RESIGNATION SPEECH

THIS WAS SENT BY A READER AND IS INDEED SATIRICAL BUT WITH A PURPOSE.. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING A NUT CASE LIKE PELOSI, OBAMBA WHAT EVER.


RESIGNATION SPEECH
The following 'speech' was written recently by an ordinary Maine-iac [a resident of the People's Republic of Maine ]. While satirical in nature, all satire must have a basis in fact to be effective. This is an excellent piece by a person who does not write for a living.



The speech George W. Bush might give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying 'My Fellow Americans.' Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.



The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.
Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media.



Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.



We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied...People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.



Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know tha t, did you?
Now some of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan , a nuclear ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to re-elect him. He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel . Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.



That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'



Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well Fed Ex a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's bel ow sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient hou se down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.



Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.


PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

PART 1 Russia's Big Lie PART 2 The New Warsaw Pact

Russia's Big Lie

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Russia: After hearing the hard, cold facts of Russia's brutal occupation of Georgia, the West has no choice but to respond harshly to Vladimir Putin's regime. Failure to do so would only invite further attacks.

Apologists for Russia say it really had no choice: Because of "genocide" in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia had to intervene. It was an "emergency." It wasn't.

This is the kind of big lie for which Hitler was famous — as when he suggested his interest in Czechoslovakia was really to rescue the Sudeten Germans, then gobbled up the entire country.

In Russia's case, this was a carefully planned operation. Once in place, Russia's leaders knew full well they weren't going to simply occupy the disputed territories, but rather fully invade Georgia — and, hopefully, topple its humiliated government.

The reason is clear: Russia wants to control the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the only non-Russian conduit that brings oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe's thirsty market. To do so would give it unparalleled control over Europe's economy.

In a riveting speech Friday, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at his side, revealed in graphic detail how Russia had gone about subjugating his country. The entire speech can be found on our Web site.

Russia systematically built up the rail infrastructure in Abkhazia to make it easier to send in troops, Saakashvili said. They began building tank bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"They started to bring in lots of military specialists, reconnaissance," he said. "They brought in paratroopers. We screamed to the world, stop it! And there were some statements from Washington, but I have to tell you that for most of the European countries . . . there was pretty muted and quiet reaction to all this."

The trouble started when Europe balked at letting Georgia join NATO last spring. At the time, Saakashvili complained. Then, when Russian planes repeatedly violated Georgian airspace, he complained again. Though the signs were clear, he was ignored.

Now we see what Russia was preparing. The brutality and lack of humanitarian concern shown by Russia's poorly disciplined troops in attacking Georgia are shocking.

• Russia used SS-21 missiles, one of the deadliest weapons in its military's arsenal, on areas they knew contained civilians.

• Russian aircraft dropped incendiary devices on Georgian forests to create fires, panic and terror.

• Putin's forces also dropped cluster bombs on civilian populations, knowing full well those munitions' main use is to kill and maim people, not destroy buildings or damage property.

• Troops have looted, robbed banks, stolen goods, murdered, burned towns and raped women as part of a terror campaign.

Putin prepared the Russian public for this by using the cowed Russian media to whip up nationalistic hysteria, suggesting Russia was under siege and encircled by enemies ready to do NATO's bidding.

Russia planned for months, watching and learning from our response to Iran. The West told Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium and its nuclear weapons program. It hasn't, and we've done nothing. Now, our lack of resolve has come back to haunt us.

Knowing this, Russia executed its plan with brutal precision.

Our weakness invited an attack — and will invite more if we don't respond now. But the U.S. can do even more than just isolating Russia in diplomacy, or issuing pleas. We can also neutralize Putin's use of the "oil weapon" — his implicit threat to cut off oil sales to the West — by drilling for more oil ourselves.

To help, the Democrat-led Congress could immediately approve drilling on all federal lands containing oil — a move that would send crude prices tumbling and slash Russia's hard currency earnings from energy. We hope they will — but won't hold our breath.


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PART 2 PART 2 PART 2

The New Warsaw Pact


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Missile Defense: In the face of renewed Russian imperialism, Poland agrees to host U.S. missile interceptors on its soil. Now the only opposition is from the Russians and the Democrats.

Nothing concentrates the minds of a country's leaders like naked aggression. If one of Putin's goals in attacking Georgia was to intimidate the rest of NATO and those considering joining it, he has failed miserably.

Poland, once before the victim of Moscow's aggression and occupation, has no intention of repeating the experience. Despite threats of being moved up on Russia's target list, Polish leaders have finally inked a deal to allow the deployment of 10 U.S. missile interceptors on its territory. The interceptors will work in tandem with tracking radars the Czech Republic has already agreed to accept.

Poland had been dragging its feet, hoping to get a better deal and worried that an Obama administration might pull the plug after Warsaw had stuck its neck out. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to a plan to upgrade Poland's military, establish a permanent U.S. military base on Polish soil and deploy Patriot air defense missiles.

"We have crossed the Rubicon," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said after the successful end to 18 months of negotiations. Unsure of NATO's seriousness, Tusk welcomed the pact with the U.S., saying: "This is a step toward real security for Poland in the future."

Needless to say, the Russians are not amused. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, their deputy chief of staff, said: "Poland, by deploying (the missile interceptors), is exposing itself to a strike — 100%." He added that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them."

Never mind that the missiles are to defend against Russia's client, Iran, as it develops nuclear weapons with Russian assistance and the missiles to deliver them. NATO on its doorstep is an impediment to the dream of reconstituting Moscow's former empire.

Yuri Baluyevski, Russia's top general, has said Moscow wouldn't hesitate to use its nuclear weapons pre-emptively against a perceived threat. "We have no plans to attack anyone," he said recently, "but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand . . . that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including pre-emptively, including with the use of nuclear weapons."

Officially, they had no "plans" to attack Georgia either.

The missile defense deals still have to be ratified by the Czech and Polish parliaments. They also need the approval of a Democratic U.S. Congress reluctant to fund them and a possible U.S president vehemently opposed to missile defense in general and this plan in particular.

Part of Poland's hesitation was the fact that, as Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said July 8, John McCain has pledged to carry out President Bush's missile defense plans in Poland, but no such assurances have been forthcoming from Barack Obama.

In a video pledge to the liberal group Caucus4Priorities, Obama vowed to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems" and not "weaponize space." In other words, he will not defend Poland, the Czech Republic, NATO or the U.S. from missile attack.

Arsonists hate smoke detectors and sprinkler systems. The Russia of Vladimir Putin and whichever of his hand puppets holds the presidency hates missile defense. As in the days of the evil empire that was the Soviet Union, Moscow's foreign policy is based on threats and intimidation. Ours is based on tenacity and technology.

Democrats would replace that with weakness and what Obama calls "aggressive personal diplomacy."

In a floor statement before a vote on missile defense, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted that the U.S. doesn't need a missile defense.

"If we need anything," she said, "we need a strong nonproliferation policy."

Like her party's standard-bearer, she views missile defense as unproven, unworkable and unnecessary.

The Poles beg to differ. So do we.

Palin's Gas Pipeline Isn't Hot Air

SEE THIS FOLKS THIS IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT MY GOVERNOR AND FAVORITE FEMALE LEADER.

Palin's Gas Pipeline Isn't Hot Air

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Energy: As congressional Democrats dither on a vote for oil drilling, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has pushed through a gas pipeline project to bring new supply and price relief to the lower 48.

On Aug. 1, the same day the call for a vote on drilling began on the House floor, the Alaska state Senate approved a package of measures to license a new natural gas pipeline. House Bill 3001 lets Palin award the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license to TransCanada Alaska, a pipeline builder that cast a winning bid of five.

The legislature had been trying for 30 years to authorize something like this and, up until now, had blown it. Palin got it through. Getting it off the ground, the state says, will be the biggest construction project in U.S. history.

