As a funny side note, none of top executives at either company have any stock options in their compensation arrangements. Evidently they’re the only ones getting all their cash up front. This measure is also been seen as the government’s way to spur on investment in the real estate market, including the encouragement of lending to riskier clientele.

Does no one remember what happened one year ago?

Yell and scream as much as you want that greedy companies destroyed the economy. Companies are by their very nature greedy enterprises. They are created to build wealth, and have often done so at the expense of regular people. The job of the government is to regulate these entities in order to protect citizens from unfair practices. However, in this latest round of boom and bust, the government actively encouraged (and even legislated) terrible excesses in the real estate market and brought the whole thing crashing down.

They took their GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) and forced them to take on a mountain of risky mortgages. The CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) applied similar pressure to private banks and other lending firms.

At first Freddie and Fanny resisted these moves. They are publically traded companies and they knew taking on all this added risk was a poor choice. But then the silver lining appeared.

So as long as the interest rates were held low (once again, something only the Federal government can do), everyone could make money.

And boy, did everyone make money. Then they lost it.

These sorts of things never last. It was a Ponzi scheme of such epic proportions it would make Bernie Madoff blush. It has cost America hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts, and there does not seem to be an end in sight. A 5 percent shift in homeownership nearly ruined our whole (hell, the whole world’s) economy. Was it worth it? What did it gain us in the end? Nothing.

What is the current administration’s answer to this problem? It is the exact same answer that the Clinton and Bush administrations had. Encourage more risky investment. Encourage the foolish decision to push more and more people into untenable mortagages in order to boost the economy. So much for breaking out of the old cycles, President Obama.

Where does all this come from? The driving need to question, to constantly expand the boundaries of human knowledge and tolerance, is the product of free minds. Any society that devotes itself to personal freedom will give rise to the most flexible and creative minds known to humankind.

Devotion to progress and freedom is commendable, considering the most of the world is still mired in Dark Ages philosophies and sickening religious intolerance. When the iron bars of indisputable religious truth slam shut, you can be sure that a country’s path to success is blockaded.

The Pew Research Center recently released a chilling study. The aptly named “Global Restrictions on Religion” survey found that the majority of the world was still under heavy, state-run, religious repression. Roughly 70 percent of the world is under some kind of religious restriction. Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and (of course) Iran are among the most oppressive. The United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan and South Africa (look how far that nation has come in the last few decades) are among the least oppressive. Notice that line. All our allies (with the marginal Brazil, depending on how President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva feels day to day about white, blue-eyed bankers) on one side, and the most proliferate enemies of freedom on the other. Yes, I know Saudi Arabia is technically an ally of the U.S., but it shouldn’t be. Their reprehensible oppression of women should be enough to cancel any contact with that King-based, atavistic throwback of a government. The same goes for Egypt and Iran, though I hardly need to expend time and energy talking about why Iran should not be treated as an equal member of the world community.

The study from the Pew Institute reinforces something I have been telling people for years. Those oppressive countries (several of which are centers for the Muslim extremism the western world has been fighting for years) hate the free world because we allow for dissention through our freedom, and we still succeed as nations. The idea of anything aside from tyrannical enforcement of arch-conservative religious and political maxims frightens the rulers of countries like Indonesia and Iran. They know they have no tool aside from punishment to wield against their citizens. They are flabbergasted that a nation like the United States or Japan can allow for all this freedom, the existence of diverse ideas and conflicting ideologies, and not turn into a gibbering heap of death and destruction. They wonder why the tolerant countries flourish, nurturing some of the most brilliant minds in the world, while they are unable to progress in the sciences.

Well, wonder no more. When you quash the ability of your citizens to think and act on their own, one of two things will happen. Citizens beaten over the head with utterly arbitrary unquestionable rules will either shut up and hide their genius or flee the country as quickly as possible. Need an example? Look at the brain drain that happened in the former Soviet Bloc in the 1980s and 1990s. Look at the brain drain going on in Iran today.

Want to build the next revolutionary supercollider, Indonesia? Want to be responsible for the next DaVinci or Einstein, Saudi Arabia? Give people the freedom to question religion and you might have a chance. I am sure it will be difficult for you to give up despotism, but in the end it is the only way to make yourself relevant in the years to come.

The role of money is greater in U.S. politics than it is in that of any other advanced country, just as the U.S. is in other respects the most commercialized of all advanced countries. Campaign-finance reform has been an exercise in futile and self-serving hypocrisy. Organized labor gave the Democrats $400 million in the year leading up to the 2008 election. Labor has already received an impressive return on its money, although its most cherished goal — the abolition of the secret ballot in union elections and the restoration of thuggish self-perpetuation of labor leadership (card-check) — has foundered on the shoals of public concern, which, beyond a certain point, overwhelms the loyalties of those legislators in whose fidelity supporters have invested.

