It has been nearly a year since Barrack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. This is pretty much the last bit of respect I’ll ever give him, so tune out if you want.
I couldn’t stand McCain. I saw him as an opportunist with no firm political philosophy. He was a hero of Viet Nam that was convinced to run for senator of Arizona by a bunch of political operatives that had no allegiance to either party. I began listening to Obama. He just never got into specifics on any issue. He said what people wanted to hear. As eager as I was to start a new page in American History, I never wanted to surrender to the internal communists of either party. Believe me, taking over this countries private industry is communism. Obama also uses the National Socialist ploy of scapegoating popular enemies of the common man.
Healthcare, in my home state of New Jersey, is a defacto right. Every visit to a doctors office or hospital is coupled with a state surcharge for the uninsured. Much like each telephone bill is a subsidy for cell phones for those that cannot afford them. I still try to figure out the necessity of changing this policy except for the federal government to own more of our souls.
Obama now wants to charge banks that paid their loan to subsidize those that are failures.
People sometimes you have to allow failure. No business is to big fail is a lie. You need to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Obama has alienated the elderly by threatening Medicare, and coddling Medicaid. He’s tried to tax millionaires and found he has to reach down to people earning $250,000 a year which penalizes nearly every small business owner in a time of recession. He’s abandoned our only ally in the Middle East, Israel and a large chunk of the Democratic base. The only friends he has left are the extreme radical Communists in his party and his base that live off the forced charity that is welfare.
It’s amazing to watch the results of a president based in an Affirmative Action era that seriously believes himself right, with all the qualities and qualifications that justifies his election win. Arrogance and delusion will mark this presidency. Luckily this country will relegate him to the same place we’ve placed Carter. Maybe he can wield hammer and hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening, all over this land.

I know I am totally ignorant of the details of high finance and economy. I realized that I have some simple economic rules to live by and only spend what you have is the principle law I live by. I think most of you live the same way. Yes you will take out a mortgage, car payment, dinners, and vacations on credit but most of us do not take on so much debt that we cannot meet our monthly charges.

The refusal of the House to pass the bailout bill might actually be a good thing. I know it will be painful, but think about it. All government entities would be held to the same standards that we impose on ourselves. Every time they wanted to spend more than they expected we would have a vote on whether to allow the spending. Businesses that require short term loans to bridge the gap between collecting revenues and spending the revenues would have to make an adjustment but look at the savings in interest that would be saved. College loans that strap the newly graduated for a lifetime would be halted. Save some money take some courses. I spent years in night and weekend courses for my degree. I paid as I went and owe nothing for my education. Given the length of time it takes to graduate for alot of these kids it would not matter. All loans would be scrutinized before a lender would just blindly give out the money. People with savings accounts would actually get some real interest rates like we did in the past.

I have to believe that not being a debtor country would make us the real power house in the world. I have to believe that it is not so much Wall Street that fears this problem but the biggest waster of money our governments. Local, State, and Federal government would be restricted from spending money they do not have. No more give aways to foreign countries to llow them to trade with us, but ends up financing their hatred of this country. No one wants to be owned and told what to do except the most childish people.

Today really emphasized the ethereal quality of our finances. Yesterday the market tanked, today it is gaining some back. That IBM stock did not change overnite, just your attitude towards it. So how real is the stock values? Maybe we should just hold hands sing cumbayah and wish for it to rise. Having workedin State government I learned that their method of measuring deficits and surpluses have more to do with how they want to paint the other party than in checkbook finances. They constantly play games with projected spending and projected revenues to create any scenario they want. The state of New Jersey generally does not have a clue where they stand unless they freeze spending in the fourth fiscal quarter to find out hwere they really stand at the end of the fiscal year. All this juggling would go away.

So now what do we do, pay 700 billion dollars to remain the biggest debtor nation or do nothing and see where we go? We stand at the brink of a high cliff. Is there a soft landing or rocks at the bottom? I can not tell you. I am just one of many that pays the bills so that these experts can get their butts in a wringer and get bailed out when they screw up.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last - Winston Churchill

Does anyone ever read or study history? Neville Chamberlain had success of the Irish Treaty of 1921 to guide him with his policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany.  Mr. Chamberlin thought he was dealing with like minded leader. Hitler was permitted to devour Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. The thinking was that Nazi Germany would be satisfied with this action. Believing that it was inevitable anyway, that it gave time to build the defenses of the British Isles, and in a practical sense that was over there and of little importance.

