Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Feb 2008

1. B-2. We lost a B-2 yesterday. The aircraft had just taken off from Guam on the last flight of a four month deployment from Whiteman AB in Missouri. Both pilots ejected successfully. One was transported to a hospital in Hawaii for treatment of spinal compression. Much will be made about the billion dollar price tag of these stealth bombers in upcoming weeks. When the B-2 was rolled out in 1988, it was the product of two separate design and development efforts, one of which was cancelled before anything flew. The pubic price tag for the B-2 includes the costs of both aircraft. The crash does remind military procurement people that any weapons system too expensive to use with impunity will have real problems getting the mission done. We must field weapons systems that we can afford to lose. The B-2 is at (or way above) the upper end of that spectrum, and may be too expensive. It is a superb weapons system, but its replacement ought to be much, much less expensive.

2. BMD. The Navy successfully splashed a derelict satellite last Wednesday over the north Pacific. The target was about 150 nm in altitude and struck by a Standard missile armed with a special warhead. The target was non-maneuvering, large, and not electronically active. The hit and breakup was filmed by the Pentagon and released to the general public Thursday. Whomever in the Pentagon came up with the very real concern about reentry of hydrazine used in the satellite’s reaction control and maneuvering system as the rationale for the shot ought to be congratulated, as the American media – the drive-bys – picked up that story and ran with it. They downplayed the notion that the test was a real message being sent to the bad guys around the globe – including Iran, the ChiComs, Russia, North Korea and anyone else that wants to come out and play with the Big Boys. I expect the real reason for the shoot down had a lot more to do with an available target of opportunity and the desire not to allow sensitive hardware to land in the hands of people who we don’t want to have access to it. The test also demonstrated the shoot down capability of the AEGIS ballistic missile defense system being outfitted on 18 ships. This was a big deal and accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish. Congratulations to all involved.

3. Cut Cables. Interesting story out of the Middle East is that of the cut fiber optic transmission cables on the floor of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Over the course of the last few months, five cables have been mysteriously cut. These cables carry most of the internet traffic between the Middle East and the rest of the world. One of the cuts in the Med appears to have been an accident. The others may be something else. Dr. Jack Wheeler of To the Point believes the cables were cut deliberately by either the Israelis or the US, both of which have the naval assets in place to do the deed. He believes someone is isolating Iran, Syria and other less friendly players in the Middle East as a preparation to some sort of action. AJ Strata holds the other opinion, that the cuts are the result of terrorist action aimed against Iraq. I tend to side with Wheeler on this one, as the terrorists simply do not have the technical expertise, training or equipment (that we know of) to ch arter and / or operate a couple subs to do the deed. If Wheeler is correct, there are some interesting times afoot for the Iranian Mullahs.

4. NYT. Well it only took the New York Times two days after their chosen Republican presidential candidate all but sewed up the nomination to launch their first slime job against him and his campaign. Last Thursday the NYT ran their typical hatchet job against McCain accusing him of sexual involvement with a telecommunications lobbyist. McCain himself went public and expressed his disappointment with the NYT. Conservative talk radio and bloggers were far harsher, as were some McCain campaign staffers. Apparently the paper has been working this story for months and decided to drop it on the public after it was too late to select another Republican presidential nominee – which makes the political component of the hit piece pretty obvious to anyone who bothered to pay attention. The NYT is well on its way to joining NBC news, CBS news, and Sixty Minutes as former news organizations. They are completely in the tank for the democrats and will stop at nothing to get their guy or gal elected. We are on the verge of returning back to the good old days of non-objective journalism practiced 100-200 years ago – which is not such a bad thing. The only thing many conservatives are wondering is why they didn’t wait until the weekend before the election like they normally do? Given that this one has been released, expect many, many other slime jobs out of various leftist-friendly news organizations from now until November. This single act of hatchet-job journalism will do more to shore up conservative support behind McCain than anything he could do reaching out to them, as an enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my enemy any longer.