The federal government intervened to gut the rights of the General Motors and Chrysler bondholders, and delivered those companies into the hands of the United Auto Workers, one of the most retrograde and Luddite unions in America — and the chief author, even beyond decades of incompetent management, of the demise of those companies. President Obama, in complete consistency with his effort to nationalize health care to reduce its costs, secured $50,000 of union health and pension benefits per manufactured vehicle by crushing the shareholders and robbing the other supposedly secured stakeholders.

The American trial-lawyers’ association contributed $47 million to the Obama campaign, which has proved sufficient to ensure that malpractice awards are not capped and that health plans continue to be loaded with expensive preventive tests as legal defensive moves. This has sunk any possibility of reducing the $3,000 additional per capita health-care costs in the U.S. (Compare them with those in other advanced countries. The U.S.: over $7,000. Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan: over $4,000.)

The U.S. has become a nation of what were called “rotten boroughs” in Britain before the passage of the First Reform Act in 1832 (which broadened the electorate and sensibly redistricted constituencies). These were legislative districts that were won as soon as the nomination process was complete. From post-Reconstruction times to the 1970s, the Democrats had almost all the congressional representation in the South, and so usually controlled Congress; and, through the seniority system, most committee chairmen were Southerners, somewhat mitigating the impact of the Northern victory in the Civil War.

Now, control seesaws between the parties, but the seniority system is still sclerotic, though not regionally dominated. Elections and the preferments of tangibly patronized members of Congress have become appallingly expensive, and the system is profoundly corrupt and taints many of its chief practitioners. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has carved in a special reward of federal health-care money for his state of Nevada, and Democratic Senate whip Dick Durbin has, in the interests of the commodity-exchange preeminence of his home city of Chicago, pulled the teeth out of bills purporting to crack down on commodity speculators. Congress’s most powerful person in matters of public finance, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel, has apparently filed fraudulent tax returns for years and has even ripped off the New York City rent-control regime. The House Ethics Committee, not an organization martyred to the work ethic, has been “looking into” this for many months.

The bold championship of term limits in the Dole-Gingrich revolution of 1994 has vanished. Those men retired voluntarily from Congress, but few other members of the congressional leadership have. The presidency alone has term limits in this system, but on the only occasion when a president sought a third term, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, all civilization depended on his success, as the champion of “all aid short of war” for Britain and Canada against Nazi Germany. Without him, those countries could not have stayed in the war until the U.S. joined it after Pearl Harbor.

Yet almost the only dignified retirements of major democratic leaders since World War II have been those of term-limited U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. In that time, great leaders of other democracies, Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher, have all, after eleven to fourteen years in their countries’ highest offices, been plunged inelegantly into honored retirement.

Of all the rotten boroughs in America, the most egregious is Chicago. The great-shoulders-and-elbows metropolis of ethnic diversity at the core of America, traditional architectural capital, and rival to New York as cultural center of the nation, one of the most folklorically rich cities in the world, the country’s third-largest urban complex with 10 million people in its environs, has been in the iron and generally benign grip of the Cook County Democratic machine for 80 years.

The last Republican mayor of Chicago, Big Bill Thompson, was largely identified with the rise to immortality of Twenties mobster Alphonse Capone, Chicago’s most famous historic figure, surpassing such eminences in more respectable fields as Clarence Darrow, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Enrico Fermi, Milton Friedman, and Michael Jordan, and perhaps even Barack Obama. Thompson’s most lapidary utterance was his promise to “punch King George [V] in the nose.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt purged or curbed the Democratic-party bosses elsewhere: Tammany’s James J. Walker of New York (Beau James), Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, James Michael Curley (The Last Hurrah) of Boston, Frank Hague of New Jersey. But the Kelly-Nash-Arvey-Daley machine in Chicago held seven Democratic conventions from 1932 to 1968, staging the farcical “draft” of FDR to a third term in 1940, the ejection of Henry Wallace and insertion of Harry Truman as vice president in 1944 (both on Roosevelt’s orders), and the elevation of Gov. Adlai Stevenson in 1952 (the only major-party presidential nominee from Illinois between Lincoln and Obama), this last because Arvey thought “an intellectual would be good for our image.” The Chicago machine effected the outright theft of Illinois for John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon in the razor-thin 1960 election by 9,000 votes out of over 5 million cast, with a strategic disappearance of ballot boxes still theoretically under investigation, and the bloody debacle and “police riot” of the 1968 convention, when Hubert Humphrey defeated Eugene McCarthy after the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson and the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Mayors Daley, father and son, have won twelve mayoral terms and have ruled in city hall for 43 of the last 54 years. Richard M. Daley was reelected mayor with 79 percent of the vote in 2003 and 70 percent in 2007, but in the aftermath of the Olympic fiasco is at only about 30 percent in the polls now.

