Dr. Jack Wheeler
THE BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT YOU CAN GIVE A FRIEND
Obviously - it's a gift subscription to To The Point! It certainly has the best value-to-cost ratio of any alternative. And you don't have to go to a store, search aimlessly for something cool, gift-wrap it, or undergo any other hassle. Just a minute to fill out the info form at TTP Gift Subscriptions and you're done. You can of course go the whole nine yards and pop for a full year at $95. That would have to be for a really good friend! Or you could opt for the most economical route, a single month for $9.99. There's a really attractive third choice, that we've just made available in time for Christmas: three months for $24.99. You know the value of To The Point for yourself. Why not provide it to a friend for Christmas - enabling him or her to take refuge in the Oasis for Rational Conservatives as the craziness of 2009 unfolds? There's no better Christmas present you could give a friend than To The Point. Clicking on TTP Gift Subscriptions is all it takes. It's a wonderful way to wish someone Merry Christmas!
DRIVING IN CHINA
When you hear the word "China," if you're like most people the picture most likely to appear in your mind's eye is vast uncountable hordes of people. I've got a different picture, having bounced along so many thousands of kilometers of bad Chinese roads: no people at all.
China is almost half a million square miles bigger than the continental US (the contiguous 48 states without Alaska/Hawaii) - and it is amazing how much of it is desert or high mountain plateaus where hardly anybody lives. And I mean no one, as in empty. I'd estimate that more than half, upwards of two-thirds of China is virtually uninhabited.
That means cramming 1.3 billion people into an area less than one-third of the continental US. People who have made a deal with their Chicom leaders: you get to keep political control and we get to prosper in a growing economy. The deal breaks down if the economy falters - and it is faltering fast.
The engine of China's economy - her exports that we buy - is in steep decline, foreign direct investment is down 36% for 2008, scores of millions of peasants who had found work in cities are now unemployed and headed back to their bleak villages.
China is in trouble - and when dictatorships get in trouble, history shows the option they most often choose to try and save themselves is war. Will China - or will it opt for the alternative that geopolitics is now providing, to take America's place as protector and peacemaker?
THE BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR YOURSELF
One of my fond childhood memories is that whenever we had guests over for dinner, my father would always offer his favorite toast, the famous Spanish one: Salud, amor, y pesetas - y el tiempo para gozarlas. (May you have) Health, love, and wealth - and the time in which to enjoy them. It is appropriate that the most important of this triumvirate comes first - health. When we are young, it is easy to take natural good health and vitality for granted - and it becomes progressively less easy as we get old. Which it is why it is wise to start preserving one's health when young (just as it is wise then to start saving money). I'm 65 now and as you know, 12 days ago (12/05) underwent serious abdominal surgery. My doctors are amazed at how rapidly I am recuperating. One reason for this is that I have taken nutritional supplements in "life extension" amounts for over 30 years. Another is that I am taking specific nutritional formulas to promote healing and recovery. Almost exclusively, they are formulas designed by famed life extension scientists Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw - dear friends for 40 years - and produced by our mutual friend Will Block's company Life Enhancement. I think that such nutrition is the best Christmas present you could give to yourself.
SUING HENRY PAULSON
The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed. Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet. Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG - deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by now. One result of Mr. Paulson's nationalization of AIG is that all of us taxpayers are now owners of a company that promotes Moslem Shariah law - the brutally repressive, totalitarian theo-political-legal program of authoritarian Islam. It turns out that AIG has a subsidiary specializing in takaful¸ insurance products that are "Shariah-compliant." Fortunately, an important legal initiative has just been launched aimed at blocking Secretary Paulson and the Federal Reserve Board from engaging in this sort of unconstitutional behavior via Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and other commercial transactions.
BIBI AND OBAMA
The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, Mr. Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a “peace process” with the Palestinians and the Syrians. Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls that show that Likud, led by Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, is favored to win February 10's general elections by a wide margin. In the coming contest between Bibi and Obama, it is important to recall that one of Netanyahu's most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was handling his relations with the hostile Clinton administration. From the moment Netanyahu was elected until the moment he left office, the Clinton administration's Israel policy was devoted entirely to bringing down his government. It is likely that the Obama White House will duplicate these efforts against a Likud government.