According to Paul Kennedy in his Strategy and Diplomacy, 1983, appeasement is “the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an armed conflict which would be, expensive, bloody and possibly dangerous.”

So what happened? 72,709,600 deaths attributed to World War II. How many deaths would there have been if the world governments took Hitler to task and isolated and attacked him? No one knows but it seems reasonable to believe that it would have been fewer and defintely would not have included the world. Wison’s League of Nation’s Covenant was the natural outcome of a man born to appeasement. He was elected on the premise that he would keep us out of war.

In the early days of World War I, Wilson was determined to maintain neutrality. He protested British as well as German acts; he offered mediation to both sides but was rebuffed.

Finally the reality of German U Boats and sovereign rights to the oceans aroused the people and him to enter the war. Doing nothing early on starts to show a pattern in the high cost of appeasement and negotiation.

Believing that Stalin was both a like minded rational world leader and someone that he, Franklin Roosevelt could manipulate, allowed Stalin to wait while Warsaw was demolished before entering it and suppressing another nation.  An elitist, President Roosevelt felt himself smarter/better/more sophisticated than a son of a cobbler, President Roosevelt allowed the devastation of the nation of Poland for the same fuzzy thinking that appeasement is better than conflict. We see how Stalin gobbled up Eastern Europe and ruled as a dictator, everything we fought against Hitler during Word War II. He must have laughed at Chuchill and Roosevelt while he took possession of all Eastern Europe and then proceeded to annihlate any opposition from his own country men.

Some would say appeasement is the rational and mature aproach to the choice of armed conflict. That presupposes that you are dealing with like minded leaders that want to resolve differences before using armed conflict. We still have that sense of smuggness that believes in negotiation and appeasement as an answer to the difficult problems facing us. Negotiation is viewed as the rational approach to a bad situation. Going to war is the barbaric response to differing viewpoints. I would like to point out that the Iraq war is not a sign of stupidity or barbarism. Saddam Hussein was the barbarian in the mass elimination of the Kurds that disagreed with his tribe. I think tribe is the key word. That area was nothing but tribes at one time until it became an industrialized by the national oil companies in an effort to appease the idigneous population so that they could grow their profits. Now the oil companies and in turn us, dance to an OPEC band, at one time little more than wondering nomads with hereditary titles to sand and sky.

So what do the current crop of candidates want to do, pull out of Iraq. Its costing us too muchin money and lives. Iraq is over there and maybe they will not bother anyone in the location. There will be no more ethnic cleansing. Israel will not be bombed. The war will not spill over to a world conflict just because of oil. this is from two candidates that are essentially hypocrites. One too young to be a part of the selective service and did not volutnteer for national service but wanted a nice life as a Harvard graduate with a law degree and a need to rule this country. Or maybe Hillary’s plan that regardless of circumstances she will pull the troops out in six months. Both of them ignored the history of appeasement and its costs. Hillary the person that treated high ranking military aides as busboys in the White House. her and her draft dodging husband that seem to despise the military. That same smug attitude of superiority that President Roosevelt showed to Stalin. As President Clinton like to describe himself “a politcal wonk” he could make things work that no one else has been able to succeed and the arrogance of Hillary that seems to want ot destroy a political party in the lust for power and control. In the end there is only one rational attitude and that is Senator McCain. We are there. We have a goal. Lets get it done and come home. Too bad that does not play well in the affluent suburbs. These yuppies that believe in throwing money at problems and for who the phrase NIMBY was coined. So lets prove to the world that we do not have the stamina for a just fight. We have not wanted to win since World War II. Vietnam and Koread showed that we should just negotiate and give them what they want so they do not bother us. Isn’t that how organized crime makes money extorting those that do not want or will not fight back. Give a little get a little.

