13 NOV

Final Friday in Afghanistan. One last Jummah. One last trip to the bazaar. Last truly Afghan blog entry. My bags are packed, boxes have been shipped. How appropriate, my final Jummah is a Jummah the 13^th? Such as life.

I finished a book Thursday that was a great way to follow Because They Hate. Titled Revolution! A New Plan for Selecting Representatives, the book outlines a plan to replace all 435 members of the House of Representatives. Originally written to execute the plan in the 2008 elections, GOOOH (Get Out Of Our House-go to GOOOH.com to check it out and read more) has now shifted to the 2010 election. GOOOH is not a political party, it is a concept that serves to change the way we select those that supposedly represent us in Washington. Sure, the founder, Tim Cox of Texas, wishes that all those chosen and elected would share his views, but he is confident that if chosen by his plan, the people elected will represent the people of their districts. How many of you feel truly represented by the fat cat lawyers and millionaires that make up our elected bodies today? Are they making decisions based on what is best for you, the American TAX PAYER, or what is best for their re-election campaigns? People, hell, entire families have made their entire living “serving” the tax payers. We keep re-electing and electing the same ole politicians year after year, yet we have nothing but failing government programs and ill-advised government takeovers to show for it. Mr. Cox’s plan is not the cure-all, but it is a step in the right direction. How can we expect the same ole crowd to make revolutionary decisions to reverse the current course of our country? Our country was founded on principles held by hardworking farmers, businessmen, and military leaders…everyday Americans, and that is who must stand up and be counted. I find it personally promising that some of Mr. Cox’s main points address the issues that Mrs. Gabriel says we must address in order to stabilize our country and our way of life in the face of Islamic extremism.

As far as those of you who think that a course reversal is a bit much, consider some points and statistics:

• Our reliance on foreign oil controlled by radical Islamic states is out of control.

• We must take action in regards to our environment—the environment is not political, but every time a politician starts talking about it, half of the population automatically closes their ears because the person talking is from the other party—we have to come together and take action.

• In 1936 (Great Depression), about 1% of the population was on welfare, in 1994 15% were soaking up your hard earned dollars—needs fixing.

• The top 52% of earners pay 100% of the taxes—not fair.

• Some Americans fork over close to 50% of their earnings to Uncle Sam, while the drug dealers, bookies, and black market folks don’t pay a dime in income taxes. A consumption tax would alleviate that problem and do away with the IRS (GOOD THING) See fairtax.org

• At the time of printing, the top 10% of earners pay over 60% of taxes. Distributing our growing national debt equally among us 10% folks, we each are down $672,000…but no one is slowing down the spending machine that is our Federal Government.

• The U.S. Government pays 50% more on healthcare per person than the next most expensive country (Switzerland)—we aren’t even trying to give healthcare to everyone, yet. The World Health Organization ranks us 37^th in the world for overall healthcare systems

• Department of Education has spent nearly $1 trillion since its inception ($71 billion budget), yet high school graduation rates across the country have not budged in 28 years. In the city of Cleveland, a meager 28% of students graduated from high school (I personally believe that parental involvement, drugs, and teen pregnancy are chief to blame for poor graduation rates in some of our communities.)

• Most Politicians and many public school teachers send their kids to private school—Hello, anybody home?

• We spend an average of over $23,000 per prisoner in the Federal system, but the average welfare recipient gets less than $15,000—Now, I think welfare needs to be revamped completely, but it wouldn’t cost me or you a dime to switch these two numbers. Prisoners are guaranteed hot food, cable TV, and medical care…the food should be cold, the TV gone, and the medical care limited to tourniquets and rubbing alcohol.

• Social Security—that gig is up. We have to stop the madness.

• Legal Immigration is a great thing. It makes our country who we are. Illegal immigration is bringing us to our knees and killing us literally. Ponder this, freeamerica.com reports(at time of printing) since 9/11, including 9/11 less than 7,000 Americans have died at the hands of terrorists including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other attacks, 19,000 have died a violent death at the hands of illegal aliens, 20,000 due to uninsured illegals drunk behind the wheel, 13,000 victimized children at the hands of illegals…we have 250,000 illegal aliens that are known sex offenders in our country

In conclusion, I demand more than a minor course correction from our elected officials. Every topic listed above has a giant government program with thousands of employees that should all be held accountable for the failures of their respective programs. If you owned a business and got this level of productivity from your employees, would you stand for it? No, you wouldn’t. Heads would roll. Why do we accept this from our government? What if George, Ben, Sam, and Thomas had taken “The Crown’s” bull and not done anything about it 233 years ago? It is our turn, not to take up arms, not to secede, but to use the system put in place by the geniuses that founded our great nation to get her back on track.

Over 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson said, “God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.”

Samuel Adams said, “If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men should possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

Mark Twain said, “In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him…”

As a Federal Employee, I see the monster at work. I see inefficiencies that would blow your mind. The only thing we can do is report blatant fraud, waste, and abuse and elect officials that will demand more of themselves and hold accountable the spending machine programs. We have 51 weeks left until 2010 elections. Something has got to give.

The FT. HOOD terror attack, I wanted to touch on it, but not go into great detail… Had this been on a street corner or train, no questions asked, terrorist. But he was a military officer, so we cannot call it a terror attack, can we? Cut the crap. This same PC attitude is what kept people from speaking up about this lunatic Infidel-hater long ago. I am sure those people that could have spoken up are sick to their stomachs, I’d be. But, I know exactly why they didn’t say anything. Any harsh word or order to perform a less than desirable task in the military has to be handled with care, always aware of the possible Equal Opportunity complaint that could come my way. I see poor performers promoted regularly because people don't want to give them a bad evaluation because it will hurt their career...not keeping score at kids soccer games is the least of our concerns. Just wanted to let you know where these folks are coming from in their hesitation to report weird behavior by a Muslim in their ranks.

