Counter Attack and Retake the Message

As I listen to Democrats and the main stream liberal media rail on about how America has created a new generation of jihadists by the way we are fighting the Global War on Terror and more specifically by invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein I’m always at a loss to understand how they answer a simple question. If we are creating more jihadists why have they not increased their attacks on American interests either at home or abroad since 12 September 2001?

Most of these liberal clowns claim we are just lucky to date, while I believe we haven’t been attacked for two primary reasons:

1. Since 12 September 2001 America’s security services have been unleashed and ordered to go on the offensive, from military might to the creation of the Homeland Security Department to the active work of the Intelligence services it’s becoming more of an all for one attitude towards defending America at home and abroad. History will show that the Clinton administration hindered the CIA’s efforts against Osama bin Laden on several occasions while not only neutering the intelligence community he decapitated the US militaries offensive capabilities by reducing personnel, equipment and readiness levels throughout the 90’s to create the so-called peace dividend and those future imaginary surpluses liberals love to talk about.

2. Just as important or perhaps more so, it seems unlike the past Clinton administration the Bush administration got the message on 9-11 loud and clear and responded with directives to hunt down and kill all those that want to hurt us. Not just those who have on 9-11 but all those who threaten and support those who will. It was a dramatic and unexpected change that Al Queda wasn’t prepared for and why should they I suppose. After eight years of Clinton’s pacifist approach to five major attacks on the US and its interests both at home and abroad followed by a disputed Presidential campaign which left the impression that America was divided and didn’t support the new President led to a wrong-headed decision to test this President who could rarely pronounce foreign leaders names.

What the Clinton administration never understood was that the world’s terrorists and the regimes that supported them only respond to one thing and that’s action. Not threats, not diplomacy and certainly not inaction as we saw after the USS Cole attack.
Further proof of this theory can be found by looking at Europe over the past seven years. The European Union has been fully against America since 20 March 2003 when Iraq felt the reality of Shock and Awe. The European people held massive rallies and the politicians spoke loudly and repeatedly against the war. For their efforts the terrorists while flooding into Iraq to die by the gross also began bombing campaigns across Europe. If we are so bad why not attack us and leave the terrorist loving European Capitol’s alone? Why indeed, it’s simple, attack Europe and nothing happens except perhaps a change in government to ensure European troops won’t fully participate in Afghanistan or at all in Iraq but attack America and you will be hunted and America will impose sanctions on your support base or worse yet invade your training grounds and kill the vast majority of your leadership.
The only place the terrorists are succeeding is in war of marketing. American’s still believe we are losing in Iraq regardless of what facts are put in front of them and are even starting to believe that the Taliban-Al Qaeda joint venture have somehow regenerated their capabilities in Afghanistan once again regardless of the facts.
In 2006, the Taliban were operating in company strength (groups of 100 plus men) throughout Helmand and Kandahar provinces when the Canadians and Brits took over these two provinces from US forces. Throughout 2006 the Canadians fought hard and pursued the Taliban while the Brits began a force buildup that would lead to a hugely successful preemptive March offensive in 2007. Today after less than two years on the ground the Taliban are now only operating in cells of 2-4 men and have only once gathered in a group of company size during which 40 were killed and 25 captured. They have not been able to conduct a spring offensive since 2006 and have now resorted to the Iraq tactics of IED’s and suicide attacks which as we’ve seen in Iraq will soon turn the population against them and further produce the results that lead to stability.
If only we could get the main stream liberal media to buy into the idea that in the case of fanatical terrorists you must use force as diplomacy and carrots are only seen as weakness. They laugh when we debate waterboarding because they fear it and laugh harder when Congress continually debates the programs that actually hurt them like the wiretap program. If we don’t win, it will be because we failed to live up to the rhetoric we heard on 12 September 2001 when we all demanded that our President do whatever it takes to keep us safe. While we continue to win the battles we are losing the press and if there is any comparison to be made to the Vietnam War history will tell us that if we don’t counter attack and retake the message we will lose the war.

Stand By PA the Blitz is coming

Stand by PA here comes the Hilly-Billy show (if the Bill muzzle stays in place much longer I’m going to have to find a new handle for this gong show). In the coming weeks before the April 22 primary Pennsylvania is about to experience something it hasn’t seen in over two decades a primary vote that means something.

OK first I must say I was WRONG with my predictions and it bloody well serves me right too. I should have put more thought into where Hill-Billy was going negative, in Texas even the democrats like a good dust up and some decent mudslinging so Hill-Billy’s negative attacks pulled it out for her but I’m guessing we haven’t seen anything yet. Like a shark smelling blood in the water Hill-Billy is now charging hard and ready for the kill, never mind that the delegate count hasn’t moved an inch, nor has the popular vote with Obama still leading in both categories, so why does she feel that she can still win?

