Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform) – Page 40

2006/11/162009/12/04

Review: War on the Middle Class–How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Crime (Corporate), Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Single Best Handbook for We the People Seeking to Take Back the Power,

November 16, 2006

Lou Dobbs

I read a lot, and my highest praise for this book is that it is easily a single coherent substitute for at least 50 others books including Barbara Ehrenrich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America; David Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America; Jeff Faux, The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back; Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and many many others including books I have reviewed on the broken government, immoral capitalism, the failure of education and health care, and so on. He covers it all, including how Wal-Mart is trying to use the World Trade Organization to force US states to back down on laws protecting them from this predatory organization (see my reviews of the book and DVD about Wal-Mart).

Although the author draws most heavily on his own broadcast remarks, and does not provide an annotated bibliography for further study, Amazon reviews by many others could serve to this end–just search for the topic and read the reviews of the book for a broader study.

Lou Dobbs may well have swung the 2006 election with his series on Broken Government and Jack Cafferty's robust commentaries, and thank God he did.

The book ends with key documents–the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitutional Amendments.

Summing it all up: take back the power by voting and demanding that Washington represent the people instead of corporations; fair trade not free trade; end illegal immigration (and I would add, demand English as a common language); self-insure as a Nation with respect to health care.

This topic is so important, I bought a second book with a more aggressive title, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class – And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents) by Thom Hartmann, also published in 2006, and I am pleased to report that these two books complement one another perfectly.

Lou Dobbs would have my vote if he ever ran for President. Now if we can just get him to add a 15 minute “national intelligence review” to the CNN line-up or web site….all the topics he deals with are right on target, but missing is the larger picture: America faces ten high-level global threats, America has no strategy and no coherent policies across twelve policy areas from Agriculture and Debt to Security and Water, and America has no plan for helping the eight challengers (Brazil through Venezuela) avoid our enormous mistakes, mistakes the planet cannot afford (we consume one third of the energy and create one third of the waste if not more).

Of all the books I have read, this is the one that I hope everyone buys, reads, and discusses before the 2008 primaries and general election.

There is also hope. Jim Turner, #2 Naderite, tells me he is seeing signals that 100 million Americans who opted ou8t of partisan politics and jumped back in with both feet in 2008. Below are the books that those people are reading:

Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

There are many more. I have gotten fed up with Amazon's refusing to provide a means for reviewers to sort their reviews, so I am posting, at Earth Intelligence Network, a sortable searchable Word table that covers all of my reading across the ten threats, twelve policies, eight challengers, and other areas. This will dramatically improve the efficiency for anyone seeking to leverage the free reviews that I offer for any given topic. We need to come back angry, non-violent, and INFORMED. Amazon, for all its flaws, is the People's Schoolhouse, and a big part of why public intelligence is a reality, not an oxymoron like “central intelligence.”

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2006/11/162009/12/04

Review: Screwed–The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class — And What We Can Do About It

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

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Perfect Complement to Lou Dobbs' Own Book,

November 16, 2006

Thom Hartmann

Edit of 21 July 2009 to add links.

This book is a perfect complement to Lou Dobbs' own book on War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back and is also better in the single specific area where this author chooses to focus: on the middle class. The book by Lou Dobbs is the best book over-all, covering a number of topics related to the health of U.S. society and the economy, while this author focuses exclusively on the middle class.

If I were to recommend one other book, it would be Naomi Klein's No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs which discusses how individual citizens can track the abusive practices and behavior of corporations, and the multitude of individuals can punish them through simple boycotts of their products.

There is no question in my mind but that We the People will take back the power, this book, and Lou Dobbs' book, represent the end of an era of unquestioned repression and abuse of America's middle class and blue-collar labor force, and the beginning of a revolution that the banks and corporations will NOT be able to squelch.

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2006/11/122009/12/04

Review: Wild Fire

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

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Fiction Maybe, Reality, Very Much So,

November 12, 2006

Nelson DeMille

I generally only read non-fiction, but increasingly in the past fifteen years I have found that fiction of a particular type can be stunningly effective as a truth serum. Winn Schartau's TERMINAL COMPROMISE in the 1990's, about an electronic Pearl Harbar ultimately found to have been set in motion by the National Security Agency, is one such book. This is another.

