  It has to utilize this advantage somehow to gain an edge, because guerrilla war means asymmetrical warfare: using your advantages to exploit enemies’ weaknesses.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/specialengagements/moviespeechafewgoodmencodered.html

American Rhetoric: Movie Speech
“A Few Good Men” (1992)
written by Aaron Sorkin

Colonel Nathan R. Jessep Addresses the Court on “Code Red”

*** begin quote ***

You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

*** end quote ***

This rings true more today that ever.

Who’s “manning the walls” in the Obama administration?

Sorry, but the Department of Defense and the National Guard should be deployed here at home. Like the Coast Guard should NOT be off gallivanting.

We have bases in reportedly 170 countries. Time for a base closing commission of taxpayers.

Did you know that the Constitution only authorizes a permanent Navy. The Army is only allowed for two years. Guess the Dead Old White guys understood about the dangers of a permanent army. What do you think they’d have thought about the alphabet agencies: FBI, DEA, BATF, CIA, NSA, yada, yada, and yada?

Argh!

# # # # #

Good article by 林保華 that put things in good perspective, I think.

http://iservice.libertytimes.com.tw/liveNews/news.php?no=326869&type=%E6%94%BF%E6%B2%BB

This report seems kind of fishy.  Basically the navy fleet detect unknown object near the 左營 naval base during an excercise.  The commander said they had similar experience before as well.  They know for sure those are not whale.  But because when they approach, the object does not intend to submerge deeper and escape, they don’t think they are Chinese submarines neither.  Now the second statement just sound so stupid.  I am not an expert, but I think it’s just common sense.  Just because the object stay the course does not mean it’s not submarines.  It could be the submarine did not detect the ship approaching…who knows, some of the Chinese subs are really old and god knows if their sonars are actually working properly.  Or, they know the ship is coming, but by staying the course, they make you think they are not submarines.  We are talking about military operation, where deception is common activities…so how can a task force commander simply discard the possibility that those are submarines.

Beside, if they are not whale, and they are not submarines, then WTF are they?  UFO? Sea Monsters?  You got to be joking.  Someone needs to tell them that they are making some assumptions that simply do not make any sense.  Try get some better sonar, or find way to detect it more accurately and just see what exactly this thing is.  Speculating based on some preconceived assumption just look stupid, and it could also endanger Taiwan’s navy bases.

UPDATE: Ha, I knew they would sound like idiots.  Now people are making fun of them.

The maiden flight of Russia’s fifth generation fighter jet ended successfully.

“Having made a short run, the fifth generation jet took off and started ascending vigorously,” a source from the airbase in Komsomolsk-on-Amur told Interfax news agency.

	AP photo
	BREAKING NEWS Russia Tests Fifth Generation Fighter Jet
	Russia’s Fifth Generation Plane on Maiden Flight More…

The flight was a success, all systems worked normally, the press service of Russia’s Sukhoi design bureau said. The flight continued for 47 minutes.

“All the goals set for the first flight have been achieved successfully,” the source said. The flight was supposed to take place on January 28, but was delayed for 24 hours because of bad weather conditions.

There are still no specific details about the new plane. Experts only say that it is a highly maneuverable, multifunctional and powerful stealthy aircraft. Eight of 16 missile suspension points sit inside the fuselage. Sukhoi’s T-50 PAK FA can attack multiple air and ground-based targets simultaneously.

Russia’s Air Force will have first fifth generation fighter jets in 2015 and will use Su-35 of 4++ generation before that year. Russia’s Defense Ministry has already signed contracts with Sukhoi for the delivery of 48 Su-35 jets. India plans to buy 250 new T-50 fifth generation jets from Sukhoi in the future.

For the time being, it is only the USA that has a full-fledged fifth generation aircraft – F-22. Lockheed Martin currently works on a lighter version – F-35. China also works on a similar aircraft, although it is not known when the Chinese plane is going to be ready. Even if Russia has Sukhoi PAK FA only in 2020, China will still be working on its version.

The first test flight of Sukhoi T-50 showed that Russia is a member of the club that currently has only one member – the USA.

The aircraft that performed the first flight under the trademark of the fifth generation fighter jet was outfitted with engines of the so-called intermediate generation of combat airplanes 4++. These engines are currently produced for Su-35 fighters, although T-50 is supposed to have new, more powerful engines. It does not have the radar, which the plane of this class should have. The radar, or the system of radars, is nearly finished – the active phased antenna array. The system is currently being tested on another plane, Pravda.Ru reports.

Nothing is known about the battle equipment of the new jet. It was only said that several missiles will be placed inside the plane during the flight – similarly to the Tu-160 strategic bomber. This detail will make the plane even stealthier.

Like we reported before, only a few people have seen the new plane so far – designers, engineers and top officials of the Russian administration. There are no real pictures of Sukhoi PAK FA on the Internet either. All pictures that can now be found in the Internet are fake, Russian specialists participating in the project said.

Rumor has it that the Russian T-50 looks very much like USA’s F-22 Raptor. First photographs of the new plane have just been published.

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/29-01-2010/111923-fifth_generation-0

More on Obama’s unreal world.

We have focused recently on how more and more pundits have commented on the fact that the Obama Administration seems to be living in an alternative, unreal universe where they can’t seem to see the truth even when it hits them in the face…case in point, the Brown election in Massachusetts. We’ve pointed out some of these instances on our blog, here: http://politicallyempowered.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/unpresidential/ here: http://politicallyempowered.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/225/ and here: http://politicallyempowered.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/liberalisms-new-catechism/ .

The following is from Jennifer Rubin over at Commentary Magazine who has noticed the same problem in Obama’s foreign policy, which can cause really big problems for the country in the short and long term.  