Thanks for the Vets Day emails. Pray for the families of the Ft Hood Terror Attack Victims. Pray for the full recovery of Dr. Hasan; I want him to get his day in court and experience being killed all over again.

God bless and Geaux Tigers.

BMP

06 NOV

10 days until I am homeward bound. I can see it, I can taste it, and I can feel it. It has been a long journey that has gone really fast in the grand scheme of things. The way I see it, this is my second to last Afghan entry, made in Afghanistan. I will probably write during my travels and post a final Afghan Blog upon my return to the U.S. of A.

The elections getting canceled hasn’t really been a hot topic of discussion around here. We were prepping for the pending elections up until Monday night when they finally called off securing sites for an election that had been canceled hours earlier between two guys, one of which said he quit the day before…shouldn’t be making any sense to you because it doesn’t. My personal feeling on the whole election debacle is one of uncertainty. I think the whole thing makes a statement on Afghanistan's readiness to operate independent of outside help...they are far from it. The runoff was the result of fraudulent ballots, yet nothing was changed with the election commission or any other factor to ensure an improvement in the integrity of the process; however, they were going to go on with an election. That is the reason Dr. Abdullah dropped out, he new that there would be wide spread fraud. When I questioned locals during all of this, the consensus was Karzai is better be cause he is Pashtun (the same tribe as most of them)....sad.

I have been thinking considerably since writing last week in response to Mr. Hoh’s resignation. I also started and finished a book titled Because They Hate. The non-fiction book is written by a Lebanese Christian woman who spent the first part of her life in a peaceful Christian village in southern Lebanon, then all hell broke loose in her perfect bubble of a world and war ensued and lasted for 7 years. Seven years of living in a bunker with her aging parents and seeing death and destruction daily. Seven years of seeing people killed for being Christian or Jewish at the hands of crazed Islamic extremists killing in the name of a god I don’t want to know. Robbed of her childhood, she escaped to Israel where her eyes were opened to the reality of Islamic hatred. Much of the world will say that Israel INVADED Lebanon. Her version of the story is that Israel came to the aid of a group of Christian people who took up arms against the Islamic aggressors. She goes on to explain her feelings about the true the Islam that we are blind to and what America and the West must do to stop them. Without going into great detail, I will outline what she says we must do to protect our country followed by my own commentary:

1. Close the borders…there is a legal way for people to enter our country. She did it herself and thousands of people do it every year. The problem is thousands also enter our porous borders with ill intent for our country and our way of life.

2. Reform the immigration process in our country…according to Mrs. Gabriel (she married an Israeli), The INS approved Mohamad Atta’s student visa six months after he died while blowing up the WTC on 9/11/2001...your tax dollars at work.

3. Increase Human Intelligence (HUMINT)…this means spend more to train more people to go deep under cover in our country and others to infiltrate groups of bad people. Satellites and drones are neat, but there is no substitute for good HUMINT. Someone has to have the guts to act on this HUMINT (Kill bad people). G.W. signed off on it. The CIA was trying to do it, but Congress called foul play because they weren't informed. Now the American people and the World are informed. Quite frankly, there are people that get paid to know and do stuff that the average American citizen doesn't need to know or cannot handle, infact, most don't want to know.

4.” Profile, Profile, Profile” she says. Racially that is. We waste time, money, and energy searching white haired little ladies at the airport with the same scrutiny as we look at Arab men between the age of 16 and 40. If we spend more time searching the people that fit the bill for blowing shit up, and waste less on those of us that don’t, we might actually be able to call the searches worthwhile.

5. Silence any teaching of intolerance against our country…including the close monitoring of Islamic websites. According to Mrs. Gabriel, there are mosques all over our country spewing hate for America and our way of life. All literature that calls for the destruction of America or the death of Americans should be burned and anyone preaching it who is not an American citizen should be shipped home to their country of origin. People who are not citizens of the U.S. should not be afforded rights such as freedom of speech or due process...you messed up, game over, go home.

6. As individuals, she recommends we watch where we invest to make sure we aren’t supporting terror (www.divestterror.org), promote western values in our homes, report suspicious behavior, lobby for patriotic education, and of course, support our troops.

Brigitte Gabriel’s book is a good read and brought many things to my attention that I previously had not considered. What I find most interesting about her book is that she is an Arab woman who lived terror long before the twin towers collapsed. She is not a middle aged white guy who gets paid to talk. She has seen it first hand and stands to warn us of what is to come if we don’t put aside the political correctness B.S. and fight back.

If what Mrs. Gabriel says is true of Islam (I am trying to find a “real” English translation of the Koran), our mission in Afghanistan needs to wrap up. We need to collapse our security perimeter to our borders, support Israel in their military endeavors, and stand by to defend our nation against the impending attacks. This seems like dooms day talk, but why do we have handguns in our homes…there are police right? We lock our doors at night. We have neighborhood watch and street lights. Sure we have all of those, and no real reason to suspect that someone is coming for us and our stuff, yet most of us stand ready to shoot the first S.O.B. that wants to get at us and our stuff…white, black, yellow, Christian, Muslim, Jewish…our bullets in the closet don’t care. Why should our borders be any different? If you mean America harm, if you preach or find delight in the idea of the destruction of my way of life, if you run around thinking that you are going to turn my country into an Islamic state, please, I beg you come to my house first to try to convert me by force.

Geaux Tigers. God Bless.

BMP