5. Public Funding. Both McCain and Obama have interesting decisions in the very near future regarding how to fund their campaigns. Will they accept public funding, which will put limits on what they are able to spend? Or will they forego public funding and raise money without limits? McCain is on the hook as the champion of McCain-Feingold, which really garbaged up the ability of candidates to raise money. Obama has raised and spent over $100 million, mostly on the Internet, in his campaign for the democrat presidential nomination. On the other hand, a year ago he made a public deal with McCain that should either become their p arty’s candidate; they would accept public financing and the spending limits for the general election campaign. McCain has been short of money throughout the entire process, and apparently has the ability to run and win via insurgent, grass roots, low-cost campaign as he has for the last year. Obama has demonstrated that his rock-star routine will raise large quantities of money easily, money that he spends like water down a drain. If Obama changes his mind, McCain has yet another opening to slam him as simply another politician that says one thing while doing another. Obama has a decision in front of him – one that will be uncomfortable either way he goes. CQ, Tues.

6. Michelle. Senator Obama (D, IL) is yet another democrat presidential candidate with an in-your face, pushy, mouthy wife. Much like Hillary in 1992 and 1996, Theresa Heinz in 2004, Michelle Obama is going to make a name for herself. She has had some most interesting comments over the last couple weeks. The first was at UCLA earlier in the month, where she made that argument that the collective souls of Americans were broken and the only one who could fix them was her husband, Barack, should he be elected. Imagine the reaction from the drive-by media should Mitt Romney’s wife or Mike Huckabee’s wife had made the same argument. Apparently a theocracy is only bad when someone who believes in God wants to impose it. And it is quite all right if followers of radical Islam or leftist presidential candidate wives want to impose it. Michelle’s other statement was in a campaign appearance in Wisconsin last week when she said the following (from Captain’s Qu arters, Tues):

CQ and Michelle Malkin then proceeded to tear into Michelle Obama, noting that she and her husband are both millionaires, graduates from Ivy League schools, and sit at the upper crust of power and influence in this nation. Yet she has never seen anything in her 40+ years of living here in America that she was proud of until here husband st arted running for El Presidente. This is a quotation that reveals her actual view of the United States and outs her as simply another in a long line of black, liberal victim mongers.

1. FISA. Nancy Pelosi’s (D, SF) House leadership blew off a vote on an extension of FISA legislation Friday and let the extension lapse for the duration of their 12-day vacation. As a result, authority for the feds to conduct message intercepts and wiretaps for new terrorist threats no longer exists. At issue is a provision of the legislation that will grant immunity to the Telecom corporations for past assistance to the administration from lawsuits. The corporations acted in good faith as they responded to administration requests for assistance in surveiling suspected terrorist transmissions via phone lines switched in the US. Trial lawyers, who have donated significant money to elect democrats over the last several decades, believe they have the next big target for a series of high-dollar lawsuits, and given the number of Islamists here in the US, they will have no shortage of claiming to be victims. The legislation was passed out of the senate with the vote of 19 democrat senators. The rest of them either voted in opposition or abstained. The legislation would have had sufficient votes to pass out of the House, but Pelosi’s democrat leadership did not allow it to come to the floor of the House. The move was blasted by the Republican minority in the House, by President Bush, and in the online conservative community. Clearly, the democrat majority in the House value the campaign contributions of trial lawyers far more than they value the safety of successful interdiction against terrorist threats. This will continue to be a festering issue over the next several months. We will hope that we do not miss any plot that will result in dead Americans. This is the sort of nonsense that we get when we elect democrats. This is the sort of foolishness that we get when conservatives stay home and allow the other side to win. This is precisely the sort of thing that we will get should we conservatives and evangelicals sit this election out. Democrats are only serious about feathering their own nests; and not a bit serious about national security or the destruction of people and an ideology that would do us harm. One interesting postscript to this entire affair would be a possible exploration of FISA legislation. It was first passed in 1978 by the Church Committee as a response to surveillance abuses during the Nixon years. Note that the Church Committee only focused on the Nixon administration and were uninterested in the same actions by the previous Johnson and Kennedy Administrations. No administration has ever challenged it in court. There is an opening for the administration to toss out the entire FISA structure as an unconstitutional congressional intrusion into Executive authority to conduct a war. Now that Pelosi’s House leadership has given him this opening, perhaps it is time to take that step.

