I love to witness the addicted, whether they be in 12-step “Friends of Bill” programs or on the political trail.  It is never their (my) fault…either they(we) have someone to blame or just can’t help them(our)selves.

One day someone, maybe Dick Morris,  may figure out that the addicted are the swing voters.  Millions of Americans are addicted, some like Hillary (and Bill) to lying, some, like Spitzer to sex (with hookers, not his wife), others to  gambling, alcohol and drugs.  And nobody has sought this group, which cuts across all ethnic and economic lines.  Forget black/white, Jewish/Catholic/Born Agains…this is the group to which our candidates, if they would only confess, belong.  For they are all addicted — addicted to lying!

And, so we have bred our political class:  From the Kennedy family to the Bush and Clinton families, we have elevated  those who know best how to lie abut their past, the present and our view of the future.  Perhaps it is what we deserve, but hopefully we can do better.

Our present “Liar-in-Chief” is the junior senator from New York, one Hillary Clinton.  She blithely lies about her achievements, about her own NAME! It would take too much space to list all her lies, but suffice it to say, it is with bemusement that she cannot stop, or admit to her addiction.  She, as the saying goes, needs to admit to her short-comings and make amends.   It is unlikely that we can expect her to seek guidance from a “higher power” — as all she seeks is a higher office.  Her “ends”, which she thinks “justifies her means”, by the way, are way too flatulent.

It is the one truth that she and Bill share, and seems to be the lynchpin of their relationship: They have both always been addicted to assuming power.  Their lies, they believe are dismissable–and they were from the main stream media until another, more likeable liberal, in the name of Barack Hussein Obama, emerged. They’ve cloaked their addiction in populist terms, about how they can bring about a better world, even as theirs is, on a marital basis at least, is a transparent sham; a partnership of lust, not for each other, but of power.  How delightful.  Is that the best we can do?!

And Barack, suave, svelte and soothing, is on a similar hedonistic ”high.”  Only he, raised by a white grandmother, whom he blithely tossed onto the coals of his ambition, he tells voters, can make us whole.  He too is addicted, to the belief that because he fit so effortlessly into our “white world”, that he alone can assuage us of our white guilt and bring us together.  Nevermind that he sat and listened to a hateful preacher for 20 years and never recoiled; he is Superman, cloaked in a mixed-race cape, addicted to his bathroom mirror - and immune to the kryptonite being shot from Hillary’s cannons!

John McCain remains a question: Is he addicted to pain?  He suffered more than almost anyone, and certainly evokes sympathy, if not admiration for doing so; for surviving and starting a new life.  But does he retain a lust, or addiction to the power of our military prowess to invoke the pan-American dream of  planting democracies where, perhaps,  they cannot grow, at least in our children’s lifetimes.

That remains the salient question for American voters: Do we have candidates who lie for the lust of power, lie because they are addicted or because their utopian dreams are what they think we want to hear?

They lie about their votes, their histories; they lie to their spouses and the voters.  One only hopes they lie less to their children.  My own experience is that our children hardly ever listen to us as much as they watch us, and then make judgments.  As it should be!

Or is there a voice, one voice that rings true.  That, in the end, I believe,  is the what the American people will evaluate–and who we will elect to the office of the President of the United States!  Someone who will serve us, rather than themselves.

It’s either that, or they confess to themselves, to a “higher power” — or aggressively seek the votes of those of us who suffer from one addiction or another.  Millions of us suffer from a variety of addictions, me included, and if anyone one of them came “clean” they just might capture the hidden swing-votes of “the addicted.”

Alan Bromley

Hope is a wonderful thing, and Barack Obama is full of it.  He thinks if he sits down and talks to the dictators of North Korea and Iran, he can bring reason, perhaps peace, and certainly hope for a better world.

 But, apparently, he never sat down with his long-time minister, Reverend (without reverence here) Jeremiah Wright Jr. and had a discussion about the reverend’s hateful rhetoric.

