Minnesota had a .500 day in Ames, Iowa yesterday, with US Rep. Michelle Bachmann winning the straw poll, and that state's former Governor Tim Pawlenty coming in third, and ultimately dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Right on Bachmann's heals was Rep. Ron Paul, coming in second only 152 votes behind Bachmann, which I find troubling and hope doesn't indicate that he'll be a front runner going into next year's caucuses and primaries. I'll explain in a minute.

Pennsylvania's former Sen. Rick Santorum made a great showing, coming in fourth, which had him walking on clouds since he had made a big deal of being ignored by the national media and was considered to be way back in the pack. At least the GOP voters in Ames were listening to his message.

Similarly, right behind him in a shocking fifth place showing - for the media - was former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who no one is talking about today.

Herman Cain

But Cain is changing the face of the GOP presidential race, with a message directly from the business world where he has been an overwhelming success. Cain is showing the independent and disenchanted Democratic voters that not only do we have a diverse field of viable candidates, but that we are on the same page to a great degree with our opposition to the failed administration of the vacationing Barack Hussein Obama.

Now, just to get our bearings, we should take a second to review why the third-place finisher is dropping out of the race, while the fourth- and fifth-place finishers are celebrating. In a word - Expectations.

Gov. Pawlenty put a lot of time, money and personal appearances into the Ames Straw Poll, which in itself may not have been a really good move. Considering the amount of effort he put into Iowa, Pawlenty was expected to beat Michelle Bachmann. He didn't come close.

Now Pawlenty can't go back to his financial backers and show that people are listening to, and more important, responding to his message. He can't expect to raise much more money and that puts his candidacy to an end. In retrospect, did he really expect to do better than Michelle Bachmann who was born and raised in Iowa, and whose family counts among that state's earliest settlers?

Santorum and Cain, however, were not expected to place anywhere near the top and since both did they can both claim momentum, which can keep them going at least through January when the caucuses begin. Santorum and Cain both did well in the GOP debate last Thursday, both have a clear and convincing message and both can be formidable opponents for the so-called "top-tier" candidates.

Cain has made a point on numerous occasions that he still is working on building national name recognition and thus has a distinct disadvantage when compared to the rest of the field, all of whom have been in the political area for years. That his message is taking hold was evident, however, when Cain spoke to the Straw Poll attendees Saturday afternoon.

Cain promised that he would never remove the phrase "endowed by our creator" from the Declaration of Independence - as Barack Obama did in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute on Sept. 18, 2010. When Cain made that point the applause and cheers were overwhelming.

So, while Cain polled fifth overall, he still out-polled such GOP heavyweights as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; Texas Gov. Rick Perry who announced his candidacy at a stop in South Carolina about midway through the Straw Poll voting and received nearly 800 write-in votes; former Massachusetts Governor and acknowledged national front-runner Mitt Romney, and others.

That means people were listening to his message and responding to it. That means Cain will likely be in the race at least through the early caucus votes and that means GOP voters nationally will be seeing and hearing from a broad range of backgrounds and will have some real choices when the binding votes are cast.

As for Ron Paul, who nearly toppled Bachmann in her own home state, due I believe to a well established and fiercely loyal following that has been with him for years, he showed once again in his Saturday speech that he should not be president of the United States. He did this by saying one moment that he is a proponent of free trade, and the next that we should withdraw all US troops from all overseas posts and bring them back inside the US borders.

Besides coming across as rabidly isolationist, Mr. Paul claims to be the opposite of Obama, yet his foreign relations positions show him to more of a mirror image of the current president.

Free trade across the globe has been maintained since the first ancient navies floated wooden rafts on big ponds by the military forces that are necessary to keep the trade routes open. If Mr. Paul stopped to think about it for a minute he might remember the line "to the shores of Tripoli" from the Marine Hymn, referring to the Marines taking on the Barbary Pirates at the behest of Thomas Jefferson in 1803 and onward.

I would like to see our troops disengage in places like Libya where we are doing no good and getting nowhere and don't even appear to have a battle plan. But elsewhere such as Japan, Germany and South Korea, countries cited by Mr. Paul in his Saturday speech, we are there to insure that the trade routes stay open and previous histories of dominance by dictators and brutal regimes are not repeated.

Mr. Paul might get cheers and votes from anti-war supporters across the political spectrum, but they are not realistic, in fact I see them as hopelessly naive, and I don't see him going much further when real votes are taken.

The final votes at the Ames Straw Poll were: Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)- 4,823 votes
Ron Paul (R-Texas)- 4,671 votes; Tim Pawlenty - 2,293 votes; Rick Santorum (R-Pa.)- 1,657 votes; Herman Cain - 1,456 votes; Rick Perry - 718 votes; Mitt Romney - 567 votes; Newt Gingrich - 385 votes; Jon Huntsman - 69 votes; and Thad McCotter (R-Mich.) - 35 votes.

The Ames, Iowa Straw Poll is held only in years prior to the presidential election when there is not a GOP incumbent. Let's hope the next one isn't held until 2019.

Eight Republicans who want to be president of the United States met on the stage in Iowa last night in a debate hosted by FOX News and the Washington Examiner.

The Winner? FOX News and the Washington Examiner!

I say that because the debate was at times heated, humorous, informative, off the wall and certainly thought provoking. In short it was great live television, and even though there is some criticism that some candidates resorted as often as possible to talking points and campaign rhetoric, there was more than sufficient spontaneity to offset the prepared comments.

Among the night's luminaries were former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich who showed once again that his intellect is sharp and his grasp of national and international issues is wide-ranging; Ron Paul who showed that if he ever became president he would give Barack Obama a run for the title of worst ever; and Herman Cain who got far too little attention.

If there was a dead spot in the night, for me anyway, it was that the panel of questioners, who overall were excellent, focused too often on the pissing match between former Wisconsin governor Tim Pawlenty and current Wisconsin Representative Michelle Bachmann.

Both are intelligent, opinionated and knowledgeable, but I don't see either of them as a national front-runner despite the polls in Iowa, and I don't care what they think of each other. I don't care who did what or how they interpret it and encouraging their back and forth attacks only took time away from the other candidates.

I watched both of them on Fox News Sunday over the past couple of months and I decided a week ago that when the primary season comes around I definitely won't be voting for Pawlenty. I made this decision because after questioning from Chris Wallace - on FNS, not during the debate - Pawlenty commented that Bachmann's level of experience is similar to that of Barack Obama's, adding words to the effect that we have seen how that worked out and we don't need to repeat that mistake.

When Wallace then asked Pawlenty point blank if Michelle Bachmann is another Obama, Pawlenty ducked the question! All he had to say was "Yes" or "No."

Instead he responded like a typical politician, using a lot of words but saying nothing. Obviously, if he is going to compare Michelle Bachmann's voting record and experience level to Barack Obama's then he is saying the two are similar and thus she is not worthy of the presidency.

But to try and parse or spin his comments is just more obfuscation and we don't need that, do we?

I was very pleased to see that when Herman Cain had an opportunity to speak he not only was forthright about his positions and past statements - in addition to having real world knowledge of how business and the economy are supposed to work - he also has learned from past slips.

For instance, on a FNS show a few months back he was not well versed on the issue of the Palestinian claim to Right of Return in the more-than-a-half-century-old dispute over the land that now comprises Israel. Cain muffed that question on FNS but obviously went right out and studied up on it because he was far better prepared last night.

Cain also did not duck questions about his support of the residents of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who do not want a Muslim center in their community. A group of residents filed suit against Rutherford County in 2010 after the Regional Planning Commission gave the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro site plan approval for a 58,000-square-foot facility.

FOX questioners have made reference to Cain's position on this dispute several times, with the implication that his resistance is racially based and as a black man he should know better.

But Cain has articulated his position in-depth numerous times and repeatedly has made the point as he did in the debate that his opposition is not to the Muslim religion, but to the institution of Muslim Sharia law in ANY community in the United States of America. Sharia law is based on the tenets of the Muslim religion and is seen by many to be inconsistent - in areas such as equal rights for women - with modern society and legal principles.

Cain was well-versed on the Constitution noting that it does not prohibit the practice of religion, but has no room for people in any American community to establish their own laws that are different - in the case of Sharia, markedly so - from our Constitution.

Elsewhere, I have watched Ron Paul on many occasions and while he has some positions on national issues that I totally agree with, his grasp of international affairs leaves me shaking my head. It is one thing to say you don't agree with the deployment of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to say that Iran has good reason to want atomic weapons and that there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq are not supportable positions.

And to say kind things about Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who wants to destroy Israel and thinks that if the world ends in a massive explosion of heat and light he will wake up in an instant in his version of paradise - is flat out naive.

So, thanks but no thanks on Rep. Paul.

Probably the most controversial question of the evening came from panelist Byron York, political correspondent for the Examiner, who, quoting Michelle Bachmann in an interview she gave in 2006 saying she was "submissive" to her husband, asked if that would carry over to the White House if she is elected president.

The crowd booed York but I think it was a fair question especially since Bachmann said she and her husband define submissive as meaning "Respect." I looked up submissive, submit, submission and several variations of that word, especially seeking synonyms and found nothing that even came close to "respect."

