Rick Raw: Afghanistan is Not Vietnam–Al Qaeda and Taliban have to be Defeated

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

As the eighth anniversary of 9/11 came and went, we were reminded of why we are fighting in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has joined forces with the Taliban to make Afghanistan their countrywide base of operation. More seriously, Admiral Mullen, Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that "the situation in Afghanistan is grim. The Taliban occupy a third of the country."

Presently, there are 68,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan. President Obama said that he will be authorizing at least 21,000 more troops committed to the action. Eight years after 9/11, America’s prime directive still is: We must defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban to prevent more catastropic worldwide terrorist attacks. This is a long term goal.

These crazed fanatics will not stop until they’re either dead or have completed there mission to make the entire world a fundamentalist Islamic empire. And, they’re not thinking of years, but hundreds of years or more. Therefore, we must kill them all so they can’t recruit anymore naive young Islamic suicide bombers, who are enticed with receiving 72 virgins in paradise for becoming a martyr.

Lately, some influential politicians and pundits are saying that, like the Russians, we can’t win in Afghanistan. More significantly, they are comparing Afghanistan with the Vietnam quagmire. Rubbish! This kind of talk hurts our troops, bravely risking their lives to defeat the enemy–an evil force that would turn the world back in time to a Medieval society.

Although, in a major screw up in 2001, we lost our opportunity to kill bin Ladin, he is still inspiring a new generation of Islamic fundamentalists, hell bent to kill Westerners and Jews. Now, he has gone to ground and is protected by a phallanx of radicals.

For a moment, remember the horror of 9/11 and the victims families who are still suffering from grief and PTSD. These ignorant ragheads are a serious thread to our freedom and world peace. We either fight them in the Afghanistan theater of war or we fight them on the streets of America.

Lately, the buzz from the talking heads is about the impossibility of "nation building" in Afghanistan–a primitive oxcart society. It’s not so much that we are nation building, but killing off these barbaric zealots, so that when they are all dead, the Afghan people can take back their own country.

Rick Raw: Bill Gates Having Delusions of Grandeur by Claiming to Stop Hurricanes

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

Bill Gates is the undisputed richest man in the world. His money is making so much interest, he can’t possibly spend it all. In June, 2006 Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft to devote his time to philanthropic endeavors through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He and his wife Melinda travel in their private jet to countries in Africa and other poverty stricken regions of the globe to personally supervise programs to help these people work their way out of poverty and starvation.

Of course, Gates retained his position as non-executive chairman and majority stockholder. His personal wealth is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Naturally, a man in his position feels great responsibility to engage in research and explore any dream, however ambitious..

Recently, Gates and his hand picked scientists submitted patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures ahead of the storm. No doubt, Gates was thinking about the terrible aftermath of hurricane Katrina, that practically wiped out New Orleans. Four years after the storm, New Orleans is still in recovery, with privately funded building projects in progress.

But the quiet submission for patents set off a firestorm of skepticism among prominent meteorologists who applauded Gates noble idea, but doubted his giant barges of cool water, which would cool the ocean surface ahead of hurricanes, would make that much difference in either weakening the storm or stopping it.

Wake up and feel the wind, Gates, "you can’t mess with mother nature!" Yes, Gates must be looking for new challenges into which to put his time and money. So, perhaps Gates was feeling God-like to conjure up such a grandiose idea. "I’m the king of the world," therefore I can control the weather. It’s absurd.

"The enormity of it, in order to do something effective, we’d have to do something on a scale that humans have never really done before, said Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Exactly how would Gates’ hurricane bashing method work? According to the documents sent to the patent office, many tub-like barges would be placed directly in the path of an oncoming storm. Each barge would have two conduits, each 500 feet long. One conduit would push the warm water from the ocean’s surface down, The other would bring up cold water where it lies deep under the sea.

Hurricane guru, William Gray, who has been studying and predicting hurricanes for 50 years said, "The problem is the storms come up so rapidly, you only get two or three days warning. It’s very difficult to bring up enough cold water in this time frame to have much of an effect."

Hell, Gates has enough money to drain the Arctic Ice Cap and send it down to the Caribbean to thwart the mighty storms. Come on Billy Boy, get off your high horse and get real. For years, plenty of scientists have tried various methods of seeding hurricanes to make them less dangerous. It failed. Hurricanes have a mind of their own. Once they get established, it’s futile to stop or weaken them.

Gates should let mother nature handle the weather, and forget this preposterous idea. One has to wonder–has Bill Gates developed a God complex? Well, he has more money than God, but he should stick to philanthropy as a noble use of it.

Rick Raw: Economic Recovery Slows to Snail’s Pace–Stimulus Fizzled

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

From my corner of the world, Jacksonville, Florida, I still hear of friends and former colleagues who can’t find jobs, established businesses and restaurants going belly-up, and a forty year diner theater tradition, The Alhambra, closing its doors. My E-mails tell tragic stories of once proud independent business people going bankrupt or facing foreclosure. It’s not a pretty picture.

Yet, the 24 hour news pundits are preaching optimism and announcing an uptick in the housing market. Yeah, that may be true, but the people buying these homes are speculators buying low and selling high. The average Joe is still hurting. Big companies are either still laying people off or instituting hiring freezes.