Palin considers the $26 billion project her biggest accomplishment as governor. "It was not easy," she told IBD. "Alaska has been hoping and dreaming for a natural gas pipeline for decades. What it took was getting off the dime and creating a competitive market in Alaska."


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The 1,715-mile gas line would stretch from Alaska's North Slope to Fairbanks and down to Alberta, Canada. Then it would take existing gas lines to Idaho. In 10 years, Palin says, the lower 48 states would receive 4.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. By 2030, according to Energy Department estimates, Alaska's annual natgas production would quintuple to 2 trillion cubic feet.

Minus a pipeline, Alaska's abundant gas largely ends up pumped back into the ground to be used to pressurize oil fields and aid in extraction. With oil production in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay region declining and Congress continuing to drag its feet on new oil drilling, one of the few things Alaska can do is sell some of the gas now.

The new supply could bring price relief to anyone who uses home heating, electricity, farm fertilizers or manufactured goods in the U.S. "Not only is this economical for all players involved; it's wildly needed," said Palin.

The pipeline does spark controversy. Two of Alaska's biggest three oil producers, BP and ConocoPhillips, think the state is too involved. They are working on a gas line project of their own called Denali.

At first glance, it would seem the more gas lines, the merrier. But neither Palin nor BP/ConocoPhillips thinks more than one multibillion dollar gas line will be profitable, based on what's known of Alaska's resources. So both sides think the projects may eventually merge.

BP/Conoco argues that its gas line will be more efficient, but Palin's project has something a little different — political viability, something that could smooth the path to production at a time when activist lawsuits and protests gum up production as badly as Congress does.

Although a package of state goodies demanded by various constituencies could add costs, it also could be a trade-off to actually getting the project off the ground.

Palin justified it this way: "We wanted this in a competitive environment and asked companies what they could offer Alaska. Alaska is going to lay down the law (and) say, 'If you want to build this line, here is what Alaska must have: protection for the environment, in-state use of resources, jobs for Alaskans.' "

The job isn't done, but Palin isn't going on vacation.

"We still have so much to do — to break ground, to build," she said. "We'll keep ramping up oil production, educating Congress to allow ANWR to be tapped and to prove we can ethically and responsibly drill so Alaska can produce for everyone. Alaska should be the head, not the tail, to the energy solution."

Small wonder, then, that Alaska has one popular governor. If only congressional Democrats could also get off the dime.



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Russian Attack Hands McCain Winning Issue

Russian Attack Hands McCain Winning Issue

By GEORGE F. WILL | Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Last August, John McCain's campaign was a guttering candle, out of money but flush with half-baked ideas unlikely to be improved by further baking. Anyway, to have many ideas is to have too many for a campaign's concluding sprint, and McCain's revival hasn't been robust enough to bring him even with Barack Obama.

Now his rejuvenated hopes rest on his ability to refocus this election on who should lead America in a world suddenly darkened by Russia's war of European conquest. To begin the recasting, he should weed from the unkempt garden of his political thinking the populism which often seems like mere attitudinizing redeemed by insincerity.

His silliness about sinful Wall Street and exploitative corporations cannot compete with Democratic entrees in the nonsense sweepstakes. Furthermore, his populism subverts his strength — the perception that although he is an acquired taste, he is serious, hence incapable of self-celebratory froth such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

McCain's populism, if such there must be, should be distilled into one proposal that would be popular and, unlike most populism, not economically injurious. The proposal, for which he has expressed sympathy, is: No officer of any corporation receiving a federal subsidy, broadly defined, can be paid more than the highest federal civil servant ($124,010 for a GS-15). This would abruptly halt the galloping expansion of private economic entities — is GM next? — eager to become, in effect, joint ventures with Washington.

Next, McCain should make an asset of an inevitability by promising two presidential vetoes. The inevitability is enlarged Democratic congressional majorities in 2009. Americans suffer political astigmatism. They squint at Washington, seeing an incompetent cornucopia that is too big but which should expand to give them more blessings.

Their voting behavior, however, generally conforms to their professed suspicion about unchecked power in Washington: In 31 election cycles since the restoration of normal politics after the Second World War, 19 of them produced divided government — the executive and legislative branches not controlled by the same party.

Two Democratic priorities in the next Congress would placate two factions that hold the party's leash — organized labor and the far left. One is abolition of a worker's right to a secret ballot in unionization elections. The other is restoration of the "fairness doctrine" in order to kill talk radio, on which liberals cannot compete.

The doctrine would expose broadcasters to endless threats of litigation over government rules about how many views must be presented, on which issues, by whom, for how long and in what manner.

By promising to veto both of these assaults on fundamental freedoms, McCain would give specific content to voters' usually unfocused fear of one-party government. Then, having delighted conservatives, who thus far have curbed their enthusiasm for him, he should make this challenge:

He should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia's aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin's next victim.

But does Russia's behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on "soft power" — dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks — which Putin considers almost an oxymoron? Does Russia's resort to military coercion, and its arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles, cause Obama to revise his resistance to missile defense?

Obama, unlike McCain, believes Russia belongs in the G-8. Does Obama think Russia should be admitted to the World Trade Organization? Does Obama consider Putin helpful with Iran? Does Obama accept the description of the G-8 as an organization of the largest "industrialized democracies"? Does he think China should be admitted?

McCain, like Republicans generally, reveres Ronald Reagan. But such reverence seems to involve an obligatory sunniness, which suits neither McCain nor this moment. A great political thinker of the last century, Raymond Aron, was right: "What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error."

McCain must convince voters that Obama's complacent confidence in the taming abilities of soft power is the effect of liberalism's scary sentimentalism about a dangerous thing, human nature, and a fiction, "the community of nations."

McCain is hardly the change many people have been eagerly waiting for, but Putin is part of the change we must confront. Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc


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Executive Privilege

Executive Privilege


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Economics: When capitalists fail to defend the system that's done more than any other to end human misery, they make a fatal mistake. That's why it's so encouraging to see Exxon Mobil's CEO stand up for his business.

On July 31, Exxon Mobil reported an $11.7 billion second-quarter profit, breaking the record for a U.S. company that it previously set.

Naturally, politicians and the public, provoked by a financially ignorant media, reacted as if the company had stolen the money.

Barack Obama called the earnings "outrageous."

Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York, called oil industries "the most selfish group of companies that I've ever seen — and the most hypocritical" and said it was "Christmas in July" inside the Big Oil boardrooms.

NBC "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira moaned that "oil companies seem to be rolling in dough."

Perhaps the most asinine comment came from Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

"These oil companies cannot continue to earn these profits, spend a pittance on renewable fuels to move America beyond oil and then block any efforts to shift billions in tax breaks to companies trying to bring about the next generation of clean energy," he said.

Too often, business leaders choose to duck when the arrows of outrage come flying. But Exxon Mobil CEO and Chairman Rex Tillerson made an unusual and courageous stand Wednesday, appearing on ABC's "World News" with Charles Gibson.

"I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second," Tillerson told Gibson.

"Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost. We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it."

We can't think of anyone who would be willing to pay $4,000 in taxes for every $5,400 they earn in salary or wages. Yet many in our country believe it's OK, even desirable, for oil companies to do just that.

What's needed here is a bit more perspective, a sense of proportion. Though Exxon Mobil set a record for nominal profit, the oil industry isn't actually making the biggest profits.

In the first quarter of this year, the profit margin for oil companies was 7.4%. That trailed the electronic equipment industry (12.1%) and the pharmaceutical and medical industry (25.9%).

Last year, 63 industrial groups posted bigger profit margins than the oil industry.

Also obscured by the moaning over Exxon Mobil's profit is the fact that investors expected higher earnings from the company. After second-quarter profit was announced, the company's stock price fell almost 5% because of its disappointing performance.

That's not an aberration for this corporate behemoth that is ruining everyone's lives by selling them the gasoline they need.

