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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.

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LESSONS FROM BULGARIA

Can you name a country that has a flat 10 percent income tax on both personal and corporate income, and that is also running a budget surplus of 8 percent of gross domestic product (the equivalent of the United States running a budget surplus of more than $1 trillion)? The surprising answer is Bulgaria, formerly one of Europe's most backward countries. Most of the former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe have instituted flat-rate income tax systems. Estonia was the first, and Bulgaria is one of the most recent, having only moved to the 10 percent flat rate at the beginning of this year. It's one of several lessons America and the politicians she elects could learn from Bulgaria.

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SAY IT TO OBAMA’S FACE, JOHN

Who is Barack Hussein Obama?  Is he the thoughtful, moderate guy he's appeared to be in the first two presidential debates?  Or is he a closet radical? The election is less than a month away, and we still don't know. In his campaign advertising, Sen. McCain has made much of the association between Sen. Obama and William Ayers, a leader of the Weatherman domestic terror group in the 1970s who has never expressed regret for setting bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and police stations.  But Sen. McCain didn't mention Mr. Ayers in Tuesday's debate. "Why doesn't he say these things to my face?" Sen. Obama wondered in an interview with ABC after that debate.  It's a fair question.  And a puzzling one, because the relationship between Sen. Obama and Mr. Ayers is much closer than Sen. Obama has so far acknowledged. 

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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.

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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.

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IS JOE BIDEN A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR?

"All you have to do is go down Union street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years," said Sen. Joe Biden in the vice presidential debate to bolster his assertion he's in touch with the concerns of the middle class. That answer suggested otherwise. "It came as a surprise to us in Delaware that Joe Biden recently had a meal and talked with patrons at Katie's Restaurant on Union Street in Wilmington," said an email to National Review Online.  "Katie's Restaurant closed years ago.  It was on Scott Street in Little Italy." The people who fill up at his neighborhood gas station can't pay for a full tank of gas, Sen. Biden said.  Sen. Biden lives in a 7,000 square foot estate on a four acre lakefront lot in Greenville, which is described as "northern Delaware's priciest area." Sen. Biden says things which are not true with passionate conviction.  That's a polite description of a pathological liar.

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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.

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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.

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THE FIX IS IN FOR OBAMA

Who is Will, Good? Mr. Good Will -- who lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You" -- has contributed 1,000 times to the Obama campaign. All the contributions have been in amounts of $25 or less.  But they add up to $17,375 -- far more than the legal limit of $4,600 ($2,300 each for the primary and general election campaigns). Kenneth Timmerman, a reporter for NewsMax, discovered Mr. Good Will when he reviewed 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest Federal Elections Commission master file for the Obama campaign. Mr. Good Will said he was from Austin, Texas.  When I called Directory Assistance, they could find no listing for him.   Who is Pro, Doodad?

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TIME TO RELEARN THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM

There is nothing new under the sun. The United States has endured major financial panics in 1837, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1929, 1933 and now in 2008. Most of these economic events had ideological and political consequences - as well as the inevitable economic play-outs. And, if history is any guide, contrary to the hope of some and the fear of others, this is not the end of capitalism as we have known it. But it is true that usually, major economic events have had political as well as economic consequences. For instance, the panic of 1893, which in some ways is similar to the current panic, was caused by overbuilding and sloppy financing of the railroads. The 1880s had enjoyed dramatic economic expansion, which lead to dangerous speculation. Once the railroad bubble burst there was a run on the banks, a contraction of credit, and European investors demanded gold for payments which forced the reduction in the value of the dollar.

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