For months now I have been watching the national media, aka Mainstream Media, aka Lamestream Media, or as it is known in this column, the American Terrorist Media, attempting to run every non-traditional candidate out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination before we even get to the primaries.

The traditional media doesn't like Sarah Palin - we all know that, they've been savaging her mercilessly since 2008. They don't like Herman Cain - I mean after all, a BLACK Republican presidential candidate who also is a corporate CEO with a strong track record of business success, who can't be pushed around on the flat tax issue? They don't like Michelle Bachmann at all - Good GAWD another Republican Woman???

The media does like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who announced his candidacy today because they think his Romney Care legislation enacted when he was governor will kill his chances with conservatives - Republicans and Independents alike. They loved Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels - who? - until he dropped out. They love to hate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich because he has more baggage than an overseas tourist flight.

They keep throwing former Ambassador Jon Huntsman's name around because he worked for Obama and again would have no chance with rank and file Republicans on that issue alone. They loved to love former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee until he dropped out because according to the media's "logic" he also was beatable.

Even when the announced GOP candidates were preparing to debate in South Carolina the media described Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as "the only top-tier" candidate (defined as meeting the approval of the national media, which is further defined as having baggage that would prevent his election should he face incumbent President Barack Obama.)

Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson all get passing grades from the media for one reason - they all are known quantities and all can be manipulated by the very people who are passing judgment on them.

Meanwhile, the media also has declared the Presidential election of 2012 a done deal, with Obama the winner, because the arrogant pieces of crap think the American public is so dense that we can't think for ourselves.

As evidence of Obama's certain victory 18 months from now the media points to last week's election of a Democrat to the US House of Representatives in a "GOP stronghold" in upstate New York; and to a horribly skewed poll that was done by CNN - Obama's public relations agency - that has his approval rating bouncing back from the mid-40s to around 60 percent.

First, in upstate New York, no one got a majority of the votes cast because a former Democrat who reinvented himself as a Tea Party candidate ran a third party race that siphoned votes from the Republican candidate and assured the Democrat victory. Now, without question the Republicans should have put a much, much stronger candidate up for that seat, and they should have done one hell of a lot more to educate the voters to the sleazeball tactics of the opposition.

They didn't and paid the price, but I hardly think that qualifies as a "trend" or even a sign.

AS far as the latest bogus poll is concerned - every news outlet on the national scene is reporting it as if it is gospel (every one, get it? EVERY one. Meaning FOX too. It's true. It's true. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it but I did.)

Way back when it first broke a number of outlets mentioned that it had a horribly over-represented number of Democrats compared to Republicans and Independents so it has virtually no validity - although that point was established once we noted it was sponsored by CNN.

But there is more to this approval rating issue. If a major percentage of registered voters don't like a particular candidate it isn't likely that they are going to change their minds simply based on who else is running. I have seen this before, very recently, and I can tell you that once a candidate's negative ratings go above 50 percent it is very hard to get people to change their minds - unless you have rigged sufficient numbers of voting machines that it doesn't matter.

Obama's approval rating supposedly shot upwards due to his "courageous" decision to allow US Navy Seals to put two bullets into Osama bin Laden's head. Are you kidding? I even heard radio personality Don Imus, who frankly isn't even a ghost of his former hard-edged self any longer - make that point recently.

There was nothing courageous about making that decision. It was a decision that had to be made and should be made in the normal course of business if you are President of the United States. Imus claimed that Obama's decision to allow the SEALS to whack Osama has erased any comparison between Obama and the ultimate wimp president, jimmy carter.

Bull! It did no such thing. The fact that sycophants like Imus are trying so hard to give Obama a macho image only serves to further illuminate the point that even a simple decision has to be blown up far beyond its true value and meaning to give Obama any boost at all. For crying out loud the majority of Americans have been wanting bin Laden dead for nearly ten years!

How courageous is it to say "Sic 'em" once he was found? A pacifist could have made that call in his sleep!

The GOP has some real issues to deal with, but they aren't the issues the media is pushing. The lesson to be learned from the New York race is that: 1.) we should enact run-off legislation that will require the top two finishers to run against each other in any race where no one gets 50 percent of the vote (as in Bill Clinton); and 2.) we'd better start grooming some spoiler candidates of our own all across the country to draw votes away from establishment Democrats to nullify that tactic.

It will piss the Democrats off and they'll holler and fuss like spoiled children, but who cares? They won't win, Obama won't win and that is the real issue.

The GOP also needs to get off stupid questions like "Is Sarah Palin qualified to be President?" Are you serious? Is Obama?? Good grief a New England stone wall has more qualifications to be president than Obama? At least the stone wall has strength of character.

As Huckabee put it one night recently, just about any GOP candidate out there has worlds more qualifications than Obama. I even saw Juan Williams on a recent panel talk show, in his continuing role as Democrat mouthpiece and reciter of the daily Democrat talking points, take a shot at Congressman Paul Ryan's presidential aspirations because Ryan supposedly has no foreign relations experience.

Williams quickly shut up when the host reminded him that Obama doesn't have ANY experience except for voting "Present" when he was representing the people of Illinois.

And it shows! Unless you're Williams or one of the other media sycophants working out of the D.C. beltway or Manhattan most people know that Obama is doing squat except screwing up the country.

I've been having a blast the last few days watching the media work itself into a state of extreme frustration because Sarah Palin won't tell them what she is attempting to accomplish with her bus tour of America. She won't tell the media and sometimes she won't even tell the GOP power structure where she is going or what she will do when she gets there.

Would you like to know why? Because she doesn't trust either of them and she shouldn't.

Best way to cover Sarah Palin's bus trip? Rent a car and follow her. Listen to her speeches, write down what she says, take in the crowd reaction and do the job you signed on for instead of sitting on your ass in the bureau letting the Democratic communications people write your stories for you.

I don't know what the GOP field is going to look like by this time next year, but I am very happy that we have a diverse and interesting group of candidates out there trying for the nomination. I like Herman Cain. I like Michele Bachmann. I like Sarah Palin too, and yes she is qualified to be president if you look at her real record in Alaska instead of reading the propaganda spewed by the alleged ATM.

I'll decide who to vote for when the time comes, and on that day you can be sure of this - I won't be making any decisions based on anything I see in the media.

In 1943, the American military intercepted a radio transmission detailing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's route for an inspection trip to bases in the South Pacific.

His aircraft was shot down by American interceptors and he died. Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, who commanded the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor, had studied at Harvard University giving him an inside knowledge of America. His death was a major blow to the Japanese military during World War II.

I bring this up because I believe that had he been alive in October, 1944 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines was hanging by a thread, the allied victory may well have had a different outcome.

(I read as much as I can about that battle because my late father was serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Princeton - shown at left - when it was sunk there on Oct. 24, 1944. He was blown off the hangar deck by a massive explosion and survived several hours in the water – sharks below, Japanese zeroes above – before he was rescued.)

Regarding the ongoing War on Terror and the recent death of the top Al Qaeda commander, Osama bin Laden I believe the action by US forces who killed him has much the same military and historic significance as the death of Adm. Yamamoto. In both cases our military eliminated highly intelligent, highly skilled enemy commanders who also possessed first-person knowledge of America.

Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the order to kill Yamamoto much as Obama gave the order to kill bin Laden, but you don't see a lot in the history books about Roosevelt appearing before the nation's media and taking credit for the death of a top enemy commander - as Obama did.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Roosevelt's either, despite the fawning obsequiousness of many modern Republicans who either don't know the nation's history or think we don't. Roosevelt's economic policies are widely believed to have extended rather than ended the Great Depression, his threats to expand the number of judges on the Supreme Court so he could have his way in social engineering issues were nothing short of extortion, and his expansion of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution was outright theft of the right of individuals to reap the benefits of their own labor - in my opinion.

But he still had the good sense to let the military do its job, and gave credit where it was due. Obama on the other hand got so much negative press for taking credit for the operation by US Navy SEALS, and a photo of his Administration officers in the Situation Room where he looked like the least important person in the photo, that it upended the uptick he got in popularity polls.

