I really don’t expect much from tonight’s debate; I’ve been personally trained by the McCain campaign to think this way. You too, perhaps.
As I wrote on Monday:
I’ve made it no secret, here on Bloviating Zeppelin, that I’ll vote for the McCain/Palin ticket simply because I will in no way countenance or be remotely responsible for an Obama/Biden win. I’ll not stay home on election day (a figure of speech anyway, as I’ve already marked my absentee ballot — as I receive one every election), I’ll not “write in” some other minimal person whose philosophy may more mirror mine but is, realistically, entirely unelectable, nor will I vote for Obama simply because I want “change” — whatever that word connotes.
And that philosophy shall not mutate.
Some persons on the Right are already “doomsaying.” I say, avoid this phrase: “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
McCain may do well, he may not. And Barack Hussein Obama is purposely portraying himself as something of a centrist when, if elected, I fervently believe the gloves shall fall off and he will lean and advocate Hard Left and there will be much “buyers’ remorse” with voters. I would ask all my readers and visitors to simply stay the course for McCain/Palin because this is the alternative:
- A Demorat-controlled White House, House, Senate and SCOTUS;
- Loss of of personal freedoms;
- Loss of communications freedoms;
- Massive tax hikes;
- A purposeful downturn in prosperity;
- A purposeful downturn in national security;
Also: let us NOT forget that the OBJECTIVE of the bulk of national polls is to so disillusion Conservatives that they’ll conclude their sole vote means little. DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN.
Those bulleted items are guaranteed with a Demorat-controlled political system. A political system will all three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) that will be, essentially, entirely unchallenged. And that is good for no one.
BZ
The upshot: the return of the ‘weak horse’ and the victory of al Qaeda’s philosophy.
We will have validated it.
And then things get bad from there on out… and 9/11 returns with avengeance under ‘such a good man wanting to make up for things America has done wrong’.
I’m voting for Gov. Palin as she has done what she has promised in her previous campaigns. These others? Not so much.
“Not so much”? You, sir, are being very kind indeed.
BZ
Yeah, I ran out of ‘mercenary’, ‘incompetent’, ‘fools’, ‘imbeciles’, ‘clueless’, ‘self-serving’ and a whole slew of other things I apply generally to Congresscritters and those three in particular. I’ve been going through my past posts to get a semi-organized list of semi-important posts and the names I use I stand by – each and every one of them.
‘Seatwarmers’ comes to mind for those three… people marking time on the bench… I have had zero respect for Congresscritters for a long, long, long, long time. You can’t order pizza out with any of them as they want to nationalize the place you get it from so it will be made perfectly…
a j
The worst of it is the the event to come will have to be more spectacular than 911. We have become numb to terrorist attacks so they must be worse than the last or its just ho hum. A bombing in a cafe used to be news no its just I hope they didnt ruin the coffee. How soon till they reopen?
I cant even imagine what they would try to actually expect to pull off that will be worse than 911.
wmd – If we continue pressing AQ in Pakistan along with the Taliban we just *might* get them to split. This, however, leaves the actual power base there unaddressed: the trans-‘stan organization run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. It was his organization that was caught up in the ricin incident in London, not AQ, so that demonstrates his organization has reach and depth. Even with one of the major interconnectors for transnational terrorism being with AQ, his contact leads base is getting narrowed to Hekmatyar’s group.
Hekmatyar has been in the pay of the ISI since the early ’70s and is an Afghan supporter of the Talibani. But his organization never incorporated with the Taliban, and extends further and deeper into central asia and even threatened China… which sent a company to try and buy-off the Taliban to call him off. Recent bombing threats in western China indicate his continued support there (via the Uighars). Hekmatyar made connections with the Red Mafia’s Semion Mogilevich via a Russian arms dealer in the early 1990’s, as Mogilevich can provide transport for opium to Europe. Mogilevich has been implicated in a number of the known nuclear smuggling incidents from the Red Mafia, particularly ones in France and Egypt, the latter was talks with al Qaeda.
So removing the Taliban and even al Qaeda does not end the system supporting them or able to funnel new jihadis to the West. And if the heroin can make it in, then the jihadis can. Mogilevich’s man who has been slowly taking over his criminal enterprises is in the Ukraine, Dmitry Firtash, and he has seen fit to start waging economic war on Iran via natural gas supplies. Currently I place Firtash with $10 billion/year excess profit (before materials profit, this is a pay-off from Russia) as the one shifting money and manpower into Mexico and other places in the Americas. It is unlikely he is not connected with Hekmatyar as he is both source provider and ‘muscle’ out there.
Hezbollah has already made inroads into Canada and the US (see the illegal cigarette trading ring run by the Mugniyah group) and also runs black market and drug running operations in North America. They have a presence in S. America, particularly the Tri-Border Area of Argentina which was opened for them by Monzer al-Kassar and Carlos Menem. It is more than likely that as FARC breaks up they will merge with parts of Hezbollah, HAMAS and al Qaeda present in the area in a narcotics provider for necessary muscle arrangement. All of these organizations have cells (some of them close to full blown operations) in the Caribbean. al Qaeda was working on detonating a natural gas tanker in Hartford… the plan was nipped in the bud, but the ease with which it could be done is frightening. Worse than a FAE bomb by orders of magnitude.
So the question isn’t ‘if we will get hit’ it is: when, how often and how hard. al Qaeda, if it continues to be pressed, will not have much functional outside of Pakistan. Hekmatyar, however, operates as he likes and makes him worse than al Qaeda because he has no wishes for global domination and sees no reason not to blow things up to get his way: he won’t depend on Allah to do it for him like bin Laden did.
Hezbollah without Mugniyah is not stagnant: they had turned to the multivariate franchise system and I estimate they get less than half of their operational funds from Iran now. The other half is through narcotics, intellectual property theft, black market goods, banking fraud, cigarette smuggling and human trafficking. If this sounds more like a mafia, you are correct. They are merging with mafia styles to get ‘terror taxation’ on goods and services. Getting just 10% of the $44 billion/yr European heroin trade ($4.4 billion) and taxing that at 10% gets you $440 million just for having a good smuggling operation down. Those are 2000 values, BTW, the market has grown greatly since then. Controlling the Balkans (in part) helps to get part of that trade, although Syria controls it at its source through the Kassar family that runs the heroin system in the Bekaa in Lebanon. That is why they want Monzer al-Kassar back from the US and we are in deadly danger until he is *dead*. His familial empire stretches into every drug gang, prison and illicit group that gets their heroin on the planet. Only some of the asian areas are fully out of their influence. He has been let off of trial because people on different continents have turned up dead… in jails…
Right now we have the nexus of one of the worst groups sitting in a federal holding pen awaiting trial and I can bet that any contact with the outside world lets him control his entire empire. He has done it before from the UK, Tunisia and Spain. He has deep contacts with Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, the Red Mafia…and folks like Jackson Stephens, Ollie North, Richard Secord… and those connected with BCCI and BNL…
Terrorists will wait until a new administration and then see if they can make it crumble. Clinton got his in January 1993 then a few months later at the WTC bombing. Then Somalia… GWB got his on 9/11.
Capacity is speculation, but past plans that have been stopped do not indicate ‘small plans’.
As I said a while ago, I fear that he will push us into a civil war. He’s just plain dangerous.
These are the candidates and both sides are stuck with them. I wish McCain was more conservative, but he’ll obviously have my vote because there absolutely is no other choice.