2. BMD. The Defense Dep artment announced a ballistic Missile Defense test to take place sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. There is a derelict spy satellite that has run out of fuel and is in the process of reentering the atmosphere. We will try to shoot it down before it hits the ground, all in the interest of safety, for there are fuel tanks onboard that contain hydrazine. The anti-BMD crowd went nuts after the announcement, of course. So did the ChiComs and the Russians. The shooter will be a navy Aegis cruiser. This response is a very nice counter to the ChiCom ASAT test several months ago that trashed a wide swath of orbital space with shrapnel. Think of it as an attention getting step by the military to the ChiComs, the Russians and the Iranians.

3. Mughniyeh. Yet another really Bad Guy went on his way to meet his 72 raisins or virgins or whatever last week. This guy was the one of the chief planners of the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon. He planned the 1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacking and two-week long torture and murder episode. He was involved in most of Hezbollah’s high profile bombings and attacks over the last 25 years and was truly a bad, bad dude. Well, he disappeared in a car bomb explosion in Damascus. It is unclear at this time whether he was removed from the gene pool by some hitherto unnamed intelligence service, or he simply buffooned preparation of a car bomb destined for Lebanon. For me, either one will work. And the notion that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are all considering the possibility of a second covert operation far inside Syria in less than a year makes me sleep well at night.

4. Pebble. The battle of Pebble Mine proceeds here in Alaska, with the pro-mining people st arting to return effective fire against the greens and nimbys. Pebble is a huge copper and molybdenum mine being planned north of Lake Iliamna in western Alaska. The mining companies have found one of the largest deposits in the world out there and are planning to build a huge open pit mine. Potential value of what will be dug out of the mining district rivals the value of all natural gas on the Alaska North Slope / Prudhoe Bay oil and gas fields. The proposed mine sits close to the headwaters of two of the nine salmon streams that feed into Bristol Bay, a region currently almost entirely dependent of commercial salmon fishing. Should this mine get dug, it will provide yet another major industry in one of the poorest p arts of the state. There are also a number of lodges in the area that cater to some very high class fishing and hunting clientele. One of the lodge owners has been funding a series of anti-mining ads, opposition groups, and now a couple ballot initiatives that will all but shut down mining statewide if passed in November. We have been hearing ads in support of and in opposition to the ballot initiatives for over a month so far this year. Predictably, the anti-mining greens and nimbys entitled their initiative the “Clean Water Initiative” because it bans all discharge of fluids, dusts, crushed rock, and anything else in any flowing water in the Bristol Bay region. Trouble is, should it pass, it will also set statewide precedent that will be used to shut down all other active and planned mines statewide. The opponents have correctly pointed this out and tied it to an attack on native-owned mining operations in Bush Alaska. In response the anti-miners denied the impact, but then went on to note that should the native-owned and operated Red Dog Mine, “… the largest polluter in the nation…” be plopped down in Bristol Bay, it would have to be shut down. So in making their case, they are incapable of hiding what they are really all about. Native Corporations and a number of other pro-development groups are suing to get the initiatives removed from the ballot. There is going to be a lot of money spent on this fight. Pebble Mine is a very, very big deal, and will have huge positive economic impact in western Alaska. If you extract over a hundred billion dollars of metals from a hole in the ground, some of that money will hang around locally and create a local and sustainable economy.

5. Ice Pack. The local fishwrapper (Anchorage Daily News) Tuesday ran yet another breathless story about the disappearance of the polar ice cap, noting that 2007 was the worst year on record and wondering what was next. What is really happening in the Arctic is that the prevailing winds have shifted a bit, blowing the majority of the ice east toward Greenland. Wind direction is tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a 50-70 year natural cycle of changes in water temperature, wind direction, and currents. Total covered area hasn’t changed a lot over the years. In the summer, ice melts. It comes back in the winter, just as it has done over millions of years. The breathless story claims that next year’s ice loss may be just as bad, if not worse than 2007. Note the use of models here. In a time when we can’t reliably predict local weather two days from today, the models are trying mightily to predict what the polar ice cap will do next winter, a decade and half a century from now. Remember that these are the same clowns that are predicting the disappearance of the polar ice cap by mid-century, along with all the polar bears. Somehow, I think they will be wrong. The article appears to be yet another little prod to the Fish & Wildlife Services to list the polar bear as a threatened species based on that half century out, future ice forecast.

