Thinkin’bout Stuff

Did you feel it? Did you wake up, turn on the news, and get punched in the stomach today?

Yes, the plot to blow up several US bound planes was disrupted. No doubt this should be viewed on an intellectual level as a victory for intelligence services and law enforcement, but still there’s that feeling.  We knew on some hypothetical, back-of-the-mind, when-not-if level that terrorists did not just disappear from the international scene after 9/11.  But just like people living near a fault line or at the foot of a volcano, we continued to carry on with our lives secure in the belief that today would not be the day.

Well, today was a stark reminder that any day can be that day. 

So, do we have the stomach for this fight? 

Are we the same nation we were in 1941? Or are we simply an empire in decline; too comfortable with our luxuries to sacrifice even a little bit to help the war effort.  Can you imagine the uproar (and the shrill screams from the left) if we were forced to ration and conserve resources in support of this war as our parents and grand parents did during WWII?

Are we ready to understand that the enemy we are fighting doesn’t give a damn about fair fights or protecting innocent civilians? While they parade faux victims in front of ever present and eager media cameras to foment opposition to this war around the world, do you think they shed a tear when blowing up children in playgrounds or mourners at funerals?

San Francisco Chronicle
Two unidentified men hid the explosives among other bags near a bench packed with children watching a match between neighborhood teams, said the lead investigator in the case, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss it. At halftime, around 8 p.m., when the players sat down to rest, the bombs exploded simultaneously.

I’m not even remotely suggesting we should start blowing up children, but perhaps we could show just a little bit less compassion for terrorists and their “rights”. 

Perhaps we can stop talking about measured and equitable responses to terrorist attacks (such as the launching of rockets into civilian neighborhoods).

Perhaps we can stop whining about the government monitoring phone calls from known terrorist states.

Perhaps we can stop making false comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam to score politcal points.

Perhaps we will finally remember that this country is at war, and while the battle is being fought on other shores, it will not take much for it to be brought home to us again.

These fascists aren’t fighting for land or money; they really hate us and want us dead. Cease fires and UN resolutions are merely tactical retreats in their minds, meant to provide an opportunity to gain advantage and continue the fight another day.

Are we so desparate for peace, so enamored of our cushy lives, that we are willing to grasp at frayed ropes offered by those who would dance in the streets if that rope should break?

Time to wake up America; we talk about mortgaging our children’s future with Social Security and “tax breaks for the rich” when the real threat is our own selfish denial of reality so that we can continue leading comfortable lives while our future is threatened like never before.

Originally published in 2006, republished in 2007.. and now here we are in 2008 and it still may not be too late, but it sure as heck would have been better if we had addressed this two years ago.  Reprinted here in it’s entirety:  How to Break the Oil Habit

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The following was originally posted July 2006. I decided to repost it (with some minor updates) because I believe we need to stop talking about freeing ourselves from our addiction to oil and start to actually do something about it. Also, since it was only the 3rd article I posted, odds are I’m the only one who read it

Although the price of oil has come down since this was written, the key points remain the same:

• We need to encourage research and development of alternative energy sources
• We need to encourage conservation of existing sources
• We need to do this in a way that limits the money funneled to terrorist backers like Iran
• We need to counter the money flowing out to terrorist nations with money flowing into our own government until we can break our addiction to oil

The bottom line for those not planning to read the entire article:

I propose that for the next five years, a new federal tax on gasoline (not diesel.. just gasoline) be phased in, increasing from 25 cents a gallon the first year to $1.25 in year five and continuing until the end of the war AND the identification of a viable alternative to oil for 50% - 75% of our energy needs. 

Painful… sure.  So is paying more for gasoline when OPEC raises the price of crude oil… but we get nothing out of it when they raise the price.  If we ever expect to kick the oil habit and fund the war on terror… we need to be willing to make some sacrifices. 

—— July 23, 2006 ——

How many of you believe the price of fuel is too high, probably going higher, will ultimately wreck our economy and we need prices lowered, stabilized and affordable? … Raise your hands.