Really, there is a childlike assumption by the Obami that these powers will be impressed with the West’s disarmament efforts and want to get in on the back-slapping congratulations too. It is, as (John) Bolton points out, further confirmation that rather than become more “realistic” in our approach to national security, the Obami crew have adopted fictions that bear no relationship to the behavior and motives of the regimes we face. The president has in essence doubled down on a dangerously misguided vision:

Obama has now explicitly rejected the idea that U.S. weakness is provocative, arguing instead that weakness will convince Tehran and Pyongyang to do the opposite of what they have been resolutely doing for decades—vigorously pursuing their nuclear and missile programs. Obama’s first year amply demonstrates that his approach will do nothing even to retard, let alone stop, Iran and North Korea.

But this sort of thinking is not unique to nuclear proliferation, of course. Was his Middle East gambit — bully Israel, raise Palestinian expectations, and rely on the wonderfulness of himself — any more grounded in reality? Was his idea that yanking missile defense from Poland and the Czech Republic would “reset” our relations with Russia grounded in a historic experience or on a well-thought out strategy? You see the pattern. Obama looks at the world, disregards the motives of our foes, and acts in ways that further aggravate bad situations (e.g., raising Palestinian expectations, encouraging Russian belligerences, providing breathing space to the mullahs). He then reports back that these problems are “hard” and that, lo and behold, he has discovered that there are complicating factors at play. (In his appearance in Tampa this week he seemed to acknowledge just this when he told the crowd, “The problem that we’re confronting right now is that both in Israel and within the Palestinian Territories, the politics are difficult; they’re divided.”)

One is left to gape at the naiveté. While it be dawning on Obama that the Middle East is not amenable to the “Cairo Effect” (his fractured history lesson really didn’t change anything — at least not for the better), that conclusion has not been extrapolated to other foreign-policy challenges. The Obami can be rebuffed and turned back in discrete areas. (Honduras stood up to the Foggy Bottom bullies. Domestic political realities are forcing a rethinking of Obama’s “Not Bush” anti-terror approach.) But they keep at it, ever more certain that the world can conform to their vision rather than the other way around. It is, for those who were waiting for a foreign policy built on ” realism,” anything but.

If Americans can see the “unreality” in Obama’s foreign policy stances, don’t you think our enemies can see it too? If Khrushchev thought Kennedy was naive and easy to push around, and Ayatollah Khomeini thought the same of Jimmy Carter, what must Putin, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung Il, and Osama bin Laden think of our current president? Read it all here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/227786

//

Obama admin, after a few centuries, finally decide one something that should not surprise anyone: selling Black Hawks, PAC-3, and anti-mine ships.  Really, the list is so uncontroversial, they could have sold those to North Korea and no one would complained.  But wow, they have to sell these to TAIWAN.  Wow, wait a minute, all of a sudden it’s a big news, because look out, China the Drama Queen is ANGRY again.

OK, maybe I am being over sarcastic, because Taiwan does need those items (Black Hawks to replace the aging UH-1 transport fleets.  Mine sweepers to increase anti-blockade capability because China does own large amount and large variety of sea mines, some are quite advance.  PAC-3 is debatable as many still question its effectiveness and cost, but maybe it’s better than nothing).  But truely, the international relationship nowadays looks like a fucking joke.  What are these officials learn from nowadays?  Soup Opera? or babies beating the crap out of each other for a stuffed toy?  The US did not even sell Taiwan the controversial items such as F-16 C/D and submarines, WTF is China crying about?  Wow, Taiwan is going to invade China with its 60 new Black Hawks.  Its new mine sweepers is going to destroy the Chinese fleets with lightning bolts.  Its new PAC-3 is going to bomb the shit out of China.  Rediculous.  None of item sold are even close to a threat to China.  So why is China crying?

I suspect China is just using this as an excuse to get Chinese people angry and unite behind the Communists party.  After Google kicks the CCP in the balls, CCP does need to find some diversion and fabricating or re-emphasizing the outside enemies.

Interestingly, in Taiwan, those pro-China media seems rather quite.  During DPP admin, those pro-China media keeps black smearing whatever the US sold to Taiwan.  They call those weapons “waste iron.”  But now, all of a sudden, no one says shit.  Why don’t they complain about the mine sweepers?  They did complain about the P-3C Orion anti-sub aircraft.  Why don’t they complain about the PAC-3?  They kept complaining about it before.  The point is very simple, their brains grow on their asses.  On the positive side, that’s good.  Because at least now they can actually make some needed arm purchases.

( The order also include other items such as Harpoon anti-ship missiles.  But once again, those are items Taiwan already have and are considered regular stock pile and upgrades.  It should not be a big deal. )

UPDATE: It’s actually a good thing that China over reacted, because it’s actually a good advertisement of Taiwan’s sovereignty, as Liberty Times rightfully pointed out.  Just look at this photo.

The last President we had who criticized our own people and was weak on national defense was tossed out in a landslide after one term.  His continued derogatory statements, support of brutal dictators, and unending sniping at American policy have relegated him to the status of a bitter has-been destined for the dustbin of history.  Now we have a President who seems to be following the same path with near exponential zeal.   

The Peronistic demagoguery of doctors, banks, insurance firms, Wall Street, news organizations, and corporations wears out welcome mats over time.  The Huey Long promises of handouts, benefits, entitlements, and government largesse are unaffordable for future generations.  The constant apologies for America’s past and apparent disbelief in American exceptionalism grate on millions of proud, hard working citizens across the land.  Continued dithering on vital decisions demonstrates a lack of executive skills. 

We have only had a handful of former senators as presidents.  There is a very good reason that more former governors come to the White House instead.  They have true executive experience directing people and projects and making tough decisions.  Senators on the other hand come from a congenial world of negotiation, compromise, and are used to turning their ideas and decisions into consensus rather than action.  We are witnessing this dichotomy in the present administration.

From the labyrinths of the Daley machine in Cook County, this President and his closest associates brought the “Chicago way” to DC.  Associated baggage included a number of various hacks and camp followers of rather dubious backgrounds and beliefs.  Their vetting process was either totally slipshod or intentionally permissive and a long list of tax cheats, radicals, and various & sundry questionable sycophants have been slipped into positions throughout the government.  When the administration ran out of slots, they tucked more odious characters into instant czar positions.  The Attorney General was the fixer on the Marc Rich pardon.  The White House communications director looks to Mao Tse Tung for guidance.  The regulatory czar believes that animals should be enabled to bring lawsuits.  The secretary of homeland security thinks a bomb going off killing innocents is a “man caused disaster”.  Only a year into this administration, the lights are being shined into these folks’ closets and the skeletons come running out.    