Chicago is beautiful, largely safe, clean, well-organized, and human in scale despite its vastness. No American city has done a better job of keeping its core alive and vital, or its waterfront as ecologically pleasing and accessible. But Chicago is subdivided into scores of wards and minor municipalities that are riddled with corruption and conflicting legal crusades. A terrifying and high-handed U.S. attorney picks off Daley acolytes like clay pigeons, and the Cook County prosecutors are trying to muzzle a Northwestern University law-school project of examining false prosecutions by the machine. The project has saved a number of people from the death penalty and liberated many other innocents, but is now being prosecuted for its inconvenient humanitarian efforts.

There are conflicts, overlaps, subplots, and Machiavellian chicanery everywhere. Another interesting current legal initiative is the personal campaign of Joe Fosco, scion of a Teamster union family once associated with the Capones, to recover blackmail money he claims was extorted from him by the mob and to establish his good name. He is fighting a lonely battle against public- and private-sector interests who are not accustomed to being treated as if they were accountable.

Chicago is the last stand of the conservative Democrats, the tough liberals of the Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Scoop Jackson mold, as the Giuliani-Bloomberg faction is the last stand of the liberal, Rockefeller-Javits Republicans. This Mayor Daley, chastened perhaps by the disaster of the convention of 1968 that alienated the local Left from his father’s hard-hat, multiethnic coalition, has suborned the Bill Ayers Left, and, in the manner of foreign populist-authoritarian regimes, like those of Castro, Chávez, Perón, the Mexican PRI, and even Mussolini, makes common cause with many of the intellectuals. The most visible product of the alliance of these bedfellows is the incumbent president; Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, former Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel, are skilled and unselfconscious practitioners of the rough-and-tumble Chicago school of politics.

What America needs is a revival of the federal two-party system throughout the land and not just in the partisan identity of the president, Senate majority leader, and House speaker. The rotten boroughs will spoil the whole political system. Chicago, true to its vocation as a swaggering and muscular, streetwise town, has written a gripping suite of chapters in the country’s political and cultural history, but after 80 years, the greatest rotten borough in the world should be sliced, cleaned, and restored to its rightful owners. Thus, and not otherwise, can that remarkable and endearing city continue at the vanguard of national affairs.

This work is based on an article written for the National Review Online.

Yet another recently released deposition, related to me via my acquaintance Jeff Anderson, has shocked me. Speaking with Jeff is always enlightening. This new deposition deals with the many serious controversies of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. A copy can be found for a limited time at the Archdiocese of Chicago website. It is a voluminous piece chock full of startling revelations.

I wish to digress for a second to share something. Chicago is presently the home base for the most influential politician in America, Mr. Barack Obama. It is also home for the most influential Catholic in America, Cardinal Francis George, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Given the many serious controversies surrounding Chicago politics and Chicago Catholics (i.e., pedophile priests), I ask myself, ‘why would Americans across our fine nation hold Chicago as a credible base to launch such leaders?’ Some call Illinois the ‘Land of Lincoln’, perhaps it is really best known as the ‘Territory of Al Capone & Company’ (please be advised that my mention of Al Capone is not an insinuation that he was a pedophile).

With this ugly state of affairs in mind, I would like to return to my original point.

For those of you that are unaware, I have worked very hard over the years to aid the Archdiocese here in Chicago, particularly the elementary school system. I have insisted that friends and associates donate their money to various entities of the Archdiocese, just as I have donated my personal money. I am not a heavy hitter (unfortunately I do not have millions of dollars to donate), but I have personally donated many thousands of dollars to the Archdiocese. I have been invited to stewardship boards, numerous fundraising events, etc. I have authored articles in defense of the Archdiocese, its bishops and His Eminence. Despite my recent article meant to shed some light on a question regarding Cardinal George (sadly, not a favorable question – but one that many friends and associates were asking for a long time), I have always defended my church.

Now that I have shared with you some details of my background concerning the Archdiocese of Chicago, you can understand that I am speaking as a person that has been closely working with the Archdiocese for some years, thus giving credibility to my viewpoints.