Since May 20, less than a month after its first-quarter profit — then the fifth highest in history — was reported, Exxon Mobil stock has fallen 18%, from 94.56 to 77.45 at Thursday's close.

Falling stock prices aren't good news for Exxon Mobil shareholders, those average Americans trying to finance their futures, retirements and kids' educations. And with more than half of all Americans owning stock, that means millions are poorer when Exxon Mobil shares fall.

But in the eyes of the political class and media know-nothings, those invested in Exxon Mobil should be making less on their investments.

Such is the quality of our media and elected officials, who seemingly don't understand even the most basic rudiments of a free-market system.

This is the big reason Tillerson has to go on national TV to defend an indispensable private enterprise.



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A New Sense Of Putin's Soul

A New Sense Of Putin's Soul

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Crisis In Georgia: Russia's invasion of Georgia is just the latest example of Moscow's aggressive intentions. From its support of Iran's nuclear programs to opposition to missile defense, we should have seen it coming.

It seems the defeat of the Soviet Union was not the end of history after all. Like Germany during the 1930s, Russia licked its wounds, wallowed in self-pity and plotted how to get even.

While America was busy with the war on Islamic terror, Russia bided its time, solidified power at home and used its energy resources to hold its neighbors hostage while it rebuilt its war machine.

Look in his eyes now says USSR.
In June 2001, a hopeful President Bush, unaware that Sept. 11 would unravel the kinder, gentler world his father spoke of, met with Vladimir Putin.

"I looked the man in the eye," he said of Putin afterward. "I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Turns out the man doesn't have one.

At that moment the former KGB colonel already was plotting the reacquisition of the lost provinces of the evil empire.

In his annual address to parliament in 2005, Putin made the grotesque claim that the "demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest political catastrophe of the century," demonstrating a nostalgia for what he considers the good old days that explained his decision to reinstate the old Soviet national anthem and military flag.

When Bush observed the 60th anniversary of VE Day with Putin in Moscow, the Russian leader refused to acknowledge, much less apologize, for Soviet complicity in making World War II happen in the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that divided Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

Putin also maintains the fiction that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia "invited" the Soviets in, just as he offers a new fiction that Russia was merely responding to Georgian aggression in South Ossetia.

"Stalin was a tyrant whom many call a criminal," Putin says, "but he wasn't a Nazi." Oh.

These are words to ponder as Russian tanks roll toward Gori, birthplace of Stalin, Putin's hero.

The Russia of Putin has been the No. 1 supplier of weapons to America's enemies.

In December 2005, Russia announced it would send Iran $700 million worth of TOR-M1 (SA-15) short-range surface-to-air missiles.

They will be part of a national air defense system designed to protect Iranian facilities feverishly working on a nuclear weapon to use against Israel. Moscow has supplied the fuel for the nuclear reactor Iran has built at Bushehr.

Putin's Russia also has resumed the long-range strategic bomber patrols that were common during the Cold War, but which disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union — a response to U.S. missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia's war games have included these bombers off France and Spain. They have buzzed U.S. aircraft carriers and violated Japanese air space. Putin has even threatened to fly supersonic TU-160 Blackjack bombers to Cuba.

After all this provocation, the U.S. is responding.

President Bush on Thursday repeated his support for a "sovereign, free Georgia and its territorial integrity." Also Thursday, the U.S. and Poland agreed to set up a battery of U.S. missiles on Polish soil and signed a "mutual commitment" to come to each other's aid in case of an attack. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending medical and other aid to Georgia and has warned Russia not to interfere.

John McCain, who nominated Georgia's beleaguered president, Mikheil Saakashvilli, for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, says of Putin: "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B." McCain had urged the U.S. to boycott the G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2006. In retrospect, we should have.

"NATO's decision to withhold a membership action plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia," McCain told reporters on Monday, "and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision."

So do we. Maybe, as columnist Charles Krauthammer has suggested, we need to remind Moscow what American-supplied Stinger missiles did to their occupation of Afghanistan. Perhaps the next C-117 flight into Tbilisi should carry more than blankets.



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Obama's Radical Roots And Rules

Obama's Radical Roots And Rules


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Most Americans revile socialism, yet Barack Obama's poll numbers remain competitive. One explanation: He's a longtime disciple of a man whose mission was to teach radicals to disguise their ideology.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's choice of the word "change" as his campaign's central slogan is not the product of focus-group studies, or the brainstorming sessions of his political consultants.

One of Obama's main inspirations was a man dedicated to revolutionary change that he was convinced "must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, nonchallenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future."

Saul Alinsky, circa 1946: Like Obama, he wanted "change."
Sen. Obama was trained by Chicago's Industrial Areas Foundation, founded in 1940 by the radical organizer Saul Alinsky. In the 1980s, Obama spent years as director of the Developing Communities Project, which operated using Alinsky's strategies, and was involved with two other Alinsky-oriented entities, Acorn and Project Vote.

On the Obama campaign Web site can be found a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom with "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" written on the blackboard — key terms utilized in the Alinsky method.

The far-left Alinsky had no time for liberalism or liberals, declaring that "a liberal is (someone) who puts his foot down firmly on thin air." He wanted nothing less than transformational radicalism. "America was begun by its radicals," he wrote. "America was built by its radicals. The hope and future of America lies with its radicals." And so, "This is the job for today's radical — to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight. To say, '. . . let us change it together!' "

Alinsky students ranged "from militant Indians to Chicanos to Puerto Ricans to blacks from all parts of the black power spectrum, from Panthers to radical philosophers, from a variety of campus activists, S.D.S. and others, to a priest who was joining a revolutionary party in South America."

Capitalism always was considered the enemy. "America's corporations are a spiritual slum," he wrote, "and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society." Is it surprising that an Alinsky disciple such as Obama can promise so blithely to increase taxes on CEOs?

Obama calls his years as an Alinskyesque community organizer in Chicago "the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith." But as radicalism expert Richard Lawrence Poe has noted, "Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. In organizing coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer."

Indeed, Alinsky believed in sacrificing ethics and morals for the great cause. "Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times," Alinsky wrote in his last book, "Rules for Radicals," adding that "all values are relative in a world of political relativity."

Published a year before Alinsky's death in 1972, "Rules for Radicals" includes a dedication in which he gives "an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical . . . who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."

Alinsky's writings even explain what often seems like Obama's oversized ego. In New Hampshire in January, for example, the senator told an audience that "a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany . . . and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."

It was a bizarre spectacle, but consider that Alinsky believed that "anyone who is working against the haves is always facing odds, and in many cases heavy odds. If he or she does not have that complete self-confidence (or call it ego) that he can win, then the battle is lost before it is even begun."

According to Alinsky, "Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego."

Alinsky also readily admitted that he didn't trust the people themselves. "It is the schizophrenia of a free society that we outwardly espouse faith in the people but inwardly have strong doubts whether the people can be trusted," he wrote. "Seeking some meaning in life," the middle class, according to Alinsky, "turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the 'American' faith."

This is evocative of Obama's remark during the primaries that small-town Americans are "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion."

Obama is also following Alinsky's instructions to the hard left for attaining power in America. In the last chapter of "Rules for Radicals," titled "The Way Ahead," is found this declaration: "Activists and radicals, on and off our college campuses — people who are committed to change — must make a complete turnabout."

Alinsky noted that "our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt."

According to Alinsky, "They are right," but he cautioned his comrades that "the power and the people are in the big middle-class majority." Therefore, an effective radical activist "discards the rhetoric that always says 'pig' " in reference to police officers, plus other forms of disguise, "to radicalize parts of the middle class."

Obama's rhetorical window-dressing is easily recognizable as Alinskyesque camouflage. New annual spending of more than $340 billion, as estimated by the National Taxpayers Union, is merely a wish to "recast" the safety net woven by FDR and LBJ, as Obama describes it in his writings. The free market is disparaged as a "winner-take-all" economy. Big tax increases masquerade as "restoring fairness to the economy."

Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" is simply socialism — imposed by stratagem because Americans have never believed in Marxist economics. Saul Alinsky understood this, and his ghost is alive and well — and threatening to haunt the White House.



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Monday, August 18, 2008 EDITOR COMMENT

Monday, August 18, 2008



WE NOW HAVE A QUEEN??

I THOUGHT, MISTAKENLY IT APPEARS, THAT THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES WAS TO ACT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE WHOLE AND NOT JUST FOR THE FURTHERENCE OF ONE PARTY OVER THE NEEDS OF THE NATION.

THIS B-----Y NEEDS TO GO, ANY WAY THAT IS POSSIBLE, VOTE HER OUT WHATEVER!!!

Putin Running Circles Around the West

Putin Running Circles Around the West

Friday, August 15, 2008 10:12 AM

By: Michael Reagan

In any struggle between the dreamers and the realists, the realists always win.

We’re seeing that played out right now as the supreme realist of our time, Vladimir Putin, not only is running circles around the dreamers of the West, but is also making them look like a bunch of incompetent ninnies.


Putin is playing the role of Vlad the Impaler, and the heads he is displaying atop Red army bayonets as he marches through Georgia — a la Gen. Sherman — are those of the leaders of what used to be called the Free World.


We should have seen it coming, but we were too busy with George Bush’s dreams of a democracy-drenched world, and Western Europe’s preoccupation with the destruction of all vestiges of its Christian past, to notice what Vlad has been up to as he goes about creating the latest version of a czarist imperialist Russia itching to expand its borders.


As the always-perceptive Ralph Peters wrote in the New York Post, Putin’s latest venture “not only sized up President Bush humiliatingly well, but precisely anticipated Europe's nonreaction, while taking a perfect-fit measure of Georgia's mercurial president.”


Putin, he added, “not only knew what he was doing — he knew exactly what others would do” an example, Peters wrote, of “intelligence work at the hall-of-fame level. [For our part, we had all the intelligence pieces in our hands and failed to assemble the puzzle.]”


Peters recalled the signs that were always there for the CIA to see, had they been able to recognize what was taking place right under their noses, “the months of meticulous planning and extensive preparations for this invasion [that] were covered by military exercises, disingenuous explanations, and maskirovka, the art of deception the Red army had mastered.”


The result? “The Russians convinced us to see what we wanted to see.”


The reaction of all of this by the Bush administration and our Western allies has been to run around like headless chickens. We have been shown exactly how it feels to be rendered impotent in the face of a determined opponent that doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks of him.


There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from this, but for Americans one of the most important ones concerns the current debate on energy. Nobody seems to have noticed that the crisis in Georgia points up once again just how dependent we are on getting much of our oil from areas of the world where turmoil is rampant.


A vital oil pipeline runs through Georgia, for example. One word from Putin and it shuts down.


In the face of all this, when we need desperately to take advantage of the vast stores of oil that lie beneath our feet and off our shores waiting to be exploited, we allow the Democrats to place all that petroleum off-limits as they have since the Clinton administration all but banned drilling.


They scoff at the vast majority of Americans who are demanding that we drill and drill now, using the lame excuse that it will take years before the oil here can be brought to the surface and refined and supplied to the nation’s gas pumps.


Instead they dream of presently unavailable alternative sources of energy that may never become realities, and in any case are years in the future.


Realists don’t dream. They recognize that if we start to drill now, sometime in the not too distant future — two, three, five, or even 10 years from now — America will have all the oil we’ll ever need and we won’t have to worry about what Vladimir Putin or Iran’s President Ahmadinejad are doing to threaten our oil supplies.


If we listen to the dreamers 10 years from now we’ll still be waiting for the promised age of alternative energy to get off the ground, and we’ll still be dependent on foreign oil at only God knows how much per gallon.


Note: Peters’ full article can be seen at http://www.nypost.com/seven/08142008/news/columnists/a_czar_is_born__bad_vlad_wins_war__dupes_124459.htm and it’s required reading for anyone who wants to understand what Putin is up to.



© 2008 Mike Reagan

Hillary's Campaign Against Obama Continues

Hillary's Campaign Against Obama Continues

Thursday, August 14, 2008 8:36 AM

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann


"Every speech should contain a line [saying that] you were born in the middle of America to a middle class family in the middle of the last century."


On May 10, 2007, Time magazine reported that Hillary's stump speech included the lines: "I was born into a middle class family in the middle of the country in the middle of the last century."


After Penn's memos were released to the media this week, Hillary's people spread the word that she did not take Penn's advice. But it is evident that she did.


The strategy Penn recommended was ridiculous. He somehow thought that by stressing Hillary's normalcy, Obama's unusual name, race, origin, parents, and skin color would redound to his detriment. In fact, the exact opposite proved to be the case. It has been his very novelty that has underscored his appeal. Penn missed the point.


But the larger point in his memos is that Hillary sought, from the beginning of the 2008 campaign, to use race as an issue against Obama. Her early willingness to wrap herself in the flag and marginalize Obama as an outsider bespeaks her efforts to inject race into the campaign. As soon as Obama emerged as her chief opponent, Hillary and Bill Clinton tried to make the election about race and to contrast her American roots with Obama's otherness.


It would be a mistake to think that Hillary's campaign against Obama is over. She and Bill both realize that if McCain wins, she would be the likely Democratic nominee against him in 2012.


At the age of 76, McCain might make easy pickings. Hillary's argument to win the nomination would be simple: I told you so. Her warnings that Obama was unelectable would have proven to have been prescient, and Democrats are likely to feel chagrined that they rejected her in 2008.


How will the Clintons undermine Obama? Not by any overt statement. In public, they will appear to be his biggest fans. Hillary does not dare incurr the wrath of Democratic voters by abandoning her party's nominee in the general election. But the Clintons will do what they do best: They will hog the spotlight. By speaking on Tuesday and Wednesday, this former first couple will spread themselves over the convention, usurping media, taking face time, and making the convention appear, for its first three days, as a Hillary Clinton gathering.


Remember how in 2004, Bill Clinton timed the release of his memoir "My Life" to coincide with the start of the John Kerry campaign. His swings through the nation, attracting lines and crowds at bookstores drew attention away from Kerry. His strategy of distraction culminated when he scheduled a book signing in Boston during the Democratic Convention, drawing mobs and pulling the spotlight away from Kerry.


By hogging the publicity at the Democratic Convention and by keeping the spotlight away from Obama, the Clintons are going to do all they can to stop the Democrat from getting a bounce from his Convention appearance. How will they hurt Obama down the road? Bill will make off-handed comments, seemingly mistakes. A lose cannon, he will appear to be undisciplined as he follows a game plan to undermine the candidate. Hillary will do her best to avoid campaigning for Obama and will undercut him in any way she can without getting caught.


Obama: Watch your back!




© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Pelosi And The Big Wind Boone-Doggle

Pelosi And The Big Wind Boone-Doggle


By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 4:30 PM PT

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes "handmaidens of the oil companies." Let's call Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers.

Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a "hoax" this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out.

Which brings us to the Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists "Assets and Unearned Income" of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp.-Public Common Stock.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens — ex-oilman turned wind-power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos.

Pickens and Pelosi share the same talking points downplaying the need to drill and open up more access to American oil. Instead, the Pickens pie-in-the-sky plan proposes to replace natural gas with wind power in power generation and theoretically free up natural gas for America's transportation needs.

All well and good in la-la land, but let's be real about the limitations and costs of wind power. Past and ongoing experience demonstrates the unreliability of wind and the miserably low operating capacity of wind-power facilities here and around the world.

Depending on wind requires supplemental fossil fuel plants as backup to be turned on and off to compensate for wind-power supply shortfalls — nullifying any reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, which are minuscule, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Not to mention the thousands of sliced-up birds and other wildlife that have become wind-power casualties — a problem scientists say would be solved by "repowering" old turbines at a cost of untold billions.