Now we have the skivvy-shorts bomber provided with a lawyer and tucked safely in a Detroit jail instead of being put under the light in Gitmo.  KSM and his closest co-conspirators are now scheduled for a fiasco in a New York courtroom.  A jihadist mole in a major’s uniform murders 13 people while screaming “Allah Akbar” and the Army whitewash does not even mention his religion.  North Korea and Iran are rolling their own nukes with no end game in sight.  The stimulus spending is so far an abject failure based on the President’s own promises and the deficit is three times as big as it has ever been.  We are not allowed to drill for oil and gas in our own country and off its shores while we import nearly 70% of it from hostile regimes that only wish us ill.  A whole valley full of the most productive farmland in the world bakes and dies out for lack of water to make some insignificant minnows comfortable.

This is not change we can believe in.  It is a vile mixture of lunacy, stupidity, inertia, political correctness and naivety run amok.  It is time for pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers.

An open letter to Barack Obama in response to his State of the Union speech:

State of the Union, January 2010

Mr. Obama, here are my reactions to and impressions of your State of the Union speech last night.

First of all, let me make one overall recommendation to you, Mr. Obama.

Grow up and take responsibility.

You say “I’m not interested in re-litigating the past.”  Yet you continue to blame George W. Bush for EVERYTHING under the sun.  You point fingers and blame everyone else on the planet for your problems, and for things you don’t like while dodging any and all personal responsibility for events taking place in America now.  It makes you look immature and petty.  The minute you signed onto the stimulus and began taking over companies and banks, you owned this economy, and your senatorial votes during the Bush administration played a significant part in the economy’s demise.

You said that you understand the “burden of working harder for less,” and “I know the anxieties out there now.”  Really?  Sir, most of your life has been one of privilege financed by others.  Now you are at the pinnacle of that life living in the lap of luxury, throwing lavish parties, traveling all over the world, flaunting power all at the expense of the American taxpayer.  If you really understood, you wouldn’t be throwing your weekly parties for your cronies, and you wouldn’t be spending millions of taxpayer dollars flying all over the country and world on Air Force One just to get photo ops for your never ending campaign.  You would be staying in Washington, D.C. working on REAL, bipartisan solutions.

You stated that you had cut taxes for millions of us in the middle class.  Really?  Being solidly in the middle class, I think I would know if you had.  Allowing us to keep more money up front and then taxing it away from us on April 15^th is not a tax cut.  Mailing me a check for a SMALL PORTION of the tax money that was mine to begin with is a REBATE, not a tax cut.  When you mail those same checks to the 50% of Americans who don’t pay income taxes anyway, that’s just a handout.  When you’re charitable with your own money, that’s generosity.  When you’re charitable with OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY, that’s called THEFT or REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH when it’s done by the government.

You talk of creating government/public service jobs to help the economy.  Since you were supposedly a “professor,” I would expect you to be educated enough to understand that public-sector, government jobs by definition CAN NOT CREATE WEALTH, which is what will stimulate our economy.  A government job by definition takes money away from the economy to pay for itself.

Mr. Obama, you said you wanted a “jobs bill” on your desk immediately.  Sir, here’s the jobs bill guaranteed to create jobs, and stimulate economic growth.  I’ve delivered it to you before congress could, and kept it so brief that any child could understand it.  Here it is.  Are you ready?

CUT TAXES!

Cut personal income taxes, cut corporate taxes, and eliminate the “death” and “marriage” taxes, and I GUARANTEE that the economy will take off like a rocket.

You also mentioned that you were going to “double exports” to reduce our trade deficit.  That sounds good, but how do you plan to achieve that, and what do you plan to export?  The liberal policies of taxing businesses and creating a business climate that forces them to move their businesses overseas has left us with very little to export.  When you make a corporate environment that ATTRACTS businesses, we will once again produce what the rest of the world wants, and exports will be a natural byproduct of that.

When it comes to health care reform, you have been wrong, and continue to be wrong.  You have been dishonest in your dealings with the American people, and have outright lied about the “transparency” that was supposed to be the hallmark of these negotiations and of your administration.  CSPAN?  How’s that working for you?  I guess I just missed all of those broadcasts, because I haven’t seen any of them.  You said “if anybody has a better idea (about health care) let me know.”  Oh, dear Lord in Heaven (I can introduce you to Him), please keep my head from exploding.  You and the rest of your “progressive” (read communist) buddies have SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED REPUBLICANS from the entire process, and refused to listen to, include or consider ANY of their ideas while crafting your government takeover of the health care system.  Sir, the ideas are there but you are unwilling to listen to any ideas that do not fit your agenda.  Tort reform, tax cuts, competition across state lines, and several other ideas have been put forth that are proven successful strategies for making health care better and more affordable.  Yet you won’t allow them to be put on the table because they don’t pay your union buddies, or contribute to the takeover of health care.  I pause to conjure the spirit of Rep. Joe Wilson.

You said you were going to “freeze spending for three years.”  You speak of how that won’t start until 2011 because “that’s how budgeting works.”  How convenient that it works out that you are putting it off until AFTER the midterm elections so that any possible pain associated with your policies won’t be felt until after Americans cast their votes. Your “spending freeze” sounds good to the uninitiated and uneducated that you hoped were the majority of your audience last night.  But the reality is that you have already allowed HUGE spending increases in nearly every government agency that they wouldn’t have seen in the next 5-7 years COMBINED.  Then you exempt the largest portion of government spending from any freeze.  That would be the ENTITLEMENT SPENDING upon which you and the liberals depend for your political lives, and to which NO ONE IS ACTUALLY ENTITLED.  If you were serious about eliminating the deficit, and paying down the debt, then you would get serious about ELIMINATING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.  Go to a flat tax (which is a FAIR tax) with no exemptions and eliminate the IRS.  That would save about $11 Billion per year.  The Department of Energy was established to “end our dependence on foreign oil.”  How would you say that’s working?  The DoE is about as useful as mammary glands on a boar hog.  Scrap it and save the billions of dollars per year that it sucks up from the tax payers.  You could legitimately close the doors of 75% of the Federal government with no negative impact on America.  You would in fact allow America to prosper by simply getting government out of the way, and saving us all of that money.