Despite my love and respect for Bishop Lyne and Cardinal George, I am compelled to expand a bit on the many horrors that have transpired for decades within the Archdiocese here in Chicago. It is no secret that sex abuse matters have been the focus of numerous scandals, some of which continue to plague the Archdiocese, unfortunately. What I find especially alarming is the Archdiocese of Chicago’s obsession over ‘scandal prevention’, which seems to be more of a concern than the safety of children. The depositions of Cardinal George and Bishop Goedert clearly show that scandal is among their chief concern (in my opinion). It was sad to read letters regarding the late Cardinal Bernardine, who apparently was as worried about scandals as his successor seems to be. I understand that scandals are critical matters, but the safety of children is far more critical.

In the last year, I have learned a great deal through KTF Media Group. People from all over the world have contacted me about the articles that I have written, sharing their thoughts and information, both secretly and in the open. Therefore, I have made the recent decision to start a community watch program, specifically for people affected by pedophile priests. I have named the program after the late John Cardinal Cody. Its full name is the Cardinal Cody Observation Commission. You may visit its website at www.ccocommission.org (which should be live very soon).

This program allows anyone to report sex crimes anonymously. All fresh leads involving minors will be instantly reported to the proper authorities. It is my goal to provide a unique opportunity to informants and victims interested in sharing their story. Perhaps such opportunity will help build confidence in these troubled individuals to a point where they will come out of the closet with their story and walk into a police station and press charges. In the spirit of Cardinal Cody, we will clean up the Church!

A large cash reward will be paid to anyone that provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of a pedophile.

KTF Media Group and the newly formed Cardinal Cody Observation Commission does endorse Voice Of The Faithful.

In my opinion it seems that we have an alleged criminal (disorderly conduct is a crime), Henry Gates, who pulled the race card and walked away from criminal charges. This is no different than any of the criminals from Obama’s home base, Chicago, scores of who have avoided criminal prosecutions on countless occasions by bribing Cook County judges (see Operation Greylord).

Allow me to make better sense of what I am saying. Whether a defendant influences the judicial process by falsely manipulating a ‘race’ argument (with the aid of a stupid United States President), or pays a bribe to a member of the judicial system to have their criminal case dismissed, both scenarios are inconsistent with the factual legal grounds necessary for dismissal. Therefore, both of my examples are just as inappropriate, not to mention classical, Chicago/scofflaw behavior. What only compounds this travesty of justice is the fact that our President put his nose in this situation in the first place.

On an equally despicable note, President Obama hosted a beer-drinking get-together, further exploiting this ridiculous situation in the public spotlight, with no significant outcome. When the dust settles, all we have left is an alleged criminal that avoided prosecution. For those who would argue that ‘disorderly conduct’ is a petty offense, who cares? Why bother to have laws if they are not going to be enforced? Hell, why have laws at all?

This ‘beer summit’ just boils down to a PR scheme to resuscitate Obama’s flagging popularity, and most likely on our dime. I want to know, who paid the travel expenses for Gates and Crowley to visit D.C.? My guess is that taxpayers did. I wonder what the tab ended up being? Surely four beers could only have cost a few thousand dollars, right? Bottom’s up, America!

Only One Reason:

The Republican Party!

President Barack Obama’s administration has had lapses of administration failures and frustration during his early days as President, just as all new Presidents have experienced. Time is the greatest teacher for Presidents and their administrative staffs, the same as in all past administrations. This President, however, has taken America and our policies on a sharp left-hand turn in policy. During a once in a lifetime economic slowdown, this President is attempting to re-write much of the American success story. The American media in general is not reporting this hard policy shift, instead dealing with major issues like the first family’s new dog or the latest fashion trend offered by our new First Lady. Errors in judgment are quickly reported and then dropped from all future discussions. The hard right-wing conservative media sources are screaming to their listeners about this overt shift in policy to the far-left with expected results.

The President’s popularity numbers have of course dropped from the inauguration initial numbers, since the President had roughly two full months of nothing but positive news reporting from the election until inauguration day. This policy shift has taken his popularity down but not to the devastating levels that would have happened if any other President of recent history had tried such a sudden shift in governing principles. Yes, the President’s popularity numbers are down, but they are still in a very strong positive all things considered. Why is this? That is the question you must ask yourself.

Why is President Obama still so popular? Several reasons for this popularity are obvious.

1. The majority of the TV and Print media are still only reporting positive news and limiting negative news. This segment of the media and their constant praise and instant ridicule of any negative assertions is worth at least 7 to 10 points nationally.