Interesting. Maybe we should vet her husband.

Overall, it was a good night, and the candidates at least had an opportunity to showcase their beliefs and positions. Bret Baier was a perfect moderator, and York, Chris Wallace and Susan Ferrechio of the Examiner were both fair and incisive in their questioning.

My scores: New Gingrich, up; Herman Cain, up; Tim Pawlenty, down; Michelle Bachmann even; Rick Santorum, even; Jon Huntsman, down; Ron Paul, down; Mitt Romney, even.

The next big deal is the Ames straw poll tomorrow which is a non-binding popularity contest that really has no great weight or meaning beyond what the media gives it.

What we'll learn tomorrow is how successful the candidates have been at convincing the residents of Iowa that they would be a perfect choice for president. After that, there is a long wait for the caucus and primary votes where the race for the nomination picks up speed, and drops off the losers.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was all over the international news this week, calling out the United States as international parasites, and trying to impress a group of Young Communists by climbing a rock wall without a harness and attempting to bend a frying pan with his bare hands.


He didn't get the job done on the frying pan, but it seems as though he probably could score some points with young Russians who were born years after the jackboots of communist oppression were lifted off of their parents' necks. And lest we forget, those jackboots were put there to a major degree by Putin himself, when he was a big noise with the Russian Secret Police.

Putin is known for getting headlines, but it appears there is far more to his grandstanding this time than meets the eye; certainly more than the national or international media cares about.

Putin likes the world to see him as a strongman, not one of these American and European unweaned international metrosexual pusillanimous purveyors of pap who think the United Nations is the answer to humanity's ills. Putin is a stand-up guy, who, whether you agree with him or not, is right in your face if you disagree with him or are in the way of his intentions.

Also, even though the Soviet Union with its brutal repression of lands under Russian control has been dead for two decades, Putin still is capable of backing up his words with actions. Not like it was 25 years ago, but still formidable in many regards.

I've been told that lately those intentions include a renewed presence in Hanoi - yes Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, where it was the Russians who provided most of the support for the communist regime during the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese apparently still owe the Russians about $10 billion - which buys a lot more in Vietnam and Russia than it does here.

So the Russians are in Hanoi now, using diplomacy to get them where they really want to be - Cam Ranh Bay the massive deep water port that has extensive support facilities built and expanded by the United States in the 1960s.

After South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975, and after they crushed a rebellion of the South's rice farmers - the communists classify them as "peasants" - in 1977 when the farmers discovered what collectivization is really all about, and after they put hundreds of thousands of people into concentration camps where tens of thousands died, and after a million more fled on the South China Sea as boat people with about 300,000 never making it to shore, and after Cambodian communists went on murderous rampages that made the Vietnamese communists look like Boy Scouts, Russia and Vietnam signed a 25-year agreement that gave Russia extensive rights in the ports the US built.

The website Russian Defense Policy http://russiandefpolicy.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/return-to-cam-ranh/ states in a blog written last October that "According to Newsru.com and Vremya novostey, in 1979, Moscow and Hanoi signed a 25-year agreement by which the Soviet Pacific Fleet's 17th Squadron gained access to Cam Ranh. Vietnam allowed the Soviet Navy to base 10 surface ships, 8 submarines with a submarine support ship, and 6 auxiliaries at the port. The Soviets had POL storage, an ASW (anti-submarine warfare) and missile armaments base and technical service unit, a Naval Infantry sub-unit, and an air regiment at Cam Ranh.

The base was initially free, but Hanoi asked for $300 million in rent in 1998. In 2001, Moscow decided not to extend its agreement with Vietnam, and the last Russian elements departed Cam Ranh in mid-2002."

Now you probably are asking yourself what is prompting Russia to suddenly be taking an interest in Vietnam again. Actually, you should first be asking yourself why we, meaning the United States of America, also are taking a renewed interest in Vietnam.

For starters, there have been plenty of people in the US trying to renew relations with Vietnam - the communists that is - for decades, partly through trying to convince the American public to "get over" the war, all the while pushing the false claim that Vietnamese farmers, the Viet Cong, defeated the world's greatest military. But the American public is far more educated than the people who like to think of them as sheep are prepared to believe, and they know that the American military didn't lose a single major battle in Vietnam, the entire VC military was annihilated in 1968 and 1969, and that the northern communists were given a free hand to destroy the south by our own State Department and Congress.

So efforts to increase tourism and business opportunities have fallen short. I've been invited to go back several times in the last 10 years and really have no interest - until very recently.

AMERICAN LEADERS - OBAMA, KERRY

I don't want to visit the communist "Victory Museum" in Saigon where Jane Fonda and John Kerry are displayed prominently as Heroes of the Revolution. I also don't want to return to the scene of battles where we shellacked the communists only to read their self-serving propaganda on little plaques where they declare victories that they never enjoyed during the fighting.

RUSSIAN LEADER - VLADIMIR PUTION, ENOUGH SAID
That being said, we are expanding our diplomatic presence in Hanoi at the same time the Russians are, and we are once again locking horns with our old enemies - and depending on the point in history, our old friends - over the diplomatic tables. Why?

China.

Republican President Richard Nixon went to visit China in 1972, leading to the abandonment of Vietnam by the US Congress in 1973, and the fall of the democratic south to the communists in 1975. He was credited with "opening" China to the west.

Ever since, subsequent Democratic administrations in the US have been giving more and more business and secret technology to China, and worrying the hell out of our Pacific allies including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, not to mention the Russians.

jimmy carter renegotiated our long-standing agreements with Taiwan to appease China, even though Taiwan is the last bastion of a democratic Chinese government. Likewise, Bill and Hillary Clinton helped the Chinese get their hands on our rocket guidance technology by reclassifying secret circuitry as video game technology, at the same time our 99-year lease for bases in the Philippines lapsed thus denying us access to the massive Subic Bay naval facility, Clark Air Force base and others.

The Clintons' largess led to generational jumps in Chinese rocketry and satellite capabilities, and since then they also have acquired our sonar technology and our stealth technology, including samples of the paint used on the Black Hawk stealth helicopter that went down in Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan when the Al Qaeda leader was killed by US Navy Seals.

A friend who studies the region told me about 20 years ago that major world powers were ignoring China's advancement in its naval forces, which was not considered a smart move. Since then Democratic administrations have gone out of their way to help the Chinese while simultaneously weakening the US.

The alignment of forces in the Pacific and Southeast Asia can be easily figured out if you take an objective look at what happened there after the democratic governments in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell to the communists after they were abandoned by the US in 1975. In all three countries the communists went on a rampage of reprisals, slaughtering millions of civilians from the very young to the very old, while imprisoning and enslaving millions more.

As bad as things were in Laos and Vietnam, they were much worse in Cambodia where the communist Khmer Rouge forces went on a four-year orgy of murder, rape and torture. At least 2 million Cambodians, nearly half the country's population, and probably many more, were slaughtered.

In fact, the "excesses" of the Khmer Rouge which were hidden from public view by a compliant media, eventually became too widely known and were seen as an embarrassment to "moderate" communist regimes worldwide. The situation became so egregious that Vietnam's communists ultimately invaded Cambodia's communists in an effort to stop the slaughter before everyone was dead.

In that conflict the Vietnamese were backed by the Russians who had backed them during the war with the United States, but China jumped in and helped out the Cambodians. China even launched an invasion of North Vietnam's border provinces to draw some of the Vietnamese forces away from the war in Cambodia.

Ultimately the Vietnamese communists prevailed over the Cambodian communists and the slaughter and torture were brought back to "acceptable" levels. But in that region, the Vietnamese still hate the Chinese, and even though the Russians were seen as humorless cheapskates, they still are considered an ally.

To add to the chaos, the world now has a fawning US president who bows to Muslim terrorists, and kisses the asses of Chinese officials at every opportunity - remember he made the Dalai Lama use the trash entrance at the White House so as not to offend the Chinese who are systematically eliminating the people and culture of Tibet and Nepal.

Barack Obama has shown by his own actions and those of his bureaucrats, cabinet members and advisers that he believes the US should be relegated to a third-world trash heap for having the audacity to emerge as the leader of the planet, and he obviously is quite content to let China take over and dictate our future.

But, President Obama notwithstanding, the United States still has people who believe we can regain our world status with appropriate leadership in Congress and the White House, and even the hand-wringers realize that there has to be some kind of counterbalance to an unbridled Chinese presence in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Use of the deep-water ports in Cam Ranh Bay and DaNang - also housing US built facilities - is key to an economically viable deployment of naval forces in the area.

We know this and Vladimir Putin knows this. And as much as Putin hates the US, you can bet he hates the Chinese more.

That point wasn't expounded on to a great degree but this segment from the Russia Defense Policy website does give the briefest of hints to the thinking of at least some Russian military and political leaders:

"Izvestiya quotes independent military analyst Aleksandr Khramchikhin:

"Theoretically, I welcome the reestablishment of a Navy base at Cam Ranh. For Russia, it is a very composite and most useful facility abroad. Without it, the operations of the Pacific Fleet are impeded. Also very little remains of the Pacific Fleet. This fact, however, doesn’t change the usefulness of the base at Cam Ranh. Such a step could, of course, create certain foreign policy difficulties for Russia. I suppose the U.S. and China will express dissatisfaction, but this will hardly have any real effect. As concerns Vietnam, it would pay to view it as our most important ally. Russia largely cast it aside after the collapse of the USSR. This was a gross mistake worth correcting."

