Speaking of thin resumes: meet Polly "A New Generation of Leadership" Adams Mervine

When I ran my original post about 19th District Libertarian State Senate candidate Wendy Jones, at least one of my regular commenters carped that she had a rather mediocre to non-existent record of public service or public policy experience [discounting her work with 2nd Amendment groups, LGBT groups, and the Sussex Mobility Consortium]. But now that I see Democrat ["Don't I look a lot like Sarah Palin"] Polly ADAMS Mervine's resume from her campaign website, I get it completely:

Family: Husband S. Jay Mervine,

Pilot, American Airlines

Marine Capt. Desert Storm

Son Stephen J. Mervine, Jr.,

9th grade Sussex Tech

Graduate Eagles Nest Christian Academy

Greenwood Mennonite School

Occupation: Co-owner Fauxbulous FX, Inc.

Previous 2nd grade teacher North Laurel Elementary School

Previous English teacher All Nippon Airways in Okinawa, Japan

Education: Elementary Education Teaching Certification—East Carolina Univ. ‘91

Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth Univ. ‘86

Woodbridge High School ‘82

Activities/Community Involvement:

Member Union United Methodist Church

Former Children’s Church Coordinator

Board Member Clear Space Productions

Founder Fund For Women

Former Board Member Delaware Pain Initiative

Founding Sister-Epsilon Gamma Chapter of Alpha Sigma Alpha ‘84

Let's see: she's been a 2nd Grade Teacher, attends church, and served as a board member for a couple of charities. Yep. Got it. Oh, yeah: she helped found an ASS--oops, I mean ASA--chapter. Unfortunately, she hasn't actually taken time to put down anything about her stance on the issues.

Now I can see why some people might be just so bowled over that they'd say, Who needs an election? The obvious intellectual and philosophical strength of the Delaware Democratic Party is on display right here. Let's just give her that crown she should have had in the Miss Delaware pageant. Strange, 3rd place in Miss Delaware [what year was that?] ain't on the list of achievements.

Wendy Jones has actually had a life of hard work, and has actually posted a platform on the issues:

Petition/Referendum: As your state senator, Wendy pledges to support the introduction of the use of petition and referendum on the ballot; in the meantime, Wendy pledges to sponsor and introduce any legislation supported by a certain percentage of the registered voters within the area involved.

Prevailing Wage: Replace the current process with a competitive, sealed-bid procedure by private industries, promoting fair market value for your hard earned tax dollars.

Gun Control: “In my opinion, gun control should be defined as a steady aim. What part of ’shall not be infringed’ do they not understand? The Second Amendment guarantees the rest, being necessary to the security of a free state, and as a last resort against tyranny in government.” - Wendy Jones

School Vouchers: Citizens have the right to choose how and where their children are educated, whether it be public, private, charter, parochial, or home. Furthermore, their school tax dollars should be applied to whichever is their choice. Those citizens having no eligible children should pay no school taxes.

Tenth Amendment: Fight to restore and defend the state’s and people’s rights as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution in the face of a virtual irrelevance by our centralized national government.

Term Limits:Wendy proposes that no elected office be held for over two consecutive terms without vacating that position for a third term, after would they will be free to run for that office again. She includes herself in that proposal.

Illegal Immigration: Enhance and expand enforcing existing laws, by maximizing fines and other sanctions against offending employers.

Property Rights: The right to private ownership of property is the basic foundation on which this country was built. There can be no better stewards than those private owners; land is not inherited from our ancestors but borrowed from our children.

Gay Marriage: I oppose all government interference between the freedom of choice for consenting adults to freely contract within the sanctity of their home and their church.

You may or may not agree with all (or any) of her positions, but at least she's actually telling people about what she'd do as State Senator--not just why Daddy's little darling deserves, Biden-like, to continue the legacy....

Why I'm not a conservative; OR--why it is so lonely being a Libertarian advocate of smaller government

... because the GOP never--not just George W Bush never, but never even under Ronald Reagan--meant it.

And I have not found a piece of a rant that I more wish I'd written in a long time than this one from Matt Barganier:

If you think most self-described conservatives really hate Big Government, then you stopped paying attention sometime around, oh, the Nixon administration. Good God, man, if they hated Big Government, wouldn’t they at least dislike the most wasteful and intrusive government programs of them all, from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs? No, they love Big Government, from its big, fat boots to its big, fat head. Oh, they’re angry that some of the loot falls on the, um… undeserving, but that won’t stop them from sucking the teats of Social Security and Medicare to the shape and texture of a deflated football. They won’t abide tax increases, but they see no connection between those and deficit spending. And why should they? Just keep those F-22s coming, barkeep! The grandkids are buying!