There are no jobs for the working man. It’s true that the Recovery Act has helped some rust belt areas retool to building green energy technology, such as manufacturing wind turbines, thus providing jobs for laid-off workers. But this is just a drop in the big bucket for millions of unemployed, who have seen their middle class life degenerate into poverty. These people are the new poor thrown into a lower lifestyle with the long-term poor.

Vice President, Joseph Biden recently acknowledged that the "$787 billion economic stimulus program has not yet had the impact that the White House had hoped for." Biden went on to say, "We misread how bad the economy was." Indeed, that was an understatement.
Was it too little, taking too long? Yes, but when the Congress completed their work on the

Recovery Act back in January and February, economists warned the Stimulus Package was not going to be enough to revitalize the economy. Republicans wanted to do nothing but cut taxes, and played hard ball scaring the American public with fear mongering that the bill would cost way too much.

Now, according to a recent Gallop poll, many of the independent voters in the swing states who had voted for Obama are now unhappy with the president’s performance. The underlying perception across America is the Recovery Act is not working fast enough, and is bogged down in partisan politics and stifling government bureaucracy.

While Obama’s approval rating remains high at 56%, his shining armor of the great black hope is weakening. Unless things change more rapidly, Obama’s approval rating will plummet.

The real problem is the mind boggling delay in the bloated government inefficiency getting things done. The recent "cash for clunkers" program is a good example. Many dealerships that made the deals a month ago still haven’t been paid for their parking lot full of clunkers. Making our government more efficient was one of Obama’s campaign promises that went right out the window when he was elected.

When American banks were given billion of dollars to help refinance foreclosures for people that had good credit, the individuals got the runaround from the banks. The greedy bankers opted to hang on the money and let it make interest, rather than give these deserving people a break. Congress should have given the people on the brink of losing their houses the money instead of the banks.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in Obama’s intelligence and ability to get us out of this mess. However, he underestimated the depth of the problems created by the former administration when he took office. I blame W who royally screwed up everything.

I think Obama was overwhelmed when he faced the shocking truth that solving the country’s problems was going to take more intelligent thought, planning, and energy, as well as much more time than he had anticipated.

Obama is still fighting and struggling to get bipartisan support for his policies, but he faces an angry Zeitgeist. It must be the most frustrating job in the world. It’s like churning butter with a stick to get anything done. The jury is still out on the future success of the Recovery Bill. The American people demand action. Obama’s presidency is on the line.

Rick Raw: End of Manned Space Exploration–The Fantastic Dream of Colonizing Other Planets is Lost in The Economic Apocalypse

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

Recently we celebrated the 40th anniversary of landing a man on the moon. This entire program was driven by the Space Race with the Soviet Union. The aerospace industry was given financial carte blanche to spend any amount necessary to beat the Russians to the moon.

In the dark paranoia of the Cold War, beating the Soviets was the Kennedy administration’s prime directive. After all, world peace was at stake. At the time, the Soviets were a palpable threat to humanity.

When the Space Shuttle is scrapped next year, there is nothing to replace it. Thousands of aerospace engineers and technicians will lose their jobs. The economic collapse plunged the country into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Manned space exploration is one of many victims of this financial crisis.

For years, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has led a tireless campaign to promote a manned Mars mission. Other NASA officials have planned out another trip to the moon. Sadly, these ambitious programs are way too expensive in today’s economic climate. They remain on the drawing boards.

Development of the Orbital Space Plane has stalled due to lack of funding. This was the vehicle to replace the Shuttle to haul supplies and rescue astronauts from the International Space Station. Now they only have a small Russian built escape pod should they have to abandon ship.

The dream of manned space exploration and colonization of other planets will have to be put on hold until we solve our domestic issues like health care, economic rejuvenation, green energy jobs, et al. The recession hasn’t bottomed-out yet, but there are signs that there is a resurgence of housing starts and other positive economic indicators.

Presently, NASA is getting $60 Billion a year, a paltry sum compared to NASA’s expenses for research and development of new technology. That amount could be drastically cut to $20 billion a year. After the cuts, NASA may no longer exist.

More significantly, the Zeitgeist has lost the will and excitement for continuing manned space flight. Indeed, the fantastic dream of further space travel, which we all envisioned after the moon landing in 1969, has fizzled out.

Today, millions of people are out of work and have lost their homes through foreclosure. These once middle class people are scraping by, living off unemployment compensation. Big corporations are still laying-off employees, and the job market is abysmal. Our very survival as a superpower is at stake.

More depressingly, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost billions and over 5,000 casualties. Admiral Mullen, Head of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the situation in Afghanistan is "grim," because "the Taliban occupy a third of the country."

On the positive side, there are multi-billionaires who have formed private space companies with visionary ideas to move forward with manned space flight in cheaper vehicles. Five years ago, they achieved a manned sub-orbital flight.

Interestingly, NASA’s robot space vehicle program has stepped up its pace with new and exciting robot space vehicles to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. Two advanced spacecraft packed with instruments are on their way to Pluto and Ceres, a Texas sized asteroid orbiting nearby to explore these celestial bodies. They will reach their goal by 2015.

Perhaps, it makes more sense to send out unmanned robot spacecraft which can accomplish almost the same thing as manned missions. Protecting humans in space is highly complex and expensive. Let the robots take the risk. Well, it’s a great rationalization, but not the same.