It's worth recalling Khramchikhin may view Vietnam through a slightly Sinophobic prism."

That last line speaks volumes. Slightly Sinophobic. I bet.

So, we saw Mr. Putin take the international stage once again, but don't dismiss his presence as theatrics. He was making a point. Obama was probably out golfing or sneaking a smoke behind his wife's back, and I doubt he cares in the least what Putin is doing.

But there are plenty of Americans who are paying attention, and they should be.

Note to my Russian readers: Yes I know you read my blogs. And not just from Moscow either. Please pass this message on to Mr. Putin: If you want to do strongman tricks it pays to practice in private before you fail in public. There are techniques to all of these tricks.

Yes you have to be strong, but you also have to know the technique. Hint: heat the frying pan before you try to bend it. Not to the point of cooking your hands hot, but beyond room temp. Metal tends to bend more easily at higher temperatures.

You're welcome.

Did you ever see the Harrison Ford Movie Clear and Present Danger - from the Tom Clancy book of the same name - where Ford, playing fictional National Security Advisor Jack Ryan catches the president of the US running an illegal anti-drug operation in South America?

When he confronts the president Ford's character says "It gives me no pleasure to do it, sir. As acting deputy director of intelligence, it is my duty to report this matter to the Senate oversight committee."

The president replies, "You're not going to do that. ... No, no. You've got yourself a chip in the big game now. You're gonna tuck that away, you are going to save that for a time when your own ass is on the line and then you're gonna pull it out. And I'm going to cash it in for you. Right? But it won't go any further than that. It's the ol' Potomac two-step, Jack."

Jack Ryan responds, "I'm sorry, Mr. President, I don't dance."

Much the same scenario is playing out before the nation's eyes in Washington, D.C., as so-called Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives are throwing a major monkey wrench into the well-scripted nonsense being offered to the American public by both the Congress and the Obama Administration.

Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, called on Republicans in the House of Representatives to pass a measure being put forth by House Majority Leader John Boehner, supposedly his sworn political and philosophical opponent, which is opposed by sufficient House Republicans to block it.

Saying Boehner's plan is a good deal, which in itself makes me suspicious, Reid added, "Put those chips in your pocket and walk away."

Reid's comments were part of a well orchestrated effort by the Obama Administration to force the newly elected GOP representatives to forget who put them in office and why. Both GOP and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are reminding these representatives on an hourly basis that their future Congressional assignments are on the line if they don't kowtow to the long-established D.C. insiders.

Interestingly, in the midst of all the talk that the country will go into default and shut down come Tuesday if the GOP reps don't roll over and betray the voters who elected them, Obama now admits that may not be exactly true.

Obama has been saying for weeks that if he doesn't get his way right now, the country will go into default and we won't be able to pay our bills. But as of this morning's address to the nation at roughly 10:39 a.m., Mr. Obama changed his tune, I guess after so many financial experts said he was wrong.

Now Obama says we DO have the money to pay our bills, "but we don't have a triple-A political system. The time to put party first is over."

I don't see this as a party issue. I see this as an issue of principle. And the only principle I am seeing is coming from the Tea Party Republicans who are bucking the pressure from the media, the White House, the Senate and even their own party leaders in the House of Representatives.

South Carolina Republican representative Tim Scott told Fox News this morning that "we have to save this nation from financial ruin."

Tim Scott R-SC

Rep. Scott is the kind of upcoming Congressional leader we need. He is part of the Tea Party movement, he was elected by the people of his community, district and state to represent them and act in accordance with their wishes. He is doing what he should be doing, and he is standing strong and tall.

The national GOP needs a lot more people like Tim Scott and a lot less like John Boehner and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But President Obama says he wants this issue resolved, and on his terms and his terms alone. If the Congress doesn't submit to his dictatorial decrees, "Some kind of enforcement mechanism" must be enacted to force Congress to act on his preferred deficit spending plan, he said today.

I said it the other day and I'll say it again. We are on extremely dangerous ground here.

The President of the United States is threatening Congress because some of its members are doing the job they were elected to do. He is acting like a budding dictator and he is not only threatening Congress, he is threatening to continue running amok over the US Constitution.

OK, let's fix that. Mr. President step down for the good of the country.

Interestingly, Clancy addressed this issue in his book, so I'll let Clear and Present Danger speak once again.

James Earl Jones, playing Admiral Greer, says to Harrison Ford, "You took an oath, if you recall, when you first came to work for me. And I don't mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States, I mean to his boss, and I don't mean the President. You gave your word to his boss, you gave your word to the people of the United States. Your word is who you are."

The American economy is headed straight for a black hole of debt from which, at some point, it will be impossible to emerge. We can either put the brakes on right now, or sentence our offspring to an uncertain world of darkness and pain.

Hang tough Tea Party Republicans. The American people, your bosses, are watching you closely, to see who you are, and whether you are people of your word.

I first published this column at the consumer website CTWatchdog.com and it appears here in a slightly longer form. The origins of my interest in politics and the military are touched on. The part about ESP is incredible and leaves me with questions, but no answers. Perhaps you have some.

When I was growing up I was very fortunate to have some of the best uncles a boy could ask for. On my dad's side were my uncles Bill and Chuck, and on my mother's side were my uncles Bob, Vic and Floyd. My aunts were gems too, and as I look back I realize I was very fortunate when it came to relatives.

I saw my maternal uncles and aunts all the time because we lived close to each other in upstate New York. Dad's sisters and their families lived in the New York City area and I saw them less frequently, but the visits were always great times nonetheless.

Last week, the last of my uncles, Mom's older brother Victor Brimmer, who was closest to her in age and a staunch ally in her fights against my siblings and their children who tried to force her into an Alzheimer's home, died at the age of 97. (I expounded on mom's fight in my book Granny Snatching, and write about elder abuse in my CTWatchdog columns.) Uncle Vic had been in declining health for some time, and had developed pneumonia which in the end he just couldn’t beat.

I have decided not to tell Mom of Uncle Vic's death for the time being. There is nothing she can do about it and considering the mental blows she has taken due to these family attacks I am sure it would do more harm than good. They remained very close over the years and she called him regularly after she moved to Connecticut, so I will have to break the news eventually; just not now.

In addition to his support for Mom, my memories of Uncle Vic represent some of the best times of my younger days. He lived in Grafton, which is on the way from Albany to the intersection of Vermont, Massachusetts and New York states, for more than 60 years, on a vast tract of land that at one time encompassed some 300 acres, mostly wooded, although there also were fields that he rented to local farmers for haying.

Vic and his first wife, my late aunt Mill, both loved to ride horses; he had ridden on his parents' farm in Center Brunswick, New York, and a picture of Mill riding when she was a young woman still exists. Vic was a founding member of the Grafton Trail Riders Club.

He had barns, horses that they had rescued from a rodeo circuit – Gringo, a paint, Poncho a dark brown horse of indeterminate breed, and Chiquita a grey. Of the three only Gringo was ridden with any regularity and Vic for a while was an easily recognized figure riding Gringo in Grafton's annual July 4th parade.

But one year Vic had gone a long time between training rides with Gringo, and the horse was not up to his usual pleasant manners. As Vic told it, he led the parade with Gringo walking on his hind feet, and after that year, Vic and Gringo were "uninvited."

But the horses nonetheless were friendly in their own more familiar surroundings and I often fed them sliced apples or carrots and occasional sugar cubes. The barns were across a dirt road from the house, and once past the fences and into the pasture there were innumerable diversions for children of that time.



There was an old wagon road leading down to the "crick" in the upstate New York Dutch parlance – creek to everyone else – and along the way there were huge boulders to climb, an old tack house to explore, and upon arrival at the crick a swimming hole that my family helped Vic create by both digging it out and damming the stream with the plentiful rocks. (We could never do that today.)

Further downstream there were waterfalls and in years when there was an extended snowmelt you could stand underneath them and receive a cooling, sometimes ice cold, shower, even in mid-summer. If you crossed the crick below the waterfalls you would emerge into a sort of primeval forest, where huge hemlocks kept the air cool and decades of needles dropping on the forest floor kept it soft and spongy.

I spent several very special weeks as the guest of my aunt and uncle over the years when I was a teen, and walks through the woods and pastures, in summer and snowbound winters, were favorite activities.

My family went to visit them quite often, and a fireplace and picnic table that nestled up to a large boulder in one of the pastures marked the gathering place for July 4th family picnics. Thanksgivings also were a favorite time in which the extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, boyfriends and girlfriends could easily swell the size of the dinner party to 30 or so.

Mom and Dad visited them on weekends quite frequently, usually on Sunday afternoons after church. Those were some spectacular times, as Vic and my father, with Mill and my mother chiming in when they could, completely ignored the sage advice to avoid talks of politics and religion.