What both Republicans and Democrats agree upon is that it is all right for government to keep sucking money out of the economy as long as it is their particular, obviously moral purpose for which it is used.

Then they trick us into arguing about the moral purposes rather than the original question of the morality of the whole process.

Goldman Sachs: The Obama Administration's Haliburton?

I shouldn't have to explain the Haliburton reference, right?

You need to listen to Steve Cordasco lay out the Goldman Sachs mafia that has been set in place to determine which banks get TARP funds, who eats who, and who among the surviving banks gets the best deal. [The audio is from an entire show; fastforward to about 35 minutes in for the GS information.]

Once you realizer that Secretary Geitner and Fed Chair Bernancke have set things up so that GS alums [all with stock and stock options] are completely running the bank bailouts, then check this out:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reported Tuesday a second-quarter profit that jumped more than 60% as the investment powerhouse earned nearly $750 million from equity underwriting, helping battered financial-services firms sell stock to meet new government capital requirements.

The quarterly performance from equity underwriting was a company record.

Goldman (GS 149.81, +0.37, +0.25%) also profited handsomely from its role as an intermediary, and sometimes a purchaser itself, for assets that troubled firms needed to sell quickly during the ongoing economic and market crises.

"Our role as an intermediary focused on making markets for buyers and sellers helped drive our performance. We were also active as an underwriter of many significant debt and equity offerings for clients," Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a press release.

See, the neat thing about this is that all those GS folks now working directly or even indirectly for the Treasury Department don't have to do the AIG hand-wringing about bonuses, because they all already have either the stock or the stock options to take their profits. Thus nobody in the Obama administration will be pillorying Goldman Sachs chief executives for outrageous salaries and bonuses.

But nothing like Haliburton, right...?

If only it had been declared "Top Secret" before it made its way into Borders

From AP:

Court papers filed Thursday show that prison officials twice rejected requests by inmate Ahmed Omar Abu Ali to read "Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

The books contained material "potentially detrimental to national security," prison officials said in two separate rejections from August and September.

On Friday, bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the bureau reversed course in November and let him read the books.

Damn. All you people rooting around for the birth certificate and the secret Muslim decoder ring were missing it: Virginia's Bureau of Prisons already knew the real top-secret Obama shit was in the books.

Which may only go to prove that nobody actually ever read them.

Gandhi, the Daily Kos, and Libertarians

At Delawareliberal (the really old version of the site) they used to have up the following quotation from Gandhi:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Which is intriguing in light of the fact that some diarists at The Daily Kos are now spending almost as much time discussing [debunking, from their perspective] Libertarianism and the idea of a serious Libertarian third party as they spend trashing social conservatism and Sarah Palin: here, here, and here.

As a rough measure it is becoming more and more clear that libertarian ideas--unfettered by the overtly moralistic and often theocratic overtones of the extreme social conservatives--are seen by progressives and liberals to be their major intellectual and political opposition.

Which would be a lot of fun if Libertarians could ever find a way to organize themselves.

Ah, well....

Today's quote from John Holdren, Obama administration Science Advisor

"Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction."

Putting the science of eugenics back in its proper place at the top of the Federal government....

For a more complete look at Dr. Holdren's long-held views on forced abortions, population control, and the elimination of national sovereignty, go here.

If you 'd like to do anecdotal arguments for or against nationalized health care...

... then you should talk to my Dad.

Dad's 81, Mom's 78. When we talked last night he--shall we say--waxed eloquent about the idea that Medicare is the standard by which we should judge the government's performance as a health insurance provider.

First off, Dad points out, after a lifetime of paying Medicare taxes, the coverage is hardly free.

"They take $86 a month for each of us out of our Social Security payments," he notes. "Then the Medicare only covers about 60% of my out-of-pocket costs, so I had to get the supplemental insurance. We got the cheapest one we could find--bare bones coverage that leaves out a number of things we still have to pay for. That costs another $176 a month. And we didn't take the prescription drug coverage because that would have been at least another $120 a month. We just couldn't afford it."

Let's crunch those numbers: $86 + $86 + $176 + $120 = $468/month, or $5,616/year.

Above that, he estimates that--not counting prescriptions--he ends up with roughly another $3 - $4,000 of out-of-pocket medical expenses per year. Some of that occurs because the doctor he has seen for his joint problems for nearly two decades finally made the tough decision to stop accepting Medicare, so if Dad wants to keep seeing the physician he trusts (a major promise of the new reforms, right?) he has to pay the freight himself.