Even though the Constitution has been amended so no American president can ever serve more than two terms, unlike Roosevelt's four, it is hard to imagine how Obama expects to serve a second term with his overall disapproval – negatives – hanging strong at 50 percent or more.

Some friends were talking the other day about Obama's stabbing Israel in the back by siding with Palestinian terrorists who want to return Israel's borders to where they were in 1967 when the entire Arab World tried to push the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. They were saying there will be a monetary reaction from the Jewish lobby which voted heavily for Obama in 2008 but will likely not invest much in his re-election bid now.

Personally, I don't think it matters, and I believe Obama knew that before he betrayed Israel. Of course, considering that he started off his administration by bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, maybe he thinks shafting Israel is just business as usual, not a betrayal.

But if you go back to the column I wrote on Friday, March 18, 2011, about how the OPEC countries invested trillions on Oct. 10, 2008 in an attempt to crash our stock market you'll see why I don't think Obama cares about the Jewish lobby. In my Oct. 11, 2008 column I suggested that the Pentagon try to determine who may have had trillions of dollars at their disposal to make such a devastating impact on our economy. The market moved more than 2100 points that day, including 400 points in the last 15 minutes of trading, which would have been impossible for individuals, or even corporations to achieve.

Only a consortium of countries with a grudge against the US and enough money at their disposal could have pulled off that attack. The Pentagon hired a consultant who researched the trades that day and later revealed that OPEC countries, using the glut of profits they made over artificially inflated oil prices during the previous year were the likely culprits.

So – what has been going on with oil prices lately? Yes, indeed, they are again rising as they did three years ago. I'm sure that some of the increase is due to the actions of unscrupulous speculators, but the real profits are going right where they did in 2007 and 2008 – into the pockets of OPEC producers.

National level political pundits have been saying for months now that Obama is building a $1 billion "War Chest" to buy off enough poll workers across the country to ensure that he gets the most votes on Election Day 2012. So where is he going to get that money if he keeps moseying along, angering the various political, ethnic and social groups that joined to get him elected in the first place?

Let's put this into perspective. $1 billion is a lot of money but it is only about 5 percent of the amount spent on Oct. 10, 2008 to manipulate the stock market. Now that a pro-terrorist president with some very odd ideas about a social, financial and military agenda for America is in office, it will take far less to keep him there than it did to get him there.

I don't think the Republican Party is much help at this point either. I'll write more about that in another column, but it hasn't escaped any observers' attention that the American Terrorist Media is going out of its way to discredit, by any means, fair or foul, any GOP candidate who isn't on a preapproved short list.

Nonetheless, some very persistent, very capable, very intelligent, very knowledgeable candidates are refusing to be cowed by the coming onslaught of negativity and are proceeding with their campaigns. At the same time, some of the media favorites are bowing out, much to the chagrin of the self-anointed king makers who had already selected them to be sacrificial lambs over whom they could eulogize after the 2012 election that they ran a good race but Obama was simply too popular for them.

I think Obama is going to get all the money he needs and a lot more to run any kind of campaign he wishes without regard to cost control and it won't matter to him one bit if none of it comes from Jewish Democrats or their supporters. In fact, I bet he already has his $1 billion, with much more on tap if he needs it.

Life in America for the next 18 months is not likely to be a picnic for us, but it is my hope that enough Americans will be sufficiently fed up with his anti-United States agenda to get out and vote Obama out, in numbers large enough to offset any tampering with polling place scanners, and regardless of whether the king makers are happy with our choice.

It was today, 43 years ago, at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, in Irvine, California that 24 CH-46 Super D helicopters appeared in the sky to the south, flying in a formation that wrote 161 in the air, ending a journey that began on April 20, more than 3,000 miles to the east.

Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 161, commanded by Lt. Col. Paul W. Niesen, was putting the icing on a history making flight, that itself was just the beginning of a history making journey.

HMM-161 landing at El Toro, April 23, 1968.

You won't know about this if you haven't read the official Marine Corps history of 161, or my unofficial history, but it happened. We started off at the Marine Corps Air Facility in New River, N.C., which was and still is part of the sprawling Camp Lejeune complex in flights of four on April 20. Each section flew a pre-planned route with refueling stops and overnight stays at military bases along the way.

We took one day off in Tuscon, Arizona so the squadron could regroup, and then flew into California as one unit.

The main gate at New River Air Facility, circa 1967

We flew a southern route from North Carolina to California and, as a crew member on YR (Yankee Romeo)-39, I saw the Mississippi River, the Great American Desert and even the lower reaches of the Rocky Mountains from the open cabin door of a CH-46.

A CH-46 from HMM-161 over the desert during the squadron's cross-country flight in April, 1968.

I don't know why this year is more special than any other years, but thanks to the Internet, many of the survivors of that flight and the subsequent tour in Vietnam are talking about it - a lot. For the past three days I have been receiving emails from friends who served in 161 back then, starting with a pilot, Chuck Songer, who noted in the first message that it was 43 years ago that we were making that historic flight.

One person responded, then another, then another, then the floodgates opened. We all have our memories.

We spent five days at El Toro then boarded the USS Princeton LPH-5 for a 17-day trip across the Pacific that included an exploding boiler and a very intense trip right through the center of a Pacific Ocean typhoon.

Two CH-46s from HMM-161, one piloted by Lt. Col. Niesen, making a dramatic mid-ocean rescue of a sailor who had fallen overboard from the USS Princeton, LPH-5.



HMM-161 writing its squadron numbers in the air over a US Navy vessel in 1967 during a NATO operation.

Then we were off the coast of Quang Tri, South Vietnam, then on land in our new home and within 48 hours were flying combat missions along the DMZ, the Laotian border area, and of course the Marine Combat Base at Khe Sanh.

The air strip at Quang Tri. Hot burning sand and helicopters.



In the next several months 161 set records for virtually all of the things that someone keeps track of, but along the way we lost aircraft, pilots and crews too. Chuck Songer made it about three months in country before he was wounded in both legs from communist gunfire and medevaced out of country and eventually home.

Southeast approach to Khe Sanh

Col. Niesen was wounded that day too. HMM-161's tour in Vietnam that started with the April 20 liftoff from the flight line at New River eventually saw 20 crew members, corpsmen and pilots killed in action.

Those deaths represented far more than statistics to most of us. We had joined together in New River beginning in the late summer of 1966, a point when we didn't even have a squadron designation, and many of us lived together, worked together, and fought together for more than two years. Those deaths hurt, and still do.

HMM-161 was designated The First because it was the first Marine helicopter unit to carry troops into battle in the Korean War. The squadron had many other tasks in the intervening years, but we were the first of the various units that carried the 161 colors to fly CH-46s. The squadron continued flying the 46s right up until last year when it received the first tilt-rotor Ospreys and was renamed VMM-161 - the "H" designation no longer applies since Ospreys are not technically helicopters.

I don't think about Vietnam as much as I used to. I was 18 when I joined the Marines, just turning 19 when I joined 161, and 20 years old when we left for Vietnam. I turned 21 during that tour, as did my friends John Allison and Norm "Frenchy" LaFountaine - all of us shared the same birthday.


Two views of yours truly way back when. Top, aboard the USS Princeton, LPH-5 en route to Vietnam. Lower, grabbing a cigar and a few quick winks outside the 161 Avionics hooch, summer 1968.

But I am older, 43 years older in fact, and I have been fortunate in that I have 43 years of other memories that often shoulder the past aside. Time has been taking its toll and many of the people who made that cross-country flight and survived our tour in Vietnam are no longer with us. Some have died of diseases, old age, heart attacks, strokes, even at their own hand.

But once in a while, an email will arrive from an address that I recognize as one of my former squadron mates and I'll stop what I am doing for bit to think back. We were an incredibly talented group of people, starting with our pilots. We had some of the best officers and NCOs that younger Marines could ask for, and we did everything that was required and asked of us, to a far greater degree than many inhabitants of the civilian world could imagine.

In mid-1969, at about the time most of us had completed our tours and were ready to come back to the states, the entire Viet Cong guerrilla force had been wiped out, and the North Vietnamese regulars who had borne the brunt of the fighting in the south since 1965 were decimated.

