sbiam's Blog

An Open Letter To Senator John McCain:

I am a conservative republican and agree with most of your views. I hope your understanding of economics 101 is on par with the rest of the people currently having problems of why you do not support drilling off our shores and elsewhere.   We do need good alternative fuels; ethanol is not one of them and the bill enacted withdrawn. Untill alternative fuels are readily available to replace oil to power our transportation needs and to become truly independent of foreign stock, we are compelled to drill in our own back yard.

 

 Is it good for the Chinese, Cubans, etc. to drill 50 - 90 miles off our shores and take our reserves? The American people believe this will be a travesty.

 

What is your reasoning to continue to not allow drilling or the building of new gas refineries? I pray you make the right decision to get us out of this oil mess and vote to allow drilling off shore, and anywhere where large reserves will make us independent.

 

With the  current tecnology, impact on the environment will not be an issue. 

( If you concur, please let Senator McCain know how you feel)

All of us know the price of gas is high and going higher.  Why do the networks report on all the misery of folks having a hard time buying gas, etc.  Why doesn't the networks report on what is being done to find more oil, build more refineries and report on the new technologies in oil exploration.  Why report on all the profits being made and politicians wanting to tax those profits which will magically reduce the cost of gas at the pump?  The more the networks tell the lies, tell them long enough and some viewers will begin to believe it... I have been told from a few  in the oil industry, that there is enough oil in the US to not have to relie on imports.  Why do we not go and get it. Come on people use the gray matter; it has lain fallow long enough.

Well, now AT & T Yahoo are giving its subscribers something they didn't ask for and probably do not want.  Advertisements on your email page.  What joy having a flashing advertisement when you are reading  an email or when you are composing.  My complaint was answered with " this is how we give our customers world class service".  There is no way to delete these advertisements or to hide them  What are they thinking. It is more like world class trype.  Also, I was told, if you do not like it, there are other avenues you can go  for email.  Now, that is class. What abominal customer service.  If you have AT& T yahoo sending feedback may tell them their customer base does not like it but it appears it will do no good. Afterall, they are giving "World Class Dis-service" for a few shekels.

They are right, I am in process of finding another provider.

samB

Dear George:

The Dems are blowing air and getting alot of air time. Now, where is your voice. Isn't it time to use the "Bully Pulpet" and put them in their place. Enough is enough start standing up and start talking.  I know you can do it so do it.

The American people want action; we are not sitting still and want to run away but finish it.  That means get off our duff and finish it. All this blustering and micromanageing will cause us to fail and I do not think anyone wants to see that.

Your friend

There is so much name calling, criticism and hate mongering that you wonder what happened to civility. There are those that are against Bush that he can do no good no matter what. Complain, exhort tell lies and many adjectives that are not necessary to write here. Disagree fine but have a why of disagreement. Bush is wrong "why" He should have done "?" Why and how could he have done better. Disagree with Iraq, ok, now tell me what can we do now that we are there; not all the vile rheteric that offers nothing. Everyone wake up and offer constructive solutions. What I hear from congress is to punish but no solutions. Whoops I have asked to much of some.

Are we to ignore the dynamics in the Middle East and withdraw? Should we ignore and put our head in the sand of what the jihadist want of us? Argue the point should we or should we not have invaded Iraq? But we are now there and with current events taking place, what are we to do? Can we with certainty sit down and discuss our differences and walk away friends and loving each other? I think not. Before we condemn the Presidents action consider the ramifications of our leaving. Complete collapse of the Iraqi government, a return to some type of dictatorship; and a stronghold for the followers of Bin Laden. Putting our country at further danger of those wanting to destroy this country and having a base to operate with impunity. If the Presidents plan works as intended and the rules of engagement allow our troops to hold ground, we have the strength to help the Iraqi’s to win and bring a stability to their country. None of this is without sacrifice of which both we and the Iraqi people have already suffered. Or, we can just pack up, go home and be known in the world as “The Americans have no stomach and can be defeated, wait and they will leave; we can do as we please.” Pull in our heads, put up a barrier around the U.S. and live in fear that we one day will be attacked. Can anyone remember when holding hands and singing with the one that wishes you dead ever brought you safety and worked?

Ok, alot has and is being said about the cowboys loss, game was sloppy, full of mistakes, get rid of Bledsoe, tank Jones; I can hear the soothsayers that TO is going to complain he is not getting the ball, badmouthing,etc...the only advice I can offer... Let's see if TO can earn his money, only get the ball to him by whomever can do it. The Cowboys have two good quarterbacks, let's use them both. And either we will have a legend or a myth of a cowboys team...

Tried to email Burger King about their "were full of sit" commercial but they do not accept emails. Airing one like this, I wouldn't want emails either. Posted to entertainment because this is as close I can get.

Had to pass this on for as many to read as possible. Enough said

Learn from History
By Raymond Kraft

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. At that time the U.S. was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress >unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies. France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as
Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our
northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia >and Europe. America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi >heel.