My Dad is a retired public school teacher: retired with a disability after twenty-eight years (he's legally blind); Mom stayed at home through most of those years. They're contemplating the move into assisted-care now, and as a bridge to that end they investigated having a home health aide come in a couple times a week to assist with the heavier housework.

Medicare pays for that, right?

Well, yes, sort of. Except, as the nice but oh-so-sorrowful woman at the benefits office explained, to qualify for the home health aide Mom would have to give up her driver's license. "We can't provide in-home services for people who can drive."

Of course, if Mom gave up her driver's license they'd have no way to shop ... or make doctor's appointments.

Would Medicare do that? "No, but there are some volunteer programs that might be able to help you out once a week or so."

The common meme/narrative/talking point most often extended by the advocates of single-payer or the public option is that the best case would resemble "Medicare for everybody."

But to have "Medicare for everybody," as President Obama now points out, the government will have to cut Medicare costs yet again.

To Dad what that means is pretty clear: "There will be more doctors who won't take my Medicare, and they'll raise my premiums and co-pays."

Anecdotal? Sure. Opinionated? Well, he is my Dad--what did you expect?

The Obama administration reticence on naming a special prosecutor...

... has nothing to do with being thus far unaware of Bush administration policies on domestic surveillance or any failure of the MSM to cover this issue.

Yes, there are new details emerging, but we knew--we pretty much ALL knew--this was going on.

As much as I cavil about the national Libertarian Party, it was the only political party that really made this a significant issue during the 2008 elections. Again and again.

The ACLU has been pointing this out--in detail and along with other homeland security outrages--for years.

We knew. As a friend of mine said about two months ago, "There has been no greater stain on the reputation of American in modern memory than the fact that we torture."

Torture, surveillance, constitutional abuse.

And yet there continues to be surprise [now growing louder, I will admit], among our liberal and progressive friends that the Obama administration would rather leave this all in the past, and is reluctant to name a special prosecutor.

How could this be? It's not the political cost, as some have suggested. It's the fact--that the MSM and New Media have both documented thoroughly since Inauguration Day--that little has changed under the new administration.

The Obama administration has gone to court repeatedly relying on Bush-era legal theories to defend its conduct, has mooted its ability to detain people found innocent by the courts, and has even discussed executions without trials while pushing for a new cyber-security law that amounts to authorizing a complete government take-over of the internet. The Obama administration piously talks about shutting down Gitmo while maintaining abusive interrogation techniques at Bagram.

Want links? I've done this so many times that you can just start here.

The Obama administration therefore has this tiny little conundrum to solve before it can authorize a special prosecutor: how do you take the Bush administration to court for doing many things that you're still doing?

OK this is domination (and Congressional) power-mad Christianists at their worst

Not an elegant title, but I am still blown away by the Rachel Maddow interview regarding The Family, which you can either see or read here.

Only to make it imperative that you visit, I will give you this snippet about a powerful, secretive Washington DC Christianist group that includes Senators and Congresscritters among its converts:

Maddow: Wow. When I read your book, The Family, when it first came out in hardback, my notes on um, I write notes in the flyleaf about what I was thinking about. And my notes about it, I went back and looked, were that it was essentially to promote, it saw its role as promoting American power, world wide, unfettered capitalism with no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly powerful rich men should get as many resources as possible personally, and they should just privately help everyone else. That is the impression that I was left with. Was I close?

[Author Jeff] Sharlet: That's dead on the money. The family began, it's the oldest Christian conservative organization in Washington and it goes back seventy years. And the founder believed that god gave him a new revelation saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for two thousand years and that what most people think of as Christianity, as being about, you know, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out, he believes god came to him one night in April in 1935 and said what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful. And that these powerful men who were chosen by god can then if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle-down fundamentalism.

Words fail. Tomorrow maybe they won't, but tonight...

wow.

Comment rescues, bad math, and ridiculous factoids of the health care debate

Because people who have an agenda rarely bother to check their facts, and people who agree with their agenda rarely bother to challenge them, things like this comment on the American Medical Association versus Physicians for National Healthcare pass into history as fact-free talking points:

The majority of doctors who used to be members of the AMA, have left that group and joined Physicans for National Health Care. PNHP.org. These doctors are all for single payer health care!

Not that this commenter will every reaLIZe it, but the statistics say otherwise.

The AMA has not quite 245,000 members, of whom about 135,000 are actually practicing physicians (the rest are retired, medical students, or other medical personnel). This means the AMA represents something like 15% of the 900,000 practicing physicians in the United States today.

Physicians for a National Health Program [the actual name of the group] claims 14,000 members. Again, not all are doctors; many are retired, medical students or allied health professionals.

