a.  Increased inexpensive threats. 

  - Cheap hand-held anti-aircraft missiles are rapidly proliferating; have been, for years.  Three decades ago, when still expensive & reasonably controlled, these hand-held anti-air missiles spelled the end of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  Today, F-15s, F-16s, & even titanium-bathtub A-10s, are actually increasingly vulnerable to decreasingly expensive hand-held anti-air missiles. Surrendering control of the air is not an option, not for winning a war.  

 - Current accounting for threats. Currently, our aircraft (fighters, bombers, cargo, etc) cannot fly low-altitude combat patterns without significant risk… including taking off for a mission, and coming down to land at the end of a mission. The trade-off? Increased air-to-ground distance, from high altitude, makes many specific combat situations more difficult to prosecute and/or survive.

  - Vulnerable, how? Our current fleet has few F-22s, relying mostly on aging 1970s-technology fighters.  Anti-aircraft defenses have matured over time.  F-15s, F-16s, & A-10s are metallic (with radar vulnerability) and unducted (with heat-seeking vulnerability). The vulnerabilities necessitate pilot distractions from mission, to actions needed merely to stay alive.  The flight environment is probably OK, for now, though certainly it’s not optimal.  Certainly, the environment will NOT be OK in another decade.

b.  But the F-22 (and F-35) would be essentially immune. 

  - Stealth technology operates against both radar and heat-seeking guidance systems, even if low-flying planes wisely employ simple countermeasures. (It’s foolish to forsake relatively inexpensive ‘countermeasures insurance’, just like it was foolish to forsake ‘insurance’ guns on 1^st-generation missile-armed jets!)

  - Even now, F-22’s & F-35’s non-metallic construction are inherent defenses combating ground fire … they don’t reflect well on radar-guidance systems! 

  - It seems that both the F-22 & F-35 have stealth-standard exhaust ducting that ‘cools’ exhaust enough to give heat-seeking missiles considerable trouble. 

1. Two thousand years ago, 3 wise men recognized a prophecy being fulfilled, and followed a Christmas Star. Theologians & scientists debate just precisely what that star was: a supernova, a conjunction of planets, etc. 

 - Scripture doesn’t describe physical phenomenon that are unnecessary to the salvific meaning of the story. In this case, the nativity author is content to let us know the Wise Men recognized it, and the implication is that any scripturally-wise Hebrew of the day would also understand. But even then, it is possible the nature of the prophetic star was understood by only a few Zoroastrians (converts from and descendents of the ‘lost ten tribes’ forcibly emigrated to Persian lands); otherwise, why only three wise men? Indeed, it seems the wise men spent some time in Herod’s Royal Court while the wisest of the Hebrew holy men researched their question. The Wise Men’s quest seemed to catch them off-guard. Regardless, these days, it seems that the entire understanding of the prophecy’s physical manifestation is lost to history.  Perhaps the message really does matter far more than the scientific underpinning. [This is a difficult admission for Duck Archer, a scientist curious about nearly everything … ]

 - Like all divine prophecies, precision wasn’t simply handed even to the Wise Men; the got to Palestine and had to ask for more precise directions from very human instruments of God’s will. Perhaps their saga was a foreshadowing, of sorts; a prelude to when the Jesus they worshiped grew to be an adult and told his followers to preach salvation to all nations: love God with all you’ve got, and love each other because all are created & loved by God! We can be reasonably sure that the Christmas Star, like all miracles, is not an end-all-be-all; the miracle is merely the attention-getter for a more profound message. The wise men seem to have understood: the star was the beacon, not the destination.

2. Today, Sirius, aka ‘the Dog Star’, is our Christmas Star. Find it by finding one of the most easily recognized constellations: Orion. Not at all visible in summertime, Orion is prominent in the southern winter sky. Find Orion’s 3 belt stars. Follow the line made by Orion’s belt, towards the east, to the first really bright star. That star is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius, like Orion, is only visible in Winter and Spring…

 - Sirius is visible from Christmas through Easter, and until the celebration of Jesus’ Ascension 40 days after Easter. In northern latitudes like Minnesota, the sun comes up early in Summertime, but in southern latitudes, some would say Sirius can be seen until Pentecost, 50 days after the celebration of the Ascension. 

 - Regardless: Sirius, our Christmas Star, is the brightest star in the nighttime sky, and is visible during the part of the year in which we commemorate events of Jesus’ mortal life on Earth.

There are three key phases of Sirius’ nightly appearance.

 - As Advent begins, four Sundays before Christmas, a new liturgical year begins. Advent is a season of hope and anticipation. As Advent begins, Sirius rises in the east at about 10pm – about the time adults go to bed.

 - At Christmas, Sirius rises at about 8pm, or at about the time kids go to bed. At the celebration of the savior’s birth, the whole family can easily see the Christmas Star rising during the normal course of the day.

