May, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The Sad, Sad Decline Of Joe Biden and How Dangerous That Is For The Country

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

Today’s insanity is completely attributed to Joe Biden. As we have said in the past, everyone stumbles over their words once in a while, saying stuff that they did not mean. However, Biden has made an art of saying insane, stupid, and inappropriate things at inappropriate times. 

We have also said we feel sorry for him. Given his cognitive decline due to whatever causes, the fact that Democratic Party powers continue to put him up front in their bid to take over the White House is a form of elder abuse. It is our non-medical opinion, based on experiences with our family, that he needs medical help and support and to put him out there continuously where he constantly makes a fool of himself is sad and despicable.

1) There is little doubt that the leaders of the Palestinian government will not rest until Israel is wiped off the face of the Earth. In the past couple of years we have seen them divert humanitarian aid from their own people to make underground tunnels that they had hoped to use to invade Israel and bring death and destruction to Israelis. We have seen them launch extensive fire bombing attacks to try to burn Israel to the ground. Any rational person can see that the future of Israel and the health of its citizens is under attack by the Palestinian leadership and terror groups.

But apparently none of that bothers Biden:

• Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently, Biden promised that if elected president, he would start sending financial aid to the Palestinians.
• This would reverse a Trump policy which correctly identified the Palestinian leadership as terrorists and cut off aid, aid that was used to attack Israel.
• Specifically: “A priority now for the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace should be resuming our dialogue with the Palestinians and pressing Israel not to take actions that make a two-state solution impossible. I will reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to reopen the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”
• These funds were withheld under the Taylor Force Act, named after a U.S. citizen that was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in March, 2016.
• But Biden’s distaste for Israel goes back decades including the time he threatened to cut off aid to Israel if they keep building settlements.

Even if you agree with Biden, consider this reality: Millions of Americans have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus crisis, millions of Americans are homeless, hungry or drug addicted in this country, millions of American kids go to substandard schools, etc. But Biden would rather send U.S. taxpayer wealth to a terror organization halfway around the world than use that money to help Americans in need. Insane.

2) And it is not like Biden has a huge success record in foreign affairs, be it in the Middle East or elsewhere:

• Robert Gates was a Secretary of Defense during the Obama/Biden years.
• In a recent TV interview Gates said that while Biden was a nice guy, he was usually wrong when it came to foreign policy.
• When asked if Biden would be a good President, he said “I don't know,” hardly a ringing endorsement from a fellow Obama administration peer.
• In fact, he said Biden has been wrong for decades in the foreign affairs arena.
• The best he could offer is that he knew he could lean on Biden if he was experiencing a personal crisis, hardly a trait critical to managing foreign policy.

A weak assessment of a former peer, not one to build confidence for a Presidency.

3) We have often pointed out how important a free press and journalistic integrity is in a democracy. A free, aggressive, and unbiased press is critical to protect our liberties and expose corruption of all sorts by those in power.

Unfortunately, those in the journalism profession today for the most part have lost their integrity, unbiasedness, and morals when it comes to truthful reporting. They are almost always slanting the truth, distorting reality, ignoring facts that run counter to their personal or corporate positions, and generally propagating fake news, be it for career advancement or TV ratings.

This unfortunate and dangerous trend was recently demonstrated by a leader within the journalism industry in this country:

• Politico is an online news source that has a long history of favoring liberals and Democrats regardless of the need to be unbiased.
• This observation was further confirmed when Politico founder, Martin Tolchin, recently proclaimed in a letter to the New York Times that the sexual accusation of Tara Reade against Joe Biden needs to be ignored since it may endanger Biden’s run for the Presidency.
• This position was taken despite liberals and Democrats view during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings that the very same type of charges need to be thoroughly investigated, that Kavanaugh should be held guilty until he proves his innocence, in the light of what turned out to be false and fairy tale accusations of sexual assault.
• Rather than not be a liberal hypocrite, he said he wants the Reade charges totally ignored in order to support a “coronation” of Joe Biden as President.
• He goes so far to say that Biden would never be a great President, that he would be “good enough.”
• As long as Trump was not reelected, Tolchin, is fine with a subpar President (Biden) even if it means being a hypocrite to the nth degree and ignoring Tara Reade’s very credible sexual assault accusations.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable. Screw the potential reality that a woman was sexually assaulted, we need to throw out our principles in order to prevent a Trump election win. You know for sure that if Reade had accused Trump, Tolchin would be one of the first people in line calling for an extensive investigation of that accusation. 

But Reade’s alleged experience is so inconvenient for liberals like him, that he is willing to throw away the precedent people like him set with Kavanaugh for purely political reasons. Certainly a lack of morals, integrity, and unbiasedness, all of which is the pervading mindset in the news and journalism industry today.

4) To add to the untold number of other gaffes and missteps he has taken over the past few months, consider what Biden said during a recent interview regarding America's place in the world: “I would get much more engaged in the world, we can’t step back. If in fact, for example, we solve the problem in the United States of America and you don’t solve it in other parts of the world, you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to have travel bans, you’re going to not be able to do, have economic intercourse [my emphasis] around the world. There’s a lot, look, when America goes alone, when America is first, it’s America alone.”

In total, the statement is kind of garbled and says nothing. But what in the world is “economic intercourse?” Again, an occasional misspeak is only human. But he continues to misspeak in just about every interview with “economic intercourse” either a Freudian slip or a concept that no one in the world knows what he is talking about, probably including himself.