For a NON-FICTION preview of what the Neo-Cons *thought* they were going to be able to do (out of touch with reality as they are), buy this book and ALSO buy (or at least read my review of) “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror” by Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely. These two seriously overweight generals, in retirement, and well prior to the elective war on Iraq, laid it all out–Iraq, then Iran, then Syria, then Egypt and Jordan, all by force of arms. They are NUTS, but they are also very very representative of the kind of ignorant lunacy that is accepted currency–indeed a qualification for appointment–in the Bush-Cheney regime. With Goldman Sachs in charge of the U.S. Treasury, and Paul Wolfowitz, a proven immoral liar in charge of the World Bank, do not think for a minute that Rumsfeld's being replaced by a more gracious clone (Bob Gates, who is NOT an intelligence professional, but rather a White House staff professional), is going to change anything.

Wild Fire is on target. I used tobelieve that the Kennedy's were both assassinated for planning to interfere with the extreme right, and especially the Wall Street extreme right that is close to Israel.

EDIT of 10 Dec 07: With the publication of Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History we must acknowledge that the Warren Commission was indeed a cover-up, but that Cuban exiles trained by CIA (a form of extreme right, but not from Texas) did the assassination. CIA and the Secret Service knew it was going to happen, Bobby Kennedy informed JFK, and the latter very foolishly chose to ignore the warning.

The author might just as easily have included a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear plants by Israel, something that many expert observers expect will happen before December 2006 unless the Congress makes it clear that ALL financial support for Israel will be cut off, ALL military assistance for Israel will be cut off, if they do this. You can be certain that the extreme right is egging Israel on and promising American complacency in the face of such an attack.

This book, like the movie Enemy of the State [Blu-ray] is most helpful to those who wish to understand what Norman Cousins tells us in The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety Absolute power really does corrupt–where the author does not venture, and perhaps he will honor us with these thoughts in the next book, is that the U.S. Government–both Republican and Democratic–is nothing more than “the best of the servant class.” Behind the U.S. Government are a select handful of bankers and a select inter-locking group of corporate boards that are more than happy to harvest profit from the hapless individuals who continue to believe that America is a democracy and that capitalism as practiced today is moral. Not so.

Fiction of this caliber is often a pre-cursor to a “coming out” of non-fiction, such as one can see in the growing 9-11 Truth movement, and the emergent demand by select Senators for complete transparency in government funding. I strongly recommend this book as an eye-opener. It is very very real.

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2006/11/082009/12/04

Review: The Conservative Soul–How We Lost It, How to Get It Back

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion

Philosophical, Practical, Gifted Turns of Phrase, Starting Point,

November 8, 2006

Andrew Sullivan

This is a philosophical essay, not a political diatribe. This is a very educated, articulate, thoughtful, and practical book. It is so good it probably needs to be read more than once.

As an estranged moderate Republican who believes in a balanced budget, smaller government, and minimalist interference in state, local, and individual rights not assigned to the federal government by the Constitution (and also the elimination of central banks that are NOT authorized by the Constitution), I found provocation, solace, and humor in this book (the discussion of the role of the penis and its eternal sperm, in relation to fundamentalist strictures and fears, is alone worth the price of the book).

Gifted turns of phrases as well as erudite references to both ancient and modern philosopher-kings abound. I especially likes “Immoral decisions, in other words, are like environmental pollutants” (page 125), and on page 209, “In this nonfundamentalists understanding of faith, practice is more imporant than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle.”

The author's real life as a gay man who has survived AIDS no doubt infuriates the fundamentalists and the less hypocritical evangelists, but this is part and parcel of his qualifications–he completely trashes both the incumbent President and the Christian extremist fundamentalists that have substituted dogma for dialog.

This is a personal essay. It is neither a summary nor a substitute for the many other books I have reviewed on both the left and the right, and so I end by saying that the book gets five stars for its extra leavening of philosophical reasoning, but I urge those who find favor in this book to throw a wider net, or at least read my reviews of the last 25 books on ideology, religion, faith, Iraq, and the impeachable offenses of Bush-Cheney.

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2006/10/292019/09/06

Review: Rule by Secrecy–The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

7 Star Top 1%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

7 Star Life Transformative insights – Bankers, Politicians, Spies, Patsies, and Secret Societies, October 29, 2006

Jim Marrs

This book is extraordinarily interesting, broad, and paradigm-altering.

The table of contents provided enough detail to be an executive summary. The book is somewhat deficient on sources (heavily reliant on superficial “encyclopedic” references) but the alternative explanation of history and reality is not to be missed.

