If Not Romney, Who? ... Alan Caruba

If Not Romney, Who?

By Alan Caruba

Generally overlooked in the midst of the many debates and the usual competition between Republican candidates for the Party’s nomination is the fact that a rather impressive number have thrown their hats in the ring. It is testimony to the health, depth, and diversity of the Party. Compare that with the Democratic Party’s lone candidate, a President already ceded the title of worst ever.

As campaigns proceed toward the on-rushing primaries, Republicans are increasingly focused beyond the usual circus atmosphere, including the latest problems encountered by Herman Cain and Rick Perry’s gaffs. Selecting the GOP candidate has now reached the critical stage.

That is why a lengthy editorial in a recent Wall Street Journal is noteworthy. “Romney’s Fiscal Awakening” was a thorough analysis of a November 4th Romney speech on the subject of reversing the nation’s economic problems. The Journal said “his remarks deserve more attention than they’ve received as a guide to how he might govern.”

Romney has run a smart campaign to this point, not attacking the other candidates and waiting for them to exhaust themselves while he maintained a fairly constant 25% of support to this point. Unlike the boxer who spends all his energy in the first or third round, Romney has tended to the grassroots kind of effort necessary to succeed in the early primaries.

He’s been here before--losing the nomination to John McCain the last time and it is likely that many Republicans have some very serious regrets about that. He learned from that effort, probably in the same way Ronald Reagan did when he challenged Gerald Ford for the nomination. McCain was an updated version of Bob Dole, the kind of GOP candidate who gets the nod because he was judged to have earned it even if he couldn’t campaign is way out of a paper bag.

Increasingly, Republicans are asking themselves, “If not Romney, who?”

While many believe that almost any GOP candidate could beat Obama that kind of optimism is unwise because an incumbent president has a lot of resources to draw on between now and Election Day. That said, Republicans have seen their own incumbents, George H.W. Bush and the aforementioned Gerald Ford defeated.

On Saturday, November 12th, Rasmussen Reports reviewed the week’s polling results. “Poll after poll shows former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to be the Republican presidential contender voters are most comfortable with and the GOP hopeful who continues to run most competitively with President Obama. But that's not enough for a lot of Republican voters.”

“Just this past week, new surveying found that Romney is the GOP candidate viewed most favorably by all voters. This parallels other recent findings that voters see Romney as the GOP hopeful most qualified to be president and the candidate for the White House closest to the mainstream in a group that includes Obama.”

I would recommend reading “Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics” by R. B. Scott (Lyons Press) because it is not an authorized biographical profile, the author has excellent journalistic credentials, and he provides useful insights regarding the Mormon Church you are not likely to read elsewhere.

I have concluded that Romney’s religion is not going to play that much of a role in the forthcoming election. Consider that he won the governorship of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states and a Democratic stronghold. Romney knows how to win elections.

In saying that, I am also saying he is a very skilled politician. In addition, he has also a proven record in the world of business and finance. These are two elements that are going to be vital to his election in 2012. Yes, I think he will get the GOP nomination. Yes, I would vote for him.

The highest hurdle Romney must overcome is his reputation as a “flip-flopper.” There is no question that he has changed his views over the years on many topics, but that can be easily countered by merely listing the many times that Obama has done the same or, in his case, voted “present.”

Whether it’s been about abortion and choice, stem cell research, gun control, immigration, or taxes, Romney has been on one side of the issue or the other over the years. What is called “flip-flopping” can also been seen as a process of growth, of examining his positions on these issues and—yes—changing them.

Here’s where Romney’s religion really plays a role. The Mormon Church, in which he has been an active leader, is famous for its moral code. They don’t drink. They don’t smoke. And they have positions on major moral issues that are not dissimilar from the Roman Catholic Church.

As R.B. Scott says in his book, Mormons have values that include “veneration for the experience, wisdom, and caution of the elderly; respect for the talents and pragmatism of skilled tradesmen; honor and gratitude for those who perform heavy labor; deep admiration for poets, musicians, writers, entertainers, and athletes; and veneration for religious, academic, and secular achievements.”