1. McCain. I had a couple correspondents that took me to task for going after John McCain ( RINO, AZ) last week via what they described as a Clinton-esque character assassination. Perhaps a better explanation is in order. The first two reasons I gave – the Keating 5 and the POW stories – are going to be used to smear, assassinate his character and eventually to defeat him in the general election. The third story is the vehicle the left will use to defeat any conservative initiative should be he elected. My bottom line is still that he has been compromised and cannot be trusted. His positions on the issues fall well below the 80% agreement level for conservatives. Positions such as opposition to opening ANWR for oil production, adoption of the entire manmade global warming mythology, McCain – Feingold, McCain – Kennedy, McCain – Lieberman, class warfare, anti-business rhetoric, opposition to tax cuts, and the Gang of 14, etc. are all big deals.

2. What Next? Now that Mitt Romney has dropped out, what is next? What do we conservatives do? Do we suck it up and support McCain? Do we sit this one out at the presidential level? Do we continue to fight? Perhaps the best choice is to continue to fight, as this one is not over yet. Romney has not released any of his delegates. Mike Huckabee remains in the race. Conservatives can still defeat McCain in the remaining states, support Huckabee, and shoot for a brokered convention in August. The numbers may there, and there are not enough eastern states left for McCain to sew up the nomination with liberals and moderates alone. The second best choice is to fight it out until the bitter end at the convention and then support wholehe artedly whoever is the nominee. Why? Because that nominee will appoint a few SCOTUS judges, and lots of Circuit Court judges. Along with that, we do our level best to elect the most conservative congress possible. We conservatives made a mistake by sitting out the 2006 election. Granted, we tossed out a lot of slugs on our side of the aisle. But we put the nation at risk by giving the democrats the keys to the kingdom. We also empowered McCain, as predicted by Limbaugh in October of 2006, to be the next nominee. Leftists play the political game well. They spent the entire year up to the 2006 election making things just a loud, nasty, unpleasant and ugly as possible. People want quiet rather than loud chaos, and an appreciable number of them are not a bit uncomfortable with the notion of giving the dems what they want simply in order to shut them up. Well, like giving a spoiled brat what he wants to shut him up, this never works and only serves to make things worse. The dems think they are on the verge of having their hot little hands on all the levers of power again. I think we conservatives have a reasonable chance of taking back the House of Representatives. The senate is more problematic, but not outside the realm of possibility to retake. Why? Because a sub-20% public approval of a democrat congress has to count for something – despite all the polling you may hear this year predicting electoral disaster for conservatives. It was certainly enough to get the last congress tossed. Public disgust with congress may make it easier to toss this one in November. We have a potential nominee in McCain that loves crossing the aisle and making deals with democrats. It is our job to make that game just as difficult for him as humanly possible. The fewer democrats that there are in congress, in the various governor’s mansions, and sitting in state legislatures, the harder it will be for McCain to make yet another of his self-serving little deals with leftists. We simply box him in and remove his wiggle room on the left. By doing so, we also make his time in the presidency just as unpleasant for him as he made life for conservatives in congress over the last eight years, and remove his ability to grandstand against conservatives in the media. This will be sufficient payback and punishment for what he had done against conservatives for the last several years. Sometimes you get what you want. Usually, it is not at all what you expected. Our job is to do what we always have done: Support and vote for the most conservative candidates for office at all levels. We do not sit this one out. We do not whine, snivel, or wring our hands. We roll up our sleeves and get the job done. We must NEVER AGAIN sit out an election, for doing so hands power to the leftists who would impoverish and enslave us just as soon as they could. Buck up guys and gals, this is going to be fun. And a volcanic McCain on public display in the presidency will be just as fun to watch as a volcanic Clinton (either one) was in the 1990s. Who knows, we may be on our way to electing a Republican version of Andrew Jackson, who also had a reputation for a legendary temper.

3. Alaska Caucus. Alaska held caucuses last Tuesday. ON the democrat side, it was a Obama night, with 74% of the votes and 302 delegates. Senator Clinton had 24% of the vote and got 103 delegates. The democrats had a record 5,000 people p articipating. On the Republican side, we had a very pleasant surprise, with around 13,000 people p articipating. This turnout is a bit larger than the largest historic years of 1996 and 2000. Results of the caucuses were Romney with 44% of the vote and 12 delegates; Huckabee with 22% of the vote and 6 delegates; Ron Paul with 17% of the vote and 5 delegates; and McCain with 15% of the vote and 3 delegates. As with elsewhere in the nation, democrats and their cheerleaders in local drive-by media think they will be steamrolling to majorities in one or both Houses of the Legislature. They also think they have a chance to unseat incumbents Don Young and Ted Stevens. That remains to be seen, for if we found out anything from Tuesday night, it was that Alaskan conservatives are fired up, ready for battle, and fully engaged. This ought to be a great fight.

