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.

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

Harley Mechanic & The Heart Surgeon

A mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known heart surgeon in his shop.

.

The surgeon was there waiting for the service manager to come take a look at his bike. The mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hey, Doc, can I ask you a question?"

.

The surgeon, a bit surprised, walked over to the mechanic working on the motorcycle. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take valves out, fix 'em, put 'em back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I get such a small salary and you get the really big bucks, when you and I are doing basically the same work?"

.

The surgeon paused, smiled and leaned over, and whispered to the mechanic, "Try doing it with the engine running."

This Says It All....

Monday, Sep. 01, 2008

In Wasilla, Pregnancy Was No Secret

By Nathan Thornburgh / WASILLA, ALASKA

So his name is Levi.

That's about the only thing I didn't know about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The rest of the details I picked up almost without trying, while talking about other things with townsfolk — some who know the governor and her family well, some who don't. It was, more or less, an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: the governor's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it's really nobody's business beyond that.

I happen to agree.

This tiny town wedged between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountain ranges has intrigued the whole country since John McCain's surprise Friday announcement that Wasilla's favorite daughter, Sarah Palin, would be his running mate. Sure, some of the interest was a prelude to attacks on Palin's readiness for national office. But Wasilla also offered a welcome chance to get specific about the geography of a politician. It's one of our most cherished myths, that a leader can come from somewhere and you can guess at their qualities not just by what they say, but by where they live.

Well, here's the deal: small towns have their own value systems, and in this situation those values are a lot more valid than the dispassionate, pushy inquisitiveness that political journalism encourages.

I just got off the phone with a longtime Wasilla resident. She had urged me to find time today to go up to Hatcher Pass — "the most beautiful place in the valley!" — when I mentioned that the story on Bristol's baby is now national news. Her voice slowed. "Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry. That's so unfair."

Wasilla seems at times to be utterly without guile. It's a large part of the town's charm, and it's exactly the quality that could make an unorthodox pick like Palin pay off. Don't get me wrong — she's a tough politician with sharp enough elbows on her own. But still, she appears to be more steeped in the values of her hometown than any politician I've ever come across.

Maybe that means Palin is a little too much Northern Exposure for America — after all, her father's good friend Curt Menard happily showed me a picture of the governor as a high schooler in 1981, in a root cellar with family and friends, helping skin and cube and cure a whole moose. It's enough to make you almost miss fake hunters like John Kerry and Mitt Romney.

People in Wasilla are Alaskan tough, so not only does a thing like teen pregnancy not seem like anyone's damn business, but it's also not seen as the calamity that so many people in the lower 48 states might think it is. This is dangerous country — it's not just the roughneck jobs on cable reality shows. It's real life here. I listened to the absolutely heartbreaking story of how the godfather of Track Palin, Sarah's oldest son, died in a small plane crash just minutes after having dropped off four kids. Another family invited me into their home and told their incredible story; with one son in Iraq, their other son was working on a conveyor line in Anchorage, got caught in the belt and had his head partially crushed. He lived to stand across the kitchen table from me and his parents, looking fully healed just three months later, grinning at his dumb luck and wondering what comes next in life. "It makes you realize that a thing like a little teenage pregnancy isn't such a big deal," his mom said. "Bristol — and lots of other girl like her out there — are going to be just fine."

If you haven't guessed yet, the people here are genuinely friendly. Even those in Palin's inner sanctum who have been told since Friday not to talk to reporters by McCain's media team are almost apologetic that they can't be neighborly and chat, since you came all this way to little Wasilla. And those who can talk, do. All weekend they had the decency not to pretend that they didn't know the governor's eldest daughter was pregnant. But they also expected decency in return, that I wouldn't be the kind of person to make sport out of a young girl's slip.

The fact is, regardless of what you will hear over the next few days, Bristol's pregnancy is not a legitimate political issue. Sarah Palin is a long-term member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can't tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.

You can argue that it was ham-handed of the McCain campaign — they had to have known, right? — to somehow let this drop just a few days after the announcement. Pregnancy does show, and it does have a ticking clock. The story was going to come out eventually.

As for the idea — sure to be floated — that the avowedly antiabortion Palin might have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn't bet on it. The Palin family seems to share the same pro-life values going as far back as anyone here can remember, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if Bristol wore those values, however imperfectly, as her own. At least, that's what the town thinks. And Wasilla, above all, is pretty sensible.