5) See if you can figure out his response when during a CBS interview he was asked if his son’s dealing with China would be dangerous to his campaign: "My son's business dealings [in China] were not anything what everybody that he's talking about, not even remotely, number one." Huh? Nonsensical.

6) One last Biden bit for today and this one is quite sad, it reinforces our opinion that putting him up in front of the press and the country is a form of elder abuse. During a recent morning interview on MSNBC by Mika Brzezinski, he was asked about Tara Reade’s accusations that he digitally penetrated her when she worked in his Senate office and whether he would release any of his government records to see if there was any validity to her claims:

• Brzezinski asked: “Are you certain there was nothing about Tara Reade in those records? … Why not approve a search of her name in those records?” 
• Biden said that there is nothing in those records and that they did not contain personnel files.
• She then asked if Biden would allow a much more focused and narrow search of the records, searching only for Reade’s name to which he replied…. Nothing, simply 15 seconds of silent, dead air in which he looked confused, befuddled and totally out of touch with reality.

It was a sad, sad sight, an elderly man being put on the spot with a fair question and he completely loses any sense where he was or what to say. The exchange can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-left-dumbfounded-15-disastrously-awkward-seconds-unable-answer-tara-reade-question/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=flagandcross-newsletter&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=firefly

It is so sad that his cognitive abilities have deteriorated so much, that he has trouble forming coherent sentences and responding to quite straightforward questions. That he has reacted violently and aggressively to those that have a different opinion than his. 

And again, it is a form of elder abuse to keep putting him through the ringer of running for President. He should be getting help and support to get him through his troubles, not paraded around as a placeholder because liberals hate Trump so much.

But I don't want someone in the White House who is as clueless and out of touch as Biden has presented himself to be regardless of what I think of Trump. Biden is too dangerous to be President and make Presidential decisions or be President and have unknown sources behind the scenes make decisions for him, not accountable to the American voter.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The American Political Class - "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" Today - The Ugly, Part 1

This week we have been using the old Clint Eastwood movie, “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly” to describe politics in America today. We started off with “The Good,” a post meant to get us in a better mood before we looked at the Bad and the Ugly. The Good post focused on the good things that individual Americans are doing for the country, other people, and the environment since the American political class and the government it operates are certainly not doing those things. That post of Good can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-american-political-class-good-bad_15.html

Unfortunately, we had to follow up that Good feeling post with two posts that covered The Bad about the politicians in this country. The wasteful spending of taxpayer money with no societal benefit in return, the inefficient and ineffective government programs that often make a problem worse, etc. The first Bad post can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-american-political-class-good-bad_15.html

Today and tomorrow we are going to look at “The Ugly” side of American politicians. This does not mean that what they have done to the country is not ugly:

• Record high unemployment numbers for a record length of time.
• Economic programs that are expensive and useless.
• Government programs that are fraught with fraud and which lose well over $100 billion a year.
• A health care reform piece of legislation that is increasing the cost and decreasing the health insurance coverage of Americans, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
• Downgrading of the country’s credit rating for the first time in our history.
• A Veterans Administration whose incompetence and uncaring attitude has resulted in likely thousands of unnecessary veterans' deaths over the years.
• A tax burden that forces Americans to work over half of the year just to pay for taxes at all levels of government.
• A regulatory burden that stifles the economy and job creation.
• A national debt approaching an unfathomable $18 TRILLION, well above $50,000 for every person in the country including our kids.
• A foreign policy that is in tatters and useless besides endangering the national security of the country.

We could go on and on but you get the idea. Our politicians are bad at problem definition and resolution, they have no idea how to run an efficient and crime free government, and they are killing freedom and liberty in this country. But today will go beyond these dismal results.

Today we look at their attitude and how their selfishness and personal greed are likely major contributing factors to the dismal results they seem to always end up producing. It is their attitude, as much as their non-success in resolving major issues, that cause the majority of us to loathe them so much. 

Remember, recent and credible public opinion surveys put our approval rating of Congress at levels far less than 10%. Obama’s approval rating has been in free fall for a while now with far more Americans disapproving of his performance than those that approve his performance. We despise them and today and tomorrow let’s look at several reasons while that spite goes beyond their inability to effectively govern.

1) Up until last year, it was illegal for any American to profit off of any kind of company insider stock trading information….except for members of Congress and their staffs. They could leverage information about upcoming legislation, insider knowledge of companies’ situations, pending regulations, possible industry bailouts, etc. for their own personal enrichment, something that mere mortals outside of Washington would likely go to jail for.

That sleazy part of their lives was exposed by a “60 Minutes” investigative report that documented how politicians were able to leverage their positions of power and insider knowledge for their own self enrichment. The piece pointed out how Nancy Pelosi, while the Speaker of the House, was able to quickly and easily pocket a couple of hundred thousand dollars when pending legislation to regulate credit card companies was postponed until after a VISA IPO was launched, an IPO that she was granted insider access to. Apparently, this was just one of upwards of nine or so deals that she leveraged without danger of jail time.

As a result of the reporting and uproar over the special treatment politicians had granted only to themselves, a piece of legislation called the STOCK Act was quickly drafted and enacted to curtail, if not eliminate, this type of behavior, putting Congress and Washington elites back into the same treatment mode as the rest of us. The details of the whole sordid situation can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-proof-of-undeniable-corruption.html

Everyone went away happy that justice and equality had prevailed and the topic faded away. Unfortunately, it faded away so much that in the excitement of other issues and other crises, the Washington political class secretly approved new legislation that essentially gutted the original STOCK Act and allowed the Washington political class to get back to what they seem to do best, trade on insider information for their own financial gain.