 - Epiphany is the celebration of when the Wise Men arrived. Epiphany is January 6^th. At Epiphany, the entire nativity scene is completed. At Epiphany today, Sirius is rising as the sun sets; the Christmas Star is visible to all from the moment night begins.

[Fairness in advertising: Most of this Section 2, and some of Section 3, is a paraphrase from Fr Riley, then of King St Louis 9^th Parish in northern Virginia, circa 2001.]

3. Post-script.

In America’s emerging post-Shuttle space program, we have Project Orion. With Orion, mankind will again strike out beyond the known, to Moon and then to Mars. Just as the Wise Men required very human assistance in a great undertaking, and just as Orion points to Christmas, so too will humanity soon take the meaning of Christmas toward the stars. And again, a Christmas Star won’t be a destination (at least not soon); Sirius can remain a very bright beacon to a grand undertaking towards Sol’s planets, and then to any planets around Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars …

But for now, we have a Christmas Star jam-packed with coincidental (?) meaning in its nightly arrival times. And, just as the original wise men, we can aspire to the wisdom that our Christmas Star points towards. We live on Earth, but yearn for our home in a far different place.

And our wonderful “beacon to something grander” sparkles. At least at sea level, the ‘Blue Giant star’ Sirius sparkles in alternating red, white, & blue. Look for yourself … and wonder about the age-old wisdom: “with God, there are no coincidences”…

‘give to God what is God’s, give to the world what is the world’s’

Perhaps it’s worth seriously considering the meaning, or multiple meanings, of Sirius.

I spent 20 years in uniform. In 20 years, I was betrayed. I swore an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic'. While I 'manned the walls', somebody let the enemies under the walls and into the courtyard: fellow countrymen have allowed internal rot to erode the force & effect of the constitution I defended. Outright betrayal.

Still, a point to amplify: betrayal from arrogance 'reaching across the aisle' to the usual liberal suspects.

As a conservative, I have a memory that I'm not afraid to use. I remember the lies & duplicities of liberals & outright admitted socialists, of 'compassionate conservatives', and of would-be conservatives who behave as if having tumbled gyroscopes for their Jiminy Crickets. Being conservative also means I believe in an immutable standard of right versus wrong, that I'm not ashamed to call a lie a lie, and that I insist all should stick to the agreed rules, like the constitution ... or leave us.

No, the 80% change I want is to take the kid gloves off against those who throw mud to see what sticks. I want to lose the politically correct veneer: the politics of personal destruction is NOT in calling a lie a lie, it's in telling the lie in the first place. Those who speak plainly, unashamed to point out the lies, those are the candidates I'm willing to vote for and support. Conservatism does this. Conservatives will send a Packwood packing just as quickly as sending away a Studds, while the liars will join against Packwood, but circle wagons around a Studds. 

Most of America doesn't give a hoot about 'partisan politics' so much as we want integrity we can trust ... integrity that forbids betrayal. ENOUGH with lies and all the rest of Relative Morality's hidden praise of duplicity!

Conservative victory, the phoenix of integrity ... we need it.

Anybody ever notice that Republican success in national elections is directly related to how conservative the Republican is???!!! ('DumbOxBellowed' blog shows details in a featured essay.)

I wish the 2008 ticket was Palin-Anybody, with a cabinet including Thompson, Gingrich, Alexander, Keyes, DeLay, Lott, Santorum, Thune, etc. (I remember how some of them were tarred & feathered, run out of DC on a rail, then exonerated. THAT is the politics of personal destruction.) No human is perfect, but a cabinet like those names would probably keep each other true to politics of service, away from politics of self-embellishing duplicity. 

It was liberals who enabled – mandated – Fannie & Freddie & all the rest, to create this mess. Obama’s record and intentions are like his fellow liberals: more government to solve a problem created by too much government already.  How can this crisis possibly be benefitting Obama???  Does nobody know the truth???  Possible.  McCain sure isn't telling the real story.  Broadcast media sure won't.  Obama Campaign certainly has nothing to gain, everything to lose ... from truth.

B. The Guilty Parties.

The way it seems to have played out: 

   1. Liberals mandated that Fannie, Freddie, and other banks must find ways to qualify folks with very low incomes and no significant savings, to give them mortgages they couldn’t possibly ever pay off – whether the former standard mortgage or the newfangled interest-only mortgage. Politicians, like Frank, Pelosi, and the rest, must have gone home with such a warm glow that night: they'd legislated wealth redistribution, and corporate America not only has to absorb the price, but also the effort of generation & oversight, and bear the ‘burden of proof of enough low-income mortgages’ to regulators!