I bought the book thinking it was about government secrecy. Not so. Much more importantly, this book is about the secret societies used by the 300-500 wealthiest individuals in the world, the ones that own the central banks that can cause financial panics, move inflation or deflation, all to the end of profiting, while “exploding the client,” the individual “patsy” whose hard-earned wages are nothing more than a supermarket shelf from which these elites pluck extra funds to buy another castle. See my review of Mark Lewis's “Liar's Poker” to understand Wall Street use of individuals as *disposable* sources of cash, and my review of John Perkin's “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” to get a sense of the larger global methods being used to loot the commonwealths. Also relevant is Jeff Faux, “The Global Class War : How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win it Back” and many of my other reviews of books by others on the loss of government legitimacy and credibility with the people, combined with the predatory immorality of corporations that now own government.

Much of what the author attributes to a grand master plan can also be explained by the natural tendency of wealth to create wealth (compound interest) and for wealth to influence politics, but this book is deeper than that.

The author begins with an introduction of the Rothchilds, and gradually builds up a detailed picture of how they funded “barons” around the world, and in America, where the Morgans and the Rockefellers were their chosen instruments. The Bush family is second tier but right up there. Special attention is given to the Federal Reserve, which is NOT controlled by the government and has NEVER been audited in its history, and to the ease with which bankers make money from advance knowledge of changes in domestic and foreign policies that they often simply mandate.

The USA was until around 1837 a “value-based” economy in which real assets–gold, silver, land, labor–paid in full. There was no debt, no interest. From Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, bankers from Europe were rejected and considered “more dangerous than armies, swindling the future.” Jefferson also believed central banks to be unconstitutional, since the right to create a national currency is reserved to the U.S. Treasury. The author notes that both Lincoln and Kennedy were unique for issuing debt-free currency, and for being assassinated. Reagan was shot by Hinkley, whose relative was dining with a prominent member of the Bush family the night before, and he suggests this was intended to move Bush, a member of the secret society world and leading pawn, into power years sooner.

An extensive discussion is provided of bankers themselves causing financial panics, wars, and other confrontations. The author refers to the Rothschild Formula as being to spawn wars and finance both sides. The book discusses the bank-rolling of Hitler, Trotsky, the US Civil War, the French Revolution, the Boar War, and on and on.

Credible evidence is provided that the terrorism in Italy, as part of a “Strategy of Tension” described in a captured document, was intended to create enough of a perception of leftist terrorism to justify a shift in the government toward fascism. The P2 Lodge behind the terrorism was a secret society on the right, not the left, and is said to have been guided by the Alpine Lodge in Switzerland, the “Gnomes of Zurich.” George Bush senior is alleged to have been an honorary member of this lodge, while Henry Kissinger is said later in the book to be a member of the Alpine Lodge. Most interesting for me is the CIA connection. The “Strategy of Tension” was first devised by James Angleton to prevent a communist take-over in Italy following WWII, and is STRICKINGLY apt in considering the allegations that 9/11 was allowed to happen if not made to happen. See my review of “Crossing the Rubicon,” of “9/11: Synthetic Terror Made in the USA,” among other books (use my lists).

Summing up this book early on, I found it to be 1/3 wealth begets wealth; 1/3 corruption begets wealth, and 1/3 conspiracy begets wealth. However, once I entered the secret society segment of the book, I reverse the above order.

This book gave me a completely new perspective on Cheney and Rove as front men rather than the prime movers, intended to take the heat and be “sacrificed” without the public every realizing that it is Citi-Bank (the same bank said to have secretly received Yamashita's Gold from Douglas McArthur, as told in “Gold Warriors” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave), and Chase Manhattan, the two owned sufficiently by the Morgan and Rockefeller families to be the hubs for their power. The author also discusses the 40,000 tax exempt organizations that serve as fronts for banks and foundations and corporations, all manipulating the individual citizen-voter without paying a cent in taxes.

On page 408 the author says “Whatever the truth may be, we must be wary of leaders who attempt–whether by force, manipulation, or deceit–to move whole populations in directions they may not wish to go and might not be beneficial to all.”

On page 409 the author says “Knowledge is indeed power. It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves–to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity [enabled by secrecy.” The author notes that there are more of us than of them (see my review of Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World.”)

I have one word for what I plan to work toward: TRANSPARENCY. Collective public intelligence is going to survive and prosper. The times, they are a'changing.