Fittingly, the environmental mascot of the Democratic National Convention — the showcase of their alternative energy approach — is an eastern Colorado wind turbine propped up with Democratic carbon-credit funds that has never produced any substantial energy because of its chronic equipment malfunctions.

But I digress.

Naturally, the Pickens Big Wind plan is proudly endorsed by Do-Nothing Pelosi's friends at the obstructionist Sierra Club. Through another company, Mesa Power, Pickens has committed upward of $12 billion in wind farms on the Texas panhandle.

CLNE and Mesa Power are separate entities, but what benefits one piece of the Pickens puzzle benefits them all. The wind venture, as Pickens himself acknowledges, depends on permanent federal subsidies.

Pickens is banking on 'em. And Pelosi is banking on him. As reported on dontgo-movement.com, Speaker Pelosi bought between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in Pickens' CLNE Corp. in May 2007 on the day of the initial public offering:

"She, and other investors, stand to gain a substantial return on their investment if gasoline prices stay high, and municipal, state and even the federal governments start using natural gas as their primary fuel source. If gasoline prices fall? Alternative fuels and the cost to convert fleets over to them become less and less attractive."

CLNE also happens to be the sponsor of Proposition 10, a ballot initiative in Pelosi's home state of California to dole out a combined $10 billion in state and federal funds for renewable energy incentives — namely, natural gas and wind.

Follow the money. Or, to put it in economist's terms as energy analyst Kenneth Medlock III did in an interview with the Dallas Morning News about the Pickens multibillion dollar wind farm investment: "A lot of what he's trying to do is add value to a stranded asset . . . he's obviously got millions of dollars on the line."

And so, potentially, does the Speaker of the House — all the while wagging her finger at the financial motivation of others.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc


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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Thursday, August 14, 2008


Who is burying who????

"Drill Here and Drill Now!"

The American people are telling our elected officials: "Drill Here and Drill Now!"

But five Republicans-in-Name-Only (RINOs) are siding with the NO NEW DRILLING CROWD in Congress and basically betraying American families suffering severe financial hardship because of the high price of gasoline at the pump.

You've probably already heard the news. Five RINOs are trying to strike a deal with the devil and they're calling it a "compromise."

But like last year's so-called attempted "compromise" on amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens... it is NO SUCH THING!

In actuality, it's a complete and total surrender... a capitulation to liberals who see record energy costs as a political football and tell you "inflate your tires," "we can't drive our SUVs" or we can't "eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees."

If you listened to Rush Limbaugh on Friday, you already know some of the sordid and DECEPTIVE details of this proposed SURRENDER:

"Essentially there is a Gang of Ten senators, five Republicans led by Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isaakson. They joined five Democrats to craft an energy bill in the Senate that is exactly what Barack Obama wants. It is an utter disaster." [Emphasis Mine]

"It's a Democrat giveaway. ... The regulatory hurdles are huge. They have expanded. They are higher. PETA has a role. The ACLU has a role. The bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the United States coastline. That puts off limits some of the most productive areas -- even if the states allow it -- including in ANWR. Well, you can only drill in four states anyway under this bill, but no -- you can't drill any closer to 50 miles of the coastline... This deal would allow drilling if -- if and when -- the EPA and PETA and states and cities and counties and the ACLU clear the way."

In other words, Limbaugh is essentially saying, we CAN drill as long as we drill only when PETA and the ACLU and the EPA say it's okay to drill!

That's NOT "compromise!" That's essentially the same scam liberals have been perpetrating on the American people all along!

And make no mistake, RIGHT NOW, at this very minute, these ten Senators are advancing their treacherous case... attempting to drive a stake into the heart of the grassroots movement to force Congress to "Drill Here and Drill Now!"

We can't let that happen!

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush, Senators Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson and each and every Member of the Republican Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

Tell them that this ill-hatched plan from Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson MUST NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/drilliv.html

If the above hyperlink does not function, copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.



Can You Believe The Audacity?

Good people are in a rage over this betrayal.

And yet, Graham and Thune and Chambliss and Corker and Isaakson seem to not only be OBLIVIOUS to this rage, they're becoming blatantly and openly DEFIANT!

Chambliss actually called into Neal Boortz's show and attempted to defend his betrayal:

"As I went around the state all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday... people were saying to me, 'You guys are doing the right thing... '"

Who is he trying to fool?

Chambliss also said:

"People voted for me in 2002 to go to the Senate to solve problems -- not have campaign issues to deal with."

Newsflash Senator Chambliss; capitulating to those who want to continue the same old failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place DOES NOT solve the problem! And actually trying to solve a real problem is not simply a "campaign issue."

One of Rush's callers describes a heated verbal exchange with one of Graham's staffers:

"Republicans are tired of you compromising with the Democrats. If we wanted a Democrat plan, we would vote for them. We want to drill on American soil. Conservatives are excited about this. You would have so much money flowing in, if you would fight for our ideals."

Another describes a call to Chambliss's office (note the staffer's dismissive and arrogant attitude):

"'Well, we've already gotten a bunch of calls about this,' and I said, 'Now you got one more.' I said, 'You better tell the senator, he better get his head out of his b___ and he better back away from this, cause he's going to lose a lot of votes and, you know, he's going to have to pack his bags and find another line of work, next time he comes up for election.'"

Another caller had this to say:

"And when I heard it, it just outraged me, and I got on the phone to both Isaakson and Chambliss's office and I told them, 'What's wrong with these guys? Have they lost their minds?' I said, 'Do they not understand that people in this state and in our country want us to drill for our own oil?' And I said, 'I don't consider it nothing less than a stab in the back.' And I said they better back away from this. The thing about it is, Rush, I voted for these guys, and I'm ashamed I voted for them now."

Here's your chance to join these outraged Americans in protesting this betrayal by five senators we all thought we could trust.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush, Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson and each and every Member of the Republican Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

Tell them that this ill-hatched plan from Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson MUST NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/drilliv.html


If the above hyperlink does not function, copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.



So What Is Really Wrong With This So-Called Compromise?

First of all, there was no need to "compromise."

It is, after all, an election year and the opposition was starting to feel the heat. More than 70% of the American people now support more domestic drilling. The opposition was weakening!

The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel recently wrote of the catastrophic consequences of this disastrous and treacherous defection:

"The Sierra Club couldn't have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given anti-drilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November."

"Sen. Obama was thrilled. He quickly praised the Gang's bipartisan spirit, and warmed up to a possible compromise. Of course, he means removing even the token drilling provisions now in the bill. But he's only too happy for the focus to remain on the Gang's efforts, and in particular on the five Republicans providing his party its fig leaf."

So basically what Graham and Thune and Chambliss and Corker and Isaakson are trying to do is give the opposition a life-preserver and in the process snatch DEFEAT from the jaws of VICTORY!

But that isn't the only thing wrong with this "Gang of Ten" betrayal!

In a scornful analysis, the Institute for Energy Research released an analysis of the "Gang of Ten" betrayal, calling it a blueprint for economic and electoral disaster.

New production on federal offshore lands is left to the discretion of state legislatures.

Production potential is severely limited. Only four coastal states would be granted the ability to "opt out" of energy bans.

Arbitrary 50-mile buffer zones would exclude potential resource deposits, such as the Gulf of Mexico's Destin Dome, which is some 25 miles offshore.

The plan ignores the urgent national need to repeal the offshore energy exploration and production bans that have contributed to the very problem their plan purports to solve. It may even give the ban the force of permanent law for the first time ever.

Again, this is no "compromise." It is a total surrender in the guise of a "compromise."

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush, Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson and each and every Member of the Republican Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

Tell them that this ill-hatched plan from Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson MUST NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/drilliv.html

AOL Members May Use This Hyperlink

If the above hyperlink does not function, copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.