   2. Liberals mandated that Fannie, Freddie, and other banks be legally allowed to write mortgages for interest-only payments. Wow! American dream! And banks didn’t fuss too much either … Occupant gets a house much bigger & plusher than he can ever pay for, because his legal mortgage payments are now within his budget … even though he’ll never actually own the house since you never pay a dollar towards principal! Banks write mortgages for homes they never relinquish title to. Wow! Anybody heard of ‘rent’? Always wanted my landlord to be my bank … so I can pay for all the repairs myself …

   3. Then the mortgage bubble starts growing. Ordinary folks seeking ordinary homes financed with ordinary mortgages find the prices getting sky-high for the value of home to be gotten. But all the national economic numbers were looking up, with more & more Americans became homeowners … of homes they’d never be able to pay for and truly own.  

C. Other solutions.

Why couldn’t we just free up money for credit without a government buy-up? 

     - We could indefinitely suspend corporate taxes, assuring executives they’d have at least a 3-month notice before a phase-back-in would commence. 

     - We could terminate all capital gains taxes.  What good are capital gains taxes when the economy is tanked and there are no gains to generate taxes on anyway? Yet, free up the expectation of losing all that cash to tax, and you conversely increase incentive to invest, thus investors ‘find’ cash for loans and all that …

E. How it *could* happen. But won’t.

It seems McCain & Palin would fight corruption in DC.  Probably won't get the chance.

    - But McCain won’t allow the campaign to raise their voices now, naming names. 

Conclusion: insanity.

Insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, and expecting a different result.

    - Politicians want us to believe the government bailout will solve the problem of too much government involvement. Insanity.

    - McCain wants to believe he can remain his old conservative-confounding, liberal-enabling self, and somehow win in November 2008. Insanity.

Oil. Gas. Gasoline. Natural gas. Petroleum. Collectively referred to as ‘oil’, today they are foremost in American minds even with the price per barrel sliding from $145 (July 2008) to a bit less than $100 today. Americans don’t easily forget their ‘energy crunches’! 

Remember ‘1974’? 

Well, half of America was not yet born.  But what are our societal memories, as well as individual memories?

 -  ‘1974’ automatically evokes memories of long lines at gas stations, and gas stations literally running out of gasoline after the federal government imposed ‘wage & price controls’.  Usually, only after ‘oil crisis’ do we recall …

 -  “Seasons In the Sun” or “The Steak”

 -  “Tornado Super Outbreak” or East African drought

 -  “Lucy” skeleton, or Patty Hearst’s ‘Stockholm effect”

 -  first deep-space probe pictures of Mercury, or Skylab’s multi-wavelength pictures of the Sun from Earth orbit

 -  seemingly unstoppable terrorist bombings and skyjackings

 -  Even Nixon’s resignation usually comes to mind only after ‘oil crisis’.

How about ‘1978’? 

 Recalling that year reflexively evokes American (societal & individual) memories of needing an entire $20 bill for filling the gas tank. 

 -  ‘1978’ was a hammer-blow ‘oil’ reminder.  Only later do we recall …

 -  disco and Saturday Night Fever

 -  Susan B. Anthony dollar coin

 -  USSR’s Cosmos 954 satellite spreading nuclear reactor fuel in Canada

 -  cardinals selecting two Pope John Paul’s within as many months

 -  two Voyager spacecraft giving us our ‘grand tour’ of the giant gas planets

 -  that Pluto had a moon

 -  Usually, we remember the hit to our wallets before recalling even the Camp David Accords

Oil is important. It’s a historically uniquely powerful & portable energy source. We use a lot of it. Other countries also use a lot of it, and in dramatically increasing amounts. Developing nations, like China and India (with a third of world population), reminds us how oil has uniquely improved lifestyles. For the foreseeable future, the developed & developing world’s lifestyle would collapse without oil.

But one cannot coherently discuss an issue without knowing basic context. One thing’s for sure, neither the schools nor government, and not the ‘media watchdogs’ either, have yet provided our society a comprehension of ‘the world of oil’. How many Americans have taken the time to learn on their own? Where would the average American possibly think to start? Even on the web, what sites are bona-fide, and which have agendas that allow them to show only part of the picture?  This essay can help. Basic context starts with basic terms. We must start discussion by agreeing what words mean. Meanings also provide insight. Let’s learn & use some basic terms already specifically defined and well in use by people who must use precise terms within the petroleum industry – some ‘oil jargon’.

A. Five Availability terms. (aka categories of Reserves & Resources)

1. Proven Reserves: petroleum in oil fields that are already producing, because companies have drilled a sufficient number of wells to gauge the range of oil-production depths, and the span of the field in latitude & longitude. There are enough wells, that are producing for long enough time, that we can measure changes in underground pressure – the gradual slowing of the force that pushes oil out through the oil wellheads. 

 - That is, we know there’s oil, and we have a good idea how much. 