They were very sneaky and underhanded how they did it. I guess they figured that if they came right our front and just nullified the original STOCK Act, someone would have found out about it and the whole scandal would have started again. The underhanded way they went about gutting the law included the following details:

• The original STOCK Act required the online, easily accessed posting of the personal financial disclosure statements that lawmakers and Congressional candidates, the President and Vice President, members of the cabinet and high-ranking Congressional and executive branch staff file each year. 
• This information was supposed to be made available in machine readable, electronic format. 
• With no hearings held or no public notices to the public or to most members of the Senate, the Senate voted by unanimous consent to remove both the online disclosure requirement for staff members on the Hill and in executive branch agencies and killed the creation of a public database containing the information within the reports. The new law’s provision barring insider trading by members of Congress was technically left intact.
• Roll Call reported that “neither the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee nor its House counterpart seemed to have specifics on what was in the works,” which is not surprising since everything was done in utmost secrecy lest the shenanigans become public and on the public record.
• The changes that gutted the original legislation were handled solely at the Congressional leadership level. 
• Under the new STOCK Act version, the reports and personal information of lawmakers will still be posted online as they are now. But the information within the reports would continue to be locked up in files that are not easily analyzed, discouraging investigation of insider trading done by politicians, the exact opposite of what the original STOCK Act was supposed to do.
• President Obama was a co-conspirator in this shady effort, signing the gutted STOCK Act revision into law, ironically, on tax day April 15. 

Thus, the more things change, the more they say the same. This is basically lying to the American public by proclaiming they were cleaning up their act in public while secretly undoing what the claimed they had done. Pathetic liars, and selfish [you fill in the blank].

2) President Obama is constantly dividing the country along wealth lines, continually harping on “income inequality” to set up a mythical battle between the wealthy and not wealthy in this country. In this mythical battle, he constantly tries to position himself as helping out the “little guy,” the middle class and lower class in this country, against the big, bad rich people that steal everything for themselves.

I personally find this type of attitude as nasty, divisive, wasteful, lacking in dignity, and not worthy of a President. But if he chooses to act as so, this is his choice. However, what really is loathsome is his actions as they usually pertain to his personal vacations, as the details for the next of his numerous vacations were recently released to the public:

• The Obamas will depart Washington on Saturday, August 9th and head for Martha’s Vineyard where they will vacation for two full weeks.
• They are staying in a $12 million vacation.
• For their family of four, the Obamas will be living in a seven-bedroom, nine-bath, 8,100-square-foot house.
• The house sits on a 10-acre lot and is assessed at more than $12 million. 
• The house has 17 rooms in total, expansive water views of Vineyard Sound, an infinity pool and hot tub, and a dual tennis-basketball court.

I am sorry, I do not think you can claim you understand the plight of the non-wealthy in this country when your family of four is spending two weeks in a house and a setting like this. Hypocritical to the max. 

And this extravagance comes on top of the fact that according to recent financial disclosures, travel costs alone for the Obama family vacations over the past five and a half years has cost the American taxpayer about $44 million, money that could have been much better spent on real Americans in need rather than vacations for the First Family around the country and around the world. Oh, and this total does not include the total cost for the family to vacation in Africa last year, a total cost that has been estimated at about $100 million.

Keep in mind that he is taking this two week, opulent vacation in the midst of a major security and humanitarian crises on our southern border, a hot war involving killing and shooting between the Ukrainians and Russians, a hot war between the Israelis and Palestinians, an imploding Iraq, military veterans that are dying as a result of a dysfunctional Veterans Administration, an economy that is faltering, high unemployment, and a myriad of other crucial and dangerous situations.

I realize that the President is under a lot of stress, like anyone else he deserves a vacation and time with his family. But from a symbolism perspective, maybe idling it back a little would be appropriate. Show some leadership in the midst of a world that is blowing up and a little empathy with the rest of America, many of which are struggling. 

In the face of no leadership and no empathy, then shut up about income inequality. You have no right to discuss income inequality while staying in an 8,000 square foot mansion in Martha’s vineyard.

That concludes the first part have of our “Ugly” discussion of the American political class. A group of people more concerned with their own self enrichment, whether it is cutting back room deals to allow their insider trading to start up again or staying in opulent mansions, mostly at taxpayer expense on vacation.

More loathsome behavior tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro #3 - Lots Of Talk, No Action: The Current Impotency and Lack Of Leverage of American Foreign Policy

Due to massive family obligations in the short term, time will be at a premium for the next week or so. Thus, rather than rush through new posts, I am taking the opportunity to do a "best of" series of past posts. These "retro posts" have been the most popular posts in this blog from the past year or so. All of them have been viewed hundreds of times and seem to have made a connection to our readers vs. other posts and topics. Please enjoy them again or for the first time.

This blog has often talked about the American political class inability to get anything accomplished relative to the major issues facing Americans today. These major issues include the failed war on drugs, failing public schools, the lack of a national energy policy, a non-existent immigration plan and strategy, and the failure to solve the problem of escalating health care costs in this country.