ATLAS IN AMERICA
Insanity has its consequences. Every day now, another consequence of America's insanity - and I mean that literally - of November 4 becomes apparent. It's funny to see the MSM frantically trying to disconnect Zero from Blago, as the dim bulb in the brains of those who voted for him starts to shine a glimmer of light on his corruption. Insanity and stupidity usually go together (the evil genius is a Hollywood myth, rare in reality). And when Atlas shrugs, it makes a lot of stupid people go nuts. That's what's happening in Greece this week. After all the unending ever-increasing assaults on entrepreneurial capitalism by Washington for decades, November 4 has turned out to be the last straw. Electing Zero is what it took for Atlas to shrug in America, with one result the huge increase in unemployment since the election. Massive job losses are only the start of bad news in 2009. Zero hasn't a clue of how to create wealth. Like all liberals, he only thinks of how to steal it ("redistribution" is just a liberal euphemism for "theft") from those who have created it and give it to those who have not for personal political gain. But what happens when the creators of wealth stop creating, so the thieves no longer can continue stealing and the moochers can no longer live off stolen wealth? That was the question asked and answered by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. There is now the very real possibility that America is going to live through the answer in the coming Zero years - and that what is happening to Greece this week is going to come to our shores starting next year.
IT WON’T BE A NICE WORLD FOR MR. O
Warnings about the foreign challenges the Obama administration will face early on focus on the usual suspects - al Qaeda, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia and, not least, the global solvency crisis. While each of these issues demands serious attention, the crises abroad that shocked, consumed or defined a succession of presidencies came "out of the blue." Focused on ending our Indochina war, Richard Nixon was blindsided by an oil-price shock (thanks to our eternal buddies, the Saudis). Jimmy Carter literally woke up to find the Soviets in Afghanistan - and our embassy staff held hostage in Iran, a collapsed ally. Ronald Reagan faced the Beirut Marine-barracks bombing. Somalia panicked Bill Clinton; Rwanda embarrassed him - and the rise of al Qaeda paralyzed him. W got 9/11. For Mr. Obama, too, the first international crisis could be something that not one of us foresees (although, as always, events will seem obvious in hindsight). But there are also a number of potential crises hiding in broad daylight - and ignored.
ZEROCARE
As the TTP Weekly Report was being delivered to your inbox last Friday afternoon (12/05), thanks to our fine TTP staff, I was undergoing abdominal surgery at Akta Medika, a small private hospital in Sevlievo, Bulgaria. I'm writing this from a hospital bed there right now. Abdominal surgery is a serious matter, especially when it's done to repair the errors of a previous surgery ten years ago. So I didn't come here just because it's 1/20th of the cost in the US. I came because it's better. That's not a putdown of American physicians - but it sure is of American medicine, so completely hamstrung by government rules and regulations, the nonsense of "third-party providers," and protections of medical monopolies like the AMA: the antithesis of free market medicine. Yet if you think it's bad now, wait until you see what Zerocare does to it. This is not the place to discuss the specifics of how the government makes medical care in the US ridiculously expensive, complicated, and obsolete. It is, rather, to discuss the opportunities for you to avoid - and even profit from - the mess that Zero will make so much worse with his and Teddy Chappaquiddick Kennedy's "Universal Health Care" health fascism. And to explain the "flanking movement" Republicans can make to provide an alternative to Zerocare health fascism, saving Medicare hundreds of billions of dollars in so doing.
THE ZERO WHITE HOUSE AS A TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT
Are we having fun yet? We might as well try, amidst the multiple looming disasters awaiting our economy and our country - not to mention a lot of other countries as well - with the Zero White House running Washington. One way to do so is to look at Zero's new home as a target-rich environment. Here's target number one. "Zero," of course, is an alternate name for the individual we called NMP - Not My President - shortly after November 4. Now it's turning out that vast multitudes don't look upon him as their president either, due to this crazy controversy over his birth certificate. Crazy because producing a verifiably genuine birth certificate should be the simplest thing in the world to do, instantly squashing the controversy. Yet Zero won't produce it, allowing the issue to metastasize to the point of full page ads in the Chicago Tribune.
MUMBAI AND THE SILIGURI GAP
Before we get started, let's first dispense with this stupid name of "Mumbai." The place is Bombay and that's what we'll call it. The city was created and named by the British East India Company in 1668, after the Hindi name for the area, Bambai. It was just typical politically correctness to rename it in a local dialect (Marathi). As Bombay was created by the Brits, so was all of India as a unified nation, as they stitched together hundreds of small kingdoms and petty statelets ruled by Hindu rajahs and Moslem sultans. It was not stitched well. Thus the question to ask in the wake of the Bombay terrorism just committed by Moslem proto-hominids is: will it precipitate India's unraveling? One place to look for the answer is far away from Bombay, called the Siliguri Gap.