Romney has diverged from the church’s positions on occasion, but Mormons also hold to a fundamental tenet, the doctrine of free agency. “Regardless of existing laws, faithful Mormons had the obligation to make moral judgments for themselves”, says Scott. Romney has done that.

Romney has been the clear winner of the recent debates. Rick Perry was the biggest loser and the rest of the candidates increasingly look like window dressing.

Romney has been successful at almost everything he has ever put his hand to. He is the right man at the right time to defeat Barack Hussein Obama in 2012.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Great American Auto Boondoggle

PUBLISHED:  OCTOBER 2009

The Great American Auto Boondoggle

The American Motorists is making a serious mistake… yet again. 

Back in the seventies, when the so-called fuel shortage occurred, Americans began trading the big cars in for those little gas sipping rattletraps from overseas and later from the American automakers.  As it turned out they were fairly good on gas mileage… if you didn’t mind giving up safety, and comfort, which the standard sized American car afforded.

In time, the gas shortage was seen for what it really was… a hoax… and gas stations, again, had plenty of gasoline.  But the American motorists had a pile of junk on his hands.  That is… those who survived car crashes in those tiny little things.

Already, I’m seeing ads in papers for SUV’s, and Standard, as well as the Mid-sized, American cars on sale, with prices drastically cut, some thousands of dollars off the price they’d normally bring on the market.  Dealers are frightened they will be stuck with the large cars, and trucks, and they’re practically giving them away to cut what they see as losses coming down the road aways.

Now, having said all this… let me say, if you own an SUV, or a standard size automobile, or Pick-up… keep it.  At least you’ll be safe in a car crash.  Families with small children should keep their SUV’s for the safety of their families, too.

I have a Pick-up and my wife has a standard sized four-door sedan.  We plan to keep them.  My daughter has one of the largest, if not the largest SUV’s on the market today.  She also has two small children, one an infant.  That vehicle affords a margin of safety for her, and for her children, that those little beer cans, on wheels, will never provide.  So it costs more to fuel up.  How can you put a price on the safety of your family, how?

Those little cars, as we have learned, were death traps in a collision with a standard sized vehicle or truck (including SUVs).  Reducing the speed limit didn’t do much other than make motorist angry, add to the road rage, and make lots of money, from speeding tickets, for the states and municipalities.

Now, remember what we learned from the 70’s and 80’s when the market was flooded with those little toy cars: the owners were so angry, that some of us did not downsize as they did, they tried to put a guilt trip on all the owners of standard sized cars, and trucks, claiming that when your standard size vehicle hit theirs, in a collision, people tended to get killed in the little car.  Well, that was true, but the people in the standard sized vehicle survived! 

The point I’m trying to make is that the decision to buy one of those tiny death traps has a price, not shown on the sticker.  That is the price of your life and the lives of your families. 

The hybrids coming out onto the market today will be featured in the Smithsonian before too many decades are past.  The technology is not new; it’s just newly applied. 

We need more refineries in this country, built away from the immediate coasts.  We need them badly.  We have oil.  We just have no way to refine enough to meet today’s demands.  As soon as we get new refineries built, and the newly refined petroleum products begin to hit the market… watch OPEC”S prices drop like a stone… and their production increase.

Finally, we do need to begin serious research into an alternative for oil when it does run out. That is still many, many, decades down the road, but we need the research started now.

Until that day arrives we have no real choice but to use what we have.  What we have is oil.  Be safe, drive your big truck, or car.  Drive less, if necessary, but think of your safety and the safety of your family.

J. D. Longstreet 

Veteran's Day - 11/11/11 ... Alan Caruba

Veteran's Day - 11/11/11

As a veteran I naturally feel an affinity for all who have served their nation in uniform, but I am no fan of war. Those who commanded and those who served often feel the same. And then there are those who gave their lives. Their numbers would astound you and their bravery confounds the imagination. Veteran's Day is especially for them, but for the living, too.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration."

