The love affair with Newt
I have to admit, I am a kool-aid drinker. I thought Newt Gingrich was an awesome guy and knew the lessons of history. I was kinda even glad he had supplanted Romney as the frontrunner in the race for the GOP nomination.
Then I saw his past flip flops and his different takes on the same subject sometimes only separated by mere months. His Libya stance comes to mind there.
Newt Gingrich was a hero of mine. Led the GOP back to House rule for the first time in 40 years in 1996. To put it in perspective, the Republicans were the minority in the house for almost 20% of the republics existence. 40 years in a row. Let that just fester in your head for a while. Think there is no comparison between those Elephants and today’s??? Look at the players. Look at what was being debated. Look them up. Seriously.
I saw a phrase or a ‘virtue’ of Newt’s referenced twice within the last 10 hours. Newt is good at debating and that’s what his supporters want. Not someone who can beat Obama, but someone that can out articulate and out debate him.
So what do the Republicans offer for 2012? Santorum, McDonnell, Perry, Romney, Paul, Newt, Huntsman. I liked Cain, thought he was perfect. A black conservative. Honest, a straight shooter, a guy with a can-do attitude. A proud American. Yeah, and who had a penchant for the ladies. Never mind O went to a racist church, hung around an unapologetic terrorist, did coke, no Cain is the bogeyman because he had some unsubstantiated flings.
The left will try to crush whoever the right brings to the match. The right either appeases or is complicit and happy about being 2nd fiddle, because they never fight back toe-to-toe.
Newt is not the fighter we need. We need Ron Paul. Atleast I hope he is who he is made out to be…
We need the Right to realize that THEY had the right mix, the right formula, the right combination between governance and liberty. It’s called the Constitution. The Founders had it right, even with the Federalists being the 1770’s version of ‘Progressives’.
Business as usual will keep us going on as usual, with perhaps a few years every now and then of a pull back. But the trend will continue until the lil’ guy can’t take it anymore. And personally, I feel the lil’ guy has let it be known plenty loudly exactly what he thinks of the situation.
The big boys had better be payin’ attention.
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Are You a Tebow-hatin’ American?
Tim Tebow—- More Hated than the Taliban???
I don’t deal with sports items too much on this blog but in this case it’s different. Tim Tebow and his very public love and appreciation of Christ is apparently the big event every Sunday.
Tebow is a gifted athlete. He graduated from the University of Florida. He is just the latest and the easiest target for the Hate Christ Brigade.
I don’t know Tebow. I never followed Florida or Denver really. There is more to worry about than a kids game played by spoiled multi-millionaire idiots who burn through their money like dried mesquite.
But this is cuts to the root of what America faces. Tebow-mania and Anti-Tebow-ism are symptomatic of the divide in our nation right now. America is in such a decline that an individual is ridiculed for his public display of appreciation for God’s gift.
Now, let me set this straight. I have always thought that such celebration or ‘thanks’ seemed to be a little self-aggrandizing and self-promoting. But wait.. .wait wait wait…. Wait. Did I say “I always thought…”? Why, yes I did.
Tebow is not the first to “Tebow”. There were Team Prayers even in little league and pee wee football. There have been numerous athletes that point to the sky or kneel after TD’s. It’s been going for decades. Notre Dame’s football field is situated so that a mural Touchdown Jesus can watch from a closeby building.
So-o-o-o, why is there such sudden heat and vitriol about Tebow? The only other time there was this much outcry was when a reject QB from the NFL’s European minor leagues (World League of American Football) by the name Kurt Warner gave thanks to Jesus for the win when he hoisted the Super Bowl trophy after his Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl.
But now even Warner wants Tebow to tone down his rhetoric. Why is it so different just 3 years removed since Warner last led a team (Arizona) to a Super Bowl and last professed his thanks?
What has these people worried about a young athlete that apparently loves God so much? What could be wrong with that?
The deeper meaning, or actually loss of meaning, is that Elite America doesn’t want the Light of God to shine on her inequities and her flaws. People KNOW they need to lead Christ-like lives and they simply refuse to do it. It’s inconvenient, time consuming, uncomfortable, embarrassing, etc. etc. etc.
And what has that freedom to ignore and shun God gotten us? Like other empires that have come before us, we are in a freefall due to degeneration of core values. What once was shamed is now tolerated… What once was tolerated is now the norm… What was the norm is now the exception.
How much of America’s decline is in reality? We perceive the decline because of what we’re exposed to in the media. Downright filth being broadcast in primetime on network TV, biased news, seemingly zero righteous men in high office, venomous lyrics passing as Pop music, horrendous educational industry perpetuating the scourge of ignorance that is epidemic in our republic ABOUT our Republic, the list goes on.