How many of you believe oil is a limited resource, that we need to encourage conservation, we need to identify alternatives to our dependency on mid-east oil and until we find a way to break the shackles of oil dependency, our future will continue to be threatened by nut cases who line their pockets and grow their weapons stockpiles with buckets of money shipped overseas in empty crude oil containers courtesy of you and me?  Raise your hands.

Did you raise your hand both times?  I wonder how typical that is of Americans.  We want fuel to be cheap and “affordable” so we can use as much as we want, yet we know that we also need to conserve this limited resource and find alternatives.  Trouble is, as long as fuel is affordable, there is no incentive to conserve and little incentive to find alternatives.  As with any addict, we won’t stop consuming until the supply is gone or the cost is so high we can’t pay for the fix.

How much does a gallon of gasoline have to cost for us to change our driving habits.  Gas hits $5 a gallon, are you still driving down to the shore or out to the country every weekend? Would $8 a gallon convince you to walk to the corner store instead of drive?  $10 and maybe it’s not worth driving 15 miles to see if you can get this new lawn mower at another store for a few dollars less?

What about commuting?  There will always be jobs where commuting is required (hard to work construction from the comfort of your family room); but do we all have to commute, or do we all think we have to commute?  Until 6 years ago, I commuted to work, 100 miles round trip, every weekday.  That’s 500 miles/week; assuming four weeks for vacations, holidays, other days off, that’s 24,000 miles per year.  My car got 30 miles to the gallon, which is better than average, which means I was using about 800 gallons of gas a year just to drive to work!

Assuming there are just 1 million people in a similar situation who could be working from home.  (not out of the question considering our current population is about 300 million according to the US Census and 14 million of us commute 45 minutes or more one way to work), that would be a yearly reduction of 800 million gallons of gasoline!!!!

According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2004 47% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline was to pay for the crude oil.  Assuming a gallon of gas costs $3.00, those 800 million gallons means more than $1.1 BILLION dollars going to the crude oil producers like Iran!!  Every year.  From those 1 million of us who might want to consider not commuting and setting up a home office.

$1.1 Billion dollars that could be spent here in the USA instead of on rockets for Hezbollah who then fires them into Israel while trying to distract us from the nuclear games Iran is playing. 

So demand continues to rise, prices continue to rise, the amount of real dollars shipped overseas to crude oil producers continues to rise, and available supplies continue to drop.  Even if raising crude oil prices causes a drop in consumption, the profit margin for the producers likely offsets the decrease in volume since the bulk of the price hike goes into their pockets.  What we need to do is reduce demand by raising prices in such a way that the crude oil producers do not benefit.

I can’t believe I am saying this, because I am almost ALWAYS opposed to new or increased taxes, but….

1. We need to encourage research and development of alternative energy sources
2. We need to encourage conservation of existing sources
3. We need to do this in a way that limits the money funneled to terrorist backers like Iran
4. We need to counter the money flowing out to terrorist nations with money flowing into our own government until we can break our addiction to oil

We need a (hand shaking as I type) Homeland Security and Energy Evolution Tax.

Look, the price of gas is going to go up until the demand comes down, and a lot of the money will go to weapons for terrorists.  In simplistic terms, if raising prices reduces demand, and if demand outruns supply, the prices are going to go up until demand and supply meet a state of equilibrium, period.  Inserting a tax into the equation drives down demand without increasing the flow of money to the crude oil producers.

Demand goes down, less money flows to terrorist nations, and we perhaps buy some time to develop alternative energy sources.

So where does that revenue go?  Two places, and only two places.  First, 50% goes to sponsor research for domestic sources of energy that require no dependence on foreign resources.  The other 50%, directly to Homeland Security and Defense. 

Are we at war? Well duh! So why are you whining about a tax to support the war effort and to eliminate one potential cause (if not the root cause) of the war? (Come on, some of you are whining and you know it)  If we weren’t dependent on foreign oil maybe our decision making when attacked wouldn’t be so complicated… bad guys go boom!