You speak of dismantling our nuclear arms and “agreements” with the Russians.  You obviously are not a student of history.  When we weaken ourselves, our enemies do not follow suit.  Whether it be the Soviets/Russians, the Iranians, or the North Koreans, they have proven themselves to be liars.  They will say whatever you want them to say to gain short-term political favor.  They will not disarm themselves.  Disarming unilaterally and dealing from a position of weakness will only open us up to aggression and attack from the likes of Russia, China, and Iran, not to mention the many terrorist groups who want nothing more than to see Americans die.  We need to be the biggest, strongest kid on the block to ensure peace for us, and for the rest of the world.

The one thing from your speech on which we agree is the building of nuclear power plants, and removal of restrictions on offshore drilling.  Everyone agrees that we need to try to develop clean, self-sustaining forms and sources of energy.  But letting private innovation lead the way and develop products that Americans ACTUALLY WANT is the only way to make “green” energy a success.  By forcing it down our throats while demonizing and destroying our other inexpensive, reliable forms of energy will only destroy those jobs before new ones emerge, skyrocket the cost of energy (which you promised us under YOUR plan), and destroy an economy that depends on energy at an affordable price.  I’m beginning to think this may actually be your intent.

Finally, you displayed your true, anti-American, communist, thug, street organizer colors when you quietly announced your “enemies list” during your speech.  You and your band of thugs like Rahm Emanuel bully and intimidate people to get your way.  You did so with Fox News and the other news outlets when you declared that Fox News was not a legitimate news organization, would not be treated as such, and that the other “news” outlets would be “wise” not to treat them that way either.  Attempt to destroy one to make an example of them, and use fear to control the others, a strategy from your idol, Saul Alinsky.  In a total breach of decorum and decency, you publicly flog the Supreme Court, who can’t defend themselves, and lie about their decision that actually reaffirms the 1^st Amendment freedom of speech.  You hand down the list of people whom you will combat and try to destroy if they stand in your way, a list which includes bankers, capitalist “fat-cats,” the Supreme Court, and anyone in the media or with a microphone, megaphone, or pulpit from which to deliver a message that exposes the fallacies of your agenda.  You are blatantly trying to stifle free speech.  Woodrow Wilson and FDR were two of the “progressives” who employed similar tactics.  No more, Mr. Obama.  We will not tolerate your attempts to silence us.

Mr. Obama, you simply don’t care about Americans or America.  The people of Massachusetts, a solidly liberal state, sent you a loud and clear message.  But you won’t listen.  Congress didn’t give you what you wanted, so rather than reevaluate whether what YOU want is what Americans want or need, you boldly declare that you will simply sign executive orders to bypass the congress, and any other entity that stands in your way.  You attack and besmirch the Supreme Court because you don’t control them.  You lied when you said you “never said you could end divisiveness and start a post-partisan, post-racial era.”  BULL CHIPS!  You campaigned on EXACTLY THAT PROMISE!

Sir, you are an arrogant, dishonest narcissist who is a danger to America.  You attempted to include yourself in the greatness of America when you said that “our ideals built America.”

Mr. Obama, it was OUR ideals that build America, NOT YOURS.

Out of patience,

///SIGNED///

I’m not breaking my vow to never blog again…I’m just sayin’ that our President’s speech was too long, and all wrong. 

Here’s what he (or McDonnell) should’ve said:

My fellow human beings, over the past hundred years, American voters have gradually surrendered their property, initiative, freedom and security to politicians, and that was a stupid thing to do. 

Now our debts and fears, crime and perversions have grown so big and obvious that, frankly, I’m embarrassed that you still think that you can trust politicians with your life, liberty and pursuit of health insurance.  The whole point of our constitutions was to put a leash on politics, so that real people could live by their own choice, generosity, sweat and ingenuity.  But we rob you blind, tell you we saved you from worse, and you’re still voting for our two-headed, Demorepublicrat monster.

Dang, people.

It’s by your choice that those who’ve been right all along are called “fringe,” and most accurately, “loser;” while those who’ve been wrong, or worse, deceived you intentionally, are called “expert,” “wonk,” and of course, “The Honorable so and so.” 

I cannot apologize for your choices, but I am truly sorry that we politicians did what comes natural to us, and that you still have much to suffer before our mess can be made right. 

I’ve already said that I’d rather be a good one-term President than a mediocre two-timer.  So whether voters have learned from our collective mistakes or not, I now intend to do what’s right.

And what’s right is to recognize that, while any fool can wield power, only the great restrain it. 

My fellow Americans, I am the President who will wean you off politics. 

You want somebody to care for you?  Make some friends, join a church or voluntary service association, and raise a good family.  If you can’t get people to care for you voluntarily, I’m sure not going to sqeeze taxpayers for you.

As for a financial stimulus?  I will suggest that Congress gets double-pay to just stay home and leave you the heck alone. 

About terrorism…we never should’ve gone weak-kneed over zealots with exploding underpants.

I’m telling all you red-blooded game hunters out there, that as of right now, it’s open season on terrorists.  Have at ‘em, but of course try not to make too many mistakes. 

Does that scare you?  If so, then you have no idea how much suffering takes place in the homes of our soldiers; and you have no idea how much our endless wars cost you in money, social disorder, freedom, security and opportunities lost forever.

Overnight, ordinary rednecks could end and forever scare away terrorism at a tiny fraction of the current cost in dollars, corruption and human life, and allow us to bring our troops home.  Not just from Afghanistan and Iraq, but from all over the world.  We’d no longer flex our muscles or play nanny on foreign soil, because the world would know that we are impenetrable here at home. 