2. The Conservative talk-TV and talk-radio leaders are only preaching to the choir. Obama never had their votes in his column as it related to popularity.

3. Any President that attempts any short-term military action will receive the overwhelming support of the American public. Americans love short-military incursions and they do not even have to be successful. They like the idea that our President tried to do something to right a situation using the military.
a. Gerald Ford authorized a disastrous rescue of a captured American ship (the personnel had in fact been already released at the time of the attack and we lost an entire helicopter and our troops inside – yet Ford went up in the polls).
b. Jimmy Carter authorized a rescue of our captured embassy staff in Iraq and there was a crash in the desert during the staging, losing many lives. Carter went up in the polls because the American people thought he at least tried.
c. Ronald Reagan, after the deaths of over 200 Marines in Lebanon, attacked a small Caribbean Island of Granada and went up in the polls.
d. Bill Clinton attacked some scattered tents in the desert doing next to no damage as a way of retaliating for the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York and he went up in the polls.
e. Barack Obama goes after pirates in the Middle East and he goes up in the polls. This President and his staff know history. The old saying always was, “foreign wars distract the American People from internal troubles.”

Nevertheless, this President, in slightly more than 100 days in office, had attacked the very core of America’s traditional economy, a principle that had separated American from the rest of the world for over two centuries. Talks about nationalizing American banks, taking over a large share of the auto industry, limiting the pay of executives in private companies, entitlements still being used, bailouts to businesses that are wasting our money and his bowing to a member of the Arab Royalty have led to his small drop in popularity, even with an unbelievable support of the main stream media.

However, there is still one main and unspoken reason that will save this President in popularity polls for the considerable future and that reason is the Republican Party. America and more important, the American Middle Class remembers that it was the Republicans that totally misused their control of the Congress for over ten years and for six years of that time period, they even controlled the White House. Nevertheless, the American Middle Class saw a political party that seemed to care more about enriching themselves, piety arguments, and blind obedience to a non-responsive White House than in ruling the country.

The American Middle Class didn’t vote against John McCain in the last general election – the American Middle Class voted against the Republican Party.

The reason Obama can act as if he is immune from the contempt of the American people is that the American Middle Class may not like what he is doing – but at least it is better than what the Republicans did to this country for the previous eight years. Obama is safe as long as he makes the Middle Class remembers their anger at the Republicans. It may sound strange in political talk but the Republicans are Barack Obama’s best friends. They put him in office and they are the ones keeping his poll numbers high. The American Middle Class may not like what President Obama is doing but if they consider the Republicans as the only other option, then the Middle Class will give the President more time and a second chance. They know what the Republicans would do and that is why the Middle Class is still supporting the President.

Just days ahead of President Obama’s much anticipated speech in Egypt, a voice from the not so distant past has appeared on the world stage. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say this voice appears from stage left, denoting that the speaker is conveniently out of sight, but this lack of appearance can hardly be surprising given the locutor’s current status in the eyes of the United States Armed Forces.

This disembodied voice belongs to perennial boogeyman Osama bin Laden, and it underscores exactly how little the perception of America has changed in the eyes of Muslim extremists despite the election of Barack Obama.

“Obama has followed the footsteps of his predecessor in increasing animosity towards Muslims and increasing enemy fighters and establishing long-term wars… So the American people should get ready to reap the fruits of what the leaders of the White House have planted throughout the coming years and decades.”

Just switch the surname Obama with Bush and you’ll have a delightful little trip back in time. I doubt President Obama would appreciate the comparison, but he might find it grimly illuminating.

While the mainstream Muslim world (which constitutes the vast majority of this religious group) has an unprecedented approval rating of the current president the depressing truth is that a sizable minority will be openly plotting to us. This comes from certain fundamental differences in the way American and arch-conservative Muslim societies function. Because we do things like conduct openly critical epistemological examinations of our religious institutions, allow women to speak in public, watch TV, etc. America will always be at openly hostile odds with some sections of the Muslim world.

The fact of the matter is there is no way to persuade some Obama loyalists that the much vaunted (and annoyingly repeated) mantra of ‘change’ has had no effect on the diehards like the Taliban and Al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden doesn’t care that we’ve elected a new president, one who campaigned extensively on the premise that he would do everything radically different than his Republican predecessor. All they see is that, gosh darnit, The United States hasn’t handed over Afghanistan to Mohammed Omar and his petty thugs and we are doing everything we can to get Pakistan to unseat the Taliban government they so shortsightedly let come to power. Their war is against the whole idea of the United States, not just the current figurehead.

