Thursday, October 30, 2008

Interesting Thoughts from Charles Krauthammer

This article appeared earlier in the week and I thought I'd share it... Charles Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize winner and is considered a fair-minded and brilliant intellectual. He writes a nationally syndicated column for the Washington Post, which appears in more tha 150 newspapers across the country.

I've included his BIO below.



Ralph E. Jordan
CEO & President

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October 24, 2008, 0:00 a.m.


McCain Gets My Vote

I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.


By Charles Krauthammer


Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.


I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.


First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.


McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

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McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.


The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.


Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?


Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign-policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?


There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test?


And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally — deny its success.

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The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

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Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.


© 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group


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Charles Krauthammer's Biography

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Charles Krauthammer, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, writes a nationally syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group. Krauthammer, also winner of the 1984 National Magazine Award for essays, began writing the weekly column for The Washington Post in January 1985. It now appears in more than 150 newspapers.

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The late Meg Greenfield, longtime editorial page editor of The Washington Post, called Krauthammer's column "independent and hard to peg politically. It's a very tough column. There's no 'trendy' in it. You never know what is going to happen next."

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Says Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post: "Krauthammer's weekly essays on the war on terrorism, bioethics, the Middle East and other complex and contentious issues cut through the cant and the muddy thinking in a way that many other columnists can only envy."

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A column, says Krauthammer, is not just politics. "My beat is ideas, everything from the ethics of cloning to strategy in Iraq. I also do public service, like reading Stephen Hawking's books and assuring my readers that 'It is not you. They are entirely incomprehensible.'"

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Krauthammer was born in New York City and raised in Montreal. He was educated at McGill University, majoring in political science and economics, Oxford University (Commonwealth Scholar in Politics) and Harvard (M.D. in 1975). He practiced medicine for three years as a resident and then chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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In 1978, he quit medical practice, came to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research for the Carter administration, and began contributing articles to The New Republic. During the presidential campaign of 1980, he served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale. He joined The New Republic as a writer and editor in 1981. He writes regular essays for Time magazine and contributes to several other publications, including The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and The National Interest. He has been honored by many organizations, from the Center for Security Policy (Mighty Pen Award) to People for the American Way (First Amendment Award). In 2003, he was a recipient of the first annual Bradley Prize. In 2004, he was honored by the American Enterprise Institute with the Irving Kristol Award.

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Krauthammer lives in suburban Washington with his wife Robyn, an artist. Their son is a student at Harvard.



Monday, October 27, 2008

What a Week Last Week Was...

The Tampa Rays won (before they lost 2 in a row) in the World Series. The Tampa Bay Bucs also were victorious (before they lost to Dallas...but this was all news from last week). As a die-hard sports fan, these events, alone, might have been enough to make for a great week last week, but then this week came along. (I'm just hoping next week will be a repetition of last week, not this week...as it relates to victory).
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Over the last weekend I was sitting out in my lanai (back porch in Florida , for those of you from Loma Linda) returning a few business phone calls. A lady we flew into an area where we have an account decided she wanted to live in a more urban location and would not be coming to work for us. Bummer, she was a great candidate...I was a bit disappointed until... to my pleasant surprise, an emailed resume’ came across my Blackberry. I phoned the applicant, a perfusionist in Texas, who originated from the town where we had the new account. She indicated she was interested in moving back home...hooray!!
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After a telephone interview, I was impressed by the candidate and suggested she speak to our Chief and if he thought it would be appropriate and felt that she would be a good candidate that she consider a trip to visit us and meet the administration and surgeons. She was going to get back with me after speaking with our Chief and her boss about getting some time off. She phoned back a little later to say she had a great conversation with our Chief and that he asked her to visit and she received clearance from her boss to take the trip but it had to be today. We were able to make flight arrangements and scheduled a meeting with our staff, the administration and our surgeons and by 5 PM that day, she was on a plane. She was interviewed, saw a case, she loved the people and they loved her. Her references were glowing and we hired her. Hooray! Hooray!

So, one door closes...the good candidate who declined our offer...another door opens. And the week wrapped up in Victory ! I was happy for the Rays...as well as for the Bucs...and I was delighted we hired a really top notch person for Trident. You know...sometimes you think that if you try hard enough and have hope that good things will happen. And they usually do...however…as you know, it takes a lot of effort.


Just wanted to share with you a brief moment of joy...even with this ridiculous Bail Out and the greed and corruption on Wall Street and Congress...we must keep our faith and hope alive. Do discern and think clearly and rationally about this very important election coming up in less than 10 days. My Dad use to tell me, “Buy only things you can afford...and you are judged by the company you keep...” But then, he was inspired by Jack Kennedy...and he voted for him. He was a Roosevelt Democrat (Great Depression influence) and I was a Goldwater Republican now almost Libertarian...less Government and let the system work as it is suppose to work.