As far as job creation goes?…

I know economics was supposed to be two-thirds of my speech.  But government is violence, not business.  Government is more about oppression, slavery, genocide and war than anything else it may pretend to be.  It never creates.  It cannot give without first taking.  You should never have let us rob Peter to pay Paul.  Not only is it morally wrong in its essence, but you should have known that you are not Paul.

To wrap this up, let me say that I have read the Constitution that I swore to uphold against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and I now aim to do just that, as written in both black, and white.  People have fought and died for this precious contract, and I will never again let anyone in my administration treat it with anything other than respect.  Then again, it’s up to you, American voters, to hold me to that.

Thank you, and may God bless us all.

O-Bow-ma runs around the world bowing to every muslim ruler and tinpot dictator he can find, he stands in front of a muslim audience in Turkey and says the U.S. is no longer a Christian nation, he says in his campaign he has visited “all 57 states” which corresponds to the 57 muslim states, he downplays the “crotch bomber” (Great balls of fire!) at Christmas and keeps playing golf, and OBTW most people claiming to be Christians (as he still does) are usually celebrating the birth of Christ on Christmas instead of playing golf.

Now the U.S. Treasury, at the direction of O-Bow-ma, has removed the hamas terrorists from the TERRORIST WATCH LIST so that they can get money with no restrictions.

Obama is a muslim, anti-American, terrorist sympathizing communist.

Hamas may have been whitewashed, but it is no cleaner than before

25 Jan 2010

A news item entitled ‘US Terror Blacklist Whitewashes Hamas, Enables Funding’ just arrived in my e-mail a few minutes ago. According to its authors, the US Treasury has removed all the Hamas members previously blacklisted as terrorists, with the exception of Musa Abu Marzouk, the deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau, from the black list that banks almost everywhere are obliged to use in order to block known terrorists from exploiting the financial system to finance their operations.

In practical terms, the Treasury’s black list of names is a total waste of time: as it is a public document, everyone named in it knows that his name is there, and should he want to open a bank account somewhere, he will find a suitable way round the regulations, either by using a false passport or by using a third party to act on his behalf. And apart from that, the details of many entries in the black list document are simply not very accurate or practical: as a senior compliance executive of one of the biggest European banks told me a few years ago, “the black lists are lousy” as a way of preventing terror finance and money laundering.

Nevertheless, this news is absolutely alarming, not so much because of the symbolism of removing the names of known Hamas leaders and terrorists from the black lists, but because doing so will now allow the European Union to continue sending money to the Hamas-run regime of thugs in Gaza without needing to pretend that it is only financing humanitarian efforts, while boycotting the ’military’ side of the government there. There is a genuine problem of how to ensure that genuine humanitarian aid continues to flow without helping Hamas — most of whose victims are actually Palestinians living in Gaza, rather than the hated Israelis — but this discussion is for another occasion.

http://lonestartimes.com/?p=1113

Israel National News reports:

The United States Treasury has taken all but one member of Hamas off the international list of terrorists, thus enabling funds from the European Union to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza.

It is an open secret that large sums of money from the EU flow into Gaza in the guise of humanitarian aid and salaries for officials, but are actually funneled into the coffers of Hamas, which controls Gaza with an iron grip. This method of transferring funds into terrorists’ hands could have been blocked by an international lawsuit, but according to journalist Avi Tarango, the United States Treasury has made this impossible by removing all but one Hamas man – Deputy Chairman of the Political Bureau, Musa Abu Marzouk – from the list of international terrorists.

and this:

However, according to Tarango, who went over the list, none of the tens of thousands of people who form Hamas is mentioned – other than Abu Marzuk, who resides in Damascus. The terrorist list is meant for distribution in the world banking system, where the transfer of funds to anyone on the list is prohibited.

The Bush administration was adept and persistent in trying to destroy or, at least, make very difficult the transfer of funds into terrorist hands around the world after September 11, 2001. Many of these measures are slowly being dismantled.

“EU laws define Hamas as a terror organization and therefore the EU people need to verify on a name-by-name basis that none of the people receiving salaries and support is a terrorist,” Tarango said. “This is done by the EU’s cash transfer mechanism, PEGASE, which verifies that none of the recipients of salaries are members of Hamas’s police force or activists of the military wing of Hamas, by comparing the names as received from the PA treasury department with the list of international terror activists. However, since the newly-updated list contains no Hamas officials except for Marzouk, the European check will find nothing and the funds for Gaza salaries will be transferred in whole to the Gaza banks.”

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Obama Gets ‘F’ on Stopping Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction

By Judith Miller - FOXNews.com

In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism gives the Obama administration an “F” for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report.

A bipartisan, independent commission on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction says that the Obama administration has failed in its first year in office to do enough to prevent a germ weapons attack on America or to respond quickly and effectively should such an attack occur.

In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism, chaired by former Senators Bob Graham, a Democrat from Florida, and Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, gives the new administration the grade of “F” for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report.

Specifically, the commission concludes that the Obama administration, like the three administrations before it, has failed to pay consistent and urgent attention to increasing the nation’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to a germ attack that would inflict massive casualties on the nation. 

The commission repeated its warning that unless nations acted decisively and urgently, it was more likely than not that a WMD will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013, and that the terrorists’ weapon of choice would be biological, rather than nuclear.

The administration’s delayed response to the H1N1 virus, the report concludes, demonstrated that the United States was “woefully behind in its ability to rapidly produce rapidly vaccines and therapeutics, essential steps for adequately responding to a biological threat, whether natural or man-made.”

Even with time to prepare, the report noted, the epidemic peaked “before most Americans had access to vaccine.”

And a bio-attack, it warned, would have no such warning.

MORE…...foxnews.com/

Today there are 3 different article from Liberty Times that caught my attention.  Titles with my attempt translation:

• 美智庫： 中國犯台企圖 美首要挑戰 (US Think Tank: China’s Hostile Intention on Taiwan is One of USA’s Top Challenge) 
• 平可夫：台灣應購大氣層外反導彈系統 (平可夫 Taiwan Should Acquire Exo-Atmospheric Anti-Ballistic Missile System)
• 中國配偶解放台灣？ (Chinese Spouses To “Liberate” Taiwan?)

