• Two Years With A Latter-day Neville Chamberlin.
• Iran To Takeover Lebanon In War Strategy
• Russia Flim-Flams U.N. Sanctions and Obama
• Sgt. Shultz Moment In “Mysterious” Blasts At Iranian Missile Plant.
• Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group To Persian Gulf
• Turkey-China Ink Strategic Cooperation Agreeement
• It’s the Sun Stupid
• Polling Results For California And Other Campaigns
• Iwo Jima Mass Graves Found 65-years After Battle
• Bogus Books: Save Your Money
• Lots of Water on Moon Excites Space Explorers
• Nevada Supreme Court Rejects OJ Simpson Appeal

“Life isn’t too short. It’s the longest thing you’ll ever do.”

Nobody is suggesting taking the trainer wheels off as Obama continues to steer an all too haphazard foreign policy course marked by retreat, defeat and national decline.

A profoundly disappointing example is Obama’s China policy that has failed critics say because of his fundamental misunderstandings or ideologically driven disbelief about the nature of the communist regime in Beijing and its refusal to work cooperatively with the United States as a so-called responsible stakeholder.

The Obama administration, in the face of overwhelming evidence that China is working against U.S. interests on numerous issues, is re-thinking its conciliatory policies toward Beijing despite one of his mentors being tagged head of the American Maoist Party.

The initial Obama policy on China was labeled active engagement, based largely on the assessment that China is the most important foreign policy challenge for the United States. That assessment may be about the only part where he has been correct.

Over the past two years, including an eye-opening visit to Beijing, Obama and his advisers have realized that China is not open to the kind of engagement sought by the inexperienced, naïve Obama and administration made up largely of similar foreign policy neophytes and ideological sycophants.

On North Korea, Iran, arms proliferation, climate change, currency manipulation and other trade and economic issues the administration has failed even to hold substantive constructive talks with the Chinese. Instead, conciliatory, weak U.S. policies have prompted Beijing to take aggressive actions.

China sided with its communist ally in Pyongyang over the March sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, and Chinese companies have wholesale violated U.N. sanctions by continuing arms-related transfers to Iran.

Inside “Club Obama” there is chaos on foreign as well as domestic issue.

The Washington Post reported Oct. 18 that the Obama administration called on Beijing to halt Chinese firms from supplying missile and nuclear arms technology to Iran and has been stonewalled to use a polite word.

At the same time Obama has forsaken Israel; betrayed Poland and the Czech Republic on the ABM;  been bamboozled by Russia; retreated from the Western Pacific back to Guam, and generally signaled allies and enemies the U. S. is no longer a reliable ally, dependable partner, or even trustworthy all emboldening enemies.

Obama simply cannot be trusted out of the White House driveway trainer wheels or not. Obama makes Neville Chamberlin look like a foreign policy genius to say nothing of his tearfully, laughably inept domestic reengineering. 

Salvation may only lie in a dramatically different Congress with snapping riding crops as all but the most dogmatic see failure everywhere.

For those who say “Obama’s only been in office less than two years” I say, Thank God.

A 19-year-old UCSB student, himself a lifeguard hero for saving a child, has been killed by a great white shark while surfing at a beach at Vandenberg AFB near Lompoc, California. The shark took a huge bite out of his body board in what appears to have been an unprovoked attack.

On Sept. 30, the well-connected Kuwaiti daily Al Anbaa, said Syria’s president has been concerned over the consequences to Syria of an Iranian takeover of Lebanon.                                                                                           

“This is not the right time,” Assad was said to have told Ahmadinejad warning him against going to Lebanon but that didn’t dissuade the Iranian.

Iran sees Lebanon, that sits on Israel’s northern border, as the first line of offense in any war with Israel. They said Hizbullah and IRGC, despite the efforts of the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, have taken over most of southern Lebanon as well as the Bekaa Valley that stretched from Syria down the eastern side of Lebanon.

“Hizbullah and IRGC are preparing for war, and this has greatly worried Assad,”  Arab diplomats said. “A few years ago, Assad could tell Iran ‘no.’ He can’t do that anymore.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has deemed Lebanon a key country in Teheran’s “defense” policy. Ahmadinejad has told Teheran’s allies that Lebanon must serve as Iran’s battleground in any war with Israel.

“Lebanon, and especially the southern part, is now regarded as serving Iran’s strategic needs and the first point of confrontation in any war with Israel,” an Arab diplomat who monitors Iran said.