4. Garnishment. Senator Clinton’s muscle-bound Nanny State inclinations came out in the light of day last week when in response to a question about younger Americans and health care. The question noted that younger Americans typically think they are indestructible and will not sign up for health care insurance. Her answer? Why, she will simply garnish the wages and wealth of those younger Americans and force them into a system as unwilling p articipants. To his credit, Senator Obama came out and blasted the forced entry as an attack on the young. Interesting that Obama is positioning himself to the right of Clinton, especially when both of them embrace the notion of universal health care mandates nationwide.

5. Global Cooling. A few stories about the return of colder weather st arted rattling around the Internet last week. First one has China experiencing the coldest, most brutal winter in a century. The second has the Midwest experiencing the coldest winter in a decade. The third has us up here in SouthCentral Alaska experiencing the coldest winter in the last five years. I have had a great time noting that this is what the Global Warming doomsday crowd wants us to have more of, for if it is doing this sort of stuff when the global temperatures are supposedly increasing, what do you think it will be doing when they decrease? The final story comes out of PowerLine, Saturday, with a solar prediction of quiet, which normally leads to lower solar heat output and colder temperatures in the solar system. If you look at the sun these days, you will be hard pressed to find any sunspots. We are at a solar minimum in the 11 (or 22) year long sunspot cycles. There is a 200 year cycle superimposed upon this that some solar astronomers also have tracked. The prediction reported in PowerLine, Investors Business Daily and American Thinker has the sun moving into a period of quiet not unlike and hopefully not as bad as the Little Ice Age, centered on the Maunder Minimum of 1645 – 1715, st arting in 2020 and lasting throughout the rest of this century. If so, Boys & Girls, things are going to be getting a bit colder for a while. Survivable? Absolutely, but we will be wishing for the temperate days of the recent past when Global Warming was running rampant. I expect the Global Warming fans to figure out how to blame a decrease in solar activity on what we do in our SUVs. Then again, one reaction to a solar cool down would be to build as many coal-fired power plants as soon as possible and dump as much soot and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible so as to hold the heat. One final interesting tidbit here is a possible connection between changes in solar output, volcanic eruptions and the st art of ice ages. There appears to be a correlation between major volcanic eruptions and the three coldest periods of the Little Ice Age. We already know that massive volcanic eruptions that inject tens to hundreds of cubic miles of stuff into the atmosphere cool the planet down for years afterward. Should such an eruption happen just as the sun is decreasing its output due to a naturally occurring cycle, and you set the stage for a real tipping point into some serious global climate change in a very, very cold direction.

1. McCain. Now comes the time to tell you why I oppose John McCain. It is because I believe he has been compromised by the left. And as we found out with Newt Gingrich, who was compromised as House Speaker because of his girlfriend, the left will use any anything they know, any dirt, to leverage actions in their favor. McCain is compromised three ways: First, he was p art of the Keating 5, the scandal associated with the congressionally triggered Savings & Loan failures of the mid-1980s. A democrat campaign that can dig up dirt on Obama’s third grade presidential aspirations will lay out details of McCain’s p art of the Keating 5 in excruciating detail for the next nine months. Second, Dr. Jack Wheeler and some others believe that after McCain was tortured and broken by his interrogators in the Hanoi Hilton, he then collaborated with the enemy. There have been for a long time former POWs who have muttered dark things about McCain in this regard. Wheeler believes the old KGB files have records of both the interrogations and the cooperation afterwards, and the leftists now running the CIA will leak the files at an opportune moment. I must admit, this one doesn’t bother me a whole lot, as anyone – everyone – breaks when tortured past their individual point of collapse, or they die. All McCain needs to do is to say this is why he opposes torture. Finally, and most seriously, there are those in Arizona who believe that McCain sold his soul to the drive-by media in return for his wife’s health. Around 1990, McCain’s current wife had some serious health problems. She was prescribed with pain pills. She st arted using connections with one of her charities to get more pain pills. Much like they did with Rush Limbaugh’s addiction to pain pills, the media went after her as a vehicle to go after McCain himself. They did so with a vengeance. McCain faced a choice: step down; fight; or broker a deal. As the story goes, he spent a weekend in LA, after which the stories stopped, his wife entered rehab, and all investigations ceased. Since then, local observers from Arizona believe that McCain has jumped to the calling of the drive-bys. Indeed, since 1990, his ACU rating has declined every year, and he has delighted in poking a finger in the eye of conservatives on almost a daily basis. I don’t mind a mean, nasty, cantankerous candidate. I don’t mind our candidate opening the proverbial can of Whoop Ass and going after all comers. Lord knows, the Beltway is a target rich environment. But McCain only seems to do this against conservatives. He never goes after those on the left with the same vigor, glee, and enjoyment as he does those on the right. Stories about a man don’t bother me a lot. But his actions do. Consider this when you vote on Tuesday.