However, this inability apparently is not restricted to the domestic side of political class responsibilities. If you look at our country's foreign policy recently you see very few successes (recent trade agreement with South Korea) and a whole lot of failures:

- There was a recent conference in Geneva that involved Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany [Associated Press - December 7, 2010]. The conference was supposed to find a way to allow Iran to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program while preventing them from developing nuclear weapons. The talks ended with a promise of all countries to get together again in 2011. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley went so far to say that: "We are encouraged that there will be a follow-on meeting [in 2011].

Sound familiar? It seems this dance has been going on for a long time, with Iran skillfully sitting down for talks with the over eager other six nations and hinting at enough progress to not kill future talks but never agreeing to anything either. This has been going on for years, with no concessions from Iran but serving as their delaying tactic for their continued developed of a nuclear weapon capability. Lots of talk, no action.

- The never ending search for peace between the Palestinians and Israel also has recently been in the news. The United States, for years, has tried to mediate talks between the two factions, with a recent agreement stipulating that Israel would not do any more settlement construction in Jerusalem for 90 days. This agreement was necessary to prevent the Palestinians from walking out of the peace talks. The Obama administration was so desperate for the 90 day window that they agreed to get billions of dollars of weaponry to Israel and made other diplomatic commitments for their moratorium on construction, all for a mere 90 day freeze on construction.

However, shortly afterward, Israel declared that the U.S. was too consumed by the Wikileaks fiasco to talk peace (Associated press - December 7, 2010) and that the U.S. had stopped the peace talk process. The State Department denied that this was the case and the talks were still on. However, it appears that the Israelis are using the weak excuse of Wikileaks to get the military hardware and diplomatic air cover that the U.S. committed to but never wanted to continue the peace talks anyway. Thus, all of the United States' plans to keep both sides happy and talking are likely to fail. Lots of talk, no action.

- Every time that North Korea acts up, the United States goes begging to China to please, please intervene and keep the North Koreans in check. However, China apparently has very little motivation to keep the North Koreans in check according to recent news reports and documents:

• China likes having a buffer between itself and U.S. ally South Korea. If the North government should collapse, then South Korean, and possibly U.S. troops, could be sitting on the Chinese border, something they probably do not want.
• If the North Korean government should collapse, there is a very high probability that millions of starving North Korean citizens would flee to the more prosperous China in search of food and shelter, an event that the Chinese definitely do not want to cope with.
• The North Koreans intermittently act aggressively towards Japan, a military and economic competitor of nearby China. With North Korea as a wild card, it distracts Japan in its affairs and confrontations with China.

As with the Mideast peace talks and hopes and the delaying Iranians nuclear meetings, lots of talk, no action when it comes to North Korea.

What do all of these situations have in common? Namely, the United States no longer has the leverage to make/convince others to do what it wants. Without leverage, other parties will do what the want and is best for them, not what is best for U.S. interests. Especially today, with a fragile economy, the United States has lost the leverage of economic power. China's economy has grown so much and made us so dependent on it that we can do nothing but go to the Chinese and beg for them to do something about North Korea.

The Israelis are living in a prosperous economic environment that is relatively secure. The Palestinian leaders exist and continue in power because of the hatred it sows among its citizens towards Israel. None of the parties involved, Israeli and Palestinians citizens and leaders really want peace as defined by the United States. We have no leverage to make them change their minds from the status quo but we are gullible enough to sign short term and costly agreements that the Israelis abide by or ignore at their will. Again, no leverage to make them do what we want, they have more to lose than to gain.

What leverage do we have with the Iranians? Obviously, the five or six rounds of sanctions that have been imposed on them have had insufficient leverage to make them stand down from their nuclear weapon ambitions. Plus, we are dealing with some very irrational and possibly insane rulers, both in Iran and North Korea. Without leverage to apply to their irrational interests, the United States is relegated to diplomatic beggar again and sits at these meetings with no power or leverage to enact anything effective. As a result, the Iranians play us for fools as they delay and delay as they develop and develop nuclear weaponry.

A wise old business saying goes as follows: "Never be so in love with a business deal that you cannot walk away from the negotiating table." Our political class and politicians have become so in love with these "deals," a nuclear free Iran, a well behaved North Korea, and a lasting a stable Middle East peace accord that they cannot walk away from the table. We continue to sit at the table and talk and talk because we have diplomatically, militarily, and economically no leverage to do anything else, looking diplomatically impotent in every case. Without leverage or the creativity to create leverage, you get played for a fool, which is exactly the position that our politicians have put is in today.

Which should not surprise us. The meager efforts of the political class to domestically improve life for Americans have almost always been a failure (e.g. Cash For Clunkers, TARP, etc.). And usually the root cause of these failures is that the meager and ill-thought out programs from our politicians usually have no leverage. Without leverage, plans usually fail miserably.

But that discussion is worthy of another post in the near future but before then, think about some of these recent failures and try to identify what leverage was inherent in the thought process of the programs. I will bet that you will find that there were none. As a result they failed as miserably as the foreign affairs fiascos above.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

Lots Of Talk, No Action: The Current Impotency and Lack Of Leverage Of America Foreign Policy

This blog has often talked about the American political class inability to get anything accomplished relative to the major issues facing Americans today. These major issues include the failed war on drugs, failing public schools, the lack of a national energy policy, a non-existent immigration plan and strategy, and the failure to solve the problem of escalating health care costs in this country.