Assuming that 55% of the members of PNHP [the same percentage as the AMA] are practicing physicians, this would mean that PNHP represents the views of not quite 1% of the 900,000 practicing physicians in the United States today.

For either organization to claim to speak for the entire medical profession is, therefore, dishonest, but for anyone to suggest that PHNP represents the voice of American physicians borders on delusional.

Still, it won't matter, because the relationship of talking points to truth is no longer really very important, is it?

Libertarian may be the wrong name for a political party

This is not exactly news, but a comment in response to a Peter Orvetti post on moderate libertarians at Independent Political Report got me thinking about it again.

Erik Geib says

I still feel like most of this in-fighting wouldn’t be so severe if the party simply weren’t named after a philosophy.

There are reasons that the Democratic Party is not named the Liberal Party or the Progressive Party, which is the same reason that the Republicans don't call themselves the Conservative Party.

When I break it down I get two main reasons:

(1) Because not all Democrats are progressive/liberal, and not all Republicans are that conservative. Instead, the parties are (or at least were in the case of the severely wounded GOP) vehicles for groups of political fellow travelers to use to win elections at all levels of government. Because of the way they are named (see the item below), they can accommodate Democratic Senators that are as conservative as Bayh or Carper in the same party with Dodd or Kennedy. The Libertarian Party, however, gets tied up in endless what kind of Libertarian are you and who are the real Libertarians, you're not distractions to the point wherein it implodes and convinces the American voter that they are definitely not ready for prime time.

(2) The names themselves--Democrat and Republican-- are perfect for political parties, wherein Libertarian is fatally flawed. We are a Democracy and a Republic [at least in some non-purist sense], so both parties can lay legitimate claim in that sense to being about all Americans. Libertarian is the name of an ideology, not a party--by definition a sub-set [and a fairly damned exclusive one at that] of the total populace. For a third party to be effectively organized around generally Libertarian principles, as the Dems are oganized around generally liberal principles, it needs a different name.

The problem is that the remaining good names are problematic. Somebody in the thread I quoted suggested Liberty Party, and I have always thought that Constitution Party, Federalist Party, and even Reform Party had good points. Problem: you've got to be able to turn the party name into an adjective--Democrat or Republican--and the only way to do that with Liberty Party is ... Libertarian!? Not gonna work.

Constitution, Federalist, and Reform names have already been taken by people whose ideas--in many ways--are not quite what we'd be looking for.

Freedom Party? Oops--too much like the Freepers.

Free Market Party? Too much economics and not enough individual liberty.

Civil Liberties Party? Possible, because civil libertarian, strangely enough, does not have quite the baggage attached to it that plain Libertarian does.

Jeffersonian Party? I'd kind of like it because I am an unreconstructed fan of TJ, but in the current time the image of Sally Hemmings pretty much cuts away at everything.

Bull Moose Party? Don't tempt me.

Thomas Paine Alliance? You'd get called Pains

Common Sense Party? Too much Glenn Beck association for me.

Objectivist Party? Hello Ayn Rand. Goodby votes.

Civil Resistance Party? Stolen from Venezuela. Better give it back.

Constitutional Union Party? Too Statist for a lot of Libertarians--too Civil War-era for a lot of other folks.

Limited Government Party?

Indepedent Citizens Party?

Obviously I need some help here.

But you knew that already.

Newt drops acid on Al Jazeera

... or something like that, since it is difficult to explain why else he would be there advocating that the United States attack not Iran's nuclear capabilities, but that nation's refineries in order to de-stablize the existing regime:

The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has said that the US should "sabotage" Iran's oil and gas infrastructure as part of its efforts to bring down the government.

In an interview with Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis for the Fault Lines programme, Republican Newt Gingrich said targeting Iran's refinery would spark an economic crisis that would destabilise the government in Tehran.

He said the US should "use covert operations … to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime".

"I think we have a vested interest, the world has a vested interest, in a responsible Iranian government, just as we have a vested interest in a responsible North Korean government," he said.

I love the logic, Newt old buddy.

We want a responsible government in Iran that does not meddle with the internal affairs of its neighbors, which we will achieve by meddling in its internal affairs.

Hopefully, on Tom Knapp's GOP Presidential Candidate Handicapping Post the odds on the Newtster are going down.

When self-regulation leads to tax harvesting--OR--protecting the public from bad yoga while raising revenue

Even the New York Times cannot shake off the idea that this is ... not just ridiculous but positively Orwellian:

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ten years ago, with yoga transforming into a ubiquitous pop culture phenomenon from a niche pursuit, yoga teachers banded together to create a voluntary online registry of schools meeting new standards for training instructors.