For anyone aside from the most rabidly blind supporter of President Obama’s Apology Tour this truth is painfully evident. But now I’m going to dump another bucket of cold water on this whole mess. The sorts of extreme fundamental differences I outlined a few paragraphs ago is not strictly true with most Muslim-dominated Middle-Eastern and Pacific rim countries, but it does color their thoughts about religious purity (extremism and purity are, sadly, often confused with one another) and strikes at the core differences between America and those theocratic Muslim nations.

For us to have any true discourse on democracy and liberty, nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia would need to truly embrace these concepts. So far, the results have been less than stellar. While the United States is no Platonically pure shining beacon of libertarian freedom, we are light years ahead of most everyone else in the world. Our intense, neigh on fanatical obsession with personal freedom flies in the face of not only the religion of Islam, it directly assails the theocratically-reinforced authoritarian regimes of many conservative Middle-Eastern states.

Many of the freedoms we enjoy in the United States also fly in the face of conservative Christian values as well. Our great advantage here is the founding fathers, in a grand display of foresight, purposely divided the offices of church and state at the very conception of our nation. While opinions on the matter vary, and transgressions on both sides of the church/state coin have happened repeatedly in our history, this mighty bulwark included in the opening line of the First Amendment has saved us time and time again.

Here is the pivotal point of the issue. We have been raised to see our ethics as necessarily separated from political realm. The exactly opposite is true in Saudi Arabia. I can be a good Christian/Jew/Muslim/Hare Krishna and exist in a society that does not entirely adhere to and reinforce my religious beliefs (a.k.a. a theocracy). It is my responsibility as an adherent to a religious philosophy to follow the rules of my philosophy, regardless of secular law. If my ethics do not allow me to have an abortion, then I will not have one, despite the legality of this procedure. If my religion bans the consumption of pork and alcohol then it is my responsibility to avoid these items, since I will not suffer a secular penalty for consuming bacon bits and fully kraeusened Old Style.

Why is this so important? Not everyone believes what I believe. While there are important secular laws concerned with murder, assault and some other regulations, our goal is to keep society functioning with these regulations, not enforce a religious standard. This barrier allows for the freedom to express one’s religion to the fullest, and co-exist with others who also want to express their religious beliefs.

Many Muslim countries have no such barrier, and any totalitarian regime worth its salt can use this to cement their power. North Korea, the most atheistic nation on the planet, invented Juche, a code of ethics incorporated into Kimilsungism (no, I didn’t make that term up – it would be difficult to pick something this ludicrous out of the ether) as a way of using an ethical code to enforce a political construct. In a lucky stroke for the power mongers in the Middle-East, the religion of Islam required only adoption, a bit of scholarly manipulation (if you think Islam is solely based on the Koran then you need to do some reading) and strict enforcement to be useful as a political oppression tool.

If this methodology sounds familiar, then you might be a student of European history.

So when the U.S. talks about freedom and liberty, this is mostly likely seen as an attack on the entrenched power structures built using the shield of adherence to Islam. The ideal way to deflect this ‘American Imperialism’ is to say our assault on intolerance and inequality is in fact an assault on the ancient and utterly permanent strictures of Islam. If a Muslim is convinced that the Crusading Americans, who long ago forsook religion and piety, are busy trying to crush Islam (and not the jackass who uses it to bully and oppress said Muslim) then the United States will never be taken seriously. Indeed, we will be opposed by the sort of irrational hatred that is typically born of threatening deep-seated religious beliefs.

When President Obama makes his speech in Cairo this should be first and foremost in his mind. The United States can apologize all it wants for past wrongs, but if true political and social freedom are not embraced in the Middle-East, then all he’s ever going to do there is stroke some egos with his self-recriminations. Then he will return to Washington, where he will have to decide how to handle the next war we have with Muslim theocracy.

The answer to that difficult question is actually very simple. Yes, the attacks are coming unless they are stopped at the source. The only way this can happen is if the terrorists are not stopped by us but instead stopped by the governing Middle Eastern countries themselves. But why would they step in to stop the terrorist? They have shown no desire to make such a bold move at any time in the past fifty years. The answer to that question is just one simple word. This word has not been used in decades. This word was at the core of our defensive posture for over forty years during the Cold War. This word probably prevented a nuclear attack in Europe or the United States during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. The word that saved us from a nuclear attack is brinkmanship.