Well PA you’re about to find out as you are now ground zero for the biggest Blitz since Poland in 39. TV ads, door to door knocking, rallies galore, fliers in your mailbox, dozens of automated phone calls with messages of hope and hate equaling filing your voicemail.

I have no idea how Wyoming is leaning as I can’t find a single poll on the state but I’m pretty sure it’s going Hill-Billy’s way, well as sure as I am that Mississippi is going Obama’s way and that means two more states down and no change.

With 611 electoral votes still up for grab, we’re in for a tie so that takes me to the part of my last post where I was right. Hill-Billy in her speech mentioned her wins in both Florida and Michigan…hum what wins…only in Hill-Billy land you say. No both Hill and Bill will be working over Howard Dean and his elk daily between now and the convention to ensure the fine delegates of Michigan and Florida are counted and seated regardless of any previously agreed upon rules, while simultaneously working the super delegates over like Ali on Frazier, in non-stop blurry flurries.

Once again I can only say that I’m sure republicans love this more than anything else, a vicious and ongoing primary season fight, a 50/50 split in the party, and potentially a divisive convention where the people’s choice is ignored. If John McCain was 25 years younger I’m sure he’d be doing cart wheels but I guess he’ll have to be satisfied with doing wheelies on his scooter.

Warmer or Colder who should we believe

Last summer I wrote about an old Time magazine article from 1974 that used recent climatic events and the arguments of several prominent scientists or scientific organizations to support the idea that we were facing a global cooling period and perhaps even a mini-Ice age. Although the scientists weren’t 100% sure of the cause many suggested in this article and others of the day that man was the man cause of this cooling as our pollution was blocking the sun’s ability to heat the earth.

More recently we’ve all heard about Global Warming and many of us have watched as Al Gore’s documentary about the issue won awards from both Hollywood and the International community. Together with the UN panel for climate change they shared a Nobel Peace Prize (although I’m still baffled by this one since there’s an award for science and this is surely science) which jointly honored their work.

Over the past two years it has become increasing difficult for those that disagree with the reasons for Global Warming to speak out without being labeled as heretics or nuts but even more difficult to hear are the voices that suggest Global Warming is a myth altogether. These poor souls are kindly referred to as ignorant or more often as fools who should be jailed as the leading Canadian environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki has recently proposed.

The hate and scorn heaped on those who continue to question the science, the models used, how the results are interpreted and whether or not man is the main influence or a bit player is something a kin to the hunt for Hollywood Communists carried out by Sen McCarthy and every much as foolish.

You see the trouble I have with those who believe that the debate has been settled is that rarely has the scientific community been right in the present. In fact history tells us that the agreed upon science of the day is rarely correct and must be updated as new facts are discovered, new ideas explored and new technology comes online.

Today Galileo is called the father of astronomy, the father of physics, and the father of modern science but in 1633 he was ordered to stand trial for heresy and was convicted. His crime was to proclaim and argue in books that the Sun was the center of the universe and that the Earth moved around the sun. His sentence was that he must recant his views and never speak of them again, he was ordered imprisoned but this was commuted to house arrest and he would never again be authorized to publish books. Pope Urban VIII heard the case and listened to both sides, Galileo used his research and telescope to prove his point, the Church pointed to several Psalm’s that spoke of the Earth being created and unmoving and brought forward many scientists that supported the church’s opinion suggesting that the overwhelming majority of science believes Galileo is wrong. Galileo recanted.

Even the great Galileo whom I’ve just written about was wrong, siding with the majority of scientists who rallied about the idea that the moon was the greatest influence on the tides. In fact Johannes Kepler whose theory got it right was dismissed by Galileo as “useless fiction”.

Whether it’s the modern debates over whether or not eggs are good or bad, wine is good or bad, chocolate is good or bad, meat is good or bad for us to eat and drink or some original fears about Microwave ovens and Cell phones and the damage they may do to humans it’s pretty obvious that while we continue to evolve so does our thinking and understanding of the things around us.

In the past two weeks I’ve started to see more articles about Global Cooling again and the idea that in fact the planet has just completed a normal cycle of Global warming and increased activity by the Sun and is now entering a period of Global cooling, once again the report cited recent weather patterns, heavier than normal ice densities in certain parts of the world and the scientists quoted had numerous initials after their names and came from prestigious schools where they were conducting their research and once again they had challenged those who supported the global warming theory by asserting that research must continue before we reach any conclusions.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona, two prominent climate modelers, who say that the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong. "We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

When these researchers inserted the known wind patterns from the last 40 years into the same climate models they confirmed that is was wind that had shifted the warmer water into the Arctic and the result was normal and had nothing to do with man.