But that list — which now includes nearly 1,000 yoga schools nationwide, many of them tiny — is being put to a use for which it was never intended. It is the key document in a crackdown that pits free-spirited yogis against lumbering state governments, which, unlike those they are trying to regulate, are not always known for their flexibility.

Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement — disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.

That this is pretty much a naked money grab rather than needed to protect the public is pretty clear:

The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income.” Until then, only a few states had been aware of the registry and had acted to regulate yoga instruction, though courses in other disciplines like massage therapy have long been subject to oversight....

Regulators said licensing the schools would allow states to enforce basic standards and protect customers who usually spend $2,000 to $5,000 on training courses, not to mention provide revenue for cash-starved governments. “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

Many smaller studios are being shut down by the licensing fees, but in some states Yoga masters are fighting back:

In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools warning them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000. But yogis around the state joined in opposition, and the state has, for now, backed down.

Let's go back for a moment to that idiotic comment by Patrick Sweeney of Wisconsin: “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules."

First off, moron: they did set up rules. That's how you found them in the first place, because they set up industry standards.

Second, pea-brain: there hasn't been the slightest piece of evidence put forth that unlicensed Yoga schools do any harm to anybody.

So forget the idea that you're somehow acting in the public interest. The truth is that Yoga has become a $6 Billion business over the past few years, and cash-strapped State governments are trying to cash in.

This is immoral, opportunistic tax harvesting at its worst.

But they'll get away with it.

Obama administration: no reason to investigate reports of mass murders by US-backed force in Afghanistan

Unbelievable:

WASHINGTON -Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces.

The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country.

The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate.

"There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this," Lapan said. "So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate."

Of course, Dostum has been connected with the CIA and US Special Forces since 2001:

In November 2001, with the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan, and against the wishes of the CIA who distrusted Dostum, a team including Johnny Micheal Spann landed to set up communications in the Dariya Suf. A few hours later 23 men of Operational Detatchment Alpha (ODA) 595 landed to begin the war....

There were allegations in 2001 that Dostum and his forces, who were fighting jointly with US Special Forces, suffocated as many as 2,000 prisoners in container trucks following the Taliban surrender of Kunduz in an incident that has become known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre.

And--while basically resuming his career as an Afghan warlord--Dostum is technically a senior official in the government we are supporting:

[President] Karzai appointed him as a special adviser on security and military affairs, with effective control over security affairs in the northern Afghan provinces of Balkh, Jowzjan, Sar-e Pol, Samangan, and Faryab. Today he runs parts of the country's north as his own fiefdom, nominally serving as a deputy defense minister to the national government in Kabul but operating almost totally independent of the government. Dostum's force of some 20,000 militia fighters is composed mostly of ethnic Uzbeks who are members of his political group, Junbish-e Melli.

This time even the partisans at the Daily Kos are wondering WTF?:

My understanding of offical White House policy is justice must take a back seat to political expediency if we are to more forward. Would Obama or his lackey Eric Holder dare to initiate meaningful investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan while totally ignoring them in Gitmo or Bagram? Or would any investigation whatsoever indicate a lack of a certain, shall we say, bi-partisan spirititude?

But nothing will come of it.

As the Defense Department says, only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country, which, translated into British Imperial Speak from the 19th Century attempt to occupy Afghanistan, read like this: Just wogs killing wogs, eh? No business of ours, except that they're saving us havin' to spend on the bullets.

How to secure Afghanistan: one soldier for every 122 people in the country

Actually it's worse than that.

According to WaPo:

The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force may be twice the expanded number.

So that would be 268,000 soldiers (not counting police) for a country with a population of 32.7 million.

That's one soldier for every 122 people in the country.

But wait: by fall the US will have 68,000 troops on the ground, plus 8,000 Brits, 2,700 Canadians, and roughly another 4,000-odd NATO soldiers. So that's nearly 83,000 foreign troops, and WaPo also reports that General McChrystal may be gearing up to ask for more American forces early next year--trainers, you see.

Let's just deal with the number we know will be there in the fall, which--when added to the potential expansion of the Afghani Army--means that there could be 351,000 troops in Afghanistan by some point in 2011.

That's one soldier for every 93 Afghanis.

To give you an idea of just how massive an occupation force that would be, consider that to approach the same density of troops, you'd have to send 3.2 million troops to occupy the United States.

Ask yourself for a moment exactly what kind of a war we are fighting when the Pentagon and the commander on the ground are seriously proposing that it will take years, billions of dollars, and a troop concentration equal to 1.1% of the country's total population to achieve security.