STATUS CHECK



From time to time it is good to review what has recently transpired and thus assess where we are today:


1) Iraq: as predicted numerous times in this space the situation on the ground in Iraq is steadily and surely headed toward civil war between the Sunni Moslems and the Shiites. The Kurds, too, are not happy with the present political situation and have publicly stated they await the right time to secede from Iraq and join their brethren in Kurdish Turkey to try to create a new independent nation.

US troops are now in the position of acting as policemen between these warring Moslem factions. Just this morning 5 more American soldiers were killed in suicide car bomb attacks.

The Bush Administration is - and has been - clueless about Iraq.

Their all-too-rosy forecasts have always proven to be a farce. And the January 30 election didn’t prove a thing as the Sunnis refused to participate and are now trying to gum up the whole political process.

Why has this gone south?

Because Iraq is a ‘false country’ - an amalgam of three ethnic peoples forced to live under one tent and kept together by the common fear of the jackboot of Saddam Hussein’s rule of terror. We have seen the same exact thing in the former territory of Yugoslavia: the death of Marshall Tito unleashed decades of pent-up hatreds and resentments that quickly morphed into ‘ethnic cleansing.’

Iraq is headed downward - and Iran, our real enemy for the last 26 years - is steadily infiltrating the new Iraqi government. When all is said and done Iraq will be under the thumb of the Ayatollahs from Tehran. And that ain’t good for the United States.

2) Immigration: across the country illegal immigration is by far the biggest issue - bar none!

People from across the political spectrum are furious that illegals enter the country with virtual impunity and are now being afforded rights and privileges they have not earned. And President Bush’s solution? To give them virtual amnesty!

Legal immigration is vital for our nation’s growth and survival; illegal immigration with impunity makes a farce out of the law.

And we now have big city mayors from New York and Los Angeles who want illegals to be able to vote in municipal elections! Talk about pandering!

This is the number one issue in this country - and few politicians have the guts to discuss it openly and honestly.

What a shame.

3) Social Security: the more GW Bush talks around the country about his desires to ‘reform’ Social Security, the more his ratings decline and the more unpopular his plans become.

He now has his lowest approval rating of his 4 ½ years in office and his highest disapproval rating. And only one third of Americans favor his reform plan.

You would think that the White House would correct this deteriorating situation before they squander their remaining political capital.

4) 2008: Hillary is definitely the Democratic nominee. The only question is will there even be a credible challenger to her in their primaries? Who could even raise enough money against the Clinton Machine?

The more interesting discussion is the GOP race. No one seems to be the odds-on favorite yet. Indeed, it is still early, but in a party that almost always has a ‘next-in-line’ nominee, 2008 is shaping up as surprisingly wide open. That is why my old prediction has resurfaced: Bob Woodward floated Vice President Cheney’s name again last week.

Cheney is smart and he sees no GOP front-runner and may just figure he could grab the nomination and then rally the anti-Hillary forces and win in November.

It is wide open and anything can and may happen.

With Congress and President Bush becoming so unpopular and talking about the wrong issues, the question becomes will 2008 finally become the year when a Third Party Candidate - a Perot with sanity - can actually win the Presidency?

Don’t rule it out.

KISSING UP TO THE CLINTONS


It has really gotten out of hand.

First, President GW Bush praises Bill Clinton to the hilt in the White House when unveiling the official White House portrait of the 42nd president.

Then the scene is repeated last November when the entire Bush Family journeyed to Little Rock for the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library. The praise from both President Bushes for Bill Clinton was effusive.

Then Bush 41 and former President Bill Clinton join forces for Tsunami Relief - a worthy cause - and travel the world to raise money. They appear at this year’s Super Bowl together and seem to be having a blast together.

Before you know it they declare their friendship; we learn they talk on the phone often, play golf together and are just plain ‘pals.’

Then the White House does a fancy two-step to tick off former President Jimmy Carter and thus take only Bill Clinton to Rome for Pope John Paul II’s funeral. During this trip, we learn subsequently, GW Bush asked Mr. Clinton to “sit in” on his morning CIA intel briefing and asked his opinions.

He also talked to Mr. Clinton about Social Security Reform, this president’s key second-term initiative.

In many recent interviews the Bushes and Clintons declare their ‘friendship’ and go out of their way to make nice to each other.

All of this after Bill Clinton’s disgusting Oval Office behavior and Hillary Clinton’s history of lies and scandals.

Whatever happened to GW Bush’s 2000 campaign slogan: “I will restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office”?

Why is this happening?

Because these two families - who want to retain control of their respective political parties - are using each other to ‘soften’ their disapproval in the opposite party.

GW Bush, floundering on Social Security reform, cleverly leaks out his praise for Bill Clinton’s own Social Security plan. Why? To try to garner some Democratic support for his plan.

Bill Clinton - who loves media adulation even more than he loves members of the opposite sex - happily appears with the Bushes. Plus, it makes Hillary appear more ‘mainstream.’