THE NO INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
One item of thankful good news as we're buffeted by the Dow Jones' death-spiral, reports of the domestic automakers' incipient demise, and ever-more-assertive testing by various adversaries of the not-yet-inaugurated "young president": Thomas Fingar is leaving the building on Beech Street NW in Washington DC. Tom Fingar's is not, of course, exactly a household name. Nor is the building he will depart a publicly recognized fixture in Washington's official real estate. Still, when the history of the Iranian nuclear threat - and all that flows from it - is written, his dismal tenure as Deputy Director for Analysis in the Office of National Intelligence will figure prominently. After all, at a critical moment in the Bush administration, as evidence mounted in late 2007 of the true and ominous nuclear weapons ambitions of an Iranian regime that professed an interest only in peaceful nuclear energy, Fingar was instrumental in producing one of history's most politicized and misleading National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). Under Fingar, NIE really should stand for No Intelligence Estimate. Including the one he issued just before his departure, "Global Trends 2025."
THE LAST THANKSGIVING
Can Democrats Celebrate Thanksgiving? was a good question to ask four years ago, November 2004, after George Bush had defeated John Kerry. It's still a good question to ask on this Thanksgiving in 2008. Certainly they are thankful that their man won this time - but are they thankful for America? Can they really stop their incessant whining and guilt-mongering about what happened to the Indians, about slavery and poverty and racism, finally now? Has America at last redeemed itself in their eyes by electing their Messiah? The purpose of Thanksgiving is to be thankful for being American. This is the day to celebrate the goodness of our country - the moral goodness, the moral decency of American institutions, American history, and the character of the American people. It's easy for conservatives to do this - it comes natural to us. It's the opposite for liberals, who relish and revel in guilt-mongering. For their sake, for all of our sakes, let's hope they can be truly thankful for America, because it may be their and our last opportunity to do so. This could be our Last Thanksgiving.
DASCHLE’S HEALTH FASCISM
[Note: Please read this in the context of The Word That Can Save America --JW] As President-elect Obama's apparent choice for health and human services secretary and as White House health care czar, it is a fair guess that Tom Daschle's view on health care legislation may be decisive. So it is worth reading his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, in which the gracious former Senate leader lays out without equivocation both the policy he recommends and the tactics for how to pass it. It is pure, unadulterated fascism.
CAREFREE IN ARIZONA
Scottsdale is the classy upscale suburb of Phoenix. And on the edge of Scottsdale, right next to the Tonto National Forest in the shadow of Pinnacle Peak, lies a resort community with the marvelous name of Carefree. Carefree, Arizona. Doesn't that sound like the perfect place to escape from all the insanity and gloom pervading our country, an oasis for rational conservatives to join together for their winter rendezvous? Well, that's where the TTP Winter Rendezvous will be: at the Carefree Resort & Villas, January 23-25. It's a beautiful and serene place where you can luxuriate and relax, sharing companionship with your fellow TTPers, raising a glass with the toast: NMP is NOP. Not-My-President is Not Our Problem. At least for the weekend.
THE WORD THAT CAN SAVE AMERICA
On election day, November 4th, the Dow was above 9,000. It is now headed below 7,000. Do you think this would be happening if John McCain had won instead? For all his plentiful and infuriating faults, McCain promised to slash capital gains taxes, allow full expensing for capital expenditures of business, expedite offshore oil and gas drilling, be friendly to critical energy providers like coal, be unfriendly to anti-business government regulators - in short, in many crucial ways, be the pro-capitalist opposite of his anti-capitalist opponent. There is simply no way the markets would be falling off a cliff and into a depression abyss had McCain won. That they are now means markets are pricing in the anti-capitalist catastrophe Zero (aka NMP) will inflict on the US economy. There is a word that could prevent this. It is a word that terrifies the Democrats and their friends in the media and academia more than any other. You can use any other word against them and they could care less. When McCain condemned Zero and his economic plan in the waning days of the campaign as "socialist," all he got was smirks and shrugs in return. But use this word, and back it up with real history, real facts, real examples, and real explanations, and they freak out in rage, fear, and panic. They run from it like the Devil does from the Cross. It's the word that can save America. The word is...