In the 1950s the Cold War raged across Europe and the United States. The two allies of World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States, were, less than ten years later, now locked in another titanic battle. This battle for control the world held a serious threat that nuclear weapons might actually be used. The Soviet’s “Iron Curtian” had swallowed almost half of Europe. The European free countries were still terribly weak from the effects of the last world war. The Soviet Union was looking to expand their sphere of influence and only one country had the ability, the wherewithal and the determination to stand up to the Soviet threat. That country was the United States.

The United States in the 1950s elected one of the last war’s leaders, General Dwight David Eisenhower, to the Presidency. Eisenhower was a true man of his time. He had been about the 150th ranking General in the United States Army when General Marshall and President Roosevelt selected him to be the Supreme Commander of the European theater in World War II. The thinking was they did not want to be naming the next President of the United States, so they picked a rather bland and non-outgoing man who they believed only wanted to be a General, not a President.

Nevertheless, in 1953 General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. Eisenhower took his delegate command style to the White House. His Secretary of State became extremely powerful because total authority was given to him. His name was John Foster Dulles (Washington Dulles Airport was named after this powerful man). Realizing the inherent menace of an aggressive Soviet Union and the real threat that one of the Soviet satellite countries (East Germany, Poland, Hungry, etc.) might launch a nuclear missile to achieve immediate success, John Foster Dulles created the policy called brinkmanship.

With brinkmanship, the United States’ foreign policy became:

“If a missile fired from any of the Soviet Union satellite countries strikes any NATO European country or the United States, the United States would consider the missile as being fired by the Soviet Union and thereby the United States would immediately attack the Soviet Union.”

Later Dulles expanded his policy to state that any invasion of any country by a Soviet Block Country would also be considered an attack upon the United States by the Soviet Union and that attack would be met with massive nuclear retaliation. This policy of escalation assured the Soviet Union that even the smallest move on a NATO power meant all out war.

With this single diplomacy policy, the Soviet Union was forced to take personal control of all weapons and to insist that none of their satellite countries do anything that might cause a major war. We forced our principle adversary to accept the responsibility of the rouge countries and their radical leaders to behave and to not attack us. Again, the Soviet Union stopped their people from attacking us.

Now take that thinking to today. It will not be another country that will attack the United States. It will be some small splinter group of terrorists that will attack America. The next time the attack might actually be nuclear. The question is how do we stop them and, if the terrible event does happen, what sort of retaliation will there be? If we let down our guard, the terrorists will soon strike us again. That is not a fear. That is a fact and a reality.

If they do strike us, how do we strike back? One small suitcase-sized nuclear bomb is estimated to have the power to kill at least 25,000 Americans. How would we react? What would America do? I think many of our current political leaders from both sides of the aisle, if faced with a nuclear terrorist strike in the U.S., would deal with the catastrophic event by calling for a national prayer day, or perhaps engage in an emergency session of the United Nations to discuss the issue, or maybe grab a pen and file a strong protest with many Middle Eastern countries. I, on the other hand, don’t want this attack to happen and I strongly believe that an updated brinkmanship policy would stop these types of attack.

My belief is that the only sure way to prevent an attack on the United States is brinkmanship. We would notify the countries of the Middle East that any attack upon the United States by any group that trained in or was supported by their country would be considered an action perpetrated by that county. Retribution for any attack would fall on both the terrorist organization and the sponsoring county.

When the countries in the Middle East realize we will destroy their country if they allow terrorists to train unchecked within their borders, the rulership of those countries will stop the terrorists themselves, just like the Soviet Union stopped their satellites all those years ago.

This policy is difficult to administrate unless someone has the backbone to stand up and announce that this is our policy. If we are attacked, any country that gave these terrorists financial support or a safe haven will face the retribution of a nation that only wanted to live in peace. This policy worked a few decades ago and it will work again. This policy kept America and the world safe. It is our best chance for safety of our people.

Make the Middle Eastern countries themselves stop the terrorists in order to save their own countries, their own positions of leadership and their own lives.

With the true threat of brinkmanship hanging over their heads they will have no choice.

Fast forward to 235 years and six months later. All across the country communities saw various Tea Parties protesting taxes on April 15th, commonly called Tax Day.

Or rampant government spending.

Or Muslims.

Or if President Obama is, in fact, a natural born citizen of the United States.

In Texas, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the signs protesters held even called for secession from the Union. Not only is the true meaning behind the tea parties seemingly a mixed message, but so is the origin of the idea. Some state it’s a grassroots organization, some claiming it’s sponsored by Fox Business News, The Republican National Committee or Americans for Tax Reform or even Rick Santelli. Never mind the fact that the Libertarians have been holding protests in favor of a flat sales tax every year on Tax Day.