One cannot hope to stem the massive societal trend that we are on now. Tebow can’t do it, Billy Graham couldn’t do it. When Jesus was preaching, even after 4 years, and after so many witnessed his miracles and heard The Word, he only had a handful of women and men that followed him.
We can only hope to control what we truly have control over— Overselves. If we do that, if enough of us truly do that, then the Nation and more importantly the IDEAL of freedom has a chance to recover and again flourish, if not on this continent, perhaps elsewhere on this Earth. Tim Tebow is showing us that, with Grace comes responsibility to acknowledge the Master and to give him the Glory. Tebow has a stage and he is using it to shine the light. It’s not his fault America feels dirty and guilty.
High Tensions Over Drones
High Tensions Over Drones
The US military uses 7000 airborne unmanned aircraft. These craft range in size from an insect, to a hobby RC plane which is launched like one might throw a football, to ones that are launched via runways and carry combat loads like the Predator. Most are of the spy variety, looking for intelligence, identifying targets.
This element of the ever evolving battlefield is controlled by the USA. And it is a big, important, vital piece of the American War Machine. But, the very benefit of the unmanned aircraft is becoming its Achilles Heel. While the pilot is safe, 7000 miles away from the combat lines, the system’s functional integrity and the final thought processes required in pressing that trigger mechanism have come under assault.
While we’re currently facing the news that Iran has it’s talons on a “highly secret” RQ-109, the American UAV’s have been under electronic siege for years, including a recent hack job where a ‘logging’ virus infiltrated the supposedly segregated and clean habitat at a USAF base in Nevada just in September of this year. Simple thumbdrives are again the ‘carriers’ of this virus and the seemingly inoculated USAF system has become infested with it.
“We keep wiping it off,” said a Danger Room source in an article I read. “And it keeps coming back.” That’s not what you want to hear when you speak of a virus.
Most of the USAF experts believe it is a keylogger virus, keeping track of every keystroke that is made. But this seems too persistent and virulent just to be a keylogger.
Is it any accident that Iran swore to revenge the Stuxnet virus attack that crippled 5 different Iranian organizations? The RQ-170, which looks an awful lot like the B-2 Stealth Bomber (thus, perhaps, using some of the same stealth properties and techniques), may yield the Iranians nothing but a propaganda victory, but shows that the UAV class of assets is susceptible to failure, be it loss of control (flying out of range), or technologically based (interception, jamming, and possible hostile takeover). And a UAV WITH stealth capabilities may yet yield a crippling discovery for manned stealth assets. With their Chinese/Russian friends penchant for E-attacks on American assets, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they have some sophistication in the arena of e-espionage.
The e-attacks aren’t the only burr in the back side of the UAV service. More than a few have had their video feed encrypted, so the militants have latched on to the feed with a $26 piece of software, and have seen the footage live just as they do at CentCom in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. These electrical compromises show that the system is not inoculated and shows that the US does not ‘own the sky’ outright any more. The savings, in fuel, construction, even in the amount of personnel seem to be countered by the glaring weakness in the network security.
Now comes word of a separate incident where a Predator crashed in the island nation of the Seychelles.
A second concern about UAV’s is the insulation and separation the craft gives to the ‘pilot’ far away from the combat theater and the cushion from immediate feedback of the destruction and gravity of executing the mission.
30 CIA craft (mainly piloted by USAF pilots in Nevada) have struck 200+ times in Pakistan and killed (according to Wash Post) 2000 militants and civilians. Another article put it at as much as a 15-1 civvie-militant death ratio.
UAV’s, as an asset, deserves a place in our arsenal, but I have always thought eyes on target, in the form a physical presence, that can absorb some of the subtle nuances of the local theater, gives far more benefit than just a guy in a robe in some base thousands of miles away. With the continued outsourcing of critical parts, especially from a country that has shown a desire… no, a lust to steal information, and worse, a glee at supplying mass amounts of inferior and faulty parts to many places in markets military and civilian, it seems counter-productive to continue to that relationship.
Americans will have to come to grips with the fact that we’re in the midst of WW3. This war has seen us bluster about for 10 years and use up precious resources over terrorists stuck in the 16th century, yet ignore the more pressing attacks from nations far more capable of ending every life on the continent. It’s an amazing development. We average dolts did not forsee the degree of conflict from the East, but we did see that the Middle East was a region bursting at the seams and aching for a fight.
The UAV is a tool that for a long time has been a safe and reasonably secure piece of weaponry in the US arsenal. But it’s recent vulnerabilities are being loudly proclaimed, and are out there for all to see…friend and foe.. and the DOD would be wise to make critical software adjustments as fast as humanly possible. They should piggyback that change with altering their usage of UAV’s in combat and exposure of them to hostile forces. They are no longer immune to failure and unless it tactically important, they should be held in reserve unless there is a dearth of satellite coverage.
Freedom is Everyone's Business 