“Companies too big to fail cannot be allowed to.”

 That sentence has dangerous implications. People have been throwing around the word socialism, but this isn’t socialism. This is a Corporate Aristocracy. The reason the free market is important is it rewards the lucky and the smart, and over long term just the smart. Right now there are midtier banks who are waiting to take the place of these giants. Banks that have been managed well and should be rewarded by their ascension to the top tier now. Instead we are proping the top tier companies out of some ill defined fear of depressions.Well, here is a revelation, depressions are necessary and healthy. They allow the existing tiered business system to reorganize so that the smartest can rise to the top. Instead of maintaining our corporate aristocracy, why don’t we take 200 billion and put it toward infrastructure and other profitable ventures to help our citizens weather the necessary depression that results? How many times are we going to try and cheat the nature of the free markets because we are afraid of the unknown?

This is a foolish decision and we will regret it and the fact that none of you journalists have the guts to call everyone on this is disheartening. I feel like this country is driving full speed over a cliff and there is nothing I can do about it. 700 billion dollars. Ask yourself what percent that is of the worlds GDP, especially in a worldwide recession.

This assumption that there is no limit on our national credit card will be our undoing.

For almost 20 years, Russia has been borrowing spare parts to build a democracy but somehow, the country’s rulers have ended up with the same policy the Soviets and the Tsars used: force. On Tuesday, Russia formally recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia — Georgia’s two breakaway provinces — as independent countries. Their independence, of course, was promoted and is now guaranteed by Russian might. In effect, Russia has acquired as protectorates two major provinces of another sovereign state, Georgia.

Until now, Putin’s Russia has waged a kind of cold peace on the West by smartly using hydrocarbon pipelines rather than its armor or air force. But this month, Putin has reverted to his armor, however obsolete, to acquire the lands he wants and to show the West he can just get away with it. But can he? Even on the crest of the current emotional wave of patriotism —largely fomented by the Kremlin — some Moscow officials fret that Putin has gone too far. They fear the country doesn’t have the resources to sustain another Cold War with the West. (Or a hot war. The equipment used in Georgia is considered outdated.) And they worry that Putin is imprudently choosing allies like Iran and Syria over major powers like the U.S. and the E.U.

Nevertheless, the nationalist march continues. This week, the Moscow daily Vremya Novostei ran a story on a new high school history book recommended by the Russian government. It praises Stalin as “the protector of the system” and “a consistent supporter of the transformation of the country into an industrial society, administered from a single center.” The textbook also maintains that “the introduction of Soviet forces onto the territory of Poland in 1939 was for the liberation of the territories of Ukraine and Belarus,” and that the absorption of the Baltic states and Bessarabia (now the independent country of Moldova) was appropriate because “earlier they were part of the Russian Empire.”

So, what earlier parts of the Russian Empire might be reacquired next? Moldova’s own breakaway province, Trans-Dniestria, has been controlled since 1993 by Russian peacekeepers in the same fashion they “kept peace” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. There is Ukraine’s Crimea, which is still the Russian Fleet’s Black Sea base and is densely populated with ethnic Russians who, the Kremlin keeps hinting, might need the Motherland’s protection.

The West should realize that this adventure could be just beginning. And that the Russians might press forward in spite of their hardware inadequacies. The Black Sea, for example, is not big enough for all the military power congregating in it now — the Russian forces occupying the Georgian port of Poti; the NATO “humanitarian” naval task force at the Georgian port of Batumi; and most formidably, the navy of Turkey (a NATO member), which is three times larger and stronger than what is left of the Russian Black Sea fleet. Any kind of confrontation there is likely to be messy, with no guarantee of any party coming out a winner.

When Obama broke onto the national political scene in 2004, not only did he attempt to erase all traces his Islamic childhood, but he also tried to erase the nature of his relationship with Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. (When your country is at war with Islamic extremists being a Muslim is not the shortest route to the White House.) Obama has told the media his reason for shielding his pastor was because “…he respected Mr. Wright’s work for the poor and his fight against injustice.” In reality Dr. Wright’s work was to denounce the United States as a white racist nation. That’s not good press for an African American candidate who needs to win a majority of the white vote to win the office of President.

It would have been not only natural, but expected, for Barack Obama—when he decided to run for the presidency—to make the announcement from the pulpit of the 8,500 member Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama would later state he did not in order to shield his pastor from the spotlight of the media. Dr. Wright has never shunned positive publicity. It was obvious to the media—in particular the New York Times which noted in an April 20, 2007 article that Obama was very deliberately distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright. Instead, Obama announced his candidacy on the steps of the old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois—where Abraham Lincoln announced his candidacy—on Feb. 10, 2007. Obama sees himself as an archtype of Lincoln who will “free his people from the tyranny of the oppressor.” What people are those? The inner city people of color whom Dr. Wright believes are part of the Black Value System? Or does he see himself as the man who will free the Muslim world from the Great Satan since his first action, he says, as President of the United States will be to pull all Americans troops out of the Middle East? The voters need to figure out exactly who Barack Obama’s constituents really are because when I add 2 + 2 + Obama, it doesn’t come out four.

When Obama’s early history and his Islamic upbringing was first reported, Obama’s website posted a statement dated Nov. 12, 2007 with the headline: “Barack Obama is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim.” The statement reiterated that Obama was not a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.

On Dec. 22 at the Smoky Row Coffee Shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the locals asked Obama about his Muslim roots. He said: “My father was from Kenya. A lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn’t practice Islam. Truth is, he wasn’t very religious.” That was a lie. Obama’s father and stepfather were devout Islamics. Both faithfully practiced their religion. His stepfather, who had a much greater impact on Obama’s upbringing, was a radical Wahabbi Muslim. “My mother was a Christian from Kansas.” That was also a lie. Obama’s mother, his material grandmother and grandfather were all atheists. “They married and then divorced. I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian. The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country. But I’ve never practiced Islam…For a while I lived in Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that’s a Muslim country. And I went to school—but I didn’t practice Islam.” Another lie. Obama’s mother married Lolo Soetoro, a Wahabbi extremist who lived in Indonesia. When Obama’s mother moved to Indonesia—before she married her second Muslim husband—she enrolled her son in Francis Assisis Catholic School. He was enrolled as a Muslim because he was a Muslim. The enrollment form required each student to choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when enrolling: Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or Protestant. Had he been a lifelong Christian, or even a recent convert, he—or his mother—would have circled Protestant.

When confronted with this information, Obama said he couldn’t understand how such an error could have happened. Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Watson, who dug into Obama’s allegation of error, said “…his former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama’s grade school teacher as childhood friends, says Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended. The registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion classes. The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque.” (Something else Obama claims he never did.) “…Obama’s younger sister, Maya Soetoro, said in a statement released by the campaign that the family attended the mosque only ‘for big communal events’ not every Friday.” Obama, who belongs to a church that teaches that the Muslims of the world were wronged by both Israel and the United States, cannot afford to be labeled as a “Muslim” by voters who expect the United States to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where their sons and daughters are being killed by Muslims.

Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty community activist and a friend of Obama’s said Obama comes from a very secular, skeptical family. His faith is a personal and adult choice. His material grandparents—who were professing atheists—had previously been Baptist and Methodist. His mother’s tutelage leaned towards Islam only because her new husband was an ardent Muslim—and he demanded it.

She was not, however, the docile Muslim housewife most Muslim men expected. Obama’s half-sister Maya admitted that her “…whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” Because religion of any type rubbed his mother the wrong way, when he was 10, Obama’s mother sent her son back to Hawaii to live with her parents.

In 2005 Obama met his paternal step-grandmoher (whom he calls his grandmother). Sarah Hussein Obama, 85, who lives in Kenya. She told the New York Times that she is “…a strong believer of Islamic faith,” adding that she still rises at 5 a.m. to pray for an hour before tending to her crops and the three orphans she has taken in.

A camera which caught Obama on the political stage during a fund raiser for Sen. Tom Harkin in Iowa with presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton shows his lack of respect to this nation during the singing of the National Anthem. Angered that the photo was released (and because the reporter erroneously stated the photo was taken during the Pledge of Allegiance rather than the singing of the national anthem, Obama said: “This is the classic dirty trick. This was not the Pledge of Allegiance. The woman was singing the Star Spangled Banner.”

All the time he was around either his father or stepfather, Obama was either in Hawaii or Indonesia. Thus, neither his paternal grandfather nor the father of his stepfather would have tutored him on placing his hand over his heart during the US Pledge of Allegiance, nor the singing the American Star Spangled Banner. Rest assured that Indonesian homes don’t recite the Pledge or sing the US national anthem. And while Hawaii had been a State for three years before Obama was born, logic suggests its not likely an atheist mother and an Islamic father would teach him to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the Star Spangled Banner.

In his teen years Obama moved back to Honolulu where he lived with his maternal grandparents. In his rebuttal, you will recall, Obama claimed his grandfather had taught him to place his hand over his heart during the Pledge, and to sing the national anthem. History has a problem with that on both sides of the family. Like his mother who was an atheist, so were her parents. Obama’s grandmother, he said in interviews, “…was too rational and too stubborn to accept anything she couldn’t see, feel, touch or count.” His maternal grandfather was also an atheist who “…had an innate rebelliousness and a complete inability to discipline his appetites…who…experimented with marijuana and cocaine.” An atheist is not going to teach his grandson to respect the Pledge of Allegiance which pays homage to God.

In August, 2006 US Senator Barack Obama [D-IL] made a special trip to visit a special man in Kenya. The man’s name was Raila Amolo Odinga. He is the head of the National Muslim Leaders Forum [NAMLEF] in Kenya. The political party he heads is called the Orange Democratic Movement [ODM]—although there is definitely nothing democratic about his political party of NAMLEF. The ODM is dedicated to overthrowing the legitimate democratic government of Kenya. Odinga is not really concerned how he achieves his objective. It matters little to him if he assumes power through a free election—or by revolution. But, by hook or crook, he is determined to become the president of Kenya. If he succeeds, he will be president for life and Kenya will become another Afghanistan.

When the US Senator visited Kenya to meet with Odinga in Nairobi, the Kenyan government officially denounced the visit. And, most specifically, they denounced Obama. According to a Kenyan government spokesman, Obama’s bias for his friend was so blatant that the government found it necessary to complain that Obama appeared to be Odinga’s stooge. Not only did Obama campaign for his Islamic friend, he convinced former Clinton adviser Dick Morris to become Odinga’s campaign adviser.

Odinga bothers the US State Department for a couple of reasons. First, after losing the democratic election on December 27, Raila Odinga cut a deal for support from Vladimir Putin and the former Soviet Union. Odinga knows he has to overthrow the government to gain power. When he lost the election, he protested that the vote was rigged to keep him from claiming an election he won. He incited his tribal followers to go on a murderous rampage in towns that were primarily Christian. Throughout Kenya, hundreds of people were murdered. What shocked the west is that the Kenyan media—and the political power brokers within the country—out of fear of Odinga, appear to be suggesting that perhaps the election should be held over to stop the violence and the potential for long term Muslim terrorism.

In a wave of violence aimed at protesting what they call the illegal election of newly-elected Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, a group of Christian women and children—some entire families—barricaded themselves in a church. Muslims, inflamed by Odinga’s men, torched the church and burned to death everyone inside. This is the man Obama campaigned for in Kenya, and sang the praises of. This is also the man who claims that Barack Obama is a close, personal friend. Christianity would be outlawed.

There would be a complete ban on the public consumption of alcoholic beverages and a ban on western-style dress for women since this type of garb is considered immoral and an offense to the Muslim faith. Raila Obinga, it seems, would impose the same type of Shariah law that was imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban. Odinga would degree that no Muslim living in Kenya—whether a citizen, visitor or relative of a citizen of Kenya (such as Obama, whose grandmother is a citizen of Kenya)‚shall be subject to any legal process involving the laws of a foreign country and in particular any Muslim arrested for, or suspected of, terrorism, or of any other international crimes shall only be tried inside the borders of Kenya and shall be granted a competent lawyer of his or her choice at the expense of the government.

The American people need to be asking Barack Obama a whole different list of questions when they attend his political rallies on his quest to become the leader of the free world. They need to ask the man who he really is because, up to this point on the campaign trail, he has lied to them. The American people need to find an honest candidate. Barack Obama is not that man.

It is this scribe’s firm opinion that none of these individuals have what it takes to lead this country going forward.  It might have been an illusion that Rudy Guiliani had what it takes to lead but even his former firefigyhters in NYC despise him.  John McCain is a good man, having expereince governement leadership for many years in the Senate, but as I watched him stumble on his words after winning in New Hampshire, I fear he has aged and is worn out already early in this primary.  My hope here would be he would find a very capable VP to mentor during his term in the White House.