Recently Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences said that the Sun has entered into a period of inactivity and that we should stock up on “fur coats” and that manmade climate change was a “drop in the bucket”, this was echoed by Kenneth Tapping of the Canadian National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, who is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

We should remember that the last time the Sun entered into a prolonged period of inactivity it became known as the Dark Ages. With the cold came crop failures, famine, plague and war. We are certainly better prepared and more globally integrated to survive another 5 centuries of cold and I’m certainly not predicting another period like the Dark Ages but some seem to be and that is the point.

Science like man evolves and doesn’t stand still, we cannot simple say the science is settled and react to it. If we assume Mr. Gore and his ilk are correct and we move heaven and earth to reduce green house gasses and it turns out that the opposite is occurring then we have expended useless amounts of time and capitol on something we can’t control.

While I’m all for becoming more energy efficient, cleaning up our lakes and water, cutting back on the use of fossil fuels or creating ways to use them without the same amounts of pollutants going into the air we breathe and having as many trees as we can afford to have to continue to act as natures great filters, I’m firmly against radical efforts to reduce green house gasses by neutering industry or with schemes to buy carbon credits or false treaties that reduce nothing but make us feel good by signing them like Kyoto. Destroying the economy of the West while the Far East continues to pollute and gain strength is not a plan for success but a recipe for desasture.

We must continue to invest in all types of research, we must keep politicians away from science as they will corrupt and pervert it for political gain and we must move slowly towards any solution as science moves even slower from theory towards fact and of that I am certain.

Only in Hill-Billy Land

When I woke up on Friday morning (about 11 PM EST time Thursday as I’m in Africa) I got to thinking about an article that I was reading the night before that was rehashing the various statements made by the Clinton campaign about the necessity to win in both Ohio and Texas in order to regain the momentum lost since Super Tuesday. As I read them quoting senior staffers and even the ex-President himself I began to think that sometime during the weekend, Hillary would have a choke up moment and would spend Sunday and Monday talking about the soft stuff like her long fight against the “right wing conspiracy” and how tough it is for a woman to break through that final “glass ceiling” and as reality set in and the polls began to really show that she would definitely lose in Texas, possibly eke out a slim margin win in Ohio, lose Vermont and win Rhode Island that the staffers would begin to talk more about stemming the Obama momentum and holding him, which would allow her to regain the momentum in Pennsylvania. For a group who’s truly blown a major lead to a rookie candidate whose name could barely be pronounced a year ago it always seems amazing to me how good they are at preparing for and recovering from defeat.
Mind you in Hill-Billy land anything is possible and sure enough I was too lazy to post up my thoughts on the matter so I can’t take any credit for getting out ahead of the story I read just before heading to bed late Friday night or early Friday afternoon in the States that went over a statement issued by the campaign that claimed that since Obama had seriously outspent the Hill-Billy campaign in both Texas and Ohio if he didn’t win by wide margins in both states then there was something seriously wrong with his campaign…huh?
I swear that Homer Simpson is the chief strategist for the Hill-Billy camp since nobody could actually believe that nonsense could they? Is it just me or are Hill-Billy setting up a scenario whereby anything other than a massive defeat will somehow be portrayed as a win and allow the Hill-Billy show to continue on?
I’m stuck in a remote desert camp with no Internet (It’s Saturday morning EST as I write this) and by the time I’m able to post this it will be Sunday afternoon EST so here’s my predictions for the next four states and I’m promise not to peak at the polls on Sunday and make any changes but you’ll just have to trust me on that one:
Texas-Obama + 8 Ohio-Clinton + 2 Rhode Island-Clinton + 4 Vermont-Obama + 7
So with these four so-called crucial states out of the way we’ll be exactly where we are today, having spit the two big states and split the two small states.
Now my predictions for the Hill-Billy speech on Tuesday night:
Ignore the states you lost, claim come-back kid status and vow to fight to include every vote as they should have done in Florida in 2000. It’s a not so subtle hint at the real Hill-Billy strategy and that is to fight till the end and continue to split states, she’ll win at least four or five while he’ll definitely pick up at least two more and then demand that Michigan and Florida are seated which will put her virtually in a tie with Obama and then you’ll see the real Hill-Billy show heavy on the Billy half as the arm twisting of Super Delegates will swing into action big time. At the end of it all, if Obama can’t finish her with a surprise last minute surge in Ohio he’ll lose, only a win in both the big states will put pressure on Hill-Billy land to fold up the tent until 2012 assuming Obama tanks under the spot light of a national campaign and even then unless there are 10 point margins in both states it will be a toss-up as to what the campaign does. Hill-Billy won’t go quietly.
I look forward to waking up on Wednesday morning to see the results and even more so on Thursday to see the fall out…will I be right? When you try and predict what will go on in that fantasy world of Hill-Billy land it’s like trying to predict the outcome of a NASCAR race before the checkered flag waves…you know the strengths and weaknesses of all the drivers and cars but when the green flag is waved and racing begins anything can happen and anyone can win.
Good luck Hill-Billy the republicans are cheering for you to go all the way.