 - Examples: Prudhoe Bay, original (1910s) Texas oil fields, Wyoming’s ‘Overthrust Belt’.

 - Stats on ‘proven reserves’ are at bottom of this essay.

2. Potential Reserves: petroleum in oil fields that companies have discovered, but have not extensively drilled. There are not enough wells to fully characterize the field’s extent. The wells drilled haven’t been producing long enough to demonstrate how many years (decades) before the field will ‘dry out’.  

 - That is, we know there’s oil, and can roughly approximate, but we’re still just guessing more than we are basing conclusions on real statistically-based assessments. 

 - Examples: ANWR, various Nevada and Kansas regions, MacKenzie River Delta (Canada’s Arctic Ocean shore)

3. Sub-economic Resources: we’ve enough geologic assessment (seismic, rock maps, satellite imagery, field investigation, test wells, etc) to know that the underground has some oil. We have a pretty good idea how much, at a level of certainty similar to Potential Reserves. We know a bunch of oil is there, but can’t get it out of the ground because at least one of two things is ‘too low’. First, it could be that the price per barrel is too low to make this field profitable. Second, it could be that the current state of petroleum technology is too low to solve technological problems associated with drilling enough wells to (safely and/or economically) recover the petroleum. 

 - That is: we know it’s there, but we just can’t (yet) get at it.

 - Examples: 

       - - Shale-oil and coal-liquification (until recent technology advances made this economical)

       - - deep-sea Brazilian oil deposits (though this technology is rapidly advancing)

       - - oil fields in which well-head pressure has dropped too low, such that it literally costs more to pump out the oil than the oil sells for; this example type is characterized by being always a moving financial & logistical target, balanced also against costs of shutting down a field and then starting production back up again.

4. Undiscovered Resources: areas of the world in which we simply haven’t explored for oil. Reasons can be technological shortcomings, climatic challenges, and political issues like crime, corruption, regulation, lawsuits, international sovereignty, or warfare.

 - That is, we lack all data with which to say whether there is – or is not – any oil there.

 - Examples:   

       - - regions of western Nevada, where environmentalists ensure ‘grouse mating season’ interrupts all petroleum exploration activities; 

       - - areas of northern South America where exploration is unsafe due to crime and warfare; 

       - - most all of China; national sovereignty of the Nation-State System confers on Beijing the right to explore mostly only with China’s own nescient oil industry.

5. Off-limits Resources: these oil fields are in various stages of discovery and characterization; they can be potential reserves or undiscovered resources. Domestic or international politics prevents drilling production wells, and/or using already-existing production wells, and/or outright prevents even pre-drilling exploration.

 - That is, the only real limitations to drilling & production are purely political.

 - Examples:   

       - - the USA continental shelf within USA’s Economic Exclusion Zone, barred by USA law; 

       - - the very shallow South China Sea, with it’s internationally contested Economic Exclusion Zones, contested by China, Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, among other countries.

B. Six Production & Distribution terms.

1. drilling rig: collection of metal structures and pipes, to drive diamond-studded drilling bits into Earth, either to explore for oil deposits or to tap found oil fields for greater production out of that field. On-shore rigs are two stories tall, with a derrick towering more than a hundred feet even above that. Off-shore drilling rigs are situated on floating, relatively sea-stable platforms. 

 - On-shore rigs cost about $30 million to build or replace, and operate at about $33 thousand per day. 

 - Off-shore rigs cost about $1.5 billion to build or replace, and operate at about $250 thousand per day.

 - Current technology allows wells to depths of 25,000 feet down; a few to 35,000 feet; max depth of not quite 7 miles. 

 - Generally, costs increase as well depth increases.

 - Drillbits do wear out. Even diamonds grind down after continually eating into hard rock, pressed by the weight of all the hundred-foot pipe sections between the bit and the rig. All those pipe sections gotta get hauled back up, and stacked for re-use when a new bit goes back down, before workers can screw a new bit on to the bottom of the bottom pipe. Then the rig workers start lowering pipe back down, gently, to the bottom, to resume drilling deeper.

 - Pipes do break. Then workers gotta pull all still-connected pipe sections back outta the hole. Then the engineers decide whether to send a grapple down on the bottom of a pipe to pull out the broken portion of sections – and the valuable diamond-studded drill bit at the bottom of the hole. After pipe recovery, then drilling can commence again. What of lost time, money, and all other effort, if that broken segment of pipe – and the drillbit at it’s deepest end – is simply not recoverable?

 - It’s actually pretty amazing, to think of: a long metal pipe, unseen through thousands of feet into Earth, in aprox 100-foot sections threaded together in a string up to seven miles long, making revolutions-per-minute to grind a diamond-studded drill bit against hard rock … and not continuously breaking! 