The US had been working with the South Vietnamese Army for several years to help build their capabilities and if left to its own designs, the war would have become more of a South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam affair in a matter of years. In fact it did and I'll address that in a minute.

But just about the time our tour was winding down, and at the time the US finally had numerical parity on the battlefield, with nearly 550,000 troops serving "in country," President Richard Nixon, at the instigation of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger announced that he was going to start troop withdrawals.

It was an abysmally stupid announcement on Nixon's part because as we later learned, the communist military commanders already were putting pressure on the political bosses in Hanoi to surrender. They had been beaten to a pulp, even though the pro-communist American media never reported it - and were afraid the US would just cross the DMZ and roll right over them - which we should have.

But the political bosses in Hanoi prevailed after Nixon's blunder, saying the US had weak leaders - they were right - and no backbone - they were right - and no political willpower - they were right, and even if they couldn't beat us militarily the communist politicians would eventually defeat our politicians. They were right about that too, but not as soon nor as easily as they expected.

In late 1969 Nixon announced his Vietnamization program, to shift more of the military burden to the South Vietnamese army, an approach which had worked wonders nearly two decades earlier in South Korea. By 1972 nearly all US combat troops were gone and the northern communists invaded the democratic south with some 250,000 combat troops backed by massive artillery and armored divisions.

But the south held, and aided by US air power inflicted an unprecedented defeat on the north. For years the US intelligence community said that 75,000 communists were killed that spring, but after the Soviet Union fell and the KGB archives were opened for foreign researchers, that number was upped to 150,000, with half of all the communist armor and artillery destroyed too.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the top communist military leader who had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1953, was fired and placed under house arrest.

Nonetheless Kissinger strongly urged Nixon to continue the Paris peace talks, even as Jane Fonda was urging the communists not to surrender - apparently using the argument that even though they had just suffered a military defeat that dwarfed their losses in the Tet Offensive of 1968, America's political will was virtually nonexistent.

The peace talks continued until late 1972 but when the communists kept dragging their feet Nixon began another bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Unfortunately, according to reports from the communists long after the war was over, Nixon, again at Kissinger's urging, stopped bombing two days too early. The communists were on the verge of full surrender, but again, American political "strategy" and willpower were insufficient.

Over South Vietnam's rigorous objections the Paris Peace Accords were signed in March 1973, literally giving South Vietnam away. To put the final nail in the coffin, the US Congress passed the Case-Church Resolution in mid-1973, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which ended all economic, humanitarian and military aid to South Vietnam, in what has to be the most shameful incident in the history of US foreign relations. (News reports from the time state that the US government accused the South Vietnamese government of corruption. Talk about hypocrisy.)

The South was left to fend for itself, Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford became president but still relied on Kissinger for foreign relations "expertise," and in April 1975, seven years after HMM-161 and hundreds of thousands of other American, South Korean, Australian, New Zealand and Thai servicemen went to help South Vietnam stay free, it fell to the communist onslaught, alone and abandoned.

In the next few years the communist rampage consumed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with nearly 3 million people butchered by the communists. An estimated 2 million South Vietnamese boat people fled on the South China Sea, with some 300,000 perishing due to storms, sharks or pirates. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned in communist concentration camps that the American pro-communist media labeled "re-education" camps, and more than 160,000 are reported to have been murdered by the communists.

When Kissinger and company signed off on the Paris Peace Accords they knew that more than 300 American fliers were still being held captive in Laos, but in the following years they too were written off and abandoned. In 1991 Sens. John Kerry and John McCain as co-chairs of the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs slammed the door on all further inquiries into their fate, and ordered all information on those brave Americans to be "Classified" until long after we all are gone.

By now you must be asking yourself if I would do it all over again?

I'll tell you. I wish I could bring back all who were killed, and heal all who were grievously wounded. If there truly was magic in this world, that is how I would use it.

As I write this, it is a gray and rainy day in Southern New England. The trees are just starting to show a bit of green, but the clouds and fog descended on us earlier and with the starkness of the forest just beyond my office window, it is easy to conjure up images from the war, especially the monsoon months after Agent Orange had done its work.

Oddly enough, I remember the good things most. How so many of my fellow aircraft electronic technicians volunteered to fly as gunners. How many Air Medals we were awarded, individually as well as unit awards, along with many other decorations. How close we were, even if the stress of war and death rubbed us terribly raw at times. And there is no doubt that I also remember how many were killed, and the others who were wounded.

But even knowing what I know - How our ally was abandoned by our government; how we were betrayed by traitors like Kerry, and Fonda, and yes, Kissinger; even knowing what happened I would never in a million years have missed the opportunity to serve with the people I knew in HMM-161 who 43 years ago began a journey that in many ways still has not ended.

Maybe it would have been more politically correct to write about Easter today. But I'd rather leave you with the words from the original version of an Irish folk song now known as The Parting Glass.

What I have done through lack of wit,
I never, never can recall;
I hope you're all my friends as yet;
Good night. And joy be with you all

In fact, how about if I just leave you the entire song, as it was performed on one of my favorite movies, The Waking of Ned Devine.



It was 43 years ago today, but I remember much of it as if it all just happened. And I will never forget those who also served in HMM-161.

How do you know when someone from the Obama administration is lying?

Their lips are moving. I know, it's an old joke and it's supposed to be about lawyers, but I've watched the president and his henchmen out on the talk TV circuit for the last couple of weeks supposedly explaining everything from Libya to America's finances and all I really saw was smokescreens.

We supposedly have ceased taking an active role in the attempt to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi yet we haven't - our planes are still bombing him but secretly. (And we still don't know why him, why now, and why not some other places. Oh, and we have no Congressional authorization to use military force, although Congress appears to have ceded that authority to the UN and NATO.)

We supposedly are going to set the budget and the massive federal deficit right, but we really aren't. We supposedly are moving toward emerging alternative energy sources - a b.s. term in itself - yet the price of oil is again escalating. Once again countries that have a grudge against us will have plenty of money to manipulate our stock market and destroy our economy as they did in late 2008 - but the Administration isn't talking about that, much less doing anything about it.

Did you know that while Obama was saying we didn't have "boots on the ground" in Libya, meaning military personnel, he could get around the lie because the military can temporarily transfer Special Operations Forces to the control of the CIA? This then makes them "covert operatives," not members of the military ... even if they are still wearing their uniforms and carrying the same weapons!

Every time I see the president on the television these days I change the channel because I have come to the conclusion that I can't believe a word that he or any of his spokespeople utters.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who has almost declared that he is running for president, is openly investigating Obama's claims to be a US citizen, and counter-claims that he is not. This is something the media should have done years ago when Obama first declared that he was running for president, kind of the way they are going after Trump now.

I saw Trump on the Neil Cavuto show on the Fox News Channel last week and Cavuto nearly sneered at Trump's decision to send an investigative team to Hawaii to search for Obama's birth certificate. Cavuto averred that Obama already has released his alleged birth certificate, but Trump pounced with both feet.

Trump noted that Obama has NOT released an actual birth certificate, but HAS issued a "Certification of Live Birth," from the State of Hawaii - and referenced in such "esteemed" locations as Fact Check as a Birth Certificate - but it is not a birth certificate. As Trump noted, the Certification of Live Birth is not a valid Birth Certificate - which should be on record in the county in which he was born and is a public document by the way - and that the Certification of Live Birth omits many details that are contained on a real Birth Certificate such as which hospital Obama supposedly was born in and the attending physician.

Trump told Cavuto that Obama's relatives can't even agree on which Hawaiian hospital he supposedly was born in, while his Kenyan grandmother is adamant that she witnessed his birth in Kenya.

To that point, the documents below that purportedly record the birth of one Barack Hussein Obama II have surfaced and oddly enough they do contain all the information that US birth certificates contain - except they were issued in Kenya.


This document is a Certified Copy of Registration of Birth, and below is a copy of the actual Certificate of Birth.