2. Hawaii. The Hawaiian racial secessionist movement, state and federally sponsored, has moved sm artly into the realm of censorship of free political speech. A c artoon showed up on a satirical website and was reprinted in one of the alternative newspapers. State and native separatist officials have demanded the anonymous c artoonist be instantly outed so he can attend a future reeducation camp. They are going after the newspaper, which refuses to give up the identity to the state and native separatists. All the usual suspects have accused the c artoonist of racism and worse. All he really did was point out the fallacy best stated in Orwell’s Animal House, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Malkin has a copy of the c artoon along with a pretty good writeup on the state-led censorship effort. Note that the last time the Akaka Bill was brought to the floor of the senate, Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain voted for cloture of the Republican-led filibuster. McCain inserted a note into the congressional record at the time expressing his opposition to the legislation. The Alaska congressional delegation sadly supported the legislation. Here is the text of the cartoon:

3. Bears. The Anchorage Daily News ran yet another enviro-hatchet job Sunday. This time the target was the State of Alaska bureaucrats fighting the listing of polar bears as an endangered species. The basic science behind the green effort to list the polar bear is the notion that sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing; that the polar bears use the ice to get them into position to hunt seals; and if the ice is all gone in 50 years, the bears will all starve to death. So this listing effort is based not on actual counts of the bears – which have a large, healthy and growing population in Canada, Alaska and Russia. It is rather based on a weather forecast 50 years out. The greens are insisting we act on polar bears based on a 50-year future forecast, when we cannot precisely forecast what will happen the Day After Tomorrow (irony intended). The models they are working against do not include cloud cover, wind direction or precipitation. They cannot be run backwards and predict what happened yesterday, a week or a month ago. Yet these models are the centerpiece of efforts to list the polar bear as an endangered (threatened) species. And if the Bush administration refuses to list the bears based on this specious argument, the greens are going to find some black-robed idiot sitting on the federal bench who will. Their other vehicle will be to get a future democrat administration to list the bears. Why is this listing so important to the greens? Because it will be used as yet another vehicle to stop all oil and natural gas development off the northern and western coast of Alaska.

4. Brits. Yet another lesson on the dangers of putting all decision making authority and monies for health care into the hands of a socialist bureaucracy comes out of the Brits. The money crunch has kicked in nicely in Canada and Great Britain. Doctors in Britain have recommended that they withhold treatment and operations from drug users, heavy drinkers, smokers, the obese and the elderly. Withholding this treatment will doom the elderly and infirm to short, painful deaths. Also expect this sort of cost saving measures to be extended to handicappers in Great Britain, for they are also expensive to care for. This is the path we travel when we st art down the road toward socialized medicine. It is the path toward our doom.

5. Handicappers. Al Qaida used two women in a pair of suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad last week. The attacks killed over 80 people. The women were handicappers with Down’s Syndrome, and the bombs were remotely detonated. Al Qaida continues to redefine themselves as the worst lowlifes seen on the face of this globe in many a year. Is this what fundamentalist Islam has come to where love of murder, death and mayhem overcomes very real direction to care for those that cannot care for themselves? Good show, guys.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuv alleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http:/ /home.gci.net /~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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