The carpenter grabbed his hammer and with each strike missed or bent the nail he was trying to pound into the roof. Shouting damn stupid hammer he continued in his fuitless task. Pretty stupid isn’t it? What’s the difference between our presidential candidates and the carpenter? Nothing. The military didn’t up and decide to invade a country. They are under control of the Commander in Chief and ultimately all of us and our elected representatives. So don’t blame the hammer for the failure of all of us. Let the hammer do what a hammer does best, put nails into roofs and walls. And please do not sit there talking about a failed policy. Since when is the policy of the military branch to hold still for the status quo. They are there to win. Otherwise do not send them. They are not supposed to enforce a policing policy. They are there to pound that nail down flat.

This whole debacle started when no nothing politicians started trying to run the wars, instead of telling the military what they want and sending them out with a mandate to bring home the win just short of not complying with the Geneva Convention and the general rules of war. We had that unholy trio of Lyndon Johnson, Robert MacNamara, and General William Westmoreland. Each with there own agenda, something to do with self aggrandizement. They didn’t seem to understand the concept of cannon fodder or maybe they understood it all too well. I will not argue the validity of that war or anyother, just the fact that the military should be left to do their job. Their ownly self interest is to come home alive. MacNamara knew of the lies, of inflated body counts, dropping ordinance in empty jungle, not bombing Haiphong harbor the one target that would have ended the war quickly.

Teddy Roosevelt had a saying, Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick. I would like to add an addendum, Use the Stick if necessary. All debate of the rightness and necessity of war should be done prior to firing a shot not now in the middle of it. I cannot help but feel the sorrow for those that listen to the prattle of the no nothings and do nothings expounding on when they were against the war or for it. That date is immaterial. The date that matters is the day it started with a clear no holds barred win at the end. these are the dates that matter.

The US Post Office played Scrooge this year by denying a recovering wounded veteran a Christmas card. The image tells the story. Correctly addressed after notifying Post Office but returned anyway.

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You would think that facing a war would put a sour face on anyone, but after leaving McGuire Air Force base I felt energized. All these bright and happy faces surrounded me. When I looked at the civilian workers that I work with I saw nothing but misery. All we are facing are arrogant political hacks, not harm and death. I realize that we are so beat down that no one is happy anymore until you get out of work. What a sorry way to live, yet we elect these idiots and we fear these idiots. Everyday these young Army and Air Force heroes face an uncertain future. All we face are blank faces and supreme stupidity. How do thousands of unionized workers hide under rocks when a political appointee with a limited intelligence and a limited time span to exist stares at you? I think it is truly time to use Gandhi’s passive resistance and smile and do whatever you want. They die if we don’t help. We take away the souls they have been feeding on like oily succubi and they will shrivel up and blow away in the wind.

The old story about the frog in the pot seems to apply to current state of political affairs. As the flame increases and the water becomes warmer the frog continues swimming uncaring. The fire heats higher and higher and before the frog knows enough to jump out  of the pot, he’s frog legs dinner. New Jersey politics is a lot like that. Granted that the care of those that cannot care for themselves is a moral obligation for society. These obvious moral mandates keep growing in the legislature. The rights continue to grow and grow until society as a whole can no longer sustain itself. Then, in turn do we become those unfortunates that cannot care for themselves as medical costs skyrocket because the industry knows they have an ally in a seat in the government office that thinks nothing of spending every-ones money on these moral issues? My cynical nature starts to observe that those that seem the most in need do not get the help they need. Segments of the population are given handouts while others are relegated into some living purgatory of trying to sustain themselves and pay the price for the charity of others. Increasingly the state is losing revenues because earners are leaving the state for other areas less apt to reach into their pockets to sustain a personal whim of the politicians in this state. I have lived in a quasi socialist state of Great Britain. At that time 55% of my salary was taken to pay for social programs, but I was allowed to participate in these programs. My surplus money went to luxuries that I wanted. In this country they brag of the rich and poor tax breaks and the ever shrinking middle class worker having to pay for everyone else’s needs and from the forest of satellite dishes and SUV’s I see parked in urban areas, I would say some of the luxuries as well. How much does the average citizen pay in taxes in this country? With the fees, local taxes, Federal taxes, surcharges and other hidden charges inflicted on us, how much do we pay for taxes? How much did it cost for acting Governor Cody to check high school athletes for steroid use? Governor Corzine, this morning, announced he would make sure the state of New Jersey will pick up the tab for those children that will losing their medical coverage. He is already 2 billion in the hole and with the mandated funding of schools and pension systems how is he going to pay for these moral obligations? The typical strategy will be to demonize state workers. They have too many benefits, they have medical coverage, they have days off, they have pensions, what will he take away with the rabble screaming HANG THEM ALL.After all the blood letting, there will be a quiet rebuilding of government payroll budgets and business as usual in the capitol, although with a lot of wounded, demoralized victims of a war that was not of their choosing.