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2006/10/072009/12/04

Review: Blind Into Baghdad–America’s War in Iraq

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

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The ONLY “Before and After” Book on the Iraq Mis-Adventure,

October 7, 2006

James Fallows

James Fallows is unique for giving us the only “before and after” book on Iraq. This book, while it consists of a collection of articles published in the run-up to the war on Iraq, is exemplary for showing what was known before the war, and how a combination of ideological bias, bureaucratic timidity, confusion, and general incompetence actually allowed this Nation to be led to an elective war of devastating consequence and cost.

The author provides both an introduction and a conclusion to the book that are unique to the book and set the articles in harmony as a whole.

There are other books that excel as retrospective reconstruction and finger-pointing, among which I would include HUBRIS, Squandered Victory, The End of Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, and most recently, State of Denial, but this is the only book to focus on all that we knew prior to the war about the daunting difficulties facing us in making the peace, and why the political leadership of the Executive did not want us to think about that, and why the political leadership of the Congress refused to play its role as a co-equal branch with the power of both the purse and the declaration of war exclusive to it.

James Fallows documents how virtually every sensible element of the federal government, from the military to the diplomats to the commerce and treasury and agriculture and others, all KNEW that invading Iraq was going to open a Pandora's box of sectarian violence, ethic conflict over resources, a collapse of good order, the failure of infrastructure the US would not be able to repair quickly enough, and on and on and on and on!

Objective observers, including the British, considered the claims of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz with respect to the ease with which Iraq qould be liberated, to be the “ruminations of insane people.”

The author's bottom line is clear: the bureaucracy did its job and anticipated every single reason for not going to war, every single calamity that would befall us in Iraq. Where government failed was at the political level, with Dick Cheney closing out the policy process, spoon feeding the President lies from convicted thief and liar Chalabi, and with a full-court press backed by Wall Street and the media, to declare dissent to be treason–hence General Tony Zinni, former Commander in Chief for the Central Command, being called a traitor for sharing his knowledge.

The author and The Atlantic Monthly did not rely only on open sources. They sponsored a war game that came as close as possible to matching all that the US Government might be doing behind closed doors, using only open sources and overt experts, and here again, well in advance of the war, the conclusion was the same: don't do it!

The author concludes the book with several findings, all of which are completely consistent with the other non-fiction books I have read on Iraq and related blunders:

1) Corporations deciding on how to market a brand of toothpaste are vastly more meticulous and thoughtful that the political leadership in the Executive deciding to go to war on what proved to be whims, lies, and active mis-representation.

2) There was too little friction. The Administration got a “free ride” from the people, Congress, the media. Other than Senator Byrd, who shall long be my personal hero for his 80 speeches against the war (he alone among all the Senators stood fast on the matter of the Senate being equal to the Executive and having the right to question this idiocy–see my review of his book, Losing America), our Congress abdicated its responsibilities and failed the Nation. This was a bi-partisan failure, but the extremist Republican leaders were most to blame.

3) There has been no accountability. I remain shocked by the number of books and DVDs (see my list of Serious DVDs) that document the constant stream of lies and mis-representations from the political leadership and their tame uniformed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who should be fired for confusing loyalty with integrity). It is a sad commentary on the Nation that the pedophile charges against Congressman Foley seem to carry more weight with the public than our 65,000 amputees.

I like this book very much. It is important for all Americans to understand that good minds working only with open sources of information easily anticipated the reasons why an elective war on Iraq was not a good idea. It is important for all Americans to know that the good people in State, Defense, and elsewhere got it right, but Dick Cheney shut them down, shut them out, and alone, bears responsibility for leading a young President ignorant of national security matters, on a very irresponsible and costly course of action.

Dick Cheney has a great deal to answer for–none of the others could have achieved their ill without him.

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2006/10/042010/05/31

Review: State of Denial–Bush at War Part III

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Stake in the Heart of the W Presidency

October 4, 2006

Bob Woodward

Here are the highlights I drew out that make this book extraordinary and worth reading even if it leaves one with a political hang-over:

1) The Federal Government is broken, and was made worse by a President who knew nothing of foreign policy, a Vice President who closed down the inter-agency policy system, and a Secretary of Defense who was both contemptuous of the uniformed military and held in contempt by Bush Senior.

2) My opinion of the Secretary of Defense actually went UP with this book. Rumsfeld has clearly been well-intentioned, has clearly asked the right questions, but he let his arrogance get away from him. Given a choice between Admiral Clark, a truth-telling transformative person, and General Myers, an acquiescent warrior diminished to senior clerk, Rumsfeld made the right choice for his management style, and the wrong choice for the good people in our Armed Forces. I *like* Rumsfeld's Anchor Chain letter as it has been described, and wish it had been included as an Appendix. Rumsfeld got the control he wanted, but he sacrificed honest early warning in so doing.

3) This book also improves my opinion of the Saudis and especially Prince Bandar. While I have no tolerance for Saudi Royalty–the kind of corrupt debauched individuals that make Congressman Foley look like a vestal virgin–the Saudis did understand that Bush's unleashing of Israel was disastrous, and they did an excellent job of shaking up the President. Unfortunately, they could not overcome Dick Cheney, who should resign or be impeached for gross dereliction of duty and usurpation of Presidential authority.

4) Tenet's visit to Rice on 10 July is ably recounted and adds to the picture. It joins others books, notably James Risen's “State of War,” “Hubris,” FASCO” and “The End of Iraq in presenting a compelling picture of a dysfunctional National Security Advisor who is now a dysfunctional Secretary of State–and Rumsfeld still won't return her phone calls…..

5) The author briefly touches on how CIA shined in the early days of the Afghan War (see my reviews of “JAWBREAKER” and “First In” for more details) but uses this to show that Rumsfeld took the impotence of the Pentagon, and the success of CIA, personally.

6) The author also tries to resurrect Tenet somewhat, documenting the grave reservations that Tenet had about Iraq, but Tenet, like Colin Powell, failed to speak truth to power or to the people, and failed the Nation.

7) Rumsfeld recognized the importance of stabilization and reconstruction (and got an excellent report from the Defense Science Board, not mentioned by this book, on Transitions to and From Hostilities) but he vacillated terribly and ultimately failed to be serious on this critical point.

8) This book *destroys* the Defense Intelligence Agency, which some say should be burned to the ground to allow a fresh start. The author is brutal in recounting the struggles of General Marks to get DIA to provide any useful information on the alleged 946 WMD sites in Iraq. DIA comes across as completely derelict bean counters with no clue how to support operators going in harms way, i.e. create actionable intelligence.

9) Despite WMD as the alleged basis for war, the military had no unit trained, equipped, or organized to find and neutralize WMD sites. A 400 person artillery unit was pressed into this fearful service.

10) General Jay Garner is the star of this story. My face lit up as I read of his accomplishments, insights, and good judgments. He and General Abizaid both understood that allowing the Iraqi Army to stay in being with some honor was the key to transitioning to peace, and it is clearly documented that Dick Cheney was the undoing of the peace. It was Dick Cheney that deprived Jay Garner of Tom Warrick from State, the man who has overseen and understood a year of planning on making the peace, and it was Dick Cheney that fired Garner and put Paul Bremer, idiot pro-consult in place. Garner clearly understood a month before the war–while there was still time to call it off–that the peace was un-winable absent major changes, but he could not get traction within the ideological fantasy land of the Vice Presidency.

11) Apart from State, one military officer, Colonel Steve Peterson, clearly foresaw the insurgency strategy, but his prescient warnings were dismissed by the larger group.

12) General Tommy Franks called Doug Feith “the dumbest bastard on the planet,” –Feith deprived Garner of critical information and promoted Chalabi as the man with all the answers.

13) The author covers the 2004 election night very ably, but at this point the book started to turn my stomach. The author appears oblivious to the fact that the Ohio election was stolen through the manipulation of 12 voting districts, loading good machines in the pro-Bush areas, putting too few machines in the pro-Kerry areas, and in some cases, documented by Rolling Stone, actually not counting Kerry votes at all on the tallies. Ohio has yet to pay, as does Florida, for its treasonous betrayal of the Republic.

Today I issued a press release pointing toward the Pakistan treaty creating the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan as a safehaven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the definitive end–loss of–the war on terror, which is a tactic, not an enemy. As Colin Gray says in “Modern Strategy,” time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. As a moderate Republican I dare to suggest that resigning prior to the November elections, in favor of John McCain, Gary Hart, and a Coalition Cabinet, might be the one thing that keeps the moderate Republican incumbents, and the honest Democrats–those that respect the need for a balanced budget–in place to provide for continuity in Congress, which must *be* the first branch of government rather than slaves to the party line.

It's crunch time. This book is the last straw. The American people are now *very* angry.