However, this inability apparently is not restricted to the domestic side of political class responsibilities. If you look at our country's foreign policy recently you see very few successes (recent trade agreement with South Korea) and a whole lot of failures:

- There was a recent conference in Geneva that involved Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany [Associated Press - December 7, 2010]. The conference was supposed to find a way to allow Iran to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program while preventing them from developing nuclear weapons. The talks ended with a promise of all countries to get together again in 2011. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley went so far to say that: "We are encouraged that there will be a follow-on meeting [in 2011].

Sound familiar? It seems this dance has been going on for a long time, with Iran skillfully sitting down for talks with the over eager other six nations and hinting at enough progress to not kill future talks but never agreeing to anything either. This has been going on for years, with no concessions from Iran but serving as their delaying tactic for their continued developed of a nuclear weapon capability. Lots of talk, no action.

- The never ending search for peace between the Palestinians and Israel also has recently been in the news. The United States, for years, has tried to mediate talks between the two factions, with a recent agreement stipulating that Israel would not do any more settlement construction in Jerusalem for 90 days. This agreement was necessary to prevent the Palestinians from walking out of the peace talks. The Obama administration was so desperate for the 90 day window that they agreed to get billions of dollars of weaponry to Israel and made other diplomatic commitments for their moratorium on construction, all for a mere 90 day freeze on construction.

However, shortly afterward, Israel declared that the U.S. was too consumed by the Wikileaks fiasco to talk peace (Associated press - December 7, 2010) and that the U.S. had stopped the peace talk process. The State Department denied that this was the case and the talks were still on. However, it appears that the Israelis are using the weak excuse of Wikileaks to get the military hardware and diplomatic air cover that the U.S. committed to but never wanted to continue the peace talks anyway. Thus, all of the United States' plans to keep both sides happy and talking are likely to fail. Lots of talk, no action. 

- Every time that North Korea acts up, the United States goes begging to China to please, please intervene and keep the North Koreans in check. However, China apparently has very little motivation to keep the North Koreans in check according to recent news reports and documents:

• China likes having a buffer between itself and U.S. ally South Korea. If the North government should collapse, then South Korean, and possibly U.S. troops, could be sitting on the Chinese border, something they probably do not want.
• If the North Korean government should collapse, there is a very high probability that millions of starving North Korean citizens would flee to the more prosperous China in search of food and shelter, an event that the Chinese definitely do not want to cope with.
• The North Koreans intermittently act aggressively towards Japan, a military and economic competitor of nearby China. With North Korea as a wild card, it distracts Japan in its affairs and confrontations with China.

As with the Mideast peace talks and hopes and the delaying Iranians nuclear meetings, lots of talk, no action when it comes to North Korea.

What do all of these situations have in common? Namely, the United States no longer has the leverage to make/convince others to do what it wants. Without leverage, other parties will do what the want and is best for them, not what is best for U.S. interests. Especially today, with a fragile economy, the United States has lost the leverage of economic power. China's economy has grown so much and made us so dependent on it that we can do nothing but go to the Chinese and beg for them to do something about North Korea.

The Israelis are living in a prosperous economic environment that is relatively secure. The Palestinian leaders exist and continue in power because of the hatred it sows among its citizens towards Israel. None of the parties involved, Israeli and Palestinians citizens and leaders really want peace as defined by the United States. We have no leverage to make them change their minds from the status quo but we are gullible enough to sign short term and costly agreements that the Israelis abide by or ignore at their will. Again, no leverage to make them do what we want, they have more to lose than to gain.

What leverage do we have with the Iranians? Obviously, the five or six rounds of sanctions that have been imposed on them have had insufficient leverage to make them stand down from their nuclear weapon ambitions. Plus, we are dealing with some very irrational and possibly insane rulers, both in Iran and North Korea. Without leverage to apply to their irrational interests, the United States is relegated to diplomatic beggar again and sits at these meetings with no power or leverage to enact anything effective. As a result, the Iranians play us for fools as they delay and delay as they develop and develop nuclear weaponry.

A wise old business saying goes as follows: "Never be so in love with a business deal that you cannot walk away from the negotiating table." Our political class and politicians have become so in love with these "deals," a nuclear free Iran, a well behaved North Korea, and a lasting a stable Middle East peace accord that they cannot walk away from the table. We continue to sit at the table and talk and talk because we have diplomatically, militarily, and economically no leverage to do anything else, looking diplomatically impotent in every case. Without leverage or the creativity to create leverage, you get played for a fool, which is exactly the position that our politicians have put is in today.

Which should not surprise us. The meager efforts of the political class to domestically improve life for Americans have almost always been a failure (e.g. Cash For Clunkers, TARP, etc.). And usually the root cause of these failures is that the meager and ill-thought out programs from our politicians usually have no leverage. Without leverage, plans usually fail miserably.

But that discussion is worthy of another post in the near future but before then, think about some of these recent failures and try to identify what leverage was inherent in the thought process of the programs. I will bet that you will find that there were none. As a result they failed as miserably as the foreign affairs fiascos above.




Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

Resetting U.S. Foreign Policy - From Weakness and Begging To Strength And Leverage

There has been a lot of thought and conjecture on how the Obama administration was going to "reset" itself, given the rebuke and significant defeat the administration and the Democrats suffered in the early November elections. Most of the "reset" speculation has been centered around Obama's approach to domestic policy, especially as it applies to the economic situation.