If he can’t muster the strength to confront one of Chicago’s more public bigots, I wonder, how he’s ever going to have the muster to confront the beast of North Korea, the ayotollahs of Iran, or even his whiny, unthankful (and only recently proud) wife Michelle. Maybe, just maybe, he’s found the fortitude to confront his children. And even more importantly, maybe his two daughters, like mine (sometimes to my chagrin), have been given the space, the independence of thought and the courage to confront him and his wife.

It doesn’t take a lot to challenge your religious leaders, only a smidgen of  indignation, coupled with some beliefs.  I know, I’ve done it numerous times, without ever risking any collateral damage.  Then again, I’m not running for President of the United States – or running from my beliefs to curry favor with those praying next to me.

Recently, I went to synagogue on a Friday night at B’nai Jeshrun in New York City, to celebrate the Sabbath.  It was the week that the Jewish students in Jerusalem were slaughtered by an irate Muslim.  The rabbi was also full of hope,  and prayed we would not evolve in another “cycle of violence.” I shuddered and — and immediately went up to him after services.

I put my hand on his arm and said, “Rabbi when you used the term ‘cycle of violence’ you are speaking of moral equivalency; you are saying that violence deliberately targeting innocent civilians is equivalent to that of self-defense; you are saying that a culture, like those of fanatical Muslims, that worships death is of equal morality to that of our Jewish tradition that cherishes life — and you are making our people weaker and  less able to defend themselves.” He apologized.

And, I don’t go to temple every week.  I go for spiritual sustenance, which is aplenty at B’nai Jeshrun, but when they turn political, which happens, I speak my mind.  It is part of the Jewish tradition, my tradition.

So, my question to Barack is: After 20  years of sermons, did you not once go up to your religious leader and tell him you were offended?  Did you not once express your displeasure with his hate-mongering, or were you sidling up to him to like some south-side hooker, pretending to be asking for foregiveness, but actually conning your next John?

During the Clinton administration, at the same temple, a rabbi regaled us with his tale of praying with Jesse Jackson that Bill Clinton “be absolved of all the charges against him” — not that he become a better man!.

I was incensed because I came for spiritual and religious inspiration and the inner calmness the Sabbath is supposed to bring.  So I went up to him, put my arm around his shoulder and told him, “Rabbi, I want you to know that while you were praying that Billl Clinton be absolved of all the charges against him, I was praying to the same God to cancel your prayers.”

It doesn’t take much to challenge hypocrisy, but it does take a lot to be the leader of the the United States, of the world, and to confront the regimes that imprison their own people, threaten to annihilate those who worship differently, to prevent nuclear arms from falling into terrorists’ hands and to move society forward, into the real realm of hope, peace and prosperity.

And, if Barack, after 20 years of listening to Reverend Wright, had neither the conviction nor the courage to confront his minister’s anti-American, racist rages,  then I have to surmise that Barack is a man with less backbone than I want to see in the White House.

Barack Obama, it seems to me, would rather take detours than build bridges, as long as he continues on the road he set out for himself — and neither for the greater populace, nor for bringing us together.

Me thinks he’s not half the man Hillary is!

Fear is the dominant factor in our war against terrorism.  The republicans are afraid of failure, the democrats are afraid of success and western Europe is simply afraid.

The Bush administration, sure it could topple Saddam Hussein, was afraid (and remains so) to pursue Saddam’s co-conspirator, namely Syria’s  B’aathist Mr. Assad, for fear of expanding the war and reaping the negative attacks from the liberal media, congress and western Europe.  Like his father, in the first war against Iraq, he fears failure.  But we’re not in wars to strive for a “tie”, we’re supposed to go into war to win.

According to Israeli intelligence, and a top Iraqi air force general, while Bush was trying to appease nay-sayers at the United Nations, Saddam transferred his chemical weapons to Syria, stripping out commercial airliners and loading them up with his (WMD) weapons of mass destruction.