2. refinery: a factory to take raw crude, and separate it into it’s various grades of petroleum products, from kerosene & butane to gasoline & diesel fuel, to lubricating oils and petroleum jelly quality of products. Refineries also separate out the various levels of impurities (like water and minerals).

3. pipeline: above-ground or buried pipes. They move crude oil from wells to refineries, with or without transshipment between trucks, trains, and (ship) tankers. They also take refined grades of petroleum from refineries to oil-fired plants and various distribution points. Examples:

 - The probably most-famous pipeline is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that ships crude oil from Prudhoe Bay oil field to tanker ships in ports in southern Alaska. 

 - Pipelines are legion between Texas-Louisiana origin and East Coast destination. Mostly, they ship refined products from refineries to customers in the DC-Boston Megalopolis.

 - Newer pipelines now cross the northern plains and Canada’s plains. Mostly, they bring oil to USA customers from fields & refineries in/near the Rockies and from Canada’s western plains.

4. horizontal drilling: the technique, increasingly developed in the last decade, of drilling a well at an angle other than ‘straight down’. Three decades ago, the angle variation was limited to plus or minus about three degrees from vertical. Today, there is no real technological limit. Thus, China’s oil drilling rigs sited between Florida and Cuba, could theoretically be drilling USA oil from within Cuba’s Offshore Economic Exclusion Zone, not merely pumping oil from Cuba’s side of an oil field that exists on both sides of the Zone boundary. Drilling another country’s oil was one of the factors behind 1970s & 1980s tensions between Iraq & Kuwait; two of the oil fields spread on both sides of the Iraq-Kuwait border. Horizontal drilling costs about twice as much as vertical drilling.

5. 3-D Seismic Exploration: a technique geologists use to ‘map’ underground rock formations. Crews set up seismic recorders in a pattern across the land. Then they set up ‘something’ to make a very low-level earthquake. The ‘something’ can be sticks of dynamite, or a truck with a ground ‘thumper’ on the underside. The seismic recorders pick up the vibration as it echoes off different rock layers that have different densities; echoes are pronounced from boundaries between the layers. 

 - Recent technological advances have also allowed geologists to detect whether given ‘pockets’ of folded rocks contain oil or water or other substances – or are dry. This saves the time & cost of drilling a well into promising pockets that contain no oil after all. The science is not perfect – not yet, anyway – and not all geologists are equally trained/experienced at interpreting how the signals can now reveal changes in travel time that indicate the nature of material the ground wave traveled through.

 - Other technological advances, such as within computer modeling softwares, have allowed geologists to go from two-dimensional depth-maps to three-dimensional computer-aided visualization. The leap to three dimensional visualization has given geologists not only new visualization tools for assessment, but also for clearly explaining, to investors and company managers, why they assess oil is (or is not) at any particular location and depth. (Recall, drilling for oil isn’t just about the right spot on the ground, it’s just as important to drill to the right depth!)

 - Overall, recent technological advances in the exploration arena have dramatically reduced the risk of drilling ‘dry holes’ in the process of drilling a fields first exploration wells. That ‘dry hole’ rate in ‘wildcatting’ used to be nine in ten wells. Now the rate is down to about three in ten.

6. porosity & permeability: much like water in a jar filled with pebbles, oil is found in the spaces between the rocks. Porous rocks have pretty decent ‘pockets’ for oil to reside between rocks. Permeable rocks allow oil to flow from one location to another. A company can drill a well into porous rocks with lots of free oil that flows out, but if the rocks aren’t permeable, the well can only realize the oil very close to the well shaft before going dry. Oil companies developed ‘fracing’ – a way of forcing more permeability into oil-bearing rock layers. The more porous & permeable the rock, the longer an oil well is producing oil at least possible cost…

C. ‘Proven Reserves’, by the numbers, over 50 years, world-wide:

- 1953: 115,117 million barrels

     - - top tier: 25% USA,

     - - 2nd tier: 16% Kuwait, 16% Saudi Arabia, 11% Iran, 10% Iraq, 8% Venezuela

     - - Remainder: 14% all lesser possessors

- 1979: 625,356 million barrels

     - - top tier: 27% Saudi Arabia

     - - 2nd tier: 12% Kuwait, 10% USSR, 7% Iran, 6% Iraq, 5% UAE, 5% Mexico, 4% USA, 4% Libya, 

     - - Remainder: 3% China, 3% Venezuela; 14% all lesser possessors

- 2002: 1,025,336 million barrels 

     - - top tier: 26% Saudi Arabia

     - - 2nd tier: 11% Iraq, 10% Kuwait, 9% Iran, 8% UAE, 6% Venezuela, 5% Russia

Observations:

 - dramatic increase, over 50 years, of at-the-time-unused ‘proven reserves’, despite ever-increasing oil consumption