Do we, as a Country and a Society, have an obligation to help our fellow citizens? I think we do and I think it should be up to each of us to do what we can to help those in need. I don't think it's the government's duty to mandate any of us to do that which we can do ourselves on our own volition. That redistribution of the wealth comment made to Joe the Plumber could prove to most of the intuitive hard working citizens of this Country, especially those who own or work for a privately owned business, a harbinger of what we might expect from an Obama Presidency. Yet this young fellow does inspire. I am too old and too cynical and have too much experience to be taken in by the glib arrogance and velvet tongue of a well meaning anti-capitalist, who's far left pronouncements are as disturbing as the whacko nuttiness of the far far right...what a difficult decision for some. Check your heart and your head; be sure of the facts and do not be influenced by the crazy opinions of others...and do not be swayed by the liberal left leaning and unfair 4th Estate...but vote! It will be the most important vote of your lifetime to date... for you, your children and their children.


Ralph Jordan
President & CEO

Friday, October 24, 2008

Testing Obama's Mettle

I am fully aware that some readers are so hateful of the "Bush" administration that you are unwilling to even consider another Republican Administration. However, to be forewarned is to be forearmed and this article is a warning of significant magnitude. Barack Obama is the Jedi Knight of persuasion but does he have the mettle of a Jedi Knight?

No, according to his running mate Senator Biden who is quoted below. You really ought to read this article.

Ralph Jordan


Testing Obama's mettle
By Caroline B. Glick

In a week and a half, American voters will elect the next US President. Their decision will impact the entire world.

Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama now enjoys a significant lead in the polls against Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. For McCain to win, a lot of Obama supporters will need to reassess their choice for president. This week, Obama's running-mate Senator Joseph Biden gave Obama supporters a good reason to change their minds.

In much-reported remarks to campaign donors in Seattle on Sunday, Biden warned that if Obama is elected to the White House, it will take America's adversaries no time at all to test him. In his words, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama ... The world is looking ... Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate." Biden then continued, "And he's gonna need help ...We're gonna need you to use your influence ...within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right." Many commentators have minimized the importance of Biden's remarks by claiming that all new leaders are tested.

But this is not exactly correct. World leaders test their adversaries when they perceive them as weak. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected US president in 1952, the Soviet Union did not move quickly to test the man who had led Allied Forces in World War II. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the Iranian regime released the US hostages it had held for a year and a half. In speaking as he did, Biden essentially acknowledged three things. First, he recognized that Obama projects an image of weakness and naivete internationally that invite America's adversaries to challenge him.

Second, by stating that if Obama is tested a crisis will ensue, Biden made clear that Obama will fail the tests he is handed as a newly inaugurated president. After all, when an able leader is tested, he acts wisely and secures his nation's interests while averting a crisis. Finally, Biden made clear that Obama's failure will be widely noted, and hence, "it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

In light of Biden's dire warning about his running-mate, the central question that Americans ought to be asking themselves is whether or not Biden is correct. Is it true that Obama projects a posture of weakness and incompetence internationally and is it likely that this posture reflects reality? Unfortunately, it appears that Biden knows exactly what he is talking about. Take Iran for example. Obama has stated outright, that if he is elected US president, he will offer to conduct direct negotiations with his Iranian counterpart President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions.

Yet two weeks ago, the Iranians made clear that their dispute with America is not about who occupies the White House, but about the nature the US. Speaking to the official Iranian news service IRNA two weeks ago, Iranian Vice President for Media Affairs Mehdi Kalhor stipulated that Iran will only agree to meet with a US leader after America has bowed to Teheran's will. In his words, Iran will refuse to hold such high-level talks "for as long as US forces have not left the Middle East region, and [the US] continues its support for the Zionist regime." Kalhor explained, "It is stupidity to hold talks without any change in US attitudes."

After naming its price, Iran has since done its best to make its preconditions palatable for an Obama administration. This it has done by claiming that it will not attack the US, it will only attack Israel. Just after Kalhor's interview, Seyed Safavi, a senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a diplomatic audience in London that Iranian leadership circles are now debating the option of attacking Israel without attacking US forces in the region. Safavi added that chances for direct negotiations between the US and Iran will increase if Obama is elected. Alluding to Kalhor's remarks, Safavi claimed that sanctions against Iran have failed and that if the US expects Iran to stop enriching uranium, it will have to take "firm and significant" steps in Iran's direction.

Then on Wednesday, in a visit to US-ally Bahrain, the speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani gave Obama the regime's official endorsement. Larijani said, "We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational."

Iran's pre-US election behavior indicates that Iran will waste no time testing Obama's mettle. Iran is behaving as if it fully expects Obama to do what his supporter Rev. Jesse Jackson expects him to do. That is, like Jackson, Iran expects Obama to end "Zionist control" of US foreign policy. And to aid the process, the Iranians are willing to leave US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan alone as they attack Israel with their nascent nuclear arsenal shortly after Obama is inaugurated.