Dad would usually stop on the way to their house and pick up a few quarts of Fitzgerald's beer, a local brew from Troy, New York that is long gone but was quite good. The "discussions" I remember best go back to 1960 and the Nixon/Kennedy election, and again in 1964 when it was Johnson vs. Goldwater.

As I recall one side said Goldwater would drop the A-bomb on the communists, and the other side said he should. I forget who took which side.

Vic and Mill loved to hunt and fish and the area was crawling with game. Further up the old wagon road, heading into the woods a beaver family once built its own dam creating another pond. Deer were seen regularly, and once Aunt Mill found herself picking wild blueberries on the other side of a huge bush from a black bear!

They raised Springer Spaniels for many years, and even rabbits for a while. In his middle ages Vic gave up hunting – he had been an expert with shotgun, rifle and a beautiful recurved bone bow – and took up wildlife photography instead.

Vic had trained as a dental technician and was a member of the American Dental Association. He worked with a firm in Albany and then started his own firm, but he didn’t like city life and eventually moved his business to his house in Grafton.

Vic was a trailblazer in terms of running his home-based business. He built a lab in his basement, where he did gold inlays for false teeth, receiving the molds by mail and shipping them out the same way when he was finished. I always marveled at that facet of his life because when he wanted a break he could walk outdoors and ride the horses or go fishing if he so desired - but he still got paid!

As a youth working on my grandfather's farm Vic and my mother often teamed up, due to them being the youngest of the four children, and my mother's ability to drive teams of horses and help out with the haying and other farm work. Vic had incredible hand strength, probably due to milking a herd of dairy cows by hand twice a day for years, and when in high school he could bend a 10-penny nail into a horseshoe shape.

When he was old enough to drive the farm truck he started taking the raw milk to the processor in nearby Cropseyville each day, sneaking a smoke from cigars he hid in the truck. He allowed Mom to ride with him as long as she didn't squeal and she never did.

In the mid-80s my Aunt Mill died and Vic was a lonesome guy for quite some time. But he had always loved to dance – he and Aunt Mill even transformed one of the unused barns into a dance hall named the Oxbow Ranch which they ran for a few years, and the place was jammed on weekends.

I will never forget my uncle sitting in with the band one night in the mid-50s, singing a commercial song from the Save the Baby cough linament. He forgot the lyrics, as did everyone else, but it didn't matter. The band knew the chords, the joint was jumping and everyone was cheering as Vic did the chorus over and over. What a hoot. That man was at least two generations ahead of the karaoke craze!

Vic's property was about a half-mile up a dirt road from State Route 2 that winds its way through eastern New York and he had placed a sign at the bottom of the hill advertising the Oxbow Ranch and that breakfast and lunch were served. One of Mom's favorite stories concerned the summer morning when a carload of New York City tourists pulled in and ordered a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon.

Vic was not much of a cook and while he handled the coffee, toast and bacon, he didn't know how to make the scrambled eggs - Aunt Mill was out - and he had to call Mom for directions! But Mom knew her way around the kitchen, both at our house and at the Oxbow Ranch, and it all ended well, with the tourists complimenting Vic on his cooking skills.

It took Vic quite some time to get over the loss of Aunt Mill, but eventually he started getting out again, and he met his second wife Joyce, who shared his love of dancing, and antiques. They married in 1998 and she was with him until the end both as companion and caregiver.

I took Mom to Grafton one last time in 2009, about a year after she moved in with us, and they had a great visit. It was then that I told Uncle Vic how his firearms training when I was a teen helped me when I was a Marine helicopter gunner in Vietnam.

Victor Brimmer and Ella Winter 2009

The Marines taught proper firearms handling and precise target shooting at Parris Island when I was a recruit, then added the concept of "battle sights" when we later took the required infantry training. Battle sights amount to pointing your firearms directly into the enemy's center mass without too much regard for what part of the body you hit as long as you hit something and the enemy goes down.

But Uncle Vic who also had taught me firearm safety and the proper shooting positions, had a similar tactic called "snap shooting," which amounted to the same thing done quickly. I told him that snap shooting worked very well for me as a machine gunner, especially when it was clear that no friendly troops were in the field of fire.

Uncle Vic's face lit up like a Christmas tree when I told him that. We hadn't talked much about Vietnam but the knowledge that what he taught me all those years ago helped me out in combat was obviously of great comfort to him. I'm glad I told him.

Vic's life ended peacefully; he died in his sleep, shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday July 21, 2011. But there is one more item to share.

On the last day he was alive, Mom was in an unusually agitated state. The next day Mom was quiet, even introspective and spent much of the day just watching her television. It was that night, Friday, that Joyce called with the news that Vic had died the night before. I decided to say nothing about it for the time being, so as not to upset Mom.

The next morning, Mom awoke and her very first words were about funerals and graveyards! She was dredging up memories from 70 years ago and more, all about death.

Then, she called to my wife, asking her to come to the kitchen where Mom was reading her daily newspaper. The table where she sits looks out on a wide deck that is adorned with annual flowers that she and my wife planted in the spring. Hummingbirds and butterflies come to the flowers and if it is raining or too hot she still can see them.

Access is by a six-foot wide slider. When my wife entered the kitchen Mom said, "Vic was at the slider, can you let him in?" My wife was in shock and to be certain of what she heard, asked Mom, "Are you talking about your brother, Vic?"

Mom answered in the affirmative, adding that he had approached the slider, stood looking at her for a long moment, and then slowly turned and walked away. I swear to you this is true, and I have no explanation for it.

I told Joyce and she said "I believe Vic was helping her," trying to set Mom's mind at ease. Mom's vision also gave Joyce great comfort concerning the death of her husband, she said.

I don't know what all this means, but maybe some readers have some insight that I lack and can share it with us.

For the moment, I’d like to leave you with a line from the Garrison Keillor movie, Prairie Home Companion, in which actress Virginia Madsen, states, "The death of an elderly man is not a tragedy."

Uncle Vic lived a long and productive life, he saw triumphs and tragedies, and the one thing that saddens me the most is that he never had children and thus his line of the Brimmer family has come to an end. Still, his life was rich and fulfilling, and his death is more a normal part of living than tragic.

But he will still be missed.

Occasionally in this column I give Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace a hard time. If I do, it's because I believe he deserves it, mainly because I think he crossed the "fair and balanced" line or he let someone off the hook who should have been pressed harder.

Sunday, though, Wallace did a great job on an intense interview with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and if I am going to give Wallace a hard time on occasion, then at least he should hear the good side too.

(I have a very personal quirk about journalists who cover politics and the military. It comes from being a journalist and before that an active Marine serving as a helicopter machine gunner in Vietnam. I, and many, many others believe that since we won all the battles in Vietnam and at least twice pushed the communists to the brink of surrender, the communists' ultimate victory over the South Vietnamese, and their subsequent murderous rampage through much of Southeast Asia slaughtering millions who didn't agree with them is the direct responsibility of the media and politicians. Thus my insistence we keep politicians' feet to the fire and journalists do their job right!)

Geithner was on FNS supposedly to explain how the Obama Administration is working so hard, in a non-partisan, politically objective fashion to resolve its major differences with Congress over the fact that our country is rushing headlong into an abyss of fiscal insolvency.

Obama, who seems more and more like the Paris Hilton of politics, wants the government to extend his line of credit by a few more trillion. (It is easier to swallow if you don't say thousands of billions or hundreds of millions of millions.) The Republican led House of Representatives is saying no, and the Democratic led Senate is not exactly backing Obama either.

Republicans are opposed to giving him any more credit unless he agrees to cut trillions from his spending sprees which Obama doesn't agree with, so we are at an impasse with an artificially imposed deadline looming, at which time we supposedly will default as a nation. We won't, but it certainly gives an air of uncertainty and intensity to the situation.

Anyway, in his supposedly non-partisan blathering Geithner repeatedly blamed the entire fiscal mess on the GOP – again – even though it was Democrats who engineered the housing collapse which is one of the major facets of the current fiscal embarrassment – not that the GOP is squeaky clean. If that was a non-partisan appearance I'd hate to see this guy if he was put in charge of Obama's dirty campaign tricks.

What Geithner said he really wanted was to "take default off the table until after the election," in 2012. That's because virtually everyone in the Obama Administration considers the bulk of the American people to be mindless sheep who will forget all this by the next presidential election 15 months from now, if it temporarily goes away now.

Just like we'll forget waging war in Libya without Congressional approval, refusing to salute the flag, a phony birth certificate, withdrawing prematurely from Afghanistan, nationalizing the auto industry, the gross excesses of Obama Care, etc., etc., and etc. We won't, but the administration doesn't believe that.

So Obama believes that if the default option is off the table we all will go back to sleep, mindlessly vote him in again next year, and we'll wake up on Inauguration Day 2013 and suddenly realize to our dismay that we are really screwed.

Once he gets the temporary increase in his credit limit, without any restrictions on his spending spree habits, Geithner said, Obama then wants to impose "A framework of tough reforms that forces Congress to act."

Is this guy serious? Congress is acting, Tim; they are just refusing to give in on your boss' demands that he gets what he wants when he wants it without any lip – or checks and balances – from the other branches of government.