(Note: For those who say Bush lied about Saddam’s WMD, they are either blissfully  ignorant of recent history or deliberately lying for some perceived political gain or cocktail party one-upsmanship.  It is well documented that Saddam used WMD at least three times, against the Iranians in their prolonged war, against the Kurds in northern Iraq and against the “marsh” people of southern Iraq, where he sprayed chemicals onto one of the world’s largest marshes and then set it afire, simply because those people were deemed to be too independent…one can almost. but not quite,  hear the weeping of environmentalists.

Instead of following the trail of weapons, President Bush followed the scent of the polls and gave Syria a pass, lest he be perceived as being too aggressive.  Similarly, he is now trying to figure out how to best deal with Iran, a huge protaganist in the middle east, which acts and smells like a dog, sensing Bush’s fear of failure.

Even in the “war of the sexes”, people smell fear and insecurity, and either walk away or take advantage of the weaker one, depending upon whether they have short-term or long-term goals.  We’re doing neither, hoping to hold hands rather than seek consummation of the relationship.  This is no cowboy President.  Hold the barbecued ribs and serve him quiche.  John Wayne would’ve won this war 2 years ago.

And what can we expect, after intelligence reports tell us Al Qaeda has re-grouped in the hills of Pakistan?  Not much, I suspect, because the polls tell us we’ve lost our appetite for minor victories and Bush is afraid of the political cost of a major victory.  He’s a lame-duck president who now looks like chicken marsala.

But, I suggest, if the warlords of Pakistan and Afghanistan are willing to protect Osama bin Laden, then they have to be ready to die for their choice.  Carpet-bomb them!  In the scheme of things, if a couple hundred mountain ranges are flattened and opium growers are annihilated, who’s going to care 20 or 30 years from now if we can erase the cancer of Islamicists who want to bring us back to the 15th century, ruled by Shariah law.  It is a body of laws which is so mysoginist, so punitive that everyone but the strictist Muslims would be impugned or impaled.  Picture Maureen Dowd in a burqa, stripped of her feminity and her sacrcasm.

Residents of Dresden aren’t holding grudges; neither are the off-spring citizens of Hiroshima.  Sure, there’ll be cries, whimpers and whining from the liberals, but what the hell, victors write history, not those who enabled the losers, especially when the next generation gets to enjoy the benefits of both personal and economic freedom.

And, the democrats, the cheerleading team of Murtha, Pelosi and Reid, what are they  most afraid of?  A victory against terrorism, a victory for Bush.  They are afraid of success.  If Bush somehow wins the war on terrorism, or at least sets it back 10 years, they’re afraid they can’t elect a democractic president.  It has nothing to do with with what’s right, or what’s attainable for the nation, or the world, it’s about who  conquers the White House, not who preserves western civilization.

They want to raise taxes on the most successful of Americans, implicity telling their constuency that success is unattainable for them, and that the government will give them everything they need (assuming these people have no aspirations for themselves or their children, I must add).

Attack the successful!  Go after the pharmaceutical companies, the oil giants, the healthcare industry, and lastly, the financial indsutry.  Tax them to death til two things happen: Under-achievers are  placated and rewarded (and vote democratic), and capital (money has no conscious, nor should it have!) flows to it’s safe havens…places like the Cayman Islands, eastern Europe, which has lowered taxes and seen a boom in industry and employment, not to mention tax revenues (thank you, Arthur Laffer).  They will export our last strength: intellectual property.  Micky Mouse will neighbor with Mick Jagger on some Carribean Island.

God, are they afraid that Bush’s policies,  no matter how limp, will win the day against Islamic terrorism.  They declared the “surge” dead before the troops were deployed.  They don’t care about the millions of Iragis or those in Afghanistan who strive — and voted – for freedom.  They revel about the tolerance of diversity on the streets of their beloved San Francisco, where the porno-Mitchell Brothers became some sort of icon, and they neither see nor say anything about how women are treated under Shariah law (which should be relegated to the dust-bins of history, burned like Joan D’Arc, or at some college football or fraternity ceremony).

