Taking it in the jaw from Iran

Tomorrow, February 11th, is the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, in which the Ayatollah Khomeini and his forces overthrew the U.S. backed government. Tomorrow could also mark the failure of President Obama’s diplomatic efforts toward Iran. Obama came into office promising to speak with Iranian leaders “without preconditions” and jumpstart a process that would convince Iran to backtrack on their nuclear ambitions. Obama set a deadline for Iran to stop their nuclear program by the end of 2009. After a year in office, our relationship with Iran has only declined. Instead of rolling back their nuclear problem, Iran has continued to enrich uranium, necessary for a nuclear weapon, at higher levels than they have previously attempted. In addition, Khomeini has promised that on their anniversary tomorrow they will “punch the [Western powers] in a way that will leave them stunned.”

It is more than likely that tomorrow will not be the end of the world as some of my students seemed to think I was implying. But a declaration by Iran that they have already acquired a nuclear weapon or are much further ahead in the process than Western intelligence agencies have indicated will show Obama’s diplomatic route to have failed. How can an apocalyptic tyrant who believes that the Islamic Messiah will be ushered onto the world stage by starting a worldwide war be tolerated? How can a man who denies that the Holocaust happened and desires the destruction of Israel be allowed to hold the means of their destruction? In the end, it would be because Obama is a naive amateur who believes that radical Muslims only hate us because of Bush’s foreign policy and that once we stop meddling in the Middle East they will have a change of heart.  Hopefully Obama will prove me wrong and show some backbone when dealing with Iran, but his track record so far shows that he is much more interested in bowing to world leaders than standing up to them.

 

UPDATE: Iran announced today that it had produced its first batch of enriched uranium, which can provide the fuel necessary for a nuclear weapon. They continue to say that they have no desire to build a nuke, but Hitler said he didn’t want any more land in Europe either. We know where believing him got us!

Back in business!

After quite a few months absence I am making my reappearance into the world of blogging. It is an exciting time to be about this business as there has been and will continue to be much news to comment on over the next year. In just three days we will be seeing what Iran is calling “a punch in the face” to Western nations. What will happen? How will Obama and the rest of the Western nations respond? Stay tuned as I will keep you updated on all the goings on throughout the world up to and including the latest on the continued Democrats’ attempts at health deform and the upcoming midterm elections….Stay tuned!

Liberal Compassion

Liberals love to claim the moral high ground when it comes to caring for the poor, minorities, stray animals and tortured terrorists. But when push comes to shove the money flows back to the people who financed their political victories. Many examples could be given such as bailouts for AIG (check out campaign contributions to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama) and car manufacturers (the UAW has the Democrats in their pocket). So what happens when they have a chance to help poor minorities in Washington, D.C. receive a better education? The plan gets scrapped under pressure from teachers' unions. To summarize, there was a federally funded scholarship for low income children in D.C. where they could apply for vouchers to attend the private school of their choice. Almost 2,000 children were chosen out of 7,000 applications. The research (which the Dept of Education kept under wraps until the stimulus bill with this oblation to teachers was passed) has shown that children in the program were averaging an increase of one to two years of reading ability compared to the children who did not get the scholarship. In an education system where minority test scores have brought the average US grade well below other developed countries, it would seem like any program with proven effectiveness would be worth keeping. That is where the teachers, who have obviously not been too terribly successfull with minorities in D.C., have put their foot down. All of the money they have given Democratic politicians must be good for something as they got this scholarship cut, which if taken nationally would threaten their jobs in the public school system. So despite all of the rhetoric about standing up for the poor minorities who have been victimized by a racist America, Democrats simply help out the groups who are paying their bills.

Check out this site and decide what the compassionate choice would be:

VoicesOfSchoolChoice.org

Tuesday Press Conference and Sub-Prime Mortgages

President Obama was thrown softballs tonight from his predetermined list of questioners that included Politico, Ebony, and the French Press Association, but excluded such prominent papers as the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post as well as all other economic journals or newspapers. Do you think he was afraid of a question from the experts? He also compared peace in Ireland to hope for the Middle East and in my estimation is no better a speaker than President Bush was in an unscripted setting.

I also promised a description of how we got into our present problem. In our complex society their is no simple answer to the whole question. But one very large chunk of the mess came from sub-prime mortgages, which were handed out to unqualified individuals so that they could own homes for the sake of fairness. The federal governmnet forced mortgage companies to dispense these loans and now is using taxpayer money to attempt to fix the problem. They are also wagering that these bad mortgages will go up in value, but if not then it will the taxpayer that will have lost out by having their money spent in vain. Nor does it solve the basic problem of the government being the cause of the present recession. Government officials need to learn that they have more often then not been the cause of economic disaster, while in times when cooler heads prevailed, such as 1921, the government left a recession alone and the result was a decade of some of the greatest prosperity in American history.

The $1,000,000,000,000 solution

Alright, so the news today is that the Obama administration has decided to spend another trillion dollars basically fulfilling the purpose of the original TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money. It was originally created under the Bush administration to buy up the toxic foreclosure mortgages that have been clogging up the credit market, thus supposedly freeing up banks to continue to lend money. The money was never used for its original purpose, but now as the markets have shot up as a result one must wonder why the Bush administration never followed through with their plan and why the Obama administration took so long to unveil the details of their plan (and when they did so it was not really theirs). Even so, the long term impact of the most recent injection of taxpayer money is yet to be seen. How will it impact the economy alongside the $20 trillion in debt the US will have in about 10 years? Only time will tell.

Maybe next I'll try to answer the question of why we are even in this position in the first place...stay tuned!

Greetings!

Welcome to my new blog! What will follow is a very random assortment of my thoughts on various and sundry topics including, but not limited to: religion, politics, education, philosophy, and economics. Some of the topics I will be better versed on, while some may delve into the speculative. Comments are welcome, but please keep them civil and appropriate to a wide viewing audience. I look forward to the chance to broadcast my thoughts and ideas and to receive constructive criticism from whoever may wander across this page.