HOW YOU CAN HELP STOP GLOBAL WARMING
We'll get to what you can do in a moment, but first we're going to talk about bear fat. From time immemorial, the Apache Indians in what is now Arizona have had a fool-proof way of determining if the coming winter would be cold or mild. Sometime around October or so, they go into the mountains and shoot a bear. They stopped using arrows to do this a long time ago. Skinning out the bear, they examine its fat layer under the skin. If it's thin and less viscous, the winter will be mild; the thicker and more viscous, the colder the winter will be. The Apaches on bear hunts over the past few weeks report the latter. Ask ranchers out West, and they'll tell you that the coats of coyotes, ground squirrels, horses, cows, and any other critter with fur or a hide that lives outdoors are thicker this fall. You'd be wise to pay attention to the Apaches and the ranchers, to the bears and coyotes, in preparing for this winter, rather than Algore and the glowarmers, or you are going to freeze your tush off.
PIRATES AND PUSSIES
The first thing to do regarding these ridiculous Somali pirates running around the Indian Ocean in these tiny outboard motorized skiffs hijacking $100 million tankers is read Civilizational Confidence, written two years ago (December 2006). It tells the story of how George Washington for the entire eight years of his presidency paid ransom and extortion money to the Barbary Pirates along the north coast of Africa. Then how finally Thomas Jefferson as president sent the Marines "to the shores of Tripoli" and took care of the problem. It also explains what is "the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future: civilizational confidence." And that the collapse of civilizational confidence is suicidal masochism. So we have reached the bottom of that masochistic barrel, with pirates in the ocean and pussies in the White House. Note the latter reference is also plural, for it's hard to imagine how the future president could be more of a pussy than the one we have now.
FRUGALITY AND SAFETY IN A POST-RATIONAL AMERICA
Frugality is in vogue and is going to be a necessity for a lot of folks these days. If you are using Windows, MacOSX, or Linux, save yourself a bundle of cash and download the free OpenOffice suite. It can open Microsoft office documents, and documents created by OpenOffice can be opened by Microsoft Office. As you well know Microsoft Office does not come cheap, even in upgrade forms. This free suite will save you hundreds of dollars, in a time when dollars are becoming harder to come by. OpenOffice can be downloaded for free here: OpenOffice Safety is a concern for all of us in this troubled world and online, one has to be cautious. One way to add to your protection is...
THE EVIL OF THE FEAR OF THE EVIL EYE
The November 4th election is being hailed as "transformational." It certainly has been personally transformational for me. Grocery shopping at the local Giant supermarket is a very different experience now. As I look at all the people scrutinizing the fruits and vegetables, telling the butcher what cut of meat they want, or walking down the aisles pushing their carts with a list in their hand, they all look so normal, just like before last week. Yet I know that a majority of them are either suicidally insane, too stupid to know what they've done to themselves, or crypto-fascists. Before last week, they were all my fellow Americans. Now I don't really know who or what they are. They, together with 60-odd million others, have decided to lurch America radically and thoughtlessly to the left. Collectively, they are a cold-shower demonstration of the self-destructive evil of the fear of the evil eye.
EVIL EYE ARTICLES
THE NIGHT WE WAVED GOODBYE TO AMERICA
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernize Heaven and Hell - or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead. The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilization. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something. I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
THE PHOENIX CONSPIRACY
The To The Point Phoenix Rendezvous is little more than two months away: January 23-25. It will be a conspiracy - TTPers plotting how best to survive the depredations of the coming NMP Regime. As we said in the immediate wake of last week's electoral insanity, TTP will be focusing on practical survival, on preserving and even expanding your freedom and pocketbook. Yet - a big yet - there are a number of things that we can't put in print, but can only discuss in a completely closed-session off-the-books personal discussion - and that's what we'll be doing in Phoenix. We'll be sending you the details regarding the venues and costs shortly. But to get in an early reservation and deposit, as we can accommodate a limited number, please email Miko, TTP's general manager, at [email protected] now. Speaking of now, however, let's get to work on some initial steps you can take to protect yourself personally and financially. Here are two ways to consider regarding what to do with your money, one relative, one absolute.