-- John Stuart Mill, "The Contest in America,"

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."

       -- Dwight  D. Eisenhower, speech, Jan. 10, 1946

"I know not with what weapons World War II will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein

And, a poem by Henry Reed, an English poet who was killed in World War I. Told in the voice of an instructor teaching new soldiers about their rifle, it juxtaposes the poet's observation of the beauty of nature around him and the absurdity of war for any but the most noble purpose.

NAMING OF PARTS
By Henry Reed

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.
 *****************************
Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Israel And Iran Nearing Point Of No Return

Israel And Iran Nearing Point Of No Return

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

When US military forces leave Iraq next month, Israel’s door to Iran will swing wide open.  Iraqi airspace will be available for Israel’s air force for the first time since US troops invaded Iraq.

Tensions have been ramping up between the two government’s for the past year, or so, especially since Obama’s announcement that US forces would leave Iraq next month.

As a police officer many, many, decades ago, I learned, first hand, that some people just don’t know when to shut up.  Many times a police officer will find that he has to separate two people shouting threats at each other.  While one calms down the other continues, even after being warned multiple times to be quiet, shouting epithets, curses, and threats at his former antagonist.  More often that not, the loud-mouth finds him/herself face down on the ground, with his hands cuffed behind him, and on his way to jail.  As we indicated, some people just cannot grasp that there is a time to shut one’s mouth -- and keep it shut.

Such, it would seem, is Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran.  He continues yammering when he should simmer down.  One must consider the possibility that he is attempting to convince himself (more than anyone else) that Iran can destroy Israel. Ahmadinejad is on the brink of a rude awakening. He is about to talk himself into a thrashing of biblical proportions.

On the other hand Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, has had more than enough of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s threats and posturing as well as Iran’s arming of proxy troops in nations surrounding Israel.  For Netanyahu -- it is put up or shut up time for Iran.

There is an extremely thin line of resistance to a preemptive attack on Iran in the Israeli government.  That resistance can dissipate at a moment’s notice, however.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that Iran has any idea of the strength and lethality of the Israeli Defense Forces. 

When the attack begins, it will not be simply an air attack.  It will be a three-pronged attack by the air, land, and sea forces of Israel.  It will rival America’s “shock and awe” attack on Iraq. 

This projection is based on Israel going it alone -- without US assistance. However, I expect US naval assets will guarantee the Straits of Hormuz will remain open, when the attack begins, and be joined in that effort by Israeli naval forces immediately after the opening few hours of battle.

Should the US Navy elect to stand down during Israel’s attack, the Israeli navy and IDF Special Forces are quite capable of removing Iranian missile emplacements that would certainly be used to fire on oil tankers and naval vessels in an attempt to close the Straits to out bound oil bearing ships.  An air attack on the Straits will be met by US aircraft -- defending the waterway -- and quickly smashed.

Netanyahu is former member of the IDF Special Forces.  He is no novice when it comes to matters of war.  Netanyahu’s brother was killed in the Israeli raid on the Entebbe airport in which many hostages from a highjacked airliner were being held.  The hostages were freed but the Netanyahu family, like so many Israeli families, felt the loss of a loved one to military conflict.  There can be no doubt that Netanyahu knows the pain of war.  He also understands that if Israel is to survive, it will be called upon, once again, to sacrifice it’s young on the bloody alter of war.

Delaying the inevitable is only going to intensify the conflict when it comes and probably extend it, as well. The IDF has been training for this war for years now.  Israel’s troops are keen, sharp, and leaning forward.  A number of its assets are; no doubt, already forward deployed and awaiting orders.

Even as US forces are leaving Iraq, the US is already building up its forces “in the area.”  It is said, publicly, to be a back up in case the experiment in nation building in Iraq begins to crumble – or -- Iran starts trouble in Iraq. 

The fact is, that once hostilities commence between Iran and Israel, Iran will most certainly make every effort it possibly can to kill American troops in the area they consider their sphere of influence. Therefore, it will be nigh on to impossible for the US to remain on the sidelines.