 - exploration just keeps finding more oil

 - drop in USA ‘proven reserves’ is due to USA legislating & litigating itself out of ability to seriously explore, combined with ‘rest of the world’ exploring as fast as allowed by money and technology and training

[Fairness in advertising: Duck Archer is not, and never has been, employed in (or by) the petroleum industry. Nor has he ever been employed in (or by) any of the industry’s related industries (like parts manufacturers, for example).  As well, he has never been employed in (or by) any organization opposed to the petroleum industry.  Indeed, Duck Archer spends as much and as little of his money for all petroleum products as anybody else in the USA. The only beneficial relationship Duck Archer has with the petroleum industry is living with this historically abundant energy source, and plastics and all the other amazing petroleum spin-off products that make today’s American living the wealthiest & most comfortable in all history. This essay is intended, thus purely, to knock some air out of the hype, and strike some sense into the nation’s petroleum debate.]

All things that are knowable, are in one of six categories:

1.  Evidence: a fact pertaining to the problem

2.  Argument: reasoning assessing how evidence relates to the problem

3.  Hypothesis: a possible solution to the problem, built on evidence linked together with argument

5.  Opinion: reasoning that is not necessarily related to the problem, and may not even be based in facts

6.  Viewpoint: a conclusion on ‘how things are’ that doesn’t necessarily take into account even most evidence

Now, this short expose does not address how the ingredients are used. Things like ‘evidence credibility’ and ‘force of argument’ are part of another aspect of logical thinking.

2.  Get serious about defending the country in its border regions, including citizens therein

    a.  arm & man the border commensurate with the low-intensity guerrilla conflict that it is

    b.  enhance ‘eyes in the sky’ with spectral remote sensors and people who know how to use spectral signatures, comm-linked to vectorable ‘boots on the ground’

             - -  actual border defense operations

             - -  monitoring of identified “outward movers”, whether ID’d through traffic stops or self-identification 

    c.  enact a Constitutional Amendment clarifying triggers for USA citizenship, or seek a new lawsuit for the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling that a child born in the USA of illegal immigrant parentage has USA citizenship

         - that ruling is NOT the way the Constitution was written

         - outragious 'Dred Scott' decisions (including a grafting of citizenship though from illegal immigrants) are proper for overturning

    d.  Enact fully-funded federal legislation to *dramatically* increase, by start of Fiscal 2010, the numbers of LEGAL immigrant applications that USA Immigration officers can review and grant, though not for illegals until they have first left the USA

These 4 steps to national defense on the border, are in accord with international, national, & moral law:

     a.  the international “nation-state system” recognizes each country's right to self-defense
         - by inherent definition, self-defense is meaningless if a nation cannot control its borders

   b.  our Constitution entrusts national defense to elected officials
         - and of the smaller-scale version (self-defense) to the citizens 

On 10 Sep 2008, various folks received, from a McCain Campaign source:

          "Even before our national convention, the Obama campaign dispatched what The Wall Street Journal called a "mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" to Alaska to dig up dirt for their personal attacks on Governor Palin and her family. FactCheck.org has called the attacks on Governor Palin, "completely false" and "misleading." However, the Obama Democrats continue to launch these attacks, hoping you'll never find out the truth."

No surprise.  Liars lie.  Seems liberals embrace Relative Morality, in which any individual is legitimate in deciding any bad deed is actually virtuous, if the bad deed advances 'the cause'.  Kind of like what some branches of Christians had decided a few centuries ago:  "the ends justify the means".  Liberals, with Relative Morality, have decided it’s virtuous to tell lies that promote liberal causes.  Seems liberals, as a group, have become habitual liars…  10 Sep 2008 was not new …

  - Most of what's not said about global warming is 'lies by omission', though there’s also plenty of both lies of commission and lies by implication. They show us the full-up Three Ring Lying Circus.  One of the leading liberal climatologists, Stephen Schneider, actually overtly and publicly encouraged lying for the sake of the agenda (and was quoted in Discover Magazine, October 1989):

          "Scientists should consider stretching the truth to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention about any doubts we may have.... Each of us has to decide what is the right balance between being effective and being honest."

 - Remember also the Gore Campaign.  In December 2000, this group of liberals had a very interesting Florida campaign strategy (as reported in Washington Post and New York Times): get Gore votes into the public’s consciousness, loudly & repeatedly, even if you have to quietly take them back later; create the impression of winning.

Intentionally & loudly proclaim the lie, foster a false image. Then quietly just stop talking the lie when it’s found out. Indeed.  Liars won’t stop lying unless forced. 

That’s three ‘big campaign’ snapshots going back two decades. There’s more; it's what they get good at, whether by omission, commission, or implication.  But these three examples are big enough to suffice for a short essay. 