Ahmadinejad is said to have shared his vision of Lebanon with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime had controlled most of Lebanon for decades. They said Assad, already concerned by the growing Iranian presence in Syria, has not sought to block Iran’s domination of Lebanon.

“The agent of Iran has been Hizbullah, which today has become virtually indistinguishable from the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard [Corps],” diplomats said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is said to have avoided an assassination plot while in Lebanon. during his visit to the Israeli border. Lebanese security sources said the Beirut government had been concerned of an Israeli assassination during Ahmadinejad’s planned visit to the southern Lebanese border. Nothing was confirmed. But, Ahmadinejad hastily changed his itinerary.

Russia is selling Venezuela the same five advanced S-300PMU-1 air defense missile battalions it ostensively withheld from Iran because of international sanctions. Venezuela’s ruler Hugo Chavez, offered to buy them when he met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow Thursday, Oct. 14.  

Israel immediately turned to Washington to try and block the transaction. Clearly, the highly-sophisticated interceptors are bound for their original client, Iran, through its good friend Chavez.

Putin is flim-flamming again or still. The temporarily blocked sale was reportedly a trade for Obama’s betrayal of Poland and the Czech-Republic when he jerked the promised Anti-Ballistic Missile shield out from under them because Russia threatened.

Chavez and Putin are giving Obama the “Bronx cheer” and have again made fools of him, the U. S. and U. N. although the latter is oxymoronic.

The S-300 system is capable of great harm and even thwarting any Israeli or others air attack on Iran’s nuke plants.

There is a hoax In California that absentee ballots must be received by elections oofices by October 26^th or they will NOT be counted. While that is incorrect it is a reminder.

The ballot must be in hand by Tuesday November 2^nd you can take your ballot to a polling place or deliver it to the elections office and it will be counted. But, if it is not received by November 2 - it will not be counted. The point is don’t risk mailing it after next Tuesday.

Keep your eyes open about how many military ballots from overseas are not counted.

In a mostly unreported event a top-secret Iranian military installation was “disabled” by a mysterious triple blast the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon a few days ago.

The site held most of Iran’s Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stock piling for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war - some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones). 18-Iranians soldiers were reportedly killed.

The Imam Ali Base where the explosions occurred is in the remote, lofty Zagros mountain country near the town of Khorramabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. This site was selected for an altitude which eases precise targeting and the difficulty of reaching it for air or ground attack. It lies 400 kilometers from Baghdad and primary American bases in central Iraq and 1,250 kilometers from Tel Aviv and central Israel.

Baghdad and TelAviv are well within the Shehab-3 missile’s 1,800-2,500-kilometer (about 1,100-1550-miles) operational range.

Iranian sources report that Tehran spent hundreds of millions and years building one of the largest subterranean missile launching facilities of its kind on earth.  Burrowed under the Imam Ali Base is a complex network of wide tunnels deep underground to defend against air attack.

Then kablam! Three mysterious hand rigged, carefully placed blasts in quick succession deep inside those tunnels, destroying a large number of launchers and causing enough damage to render the facility unfit for use. At this writing, just like Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes, nobody knows nothing.

In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus - which is still at work. (The U. S. and Israel have been fingered for that cyber warfare attack.)

In actual fact, military sources report, Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have also suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most secret and closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow it up.  

Goodness I wonder who could have done such a thing? My hunch is somebodies were buying somebodies drinks in TelAviv and Langley, Virginia before they headed out to the Little League games.

A shareholder of Bible.com Inc sued the company’s board members, accusing the ordained ministers of failing to profit from the “goldmine” potential of the namesake Internet property. According to the lawsuit “for breaching their duty by refusing to sell the site or run the company in a profitable way.”  

The United States has deployed a second aircraft carrier task force , with the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf and northern Arabian Sea. The announcement came two days after the vessel put into port at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. This is the first time in two years that Washington has deployed two aircraft carriers at same time - not just one - in waters opposite Iran and Afghanistan.

Facing Iran at the moment therefore is the USS Harry S. Truman which has four squadrons of Hornet and Super Hornet fighter-bombers plus Squadron 116 of early warning, surveillance and command craft, Squadron 131 of electronic warfare craft, two more squadrons of helicopters and one of transports.

The Abraham Lincoln’s arrival has raised the number of US fighter-bombers in Iran’s neighborhood to 120.