Wallace pressed Geithner and pressed him hard on these points – maybe Fox has it on podcast somewhere so you can see it. But Geithner just went on about completely revamping the US government's fiscal controls, which means giving all power to the executive branch and making the Congress a rubber-stamp body with no control even over a spending addict. (Can you imagine Obama and Hilton out shopping together?)

This is seriously dangerous territory folks. I even heard a "pundit" on Fox Business early in the afternoon segment today saying essentially the same thing. This is seriously, seriously dangerous territory.

The reason we have an impasse at the moment is because our system of government that has been in existence since 1789, is working! Our founding fathers knew what happened when one person - say a dictator or a king - was in control of everything and everyone, that's why they fought the American Revolution.

And when they finally enacted the Constitution, which is the one we still exist under, they deliberately wrote in a series of checks and balances so we wouldn't wake up one morning under control of a dictator. Yet that is exactly what I heard from Timothy Geithner yesterday; the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury laying the groundwork for the destruction of our form of government, in favor of a dictatorial format.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm not buying into this nonsense. I think there are enough Democrats in Congress who are not far-left ideologues to stand up for our Constitution and get a better figurehead for their party than this closet communist who has delusions of grandeur.

Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. What a joke. His job should be retitled as Minister of Obama Propaganda.

It's official! Past President George W. Bush is no longer the whipping boy for the Democratic Party's point-the-finger-at-someone-else-blame-game for the dismal state of the economy, foreign relations, national defense and especially the massive multi-trillion dollar budget deficit.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Maryland Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen who is as much responsible for the dismal state of national affairs as anyone else, told Chris Wallace that the American people "can NOT choose to not pay the bills that THEY incurred."

What? Aside from the arrogance of that statement, not to mention the double negative, we have a president who has not come up with a single good idea for running the country. Our president can't prove who he was, who he is, or even where he was for a good portion of his pre-presidential life.

He has spent more money unsuccessfully bombing Libya to boost his "war-time president image" than it would cost to operate all the nation's military music organizations for an entire year, and in the context of this issue has increased the national debt beyond all federal debt accrued in the first 204 years of the nation’s history.

But Van Hollen says WE are to blame?

This mindless lemming - Van Hollen - is now blaming the American public for the reprehensible actions of an out-of-control federal government! Did he clear that with Barack Obama first?

Is this now the official line of the Democratic Party? That the American voting public is responsible for the actions of Congress and the Obama Administration? Is this a sick takeoff on that line from the movie Animal House? "Face it America, you screwed up! You elected us!"

What was amazing about this incredible change in Congressional direction, insofar as blaming anyone else for the failed policies of the Obama Administration, is that Wallace let it go without comment!

Van Hollen is the kind of guest on the Sunday morning talk shows who gives me the impetus to watch Holmes Inspection on the Home and Garden Channel even if I've already seen the episode. But I stayed tuned to Fox News Sunday yesterday because I wanted to see Herman Cain, who appeared after Van Hollen, and I'm glad I did.

Cain is a good man, and frankly I think he's a viable presidential candidate. He tripped up a little when he appeared on FNS earlier this year - he wasn't exactly sure what the Palestinian claim to Right of Return was all about in the continuing strife between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, but that is not a disqualifier in my opinion.

But on Sunday Cain did remarkably well, even though Wallace did everything he could to convince Cain to drop out of the race for the GOP nomination if he doesn't do well in the upcoming Iowa Straw Poll. Wallace kept referring to Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann's strong position in a number of polls leading up to the Iowa Straw Poll as the reason why Cain should drop out.

Guess which GOP presidential aspirant won the last Iowa Straw Poll? Mitt Romney! Guess where he ended up after the dust settled? Out of the race. He not only is not president, he wasn't even the ultimate GOP nominee.

The Iowa Straw Poll is a great place for candidates to get some national attention in the summer doldrums, but it hardly can be used as a national indicator of who is the best candidate. The straw poll precedes the Iowa Caucus which is held in January.

Know who won the 2008 GOP caucus in Iowa? Mike Huckabee. He out-polled Romney who only five months earlier was the darling of the Straw Poll. Oh, and Huckabee isn't president either, and he also was not the GOP nominee in 2008. In fact, the ultimate GOP nominee, John McCain, who isn't president either, didn't even participate in the Iowa Straw Poll last time.

I was somewhat curious about Wallace's insistence that Cain drop out of if he isn't at least a third-place finisher in the Iowa Straw Poll, especially since he ignored all the other candidates in the race for the GOP nomination and focused on Bachmann.

Now, I like her too, but this is way too early for me to be deciding who will get my vote although I can tell you, I'd rather go with one of the newer candidates, maybe Cain if he can hang in there, than any of the so-called "establishment" candidates. The establishment isn't doing very well for us, in either party, and I believe some fresh blood, new ideas and an absence of hidden ties to power brokers is the way to really get America out of this mess we're in.

I also noticed something else about Bachmann in the past couple of weeks that is worthy of comment. She has flubbed the answers on a couple of issues, showing that even though she currently holds office that doesn't make her perfect either.

Know what the media did when she goofed? Nothing. They gave her a pass. Know what that means? The mainstream media wants Bachmann to be the GOP candidate, probably so they can pull these errors and a bunch of other issues out of the closet at the appropriate time and use them to boost Obama over her.

Can you imagine what would happen to Sarah Palin if she erred in public? Hell, the media goes after her even when she's right, such as the Paul Revere issue where she proved that she knows her American history and the media only knows what it rewrites.

But for Bachmann, silence.

Go ahead call me a conspiracy theorist. That doesn't mean there aren't conspiracies. It only takes two people to conspire you know - and that's the law, not opinion.

Herman Cain wasn't the least bit flustered by Wallace yesterday, which means I'll keep watching and waiting, and hoping that maybe by the time we get to primary votes in my state, he will be a strong option.

There was one other segment of FNS yesterday that is worthy of comment because it too involved a commentator who didn't get flustered.

The second half-hour of the show is given over largely to a panel discussion of the current issues, which I used to like a lot, especially when Brit Hume was on every week because he was a great counter-point to the liberal Juan Williams.

Hume wasn't there Sunday, but Williams was, and so was another liberal, John Podesta. Opposing them was Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president. I like Liz Cheney, both for her extensive knowledge of government and world issues, and her toughness.

During the discussion Liz was making a point on Obama's budget deficits and the federal debt, and a good one too, when both Podesta and Williams who flanked her at the table, jumped ugly all over her, a decibel or so just below shouting at her. In the live version of the show it went on for at least 10 seconds, maybe 15, but she never wavered. (In the taped version of the show show in mid-afternoon and early evening the confrontation appeared to have been edited down to only a few seconds, but in the original morning version, it went on longer.)

In a classic display of the way liberal men really view women, they not only tried to beat up on her, it took two of them to do it ... and she kicked their asses. Wallace ultimately stepped in to shut them down and let her speak, but frankly, he wasn't needed.

So kudos to Liz Cheney for standing her ground and taking it right back to Podesta and Williams, and shame on them for both their approach, their lack of knowledge and their attempts to bully a woman to cover up their weaknesses. Finally congratulations to former President George W. Bush for finally shaking the "it's his fault" monkey off his back.

Want to see one reason why our country is so deep in debt? Take a minute and watch the video below. Warning: it will probably make you angry.

If you haven’t seen the movie Office Space stop what you are doing and go watch it right now!

Especially take note of the restaurant manager who constantly berates Jennifer Aniston for wearing only "the bare minimum" of flair – little magnet-like pins with cool logos and witty sayings that are supposed to go on her waitress uniform to show she is a fun person.

"But I thought you wanted 15 pieces of flair" her character says. "Well that's fine, if you are the kind of person who is satisfied doing the bare minimum," he retorts. Then he refers her to a bubbly little pain in the ass of a wait-guy who has 37 pieces of flair on his uniform which apparently is supposed to mean he is lots more fun than Aniston's character.

Well, not to me but let's not go there.

Aniston ends up flipping off her boss and quitting the job. Good move that makes a good movie even better.

Now, back to reality. President Barack Obama held a news conference on the debt and budget crises today – he ignored the news about China hacking the Pentagon computers and stealing our stealth aircraft technology – and twice he used the "bare minimum" argument for why he should ignore Republicans' alternatives to his plan.

"If you just want to do the bare minimum." What a tremendous orator, communicator and all around good guy. I bet in a fit of fiscal restraint he fired his high priced White House speech writers and started watching cult flicks instead to get a cheap supply of great one-liners. Our President.

Karl Rove the GOP strategist and former Bush Administration power player decimated Obama's arguments on the Fox Business Channel right after the President went back to the Oval Office to plot out his next golf game. But I couldn't get Office Space out of my mind.

I mean, here is a guy who wants the world to think he is a devout Muslim without ever going to the local mosque, or a devout Christian without ever going to church, but in reality is a communist who wants to destroy the foundation of American wealth by replacing corporations with government.

Communists have to attack corporations because in reality their economic model was formed in the days of aristocracies and monarchies which pretty much died a natural death a century ago. So if communists want to retain any sense of relevancy they have to dumb down the educational system and then spew hatred for corporations to keep the masses diverted and engaged.