However, I would suggest that the President also strongly consider resetting U.S. foreign policy since right now, it is a disaster. Consider:

- An article in the November 26, 2010 issue of The Week magazine talked about the rising problems and conflicts we are having with the government of Afghanistan President Karzai. Recently, Karzai unexpectedly called for the NATO troops, fighting to protect his government, in Afghanistan to stop combat initiatives in southern Afghanistan that have led to the capturing or deaths of hundreds of Taliban fighters. Since the Taliban stronghold is in southern Afghanistan and our troops look like they are having some degree of success in fighting the enemy, the Taliban, why would we do this? And more importantly, why would Karzai want us to do that?

Thus, we are fighting hard, spending money and soldiers lives to fight the enemy and now we are told by the very people we are supposedly fighting for to stop fighting. Worse yet, recent NATO and U.S. negotiations have established 2014 as the target date to turn over the fighting responsibilities to the Afghan forces, meaning another four years of wasted resources for a government that is by far one of the most corrupt in the world and which is led by someone who may just be stringing us along for their own  protection and power.

The current U.S. foreign policy strategy of starting to bring U.S. troops home in July, 2011 is now out the window, leaving us with a muddling through to a nebulous disengagement date with a corrupt partner somewhere down the road, beyond the 2012 elections. As a result, more money wasted, more lives lost as the Afghan foreign policy continually drifts.

- On a related matter, consider an article in the Briefing section of November 26, 2010 issue of The Week magazine. This article did an in-depth analysis of the Pakistani government's ISI organization, the Directorate of Inter-Services. ISI is basically comparable to our CIA with a little bit of our Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency thrown it. The difference with our CIA, however, is that while the ISI is theoretically under civilian government control. the ISI pretty much does whatever it wants to do. It is has resisted all attempts to reign in its power, it is suspected of assassinating Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and it is believed to have been behind the 2008 terror raids in Mumbai, India that killed almost 200 people.

What is their relationship to the conflict in Afghanistan? According to the article, the ISI realizes that they will be around long after U.S. and NATO forces leave Afghanistan. Supporting the Taliban stationed in Pakistan gives the ISI leverage over the future status and government of Afghanistan. The article cites a London School of Economic report that found the ISI funds and trains Taliban fighters and even sends some of its agents to Taliban leadership meetings. The ISI also allows Taliban and al Qaida leaders to move freely about the country, with some sources claiming that Bin Laden and other terror leaders live comfortably in ISI safe houses.

As this wing of the Pakistani government supports the very people our soldiers are trying to defeat, the U.S. government continues to send billions of dollars of military aid to the the same government, including an announced two billion dollar deal last week. Thus, our current foreign policy in the area puts us between a rock and a hard place, i.e. we are being played for suckers everywhere. The Pakistan government knows we need them to logistically supply our troops in Afghanistan and plays on our fear that Bin Laden and the sort might re-emerge to take back power in Afghanistan. At the same time, the same government's agencies are supporting the Taliban in case they ever regain power rather than being true to our needs and agreements of destroying them and the terrorists among them.

Combine this situation with the previous points above, where Karzai is also playing both sides, wanting us to be successful enough to keep him in power but not so successful that we win the conflict and go home by hamstringing our fighting forces. Dealing with two timing friends with little leverage at all makes for a very weak foreign policy strategy.

There appears to be only two foreign policy strategies. Either you go all out and win the war, which probably involves bypassing both the Afghan and Pakistani governments altogether, and militarily go after the Taliban and terrorists wherever they are. This would include both the southern part of Afghanistan and the northwest haven corner of Pakistan. The problem with this strategy is that we would be violating sovereign space of a country (Pakistan) and we would have to find a way to supply our troops without Pakistan's help. Additionally, we would suffer an increase in battle field deaths and wounded as we finally took the fight to the enemy.

The second alternative is to just get out now, minimizing our loses. We need to recognize that there are forces in both countries that want us on their terms and for their reward, not for our goals and aims. If that situation is not going to change, then we will continue to be in this no-man's ground with little leverage to succeed. Time to reset this entire operation and do it before 2012, regardless of whose political career is endangered. U.S. solidiers' lives should always override political careers.

- Staying in the Middle East, another article from The Week magazine, this one also from the November 26, 2010 issue, discussed the latest peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestinians. In order to keep the endangered peace process moving along, the United States recently agreed to supply $3 billion in military aid to Israel and would commit to oppose any international recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state if only the Israeli  government agreed to stop constructing new homes in the West Bank for 90 days. The logic is that if the construction was not frozen, the Palestinians would walk out of the talks. The hope, and it is not much more than a hope, is that the 90 day window would allow the talks to move so far forward that by the 91st day the peace talks would have their own momentum.

Serious problems with this U.S. foreign policy strategy. First of all, these two parties have been at each others' throats for 62 years, I find it highly doubtful that a 90 day window is going to make any difference. Second, according to the article, the Israeli government has not yet approved the plan and the Palestinians are balking because the freeze does not include the building of new Israeli homes in Jerusalem. Thus, the two parties might not even agree on the terms of the 90 day freeze, never mind settling the conflicts of 62 years.

The additional problem with this approach is that we are again negotiating from a position of weakness, much like we are in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We beg the Israelis to do a momentary stop to construction in exchange for $3 billion worth of military hardware. After 62 years, a 90 day delay for $3 billion worth of goodies is a great deal for them. Again, we are being played for suckers.