DO SVIDANIYA
That's how you say goodbye in Russian (pronounced das veh-don-yah). Adios, comrades. Finita la musica. The music is over for Putin and all the other commies in the Kremlin. Putin's personal fortune and the Kremlin's cash cow lies in Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly that supplies over 20% of the government's budget. Six months ago - last May - Gazprom (GAZP:RU) had the largest market cap of any company in the entire world, US$360 billion. It is now (11/13) $91b. It has lost 75% of its value and so has its share price. Further, it has made a number of large acquisitions with its stock as collateral. Margin Call City. That's gas. Let's take oil. The Kremlin says its budget is based on a price of $65 a barrel, while independent analysts think its at least $70. Yet the collapse of benchmark oil prices to below $60 currently masks the fact that Russia sells a lower grade, Urals Crude, than benchmark grades like Brent or WTI (West Texas Intermediate). Today, Urals crude closed at $48.80.
THERE’S GOT TO BE AN ELEPHANT IN HERE SOMEWHERE
Ronald Reagan was fond of describing the ultimate optimist as a young boy happily digging through a huge pile of horse manure while yelling, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" So after six weeks in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and 7,000 kilometers overland across Chinese Turkestan, I've returned to Washington and the biggest pile of political manure in the history of America. I can't help thinking that Ronald Reagan would say, "There's got to be an elephant in there somewhere." First, though, let's dispense with two alleged "silver linings" to this debacle. Both are stupefyingly naïve. One is that this election "heals" the wound of racism and the legacy of slavery, so that nevermore can Sharpton-type race hustlers claim that America is an incurably racist nation. This is delusionary.
1977-1983: RESURRECTION
Her name was Jacqueline. I thought of her as I stood on the beach looking out at the waves. It was a lonely stretch of beach in north Malibu, near the Ventura County Line. Far away from the frenetic bustle of L.A., I had moved up here where it was peaceful and quiet, where I could walk on the beach in solitude and recover from her loss. She was born in the French Alps, the daughter of a cheesemaker. Growing up in the rustic village of Villette‑par‑Aime in the province of Savoie south of Mont Blanc, she had had a Heidi‑like childhood ‑‑ herding sheep, milking cows, gathering wild raspberries and mushrooms in the forest. She grew up to be a tough strong mountain girl, helping her family eke out the montagnard (French mountain peasant) way of life amongst the glaciers and waterfalls, the high alpine pastures strewn with wildflowers, the valleys and crags of the Alps. Finishing the local school, she made her way to Paris as a magician's apprentice in a traveling magic show that toured through the small villages and towns of France, from Provence to Gascony, from Brittany to Champagne. Once in Paris, she struggled at part‑time office jobs while taking singing and dancing lessons at night. The lessons paid off when she was hired by the legendary Folies Bergère. With her spectacular beauty, she quickly became the world famous show's principal showgirl, idolized by all of Paris and surrounded by a horde of admirers ‑‑ writers, directors, millionaires, and playboys. "Every night," she had told me, "there would be so many roses in my dressing room I hardly had any space to change costumes. And just two years before, I was digging potatoes with my mother and herding cows with my father!" Her life had become a dream. But her greatest dream lay beyond Paris ‑‑ it was to come to America.
THE END OF THE SILK ROAD
Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China. As you can see from the map, here is where the branches of the Silk Road came together. From Dunhuang it was a straight shot through the "Gansu Corridor" between the snow-capped Qilian (Southern) Mountains and the Gobi Desert to the first big city in China, Lanzhou, and on to the capital of ancient China, Chang'an (now called Xian, famous for the Terracotta Army made for the mausoleum of China's first emperor, Chin Shi Wang (259-210 BC) - after whom China is named although Beijing insists his name be spelled Qin). For the pilgrims, merchants, and traders who brought the exotic goods of the West to the East, here is where the road ended. Finally they were in China. So it seems appropriate that I am here at the end of the fabled Silk Road on the day when the American Road of Freedom came to an end. This is a day of true historical tragedy, when history's greatest nation of its own free will decided to commit suicide for no good reason whatsoever, an act of inexplicable mass insanity. Yet this is not a time for bitterness or anger. It is, instead, a time to shrug.