Now we have this scene being replayed: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton are all lovey-dovey as they announce support for a new bill to enable online medical record sharing.

Newt and Hillary.

What is going on here?

It is simple - and it is awful:

A) Politically, both ends of the spectrum are using each other to ‘moderate’ their own extremist images.

Newt, who is running a futile race for the presidential nomination in 2008 and who has an insatiable ego, thinks he can look a little more mainstream by appearing with Hillary.

Hillary, who already has the 2008 Democratic nomination in her handbag, thinks she can appear more ‘centrist’ by always cozying up with right-wingers, pro-lifers and the Bushes.

B) In real terms, these folks are all the same: political prostitutes who will do anything for attention.

Newt Gingrich is and was a smart operator who got too big for his britches and began talking about himself in the third person and comparing himself to Winston Churchill. He betrayed two wives and became a serial philanderer just like Bill Clinton.

Newt admitted that he got ‘seduced’ by Bill Clinton during those now-infamous 1995 budget negotiations which were the downfall of Newt’s leadership in the House - and enabled a damaged Clinton to ‘tri-angulate’ and get himself re-elected in 1996.

Now Newt thinks it is clever to hang around with Hillary and to brag about how they talk at least once a week.

He is nuttier than ever.

All of these folks - the Bushes, the Clintons and Newt - have degraded American politics to a new low.

They all lie like mad - about their scandals, about their cheating, about WMD - and have not one principle they believe in.

In a mere twenty years we have gone from giants of principle like Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher to overly ambitious pygmies who just want power for power’s sake.

Nothing the Clintons do should surprise any of us. They are what they are.

But when so-called conservatives and Republicans repeatedly reach out to the Clintons, then something is egregiously wrong.

They will soon learn a lesson:

Kissing up to the Clintons isn’t smart; it is the Kiss of (political) Death.

CZECH OUT THE TRUTH


“Things are not what they seem to be” is totally applicable to the so-called demise of Communism in Eastern Europe.

While we all cheered the seeming end to the Soviet Empire, instead it has been replaced by a hybrid form of continued Communist control by evil, clever, and totally corrupt life-long Communists who will never relinquish power.

The best example of this has been detailed byan excellent Miami writer, Ross Hedvicek, himself a former Czech citizen. Mr. Hedvicek is alarmed by what has happened to his former country - and to how we Americans have been duped into thinking all is peaches and cream now in Eastern Europe.

He writes, “The two main Czech political parties, CSSD and ODS, are heavily populated by ex-communists, who (after the fake Velvet Revolution) simply left their original Stalinist Communist Party and joined these two. The KSCM (non-apologetic Stalinist communists) is the third strongest party in the country. And that in spite of the fact that the country has a currently standing law (198/93 Sb), proclaiming communist ideology, parties and regimes ILLEGAL!”

“Take a look at the Czechoslovak/Czech Prime Ministers of the past 15 years - when the country was allegedly "democratic": Milan Cic, Marian Calfa, Petr Pithart, Josef Tosovsky, Vaclav Klaus, Milos Zeman, Vladimir Spidla, and Stanislav Gross. Out of those eight people, five were
communists and the remaining three were politically so far left, that they
would qualify for the communist label without any difficulty. And now, with
the latest leftie Prime Minister Sanislav Gross having to resign because of
corruption, we already know that the next Czech Prime Minister will be
another ex-communist.”

“In the current armed forces of the Czech republic (army and air force) all senior officers (I am not talking about some junior lieutenants) are ex-communists and as senior officers they represent their country at NATO headquarters in Brussels. I doubt it would be too big of a stretch of the imagination to assume that they forward all NATO military secrets to their old buddies and schoolmates (since they all have Soviet schooling) in
Moscow as soon as any such secrets reach their desks.”

Mr. Hedvicek then writes about the Czech judiciary. If you think we have a problem here with our liberal federal judges, just read about what has happened in the Czech Republic:

“Former president Vaclav Havel gave lifetime tenure to
communist judges from pre-revolution Czechoslovakia (to be a communist was a pre-requisite for the job), so they feel quite secure. Before they were
judging according to the Stalinist rule book, now the same people are
supposed to uphold democratic laws and justice. Havel's successor, current Czech president Vaclav Klaus recently refused to name approximately 36 new judges. Why? Because they were too young and lacked a communist past! The abuse of power in the Czech justice system is rampant - a perfect example would be the judicial persecution of Vladimir Hucin (www.hucin.com) who was imprisoned without charge or trial during Havel's presidency and is still being dragged through the courts just for his opposition to communism.”

Clearly, the “fix is in” in Prague. Just listen to what this Czech patriot, Mr. Hedvicek, writes, “It is a mystery to me why, 15 years after the country's alleged switch to democracy, the Czech Republic cannot - or does not want to - produce quality people with a clean past to represent them abroad and fill the top positions of their government. Why are only ex-communists available? Is it accidental? A freak of nature? Or worse - intentional?”

Indeed, it is totally intentional. The bad guys ain’t giving up power. Period.