I propose that for the next five years, a new federal tax on gasoline (not diesel.. just gasoline) be phased in, increasing from 25 cents a gallon the first year to $1.25 in year five and continuing until the end of the war AND the identification of a viable alternative to oil for 50% - 75% of our energy needs.

Painful… sure.  So is paying more for gasoline when OPEC raises the price of crude oil… but we get nothing out of it when they raise the price.  If we ever expect to kick the oil habit and fund the war on terror… we need to be willing to make some sacrifices.  This doesn’t even come close to what our country sacrificed in World War II.  Time to suck it up people!

I had read, with some skepticism, Malcolm Nance’s assertion that waterboarding is torture:

I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.

In the media, waterboarding is called “simulated drowning,” but that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Not sure how it can be torture when applied to a prisoner but not torture when used in training.  If I pull out your fingernails in a training session, is that not torture? How about if I tie your hands and feet together behind your back and hang you from the ceiling… training?

It’s either torture or not torture in my view.  So if it is torture, and we know torture is illegal, why then is congress not demanding that we prosecute those “trainers”?

But what really got me was the assertion that pint after pint of water fills your lungs.  Have you ever aspirated anything? I have… a very small food particle.  This resulted in pneumonia that knocked me out of commission for quite some time…  for a tiny partical of food.  So I’m thinking pints of water filling my lungs would pretty much have killed me.

Turns out my hunch was right.  Found this over at Captains Quarters:

There is a word for people who have “pint after pint of water” filling their lungs: dead. “In fact,” according to Mike, “they would be very, very dead. By definition, anyone who has drowned is in fact dead. A large percentage of true drownings do not involve ANY water entering the lungs because the epiglottis closes off the air passages as water enters the throat. People who die immediately from being immersed in water actually die of suffocation, not water entering their lungs. Not only that, many people who survive a near-drowning who do have even small amounts of water that slip by the epiglottis and enter their lungs can die later of fluid shifts and pneumonia. I can assure you that we do not use any technique that involves true suffocation or aspiration of water into the lungs. One cannot get questions to answers from people who suffocate or have water fill their lungs in any interrogation technique, which would render that technique more than a little self-defeating. Dead men tell no tales — and also make rather poor soldiers.”

I am far from an expert on waterboarding, but just the fact that journalists have subjected themselves to this technique indicates to me that waterboarding is a very intense form of coercion, but not torture.

Flopping Aces has some good insight on the topic as well.

Folks… this means a potentially hostile submarine surfaced within striking range of one of our carriers and we had no clue it was there.:

From UPI:- Senior NATO officials said that since the Chinese vessel surfaced in the middle of the recent military exercise, U.S. Navy officials have been shocked by the advanced technology used by their Chinese counterparts, The Daily Mail said Saturday.

One official said that based on the ease at which the submarine avoided 12 U.S. warships to surface near a 1,000-foot carrier, Navy officials are reconsidering the potential dangers posed by Chinese subs.

Appears we are once again reaping some of the bountiful harvest of the Clinton administration (bold highlights added by me):

From Seth Cropsey, Safeguarding Defense Technology, Enabling Commerce, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research - In 1994, China sold Pakistan parts of a missile with a payload of at least 1,100 pounds and minimum range of 185 miles, in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime, an accord that Beijing promised to honor. The Clinton administration offered to forgive China if it would admit its violation; Beijing admitted nothing. When the PRC sold Iran C801/802 Silkworm antiship missiles—which could endanger U.S. Navy operations in the Persian Gulf—the Clinton State Department simply issued a démarche (a mild diplomatic protest called a “demarshmallow” in diplomatic circles), even though American machine tools and specialty furnaces sold to China had contributed to improving the capabilities of the Silkworm missiles that China sold Iran.

The United States was also slow to act when specialty steels that could only be used to make SCUD missiles went from China to North Korea and Syria. Titanium-stabilized duplex stainless steel has virtually no commercial applications; it can be, and is, used in the production of SCUD missiles and in the storage of their highly caustic propellants. Despite evidence that a third country was selling this highly specialized steel to China, it took the Clinton administration two years to place it on the list of materials whose export is proscribed by the Missile Technology Control Regime. In this as in the other issues raised by China’s stealthy effort to increase its military’s technological sophistication, the Clinton administration steadfastly refused to apply sanctions, to use its leverage to withhold other goods Beijing wanted, or to discourage China’s problematic behavior in any meaningful way.

Gee.. I wonder why….

With the outpouring of formerly restricted technology to China—and by extension, to its rogue-state clientele—development times for military hardware have been dramatically compressed. In December 1999, the Washington Times carried  reports that a Chinese submarine, the Type 094, would be operational around 2005. The sub will carry the Julang-2 (“Great Wave”) missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching a target 7,400 miles away, which will permit Chinese submarines to threaten cities throughout the United States. Pentagon officials said that the Julang-2 would be armed with Chinese copies of the smallsize, large-power W-88 warhead—whose design had been stolen from the United States, as Bill Richardson, the Clinton administration’s Secretary of Energy, admitted in March 1999.

China’s enhanced ability to project nuclear force is noteworthy not merely for its threat to America but also because much of the Clinton administration’s decontrol of defense exports took place after 1995, when the administration first admitted that China may have stolen our W-88 warhead design. For example, the export to China of computers that could be used to test the performance of nuclear warheads continued even after the administration knew what had likely happened to the W-88 design. Similarly, the machine tools for the quiet submarine propellers were delivered in China after the administration realized the extent of Beijing’s success in appropriating our advanced nuclear weapons technology.

hmmm…   a submarine sneaks up on one of our carriers… we delivered machine tools to China to make quieter subs…  wonder if there could be any correlation…

This could only be worse if somehow the Chinese had access to the highest levels of the administration to influence technology release decisions.  Oh wait… they did…

NY Times February 16, 1998.. William Safire: In rare agreement, the counterintelligence arm of the F.B.I. and counterspies in the C.I.A. approved this statement to be issued by the Senate next week:

”There are indications that Chinese efforts in connection with the 1996 elections were undertaken or orchestrated, at least in part, by People’s Republic of China intelligence agencies.”

That agonizingly worked-over judgment by America’s intelligence establishment is a stunner. China’s spy network succeeded in penetrating the Clinton White House.

We are not dealing here merely with lobbying conducted covertly, unlawful though such secret activity is. As the language in the report the Senate worked out with the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A. makes clear: ”the PRC engaged in much more than simply ‘lobbying.’ ”

We are confronted by evidence of espionage. It was conducted by operatives assigned by Chinese intelligence to collect U.S. trade-policy and other official secrets, as well as by agents of influence directed by Beijing to buy changes in U.S. foreign policy.

”A variety of PRC entities were acting to influence U.S. elections,” the unclassified Senate report states. A top-secret appendix containing evidence to back up these conclusions is to be locked away in inaccessible archives for decades.

More (lots more) on John Huang (the subject of the Safire essay) from the NY Times here.

And yet, the Clinton-China connection continues to this day:

From the NY Daily News - The big bucks Hillary Clinton raised from Chinatown donors holding seemingly modest-paying jobs caused a political stir last month - and recent calls from the Justice Department.

Donor Hsiao Yen Wang said a Justice Department investigator asked her last week if she was coerced into giving money to the campaign and whether she knew of anybody else who may have been forced to contribute.

Wang said she gave willingly, but the campaign returned her $1,000 check out of an “abundance of caution.”

Yeah… no chance that money was being laundered in Chinatown before finding its way to Clinton (no pun intended).

From the LA Times and RedState - “A warrant was issued this morning for Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who failed to appear for a bail hearing on a 15-year-old grand theft charge.”

Hsu, a fugitive from justice since 1992, was jailed Friday after a judge ordered him to post $2 million bail. Hsu, turned himself in after first news accounts, then his lawyer, identified the Democratic fundraiser as a fugitive.

Back in 1992, before becoming one of the Democrats’ go to bag men, Hsu disappeared after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.

This is all sounding strangely familiar. We have seen unusual Clinton campaign contribution scandals before. The 1996 scandal saw 120 people connected to the Clinton fundraising efforts either flee the country to avoid questioning or plead the Fifth Amendment.

Clinton campaigns need to be scrutinized closely. The 1996 Clinton campaign wasn’t and we had a situation which may have compromised American national security - the Chinese tried to influence our election.

Hillary now says she is going to give some of Hsu’s tainted money to charity. But why only two percent?

And the beat goes on…

Makes me wish the only problem with another Clinton presidency would be higher taxes and socialized everything; unfortunately, that may be the least of our worries when our nation’s security is jeopardized by politicians willing to sell our knowledge and technology to the highest bidder.

Did you miss this article when it was published in the WSJ?  I did.

Clicked a historical link over at Bottom Line Up Front and found the link to the WSJ article which was written by a former high-ranking KGB agent. What he confirms s what many of us have long believed: our enemies use our mass media as a powerful conduit for their propaganda:

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman–the leader of the new “occupation power.” Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the “butcher of Hiroshima.” We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering “shark” run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a “Yankees-Go-Home” petition, at the same time launching the slogan “Europe for the Europeans.”

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America’s commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O’Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a “deserter.” And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, “Give Bush the Boot.”

<snip>

Now we are again at war. It is not the president’s war. It is America’s war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don’t know either. But I do know that if America’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: “We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West.”

Exactly!  Unfortunately, all that matters is who wins the Whitehouse and Congress… not who wins the war.

Soccer season is over. Work is calming down a bit. I find myself Thinkin’bout Stuff again.

Interesting how little has changed since my last post. For example, I found this snippet that I never got around to completing and posting from May 2007:

Anyone else getting tired of the Democrats wasting time and money on this investigation into why federal prosecutors were fired? Besides a political witch hunt, what is the goal here? What critical national need are they filling? What major crises are they solving? Assuming Gonzales were forced to resign, how will that make life better for you and me? Who really cares why they were fired when they can be fired without a reason anyway.. just as has happened in every other administration prior to this one?

The focus of this session of Congress seems to be revenge for having lost past elections. It’s all about playing gotcha and gimmee. What have they accomplished beyond empty political statements, like sending bills to the president they know will be vetoed effectively delaying the funding of the troops so that they can make a point. Who cares about your damn point! Stop making points! We get your point! Now go do your damn job!

You want to fire someone? Fire Reid, Pelosi and all of these renegade committee chairs who believe it is the role of Congress to spend hours grilling administration officials even when the evidence clearly indicates no wrong doing; who believe that anyone who the president believes is qualified for any position in the administration is, by definition, not qualified, and that reading and passing legislation is more of a hobby to be done in whatever spare time that is available after the inquisitions have ended for the day.

You want to talk about “worst” lists… so far this Congress is on a path to be the worst in history.  Don’t agree? What have they accomplished? Any bills out there to reduce dependency of foreign oil? Anything to encourage an increase in refinery capacity? Any real legislation to secure our borders? Any action to protect the tax cuts that will expire so that the economy can continue to grow? Let’s make the question open ended… what have they accomplished?

That was May 2007…  

Well, since then, the approval rating for this Congress plunged to a tie for the all time low of 18% in August (compare that to 45% in February 2005) and currently polls in the low to mid 20’s.   Interesting side note… in an ABC News/Washington Post poll, the majority of those polled believe Congress has not accomplished anything and only 25% blame the Democrats…  they do realize the Dems control both Houses, right? (It has to be bugging Reid and Pelosi that President Bush has been polling better than the Dem controlled Congress).

So here we are, 6 months later and this Congress has still accomplished virtually nothing of note.  We are still having ridiculous hearings, arguing over whether the President has the right to fire federal prosecutors.  Congress is still crying that they aren’t being treated as the “co-equal” branch of the government that they are, simply because the President has exercised his veto authority.  And now they came this close ((  )) to blocking the confirmation of a new Attorney General who was hand picked for nomination by Senator Charles Schumer, who apparently has decided to hold his nose and vote for his own candidate for the job.

And why is there so much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands in the hallowed halls of Congress these days? Nominee Mukasey has refused to declare waterboarding to be a form of torture without having the opportunity to review classified documentation that will not be available to him until he is confirmed. 

Leaky Leahy and Diver Dan Kennedy are incensed since they have already declared that waterboarding is torture and is illegal.  Unfortunately for them, the lawmaking body which views them as <cough> leaders and who actually could make waterboarding illegal, have politely declined to do so,  preferring to carp about Mukasey instead of acting upon there own supposed consciences.

But the fun continues.  Senator Obama chides Senator Clinton for backing a resolution labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, presumably opening the door for President Bush to attack Iran.  Senator Clinton fires back that the resolution does not give the president the authority to attack Iran and if Senator Obama felt this was so important, wonders why he didn’t bother to show up and vote against it.  Senator Obama counters with his own resolution to tell the President he can not attack Iran without going to Congress first (which, by the way, is not true), Senator Clinton says the resolution is a waste of time because the first resolution did not give the President authority to attack, but then sends a letter (with 28 other senators… drafted by Senator Pistol Packin’ Jim Webb) to the President to let him know he doesn’t have authority to attack, but Obama does not sign the letter….  following all of this?  I’m not…

If Iran is providing terrorists with weapons to attack our troops in Iraq, and if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization, and if we are in a war against Islamic terrorism….  why would we not want to have the option to…  um…  I don’t know…  attack the terrorists?

Oh.. by the way.  None of these resolutions or letters does a damn thing, they are non-binding… kind of like a letter to the editor… gets them on the record, let’s them get it off their chest, but doesn’t really change anything.    And Congress still hasn’t approved any of the annual spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but they have time for all of this stuff.

Speaking of Senators Obama and Clinton, when last we left Senator Obama, he was considering the option of invading Pakistan.  Today we learned that, unlike the proposed resolution to our differences with Pakistan, Senator Obama would solve the minor differences we have with Iran by offering them membership in the WTO and by having direct one-on-one diplomatic negotiations with Adolf Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, we learned that Senator Clinton supports New York Governor Spitzer’s unilateral decision to provide drivers licenses to illegal aliens, unless of course she opposes the idea, but if given the option, she would pretty much just ask that we not ask such hard questions…. after all, it’s not nice to pick on girls.

I sincerely hope that, should the country go insane and elect HRC president, she not pull this weak everyone-is-picking-on-me crap when dealing with the leaders of other countries, friend and foe alike… they’ll eat her (and us) alive.

Seriously?

Going into Iraq to find terrorists… bad?

Going into Pakistan, an ally in the terror war whose president has risked his life to support the United States… good?

Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) on getting tough with terrorists:

From AP: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

Hmmm.. maybe Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. What exactly warrants sending troops across the border of an allied country without permission?

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

Canada better pay attention here… there are known terrorist cells in Canada and Obama might just have to get tough on our neighbors to the north and send in the troops.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

If only we could get those terrorist holed up in those mountains, we could end this whole thing.  After all, the rest of the terrorists in the world would cease to exist if we get rid of the hole-in-the-wall gang of terrorists.  I guess it’s kind of like vampires.  If you can kill the head vampire, the others lose all their powers and just evaporate, or whatever it is vampires do when they stop being undead.

I guess Pakistan president Musharraf won’t be on the invite list to the White House along with Kim Jung Il and Ahmadinejad when he has his little get together with the world’s terrorism sponsors.

For the record now…

BHO was against invading Iraq, a major sponsor of terrorism with a leader who was threatening the use of chemical and biological weapons and who was trying to obtain the necessary ingredients to develop a nuclear device, and OBO proudly wears this position (not a vote, action or even a tough decision for him since he was not even in Congress to vote on the topic) on his sleeve.

However, he is now on record as saying he would have no problem with INVADING AN ALLIED NATION!

Yep.. finally found something HRC and I agree on…

More thoughts in the blogosphere on the topic:  DeMediacratic Nation, Michelle Malkin, Wake up America, Texas Rainmaker