THE SANDS OF THE TAKLA MAKAN
Charklik, Chinese Turkestan. Since I was a young boy with dreams of exploring the world, the essence of remote mystery was summed up by the innermost heart of Asia called Chinese Turkestan. What defines the region is one of the world's great deserts, an ocean of sand the size of France yet so empty and vast it has been known for many centuries as The Takla Makan (tah-kla mah-con), meaning, "If you go in, you don't come out." The Desert of Death. Thus the fabled Silk Road split in two to go around it to the north or the south. In 1273, Marco Polo took the south. What I as a young boy fifty years ago most dreamed of doing was following the route of Marco Polo through Chinese Turkestan, to those lost and forgotten oases of the Southern Silk Road that hardly anyone in the world knew about much less had been to, with the magical names of Yarkand, Khotan, Charchan, and Charklik. For all but the last few of those fifty years the Southern Silk Road was completely off-limits to foreigners, and the road itself a thousand mile-long four-wheel track of mud and sand. Now it's open, the road is paved, and here I am, having traversed Polo's route from Kashgar to Charklik. I was expecting an ultimate in the exotic and remote, for things to have changed little since Polo's day. In some ways that's what I found. But for others, I am in a state of shock. What I have found here astounds me, and I thought I'd share it with you. For after all, Chinese Turkestan, or Xinjiang as Beijing calls it, is Moslem China. The native inhabitants, whose homeland this has been for millennia, are Turkic, not Chinese. Culturally, ethnically, and historically, this place is not Chinese. But in reality - and reality is what counts - this is China. Of that there is no doubt, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
1981: NORTH POLE SKYDIVE
With the wind chill, it was around 50‑60 degrees below zero. I sat on my heels in the back of the Twin‑Otter and looked out the open door of the plane to the sea of white below. We were 8,000 feet above the ice and making our jump run. Some tiny black specks appeared on the ice in the distance. "Left five degrees!" I called out through my face mask, and Rocky nudged the Otter toward the specks.
"More left!" I yelled again, and as Rocky looked around to make sure, I nodded and pointed left with a gloved finger. When the spot was set, I pointed ahead, yelled "Straight!" to Rocky, then closed my eyes and turned inward. About thirty seconds to go."All right, man, how do you feel?' I asked myself. "Are you nervous?" I took a deep breath and relaxed, just letting whatever emotions were there come up. I had expected the reply to be, " What, are you kidding?!? I'm terrified!!" But no, to my surprise, I felt incredibly calm and peaceful.
Memories of the past four years raced through me like a flash flood. All the ecstasy and magic ‑‑ then all the pain and grief and mourning. A year ago, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to live or not. Learning how to sky‑dive when you don't know if you want to live is a good way to find out.
OBAMABASHI
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. I did it. I've been searching all over the world for a place suitably appropriate for Barack Hussein Obama Junior's megalomaniacal egomania, and I found it here, deep in the middle of Central Asia. Here is where he can be worshipped as the Messiah he believes he is, worshipped on a scale beyond even his hyper-hubristic fantasies. America will never give him what he wants. Here is a place that can. Here is where he can be Obamabashi. Obamabashi the Great, the Supreme, the Magnificent. Here is where he belongs - not in America. I'm convinced: there isn't a better place on earth for Barry Hussein and his followers to move to after he loses on November 4. It's absolutely perfect for him and them.
1995: ARM-WRESTLING RUSSIA
On a late September day in 1995, I was washing the family station wagon in the driveway of our home in McLean, Virginia, when my wife called out, "Dana's on the phone for you." Rebel brought me the phone and I heard a familiar voice. "Hey, Wheeler, there are some Russians coming by my office around four this afternoon - the Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg and his entourage. You need to be there." I looked at my watch. "Dana, it's two o'clock already. You sure?" "Well, I don't know anyone who's been to Russia more than you whose opinion I can really trust. I'd really like you to be here." How could I turn that down? I'd known Dana Rohrabacher since we were in Youth For Reagan during Ronald Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966. Now, almost 30 years later, Dana was a Member of Congress, and on the powerful International Relations Committee. So I finished up with the car, put on the Washington costume of dark suit and tie, and motored down the George Washington Parkway to DC and Dana's office in the House Rayburn Building. The meeting went well. This was the time of Good Feelings between Boris Yeltsin's Russia and America, and there was a camaraderie between us all. So much so that Dana suggested at the meeting's close, since he had no more meetings scheduled, why don't we all have a beer together at the Irish Times pub on the other side of Capitol Hill? Beer? The Russians thought that was a great idea.