The democrats want the White House.  That is what they are concerned about conquering, not some antiquated, medieval movement that is trying to assert itself on the world, largely because of its own impotence over the last 400 years.  Islamicism is but a Viagra moment in history, with some artificial lasting power, but easily spent and cast aside, if we have the will to deal with it (we have the capability).

But we all cower, needlessly so.  There are approximately 1.25 billion Muslims, but nobody is doing the math:  Even if half of them are sympathic to random bombers or want Shariah law imposed on the rest of us, we need to count the 1 billion Catholics,  the 500 hundred million fundamentalist Christians, the hundreds of millions of Hindus and Sikhs and the13 million Jews, not to mention over 1 billion Chinese, who, at last report,  are aetheists. All are dogs to the Islamicists.  But these dogs can bite! It is these groups , who control all the technology of the world, all of industry and it is they who can muster the strength to fight this war to its proper end against the cavemen of the Islamicist world!

So while western Europe lanquishes, and tells its people not to even mention two words together — Islam and terrorism — and Bush tries for a “tie” and democrats seek to appease their way to the White House,  the Islamic terrorists persist.

But make no mistake, even if we end up with Hillary or Obama as president, the Islamic terrorists will overplay their hand, and land one too many bombs or missiles — and the west will react with a vengence not seen before, wiping out the cancer that nobody is quite  ready to extinquish!

Alan Bromley

Last semester, my youngest daughter implored me to visit her at the University of Wisconsin.  As I hated the idea of taking two flights, but wanted to sate her loneliness, I offered a deal:  “I’ll come,” I told her, “but only if I can attend your class on Islam.”  She was taking a course from the notorius assistant professor who claims, among other things, that the U.S. orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on our soil.  She refused to give me her schedule, and I refused to visit (although, as a compromise,  we met on the common ground of Miami’s  semi-decadent South Beach for a family get together):

Apparently, she wasn’t afraid of my propensity to provoke hedonists, only among the liberal intelligentsia and apologists for murderous  zealots.  Not a bad sign, I thought, as I watch my daughter mature; a young woman who can laugh at my futile attempts to be risque while blunting my attempts to cause turmoil in her “workplace.”  Very smart, this girl is.

But her fears got me to thinking, about just what is it that people are afraid of saying (or, in her case, of what I might say).  We live in a world, where liberalism has come to mean adherence to a code of conduct and speech with parameters  so constricting that even Hillary Clinton has trouble squeezing into them.

And so, without much effort, to try to fit into the politically correct jargon of the day, I will, for the last time, whisper the things I want to say, but which are largely forbidden at U.S. universities, in Eastern Europe,  at CNN and New York City and East Hamptons cocktail parties:

1 — “He’s an Islamic terrorist” …this is no longer legal to say in the entire European Union, (lest they offend the murderers)..henceforth, I must, and will,  say: “He’s a terrorist who abusively invokes Islam”;

2 — “Merry Christmas” to anyone in the U.S., and will forevermore say “Happy Holidays!”;

3 — “Are you an illegal alien?” — I promise to re-phrase this and ask, “Are you one of those growing minorities that no one  wants to offend, because one day you may vote?”;

4 – “Is it true, that Muhammed was a warrior as much as a religious leader…and please explain to me what he added to the world’s religious landscape that had not  already existed?”  But now I have to say (and will do so hereafter), “Islam is a religion of peace” — no matter how much blood is shed in its name — “Allah Be Praised!”;

5 — “Look at that fat man taking up two bus seats” in the ever-sensitive and enlightened city of San Francisco…As it is against the law to say so (I hope this isn’t published within their holistic borders); I will forever say, “Look at that centrigually-challenged male! And how I can I make more room for you on the tram!”;

6 – “How I love my SUV” — (which gets me and my children safely up to our ski house in the worst of weather) — and will hereafter state: “How I wish I had a Prius!”;