The carrier was accompanied by the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St. George and usually an attack submarine is not far away.

The Pentagon announcement was careful to avoid mentioning Iran: US Secretary of Defense Gates approved the presence of a second carrier… to provide surge support for coalition forces in Afghanistan “and to support existing maritime security operations.”

But the significance of two massive American naval-aerial strike forces opposite Iranian shores was not lost on Tehran  On Wednesday, Oct. 20, Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami, Deputy Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, came out with this statement: “The enemies of Iran should know the Islamic establishment’s red lines and not trespass them.”

Few believe Iran can do anything against such force without suffering devastating and even mortal losses. A successful strike on a U. S. carrier task force, while unlikely, would be an enormous coup of Iran accompanied by enormous risks.

Amid angry protests from unionist France increased retirement from age 60 to 62 last week. Under the dedicated socialist Mitterrand it had reduced the retirement age and work week to 35 hour, added 6 - weeks vacation and a plethora of other days off. Predictably production and output collapsed. French President Sarkosy’s approval rating is at an all time 29% low.

China and Turkey have signed several agreements that officials deemed as strategic cooperation in such areas as defense, energy and trade.

“We have agreed to raise our relationship to the level of strategic cooperation,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The agreements were signed on Oct 8 in Ankara during the visit by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

The visit took place after the first Chinese participation in the Turkish-hosted Anatolian Eagle combat air exercise, usually reserved for NATO allies causing NATO to hop around like bugs on a hot giddle to similar effect.

Ankara and Beijing have agreed to increase trade to $50 billion a year, or triple the current level, by 2015. The trade would include joint defense and energy projects as well as investments.

Officials said China and Turkey would cooperate in counter-insurgency and other security efforts.

“We have decided bilaterally to establish a strategic partnership in our relations,” Wen, the first Chinese prime minister to visit Turkey since 2002, said.

Wen said Ankara and Beijing would establish what he termed a joint panel meant to battle insurgency.

Turkey has in years past been accused of serving as a source of funding for China’s separatist Muslim minority. Recently Turley has moved East foresaking alliances with Israel and turning its eyes away from NATO and the U. S.

The eight agreements between Turkey and China included efforts to expand cooperation in energy, transport and communications. They included memorandum of understandings on technology and maritime cooperation.

“So, far,” said one wag, “Obama’s foreign policy has worked unbelieveably.” My label of it as “Obama’s Rodney King foreign policy” has been plagiarized by at least one major news outlet.

Beleaguered but ever more sanctimonious Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) Nevada is having a heck of a time trying to get re-elected, in part, he says, because people don’t want to know that he prevented a worldwide depression. Reid is certainly not the only narcissist in Washington DC but he is one of the most practiced. The average of five polls puts Angle ahead by a scant 0,4%. Last weekend Obama descended on Bugsy Seagel-land to try to help Reid..

In case you somehow missed it in your light reading Dr. Horst Borchert, the Director of the Department of Physics of the Johannes-Gutenberg Institute, Mainz, Germany, presented a cross-eyed complex paper, Using Satellite Measurements to study the Influence of Sun Activity on Terrestrial Weather at the Space Weather Workshop held in Boulder, Colorado earlier this year.

Dr. Borchert finds from satellite measurements that global warming between about 1980 to 2008 was “not anthropogenic but caused by natural activities of the Sun’s surface.” He relates changes of the solar magnetic field to cosmic rays and cloud formation (the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al) and to effects on the North Atlantic Oscillation, which affects weather phenomena around the globe. Other minor theorist ascribe warming to water vapor (cloud formation).

(Note: Henrik Svensmark (born 1958) is a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen his hypotheses about solar activity as an indirect cause of global warming; his research has suggested a possible link through the interaction of the solar wind and cosmic rays. His conclusions have been controversial in the global warming “industry” as the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change considers solar activity unlikely to be a major contributor to recent warming, though it is thought to be the primary driver of many earlier changes in climate.)

Bochert’s results are published under the humorous title “The Hockey Schtick” making light of the so-called hockey stick graph depicting a claimed dramatic rise on global temperatures coincident with increases in carbon dioxide and other claimed green house gasses ascribed to human activites (anthropogenic) versus what’s happening on the Sun.

Bochert’s bottomline after a blizzard of numbers and statistics is “the warming period on earth, that started about 1980 and seems to be ending about 2010, indeed was caused and modulated by sun’s activity;…”  His conclusion and excruciatingly detailed evidence has those paid to think otherwise gesticulating wildly.

In the interest of perspective the earth is a bit over 7,900 miles in diameter versus the Sun’s 865,000 miles. So if the Sun even burps Earth really gets smacked.

Billionaire currency manipulator George (Schwartz) Soros, long a patron of liberal political causes, is giving $1 million to Hilary Clinton founded Media Matters in what he says is an attempt to stop the growing popularity of Fox News.

This is a summary of the findings of a series of surveys released late last week by The Public Policy Institute of California iand others ncluding:

• PPIC finds Jerry Brown leads Meg Whitman by 8 points in the governor’s race 44% to 36%.
• Senator Barbara Boxer and challenger Carly Fiorina are locked in a close contest.
• Support for Proposition 19, marijuana legalization, has dropped below 50 percent. IT MUST GET OVER 50%TO PASS.
• Six in 10 Californians are worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage.

SurveyUSA; Fox News and Reuter/Ipsos have Brown leading by 7%, 5% and 4% respectively Wilson Research has Whitman ahead by 1%. The latest Saturday Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Brown picking up 48% of the vote, while Whitman draws support from 42%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. Whitman appears to be suffering in the negative after effects of stories about her illegal alien housekeeper.

A Friday Rasmussen poll as Obama was screwing up traffic in LA had Boxer at 48% of the vote, while Fiorina draws support from 46%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. The LA Times has Boxer much farther ahead but the cloud of incredulity still hangs over its results.

Republican Pat Toomey now holds just a four-point lead over Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania.

A Gallup poll found 54% saying Obama should be reelected while 39% said he should   be and another poll found his job approval rating declining to 43%.

The internals of the polls are predictably getting more partisan and racial.

The basset hound visaged political analyst and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen says Republicans will win as many as 60 seats to take control of the House in November, and that while a GOP takeover of the Senate is a long shot, it’s possible.

Sixty-five years after the ferocious battle for Iwo Jima two mass graves that may hold the remains of up to 2,000 Japanese soldiers have been discovered on the island one of the bloodiest and most iconic battle sites of World War II, a report and officials said Friday.

A team of Japanese searchers has discovered 51 remains in two areas listed by the U.S. military after the war as enemy cemeteries, one of which could contain as many as 2,000 bodies, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Friday.

The team was to report its findings later Friday to the prime minister’s office.

Officials at Japan’s health ministry, which supervises search efforts on the remote island, confirmed that 51 bodies had been recovered and two sites believed to be burial grounds had been found.

But they could not immediately confirm the potential size of the mass graves or other details of the Kyodo report.

The discovery of the remains would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades toward finding the bodies of roughly 12,000 Japanese who remain missing and presumed dead after the 1945 battle on the island, which has been renamed Iwoto by the Japanese government.

In 1945 the pork chopped shaped island was seen as key to the United States because it had three airfields that could be used to launch raids on Tokyo and Japan’s main islands.

Out of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers tasked with defending the rugged, volcanic crag, 21,570  were killed in the battle, which became a symbol and rallying point for the United States in the Pacific war after the U.S. flag was raised on its highest ground, Mount Suribachi resulting in its iconic photograph.

The battle claimed 6,821 American lives.

Dozens of remains are recovered every year, but about 12,000 Japanese are still classified as missing in action and presumed killed on the island, along with 218 Americans. Many of the Japanese were likely buried alive in caves and tunnels.

Fighting began on Feb. 19, 1945, but Iwo Jima was not declared secured until March 26.

According to the Kyodo report, searchers dug near a runway at a base used by the Japanese military - the only full-time inhabitants of the island - and at the foot of Suribachi.

It said the operation began early this month based on information from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

The report said the main site is estimated to have about 2,000 bodies and the Suribachi site 70-200 bodies. It said the recovery effort was expected to take several months. DNA might be used to identify remain if hair or a tooth from the missing have been kept by relatives of the missing men. Sometime a mothers DNA can also be used.

Fox News signed fired, liberal NPR contributor Juan Williams to a multi-million multi-year contract hours after the taxpayer funded NPR fired him for admitting his angst when he sees travelers in Muslim garb at airports Ironically it is rumored Williams firing resulted at least in part because of his role on the hated Fox News.

There speculation that George Soros had a hand in Williams’ firing  because of his effort to influence NPR and attacks on Fox. Reportedly Soros recently contributed $1.8 million to NPR and he is vociferously  anti-Fox News.

Don’t waste your money buying “Obama’s Wars” or “The Manchurian President”  both books are tedious if for different reasons: the latter is so tenuous, speculative and full of filler about Obama’s leftist past and Muslim upbringing it makes your eyes bleed, and the former is a barely disguised manipulation of the real issue of Obama’s maddeningly dithering incompetence. So read a book review or listen to a trusted friend who did and then suffered buying and reading them.

I bought and read both and both will be consigned to the donate a book bin by Christmas

P. J. O’Rourke’s newest and undoubtedly sarcastic spoof “Don’t Vote - It Just Encourages the Bastards” will almost certainly be worth a giggle  but I’d rather buy it as a comicbook.

Simony (SY-muh-nee, SIM-) noun: Profiting from holy things, especially buying and selling of holy positions and pardons.  Etymology after Simon Magus, Samaritan sorcerer in the Bible, who wanted to buy spiritual powers — the ability to transfer the “Holy Spirit” by putting hands on someone — from Peter. Usage: “A related theme — the preacher or moraliser unmasked — has been richly illustrated in recent years by examples from real life: a string of corrupt American televangelists, self-appointed ‘men of God’, who revelled in greed, lust, and simony, the very things they were thought to be railing against.”

Scientist have discovered lots of water on the Moon. Enough in fact to quench the thirst of  major colony on the lunar surface. The lack of water has been billed as the greatest impediment to colonizing the Moon. So this is very significant.

More significant for the Chinese, Indians and Russians than the US because Obama has emasculated the US space program and NASA effectively ending any chance of a U. S. Moon base in the forseeable  future. 

Cosmologist are giddy at the prospect of a moonbase that most see as a staging point for planetary exploration and even exploration and mining of minerals there. Because the Moon was ripped from Earth by a collision with another body the Moon will have the same minerals as earth including rare earths. There’s also hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver, according to an analysis of NASA.

But, you won’t be able to go there with a dipper to take a swig but have to “squeeze” water out of the very soil.  NASA says it will take 183 pounds of moon soil to produce one gallon of water. Nevertheless it is likely the best news since Americans first walked on the Moon in 1969 - Obama is not a fan of space exploration and certainly can’t be counted upon for a mesmerizing JFK-like challenge on that or any other non-social engineering subject.

Intelligence analysts say Saudi nationals figure prominently in the Al Qaida network in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Security sources said Saudi nationals continued to serve as commanders and key operatives in the Al Qaida insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This begs the question of how much Saudi money is involved, as it financed Osama bin Laden sponsored al Qaeda terror network. That is unknown or at least not publicly described yet.

Last week the Nevada Supreme Court rejected O. J. Simpson’s most recent appeal. His lawyer contends his conviction was prejudicial “payback” for his 1994 double-murder acquittal involving the brutal 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. He also claimed prosecutorial misconduct, and an array of ineffective lawyer talk.

O. J. is still getting a very healthy NFL pension that allows him to pay for such legal counsel. That pension is estimated at $400,000 a year - of which the Goldmans cannot touch despite multi-millions in civil judgments. One would presume his two minor children receive something.

O, J. has few other expenses since he is an all expense paid guest of Nevada taxpayers serving nine to 33 years at a state prison in Lovelock Correctional Center, 90 miles northeast of Reno having been convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery, conspiracy and other crimes for what Simpson maintained was an attempt to retrieve family photos and mementos.

Of course his lawyers promise more appeals.

A UK analysis of 400,000 documents released by WikiLeak found only two possible violations of the so-called rules of war that could result in formal trials. WikiLeaks says it will release another 15,000 documents from Afghanistan.

A 30-year-old registered sex offender and parolee with 666 “the Mark of the Beast” plainly tattooed over his right eye showed up at a Riverside Sheriff’s station last weekend announcing that he had the body of a dead woman in the trunk of his car.

He did and he was immediately arrested, jailed, and ordered held without bail.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the macabre episode is that the as yet unidentified woman was dating the man who advertised his perverted views on his face

Gimmick (g m k)  noun, a device employed to cheat, deceive, or trick, especially a mechanism for the secret and dishonest control of gambling apparatus. 2. An innovative stratagem or scheme employed especially to promote a project: an advertising gimmick.

 The first known citation of the word dates to 1926 and it appears it referred then to a device to make an otherwise fair game crooked. But, its origins are misty.