Rove said Obama's attacks on Republicans for supposedly preventing him from creating a workable budget plan that will make everything hunky-dory was hypocritical, and I agree. For starters, he ignored his own words and deeds for the past three years, not that you'll see that on the news because half the media talk about how he looked rather than what he said.

In fact the press conference was supposed to be all about Obama being "the grown up" in the negotiations while Republicans are supposed to be acting "childish."

Seriously. These ass-wipes are talking about who can out-posture whom while our country is on the brink of financial ruin and we are under constant siege from communists and Islamo-fascist terrorists. And no one says so much as a word about the fact that China – which also means North Korea and Iran – has our stealth technology, our sonar technology, and our satellite technology.

That means they know how to shoot down our stealth aircraft, and build their own planes that will avoid our stealth seeking capabilities. Don't put away the ham radios and communication wire just yet.

Know what I think? I think Obama knows damn well that he isn't going to see a second term in the White House and he's goofing off for the next 18 months while our enemies, his friends, build a rocket that can be launched from Iran on Inauguration Day 2013 just in time to blow the hell out of the swearing in ceremony for the next president.

Don't agree? Prove me wrong. At least we'll be talking about real issues instead of whether the guy who was elected on leadership capabilities can stop worrying about whether he looks presidential instead of acts presidential.

Oh, and while I was out driving today I was listening to my friend Jim Vicevich's morning talk show on WTIC-1080 radio, the CBS outlet for the Greater Hartford area – you also can listen to streaming audio on line – while he was interviewing former career US Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters about the cyber attacks on the Pentagon.

Peters, now an author and analyst, said that the Obama Administration just released its What To Do In Case Of … Rules for Cyber Attacks, which basically say we'll be very angry with the Russians, Chinese and others of their ilk if they keep stealing our stuff, but won't actually do anything about it.

Unfortunately, even though we have the capabilities to respond to their cyber attacks with our far more sophisticated cyber counter-attacks that will fry their entire Information Technology networks, and insert killer viruses in places where they'll hide for decades, the Obama Administration says we won't.

Because we are all way too nice and just want a world where everyone gets along.

See where this is going? A world where no one has a military advantage – except the Chinese who have more people that you can kill, and Russia which has more land than can be conquered, and the Islamo-fascist terrorists who have more suicide bombers than bombs. Which means the free world, in particular the United States of America, is screwed.

I bet when Obama ended his press conference he was humming Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta on the way back to his office.

I have been keeping track of the economic news, particularly the unemployment figures, on various television outlets, in addition to print and radio shows for several years now and am wondering where I can find an honest journalist.

Perhaps that is too harsh a judgment of my former profession, but still, how often do you hear the real unemployment figures versus the government spin?

According to the US Debt Clock, which shows real time figures on our escalating national debt, state debt, personal debt, and a gazillion other statistics, the real number of unemployed in the US and the reported unemployed in the US are off by nearly 11 million workers – this week.

The government's latest propaganda says the unemployment rate has risen to 9.2 percent of the workforce of 139,811,815 which would be 12 million people. Now, already we have an issue with the numbers because the Debt Clock says the official number of unemployed is 14,059,706, so either the number reported is wrong or the total workforce number is wrong.

Either way is irrelevant however, because the government figures only reflect those unemployed people who are collecting benefits. Even though unemployment benefits now extend for nearly two years, there are millions of people who aren't collecting benefits, either because time ran out, or they weren't eligible in the first place.

The debt clock says the actual number of unemployed people is 24,820,067 which is nearly 18 percent of the workforce, which is double what the government and just about every news outlet in the country is reporting.

And when the media does refer to those 11 million people, without actually mentioning that there are 11 million of them, they call them "underemployed!" What the hell does underemployed mean?

Can someone tell me? I realize that the phrase usually defines people who are not working full time, or are working at jobs which pay significantly less than the jobs they are qualified for or would be working at in a full economy.

But I have a question regarding these underemployed people; how do you know how many of them there are if they are off the grid?

How do you know how many of the 11 million non-reported unemployed or underemployed are in which category. How many are sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms at fast food restaurants versus the number that have moved in with relatives and spend their days sitting in the basement muttering and sipping cheap wine?

How many are living under bridges? How many former hippies turned yuppies are living out in the woods, sleeping in hollow logs, surrounding by warning devices to alert them when census takers are in the vicinity?

All kidding aside, this is a propaganda scam that rivals the communists, the Nazis and any other totalitarian form of government that attempts to pacify its citizens by generating a non-stop stream of "good" news or news that at least isn't as bad as the real news. We are fed this garbage every single month.

And you know what really frosts me? Every time the news is bad, the Government Accounting Office or some other official organization scales it back using accounting methods that wouldn't pass a Grade Five math course, and then two weeks later they revise the figures!

And the revised figures are always a lot worse than the "official" figures that were released a couple of weeks earlier! But you hear about it on a scale that is exponentially less than the original announcement of the so-called good news.

It really bothers me that so many news anchors and reporters take the liberty of inserting snide comments into their coverage – especially of political matters – when they want to slam some office holder or candidate. But when they are handed information that is so easy to disprove – no opinions, just hard cold facts – they regurgitate the "official" spin without so much as a nod to the fact that it is off by at least half!

I have a question for the bureaucrats, politicians and journalists who regularly spew out these half-truths looking at the public with innocent, nearly angelic visages, expecting that if they look sincere we'll buy it: DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE PRESIDENT OBAMA'S CLAIM THAT WE'RE ALL STUPID????

News flash! We aren't. People have it figured out. And even if they aren't doing the math or watching the Debt Clock they know if they are out of work, and how many of their friends are out of work, and how much hot air they hear coming from Washington and their state capitals.

The best statistic of all will come on Election Day 2012 and that will be the one that says how many B.S. artists posing as concerned politicians find that the Debt Clock numbers now reflect them joining the real ranks of the unemployed. Maybe a president too! Unfortunately, I fear that it will be a long hard journey to find someone who reports the truth, meaning the whole truth between now and then.

Maybe I'll go down the street to visit my friend Diogenes. He'll probably be sitting in his hot tub this time of day, and if I explain this to him, he might let me borrow his lantern.

On a somber day in late October 1968 I entered a hangar at the Marine Corps air field in Quang Tri, South Vietnam, for a memorial service to six members of my unit who had been killed in action a few days earlier. A Marine from another unit at Quang Tri also died that week and his friends were there for the service too.

A few hundred Marines squeezed into that hangar and listened grim faced as the names of the dead were read, their brief histories were recounted and the chaplains from the various faiths performed their services. Then the First Marine Aircraft Wing Band that had flown up from Da Nang played Eternal Father, with one line changed from "for those in peril on the sea" to "for those in peril in the air."

I never was one for funeral services but a Staff Sergeant in my unit had made a point earlier in the day … "If it was you, wouldn't you want to know that your friends cared enough to come for your service."

So I went and even though it has been nearly 43 years I still remember that service, the people who died, and especially the Marine Band playing Eternal Father. I hadn't expected a band at such a forward and remote airfield, but their music touched me that day, and does to this day.

I had been in Vietnam for about six months by then, had flown more than 100 combat missions and had gone a long way toward insulating my emotions from the daily horrors of combat. But for just a moment, that band reached deep inside me, touched my soul, and retained my humanity. For that I will always be grateful.

That was not my first encounter with a Marine band in that area along the violent Demilitarized Zone. In July 1968 the combat base at Khe Sanh, where a siege only a few months earlier resulted in the deaths of 274 Americans and between 10,000 and 15,000 North Vietnamese communist troops, was dismantled having been declared unnecessary with the more mobile tactics successfully being employed against the communists.

Since the fighting was so fierce there, formal decommissioning ceremonies were held and the Marine Band was flown up from Da Nang to play taps. I flew medevac missions there, had taken incoming there, along with air bursts, and marveled at the bravery of these musicians who came armed with brass and percussion instruments, dedicated to doing their jobs to memorialize and honor the fighters who survived and those who did not.

Now, all these years later, in the midst of a nationwide battle over national debt, national spending and the future of America, Congress wants to cut the budget for musicians in all services by about one third!

Are you people serious? A one-hundred million dollar cut from the bands in an overall $500 billion defense budget? Aren't there a couple of old ships that need to go into mothballs, or a few dozen aging aircraft that have outlived their serviceable lives? Don't give me that, we both know there are.

So I ask again, are you people – in Congress – serious? I guess not. In fact, the Washington Post quoted Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who sponsored the measure to reduce funding, arguing that “the Pentagon doesn’t need any more band aid.”

Band aid! Get it? Hahahahahahahahaha.

"Is this House really capable of gutting investments in women’s health care but allowing a $5 million increase in funding for military bands?" the Post also quoted this lamebrain as saying, in a classic example of diversion since one has nothing to do with the other. This woman is a brain dead, knuckle dragging, snot-slinging Neanderthal. I said that. Me, not the Post or anyone else. Me.

The Post said the assault on military music "marks the first time that spending on the military’s 154 bands has been reduced by Congress. To take effect, however, the reduction must be approved by the Senate, which has yet to take up the fiscal 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill."