There is only one viable approach to this situation from a U.S. foreign policy perspective: don't do anything until both the Israeli and Palestinian people, not their governments, truly want peace. That is currently not the  environment. Rather than have the United States bounce back and forth between both parties, literally begging them to make nice to each other, we need to get out of the way and go home, taking our $3 billion worth of military hardware enticement with us. The U.S. begging has not worked and it weakens our position as a neutral broker if and when the conditions for peace ever did spring up. Let them call us when they are ready, we should not be constantly ringing their doorbells to see if they want to come out and play peace.

- Staying with the November 26, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a short blurb discussed the fact that it was unlikely that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9-11 attacks, would  be put on trial prior to the next U.S. Presidential election. This would likely result in the prisoner facility at Guantanamo Bay being kept open for at least several more years, despite the Obama campaign pledge to close it, a move supported as one of the fifty steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government."  A major part of the Obama foreign strategy was to close Gitmo since it was thought to serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists. Keeping it open becomes another foreign policy defeat for this administration.

- In the past week, North Korean forces artillery shelled an island off of the coast of South Korea, resulting in several South Korean civilian and military deaths. The world reacted with horror, condemning the attack, and again asking China for help in keeping its friend, North Korea, under control. Again, the United States goes begging for help from a nation that does not really have the U.S. interests as a top priority. Why? Consider some root causes for China's continuing support of North Korea:

• If the North Korean government ever collapses, millions of North Koreans would likely flee to China, looking for humanitarian aid, especially given the starvation situation currently going on in North Korea. China's best interest is to avoid dealing with starving of Koreans, regardless how badly the North Korean government acts.
• If North Korean does collapse, and you assume that the South Korean government moved in to take over, much like the West/East Germany model twenty years ago, the Chinese probably fear having an United States ally, South Korea, and possibly American troops, sitting on its southern border. Thus., China would prefer to have the current geographic buffer of North Korea to its south, regardless of how badly the North Korean government acts.
• Finally, the Chinese government has been flexing its military muscle lately, especially with regard to Japan. The Chinese and Japanese have a hot dispute going on over some island territories, so hot that only recently did the Chinese government resume shipments of rare earth elements to Japan. Since North Korea has, in the past, test fired rockets that went through and over Japanese airspace, the North Koreans can continue to be a surrogate pain to Japanese on behalf of the military flexing of China.

Again, as elsewhere, U.S. foreign policy comes from a position of weakness, begging others to act like we want them to behave. Rarely does our foreign policy understand the underlying priorities of those we are dealing with, allowing those parties to take advantage of our good will and intentions.

Karzai wants us to be somewhat, but no totally successful, stringing us along to keep himself in power. The Pakistani government wants us to be somewhat successful in Afghanistan, but not so much that we stop sending them aid or we cut off their ties to their potential future Taliban allies in Afghanistan. The Israelis are happy to take our military aid for a token break in West Bank construction but probably have no real intention of using the 90 day window as a true opportunity for peace. We say we want to close the prison at Guantanamo but we have no plan to do so. The Chinese could care less how we want North Korea to behave, given their country's interests.

What should our foreign policy look like? Better to answer that question by changing our government's basic structure and policies first, including the following steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:

• Underneath a lot of our foreign policy deficiencies is the fact that our political class tries to time foreign policy decisions to elections. The trial of  Mohammed and the closing of Guantanamo are delayed until beyond the next Presidential election. The deadlines in Afghanistan are set to avoid coming due around the next Presidential election, whether it was Obama's initial 2011 troop pull down or the new 2014 hand over of fighting to the Afghan government. If politicians were limited to one term in office, as proposed in Step 39, then valid, timely, and successful foreign policy might not be at the mercy of when our elections are scheduled.
• Second, as outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," we need to bring home almost all of our foreign deployed troops as soon as possible, including the 28,000 or so U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. In a hot war between the millions of native soldiers in both Koreas, 28,000 U.S. troops are not going to make any difference in the outcome of the fighting. Get them out now and remove a potential impediment to China helping reign in North Korea.
• Closing the prison at Guantanamo was also a step from the book, why does it take so long to comply with such a simple foreign policy strategy when our political class controls every aspect of this situation?
• Finally, stop being played for a sucker. We need to put some smarter and less gullible people in political office that can understand the both the obvious and the subtle underlying priorities and situations in a foreign policy strategy and execute and leverage a strategy that comes from a position of strength and not from a begging and pleading position of weakness.

Sounds like a lot of resetting to be done in a very short amount of time. The Presidential 2012 election is right around the corner.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

Who's On First, What's On Second and Just About Everybody is on Third

I have always loved the classic Abbott and Costello baseball routine, "Who's On First, What's On Second, I Don't Know Is On Third." It came to mind today after reading some recent articles regarding how the D.C. political class tries, and fails, to solve problems. It reminds of the old saying, "If everyone is in charge then no one is responsible." Consider the following political class comedy acts:

1) At the heart of the recent economic disaster and recession were the highly interrelated housing and banking industries. Think about how many government entities currently touch the housing and banking markets in this country:

• Housing and Urban Development
• Federal Housing Authority
• Fannie Mae
• Freddie Mac
• Ginnie Mae
• FDIC
• Federal Reserve Board
• Treasury Department
• House of Representatives banking and housing committees and subcommittees
• Senate banking and housing committees and subcommittees
• Probably other Federal entities that I do not even know about and not including the similar type government entities at the state level.

All of these organizations involved in the banking and housing industries and not one of them saw the impending biggest financial disaster since the Depression until it hit them all in the face. Everyone was in charge but no one was responsible.