Shades of Jim Florio and the toilet paper tax.

I only wrote when forced to in classes for the grade. Most of the time I looked forward to the challenge the assignment presented. These assignments were nice and structured, lots of organized facts that backed up your opinion whether right or wrong. A nice cohesive argument that could be ignored as the ramblings of a silly undergraduate.

I still have my Filofax with all the scribbles I jotted down in fits of anxious creativity. i have left short stories around the world which were probably thrown out by the maid service in some hotel. I have never seen or heard of any play, book, or movie that resembled any of my original writings so I am pretty secure in stating that no one read my scribbles.

Now with the ability to instantly publish something not limited to a select class in college, but the entire world without structure. Publishing an unstructured document without any reason other than to publish your opinions and thoughts. there is something very subversive in this ability. My writing has begun to take on the anger and frustration of the common man. I forgot who wrote the phrase, “we live our lives in quiet desperation ” but it takes on a new meaning talking inside my head while my fingers voice the thoughts for everyone to read. This started to become frightening the other night when I realized that behind me at any time there may someday be someone that types in a Google search and I will be revealed to everyone as I truly am, at least for that moment in time. This is frightening, because like all other humans my thoughts and opinions change based on circumstances and newly revealed facts. Questions arise, will this ruin my viability as a Presidential Candidate someday? Will my words be used in evidence against me? Not likely, I chose not to run and I try to follow all the known laws.

But the spectre of a Google search sits and waits. Lingering like a tiger ready to pounce. Did you see what Sibby wrote? that seems enormously presumptuous that anyone would actually care what Sibby wrote. Will the Google threat reduce me to writing anonymous graffiti? Will my freedom be impacted? Will I begin to cheat on a game of solitaire with words?

Tune in next time for the answers to these and other questions when Tide presents As the World Turns and goodnight world.

Just because you live in New Jersey does not mean that you can live anywhere in the world. There is one place that is impossible to live in and that is New Jersey. In boot camp during the beginning of my four years in the Navy, the company commander told me that New Jersey has such changeable weather that you will be able to tolerate any weather in the world. After years of travel I found out that I could tolerate and mostly enjoy the weather in other parts of the world, but not because of New Jersey’s changeable weather but because the State of New Jersey is so terrible that every place else seems great.

It is mid October and the weather is hot and humid. I hate to say it but Al Gore may be right about global warming. But think what would have happened if his pet scientist stuck with his story that the earth was moving rapidly into the next ice age. This hot and humid weather would have been considered a blessing instead of a world wide disaster. It is a matter of perspective. The other lesson is that if you constantly change your dire prediction there will be enough of the eco-nuts that will follow you everywhere including Stockholm. Remember terrorist king Yassar Arafat can get a Nobel Peace prize for not killing as many Isreali’s one year than he did all the rest. I think it is called positive reinforcement.

See you all later.

I love the old crafts. I became fascinated when I started collecting meerschaum pipes. There was something satisfying about using a unique tool to do something as mundane as smoke. Researching the method of manufacturing was not much different than the great Renaissance painters and their apprentices. Each step of the process built on the previous step, culminating on a finished pipe that was easily destroyed if you dropped it. Fragility and beauty because that is the way that things were made. Victorian gingerbread, blacksmith-ed tools, all forms of art and beauty that surrounded everyone and became part of the background of life, unappreciated until today when form follows function.