Lying can become an addiction.  Psychology tells us, confirming common sense and a few thousand years of theology, that some liars get so used to lying that they develop an inability to distinguish reality from fantasy. We hope, however, that only the most partisan Relative Morality Liberals have developed a difficulty distinguishing lie from reality. We have a greater hope that ‘inability to distinguish’ doesn’t (yet?) afflict most Americans generally. 

Since most Americans tend to be conservative, when given the chance to assess multiple views of an issue, we have a high level of trust in both hopes.

Barack Obama, candidate for USA President, has decided to face a grave danger. Maybe he’s not fully aware of the danger and its implications. Maybe he is. Probably, the USA is not fully aware of the implications. The discussion hasn't started!

1. Significance.

2. Facts.

Regardless of anything related to Mr Obama’s own choosing, objective reality is that he is the son of an African Muslim. 

 - To Christian and secular ears, that last phrase elicits “So what?”. But not to Muslim ears. Islam holds that all descendants of a Muslim are also Muslim, without choice. (This bit of Islamic doctrine helps explain why countries, once Islam arrives, have almost never changed to any other religion, and never without significant bloodshed.)   

3. Implications.

a. Apostate, under death sentence, in the White House.

Mr Obama’s religious choice also gives the USA certain inseparable uncertainties. Every president faces certain assassination risks, with resulting Secret Service costs, and personal movement restrictions. We contain & guard our presidents and, to lesser extents, their family members and friends. USA citizens accept the cost, and presidents accept the restrictions on their freedoms of movement, since the president fills a singular elected office that is critical to the continuing functioning of the U.S. government. But … 

 - What is the cost, Secret Service and the rest, of protecting a president and his family from Islamic apostasy’s automatic death sentences?   

 - What would be the cost of Islamic terrorists successfully assassinating somebody close to a President Obama?   

 - What would be the international and propaganda cost of radical Islamic terrorists successfully carrying out the death sentence on a USA president and/or family member(s)?  

b. Secrets.

There is another option. A President Obama could chose (or could have already chosen) to be a secret Muslim. This could save his life, and the lives of his girls. But this option would still spell certain grave difficulties for the USA. The difficulties would be real, whether the difficulties resulted in actual problems or not, with an Obama presidency during a war against Islamic terrorists.   

 - Having non-public associations or actions, that one wishes to remain secret, usually will prevent a military individual or civil servant from obtaining (or keeping) a security clearance. Extortion has been proven a powerful tool against citizens entrusted with national security. Thus the White House should also have no secrets that ‘bad guys’ can leverage for extortion.

 - The War Of The Reconquest (France, Spain, & Portugal, 660s AD thru 1492 AD) holds many examples of how secret Muslims left varying levels of havoc within Iberian cities & countrysides.  Most cities in central Iberia changed hands many times. Often, the secret Muslims would be simply awaiting the arrival of the next Muslim army, then become active 5^th Columnists (albeit centuries before the term was coined).

Would a secret Muslim in the executive office … 

 - be a conflicted mind, and thus pose a low-level threat to the nation from within?   

 - be coerced or co-opted into actions harmful to the USA? 

4. Conclusion: 

Again, this post only raises a question.   The question's worth noting, and discussing, and resolving

 - It’s proven that Mr Obama, and his girls, are apostate Muslims, whether they (or we) would wish it to be, or not.   

 - What is NOT clearly proven is whether the automatic Islamic death sentences are a burden unwise for the USA to accept in the Oval Office.  Maybe it’s unwise. Maybe it’s actually wise. And, maybe it just doesn’t matter. But if it does matter, we’d better go into it with full awareness …   

 - The ‘death sentences’ point is worth a little discussion, since ‘we the people’ have to know what we’re getting with our vote, or else democracy turns into dictatorship…

1. Yes, finally, an election of ‘change’: 

 - a liberal democrat riding a wave of discontent against D.C. Politics As Usual

 - a moderate republican emphasizing his ability to change things by reaching across the aisle. 

Yes, a year of ‘change in the wind’ for the record books that chronicle major shifts in American politics:

 - Obama v. McCain, 2008. 

 - But also

     -- Clinton v. Dole, 1996, and

     -- Clinton v. Bush Sr., 1992

2. Yes, quite an election year. And Republicans ignorant of history are likely to repeat the 1992 Clinton defeat of Bush Sr ... or repeat the 1972 victory that led inevitably to the 1973-5 quagmire that led to Carter's malaise ...

   a.  “All politics is local” …  Republicans adopted this phrase after the 2004 elections, to their demise in 2006

     - but it’s the liberals who think small & local, and expect the same from their elected politicians

     - conservatives tend to think about the nation ahead of pork, and expect the same from their elected politicians

   b.  “Those ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it” … which begs a scrutiny …

     - “Watergate” was a watershed political moment. Pays to review the record since that watershed birthed modern political trends.  The record shows that Reagan was the most conservative Republican, and won overwhelmingly.  The rest were less conservative, and won (barely) or lost to the degree they shied from conservative principles.  (See blow-by-blow in my post "Republicans Win When Conservative")

4. Republicans: be conservatives for once.  We sure can't get it from Democrats, and (so far) no other party has a chance.  Republicans can be conservative, or go into political dustbin of history.  Republicans, be conservative for your electoral good, and the good of the country!