Take a look at this document, which purportedly is an actual birth certificate listing our very own president as being born in Kenya to a Kenyan father. See the details it lists. Why don't we have these details from the State of Hawaii if Obama was in fact born there?



I am not for an instant claiming to be an expert on any of this. But I do know that this issue has been hotly debated for at least three years now and everyone who points out even the most obvious discrepancies in our president's background story is immediately jumped on, reviled, dismissed as a crank and relegated by extremist Democrats and their media lackeys to the status of "birther" which is not a compliment.

For instance, I was working in my office last Saturday afternoon and a talk panel show was on. I am not familiar with it because I rarely watch TV at that time, but the panel got around to Trump and his investigation and he was immediately dismissed by a bunch of people I don't know. "We've been down that road before ..." smirk, simper, smirk, simper.

Well, actually, no they haven't. A few mainstream news figures have tried to raise the issue but they are shut down pretty quickly.

I did see a very thorough review of the issue a couple of years ago in Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs blog, including forensic reviews of various documents released by Obama. Those reviews were startling in their revelations of different type faces and other inconsistencies. Check out Pamela's work here, but it may take a while to load it all because it is extensive: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/obamas_birth_certifcate_forgery/

Pamela thus became the fawning mainstream media's favorite target and has been roundly dismissed by hacks who don't possess a micron of her journalistic ability.

But they never made the effort to review her work and determine if there was validity to the information she revealed. They universally relied on the Certification of Live Birth that as Trump noted, has a far lower standard than an actual birth certificate.

Here are a few other issues that have surfaced on the Internet and came my way the other day. Relating to his claim of attending and graduating from Columbia Univeristy: No classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him. Where is the footage of the graduation ceremony for his class showing Obama as a proud graduate? Has anyone talked to the professors? Where are the people who knew him or taught him or lived with him?

When did he meet Michele and how? Are there photos? Every president gives their photos and memorabilia to the public for posterity. What has he released? Who was the best man at his wedding? Who were the groomsmen? Where are the people from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, were friends with him? As insignificant as we all are someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face, someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.

Can we talk to them and get some background information - which considering the grilling that Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and dozens of others received, certainly should have been done by the media long ago?

This literally represents the tip of the iceberg on questions related to Obama's history. If you go the Pamela Geller website I listed above you'll see a video of Trump appearing on the female talk show The View a week ago.

When Trump was making his case Whoopi Goldberg said the only reason anyone is questioning Obama is because he is black. Aha! Play the race card when all else fails.

Then she pulled the timeworn, hackneyed tactic of diverting attention to George Bush, claiming no one every questioned his authenticity that way!

Hey lady, we not only have George Bush's birth certificate, we have his childhood photos, his school records, and his military records. Got Obama's? Show me.

It appears that Donald Trump has a lot of established politicians and alleged journalists who feed at the same trough, very, very worried. I find that somehow comforting. Go Trump!

The state of Connecticut has dropped charges against a Massachusetts man who was accused of helping kill his Alzheimer's stricken father - a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Korean War - in a case of so-called mercy killing - assisted suicide - or euthanasia.

The state's decision not to pursue a conviction in the case effectively paves the way for generations of disaffected youth to off their parents with little fear of retribution.

Parents who have limited or no parenting skills may want to look closely at the case of Bruce F. Brodigan of Somerville, MA, who previously pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of his father George D. Brodigan, who died at the age of 82, on Sept. 14, 2010.

George Brodigan died of an overdose of alcohol and amitriptyline, which was prescribed to Bruce Brodigan, police said. However, press reports say the state Medical Examiner’s Office was unable to determine the manner of death.

In dropping the most serious change against Brodigan, the state also paved the way for him to apply for a program termed accelerated rehabilitation on three lesser charges - tampering with evidence, making a false statement to police, and interfering with police.

That means - if the program is granted - that he will have to promise not to help anyone else pass over to the promised land ahead of schedule. If he is a good boy for a year, the charges will be dismissed and his record erased.

Police initially alleged that Bruce Brodigan assisted in the death of his ailing father. The elder Brodigan also was a retired West Hartford lawyer and former interim Superior Court judge.

Hartford Superior Court Judge Arthur P. Gold accepted the state's decision Tuesday and said in court documents that the manslaughter case will be "reopened and pursued" if Brodigan is not successful in the pretrial intervention program. I have no idea how you would fail a pretrial intervention program if you know that to do so will put you on trial facing an extended prison sentence.

Basically, Bruce Brodigan will have to say "yes" at the appropriate times, and "no" at the appropriate times and be sent on his way to wait out his one-year probation. Then he'll go on with his life in Massachusetts and the state of Connecticut will be left wrestling with the issues of assisted suicide, mercy killing, euthanasia, call it what you will.

We will be seeing escalating numbers of the elderly being "put down" as if they were family pets. Inevitably issues will arise where some people will say the dead person was in pain and only hours or days at best away from dying naturally, while those who opposed the "procedure" will maintain that was not the case at all.

The debate on euthanasia is just getting started and while it may seem clear cut to some people, I challenge them to define at exactly what point in their lives they want a friend or relative to pull the plug on them. The definition of "terminal" is bound to find some very wide interpretations.

According to news reports Bruce Brodigan described the end of his father's life as the "most beautiful, loving moment I had with my father" throughout his life.

Frankly, it sounds a lot more like a Charlie Sheen moment to me. Not the kind of moment where Sheen is in a motel room with a bevy of hookers and a kilogram of cocaine, but a moment out of the movie Platoon. where Sheen is in a massive firefight firing weapons and screaming "This is f'ing beautiful man!"

I can relate to that somewhat because as a .50 caliber machine gunner on Marine helicopters in Vietnam, I had a few of those moments. It's easy to have a feeling of euphoria when you have the biggest weapons and the battle is going your way.

But one thing I never saw was the communists come running out of their jungle positions yelling "Shoot more, shoot more, this is f'ing beautiful man!" Being on the losing side of a deadly encounter generally is less exciting than being on the side where death is inflicted.

As a wounded combat veteran the elder Brodigan probably knew that.

Now I know that there are going to be people reading this who say I am being flippant and disrespectful. So what? If it gets people talking about this, so much the better.

Because this week, the state of Connecticut quietly moved the goalposts in the euthanasia - assisted suicide - mercy killing debate and most people didn't notice. We deserve far better. We deserve a full, transparent, free wheeling debate on this issue and thus far we have not had it.

Oh, and would everyone who is reading this please print it out and save it in a safe place. Then 30 or so years from now if you see a death notice about me, and it says alcohol and drugs were involved, please press for a forensic autopsy and make sure they identify the alcohol as GlenMorangie single malt scotch, at least 12 years old.

If they say it is anything else, press for a full investigation!

With everything else that is happening in North Africa and the Middle East, why have hostilities resumed between Israel and the Palestinians? Is it a separate issue, or part of something much larger?

What is going on? Do we really know?

We see Palestinian kids throwing rocks at Israeli tanks, and the bloodied bodies of Jewish children torn asunder by incoming rockets. But what does all that really tell us?

We know that the Israelis get bombed by Palestinians who believe they are denied a homeland, and retaliate by bombing them back; and we have varying levels of understanding that this has been going on for decades, or perhaps centuries, or even millennia in one form or another with each side blaming the other.

But how many of us have a firm understanding of why? Finally, that is about to change.

Fox News Pentagon Reporter Jennifer Griffin and her husband NPR editor Greg Myre, both with extensive experience covering international affairs and especially the war torn areas of the world - much of it together - have just released a collaborative book titled "This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."

Reporting from Jerusalem, Myre and Griffin witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war.

An editorial description of This Burning Land states that extremism can become a virtue; moderation a vice. Factions develop within factions. Propaganda becomes an important weapon, and perseverance an essential defense. While the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to achieve their goals after years of fighting, people on both sides are prepared to make continued sacrifices in the belief that they will eventually emerge triumphant.

They note that while the West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This Burning Land reveals the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world. The entire conflict can seem irrational - and many commentators see it that way.

While raising their own family in Jerusalem at the height of the violence, Myre and Griffin look at the lives of individuals caught up in the struggles to reveal how these actions make perfect sense to the participants.