The Post also has reported that in a classic example of bipartisanship Rep. John Carter (R-Tx.) has joined with his co-chairman in the Army Caucus on Capitol Hill, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx.), in a "Dear Colleague" letter, describing the assault on the military as "highly detrimental to our armed forces," because the bands "uphold pride and morale through music at funerals, welcome home celebrations, concerts, ceremonies and other esprit-de-corps events."

The bands also make recordings, often in their own studios, which are distributed free, because they can’t by law sell them.

Bands including the U.S. Marine Corps Band, "the President’s Own," which plays at White House functions, the U.S. Army Band, the U.S. Air Force Band and the U.S. Navy Band are well known in Washington. The Coast Guard band is administratively placed under the Department of Homeland Security.

Each service band also has smaller instrumental and singing groups, such as the Marine’s Chamber Orchestra, the Army’s Singing Sergeants, the Navy’s Sea Chanters, the Air Force Strings, and the Coast Guard’s Brass Quintet and Saxophone Quartet. The services also have bands that are stationed overseas but the Washington-based bands often travel as well.

All of this is important and it may be possible to make some reductions in travel or similar costs, but the worldwide cost of the bands is $325 million annually, which the anti-American forces in Congress want reduced by more than one-third to $200 million. So they want to go from roughly one dollar per American citizen to about 66 cents per American citizen. I guess illegal aliens get a pass.

Anyway, I think this is a travesty. There is so much more to our military musicians. They help in recruiting sure, but have you seen their music on the National Mall on Independence Day? Or at the Iwo Jima Memorial? Have you heard their vocalists?

Have you seen the chamber music played at official White House functions for foreign dignitaries? Have you even been to Eighth and I Streets in Washington, D.C., on a Friday night – the home of the Commandant of the Marine Corps – and seen the Drum and Bugle Corps and the Silent Drill Team? Have you been to a summer concert by Pershing's Own, the U.S. Army Band?

Tell me that Anchors Aweigh, or Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder don't get your blood pumping.

Yes, they all help with recruiting efforts and for that alone are worth their money. They also provide a path for thousands of musicians to continue on in civilian music careers, and for some they provide a full-time military career.

They were at Dover Air Base in October 1983 when the bodies of Americans killed in the Beirut bombing were brought home. They are in the vicinity of every American service member anywhere in the world, and they often are ambassadors to countries where some goodwill is a great idea.

And they go to remote, often hostile locales, to do what they do best, and remind our troops that America and Americans appreciate what they are doing, and haven't forgotten them.
Our military musicians represent the best of America, the pride of America, the hope of America. They lift our spirits and remind us of what is possible even when we are locked in desperate struggles against all enemies "foreign and domestic."

To reduce the opportunities to see and hear these ambassadors of the soul is anti-American, there is nothing else to call it. Those who support any reduction in our military music capabilities deserve to spend a two-year tour travelling to hostile environments – carrying the instruments for those who serve so willingly and so well.

A new and nearly unheard of - in national political circles - candidate has entered the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Barack Hussein Obama next year and stands as a shining example of a person with an insufficient public persona attempting to cloak himself in the guise of a previously successful person.

Just like John F. Kerry unsuccessfully attempted to portray himself as a latter day John F. Kennedy in 2004, Jon Huntsman who is so unremarkable that his own staff misspelled his name on his announcement stationery, is attempting to portray himself as a latter day Ronald Reagan.

It didn't work for Kerry and it won't work for Huntsman.

All else aside, there are two strikes against Huntsman already: he worked for Barack Hussein Obama as ambassador to China; and the American Terrorist Media loves this guy so much that they have progressed from tingles up their pant legs to virtual orgasms.

Either situation is an automatic disqualifier in my book and hopefully in the books of GOP primary voters across the country too.

Huntsman made his announcement in New Jersey's Liberty State Park, the same site where Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign with the Statue of Liberty in the background. But aside from the backdrop any similarity between Huntsman and Reagan ends right there.

In fact, Rush Limbaugh had a blast this week rebroadcasting excerpts from Ronald Reagan's announcement speech when he took on ex-president jimmy carter, and Huntsman's announcement speech where he promised to carry Barack Hussein Obama's water. What a difference.

Reagan took it right to Carter, promising and delivering a no-holds-barred campaign, while Huntsman opined that Obama is really a very nice guy who just has marginal policies. Whooppeee, we're in for a hot one now folks. Bleeeccchhh.

This entire approach of trying to recast oneself in someone else's image leaves me high and dry. If you can't portray yourself to the American public as who you really are, with expectations that the voting public will respond to you and your ideas - especially with modern marketing tools - you may as well quit before you start wasting everyone's time.

Remember John "Chameleon" Kerry when he went out to the Midwest on a bird hunting campaign appearance? Walked into a sporting goods store and the guy who talked about Genghis Khan with a soft 'g' in 1971, attempting to be the ultimate pseudo-intellectual back then, in 2004 asks the store clerk "Can I get me a hunting license here?"

'Get me a hunting license?' Really?

Did Ronald Reagan attempt to sell himself as a reincarnation of someone else? NO! He portrayed himself as himself and the public responded ... twice!

Did John F. Kennedy campaign on how much he was like some previous president? No way! He couldn't, he was the first Catholic to be elected president. Good grief even Obama didn't campaign on his similarities to someone else, he ran as himself -whomever that might be.

Kerry's unsuccessful attempt to build a link between himself and Kennedy should be a model of what NOT to do in a presidential campaign.

Kerry, who knew the Kennedys when he was a youngster, planned out his presidential bid decades in advance. Members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who worked tirelessly to portray the real John Kerry to American voters recalled that he carried a motion picture camera with him in Vietnam, a very, very rare occurrence in those days - especially for troops in combat who were too busy trying to stay alive to film themselves doing it.

When Kerry made his bid for the presidency his commercials were full of dashing images of American Swift Boats on patrol in Vietnam's waters; remarkably similar to Victory at Sea images of World War II PT Boats, which were Kennedy's claim to fame. In fact, the movie PT-109 about Kennedy's boat being destroyed by a Japanese destroyer and Kennedy's true-life valor in surviving and help save other crew members, included scenes that appeared to be recast in Kerry's commercials.

But John F. Kerry was NOT John F. Kennedy and all the commercials in the world could not stop the truth from emerging. His betrayal of fellow Vietnam vets in his phony Winter Soldier hearings in 1971; his violation of his oath as a US Naval officer when he went to Paris and held unauthorized, and illegal, meetings with Vietnamese communists; his inclusion in the communist war museum in Saigon as a Hero of the Revolution - right there with Jane Fonda; his betrayal as co-chair of the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs of more than 300 POWs left behind in Laos; all these transgressions caught up with him.

Oddly enough, in Huntsman's case the national electorate doesn't know enough about him yet to fully understand what are certain to be his weaknesses. On the surface his resume looks pretty good - twice elected Gov. of Utah, with a huge majority the second time; an exemplary Eagle Scout; the guy who made the largest tax reduction in Utah's history, and still ended the year with a budget surplus.

But what is certain to make many voters squirm is that he has worked in appointed positions in the administrations of presidents from both parties, including Reagan's but that was decades ago. Meaning he is part of the establishment, meaning he is tainted, meaning he is going to have to reinvent himself if he is going to gain a foothold with voters across the political spectrum who are sick to death of the establishment and the status quo. Huntsman's travels on all sides of the political spectrum automatically make him suspect as a RINO and as a ringer.

So Jon Huntsman has his work cut out for him ... starting with building an identity that will work with the voters if he is so uncertain of his true self. But my advice would be to lay off the Ronald Reagan comparisons.

We've already seen the real Ronald Reagan and that act is impossible to follow.

President Barack Hussein Obama is poised to announce troop withdrawals from the ongoing War on Terror's Afghanistan battlefields later today, with a preordained result that can be easily determined simply by studying the failed Vietnam policies of the late President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

In the spring of 1969, about three months after his inauguration, Nixon announced that he was going to begin withdrawing troops from Vietnam. This apparently was his so-called "secret plan to win the war" on which he had campaigned the previous year. His timing could not have been worse, the results were disastrous, his decision failed to take into account the true situation on the battlefield, and his motivation was purely political - just like President Obama's.

When Nixon made his ill-fated announcement the US had approximately 540,000 troops in Vietnam, and for the first time in the war we had numerical parity with the communist forces, which by then were entirely composed of regular troops from the North Vietnamese Army.

A year earlier, beginning on Feb. 1, 1968, the communists had launched their Tet Offensive, using 75,000 Viet Cong guerrillas backed by North Vietnamese regulars - counting on huge numbers of South Vietnamese civilians to rise up alongside them. But the vicious terror tactics employed by the communists had alienated the South Vietnamese populace, who stayed home for the battles, and by the end of the month, with the exception of the siege at Khe Sanh and the Battle for Hue City, the fighting was over.

The Viet Cong suffered an estimated 37,500 troops killed in action, which forever broke the back of the guerrilla forces, with the North Vietnamese losing about 25,000 more.

When the siege at Khe Sanh was lifted in April the communists had lost approximately 15,000 troops of the 40,000 North Vietnamese who had surrounded the remote base, and another 8,000 died in and around Hue City. All in all it was a total military disaster for the communists.