7 — “The United Nations has become a pulpit for anti-Semitism!” — and will henceforth state that “the enlightened nations the U.N. Human Rights Council– Eqypt, Belarus, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are the  able watchdogs of humanity!”;

8 — “That’s a pretty dress” to any female employee (but which, I believe, is still  fine to say to any tranvestite employee) and will curtail my remarks to, “Can I make you some fresh coffee?”;

9 —  ”Israel has a right to land it won in defensive wars against countries that continue to call for its liquidation”… and, even under extreme duress will not be coerced to say the elitist/leftist mantra that ”Israel is an oppressive non-entity,”  (even tho more than a dozen of the 50 Muslim nations were forged within the last half-century by western powers) ,  and

10 — “Global warming , while indeed a major issue, is not as great as hunger, malaria and breast and colon cancer– and may not even be caused by mankind (oops, I mean humankind”),  and hereby promise to say, “Let’s stop working…who cares about industry and employees (and their families!), we’d all be so much cooler if we didn’t work!”

Now, with these 10 Commandments of politcally correct speech imbedded in my brain, perhaps, my daughter will allow me to vist her — and attend just one of her classes.

Recognizing you’re wrong and apologizing, especially if you’re an A-type aggressive man, is what women have always wanted from us, is it not?  It’s a clear sign that despite our “take-over, caveman” mentality, that we recognize our faults and, more importantly, have much to gain from others. So it comes that fading star baseball slugger Jason Giambi apologizes for, apparently, taking steriods years ago, without mentioning the drug by name.

For an alpha-male to take steriods is to try to take over the world, or at least their sphere, and for a short time Jason Giambi took the baseball world — and The New York Yankees — by storm, and signed a contract worth north of $100 million. 

Steroids, apparently increases your strength, but shrinks your nuggets.  What a trade that is?! Obviously, each man has a different definition of masculinity — and dominance.  For instance, the Wall Street titans, such as Sandy Weill and Warrenn Buffett, took over companies and made billions, without a hint of drug inducements.  Even meglomaniacs like Hitler, Stalin and Mao who thought they could take over the world, were never alleged to have resorted to artifical enhancements.

But a home run, in any arena, has always been admired by most — and handsomely rewarded, at least in the short term.

So we come to Mr. Giambi’s mea culpa, which from this corner, is most welcome.

But the fact is that he had the guts to say he was sorry, and that he should never have taken…whatever. 

And what does the baseball establishment do?  Alpha-pretend-a-male Bud Selig, the latest in a long line of baseball furhers, issues a veiled threat to Mr. Giambi:  Testify before congress or face the consequences!

The consequences of what?  It was never against the law to take these drugs when Mr. Giambi allegedly did so.  He’s already been relegated from a star first baseman to a designated hitter (and recently moved all the way to the disabled list).  So what punishment does Mr. Selig pretend to hold over his head?

Real alpha-males, unlike Mr. Selig, know their power, it’s limits, and when to use it.  Had he, or his predescessors had their eyes on anything other than the cash regsiter, they would have stepped up to the plate a long time ago and cracked down on steriod usage.

Instead, they made millions, if not hundreds of millions, promoting the home-run bashing of muscle-bound guys like Sammy Sosa (who gave intricate hand signs and kisses after every home run, perhaps as a way of ordering more drugs from his supplier, as he crossed home plate) and Mark McGuire, the blond bombshell, who tried to take a base-on-balls during his congressional testimony.

And, that’s not to mention Barry Bonds, once a lithe and always superior athlete, whose new muscles have now rendered him unable to smile or talk.  It appears that he has to special order baseball caps to fit his newly enlarged head.  

And the same must be said for Mr. Selig: While he’s trying to throw strikes past Mr. Giambi, I wonder if he has any balls left in his repertiore…

Mr. Selig, I call on you to apologize to baseball fans around the world for turning away from the obvious — and thank Jason Giambi for leading the way in cleaning up the business of baseball.

Alan Bromley