LOST ON THE CASPIAN
Baku, Azerbaijan. Have you ever tried to go to sleep during fireworks? It's not easy, but for such occasions I always bring earplugs while traveling (along with other necessities such as a flashlight, duck tape, and a Leatherman tool kit). I happened to arrive here late at night as the latest phony election was being celebrated. Fireworks in place of freedom. Yet however Azerbaijan is a lost backwater on the Caspian for Americans, it has amazing potential to screw things up or make things better not just for this whole part of the world but for us as well. We need to study the map to understand why:
HISTORY AND INSANITY
Historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) remarked that often, history seemed to be "just one damn thing after another." Anyone who has studied the history of cultures and nations over the last few thousand years can easily get overwhelmed by the constantly recurring episodes of mindless insanity. This is not metaphorical, nor hyperbolic. I mean bouts of literal insanity, where entire cultures and nations actually go nuts. It is not something rare. Often, it seems the norm. We Americans like to believe that our country is immune to such historical insanities, but we are not. Anyone old enough to have experienced the 1960s is well aware of this. America yet to recover from the cultural and political destruction of the Sixties Radicals. And so we come to the insanity of Barack Hussein Obama. Let's dispense with all the blather and get to the bottom of it: anyone with a 3-digit IQ (2 digits means mentally defective) and loves America who is even considering voting to place his country's national security and economy in this man's hands should be institutionalized. He or she is clinically crazy and a public health hazard. Again, this is no exaggeration. This man's candidacy is insane, no ifs or buts. So the only question right now is, is this a spasm of insanity from which a majority of American voters will recover in time, or not? If the former, then all his incredible inadequacies, all the incredible associations with hate-America racists and terrorists, all the incredible vote fraud by the Communists of ACORN, on and on and on and endlessly on, will finally register with voters who will sweep him into the dustbin of history. If the latter, then my greatest personal fear will come true.
1958: A KNIFE EDGE IN THE SKY
It was a rainy Saturday morning in March. I was 14 years old and bored out of my mind with nothing to do. Stuck indoors, I stared through the rain-splattered window of my room and sighed. My eyes wandered to the bookshelf nearby, and fell on a book that a friend of my father's had given me some time ago as a present. It had remained ignored and unopened, attracting dust rather than my attention, until now. The spine of the glossy book jacket proclaimed its title - The Complete Book of Marvels. What was that about? The author was Richard Halliburton. Who was he? I reached for the book, and my life was changed forever. Our home was in a prosaic suburb of Los Angeles - Glendale, California. Like most other kids, I knew very little about the world. America was an enormous island, with the rest of the world on the other side of huge oceans, far away. The inside of the book jacket told me that Halliburton had been a famous adventurer in the 1920s and ‘30s. The book was 20 years old, and was a compilation of his exploits and experiences. As I paged through the descriptions and black-and-white pictures of dozens of the world's most extraordinary places, I was transfixed. The world, it dawned on me, was a vast place of endless wonders and adventures. What mesmerized me in particular was Halliburton's account of climbing the Matterhorn. I stared at his picture of the Matterhorn, entitled "The Tiger of the Alps," for the longest time. Then, as if I were in a trance, I found myself getting up from the chair in my room and walking down the hall to my parents' room, where I found my Dad in his easy chair, reading an Erle Stanley Gardner detective novel. He looked up at me, waiting for me to say something. I laid the Halliburton book over the Gardner book on his lap, open to the double-spread picture of the Matterhorn. He looked down at the picture, then looked back up, still waiting. I didn't consciously say anything. I pointed at the picture and heard myself say, "Dad, I want to climb that mountain."
WILL RUSSIA BREAK APART?
Tbilisi, Georgia. It's a beautiful morning here in Georgia, and there's not a Russian soldier in sight. I could find them easily enough if I went looking for them over at the "border" with South Ossetia and Abkahzia, but here in the capital of Tbilisi and the rest of Georgia, they are nowhere to be seen. Georgians are surprisingly unafraid of Russia inflicting its traditional role of barbarian invader upon them. There are several reasons, one of which is the videos of Russian troops they've been seeing on Georgian television. Russian soldiers are so ill-equipped many are wearing cheap tennis shoes. They are so ill-fed they have to steal food from villagers, so hungry they eat fruit so unripe and meat so spoiled it makes them violently sick. There is a surreptitiously-taken video of Russian soldiers ransacking a Georgian military barracks, stealing used socks (many of them have no socks), even used (!) toothbrushes, and carting off toilet commodes to sell back in Russia. "It's really hard to take soldiers who have to steal used toothbrushes seriously," one Georgian friend told me. Thus the discussion here is less on what the impact of Russia's invasion will be on Georgia, and more on what the impact will be on Russia.
WHAT VOTERS NEED TO KNOW
Here is what American voters need to know. The following information has been completed on my own time and not on behalf of any group or organization. It is based upon my own research and uses contacts I have in all branches of the US government, conversations with think tank leaders, policy experts, election law attorneys, sources within the McCain campaign, and top political consultants. It's a frightening picture. What's even more terrifying is what Obama's America will be should voters ignore the facts below.