Americans must face the fact that America is at war and will remain in a state of war for as far as the eye can see into the future.  The US government should understand this and immediately cease all talk of cutting funding for the only thing that stands between Americans and their freedom:  The US Military.

J. D. Longstreet

The Not So Good Old Days ... Alan Caruba

The Not So Good Old Days

By Alan Caruba

In troubled times it is human nature to cast a look backwards to recall “the good old days”, but anyone who lived through the latter half of the twentieth century has to look passed World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the recovery from the Great Depression of the 1930s. There were a succession of recessions that followed. In other words, it takes an effort to squeeze out memories of “I Love Lucy”, “The Ed Sullivan Show”, rock’n roll, and Elvis.

Any number of really good things did occur, of course. The polio vaccine was introduced to end that too common scourge, followed by flu vaccines that ended formerly widespread illness and deaths. All manner of technology was introduced, not the least of which was television, something that did not exist in American homes until around the 1950s. There actually was a time before cell phones, personal computers, and, of course, the Internet.

Mostly earlier times are not taught in schools except in the most perfunctory way; those who have passed through the U.S. educational system since the 1960s are often blissfully unaware of the way people used to live before electricity, trains, planes, cars, and everything else we take for granted.

An interesting book—well, at least to me— is “The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century” by Ian Mortimer. Let me share some snippets from it and, when I am through, as awful as our present times may seem to you, you may thank a merciful God that you born into these, not former times.

You’re visiting Exeter in the southwest of England, one of seventeen cathedral cities. “Arriving in every one of these places involves an assault on your senses…your nostrils will be invaded by the stench from the sewage-polluted watercourses and town ditches.”

“A major town is an intimidating place. Already you have seen the desiccated remains of thieves hanging on gallows at windswept crossroads. At the principal gates of a regional capital you will find the heads and limbs of traitors on display. When you enter the city of York, the largest city of the north, you will see the blackened heads of criminals stuck on poles above the city gates, their eyes plucked out by birds. Legs and arms hang by ropes, each the relic of a treasonable plot, now riddled with maggots or covered with flies.”

“It is generally said that medieval men are in their prime in their twenties, mature in their thirties, and growing old in their forties.” What we call children are not children for long in the fourteenth century. They are out in the fields by age seven. In some towns, citizens as young as twelve can serve on juries.”

Today’s army won’t take you unless you are at least of voting age, but at age twenty, Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377) declared war on the Scots and led an army into battle. He was highly respected by nobles, knights, and man-at-arms because, at twenty, he was already an adult in every sense of the word in those times. He was one of a handful of kings to rule England for fifty years or more. Today our generals and field officers are considerably older, but wars are still fought by young men.

In medieval times, a woman was in her prime at seventeen, mature at twenty-five, and growing old by her mid-thirties. Betrothals of boys and girls took place in infancy and marriage at the age of twelve was approved for girls although cohabitation usually began at fourteen. Most are married by sixteen and produce five or six children by their mid-twenties, although two or three of those have died.”

In a time when everyone is either obsessed with their health or urged to be, the fourteenth century and those that followed well into the twentieth are not famous for hygiene or longevity.

Arriving in 1348, the Great Plague, also called the Black Death, the toll—generally stated as one third of those living in Europe—was often as high as forty percent or more in the cities and towns of England. The Great Plague was followed by other outbreaks. “By 1400 about half of all those born over the previous seventy years have died of the plague.”

Illness was frequently fatal and usually attributed to “spells” and other superstitious beliefs. Any injury was likely lethal as well. As often as not what passed for medical care or procedures would kill you.

Suffice to say that medieval England was for most of the population a place of inadequate diet, poor sanitation (which is putting it mildly), parasites, and cramped, shared living space. Famines were a common killer.

All things considered, in the modern world we are far better off despite its absurd wars, terrorism, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. That is perhaps cold comfort for most people, including myself, when I ponder the human capacity for hatred, superstition, greed, stupidity, and other timeless failings of our species.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
********************
Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.