Election Issues Today

If we do a little research into the Barbary Coast Pirates and the two Barbary Coast Wars, we do find one similarity with today’s piracy problem: a power vacuum.

I think that the technology must exist to “mark” each legitimate merchant ship, electronically, so they can be identified from satellite. Merchants ships could be boarded and “marked” at the choke point off the coast of Djibouti. Then, by satellite, any vessel putting out a heat and noise signal that is not “marked” would be identifiable as a legitimate target for boarding and inspecting, and then engaged militarily if necessary. There are several navy ships of many different countries operating in the area, and the USA, with the technology, could coordinate these “inspections.”

Full Speed Ahead is obvious from the new White House web site that was up and running within a few seconds of the new President’s inauguration.

A visit to the new site convincingly reveals how quickly and efficiently this new Administration intends to operate.  I look forward to the “First 100 Days.”

The Obama Agenda is one of the best new pages to examine. (There is a menu bar at the top of the page.) You will find two dozen topics that have fully developed positions and goals.  Incredible!

The new web site also features an updated biography of the new President and Michelle Obama, and of Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill.

Over all, it is a VERY professional web site.  It firmly announces two things: (1) We have Arrived! (2) We mean business!

One of the new President’s likely first acts in the next few days will be an Executive Order to close down the Guantanamo detention facility.  The closure will not occur overnight, but the order could come almost immediately.  Part of the problem facing the incoming Administration is what to do with the detainees.  The fact is: nobody wants them.  No country in the World would be willing to “hold on” to these people while their cases are adjudicated.  Most of the remaining detainees are very dangerous.  The problem is presenting evidence and establishing a viable case for prosecution.

Some of those who were already released as not being a threat, have, in fact, rejoined terrorist organizations and do pose a future threat.  The United States will probably end up bringing all the detainees to United States facilities.  This will entitle them to new rights and legal remedies.  They can’t be held indefinitely without being charged and taken to trial.  This will be a sticky issue for President Obama.

I must express my disgust at how the entire World’s economy seems to have gone down the toilet due to the cost of WARS around the globe!

We note that Bill Clinton left office with over $120 Billion surplus, and today the USA faces a $1 Trillion deficit–this year!   President-elect Obama stated yesterday that he thinks the USA must endure several years of $Trillion dollar deficits–due to federal bailouts, economic stimulus packages, tax cuts, and shrinking revenues.   But what has really destroyed the U.S. economy–and that of the rest of the World–are the costs of WAR.  

Wars in the former USSR states, the horn of Africa, and the Gaza strip affect ALL NATIONS!  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the United States treasury at such a rate that ordinary middle class taxpayers can not even comprehend the amount of money involved.  Staggering.  We can’t continue this.  It reads like a plot in a spy novel: Third world dictators and terrorist organizations undermine the economic well-being of the United States and Europe in order to further disrupt the civilized world so they can take over.

While our kids and small-minded adults of all ages fiddle with cell phones and gps devices, the serious enemies of our entire World structure are busy plotting how to destroy us.  They also use cell phones and gps devices–but to much more devastating effect. 

While Food Banks are hard-pressed to provide for all the needy in the United States, and the United Nations struggles with food for peace programs and health programs around the world, the USA, Europe, Russia, and Israel spend Billions on bullets and bombs and warships and soldiers.

I don’t know what the solution is, but part of it has to be for the civilized nations of the World to come to terms with each other–for our mutual benefit.  Dragging down the USA and Europe would destroy all of civilization.  We can’t start the World all over again.  It doesn’t work that way any more.  

The Arab nations must get past the ancient insults and colonialism and “jew” preoccupations and develop their societies within the structure of muslim-acceptable economic systems that will generate JOBs and FUTURES for all the young men of those countries who have NO JOBs, NO EDUCATIONS, NO FUTURES, NO WIVES AND FAMILIES, AND NO HOPES FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE–SO THEY JOIN UP WITH TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS THAT OFFER THEM SOME SENSE OF PRIDE AND PURPOSE–ALBEIT INSANE TO MOST OF US.

We need to extricate foreign armies from what amounts to inter-tribal rivalry and nation-state building in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  They have to do it themselves. 

Last WWI Doughboy, Oldest Vet, is 107!

There is only one remaining American veteran of World War I.  His name is Frank Buckles and he is 107 years old!

This man’s amazing life story is featured this month in the magazine of the Disabled American Veterans organization.  (Highlighted text is a link to a .pdf file of the November/December issue.)

Frank Buckles joined the U.S. Army in August 1917, at age sixteen, by misstating his age and convincing the recruiter that the family bible contained the only record of his birth date.  He was eager to get to France and into the War, so he volunteered for the Ambulance Corps.  He got his wish.  He was shipped out and soon found himself in Europe.

He survived, uninjured, but witnessed horrible physical slaughter and devastation.

Following the Armistice, on November 11, 1918, he helped to escort German prisoners-of-war back to their home country.

He spent many of the following decades at sea, traveling the World.  Unfortunately, he was in the Philippines when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  Although he was a civilian working for an American Shipping company, he was taken prisoner and spent three years in a Japanese prison camp.

Today, he lives on his 330-acre farm in  West Virginia.  He says that until just recently he did most of the farm work himself.  This is a great story of one true American Hero.

Our nation remembered the courage and sacrifice of the veterans of World War I with the first Armistice Day commemoration on November 11, 1919.  It didn’t become a national holiday until 1938.  In 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor veterans of all wars.  This year marks the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day and the end of World War I. It is both a federal and state holiday.

This observance is significant to Election Issues Today because returning combat veterans face increasing difficulty with adjustment to civilian life in addition to often suffering devastating and debilitating physical and mental injury.  We must support the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Disabled American Veterans and a score of other veterans organization as they continue to struggle for adequate funding to meet our nation’s commitment to our armed services personnel, our sons and daughters (and grandkids), brothers, sisters, husbands and wives, who serve and fight on behalf of our country’s interests around the world and to safeguard our freedoms at home.