 - Don’t waffle. Be somebody we can trust. 

 - Uphold truth, eschew lies.

 - Insist on justice triumphing over relative morality; laws of the land trumping elitist agenda. 

I offer five questions. Logically answering them should prove a basis for waking up to environmentalism’s smoke’n’mirrors:

1.  If man caused global warming, then why did the globe start to warm BEFORE the industrial revolution began?

2.  If man is exacerbating global warming, then why do finally-corrected NASA global temperatures show 1998 was the warmest year, when the decade since '98 has seen more pollution than ever -- and from East Asian industrializing, which is essentially immune to Global Warmist “solutions”?

3.  If the USA has such a huge environmental disaster, then why was it only in Korea, immediately downwind from China, that I couldn’t see the sun, nor even a brighter-than-the-rest spot in the sky, on a clear day?

4. Since the 1960s-technology Trans-Alaska Pipeline (and Prudhoe Bay wells) has been such an environmentally-friendly project for all these decades, what possible legitimate objection can exist, to drilling ANWAR with 1990s+ technology?

And I have the BIG question.  It reacts to actions by General Electric, airlines, and most other major corporations, ‘going green’ in the wake of President Bush removing their last political protection against environazis: 

5. What will it take to get President Bush to return to his sensible resistance to the global warmist fanatics?

Those five questions illustrate how President Bush has snatched defeat in 2006-8, from his 2004 victory over Al Gore.  Do we have Son of ‘No New Taxes’ ?

Nationally, Republicans win when conservative. The more conservative, the bigger the margin:

A.  “Watergate” was a watershed political moment. Pays to review the record since that watershed birthed modern political trends.

1976. Ford, blue-blood, only moderately conservative, unable to overcome liberal domestic policies and Nixon’s Watergate shadows: lost

1980. Reagan, staunch “no pale pastels” conservative: won (overwhelmingly).

1984. Reagan, again sticking to principles, beating off venomous liberal attacks: won (overwhelmingly).

1988. Bush Sr, riding Reagan’s conservative coattails: won (solidly).

1992. Bush Sr, re-electing on own less-than-conservative record (i.e.: “no new taxes” aftermath of “compromise” with liberals): lost (miserably).

1996. Dole, with only transparent lip-service to conservative principles: lost (soundly).

2000. Bush Jr, emphasizing ‘conservative’ in liberal-leaning ‘compassionate conservative’: won (barely).

2004. Bush Jr, riding conservative record on stem cells, euthanasia, & Terrorism War credentials, when promises of controlling spending & even winning the war were still believable (despite lack of evidence): won (solidly).

B.  Seems that Republicans win the presidency when they stick to conservative principles. Coincidence, or Causality?  Who knows.  Doesn't matter; the relationship exists! 

Republicans:  re-starting in 2008, be conservative!

Dear Presidential Hopefuls:

A President Obama scares me. I spent twenty years in uniform to fight socialists – violent revolutionaries bent on government control & power in the name of Worker’s Paradise. That was two decades of my life to fight these enemies, whether foreign or domestic. 

But a President McCain doesn’t inspire me, and hardly even reassures me. Frankly, a political history like his is one of appeasing liberals on their pet issues, while not even achieving quid-pro-quo from them.  His ilk have not been political champions in the fight against socialist revolution, especially not against their political usurpations within our own borders. Even in this 2008 election, Sen McCain's ilk have proved wimps when disavowing state-level political ads that dared to tell the unvarnished truth about opponents; they were concentrating on cream-puff ads. We will see if recent changes in Sen McCain's ad styles remain, and we will see how he heals with damage caused by prior disavowals & distancings.

Yes, I want “change”.  But I want change the opposite direction from which Republicans & Democrats alike have been going in the last five years. I like a stand against earmarks. But that doesn't go far enough. I want change of the kind that boldly proclaims, and ACTS, to get the Federal government smaller overall. I want change that refocuses the Federal government from wealth-redistribution to governmental chores that equally benefit all citizens: national defense (including military, border, and strategic materials), internal infrastructure (interstate roads, rails, bridges), space exploration (with environment favorable not just to NASA), international trade agreements (especially to account for foreign governmental subsidies and slave-labor), parental freedom to raise & educate their own children, the constitutional right of ALL men to live from conception to natural death (unless one proves to be an uncontrollable menace to others’ right to live), and a judicial system that actually punishes offenders (so they never want to come back to jail/prison).