Repeating The Same Failed Energy Policies Of The Last Thirty Years...

Recently, Senator Barack Obama recently said that lifting the moratorium on drilling would "merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years."

But, in actuality, it is this "Gang of Ten" betrayal which would "prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years."

Economist Robert Murphy issued the following statement:

"[T]his headline-hungry gang decided it had to do something before leaving town for the August vacation."

"The New Era plan is the same as the era we find ourselves stuck in today --flush in subsidies, tax credits, and various other government handouts, but short on the energy supplies our economy and our consumers need to prosper. American families would be better served if the Gang and the entire Congress simply stopped trying to help...."

Congressman Phil Gingrey had this to say in reference to Chambliss:

"While I respect our senators' desire to find legislation that reaches consensus with Senate Democrats, the American people are more interested in lower gas prices than in Senate procedural pleasantries. For far too long, this Congress has accepted 'compromise' energy legislation and look what it has got us -- $4 gasoline."

Rep. Gingrey is absolutely RIGHT!

Let's keep sending the message that needs to be sent: "Drill Here and Drill Now."

And while we're at it, let's add another message; "No Capitulations and No Betrayals."

And let's act quickly.

This "Gang of Ten" WILL try to ride out this storm and bring other RINOs to their side.

Now's the time for the American people to bring the lightning and thunder.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax Messages to President George W. Bush, Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson and each and every Member of the Republican Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

Tell them that this ill-hatched plan from Graham, Thune, Chambliss, Corker and Isaakson MUST NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/drilliv.html



If the above hyperlink does not function, copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

Yours In Freedom,

Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.org



P.S. Please help us reach as many concerned Americans as possible by forwarding this e-mail to at least 10 of your friends and family members.

A GERMAN`S VIEW ON ISLAM

A GERMAN`S VIEW ON ISLAM VERY WELL WORTH READING


This is by far the best explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation I have read. His references to past history are accurate and clear. Not long, easy to understand, and well worth the read. The author of this email is said to be Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a well known and well respected psychiatrist.




A German's View on Islam

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor- kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.

It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our posers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this and think about it, and send it on - before it's too late.


Emanuel Tanay, M.D.

McCain's Experience Shows Through

McCain's Experience Shows Through
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Russia's brutal invasion of Georgia caught America off guard. But it did give voters an idea of what to expect from a President McCain or a President Obama, and right now the differences are stark.

John McCain understood just what was happening and called it right on the first shot.

"Russian military forces crossed an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia," he said as the news broke. "The very existence of independent Georgia — and the survival of democratically elected government — are at stake."

He was blasted by pundits as being too extreme, but events now show he was right. McCain grasped the regional implications, too.

"Russia has used violence against Georgia to send a signal to any country that chooses to associate with the West and aspire to our shared political and economic values," he said.

As he spoke, tiny Estonia and weak Ukraine began efforts to aid Georgia. Western Europe's greater powers wrung their hands.

McCain also comprehended what the attack meant for U.S. influence in the world — the specter of an ally bleeding while friend and foe alike eyed our response.

"Russian aggression against Georgia is both a matter of urgent moral and strategic importance" to the U.S., he said. He masterfully warned Russia off the cuff of specific consequences if it didn't leave — a United Nations Security Council condemnation even if Russia vetoes it; an emergency NATO session for a peacekeeping force, and a potential end to Russia's NATO partnership; a G-7 meeting that could kick Russia out; and beefed up Eastern European defenses.

In contrast, Barack Obama was all over the map, first equivocating Georgia and Russia as equally at fault and calling like a tired parent for all sides to just stop, making no moral distinction between an invader state and a nation invaded.

"Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint and avoid escalation into a full scale war," he said. It was a call for peace at any price, and implied that if Georgia should take exception to a foreign invasion, its self-defense was culpable. Jimmy Carter would be so proud.

Obama then lazily called on the U.N. to take care of the problem, which ignores the U.N.'s long record of inaction. All the same, turning it over to the U.N. conveniently extricates the U.S. from any responsibility to an ally and shields Obama from peace lobby criticism.

Obama then shifted to a slightly tougher line with more U.N. involvement, easily done with 300 foreign policy advisers, apparently including Hollywood actor George Clooney.

Obviously, one candidate has a superior sense of America's strategic interests and the emerging threats over the other, and Russia's invasion of Georgia has laid it out starkly.

McCain has a consistently clear reading on America's role in the world. He's seen war up close in Vietnam, and knows the mentality of tyrants and thugs. He also has focused on foreign affairs for decades, helping found Ronald Reagan's International Republican Institute in 1983, which, along with the National Democratic Institute, has attempted to spread democracy through the world. It's not surprising that he calls for a league of democracies to replace the stagnant U.N. and ineffective multilateral organizations.

McCain has been calling Russian intentions right since 1999, when he warned that Vladimir Putin was bad news and said Russia's strike at Chechnya would in time spread to Georgia.

It was later echoed in his defiant support of the surge in Iraq, which challenged conventional wisdom at the time but has since brought America a real victory in a long war.

It was also there in 1994, when the former POW defied Republicans to urge the normalization of trade relations with Vietnam, giving President Clinton, a draft dodger, crucial legislative cover to lift the embargo. Events show he provided America with a vital partner and emerging ally to counter the growing power of China in Southeast Asia. McCain cited that strategic picture in 1994.

In 1988, he was one of the loudest advocates for Reagan's missile shield in Europe, bluntly saying that supporters of what was then derisively called "Star Wars" "believe in protecting our security," while "opponents believe in undermining our security." Today, with military tests successfully knocking missiles out of the sky, the wisdom of that is obvious, too.

All of this shows that McCain is rapidly emerging as the 3 a.m. president.



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Pelosi's Ploy

Pelosi's Ploy



By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Energy Policy: After calling plans to drill for more oil a "hoax," Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says she'll allow a vote on drilling for more crude to reach the floor of the House. We'll believe it when we see it.

It's not that we think Pelosi won't let something with the word "drilling" in it come up for a vote. It's just that it's likely to be stuck in one of those big omnibus bills with all sorts of pork-barrel spending, new taxes, restrictions on oil use, new economy-damaging limits on global warming gases or plans to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices — a silly idea most sensible centrist Democrats are walking away from.

"They have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas," she told CNN's Larry King Live. "We can do that. We can have a vote on that."

Why Pelosi's sudden change of heart?

It isn't likely she was struck by a bolt of common sense. Too many of her stances in the past argue against that. Rather, it's likely that when she closed Congress for its August recess, House members went home and got an earful.

They discovered their constituents in fact want more oil — a Rasmussen Poll this week said 64% now support offshore drilling — and are angry Congress has done nothing.

Moreover, many Democrats likely heard that Pelosi isn't very popular — and having her as the point person for the Democrats' energy policies is a big political mistake. No surprise here. Under her leadership, Congress' approval rating has sunk to all-time lows.

House Republicans, too, should beware of Pelosi's ploy. They'll be offered a chance to show constituents they "voted for" more oil drilling, even if it's an awful bill. They shouldn't take the bait. Instead, they need to make the case that the U.S. must exploit all of its energy resources — including its vast oil reserves.

Signs that Congress might do just that, coupled with President Bush's renewed requests to open oil-rich federal lands to more exploration and production, have already kicked the legs out from under oil speculation.

Since July 11, when oil peaked at a tad over $147 a barrel, prices have plunged to $113 a barrel — a 23% drop. The reason is simple: The market has finally been convinced the U.S. is so fed up with its growing oil dependence it will do something about it. Since President Bush on July 14 announced he wants to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, futures prices for oil have fallen sharply in anticipation of a big boost in future supplies.

We've said it many times, but it bears repeating: The U.S. is awash in oil, so much that it's almost mind-boggling. The idea we're somehow energy-deficient is simply false — a lie, if you will.