The first article describe how CSBA  create a scenario, and highlights the possible problem in Taiwan Strait in the future, and how this could be one of the top challenge for the USA in the next decade.  To be ready of the potential crisis, the study recommend the Pentagon to have long term planning with discussion and debate about issues such as what to sell to Taiwan etc.  It does not seem to contain things that are too surprising.  However, the general feeling is that the US is focusing very strongly in the middle east.  To China, the current US policy is more of appeasement, because the US policy makers view China as a partner (of course, with the theory that China will turn democratic once it become rich…blah blah blah, we all heard it a thousand times before).  However, with the recent Google incident, one wonder if those policy makers will at least start to have some self-doubt about their believe that investment and trade will automatically bring out democracy and freedom…(even just spell that out sounds really like bull shit.  Economic well beings is necessary for democracy perhaps, but economic well beings do not bring out democracy.  Just look at WW2 era Japan and Germany.  Their people live well enough, but where is the democracy.  Japan’s parliament are occupied by retired military generals, and Germany is ruled by the one and only National Socialist Party, or Nazi for short).  What is perhaps more dire is that currently the US’s Taiwan policy is basically no policy.

The second article come from a famous military magazine editor.  However, although he has his expertise, we of course can only take his idea as only an idea.  The plausibility etc of this idea needs further investigations.  The system and technology is there (Standard Missile 3, developed jointly by the US and Japan), but it could be extremely expensive.  And just how effective it is we don’t know for sure.  Israel does seem to show some interest as well.  However, the missile problem faced by Israel and Taiwan is not exactly the same.  Israel’s main potential missile threat comes from Iran, but Taiwan’s comes from China.  Chinese missile forces is definitely a lot more mature than Iranian, which just got started.  And of course, there is also the nuclear warheads problem…

The 3rd article Chinese spouse in Taiwan.  Currently, there are quite a lot of them, mostly women, as the article pointed out.  To most country, immigration can be a good source of human capitals and exchange of cultures.  However, there are also considerable problems with immigration if it’s not handled properly.  Right now, Taiwan seems to have an imbalance (large portion of Chinese)  problem.  This is indeed a potential problem in my opinion.  However, the complexity of this issue is perhaps beyond my knowledge, because it involves social and human psychologies etc.  The problem I see with this though is the following:

• Next generation problem: the children raised by Chinese in Taiwan, what would they think about Taiwan?
• Integration problem:  as can be noted in North America and Europe, a lot of times immigrants, especially first generation, do not fully integrate into the rest of society.  They usually formed a niche community etc.  This is natural and might not be such a bad thing.  However, if its Chinese forming a niche within Taiwan, without much integration with the rest of Taiwanese society, what will happen?  Because afterall, the way Chinese view Taiwan is very different from new immigrants viewing the USA.

This topic might be quite interesing…some academia or government agencies should look into this and plan ahead.

The Importance of National Defense

This news just reminds me of some thoughts I had recently.  One of the strategic national objective of Taiwan is to achieve independence.  The independence I refer here is not just a name change or a new constitution, although have those would be great, even in practical purpose, because wrong name gives confusion and wrong constituion creates problems.  However, what I am talking about here is a bit bigger in scope.  I define it to include free from Chinese threats, coersion and international pressure.  In another word, Taiwan should be able to independently negotiate FTA with other coutnries or bloc if it choose to.  However, to do this, one thing has to happen: China has to give up.  And that is only going to happen if the following occurs:

1. Chinese government realize that pressuring, threatening or annexing Taiwan has extremely high cost, to the point that doing so would mean the crumbling of CCP rule.
2. Chinese government realizes that annexing Taiwan has no benefits whatsoever. 

Point 2 would solve all problem but that is quite impossible.  Of course, one can convince the Chinese government so they lower the value of Taiwan.  However, to convince them to the point that they won’t even bother to open their mouth in UN saying that Taiwan is part of China, blah blah blah, is quite impossible.  Geo-political situation simply does not seem to allow it.

Therefore, point 1 becomes important complimentary strategy.  However, to accomplish this is also very difficult, but we can see the importance of national defense to Taiwan’s objective.  Because without strong defense, all other leverage etc becomes useless.  The ideal situation will be that an Chinese invasion becomes impossible, blockage becomes breakable, and missiles barrage becomes useless.  If that is the case, Taiwan would be indepent already.  However, that ideal situation only exists in fantasy land, but it does illustrate the point: national defense is an important part of the equation.

UPDATE:  Someone replied to the 3rd article.  Ha, I knew this topic is going to be controversial.  Damn, maybe the next hot topic that will never get solved would the the policy on Chinese spouse.  I think that the article is debatable, but this reply does have some logical holes in it.

Point 1 of the reply said that the problem of Taiwan population is that it’s decreasing, not increasing.  However, that missed the point of the original article.  The original article is actually saying that the current population is already too many.  Therefore, a bit of decrease in population would actually be a good thing. 

Point 2 is correct…however that is exactly the concern of the original article.  In my opinion, immigration is immigration, it does not matter if it is through marriage or otherwise.  They are moving and living here, that is immigration, by the broader definition.

The final part points out we should treat them well etc since they are now part of Taiwan society.  That is correct.  We cannot treat them otherwise.  Once they are in,  they are part of Taiwan.  However, that is also the concern of the original article, and part of my concern. 

As one of the example shown by the original article, some Chinese women does not think too highly of Taiwanese women…for some reason.  It is this kind of view that I am worried about.  As I mentioned before, Chinese immigrants’ view of Taiwan is very different from immigrants view of the USA.  Chinese are educated from young that Taiwan is part of China etc, which come into clash with the majority view of Taiwan.  From this, other bad feeling toward Taiwan might come out.  Furthermore, not all immigrants like the country they immigrate to.  That sounds very weird, but it’s empirically true. 