In his remarks on Sunday Biden made clear that he does not believe that Obama will agree to use the US military to confront Iran or any other enemy. His rejection of the use of force is not due to a sense that force is not necessary. Rather it is due to his dim assessment of America's military capabilities. In his words, "We do not have the military capacity, nor have we ever, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, to dictate outcomes. ... It's so much more complicated than that. And Barack gets it."

Given the Democratic ticket's belief that the US military is too weak to protect American interests, it could be expected that Obama and Biden would support strengthening the US military. But the opposite is the case. Obama has called for slashing the US military budget, cutting back the US's anti-missile programs and scaling back drastically the US nuclear arsenal. That is, although Obama has claimed that he will never take the option of the use of force off the table, by refusing to strengthen the US military which he perceives as weak, he is making certain that the US military option is ineffectual.

In certain respects, if Americans elect Obama to lead them on November 4, they will be repeating the decision of Israeli voters who elected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to lead them in March 2006. Like Obama, Olmert ran on a platform of appeasing Israel's enemies.

In addition to his plan to curtail US military options by decreasing US military budgets, Obama's appeasement platform includes his pledge to abandon the Bush administration's sole foreign policy success in its second term by pulling US forces out of Iraq. He has also promised to exacerbate Bush's second term policy failures by expanding the outgoing administration's penchant for courting US adversaries.

Iran will likely be the first US adversary to test a president Obama. And Obama will have no idea what to do. While Obama has stated repeatedly that a nuclear-armed Iran is a "game-changer" Obama's own rulebook for international relations has no relevance for dealing with Iran's game.

Obama views international relations as a creature of American will. If America is nice to others, they will be nice to America. But the fact of the matter is that regimes like Iran hate the US regardless of how it behaves. The only question with strategic relevance for Washington is whether the Iranians also fear the US. And Obama has given them no reason to fear him. To the contrary, he has given them reason to believe that under his leadership, the mullahs can defeat America.

America stands to elect its new president in times of nearly unprecedented dangers. Iran is on the threshold of nuclear weapons. Thanks to the Bush administration, North Korea now feels free to vastly expand its nuclear proliferation activities. Oil rich states like Venezuela, Russia and Iran recognize that with global oil prices decreasing, now is the time to strike before they are impoverished. And the international economic turmoil will cause Western nations to recoil from international confrontations and so embolden rogue states to attack their interests.

The prospect of an Obama policy failure is enough to keep men and women of good faith up at night. Certainly it should suffice to convince some Obama supporters to reconsider their options.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

On Heart Health from A Different Perspective

I came across a philosophical article the other day and it struck me as a grand reminder to manage stress. The mind-body connection is undeniable and as professionals in the cardiovascular industry, we know this all too well. That said, here are a few words excerpted as inspired:

The tragedy of human heart disease has motivated many medical researchers. As early as 1905 the heart of a dog was transplanted into another dog at the University of Chicago. But it wasn’t until 1967 that the celebrated South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the transplant of a human heart. Mechanical hearts of various kinds have also met with some success. Notable was Barney Clark, who in 1982 became the first recipient of the Jarvik-7, a permanent-replacement artificial heart. He lived for 112 days attached to a cumbersome console. Another patient, William Schroeder, lived for 620 days after the implanting of a Jarvik–7.

The artificial heart is generally used to bridge patients over the waiting period until a suitable human heart becomes available for transplant. In 1985 Thomas Gaidosh received a Jarvik-7 and four days later a human heart. He lived 11 more years.

There have been many amazing developments in the field. Last summer in Louisville, Kentucky, surgeons implanted a revolutionary self-contained artificial heart into the chest of a terminally ill diabetic man. Though his condition had been grave, the device allowed him relief from other organ malfunctions by canceling the effect of his diseased heart.

These attempts at resolving physical disease demonstrate significant progress. But the heart is more than a muscular pump that is sometimes diseased. We also speak of it as the seat of emotional well-being. That may not be too far from the truth. Some years ago I interviewed a medical doctor, Redford Williams, who had written a book titled The Trusting Heart. His purpose was to show the toxic effect on the body of our own hostile spirit and, conversely, the physical benefits of a positive frame of mind. From his studies of the endocrine system and the effects of stress and emotion, he had discovered something that the ancients knew: Our emotions can keep us well or make us sick. Take these words of advice from the wisdom literature of Solomon: “A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones” (Proverbs 14:30). Further he wrote, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones” (Proverbs 17:22).....

Excerpt.


Source: Hulm, D., 2006, Reflections: Diseases of the Heart, vision.org, retrieved October 7, 2008 at

http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=1191



Regards,

Ralph E. Jordan
President & CEO