Let's take just that crude that exists in U.S. coastal waters — whether off Alaska or California, or in the Gulf, or off the Atlantic Coast. According to recent data from the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. has 86 billion barrels of oil offshore — and that's only what we can recover using today's technology. Future technologies will boost that.

This is no small amount. Offshore oil alone could fuel 65 million cars for 47 years.

Go onshore, and the bonanza gets even bigger. Some 11.7 billion barrels of conventional oil are available in the Lower 48, and a recent U.S. government report has identified another 45 billion in Alaska and the Arctic region. Which explains why the U.S. this week dispatched an exploration vessel to begin to stake our claim.

Government estimates say there could be as many as two trillion barrels of oil locked in shale-rock formations in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Of that, at least 800 billion barrels is recoverable using today's known technology and at prices below what we're now paying. That's three times the oil reserves of today's No. 1 oil country, Saudi Arabia.

In short, America is an oil-rich nation. Our economy — the world's economy — depends on oil for growth. And it will depend on oil and coal at least through the middle part of this century, most estimates show.

Of course, things seem to be improving right now, with prices falling and demand declining. Indeed, U.S. oil demand in the first half plunged 800,000 barrels a day from last year, the biggest drop in 26 years, the Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday.

Pelosi and other anti-energy Democrats will use this to try to argue there's no need to drill for more. They're wrong.

The reason prices are falling is because people think we'll produce more oil in the future. We need to actually provide more crude to the markets, so we'll have reasonably priced energy available with which to grow our economy — and to save some of the $700 billion we send to foreigners each year to pay our oil bill.

Yet, Pelosi earlier this month let Congress out for its August recess without voting on an energy bill. This outraged some Republicans, who stayed behind to stage a protest in the House chamber.

Initially ignored by the media and derided as a stunt, the energy revolt is starting to attract crowds of average Americans who are increasingly fed up with this do-nothing Congress' inability to exercise its basic duties.

Democrats would do well to note: People are angry, and getting angrier all the time. For Pelosi to stand in the way of drilling is unconscionable, imposing a huge deadweight tax on our economy.

We'll be watching carefully what she lets the House vote on in the way of a drilling bill. After all, she promised before — July 30, to be exact — to allow a vote. Her office later retracted that, implying she either doesn't know where she stands on energy, is simply not telling the truth, or some combination of both.

Even so, Pelosi and the Democrats may be forced to hold a vote. This September, the moratorium on offshore drilling is set to expire, and Congress must act to keep it in place.

We hope Republicans and sensible Democrats will get together and force Pelosi and Congress' energy extremists to abandon our foolish ban on drilling offshore.

If Pelosi & Co. try instead to come up with a phony, watered-down drilling bill just to get the voters off their back, her fellow Democrats would be wise to remove her from the speakership — or face the justifiable wrath of voters in November.



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AUGUST 13 2008

‘End 30 Years of Ultra-Right Rule

Obama Will ‘End 30 Years of Ultra-Right Rule,’ Communist Paper Says
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer


(CNSNews.com) – The Communist Party USA’s newspaper is defending Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama against potential defectors on the left, saying his candidacy represents a “broad multi-class, multicultural movement.”

In a July editorial, “Eye on the Prize,” the People’s Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, admonished anyone on the left who might consider abandoning Obama.

“Barack Obama is not a left candidate,” the editorial said. “This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s ‘shift to the center.’ It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees.

“But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority,” it added.

The editorial, though never using the word “endorse,” expressed excitement about his candidacy. It also used numerous slogans from the Obama campaign such as “hope,” “change” and “third Bush term.”

“The struggle to defeat the ultra-right and turn our country on a positive path will not end with Obama’s election,” the editorial said. “But that step will shift the ground for successful struggles going forward.

“One thing is clear. None of the people’s struggles — from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street — will advance if McCain wins in November. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize,” it added.

People’s Weekly World Editor Teresa Albano had little to say on the subject.

“I think the editorial speaks for itself,” Albano told CNSNews.com. “It was not an endorsement, and I have no further comment.”

The communist newspaper said a broad coalition is backing “Obama’s ‘Hope, change and unity’ campaign because they see in it the thrilling opportunity to end 30 years of ultra-right rule and move our nation forward with a broadly progressive agenda.”

“At the core are America’s working families, of all hues and ethnicities, whose determination to move forward does not depend on, and will not be diverted by, the daily twists and turns of this watershed presidential campaign. They are taking the long view,” the editorial said.

The paper praised organized labor for stepping up to the plate.

“If Obama’s candidacy represented nothing more than the spark for this profound initiative to unite the working class and defeat the pernicious influence of racism, it would be a transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term,” the editorial said.

The People’s Weekly World was founded in 1924 and was first called The Daily Worker.

The Communist Party USA Web site says that the party does not endorse any particular candidate but does “endorse and join in the anti-Bush/anti-right wing sentiments that are driving so many people to activism.”

“The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction,” the party’s Web site says. “We will work with others to defeat the Republican nominee and to end right-wing control of the new Congress.”







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RiverKing at 12:57 PM - August 12, 2008
To Ozark_Sunshine and goomygoomy: Nice sarcasm, folks. I was considering a 'flaming' violation in response but eventually decided that even CP-USA members couldn't be that dumb. So the "People’s Weekly World" doesn't endorse Obama? I'd have to agree with that but only because they don't use the word 'endorse'. Accepting that, even they would have to admit that they ardently support Obama. Imagine that. Given what little track record he has, I'd have been more surprised if the CP-USA did not support him. And Obama can deny being influenced by Davis, Farakhan, Wright, the CP-USA, et al as much as he wants but voters should remember the proverbs about "birds of a feather", "lying down with dogs", and the "leopard's spots". Further, if these people haven't influenced Obama, who has?

Ozark_Sunshine at 11:20 AM - August 12, 2008
You know Obama is good for the nation when communists, socialists, terrorists, etc. want him for president.

gommygoomy at 07:44 AM - August 12, 2008
Are you kidding me? Are you trying to tell me that Obama has the endorsement of the Communist Party USA? What is this, the National Enquirer? What's next? The New Black Panther Party is endorsing him? Hamas and Hezbolla? This is just more Tabloid Trash, like the John Edwards thing, and Monica Lewinskis' Blue Dress. How stupid do you think we are? The next thing you know, you'll be telling everyone that his BEST PALS are RACISTS, and ANTI-SEMITES, and UNREPENTENT TERRORISTS, or that he went to LOUIS FARAKHAN RALLIES, and that he's had a 20 year relationship with a CROOK, who's now behind bars; TONY REZKO. Give it up. The American people are NOT STUPID. Understand? We want CHANGE! It's time we had somebody in there who's completely OBLIVIOUS to EVERYTHING that's not on his teleprompter. Someone with nothing on his RESUME, and voted "PRESENT" 150 or more times, in the Illinois Senate, rather than take a position. THAT'S Leadership. THAT'S CHANGE! Now STOP LYING! GLOBAL WARMING!

The US almost imported more HAMAS

So close, yet so far . . . . The US almost imported more HAMAS members!

The “sad” story of three HAMAS affiliated “scholars” finally came to an end Wednesday. In case you missed it (probably because it was buried by the MSM); three Fulbright Scholars from a university in Gaza were denied entry visas into the US after originally receiving them. If that sounds like a “Kerryism” from 2004 (I voted for the war funding before I voted against it), it is — only worse.

There are many unfortunate wrinkles in this story, from the US pandering to these supposedly ‘victimized’ residents of Gaza by carrying high-tech fingerprinting equipment to an Israeli checkpoint — just to facilitate visa interviews (that is an amazing personalized service that I am sure many US taxpayers would love to receive when they are preparing to travel abroad); to Secretary of State Rice making an absolute fool out of herself by “personally taking up the case” and publicly fronting out Israel in the process.