But the American media, led by the late CBS evening news anchor and closet communist Walter Cronkite, lied to the American public and reported the US victory as a communist victory, much to the delight of their cohorts in Russia, China and North Vietnam. The American media by that point had progressed from mind-numbing ignorance of military issues, compounded by arrogance and groundless self-importance, to open collaboration with the communists.

Cronkite even flew to Saigon and reported to America that the war in Vietnam was at a "stalemate" and "unwinnable." Incredible liar.

As a result, the late president Lyndon B. Johnson replaced the victorious American commander Gen. William Westmoreland, but nonetheless began pouring even more US troops into the country - similar to President George W. Bush's 2007-2008 "Surge" in Iraq if you will.

Prior to this point in the Vietnam War the US had not lost a single battle, and never did. The communist losses were far in excess of America's although the American media again lied to the American public, ridiculing the military's body counts. (After the war it was revealed that in addition to annihilating the Viet Cong, killing virtually all of the 75,000 guerrillas in battle, the north lost about 1.5 million troops killed in action!)

With even more troops on the ground enabling a more aggressive search and destroy methodology the scope of the communist battlefield defeats escalated and they lost entire regiments and even divisions in a series of operations launched by US forces. By the spring of 1969, especially after the communists suffered massive losses in the 9th Marines' Operation Dewey Canyon, the communist field commanders began lobbying their political bosses to surrender.

Enter Nixon's troop withdrawal announcement, at the urging of Kissinger. The communist political bosses in Hanoi immediately squashed all talk of surrender, figuring correctly that while they couldn't defeat America militarily, they did have far more backbone than America's political leaders.

Later that year Nixon announced his "Vietnamization" program by which more of the fighting would be turned over to the South Vietnamese armed forces, a tactic that worked very well for the South Koreans in the early 1950s. The Vietnamization program was again ridiculed by the American media, but in fact, it worked!

South Vietnamese forces gained strength and ability, and while taking their hits along the way, still progressed to the point that in the spring of 1972, with most Americans long gone from the battlefield, they were able to stand up to a massive communist invasion of 250,000 troops, plus huge numbers of tanks and artillery. At the end of that invasion, fought on the ground by South Vietnamese forces backed by US air power, the communists had lost an estimated 150,000 troops killed in action, plus half their armor and artillery.

The US media again reported mostly on the difficulties encountered in fighting such a huge invading force, and basically neglected to mention that it failed miserably, even worse than the Tet Offensive of 1968, and that South Vietnamese forces were victorious.

America had long been at the bargaining table with the communists in Paris, another mistake based on the fraudulent concept that the war couldn't be won and only a negotiated settlement was acceptable. Later that year when the communist negotiators began dragging their feet Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of the north to force them back to the bargaining table.

He suspended the bombing again at the urging of his by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and as it later turned out again lost an opportunity to force the communists to surrender. In a memoir written well after the war, North Vietnam's top general said that the bombing was so effective and so demoralizing to the north that if it had continued for only two more days the communists were prepared to surrender unconditionally.

Instead, they went back to the bargaining table where they consistently outmaneuvered the American negotiators until an agreement was reached. The handful of remaining American fighting forces were withdrawn, and some of America's POWs were brought home, but half again as many were left in communist hands, to rot and die in Laotian prisons.

In June 1973 the US Congress passed the Case-Church Resolution, cutting off all aid to South Vietnam, our ally, including all medical, economic, military and humanitarian assistance.

Two years later after Nixon resigned in disgrace, and then-President Gerald Ford who openly told the northern communists via the American media that the US would not intervene if the communists again invaded South Vietnam, the rebuilt communist forces did just that. In April 1975, alone, abandoned and nearly out of bullets, the South Vietnamese government fell, setting off a communist rampage in Southeast Asia that left nearly 3 million civilians dead and millions more displaced.

And now we have Barack Hussein Obama, once again setting the stage for a premature troop withdrawal, a resurgence of extremist Muslim forces, and offering our enemies a secure haven from which to rebuild their forces and to once again attack America and our allies, if we actually have any.

We have many similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Our enemies employ vicious tactics including using civilians as shields, they have sanctuaries in neighboring countries - Paah Kiss Taaan this time - Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam war, that our troops are prevented from attacking, and the war is fought more often based on political and media considerations rather than military strategy.

As in Vietnam our government announces troop buildups and coming offensive operations in advance, giving the enemy time to adjust. We have "pundits" who obviously have no clue about real military tactics saying the war is unwinnable - exposing their abject ignorance of military subjects, yet providing "advice" that is heeded by President Obama.

In that vein I heard some Democratic "pollster" on Fox and Friends this morning saying the same thing as Cronkite - the war is "unwinnable." I didn't catch the guy's name and I really don't care who he is because he obviously is a Walter Cronkite wannabe who wants to go down in history as the man who convinced Obama to lose Afghanistan.

Yet we still are winning.

So-called experts are now arguing over what is the correct number of troops to bring home. That is irrelevant!

The issue is that by announcing an intention to disengage, Obama - who is doing this for political reasons just as Nixon did - is signaling a weakness in our political willpower. He is giving hope where there should be unrelenting, ceaseless attacks that kill and demoralize the enemy force, nothing less.

The war in Afghanistan is being won just as the war in Vietnam was being won. But once again the media is reporting it as being lost or at least unwinnable.

But consider this my media acquaintances - eventually, historians are going to realize that the American media was complicit in the deaths of some 3,000,000 southeast Asians slaughtered by the communists after the fall of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane, and those who took part will be forever branded as traitors to humanity.

And eventually, a withdrawal from Afghanistan when we are on the cusp of victory - military commanders on the ground there say they need about two years to wrap it up - will result in a resurgence of the same kind of extremism that was exhibited by the communists in the mid- to late-1970s. So my question to the American media is: do you really want this for your legacy? Is this how you want to be remembered?

As the next generation of propagandists who encouraged the slaughter of untold numbers of innocents - again? Think it over.

I generally don't write a separate column when we learn that a member of the Armed Forces from my state dies in combat because the ultimate goal of my columns - besides needling politicians - is to inform and give readers a sample of my writing style. Thus I don't want to create the appearance of commercialism when we lose another warrior in the ongoing War on Terror.

But for three years now I have been teaming up with other bloggers in Connecticut - most notably radio talk show host Jim Vicevich who precedes Rush Limbaugh on WTIC-1080 at 9 a.m. weekdays - to convince readers to send care packages to the troops overseas. This year the date on which I intended to deliver my annual "Support the Troops" message coincided with the news that Connecticut has lost another soldier.

My fellow bloggers and I participate in the blog competition in conjunction with an annual Internet Troopathon run by Move America Forward, the nation's largest pro-troop organization. The Troopathon this year will be held on June 23 and our blogathon competition has been underway since last month.

Three years ago, our team - The Greyhawks, named after the call sign that was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM)161 - came in second place against some stiff competition. I served in 161 in Vietnam, it was the first helicopter squadron to carry troops into battle in Korea, and it also served with distinction in the Gulf War and the ongoing War on Terror.

For more than 40 years HMM-161 flew CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, but last year the squadron transitioned to the new V-22 Ospreys which are half helicopter-half airplane and it's designation was changed to VMM-161. The HMM designation is now part of history.

Nonetheless, the Greyhawk tradition lives on here in Connecticut. Last year the Greyhawks won the blogathon competition and this year we are in the lead again. In addition to Jim http://radioviceonline.com/ and I, the CTWatchdog.com consumer website hosted by my former Hartford Courant colleague George Gombossy also is participating.

The blogathon is a means of encouraging people to visit the MAF website - all you have to do is click on the Remember Their Sacrifice link on our websites - where you can select a care package to send to troops serving in the Middle East. The options range from a package suited to one person, which costs $30, up to enough to serve a battalion. The choice is yours, but if you are so inclined please click on the link on my website, or Jim's or George's, and do something special for the people who are most impacted by the war.

None of us, not the Greyhawk bloggers, nor Move America Forward, gets so much as a cent out of this. We do it because we know that there are people defending us every single day and night from some of the most vicious terrorists the human race has ever faced. There is little we can do for them directly because the military provides all their material support.

But we can do this. Please help us.

And please pray for the family and friends of Army Private First Class Eric Daniel Soufrine, a Woodbridge, Connecticut native who was killed in action in Afghanistan on Tuesday. I offer his family, friends and loved ones my most sincere, deepest condolences.

There is little else I can offer in this time of tragedy except to say that his efforts on our behalf, and his sacrifices, as well as those of all who knew and cared for him, will never be forgotten.

Flags will fly at half-staff until he is brought home for burial, but long after they have returned to full-staff his memory will live with those of us who once walked in his shoes, and were fortunate to have returned.

As long as there are veterans of America's wars, as long as we have the capability to communicate, as long as there are days of remembrance, he will be remembered, along with all the others who also died in the service of our country.

It is our obligation to ensure that his memory, his deeds and his sacrifices will live on as long as there is a United States of America.

SAEPE EXPERTUS, SEMPER FIDELIS, FRATRES AETERNI
"Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever"