Voice in the Wilderness

The original article is on WND. This clearly illustrates the administration failure to act prudently in its efforts to clean up the oil spill. The unions own the pretender in chief lock, stock, and barrel.

Scrambling to avoid political damage from the biggest oil spill ever, President Obama seeks in ever-more-strident announcements to convince himself and the rest of the world that he is in charge and that all will soon be well. The curtain is pulled back on Barack “The Wiz” Obama. The picture is not pretty.

The Wiz is finger-pointing, shape-shifting and spinning like a dervish. It isn’t working. People noticed when the Wiz chose to go to a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer instead of attending the funeral of the 11 men who perished in the BP oil-rig explosion.

Worse, the basic inefficiency of Big Government coupled with the union and environmentalist political hammerlock on the Wiz has delayed common-sense solutions and blocked needed assistance. The latest atrocity is a union veto of offers of assistance from the Netherlands and Belgium – countries with cleanup technology and ships not available in the U.S.

More on the Jones Act fiasco in a moment. First, 57 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, burned and sank, the disaster gets worse and the need for effective action more acute every day.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen confirmed Friday that more oil was gushing from the BP well than had been previously admitted. Much more. Initial estimates of 5,000 to 25,000 barrels a day have been “revised” to 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day.

Published reports based on independent scientists and industry experts’ calculations put the number between 50,000 and 100,000 barrels a day.

At 42 gallons per barrel, assuming the government figure of 40,000 barrels a day, the BP well gushes 1,680,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels, or 10.5 million gallons, of oil in Alaska in 1989. By those numbers, the BP catastrophe is another Exxon Valdez every seven days.

Between June 3 (when BP put the containment cap over the well) and June 11, BP reports collecting 88,700 barrels of oil, or about one-quarter of the daily gusher. The rest is washing ashore and threatening the Gulf’s marshes, wildlife sanctuaries and beaches and spreading in underwater oil plumes hundreds of miles long.

Only some 400 skimmer-equipped boats are working the spill. They are hardly making a dent.

According to the publication Foreign Policy, 13 countries offered the U.S. help right after the well blowout. At least two of those – the Netherlands and Belgium – offered the immediate use of ships and cleanup equipment and technology not available in the U.S., which would clean up the Gulf faster and cheaper than the U.S. estimates.

The Obama response was no thanks: “[W]hile there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future.”

In last Friday’s briefing, Adm. Allen was asked about the foreign offers of assistance. He said he would be happy to consider using the foreign ships if there were an “official request.” So, the Coast Guard is not “assessing” the offers, without a “request” from Obama to do so.

Adm. Allen did reverse an earlier decision not to deploy U.S. cleanup “assets” from other U.S. locations. Such assets, said the admiral, would now be rushed to the Gulf – an admission that efforts to date to contain the environmental and economic effects of the gusher have not been effective. But still, the foreign “assets” are not being considered.

Fox News quoted a Coast Guard lieutenant commander that foreign “assets” were not being considered because they do not “meet the operational requirements of the Unified Area Command.” Brian Wilson of Fox News followed up, asking the Coast Guard if complying with the Jones Act was one of those “operational requirements.” The reply was “yes.”

What is this “Jones Act” that keeps the president from using the best available worldwide “assets”?

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, among other things, requires shipping between U.S. ports to be done on U.S.-made ships by U.S. citizen seamen. Although the law provides for a waiver of these requirements by the president, unionized merchant sailors have historically resisted these waivers, and they are rarely granted.

Right after Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived the Jones Act for the period Sept. 1 through Sept. 19, 2005, to allow foreign ships to work in with U.S. ships to transport natural gas and oil. More recently, a U.S. Customs official ruled that the Jones Act does not apply to foreign-owned vessels installing wind turbines off the coast of Delaware.

On Friday, Obama environmental adviser Carol Browner said the Obama administration “had not received a request from the Coast Guard to waive the Jones Act. If we have one, obviously we’ll respond to it.”

On the same day, Coast Guard Adm. Allen told reporters, “We are more than willing to consider Jones Act waivers. Nobody has come to me for a Jones Act waiver yet, but I am prepared to consider that.”

Don’t tell that to Dallas businessman Fred McCallister. He has offered 25 skimmer boats to the Coast Guard, which are foreign-owned and -operated. The reply? McCallister says all he’s getting is “radio silence.”

Do union rules trump the need for the cleanup? Only Obama knows. What the public knows is that the Wiz met with union leaders at the White House Thursday, and on Friday Browner and Allen engaged in their little verbal dance to try and mask the fact that the Wiz will not use every available “asset” to stop this gusher and clean up the Gulf.

Original article posted on WND

Leadership isn’t something a person proclaims – it is the character a person shows. It is understood as an individual’s capacity to lead. It is the ability to maintain and increase/improve during good times. It is the ability to reassure and make disciplined, cogent decisions in difficult times.

Mark Shead, referencing the book, “Leadership Challenge,” by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, writes that the “five most important leadership traits” (Leadership501.com; June 10, 2010) are that a leader be honest, forward-thinking, competent, inspiring and intelligent. Obama can proclaim himself a leader all he wants, but, apart from assuming the title by way of beguiled voters, I argue he personifies none of those qualities in sufficient enough measure to warrant either our respect or our trust.

Pursuant to honesty, he has broken his campaign promises, primary of which was his repeated promise that families making less than $250,000 a year would see no form of tax increase. He broke his pledge of transparency from his first week in office, and everyone remembers his promise to hold legislation hearings on C-SPAN. Constraints of space prohibit a complete listing of his lies, but suffice it to say, as did Richard Baehr, “his entire campaign was built on lies” (”Obama’s Campaign Built on Lies”; AmericanThinker.com; Oct. 21, 2008).

The ultimate expose on the radical nature of our 44th president: “The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists”

And the lies continue. Consider that he is spending more money than Tiger Woods earns for winning a tournament to keep his records and background secret. As I have often said – the only reason people hide things is because they have something to hide, and because they are liars and cheats – a saying that has been proven true time and time again.

Obama’s administrative agenda can hardly be called forward-thinking – whether one calls it secular-socialism, progressivism or just plain old socialism, it doesn’t work. The world has had over a century of examples showing the epic failures of his government model. It is a cataclysmic example of economic failure. See “Citizens of Subjects: Keynesian Economics” (Lance Fairchok; AmericanThinker.com; May 18, 2010).

Nowhere is his lack of competence more on display than with his handling of the BP oil spill along the Gulf coast. His lack of action and leadership is hurting the people of that area. He has to date refused to meet with the CEO of BP since the disaster began on April 22, but he did consult with James Cameron, a movie director best-known for producing fantasy films. (Albeit we now hear there is a meeting supposedly scheduled for tomorrow with BP executives.)

“Three days after the explosion … in the Gulf … the Dutch government offered to help. It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. The response from the Obama administration … [was] thanks, but no thanks. … What’s wrong with accepting outside help [from the pre-eminent country in the world when it comes to being] experienced with building dikes and managing water” (”U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertise”; Loren Steffy; Houston Chronicle; June 8, 2010).

That’s either incompetence or ataraxia, unless Joan Swirsky is more correct than we can begin to imagine. (See: “The Obama disaster machine: unfortunate coincidence or malevolently premeditated”; RightSideNews.com; June 9, 2010.)

What type of inspiration does Obama convey? Military officers under his command refuse to obey his orders, choosing rather to face a court-martial. It goes without saying how conservatives feel about him, but even his liberal base is disillusioned and uninspired by him. Earlier this year, George Soros said he “was dissatisfied with Obama.” Anthony Romero, the ACLU chief, was recently quoted as saying he was “disgusted with Obama.”

Pursuant to his alleged intelligence, I hate to disillusion Paul McCartney, but having visited a library doesn’t make one an intellect. Neither does supposedly having been part of Harvard’s Law Review. Pursuant to his intellect and ability to grow and mature into a leader, I strongly suggest reading Robin of Berkeley’s article, “A Shrink Asks: What’s Wrong with Obama?” the last eight paragraphs of which are an absolutely chilling analysis.

A few more observations of a true leader are: A true leader doesn’t blame others and/or make excuses. They don’t bemoan misfortune – they find ways to overcome it. A true leader doesn’t have to tell you he’s the man and/or resort to theatrical behavior. You can sense the leadership qualities in them.

Obama is an epic pretender who has never run anything in his dysfunctional life, and it’s up to us to stop him from running our country into the ground.

Mychal Massie is chairman of the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives-Project 21 – a conservative black think tank located in Washington, D.C. He was recognized as the 2008 Conservative Man of the Year by the Conservative Party of Suffolk County, N.Y. He is a nationally recognized political activist, pundit and columnist. He has appeared on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, NBC, Comcast Cable and talk radio programming nationwide. A former self-employed business owner of more than 30 years, Massie can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

The original story is on Pajamas Media. This is a blatant ploy by a corrupt government to take over the oil industry and pass cap and trade. The deliberateness of their delay is treasonous and all involved should be either impeached, indicted, tried, and thown in prison. This is a travesty which should not go unpunished. Oh, I am not talking about BP, though they share the blame. I am talking about the Obama administration. USARMYGUYRETIRED

June 12, 2010
- by Gregory Sullivan

Auburn, Maine, company Packgen has miles of oil spill containment boom on hand and has the capacity to produce upwards of 100,000 additional feet of boom a day. That inventory and that capacity has been available to help the
Gulf Coast states for nearly a month. The news of this company was reported here at PJM four days ago, on June 8.

The curious case of the lack of interest in Packgen’s boom gets curiouser and curiouser. Yesterday, ABC News had an interview with Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After a handful of questions about the flow of oil into the Gulf from the wellhead, the topic turned to mitigation of the spill. Here’s the exchange:

Jake Tapper, ABC: I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has — he says — the ability to make 90,000 feet of boom a day. High quality. BP came there 2 weeks ago, looked at it, they are doing another audit today. He is very frustrated, he says he has a lot of high quality boom to go and it is taking a long time for BP to get its act together. Don’t you need this boom right now?

Allen: Oh we need all the boom wherever we can get it. If you give me the information off camera I’ll be glad to follow up.

There was no need for the admiral to ask for the information from Jake Tapper. It’s contained in a letter that has been on the admiral’s desk since May 21st. The letter was also sent to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. Copies were sent to Governors Bob Riley, Charles Crist, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal. The letter was signed by two U.S. senators.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY AND A COPY OF THE LETTER FOLLOW THIS LINK

The original article is posted on The American Thinker. The EMP attack makes the most sense in that it will minimize exposure of the attacker to retaliation by whatever government survives. It will be extremely difficult to pinpoint the actual point of origin of the attacker, not the attack. For more insight into how the Chinese plan to defeat the United States read “UNRESTRICTED WARFARE” by Qiao Lang and Wang Xiangsui. USARMYGUYRETIRED

“Thus one who excels at employing the military subjugates other people`s armies without engaging in battle, captures other people`s fortified cities without attacking them, and destroys other people`s states without prolonged fighting.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

(Sun Tzu was the great second century Chinese military strategist who produced the definitive textbook for waging war.)

North Korea is proceeding with a test of its Taepo Dong 2 ICBM, and the United States has activated its spiffy new missile defense system with portentous threats to shoot down any test rocket. The situation seems to be escalating, and the DPRK seems determined to fire its multi—staged doomsday machine in spite of America`s determination to stop it. At first glance this showdown seems odd; America has repeatedly failed to take a stand against North Korea’s military development, and, although the Taepo Dong 2 can possibly reach California and the West Coast, the lack of decent guidance systems make an attack unlikely.

Why has our government become so concerned?

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY FOLLOW THIS LINK

This is a reprint from our local paper concerning Bob Krentz’s murder by a suspected illegal drug scout. USARMYGUYRETIRED
Autopsy showed rancher Krentz died of multiple gunshot wounds

Thu, 06/10/2010 – 00:01

Robert Krentz Jr., 58.

By Jonathon Shacat
Herald/Review

BISBEE — A rancher who was killed by a suspected illegal immigrant at his 35,000-acre ranch northeast of Douglas earlier this year died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to a recently released autopsy report.

On March 27, Robert Krentz Jr., 58, was checking the ranch at about 10:30 a.m. He notified his family he encountered a southbound illegal immigrant and had called the U.S. Border Patrol, according to the report.

He was supposed to meet a family member at a watering tank at 12:30 p.m. When he did not show up, the family started a search and then called Search and Rescue. An Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter found him dead in his truck at 11:43 p.m.

“In my opinion, Robert Krentz Jr. died of multiple gunshot wounds. The manner of death is homicide,” Avneesh Gupta, deputy medical examiner for Cochise County, states in the autopsy report.

The Cochise County Attorney’s Office released the autopsy report on Wednesday. Several sections of information in the report are redacted. As a result, the exact injuries to Krentz are not clear.

“That was what the Sheriff’s Department said we could send out, without compromising their investigation,” said Doyle Johnstun, chief deputy county attorney.

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever could not be reached for comment.

According to the report, however, Krentz sustained traumatic injury to his head, chest, abdomen, extremities, back and buttocks.

Also, the back of his right hand had multiple irregularly shaped, red abrasions which spread over an area of 15 cm by 12 cm and vary from 2.5 cm to 0.5 cm, according to the report.

Reprint of an article on EMP from NEWSMAX.com. USARMYGUYRETIRED

Monday, 05 Apr 2010 08:58 AM
Article Font Size

By: Ronald Kessler

America is totally unprepared for an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that would set civilization back to the 1800s, Dr. William Graham, who was chairman of the bipartisan congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, tells Newsmax.

An EMP attack occurs when a nuclear bomb explodes in the atmosphere. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the blast would fry microchips, which are at the heart of electronic devices, throughout North America.

In a rare interview, Graham, who was Ronald Reagan’s science adviser, predicts the vast majority of Americans would die from starvation or disease or would freeze to death. Yet he says that while the military is largely protected from an EMP attack, the government has done virtually nothing to address the effects of such an attack on the civilian sector.

Without that infrastructure, the military would find it difficult to operate as well. Since microchips control vehicles, trains, and airplanes, most would become inoperable.

No one could get to work.

An EMP attack “could not only take down power grids, which are fragile anyway in this country, and telecommunications networks, and financial networks, and traffic controls and many other things, but in addition, there is a very close interrelationship among those national infrastructure capabilities,” Graham says.

“So, for example, we need telecommunications to re-establish the power network, and we need the power network to keep telecommunications going for more than a few hours. And we need the financial network to continue to operate to maintain the economy, we need the transportation system, roads, street lights, control systems, to operate just to get people to the failed power, telecommunication and other systems,” he adds.

Life after an EMP attack “would probably be something that you might imagine life to be like around the late 1800s but with several times the population we had in those days, and without the ability of the country to support and sustain all those people,” Graham says. “They wouldn’t have power. Food supplies would be greatly taken out by the lack of transportation, telecommunication, power for refrigeration and so on.”

Yet life would be far more primitive than even that because in the 1800s, Americans had food from their own farms and police who rode on horseback.

“We don’t have as many horses, and we tend to depend on radios for communication now, that again need power,” Graham notes. “Radios themselves tend to be vulnerable to this if they’re not designed with protection from EMP in mind, because they’re connected to antennas. Anything that looks like an antenna can pick up the EMP signal and conduct it to the electronics, causing it to fail.”

Most computers would become inoperable, Graham says.

“Most computers are connected to things that either are antennas or look like antennas,” he says. “Even a mouse cable looks like an antenna to an electromagnetic signal. Certainly power lines, telecommunication lines, all act as antennas to pick up EMP signals and check them in the computers. And we have done tests with computers, and EMP tends to burn out the computer circuits.”

Stock and banking transactions would also be wiped out.

“Most financial records are stored electronically. ATMs, which depend upon both power and telecommunications, would not be available; banks, which try to back up records but in general aren’t strongly aware of the EMP problem, would face the problem of unprotected storage and computer systems,” Graham says. “And so it’s very likely that financial and stock brokerage records would at a minimum not be accessible and might not be available at all.”

An EMP attack could be launched by a country such as North Korea or Iran or by terrorists, Graham says. A severe geomagnetic storm — which will definitely occur one day — could cause nearly as much damage.

“The intelligent way to address this is to look at all of these threats and to develop a protection against all of them, not just against one at a time,” Graham observes.

Unlike protection against a nuclear blast, shielding to protect against EMP is a relative bargain. As noted in the Newsmax story “EMP Attack Could Wipe Out U.S.,” the 300 transformers that are critical to the power grid could be protected for $200 million to $400 million.

Yet so far, neither power companies nor banks, stock brokerage firms, nor other industries have seen fit to shield their facilities against an EMP strike.

“In talking to the various commercial organizations, they have said, “’Look, it’s not our job to protect the country against a nuclear attack,’” Graham says. “’It’s our job to have the country operate under normal conditions. It’s the military’s job to protect the country in a nuclear attack.’”

Just as the U.S. was unprepared for the 9/11 attack, so is it unprepared for an EMP attack that would be millions of times more devastating.

“Having been confirmed into three different government positions by the Senate, I have some experience in dealing with the bureaucracy,” Graham says. “Bureaucrats never like to deal with a problem before it happens the first time. It’s much easier to ignore a problem that might happen, until it happens.”

The blame rests with both Democrats and Republicans.

“It was a failure in the last administration; it’s a failure in this administration,” Graham notes. “No one has been given the job of marshaling our capabilities — governmental, private, and military — to prepare for this problem.”

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.

Mr. Elmore touches lightly on what would happen if the power grid fails. He keeps it in the context of “a few days” and how we as a technologically addicted society might react. This is only a glimpse of the catastrophic nature of an actual loss of the power for an extended period of time. There are quite a few tomes available which address what the impending result would be of such a failure. The most recent and compelling is “One Second After” which is reviewed by Bill Buppert. It is a compelling read and should be required by all who are concerned about the future of their family and how to survive an electrical apocalypse. The key point is one second after the event it will be to late. USARMYGUYRETIRED

Original article posted on World News Daily

On June 7, blogger stopped working. The outage was longer than just a couple of hours. It was long enough, in fact, for people who depend on blogger to, well, blog, to start to freak out. At microblogging site Twitter, a rising note of alarm started to creep into posts that went like this: “Is anybody else having trouble getting blogger to work?” It got worse as the outage persisted, and people who have made updating their blogs part of their daily routines suddenly couldn’t communicate with their readers.

As much as we might be tempted to dismiss bloggers as basement-dwelling loners engaged in the Internet equivalent of talking to themselves, it’s a fact that a great many people get their news from and spend time communicating with a network of bloggers who use public and commercial blogging sites (rather than their own websites). It was one of them, John Kubicek, who first brought the blogger.com outage to my attention. John maintains a popular conservative blog in which he summarizes major news events and links to various conservative and libertarian columns.

“See the panic?” John wrote to me. “PANIC? Like the end of the world kind of thing? It can be more than just annoying when technology fails. Think fishing and shrimping in the Gulf. People who depend on technology are affected by failures sometimes for their livelihood, and it can be devastating.”

FOR COMPLETE STORY FOLLOW THIS LINK

Original article posted thetenthamendmentcenter.com. USARMYGUYRETIRED

by Kelly Galbreath

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
–James Madison

James Madison warned often of the encroachments of a central government, and warned that a central or federal government needed to be kept in check by a balance of power. The cornerstone of this balance of power was the will of the people being governed expressed not only in Congress but ultimately through the sovereignty of the individual states.

The federal government has over-reached and encroached on state sovereignty for decades – and under the leadership of both Republicans and Democrats. Each time the federal government has gone unchecked it has become bigger and bolder – and continues to do so with each usurping of power belonging to the states. The passing of Obamacare, just might be the coup de grace, or at least a giant step toward bringing down the republic.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

This is a reprint of a book review completed by Bill Buppert. Follow the link at the bottom for his lessons learned, very enlightening. USARMYGUYRETIRED

I read OSA in December of last year and it left quite an impression on me. I considered myself well-versed in the potential of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) but had not thought though the implications for the new America. An America in which the work ethic has perished and people have no idea where their food comes from. I would suggest you pick this book up and read it. It is a rather fast read and entertaining. Again, get your preps in order because there is nothing in the future of America that portends a land of milk and honey. -BB

Letter Re: “One Second After” — A Book Review with Some Advice

I have been reading the novel One Second After by William R. Forstchen. I just finished it. Whew, what a heavy book. I decided to write it up as a “lessons learned” book review. A couple of you may be wondering why I sent this to you. Well, I just thought of you and know you to be like-minded … I think. That is, concerned about what the future holds for us as a nation, as crazy and uncertain as things are getting in the world. I’ve been following the elctromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat for a couple of years now and regrettably, just now made myself purchase my own copy of this novel and read it.

My initial reaction, to get to the point, is that it is my hope is that each of you will buy a copy of this novel for your own personal libraries. It should go on the “Mandatory Reading” list, right next to “Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse” , by James Rawles.

EMP is a very real threat, as is the threat of a major economic collapse, as addressed in Rawles’ novel, “Patriots”.

Since I expect most all of you will acquire your own copy, I’ll spare the commentary of the characters’ specific experiences, and get to what I gleaned as “lessons learned.” I’d love to hear feedback from each of you and know your thoughts.

This is an insightful, well-thought-out and researched novel. Dr. Forstchen is extremely knowledgeable and is a respected subject-matter expert on the topic of EMP and has a web site dedicated to his research.

Also, consider checking out this video. There are lots of videos of interviews with Dr. Forstchen

Also, separate from the book and author, this piece on future weapons.

In my opinion, this author has a keen sense of human behavior, especially in stressful and traumatic situations; an acute sense of the sociological implications of an event such as an EMP attack. I think that he is extremely accurate in his assessment of what our culture could be reduced to in the event of this type of catastrophic event. The novel gives one a lot of food for thought regarding steps that could be taken to lessen the blow of such an event … at least, on a personal/family level.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR THE LESSONS LEARNED

Original article posted on thefreemanonline.org 9 Jun 2010

For the past decade I have focused on the growth of federal criminal law, and in a recent article in Regulation magazine I took a hard look at how this development harms the economy. With the Obama administration’s stated determination to have the Justice Department seek criminal charges in the BP oil spill, I believe we should take a hard look at the entire legal process.

To understand the current situation, remember that at the founding of the United States the only federal crimes were treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. Today there are more than 4,000 federal criminal statutes and 10,000-plus more federal regulations that can be rolled into crimes. In the past 30 years the federal prison population has grown from 20,000 to more than 200,000 and many thousands more are on probation or are awaiting incarceration.

About half the federal prison population consists of people convicted of drug-related offenses, as the drug war has fueled the growth of federal law-enforcement power. While “white collar” offenders are perhaps 10 percent of the federal prison population, this still is a significant number, and what makes it more significant is that many people convicted are not guilty of “crimes” in the historical sense, but simply violated rules they did not even know existed.

FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE FOLLOW THIS LINK