A more concise message could have greatly aided in the movement. Holding it on Tax day offers the impression that it’s taxes that are being protested, rather than spending. Like a lot of protests of this size (some estimates state there were almost a thousand different gatherings, with attendance in the tens of thousands) there seemed to be a lack of focus. Was it simply about taxes? Doubtful. Recent Gallup polls state that nearly half (46%) of Americans say the amount of federal income taxes they have to pay is too high, down compared to years past, and majority (61%) say the amount of income tax they have to pay is fair. General consensus puts the aim of the protests against runaway deficit spending, a reasonable protest these days as we hear every week about more money being spent to bail out companies or about record budgets.

The protests in many places lost their focus on the economy. In some parts of Texas the chants turned to talk of secession, in other places signs read, “Obama, You Bow to Kings.” Letting the talk turn away from the issue at hand, becoming a free for all ranting session over the current economic situation, takes away from the point of the gatherings. This leaves many to wonder if some aren’t protesting for the simple sake of protesting anything in their need to show their displeasure.

The problem in my mind is that the analogy to the Boston Tea Party just doesn’t hold. This is not taxation without representation, or even spending without representation. These are duly elected officials who are putting forth these policies, and we are the ones who put them there, for good or for ill. To claim that the government is not following the will of the people means that we, the people, have failed in our duty to elect those who will go and listen to our voice and act in an accordant manner.

The grassroots approach to reform has a long-standing tradition in America – one can say that the entire revolution that formed our country was a grassroots campaign. Voicing one’s opinion on a situation that one finds undesirable is to be commended. If we want our elected officials to act in the interest of their constituents, the constituents have the responsibility of letting their interest be known. Protesting is but one form of this, and this one offered complaints, but little in the way of solutions.

So was this reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party the answer to our social and economic woes? No. These questions need better answers than simply throwing tea into the harbor. A protest of unruly taxation and wasteful spending marked by dumping perfectly useful tea in the closest body of water only highlights the confused nature of this new Tea Party.

Retaliate if attacked? Isn’t that what the USS Bainbridge should be doing right now, retaliate?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the United States didn’t raid a pirate-crewed ship in international waters with the intent of taking hostages and hijacking cargo.

The longer the United States sits, the more we look more like fools. This impotent display will surely welcome more pirate attacks on American vessels. These people do not respect restraint. This will definitely be construed as weakness.

What happened when the American hostage, Captain Richard Phillips, jumped overboard in the wee hours of the morning? I realize that reports are still sketchy surrounding the matter, but why didn’t we open fire on the pirates the moment their hostage was (at least temporarily) out of their control? Why are we holding back on using lethal force with these pirates? They clearly are not interested in the safety or well-being of any of the people on the over 50 vessels (six successful hijackings in the last week alone) they’ve tried to raid in the last four months. Why should we be concerned with theirs?

They are essentially bank robbers, except the banks they rob are out of everyone’s jurisdiction. They are essentially kidnappers, except they ransom these captives from a place where no legal authority exists.

The excuse? Somalia is a failed state, and the rest of the world should fix the problem. What’s the likelihood of that actually happening? The United States, the only nation that might do something about the problem, is constantly attacked by critics when it interferes in the governments of crazed dictators and oppressive regimes. The EU and China, who’ve been favorite targets of the pirates, are neigh on legendary for refusing to do anything in these sorts of matters. Where’s the impetus to fix the problem on the land? The U.S. is damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The one thing we can do is make a stand at sea. This is the first pirate attack on a major American vessel in 200 years. I doubt it was simple luck that held the pirates at bay all this time. Unless it was a total accident, these pirates knew they were attacking an American crew, and obviously decided there wouldn’t be enough trouble from the U.S. to avoid the target. Now why would they all of a sudden decide that?

The current administration is openly against the idea of expanding, or even supporting, military actions overseas. Negotiation is the new name of the game. Groups like these pirates know that Obama and his cabinet want to look tolerant and progressive, but will it come at the cost of emboldening the most intolerant and reactionary of our enemies? Perhaps this pirate parade is just opening round of a whole bevy of international insults.

The saddest part is that the hostages, regardless of their nationality, do not have police to protect them. Private companies are left to pay ransoms to secure their release. This glaring loophole in international law is something these enemies of civilization brazenly abuse, and it is time for America to point of that we will not stand for this kind of insolence. The political fallout that might follow the destruction of a few pirates is nothing compared to the message our tolerance and complacency sends to these bottom-feeding raiders and, more importantly, renegade enemy organizations.