America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI and throughout the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact). Actually, Belgium
>surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force
in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.

Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the U.S. got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany. Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly Iilians, but also more than a MILLION soldiers. Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly have won the war.

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history. There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. And
that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated
by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins. If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time
and place of our choosing........in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things. (1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved
in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for
democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of U.S. occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again ... a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, conditioned by 30 second sound bites, 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until
we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the U.S. can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is
>the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them.

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today. The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The U.S. has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The U.S. took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high ... A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms ... or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law). It's difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently
not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most? The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California. Please consider passing along copies of this article to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is
very meaningful today -- history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.

Thomas E. Zinn

Commander, USN - Retired

Box 160 Stockett Rd.

Morgantown, WV 26508

304.594.1669/1476

Ok, so I haven't an excuse but have you flown the Bush and seen the speed limit sign to the far right that says 45. Of course you are at the far left at altitude and are on cruise, surrounded by other flyers. You enter the toll ( the one you use when you have a toll tag) Upon exiting you get stopped for speeding. Officer I was doing speed limit (60 mph) "Yes, you were, the speed limit entering is 45" the sign is down there. Well, what about the others, " I was keeping up with traffic, couldn't slow down or would have been tail gated. I really thought the 45 for slowing to enter the lane to pay. Response from the States finest, No it isn't ( But I stopped you) Oh, well now I remember to slow as best I can. Been told the officer hides out on the Collin County side of the booth and bam gotcha...

Haven't heard much about the Trans Texas Highway, news organizations seem quiet on this. Recently read that it will be 1/4 of mile wide running from south Texas north. Haven't heard what our northern neighbors feel about this. Gov Perry is for it, his aide worked for the Spanish Co that has the contract to build it as a lobbyist for the Spanish Co. The Aide now works for Perry again. Can you say conflict of interest. Seems no one else running for Gov is in favor of this. Why? Why is this highway private and why can't we find an American company to build it if it passes the legislature. Seems it will be good for getting illegals from the border north as soon as possible. OK, that's getting them out of Texas. Can't be all bad.

What do I not understand in this Farmers Branch Council Meeting? Is FB being to harsh? Do they want to exclude Immigrants or illegal immigrants? What does Lulac want? Allow everyone to live and own property in FB? Does Lulac not care if they are illegal? Does Lulac believe immigrants should be allowed to live and own property in FB, or anywhere in the US? If they are illegal are we racist if we demand they follow the law? Ok, where is reason? Who can stop this smoke screens and call it like it is. It is so obvious; are we so politically correct we allow any to walk on us? It appears FB council is on the right track. Maybe they can do what the Feds don't seem to want to do. And that is the right thing. Welcome all that are legal and want to honor the rules of the United States. Those are the people we want. My parents had to get a visa and become citizens. why not everyone that desires to come to these shores. I lose the logic that screams racism if we even mention illegal immigrants. We better get a handle on this or I am afraid we are in for some serious times. So, tell me, What Do I Not Understand

Sat in traffic court the other day, speeding put me there. Guilty as charged. The take over is not only coming it is here. After listening to the judge opening remarks about our due process, etc. She asked, " Does anyone not speak English" in English and then in Spanish and 3/4 of the room raised their hands. And the whole litany was repeated in Spanish as well as the entire proceedings. That is fine make sure all understand. The problem: All Spanish speaking, just about 3/4 of the room had their DWU tickets dismissed. Why do we allow such pressure upon on system? I can see why our courts, our traffic courts anyway are loaded. Why, if they had a drivers license did't they have to understand English to receive them??? How I ask do you get a ticket for not having insurance and then have the charge dismissed? Why did they not have to prove they now have insurance in front of the court? Where was immigration? Ok, I know, we can't profile. We must wait until a horrific accident occurs and then after the carnage, if one can walk away or after the County spends thousands on health care and after the healing then back accross free and clear. Why can not all who want our services follow rules and laws. Please don't tell me that is to much to ask and it's to hard. This person will not listen...

Tired, yes, I am tired of hearing all the excuses and hoping we will all come together and sing Cum Ba Ya or however that is spelled. Tired, tired of hearing of people wanting the rewards but refusing to play by the rules set down by our founding fathers. Tired of those that want our freedom but refuse to learn our language. Tired of those that want to destroy us. Tired of religious leaders not condeming radicals in their midst. Now, I do not claim to know the answers but wouldn't it help if we were firm and tell those who come here, want to stay ok, now learn the language, take on the pride of being an American. For those who want to take over the world, sorry you are delusional and your delusion will kill you. I don't expect those readical to change their thinking but we sure can change ours and not let them in our midst. Tired of our elected leaders acting like grade school children in the play yard. My question, "Why do we continue to listen to the garbage thrown out, when will we grow up. Where is reason; where is logic; where is common sense.Through all this, Americans being that what we are and resilient, will come through all this and survive. God Bless America