DICTATORSHIP’S ONLY SOLUTION
In the spring of 2000, I was the keynote speaker at a conference of business leaders from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, held in Cartagena, Colombia. The fellows from Venezuela all had the same question: What can we do about Hugo Chavez?I told them they had to face reality. As an admirer and protégé of Fidel Castro, there is one way and one way only he will leave office: in a coffin. This was not what they wanted to hear...Democracy is not only the best guarantor of peace between countries, but the best guarantor of peace within a country as well. When people can choose their government with ballots they do not have to - nor have any moral right to - resort to bullets.Here’s the flip side: When people cannot choose their government with ballots, then they do have to resort to bullets - and they have a moral right to.Democracy is institutionalized peace. Dictatorship is institutionalized violence. So let’s state it clearly: A dictator has no right to life. By his violent and murderous suppression of freedom, the people so suppressed have the moral right to terminate his existence.
THE REAL MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE?
When John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, he admitted that he had probably broken the law by going to Paris and meeting with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders. (From page 188 of the hearing record: "I realize that even my visits in Paris . . . in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera. I understand these things." The prohibition against private individuals negotiating--which has been on the criminal statute books since John Adams was President--is contained in 18 U.S.C. Section 953 and is a felony.)I was serving my second tour of duty in Vietnam at the time, and while I was painfully aware of the lies Kerry was telling Congress and the American people about what was happening in Vietnam (pretending to speak for "all" Vietnam veterans, calling us "war criminals," saying 60-80 percent of us were "stoned" twenty-four hours a day, and the like), I was unaware until recently that he was also involved in exploiting the families of American POWs in Vietnam.
WHY THEY CALL HIM HANOI JOHN
Here’s a story you won’t see the New York Times pulling out of their archives and emblazoning on their front page. But thanks to the Internet, you can send it to everyone you know.It is dated July 23, 1971 and is about John Kerry’s exploiting the families of American prisoners of war for political gain. As a wife of a POW says bitterly, John Kerry is constantly using the families’ grief and suffering for his own political ambitions.Kerry has made his Flashman four months in Vietnam as the centerpiece of his campaign, so he is fair game for Swift Boat Veteran ads condemning it. But what he did during the war after he returned from Vietnam is far more important and deserves far more scrutiny than what he did in Vietnam.Read this story and you will see why Kerry deserves the sobriquet, “Hanoi John.” A discussion of its implications is in TTP Guest Author Bob Turner’s The Real Manchurian Candidate?. Again, I encourage you to forward this on.
GOOD AT SELLING LIES, LOUSY AT SELLING TRUTH
My friend and neighbor, well-known economist Richard Rahn, summarizes the Republicans’ greatest political weakness thus:
The Democrats are good at selling falsehoods, and the Republicans are lousy at selling the truth.There couldn’t be a better example of this than the July BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) jobs report. The Dems and their Pogo Press propagandists bayed to the moon on how the payroll survey showing only 32,000 new jobs created for the month was “disastrous,” and “pathetically anemic.” In reality, it was the Bush campaign’s response to the liberal headlines proclaiming employment disaster that was pathetically anemic.
TERRORISM ON THE ROPES?
At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico this week, George Bush assured America: “I know what I’m doing” regarding winning the war against Moslem terrorists in Iraq and threatening our country. Although the Pogo Press is doing its best to prevent voters from figuring it out, GW is right. He is conducting a full court press right now, and rolling the terrorists up in a ball.Let’s start with Afghanistan. The Taliban is breaking apart. About one-third of the Taliban remnants still fighting in Afghanistan have broken away from Taliban leader Mohammed Omar, who has now lost control of a number of his senior commanders. The pressure of 18,000 American and NATO soldiers relentlessly hunting them down and killing them has precipitated the dissolution of the Taliban.Then there are all the contract guys across the border in Pakistan.
THE 9/11 COMMISSION’S GUARANTEE OF FAILURE
The call for a new intelligence overseer in the executive branch is downright silly. Any CEO of a distressed firm who retained failed managers and simply added new personnel and new organizational boxes would face open rebellion from his board and shareholders. Yet that is what the commission wants to do. Its recommendations finesse or exacerbate the real problems. Without doubt, our two greatest failures are political, not structural. The first is relentless congressional tinkering with the CIA and FBI, reaching outright caricature on the eve of 9/11 — when the FBI could not even clip newspaper articles about advocates of jihad in America, and the CIA needed special permission to contact foreign officials whose human rights violations wouldn't pass muster at the ACLU.
GROWTH vs. ANTI-GROWTH IN NOVEMBER
The Kerry Democrats have in reality proposed the platform most contrary to economic growth and jobs creation in U.S. history. They are betting the news media will be too dumb or willfully blind to notice and the Republicans too incompetent to explain the reality of the Democrats' proposals to the American people. The Democrats have handed the Republicans a golden opportunity to set forth a true economic growth and jobs creation plan. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear the Bush administration and the Republicans have the skills and bold thinking to take advantage of the opportunity presented. The Democrats are good at selling falsehoods, and the Republicans are lousy at selling the truth.
SPAM KILLER
I think I’ve found the best spam killer. Well, actually there are two. You can buy the very same software that Hotmail and Yahoo use to automatically weed out spam, putting it all in a Bulk folder. One click on “empty” and they’re history. The software program is called Brightmail Anti-Spam 5.1. Microsoft will be happy to license it to you for only $1,499.00So I think we should talk about the other one:
EMERGENCY BULLETIN
If you use Internet Explorer to access the Web, you need to be aware of a dangerous “Trojan horse” that can steal your passwords to banking sites, and thus steal your money.Below is an article describing the danger. Microsoft has not issued a “patch” for it, so if your computer is infected, you must correct it yourself. Here is how:1. Use Search from the Start menu to find img1big.gif. That’s the file name of the Trojan horse. Make sure in the search that you opt to include hidden and system files and folders.2. Delete each copy of img1big.gif, if any.3. After the deletions, notify all financial institutions with whom you have electronic accounts that your account may be compromised.I strongly urge you to do this immediately.Dennis The Wizard
TERROR IN TASHKENT
Last Friday, July 30, three suicide bombers blew themselves up next to the U.S. and Israeli Embassies and Prosecutor General's Office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Three Uzbek security men, including the Israeli ambassador's bodyguard, were killed and eight were civilians wounded. The attacks coincided with the start of the trials of radical Islamists accused of perpetrating massive March terrorist attacks killing 35 people and wounding scores. Two terrorist groups, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the attack. The two organizations are well known in the global jihadi movement.