We were all naive to think that once the Berlin Wall crumbled that all these Communists would just go away. They didn’t. They stayed. They merely took off their ‘Proud to Be A Communist’ buttons and put on new “Proud to Be a Pro-Western Capitalist” buttons.

You can imagine Mr. Hedvicek’s shock just two weeks ago to read in a Czech newspaper about a conference to be held that week in Prague. There was a “gathering of Stalinist communist parties (including Cuba, China, Belarus,etc. - a total of 35 communist parties) in Prague's hotel Olympik starting on April 23, 2005. Communists from all over the world know very well that in the Czech Republic they are among friends and that they will be warmly welcomed. So - not in Beijing, Pyongyang or Havana - but in Prague, Czech Republic. Seems that the civilized West would be much better off if Czechs were still behind the barbed wire on the other side of the Iron Curtain.”

As. Mr. Hedvicek points out, this remaining Communist control of the Czech Republic also applies to Slovakia. “Over 90% of government officials in the aforementioned two countries are in one way or another stained by their membership in the communist party, its clones and variations or by collaboration with the oppressive communist regime. And the most ridiculously corrupt and incompetent characters are always at the top.”

This all goes back to the supposed ‘end’ of Communism in Czechloslovakia - to the heady days of what was then known as the Velvet Revolution, which saw the famous poet, Vaclav Havel ascend to the Presidency. Havel was, in those, days seen as an equal to Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa for having stood up to the Communists.

But the truth is another matter. As Mr. Hedvicek writes, “A few years after the Velvet revolution transcripts of tapes were published
in Prague. Transcripts of talks Havel held with representatives of the
communist government in November 1989, talks about transfer of power.
Incredible scenes of primitivism and unheard of bluntness and horse
haggling as to who will get what position in the next government in
exchange for communists going unpunished. And Havel kept his word to the people responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, communist concentration camps, and hundreds of thousands lives destroyed. Not only did they all go unpunished, but also they were all involved in "privatization" of the state-owned properties and eventually they all became rich. They went from nomeklatura communists directly to hard-core capitalists in a few short steps. All in the name of Havel's Velvet Revolution. Unreal!”

Unfortunately it was - and still is - too real for the Czech people.

And we Americans have deluded ourselves into thinking that New Europe is free.

Ross Hedvicek is a true patriot - an American and a Czech patriot. Thank goodness he is alerting us to what is happening in Eastern Europe.

Why isn’t the American media reporting this?

Why are the American people kept in the dark about the truth?

RUNAWAY BRIDE OR MEDIA?



The last week has once again demonstrated a uniquely American phenomenon: an out-of-control media which focuses too much attention on some issues - and not enough attention on others.

The case of Georgia’s Runaway Bride, Jennifer Wilbanks, is a perfect example. All 3 cable news networks went into overdrive on this story - when there are thousands of ‘missing’ people every day, including children.

So desperate were these news divisions for another Lacy Peterson case that they built this case into an international story - while other, more important news was left for later in the newcast.

Certainly our 150,000 troops in Iraq - under renewed attack from the Sunni insurgency - are more important that a cold-feet, silly young woman in Duluth, Georgia.

Surely the fact that the dreaded Iranians, while about to join the Nuclear Club, are slowly but surely taking over Iraq right under our noses, is a more meaningful development than a fake 911 call in Albuquerque.

Isn’t the latest report of North Korea test-firing another missile worth the same coverage as whether or not an innocent husband-to-be would take a police lie detector test in a case where the bride-to-be lied all over the place?

And, speaking of ‘missing people,’ what about all the young boys and girls kidnapped - some by estranged parents - but many by perverts and pedophiles? And what of the overly-sympathetic coverage of Michael Jackson’s trial?

No, instead of any balance or reality, the news divisions took the country on a useless and utterly ridiculous ride from Georgia to Las Vegas to a phone booth in Albuquerque - all at the behest of a young woman who is confused over her wedding. OK, so what else is new? This is happening every day all over the world!

Why doesn’t the media cover-up every dumping or unreturned phone call the ‘morning after’?

Where is the perspective? Where is the seriousness in the media?

In Iraq we have just learned some staggering numbers:

We have had over 1,500 of our troops killed;

We have had 38,500 wounded troops - which include amputations and mental problems - evacuated from Iraq. Yes, you read it correctly: 38,500 evacuated. That does not include troops wounded or injured inside Iraq who are patched up and returned quickly to their units.

A Johns Hopkins University study claims 109,000 Iraqis have been killed since we began combat operations 26 months ago.

Now, these numbers are real news - and a hell of a lot more important than a cancelled wedding.

Because every one of these numbers has a real story of suffering, of a grieving or worried family - and of totally shattered hopes and dreams. Widows, fatherless kids, damaged husbands and other unspeakable suffering are an ongoing story for these people.

This country has to stop being led around by the nose by the so-called ‘mainstream news media.’

We are deteriorating economically and morally as a nation. We are often silly and we trivialize important things.

We need to get back to basics as a nation - and fast.