2) Vice President Joe Biden has been in the Mideast the past few days trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the peace negotiation table. With the announcement that Israel is going ahead with more settlement construction in East Jerusalem, the visit is not going well. However, besides this recent event, consider the number of government organizations attacking this problem:

• Secretary Hilary Clinton and the State Department
• Special White House Envoy/Czar George Mitchell and his staff
• Vice President Joe Biden and his staff

Should not have Hillary been in the Mideast with Biden on this trip? If she is, she is getting no press which is so unlike her. Again, everyone is in charge and no one is responsible for what is a seriously deteriorating situation.

3) The March 15, 2010 issue of Business Week had an interview by Charlie Rose of Elizabeth Warren. Ms. Warren is chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel which was created to oversee the bailout of the banks and review the regulation of financial markets. We have reported her views in the past which always seemed honest, grounded and well reasoned. In this interview, Mr. Rose asked her where a proposed financial consumer protection agency should be based. Her response: "There are seven bureaucracies in Washington right now that each own a piece of consumer financial protection. Bloated, inefficient, and either ignored or ineffective or captured by the large financial institutions." Doe not sound as if the job is being done well now if it is bloated, inefficient, or ignored. Again, so many people in charge and no one is responsible, according to Ms. Warren.

Imagine how much better things would be if we just started over with a zero based, ground up approach to defining what government should do and how it should do it. We would save valuable tax payer dollars by getting rid of redundancy and make everything more efficient, both domestically and internationally. Much of this is proposed in Step 1 of "Love My Country, Loath My Government," see page five for details. Hopefully, we could then streamline government functions, make one person and one organization both in charge AND responsible. Right now, we have Who's on First, What's on Second, and a whole bunch of "I Am In Charge, Not Responsible and Yet Clueless" on third when it comes to the political class.



Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Obama's International Score Card

Given that we are fourteen months into the President Obama's tenure I thought it would be a good time to see how he is doing in the international arena. It is pretty obvious his administration has been pretty much a failure on the domestic front considering:

• Unemployment has risen to about 10% and looks like it will stay at that level for the near term future.


• Federal government spending and deficit levels are at all time high levels and threaten the fiscal soundness of the country's financials.


• Health care costs continue to rise and the current health care reform bill, if it passes, will be an absolute disaster that does not solve the problem, basically because the political class and Obama never defined and quantified the underlying root causes. And it took us fourteen months to get to this point.


• Public schools continue to fail, the War on Drugs continues to be lost, we continue to have no national energy plan or strategy, Social Security and Medicare continue to stagger towards insolvency, our borders continue to leak relative to illegal immigration, etc.


• The country has never been more divided with names such as un-American, racists, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, smelly, a%#holes, etc. being thrown around to describe those that disagree with the President's programs, name calling that is not renounced by the President.

Not a great status update on the home front. Fourteen months into his administration and the President cannot claim anything close to an accomplishment. But how is he doing on the international stage where he was supposed to increase America's prestige, standing, and cooperation with other countries:

• Iran is fourteen months closer to having the capability to produce atomic weapons. Nothing has inhibited Iran from going forward with its nuclear weapons program development, even Obama's charm and certainly not his policies. In an Associated Press report on February 22, 2010, reporter Ali Akbar Dareini described how Iran announced that it planned to build two new uranium enrichment plants deep inside the nation's mountains to protect the plants from attacks. The report also described how Iran was also going to install newer technology centrifuges to enrich uranium more quickly than current centrifuges. Bottom line: Iran is moving forward aggressively with its plan to build nuclear weapons and the Obama administration has done nothing to slow them down.


• On the other side of the world, we are no closer to getting North Korea's nuclear program under control. The administration's efforts have only resulted in putting North Korea fourteen months further along in its development of a nuclear arsenal.


• In the midst of sending Vice President Joe Biden to Israel to encourage peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, the Israelis announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in areas of dispute in East Jerusalem, in direct opposition to Obama's condition that settlement growth be severely curtailed in order to get the peace talks going again. Thus, it appears that Obama will not be able to charm the Israeli's into peace talks with the Palestinians since Israel just threw the settlement freeze condition back in his face.


• Sometime later in 2010, Obama will withdrawal all but 50,000 U.S. troops from Iraq which many would consider good news. However, a recent AP article described the views of a leading U.S. general that the withdrawal may not happen if there is a major disruption in the country by the time of the withdrawal. Thus, a major plank in Obama's Presidential campaign, withdrawal from Iraq, could be pushed off into 2011 or later. In any case, even if there is no major disruption, he will still leave 50,000 troops in the country for an open-ended length of time, in clear violation of his pledge to get us out of Iraq. In this area, he appears no better than if a Republican had been elected, U.S. troops will be deployed for far too long.

The problem with the above failures is that I doubt any member of the political class could have done any better. Obama, McCain, Rangel, Pelosi, Reid, etc. are just politicians who need to maintain the status quo in order to maintain their little fiefdoms, at the expense of the good of the country. There are no leaders of any degree in positions of power in D.C. today. Without leadership, the country will continue to drift until it falls off of some precipice, be it domestic or international. That is why implementing many of the steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so critical. From term limits to the elimination of gerrymandered Congressional districts to minimizing the funding of re-elections campaigns by businesses, unions and lobbyists, new ways need to be implemented to get real leaders, not shallow politicians, into those positions of power and allow them to bring in new ideas and approaches. Obama's approaches are certainly not working.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.