The case of Chinese spouse in Taiwan is very unique in my opinion.  There might not bet that many countries which experience this type of situation before.  So my view is still that we should treat the Chinese spouse well, of course.  However, the long term implication of this needs to be understood, and potential problems need to be pointed out.

[President Obama] set a new record for getting Congress to vote a president’s way, clinching 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position — breaking the record set by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, according to Congressional Quarterly.
• Within days of taking office, Obama broke his pledge not to raise any taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year by imposing a tax hike of 61 cents on a pack of cigarettes. Measures the president supports would hike taxes by $2.1 trillion over 10 years, according to Americans for Tax Reform.
• Obama signed an executive order to shut down the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay and ordered it closed within a year.
• At his Senate confirmation hearings, it was revealed that Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner had not paid $35,000 in self-employment taxes for several years. He also deducted the cost of his children’s sleep-away camp as a dependent care expense, when only expenses for day care are eligible for the deduction.
• The administration decided to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists in a civilian court in New York rather than in a military court.
• Obama’s efforts to seek a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program have produced no results, and the Islamic Republic appears more determined than ever to acquire nuclear weapons.
• Diplomacy also has failed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
• When mass demonstrations against the Iranian government [by the Iranian people] broke out in June, Obama… sidestep[ed] any condemnation of Iran’s use of force against protesters.
• Despite a campaign pledge to allow C-SPAN to televise congressional meetings, Obama and the Democrats have rebuffed a request from C-SPAN to air healthcare.
• Obama also pledged to usher in a new era of bipartisanship, then went more than six months without meeting with Republican leaders on healthcare.
• Obama stirred outrage when he appeared to bow to Saudi King Abdullah at a G-20 meeting in London, a move the Washington Times called an “extraordinary protocol violation.” Despite the criticism, the president also bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito during a November visit trip to Tokyo.
• Candidate Obama vowed that no lobbyists would work in his White House. President Obama waived that rule in June for Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who was a registered lobbyist for a defense contractor. Other lobbyists serving in the Obama administration include Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative, and Cecilia Munoz, intergovernmental affairs director at the White House.
• Obama had to accept ultimate responsibility when the so-called underwear bomber incident exposed serious gaps in the system for detecting and preventing terrorist plots.
• Security at the White House itself was shown to be porous when two uninvited guests crashed an event honoring the prime minister of India.
• Obama appointed Van Jones to be the administration’s “green jobs” czar in March. But he became embroiled in controversy over his past political activities, including his 1990s association with a Marxist group… and resigned in September.
• In July, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., was arrested at his home by Cambridge, Mass., police officer Sgt. James Crowley, who was responding to a report of a break-in, and charged with disorderly conduct. Obama … commenting that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting the African-American teacher. That led to the Obama-moderated “Beer Summit” between Gates and Crowley, which Townhall.com called “the most demeaning moment of any president in recent memory.”
• The stock market hit a seven-year low, with the Dow dipping below 7,000, after Obama likened the market to political “tracking polls,” suggesting they’re unimportant.
• Obama betrayed allies Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling plans to build a missile defense shield in those nations to guard against an attack from Iran.
• Obama said in February that approval of his $787 billion stimulus package was urgent. Congress got its work done on a Friday, but Obama and his wife Michelle flew off on Air Force One to Chicago for the Valentine’s Day weekend and dined at a romantic restaurant before flying back to Washington on Monday to sign the bill. [Much of the stimulus remains unspent]
• Obama’s promise of a public option in the healthcare reform plan — a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers — has died in the Senate. His plan to allow lower-cost drug imports into the U.S. was also defeated.
• Obama pledged during his campaign to slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels, which would be 1,318, according to the Washington Times. Then he signed into law some 9,000 earmarks, totaling about $5 billion.

Source: Newsmax, Obama’s First Year: Defeat, Disarray, Disillusionment
By: Jim Meyers

The statements made by the White House this week, about the systemic failure that let young Abdulmutallab get on a passenger jet to the US on Christmas Day, have been chillingly incompetent.  The principal impression has been one of bizarre inexperience, haplessness, and lack of judgment.  Although I had some sympathy with Juan Williams’ complaint on Fox News Sunday this morning – that right-wing pundits do nothing but look for ways to blame Obama for everything – the fact is that the Obama administration has performed very poorly in relation to the Knickerbomber.

I made the case at “contentions” on Friday that the administration’s invocation of an analytical surprise – that Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has moved from “aspirational” to “operational” – was disquieting.  There is not enough room in a short post to develop this concern fully, so I focused on the issue of whether that analytical conclusion should be required before we can keep people with known terrorist associations off of airplanes.

The implication of John Brennan and Janet Napolitano was that such a requirement exists. Within our system for developing the no-fly list, which is extracted from the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (and based on the TIDE database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC), it is apparently the case that a tie-breaking criterion, for thinking someone who’s suspicious is really, really suspicious, is whether his terrorist associates have been pronounced “operational” by analysts.  Whether this is the case some or all of the time, the clear statement of Obama’s officials was that it was the case for Abdulmutallab and AQAP.  The White House review made the same main point.

Now, I have long experience with processes of exactly this kind:  comparing intelligence to warning criteria, including criteria for preemptive action.  So I’m not talking out of my hat here, but from an excellent understanding of how this works.  I doubt that it was the case, for example, that the information we had about Abdulmutallab was actively dismissed at all, much less that it was dismissed explicitly because of the analytical assessment that AQAP was still “aspirational.”  It doesn’t work that way.  Indeed, we are informed that the FBI intended to detain Abdulmutallab for questioning when his flight arrived in Detroit.  He was of enough interest to authorities to prompt that level of pursuit.

The real problem is what everyone on earth except, apparently, US federal officials, can immediately see.  Hel-LO.

1.  Man with terrorist associations whom the FBI wants to question.

2.  Man with terrorist associations whom the FBI wants to question on a passenger jet flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Knock-knock?  Anybody home?  Hello, McFly?  The system’s decisions here seem surreally analogous to, say, letting a suspicious-looking man come into your home so you can question him about his intentions.

No, the problem lies not in our misunderstanding of the warning intelligence, but in our criteria for action.  It lies in our fundamental posture, of which appealing to the analytical categories “aspirational” and “operational” is only a symptom.  In the matter of judging terror groups to be operational versus aspirational, an airplane bombing is one of the most likely indicators of the former.  Shall we really wait for terrorists to prove themselves operational in this manner before taking preemptive action – like, say, putting suspicious men on the no-fly list?

This is quite obviously a truly idiotic posture, one that begs the question what we even want to have intelligence for – yet according to Brennan and Napolitano, it’s the one we have adopted.  The proximate decisions of our officials, whether in intelligence or law enforcement, were constrained not so much by the aspirational-operational divide as by the very posture of a system that makes the divide significant.

And yet.  Brennan and Napolitano presented this analytical nicety as a reason for our failure to keep Abdulmutallab off of the plane from Amsterdam.  I had the most discouraging sense of déjà vu, watching them speak on air on Thursday, because like most people who have achieved a level of executive responsibility in their careers, I have heard things like this before:  from subordinates.  Indeed, in my long-ago past as a junior officer, I probably advanced such explanations myself at one time or another, because there’s a time in our lives when most of us do still think systemic explanations are definitive.  Whatever less-accountable foolishness I may have perpetrated in that regard, I did learn over time the lesson all executive leaders learn, which is that if there was no breakdown of the system but something still went wrong, there’s a problem with the system’s core assumptions.

Moving to that stage is rapid and automatic, under effective leadership.  The judgment that the system’s existing assumptions produced the wrong result is an interim step, and you don’t get points for checking that block.  You just get dinged if you don’t.  By the time I was no more than a Navy lieutenant – a captain in the other services – I knew better than to offer an explanation like the one Brennan and Napolitano put so much emphasis on, as if it were the main thing to know about a situation.  It can’t help coming off as inviting sympathy (or averting blame), to dwell on features of the system as a mechanism the human actors were caught in.  The Leadership 101 prescription is to change basic systemic assumptions that are inhibiting human judgment, or sending it in the wrong direction.  That’s what you talk about.  You acknowledge that the problem was those core assumptions; but having figured that out is old news by the time you say it.  Talk about what you’re responsible for doing.

Brennan and Napolitano looked on Thursday like low-ranking subordinates who didn’t realize that they have the power and the responsibility to change the system’s assumptions, so that we get a better result.  I remember the number of occasions when abashed subordinates explained in great detail how a problem had occurred, and then earnestly promised to be more diligent, proactive, supervisory, etc to keep it from happening again – when it was obvious to me, and very likely to the chief or the department head, that there was a systemic shortfall to be addressed.  Young sailors didn’t always see that, although they usually understood immediately if someone with a broader view of the situation explained it.  They were typically just more intent on conveying their bona fides than on analysis of systemic problems.

It is nothing short of alarming to see our highest national officials offering earnest explanations to the people, with no apparent appreciation of the responsible view – the executive view – that is evident to virtually everyone else:  that we can’t keep potential terrorists off airplanes if we don’t, well, keep potential terrorists off airplanes.  With young Nigerian males who have strong associations to any group whose name starts “Al Qaeda,” and whose fathers have warned US authorities that they are radicalized and intend to attack Americans, the a priori presumption should be against letting them on commercial airliners.

We, the American people, should never have to hear the words “aspirational” and “operational” again.  Quite obviously, the associates of the groups we deem to be aspirational can make bombing attempts just like the associates of operational ones.  Making this distinction a core assumption of our system is producing the wrong result.  Stop explaining it, and just fix it.

Cartoon by: Lisa Benson

From Right Side News:

Spying on Icebergs Instead of Terrorists?

Obama Program Diverts Intelligence Assets to Climate Research

New York, NY: As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation’s most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.

Experts with The National Center for Public Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from important counterterrorism duties. They further question if it a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge already plaguing some of these scientists.

“This is another example of President Obama not taking terrorism seriously,” said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network. “Our enemies must be laughing at the Obama Administration’s incompetence.”

I have to give the Obama (Soetoro) administration credit; they really are incompetent!

Mr. Obama made reference to “system failure” with respect to the nearly successful attempt to bomb Flight 253 on Christmas day.  He further stated that no one agency, etc., etc. was at fault.  However, our Country does rely heavily on our CIA to gather, analyze and disseminate intelligence in order to keep us safe.  How well has the current Administration strengthened, or even supported, the CIA?

Consider that on January 22, 2009, only two days after being inaugurated, Mr. Obama signed an Executive Order that banned “enhanced” interrogation methods, instead opting to use only military-approved interrogation methods, down-grading the ability of those in the CIA to do their jobs.

Next, after the POTUS assured us that no CIA interrogator would be prosecuted, AG Holder announced an investigation of the CIA.  He did not assure the CIA that his investigation would not eventually lead to prosecution or other negative outcome.

Now, a year later, Mr. Obama has signed another Executive Order that gives Interpol, among other things, at least the theoretical ability to prosecute CIA operatives as “war criminals”.

Oh, yes, and finally, it has been announced that CIA manpower is now to be diverted from terrorism activities to monitoring “climate change”.

The POTUS was right about one thing in his speech yesterday, we are at war.  However, his methods in waging this war seem, to me, to be less than effective.  Now that the CIA has had its pencil confiscated, do you feel safer?

Excellent story by Sara Carter who just returned after a lengthy stay among the troops in Afghanistan.  She filed this story on New Year’s Eve.

via Perilous patrol through heart of Taliban territory – Washington Times.

(1) Is it ever okay to attack someone whom you have reasonable cause to believe is preparing to attack you?

Sometimes. It’s a judgment call. I do not subscribe to a general political philosophy of pre-emptive war theory. If I know an enemy is going to attack me or my nation, I will take the necessary steps to prevent any loss of life to myself or my country.

Terrorism/many kinds of wars ultimately ask you to choose between the life of your opponent and the life of your family/friends/countrymen.