The jewel in this crown, however, is the fact that even after the Shin Bet warned of these “scholars” and their “potential” baggage (i.e. links to HAMAS), Rice pushed forward — only to eventually make the US once again eat crow on the international scene! From Haartez.com:

The United States has revoked the visas of three Palestinian Fulbright scholars whose cases were taken up personally by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after Israel refused to let them leave Gaza for interviews, U.S. officials said Monday.

Visas for the three, along with a fourth Palestinian student from Gaza who had hoped to come to the U.S. under a different program, were approved after Rice intervened in June but were rescinded last week when new information about them was received, the officials said.

“There were four Palestinians who were issued visas about whom we then received additional information,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said.

“We decided that we needed to take a closer and harder look at them in light of the additional information we received,” said Gallegos.

He also said the visas were canceled under a prudential revocation clause in immigration rules that allows them to be rescinded based on information gleaned about the holders after they were issued.

“It does not preclude the applicants from reapplying for visas in the future,” he said.

Gallegos declined to comment on the nature of the new information about the four Palestinians, one of whom had actually arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington before he was told his visa had been revoked and was forced to return to Jordan.

Readers will be relieved to know that in the aftermath of this debacle, Sec. Rice has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the entire Fulbright Scholarship Program.

Maybe when the State Department dives into those files they will find more people that have come to the United States under the guise of “furthering their education” that are actually here to subvert our country and way of life (possibly via some sort of, umm, ahh . . . Grand Jihad?).

Maybe when they task some investigators, they will see that the (mostly unnamed in the MSM) Gaza University that these folks came from was the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), which has been alleged here (amongst others) at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism, to be a bastion of HAMAS activity.

In fact, in the story on the Christian Science Monitor website, Mr. Abed and Mr. Abu Shaban give an excellent first hand account of what many terrorism experts in the US have known for a while,

“Mr. Abed and Abu Shaban suspect that their denial is related to having studied at Islamic University, where many of the professors and administrators are affiliated with Hamas.”

Thanks for giving it to us straight boys. We do appreciate your openness . . . on that one.



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He Died To Save His Comrades

He Died To Save His Comrades


By BRAD KELLY | Posted Monday, August 11, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Congress created the U.S. Army on June 14, 1784, and exactly 203 years later, Ross McGinnis was born.

As a kindergartner, Ross was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up.

He gave one answer: a soldier.

And what a GI he turned out to be.

On June 2 — two weeks before he would have turned 21 — McGinnis was given the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for valor.

McGinnis reached Iraq in 2006, when as an Army gunner he helped sweep terrorists out of Adamiyah, near Baghdad.
Unfortunately, he was the 620th recipient to have it bestowed posthumously. Of the 3,448 people honored since President Lincoln signed off on the medal in 1862, McGinnis was only the seventh to receive it since the Vietnam War.

McGinnis displayed his heroism in the Iraq War — especially in December 2006. The private first class was part of motorized patrol in a northeast enclave of Baghdad. From his vantage in the gun turret, he spotted a grenade sailing at his Humvee.

The hand-held bomb flew past McGinnis, through the turret and into the vehicle, landing on the radio controls. He yelled out a warning to the four other soldiers riding inside, but they didn't have time to escape. He decided saving four lives was better than sparing one.

Sacrifice

Without hesitation, the 19-year-old smothered the live grenade with his body and absorbed the explosion, which killed him.

"He had time to jump out of the truck, which is protocol, but chose not to. He's a hero," said Maj. Michael Baka, who was two vehicles ahead of McGinnis in the patrol.

At the Medal of Honor ceremony, President Bush said: "His gallant action directly saved four men from certain serious injury or death. America will always honor the name of this brave soldier who gave all for his country."

The president spoke at the White House alongside McGinnis' parents, Tom and Romayne, and the hero's two sisters. Joining them were the four saved soldiers.

They saw Ross as a regular guy, a dependable friend with a big heart and a carefree spirit. They remembered that every time he left a room, he left everybody in it laughing.

"Ross did not become our hero by dying," wrote Tom and Romayne McGinnis in a statement. "He was a hero long before he died, because he was willing to risk his life to protect the ideals of freedom and justice that America represents."

Ross was born on June 14, 1987, in Meadville, Pa., and moved to Knox, north of Pittsburgh, when he was 3. He was an active kid, playing basketball, soccer and baseball as well as getting involved in the Boy Scouts.

McGinnis was never an honor roll student in high school, but he made his marks. He hoped to become a car technician.

In his eyes, joining the Army was a means to that end. In the service, he could serve his country, plus receive an education that would lead him to the car business.

McGinnis fulfilled his childhood dream by joining the Army when he was 17. After training at Fort Benning, Ga., McGinnis was assigned to the 1st Battalion, Charlie Company, 26th Infantry Regiment, in Schweinfurt, Germany. The outfit shipped out to Iraq in August 2006.

Col. Eric Schacht, the regiment's task force commander, says that of his 900 soldiers, McGinnis starred.

"He was always smiling, he had a positive attitude, he greeted leaders of the platoon with a sense of pride and urgency, and to top it all off he was born on the exact day the U.S. Army was created," Schacht told IBD. "He was born to be a soldier."

McGinnis excelled in weaponry, marksmanship and physical training. That prowess earned him a quick promotion from private to specialist. Maj. Baka inked the papers two hours before McGinnis died.

"I had four platoons, roughly 190 soldiers in my command," Baka said. "There were certain guys that would stand, out and McGinnis was definitely one of those men."

McGinnis was a surgeon with the M2 .50-caliber machine gun and was handpicked to serve as the gunner in the platoon sergeant's Humvee while out on patrol.

The patrol's mission outside of Baghdad was to secure Adamiyah, six square miles of violence.

"The area lacked a U.S. presence for eight months, and insurgent attacks, sniper fire, grenade contact and IEDs were all part of daily life in Adamiyah," Baka said.

The Americans took on the problem with daily motorized patrols through the quadrant's narrow streets. The Humvees became the terrorists' favorite targets.

On Dec. 4, McGinnis' six-vehicle platoon hit the Adamiyah road to restrict enemy movement. He had the team's back, manning the big gun on the last Humvee.

A terrorist on a nearby rooftop threw a grenade at McGinnis' vehicle. He tried to deflect the weapon, but missed it as it fell into the hatch.

He quickly yelled out, "Grenade!"

According to survivor accounts, McGinnis stood up and was preparing to jump out of the Humvee. But for the first time in his Army career, he did not follow protocol. "That is what the machine gunner is supposed to do," Baka said. "He's supposed to announce grenade, give a fair amount of time for people in the vehicle to react and then he's supposed to save himself. No one would have blamed him if he did that."

McGinnis knew that his brethren were unaware of the grenade's location and that they were in a combat-locked Humvee, which made escaping in enough time impossible.

In a split second, McGinnis had to process the threat and act. He pushed the gunner strap out from under him and laid his back right on top of the live grenade.

Baka recalls hearing an explosion, which at first he thought was right outside his own vehicle. Then the major got the news that the patrol's last vehicle was hit, and hit badly.

All four of the Humvee's doors had been blown off. Seeing the damage, Baka thought the platoon suffered a large number of casualties. On closer inspection, the company had lost just one brave soul.

As for the mission, it led to fewer terrorists and a safer Adamiyah.

'He Gave Me A Life'

Staff Sgt. Ian Newland was riding in McGinnis' vehicle.

"By all means I should have died that day. He gave me a life that he can't have now," Newland recalled in an interview. "The things people might take for granted, I'm able to appreciate and have these things all over again, every day, every hour, because of what Ross did."

Within 24 hours, Baka wrote up the recommendation for McGinnis' Medal of Honor. The hero was also awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and other honors.

The Medal of Honor goes to the bravest of the brave — a perfect characterization of Ross McGinnis.

"He sacrificed his life for his four brothers," Baka said. "In my mind, McGinnis is the definition of hero."



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