ALBANIA IN AMERICA
Tirana, Albania. I had a private dinner with an extraordinary man last night (10/09) - just the two of us with one of his key advisors. Albania is very fortunate to have Dr. Sali Berisha (he's a physician with a specialty in heart surgery) as its Prime Minister. He's a man of immense erudition and learning who is street wise in the ways of the world, having dealt with every major leader on the planet for years. The country he admires above all others is America. In this, he speaks for the great majority of Albanians. Albania is probably the most pro-American country on earth today. Yet it was a strange and scary experience to hear him relate the recent history of Albania - for at one point he seemed to be describing that of America's instead. What I really hoped he wasn't describing was the history of America's immediate future.
1955-1956: A BOY SCOUT’S FANTASY
On a Boy Scout camping trip in June, 1955, I sat in my tent which was pegged into the sands of Carpenteria Beach, California. As a lowly Second Class Scout, the biggest goal in my life at the time was to become a First Class Scout. How long would that take? I wondered, as I paged through the Boy Scout Handbook looking at the requirements. Then I made the mistake of looking at what it took to be a Star, then a Life Scout, and started imagining. Dazed with fantasies, I crawled out of the tent with the handbook. When some of the other Scouts saw me with this puzzled look, they asked, "What's with you, Wheeler?" Still in a daze, I put my mouth in gear before engaging my brain, and mumbled, "Do you know that if I made First Class by August, I could make Star by November and Life by February?" I wasn't ready for the torrent of derision. "You idiot, Wheeler!" "What a joke, Second Class!" "In your dreams, Bozo!" They walked away with sneers and laughs. I stood there in the sand in shock. Why had what I said made them so angry - really angry? I didn't know why they were so mad, but I didn't care - for now I was mad, so mad I made a decision right there to turn this fantasy into reality.
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/03/08
Sofia, Bulgaria. Dr. Joel Wade couldn't write his column yesterday (10/02) because he was so nervous waiting for the Palin-Biden debate. He's feeling a lot better this morning. So are we all. You betcha. So let's lift a pint of Kamenitza beer in honor of Sarah Palin and the hope she has reignited the McCain-Palin ticket... ...Kamenitza is my selection out of a large number of excellent Bulgarian beers because of its advertising motto: Success in your hands (there's a picture of a hand holding a bottle), followed by the ad copy: Because you are successful, we present to you a Bulgarian beer with character. You would never, ever see such an ad in any country in Western Europe. In France or Germany, young people sneer at entrepreneurial capitalism as their purpose in life is to sponge off the state... ...Thus the garish irony of our election in November.
1989: SERIOUS PEACE
This first week of October in 2008, we launch a new feature in To The Point. It is entitled How We Won The Cold War: A Personal Account of the Greatest Adventure of Modern Times. "Winning Cold War" for short in the left side bar. This calls for an explanation, and a confession. The confession first. I have absolutely no excuse whatever for not completing The Jade Steps. After completing 33 chapters, I have only the concluding last chapter and the epilogue to go, and I haven't done it. So I hope that by starting another book, it will force and embarrass me enough to finish the historical novel. How We Won The Cold War, however, is no novel. It's the way things really happened. It's the book my literary agent (and avid TTP'er) Theron Raines has said what I must write, the book I owe to history. The situation is this. I have completed the first six chapters, which I'll be posting for the next successive six weeks. They are setting-the-scene chapters which give me time to get back from my travels and get back to work (yes, this means finishing The Jade Steps as well!). Hopefully, so many of you will bug me so much to keep posting the next chapter in the series that I will actually get the book written to completion. So here we go with an Introductory Note and Chapter One, 1989: Serious Peace. Wish me luck.
THE ONLY GOOD PIRATE IS A DEAD PIRATE
Somali pirates got a shock last week: The ship they seized carried dozens of Russian-built tanks, along with a wealth of heavy weapons and ammo. It was more than they'd bargained for. As I write, the Ukrainian ship MV Faina sits at anchor off a notorious pirate port, its crew held captive by 30 or more Somalis. US Navy warships circle the vessel. Our helicopters buzz its deck. We don't want that weaponry falling into terrorist hands. The Somalis lack the facilities to unload 40-ton tanks, but the smaller weapons aboard would delight the local al Qaeda franchise. But we don't know what to do next. Which is ridiculous.