This book goes straight to the heart of the conflict: into the minds of suicide bombers and inside Israeli tanks. We hear from Palestinian informants who help the Israeli military track down and kill Palestinian militants.

Israeli settlers in isolated outposts discuss why they are there, and we hear the frustrations of a Palestinian farmer who has had his olive grove cut in half by Israel's security barrier. Their book explains how the landscape of the conflict changed and why the traditional approach to peacemaking is no longer valid.

This Burning Land displays the important lessons that can be learned by viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of modern, asymmetrical war, while providing a balanced and detailed look at the fighting based on first-hand experience and hundreds of interviews.

Myre and Griffin have been covering international affairs since the day they met in 1989 at an overflowing soccer stadium in Soweto, South Africa, where several of Nelson Mandela’s prison colleagues received a thunderous greeting following their release from decades in jail. At the time, Myre was a reporter with the Associated Press, and Griffin was a college student taking a year off her studies. Several months later, they were present as Mandela himself walked to freedom.

They covered the dramatic final years of apartheid in South Africa before moving to Pakistan in 1993. From their posting in Islamabad, they covered the tumultuous years of Benazir Bhutto's rule. On one memorable day, the man who orchestrated the first bombing of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef, was arrested just a few blocks from their home - and across the street from the bakery where they picked up croissants most mornings.

They traveled regularly to neighboring Afghanistan to witness that country's devastating civil war and more-or-less spent their honeymoon under rocket fire. They were among the very first to interview members of an obscure group that was just emerging and calling itself the Taliban. They landed next in Nicosia, Cyprus, and traveled extensively throughout the Muslim world, covering phony elections in countries from Iran to Iraq to Syria.

They headed north in 1996, spending three years in Moscow, reporting on the final years of Boris Yeltsin and the early days of Vladimir Putin.

They returned to the Middle East in 1999, settling in Jerusalem. It seemed like the calmest place they had been in years, and they decided it would be a good place to start a family. They soon found themselves raising two young daughters and covering the worst fighting ever between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

They covered every major event, from the peace talks of 2000 - to the Palestinian uprising that came later that year - the terrible bloodshed that included frequent Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military incursions - the election of Ariel Sharon - the death of Yassar Arafat - the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza - the rise of Hamas - and the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006.

During this time, Myre was a reporter for the New York Times and Griffin was the correspondent for Fox News. In their years abroad, they traveled to more than 50 countries and reported on more than a dozen wars and conflicts. But they found none so gripping as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and covered it for nearly eight years.

They now live in Washington, where Greg is a senior editor at NPR's Morning Edition program, and Jennifer is Fox’s national security correspondent, based at the Pentagon. To schedule interviews or learn more about This Burning Land you can conact Greg Myre at gregmyre@gmail.com; or thisburninglandmedia@gmail.com.

You can order "This Burning Land" from these outlets:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Burning-Land-Transformed-Israeli-Palestinian/dp/0470550902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297630336&sr=8-1

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/This-Burning-Land/Greg-Myre/e/9780470550908

http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?

Editor's note: OK, this is obviously a fake headline, and it's going over a couple of paragraphs of a fake news story (in italics). But if America's alleged "anti-war movement" had any credibility at all, I would have been able to write this story for real any time in the last four days.

The Berkeley California City Council, which three years ago attempted to ban United States Marine recruiters from their city to show dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, today banned all Democrats from the city expressing similar dissatisfaction with President Obama's "Warmongering" in Libya.

The audience at the hastily called emergency meeting was filled with Code Pink members, and notable anti-war celebrities including Jane Fonda, Ed Asner and Cindy Sheehan.

"Obama's unilateral decision to wage war on a sovereign nation without the approval of the US Congress, and only a token vote of some members of the United Nations Security Council does not meet the Smell Test," Sheehan said, with Fonda and Asner nodding in agreement.

They also scoffed at assertions from an administration spokesman on the Bob Schieffer CBS Sunday show Face the Nation that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has weapons of mass destruction in the form of tons of mustard gas.

"That's what Bush said in Iraq," was the derisive response.

Also present in the council chambers were representatives from dozens of socialist, communist, extremist Islamic and anarchistic organizations that have joined forces with America's celebrity "anti-war" factions in the past. All denounced the decision to bomb Libya under the guise of protecting civilians – some of whom fought against the US in Iraq - without simultaneously bombing dozens of other countries across the globe whose leaders mercilessly slaughter their citizens even if they don't deserve it.

"Obama lied, Libyans died," they chanted, while outside a contingent of their supporters burned an effigy of the American President. Council Democrats immediately changed their party registration to the Working Families party, with one former Democrat stating, "Hell you can't tell the difference anyway."

Enough. Now here's the real headline:

America's Left Mute on Libya, Displays Reprehensible, Fatuous Hypocrisy

President Obama, without so much as a courtesy notification to the full US Congress, and with only tacit, and apparently misunderstood, approval of a small number of United Nations member states, is bombing the daylights out of Libya day and night in open violation of the US War Powers Resolution of 1973. Exactly why he decided to launch massive air strikes against the Libyan government this past weekend is a question that has a different answer every hour.

What is clear is that America's armed forces have taken sides in an internal conflict that actually seems more like a civil war, and have decided to take out Gaddafi's forces before they achieve a full victory. That may well be a viable goal, but the way it was approached and executed is clearly illegal.

That Gaddafi deserves to go has been a given since the Reagan Administration launched strikes against him a quarter-century ago. But Reagan was dealing with specific threats and attacks against US citizens and military personnel – a requirement of the War Powers Resolution before military force can be employed. However, in recent years Gaddafi's primary threat has been to his own people, some of whom rose up against him recently, and after some initial successes were retreating on all fronts with few if any of their early gains remaining.

Although the attacks on Libya were supposed to be directed and led by an international coalition that included Arab League countries, and were not supposed to include US fighter jets, they actually have been US planned, and US led. The attacks have been carried out by B-2 Stealth bombers based in Nebraska, and American fighter jets using NATO airfields in Europe as well as US Marine Harrier jets.

Many of the attacks were launched from a hastily assembed US "fleet" that more resembles a hodgepodge of ships flying the US flag. The fleet reportedly included the recently launched USS Barack Hussein Obama, pictured here. It is the first US Navy ship with an all-English Motto - Don't Worry He Has A Plan!

Within hours of the first US-launched strikes on Saturday, March 19, 2011, Russia, which abstained from a UN Security Council vote authorizing the strikes, voiced its objections and the Arab League president said the strikes went beyond what he had understood. That left the Obama Administration scrambling to explain why we suddenly are in another war.

Obama, who is on vacation in South America, ordered the White House communications team to issue a statement similar to comments he made before he left on his trip averring that we can't stand idly by while a despot murders his own people. Of course, everyone in the world with more than a single digit IQ wants to know why Libyans are the chosen people when so many millions have been murdered in the last eight decades by Nazis, communists, and dictators of every stripe.

Also, the War Powers Resolution does not give the president the power to commit our armed forces to combat overseas unless America or our military is attacked or under imminent threat of attack. Feeling sorry for people, justifiable as that pity may be, is not included.

While all this is going on the American left, especially the anti-war factions are deathly silent. No press conferences, no denunciations, no planned protest marches, not a damn peep.

This is the most sickening display yet of the fatuous, phony, hypocrisy that drives the alleged "anti-war movement." They crawl out from under their garbage pits when it suits their agenda, and are nowhere to be seen when it doesn’t suit them.

The American left has lost all credibility. They didn’t put up they shut up, and hopefully we won’t be hearing from these superficial, brain-dead, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals ever again.

The US military action against Libya, including preemptive strikes against a country that was not an imminent threat to us or our military, was launched under direct orders from President Barack Hussein Obama but was not approved by the United States Congress as is required by the Powers Resolution of 1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548).

The War Powers Resolution allows the president to send U.S. armed forces into action abroad only after authorized by Congress, or if the United States is already under attack or hostilities against us are imminent. Neither case applies in our ongoing actions against Libya which has been ruled for more than 40 years by madman dictator Muammar Qaddafi who has killed US citizens and well as his own people.

Despite his party's long-standing support for the War Powers Resolution Obama has told the media that he hosted a meeting of a small bi-partisan group from the Congress last week which supported military action against Libya, and that's pretty much all the authorization he needs.

His position was supported today on Fox News Sunday by South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said he didn't vote to authorize Obama to wage war using US forces, but he would if he was asked. Graham gave no indication that Obama would be required to seek retroactive authorization to go to war.

The act requires that Obama, who is vacationing in Brazil as US forces are under fire in a third military theater, officially notify Congress within 48 hours of the onset of hostilities – which gives him until Monday afternoon. The act doesn't say if the president who authorizes military action without Congressional support has to cut short his vacation to deliver the report in person, of if he can just phone it in.

Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who, like Graham, serves on the Senate Armed Services committee, said on Fox News Sunday that a vote of some members of the United Nations Security Council was all he needed to give his blessing to the action. At least two members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China, abstained from that vote, and Russia today voiced objections to the extent of the ongoing operation.

Interestingly, both senators said that Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi should be overthrown as a result of the US led military action, but Admiral Mike Mullen
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff said that is not our objective and that Qaddafi could well remain after hostilities are ceased. Mullen wasn't very clear as to what our objective actually is, and frankly was pretty evasive when Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace pressed him on the issue.

Obama's unilateral decision to go to war conflicts with the position taken by his predecessor, former President George Bush, who sought and obtained authorization by overwhelming votes of both houses of Congress before he initiated the successful military action against Iraq

Although the War on Libya was portrayed in recent weeks as an effort by an international coalition headed by Western European countries with Arab League approval to impose a non-fly zone so rebel forces attempting to unseat Qaddafi could have a better chance of success, it was revealed Sunday morning that the US is actually doing most of the fighting.

The US launched more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles from ships in the Mediterranean Sea Saturday night, aided by additional strikes from Great Britain. The US reportedly also sent Navy and Marine warplanes to bomb Libyan defenses and provide cover for US bombers, including the launch of three B-2 Stealth bombers that flew from a US Air Force base in Nebraska to hit Libyan targets.

Qaddafi responded on Libyan television by threatening both military and terrorist responses against all the countries that attacked him, and claimed that dozens of civilians were killed by the US air strikes. The Arab League now has backed off somewhat from its support for the US action, due to the claims of civilian deaths.

Nonetheless, one League member state, Qatar, is reportedly gearing up to send jet fighters into the fray. Qatar, a tiny emirate on the Persian Gulf, south of Saudi Arabia, has an air force of approximately 1,500 personnel with 12 French Mirage jets operated by the 7th Air Superiority Squadron, four of which will be diverted to fighting in Libya.

It was unclear to say the least exactly how long the Obama's War on Libya is supposed to last, or exactly what it is supposed to accomplish. News organizations have been remarkably unforthcoming on exactly who we are supporting or why.

Some reports claim that all the countries now seeing unrest in the former Ottoman Empire are under pressure to enact Democratic reforms, but many commentators also say the militant Muslim Brotherhood is behind the "spontaneous" demonstrations.

Also of interest, Obama said on television that he feels compelled to overthrown Qaddafi because he is shooting his own countrymen. But while the US has been assertive concerning the actions of some Arab countries where demonstrations and regime changes took place, including Egypt, virtually nothing was said when demonstrations that broke out in Saudi Arabia were met with gunfire and repression.

Also, Obama did not address whether the US would soon be attacking North Korea, China, Myanmar and dozens of other countries where the leaders kill their own people too.

There were some reports that members of his own Democratic party are unhappy with Obama's decision to circumvent the US Congress. However, although Obama appeared at a news conference in Brazil Sunday the media was notified in advance that he wouldn't be talking about the War on Libya.

A group of countries claiming to represent the United Nations - minus the United States of America - agreed today to send warplanes against Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, whose forces are on the verge of victory over rebel troops trying to overthrow him.

After diddling around for weeks, the UN, seeing that Qaddafi wasn't going to be defeated by his own people after all, decided in what easily can be a too little, too late effort, to impose a no fly zone over Libya.

The French already are in the air, so the news says, as are US Tomahawk missiles, and the British will soon be on the way. The problem with this scenario is that neither country has an air base nearby, so they are expected to use NATO bases in Italy.

Also, Spain has gotten in on this, as has Norway, and Canada, but none of these countries is on a war footing and have admitted it will take days, maybe longer to be adequately prepared for what is coming.

The logistics of neutralizing Qaddifi's air force - according to the news - appear to be hinged on the United States using its technology to eliminate Libya's air defenses.

What seems to be missing from this equation is any consideration for what Qaddafi might do in retaliation for other countries attacking his country. I don't like this guy. I sure as hell don't like the fact that he ordered the bombing of PanAm flight 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone on board and more people on the ground and frankly, back when Ronald Reagan was President I was hoping we were going to bomb him into oblivion.

But we didn't and after weeks of an uprising that seems to be coordinated with similar outbreaks in other North African and Arab countries, Libya's dictator is still in power and his forces have pushed the rebellion to the brink of defeat.

What exactly does this group of nations think it will do by imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, assuming that it can do so successfully? The news says there are at least 13 air bases in Libya, but the only country in the world with the capabilities of taking them out simultaneously is the United States and we don't have a dog - or a ship or a ground contingent - directly in this fight.

What if the few ships we have in the Mediterranean plus the limited European forces, can't completely eliminate Libya's ground defenses and its air force in the next 96-hours or so? They are not capable of taking out vast swatches of the Libyan countryside, nor is the relatively small number of Marines aboard them, although the Tomahawk missiles some of them carry can do damage to land targets.

But Qaddafi already knows the cruise missiles are coming. If he has any sense at all he already is taking precautions to spread his air force out and not leave all the jets, bombers and refuelers in one place where they would be more vulnerable.

More to the point, if history is any teacher regarding this guy, he is already planning to retaliate. The UN has declared war on him, but did anyone ask the citizens of Great Britain or France or Spain or Italy what they think of this idea?

Do the citizens of those countries know that the Libyan air force has Russian made TU-22R bombers that have a range of more than 3,000 miles and the distance from Tripoli to Marseille is about 835 miles? Get the picture?

If I was him, and I knew I was in for a beating from primarily European forces, I'd launch every flyable bomber in my force, loaded with every type of ordnance they can carry, and send them over the Mediterranean, under the radar, to hit any place they can reach in Italy, Spain and the French Riviera. And no, I am not giving this guy any ideas, he already has considered this and I guarantee you that right now he is weighing his options.

One of those options is bombing civilian targets in the Mediterranean countries that have attacked him. We are looking at this from our point of view, but you can bet he is looking at it only from his.

It has been nearly 7 decades since the cities of Western Europe were attacked and civilians were targeted in a conventional war - not to mention terror assaults. I am not insulting the capabilities of the brave men and women who are preparing to face Qaddifi's forces in the least, but what if their homes are attacked while they are away keeping Qaddifi's air force grounded? I am not sure their leaders have thought this through.

Qaddifi is a bad man in all respects, and Europe through NATO and the United Nations is agitating him. But they are in reach too, and he already has shown he has no qualms about killing innocents if he so pleases. This isn't taking place in the remote areas of Iraq or Afghanistan, this is taking place on Europe's back doorstep.

Somehow, I don't think the decision makers at the UN have fully considered this.

On October 11, 2008 in this column I noted that the previous day's 2100-point stock market swing represented purchases and sales of about two trillion dollars, a stunning amount, especially since the market fell more than 400 points – representing an estimated $500 billion – in the last 15 minutes of trading.

At that time I called on then-President Bush to loose the Pentagon's supercomputers on the stock exchange and trace this extraordinarily unusual activity back to its roots, because obviously, someone was trying to destroy the foundation of our nation's finances. I noted that it was impossible for either Mom and Pop investors or even institutional investors for that matter, to move the market that much that quickly.

I speculated that: this appears to be a coordinated assault on a level that requires entire nations, many of them, in concert with each other, to be participants, concluding that the best bet on who was behind this assault on capitalism was China in concert with Muslim nations that want to impose Stone-Age Shariah laws worldwide.

You can read it here: http://ronaldwinter.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html
Scroll down to the Oct. 11 entry.

Well, it turns out the Pentagon did just what I had suggested, (even if someone else suggested it) assigning independent investigator Kevin B. Freeman to the case. The report he issued in June 2009 – Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses, that only now is gaining wider publicity, should have us all down on Constitution Avenue with pitchforks and torches!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49755779/Economic-Warfare-Risks-and-Responses-by-Kevin-D-Freeman

The report has been around for two years, but a couple of weeks ago the Washington Times wrote about it, and Glen Beck did part of his show on it. The report's Executive Summary notes that the total global losses in wealth during the 2008 financial crisis amounted to $50 trillion! The report also notes that: At least $15 trillion of that loss was experienced by Americans, as measured by the combined declines in the value of stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets.

Although the report doesn’t specify exactly which countries did this, meaning, are at war with us, it did outline how this assault was planned and executed.

First, OPEC's oil producing countries artificially inflated the price of oil, up over $140 a barrel for a while, that poured trillions of dollars in excess profits into their coffers. The reports states that at a price of $125 per barrel: the value of OPEC oil in the ground (was) roughly$137 trillion, virtually equal to the value of all other world financial assets, including every share of stock, every bond, every private company, all government and corporate debt, and the entire world's bank deposits. That means that the proven OPEC reserves were valued at almost three times the total market capitalization of every company on the planet traded in all 27 global stock markets.

There has been significant discussion of how the price of oil got so high. Freeman addresses that debate thus:

Starting from a low in January 2007 near $50/barrel, oil prices began a steady and unrelenting rise to almost $150/barrel by June 2008. This virtual tripling of price occurred even as economic growth appeared to be leveling and drilling activity increased. At the time there was a serious debate between those who claimed speculation was the primary cause of higher prices and those who claimed they were caused by natural supply/demand forces. In hindsight, the largest increase in prices without a supply disruption in decades does appear to have been, at least in part, driven by speculation.

Once the funding was in place, the second phase of the attack, raids on American financial institutions, began.

Freeman states that: An initial bear raid against Bear Stearns was successful in forcing the firm to near bankruptcy. It was acquired by JP Morgan Chase and the systemic risk was averted briefly. Similar bear raids were conducted against various other firms during the summer, each ending in an acquisition. The attacks continued until the outright failure of Lehman Brothers in mid-September. This created a system-wide crisis, caused the collapse of the credit markets, and nearly collapsed the global financial system. The bear raids were perpetrated by naked short selling and manipulation of credit default swaps, both of which were virtually unregulated. …

He adds: While substantial, unusual trading activity can be identified, the source of the bear raids has not been traceable to date due to serious transparency gaps for hedge funds, trading pools, sponsored access, and sovereign wealth funds. What can be demonstrated, however, is that two relatively small broker dealers emerged virtually overnight to trade trillions of dollars worth of U.S. blue chip companies. They are the number one traders in all financial companies that collapsed or are now financially supported by the U.S. government. Trading by the firms has grown exponentially while the markets have lost trillions of dollars in value.

The Sovereign Wealth Funds mentioned in the paragraph above are of particular interest since they literally are financial portfolios managed by nations. I would bet that a deeper review of those funds, especially those that were involved in the massive trading activity of 2008 would give us more clues to the identities of our enemies. Also, two phrases pop out of Freeman's report in the section on who was behind this assault: Financial Jihad; and Shariah Compliant Finance. We should be very, very concerned about those phrases.

After leveling America's financial institutions Phase Three – devaluation of the dollar began. By then, we had a new president, Barack Hussein Obama, backed by a Democrat majority Congress who seem only too willing to help in this phase of the financial attack on America.

Giddy from the false glow of unrealistic expectations, the US Congress immediately, with malice aforethought, began to systematically devalue the dollar by passing unaffordable Obama Administration initiatives. Congress further indebted the country through nationalization of much of the US auto industry, and passing the massive, unread, nationalized health insurance law.

Two years into the Obama Administration the national budget deficit and the national debt have grown exponentially – I can use that term when we're talking trillions of dollars – and the dollar is shaky at best. The US debt continues to spiral out of sight thanks to Obama policies, the US Treasury continues to issue bonds to cover that debt, and thus the value of the dollar continues to slide.

So, it would appear that two co-conspirators in this economic war are the Democrats and some of their GOP lackeys in the US Congress, and the Obama Administration which continues to support policies that can only further weaken our economy and our country. Don't take my word for it, look for yourself.

The Arab world where Obama prostrated himself in an effort to ingratiate his administration with the Muslims is erupting in violence and instability. The price of oil once again is on the rise – even as the Fox Business Channel gleefully reports that it is down – but still over $100 a barrel, while defending oil speculators.

Efforts to fully develop alternative energy are sluggish at best and new drilling is still strongly discouraged. China is still manipulating our money, and is pushing us around on the international scene while Obama does nothing. Oh, not nothing, he takes vacations, goes golfing, plays basketball and issues his picks for the National Collegiate Athletic Association March tournament winners.

Look around. Oil is up, the stock market is once again experiencing volatility and wild swings – although not on the level of 2008 – and we must consider that once again we are under attack, or that Obama is getting a message. Either way we still are at the mercy of our enemies, and even though Freeman wrote this report two years ago his Executive Summary warning bears repeating:

Finally, there are legitimate questions about the performance of the regulatory regime and Wall Street institutions. Implications that these parties have been complicit or otherwise co-opted cannot be ruled out. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that this study and any task-force response be conducted outside of traditional Washington and Wall Street circles.

Pitchfork anyone?

The Friends of Fisher House in Connecticut have been joined by Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman in their effort to build Connecticut's first Fisher House on the grounds of the Veteran's Administration Medical Center in West Haven.

A press conference to formally acknowledge Gov. Wyman's support will be conducted Thursday, March 17, 2011 in the West Haven VA's Donaldson Education Center, Room A, located on the 2nd floor of Building 2, starting at 11 am.

The Fisher House project is a unique private-public partnership that builds and then donates "comfort homes," on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one during treatment for combat wounds or unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

Once discharged from active duty, a veteran may also live in a Fisher House while receiving outpatient treatment. There is at least one Fisher House at every major active duty military and VA medical center in America, except in Connecticut. However, patient density has now increased to such a point that Connecticut needs one as soon as possible.

Connecticut's Fisher House volunteers envision a facility that will provide free lodging for up to 20 families, and is expected to cost $6 million. The Friends of Fisher House in Connecticut must raise $3 million, which will be matched by national corporate sponsors. When completed the Fisher House will be donated to the VA.

"The brave men and women veterans who have sacrificed so much for our country deserve not only our gratitude and support when they are serving, but when they return home," Wyman said. "I can't think of a better way to show our support than by helping injured or ill veterans and their families through this wonderful project."

Joining Lt. Governor Wyman on the leadership council are; Attorney Kevin E. Creed, US Army (Ret) & Chairman of the Friends of Fisher House, Connecticut; Retired Appellant Court Judge Anne Dranginis; Retired United States Congressman Jim Maloney; Executive Senior VP of Studio & Event Production for ESPN Norby Williamson; Dr. Hilary Onyiuke, UCONN Medical Center; CPA John Bauer, Accounting Firm of Mahoney, Sabol & Company; Dr. Nicholas Blondin, Yale University; Darlene Clouther, Litchfield; Dr. Jeffrey Steckler, Orthopedic Surgeon, New Britain; Nicholas Creed, Litchfield; Sarah Lasher, Litchfield; Raelene D. Miller, Stratford; Gary Thomas, Knights of Columbus; and Tom Flowers, Milford. Many others are in support of this effort and the council is joined by the American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion Auxiliary, the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Connecticut Chapter of the Purple Heart.

The Friends of Fisher House Connecticut is registered with the IRS and the Secretary of State as a 501.c (3) non-profit organization. President Barack Obama donated the proceeds of his children's book and $250,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize to this cause.

For more information please visit www.fisherhousect.org

Please watch the video below and tell me if the two guys and one woman running this union "command post" could have resolved this issue in 30 seconds by simply saying, "Gee, I'm sorry. I am not a veteran and it just didn't occur to me how this would appear to those who have served, and the families and friends of those who died."

Then all they had to do was take their crap off the Wisconsin War Memorial.

But instead, they freakin' argue with a guy and his wife who point out how disrespectful they are being. Getting into a debate was not the right tack ... removing their crap from the memorial was the right tack.

This is just short of a 9 minute video and it is obvious there were breaks in the filming. But at the end, the junk is still pasted on the Wisconsin War Memorial to those who have died serving their state and country!

And the people who put it there continue to spew lip service, and lip, but no one took the 30 seconds necessary to rectify the situation. Speaking of which, how long have any of the 20-somethings featured in the video actually worked for anyone? They look like the social rejects I saw when I taught college, always seeming to be in the background of any demonstration, egging others on, but never in the classroom.

Inconsiderate, disrespectful, arrogant, pisant, twerps. And the public employees unions want mainstream America's respect and support? Show some to us first! Starting with the veterans, and especially those who died. Thanks to my friend and fellow Vietnam vet Larry Stimeling at http://thecesspoolofknowlege.blogspot.com/ for alerting me to this video.

From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli!

If Thomas Jefferson was any less of a man, or president, and did anything in 1803 other than stand up to the Barbary Pirates who were attacking American shipping for plunder and ransom we wouldn't have that line to the Marines Hymn would we?

Yet, in the evacuation of Libya this past week, including departures from the port city of Tripoli, America came off as the weakest, most insecure, whining, hand-wringing wimp on the entire international scene.

Where is the 6th Fleet - the massive US Naval presence that has reminded modern-day pirates and despots from one end of the Mediterranean to the other for decades that the resolution shown by our nation more than 200 years ago has not wavered?

Answer, it's gone. No carrier groups bristling with jet aircraft, missiles and big guns, no big cruisers, no helicopters, no landing craft, no battalions of Marines. Gone. Just a couple of small craft that can do little to enforce America's foreign policy objectives when attacked by a capable and determined aggressor.

Is our current foreign relations playbook the work of a Woody Allen wannabe suffering from a massive fit of depression? Can we be any more cloying, annoying, neurotic? Did you see the latest foreign relations debacle of the the Obama Administration?

Other nations sent in entire fleets of jumbo jets to evacuate thousands, and in the case of China, tens of thousands of their citizens lest they get caught up in the escalating internal violence between Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi and those seeking his overthrow. Great Britain sent a couple of warships to let The Leader know they could and would intervene if necessary; but our big tough State Department wimped out.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained that we didn't want to send warships because it might give the wrong message to Qaddafi, whatever that was! So Obama sent a ferryboat! A ferryboat for crying out loud!

And even after a grand total of about 600 Americans, representing most of our civilian presence there, were on board, the USS Rubber Duck sat at the dock for three days because a storm on the Mediterranean was too strong and it couldn't risk going to sea! Meanwhile, some 4,500 Chinese workers in two other ships did leave and despite the weather made it safely to Crete while Americans stayed in port, fighting off seasickness.

So why didn't we make a stronger statement to Qaddafi and the rest of the Arab world in general, considering that it is exploding in violence and rage?

Well, the once mighty 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean has a command structure that has been merged with other NATO forces, but generally all I can find on its capabilities is the USS Mount Whitney, a 40-year-old command vessel that arguably is really great on communications but not exactly what I'd pick to enforce American policies. I mean, it probably can listen in on Qaddafi's thoughts, but then what? It has only enough armament to defend itself until the big guys get there, but now there aren't any big guys.

I guess we could reassign ships from elsewhere, but that can takes days, even weeks, and it should be obvious that if we are called upon to do anything in the Mediterranean, it probably will be a "WE NEED YOU NOW" situation. So our options apparently are nonexistent.

How's that for a modern reminder of the determination that has kept our flag flying and trade routes open in that area for more than 200 years - world wars notwithstanding?

It probably was our absence from the Mediterranean that encouraged Iranian dictator Mamoud Ahmadinejad to send warships through the Suez Canal and along the coast of Israel last week. No chance of bumping into our Navy, it wasn't around.

Imagine how the career guys must feel after decades of going eyeball to eyeball with the big guns of the Russian fleet, now reduced to avoiding gunboats owned by crackpot extremists.

While the rest of the world was flexing its international muscles the US was sitting this one out complaining of a bad back. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. I thought I'd put a little historical perspective on this so I dug up the following records on our history with Africa's north coast.

From the Library of Congress, American Memory collection, The Thomas Jefferson Papers http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html :
"From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States.

Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean.

As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

Jefferson's battle with the Barbary pirates was not easy. It continued after his presidency, requiring two wars, the second one in 1815, to finally put an exclamation point on the US refusal to pay annual tribute and its distaste for ransom. Not everyone agreed with him, and as in any war, there were losses as well as victories.

But Jefferson's decision in 1803 to send naval forces, including Marines, to Tripoli was the starting point for more than two hundred years of historical precedence that apparently is now back to its starting point. We can only wonder why, because I haven't heard a thing out of any news organization in the world that explains our deterioration from a strong, reliable, world-class ally, to the sniveling Caspar Milquetoast image we now project.

Where is Thomas Jefferson when we need him? Where is Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick? Where are Truman, Eisenhower, Lincoln? Gone. All Gone. Along with America's prestige, pride and world presence.

You know what happens to the schoolyard wimps don't you? Sure you do. They become targets of the bullies. And there always are bullies. On the world stage bullies don't respond to peer mediation. They laugh at it and kick the crap out of the facilitators.

If experience is any teacher, America better get back into the gym.

The world of international yachting, to which I do NOT belong, is reacting with understandable shock and horror over the brutal slaying of four around-the-world sailors, two men and two women, by Somali pirates today.

The four were taken hostage as so many others have been, and like so many others were being held for ransom. A US Navy patrol boat was shadowing the pirates, but had taken no action, according to news reports, when the pirates suddenly launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the Navy, then gunfire erupted on board.

According to the Associated Press, Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, along with Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay of Seattle were taken hostage on Friday several hundred miles south of Oman. The Adams had been sailing around the world since December 2004 with a 58-foot yacht full of Bibles to distribute to remote regions, and they were joined by Riggle and Macay, who left Seattle about 10 months ago, the AP article stated.

Did you catch that little item about the Adams and their missionary work in the above paragraph? Why do you supposed they were slaughtered with no warning and no apparent reason? Because they were Christians sailing off the coast of a Muslim continent where slaughtering Christians is routine, for revenge, for fun, for sport, for control and for profit.

World governments, as in the Untied Nations - misspelling on purpose - have been sitting around wringing their hands for two decades over the atrocities occurring in Somalia and other African countries, but as usual, doing nothing for fear of offending the so easily offended Muslims in the areas.

Elsewhere I found that 14 - count them, fourteen - attempts to restore a central Somalian government have failed since 1991, and a 15th one is now floundering around impotently. The United Nations is throwing all its power and influence behind the administration of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in hopes of dampening the religious fervor creating so much havoc in Somalia and elsewhere around the world.

Ahmed is described by the fawners and sycophants in the UN and the mainstream media as "a moderate Islamist with widespread support inside and outside Somalia," but he is opposed by powerful pro-al Qaeda militant Islamists and he actually only has an office and a title because they let him.

In the light of today's tragedy, take a look at the video below pitting US Congressman Allen West against an Islamic propagandist.

I found the video at Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs website.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/02/allen-west-takes-on-cair.html

On You Tube it is titled CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) Confronts Allen West. Pamela retitled it Allen West Takes on CAIR: "Don't Try and Blow Sunshine Up My Butt!"

After watching the video I agree with Pamela's title. It is a far more accurate reflection of what really transpired.

Allen West is a man who deserves respects, he has EARNED it. I hope he runs for president someday.

And CAIR's propaganda should bring a tear to the eye of die hard communists and Nazis. Watch the video. Decide for yourself.