The Pope and the President - the Peoples' Pals

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Today President Obama had his first face-to-face meeting with the popular new renegade running the Roman Catholic Vatican, Pope Francis, already revered as the People's Pope.  In the hours before the meeting the Vatican leaked out that Obama was really no stranger to the Catholic faith as he was close to the Catholic Church in Chicago and even received a grant from the church to jump start his career as a community organizer.

Of course he followed that up with his joining the congregation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the fire brand Obama family friend and preacher who preached himself out of the Obama campaign for sermons like his "White folks' greed runs a world in need" racist rants.  However, since taking over the White House Obama has downplayed his religion, but not his spirituality I might add, and seldom attends church.

Pope Francis lives in a church when he is not out shattering all Vatican protocols and sharing dinner with the people, kissing babies, washing feel, tending to the sick, hugging humans, and acting like, well, like Jesus must have intended it in ministering to the masses.

So how about some comparative factoids?

How many popes have there been?

Pope Francis is pope number 266.

How many presidents have there been?

Barack Obama is president number 44.

How old is the Roman Catholic Church?

The church is 1,981 years old.

How old is the United States?

The USA is 238 years old.

How many constituents does the Pope serve?

There are 1.211 billion Roman Catholics.

How many constituents does the president serve?

There are 317 million Americans including DC.

How many countries have Catholics?

There are 201 countries with Catholic population.

How many countries have US citizens?

There is one country and six territories with US citizens.

(District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa & Northern Mariana Islands - about 1 million people total - 600,000+ in DC)

How many Catholics in United States?

There are 78.2 million Catholics.

How many Democrats in USA?

There about 86 million Democrats.

How many Catholics support Democrats in USA?

In 1964 80-90% supported Democrats but recent elections 50%.

What does that mean?

In order to win president a democrat must get over 50% of the Catholic vote.

What is the Pope's approval rating among Catholics?

The Pope has an 88% approval rating among Catholics.

What is the President's approval rating among Democrats?

The President has an 80% approval rating among Democrats.

What is the Pope's approval rating among all Americans?

The Pope has a 63% approval rating among all Americans.

What is the President's approval  rating among all Americans?

The President has a 41% approval rating among all Americans.

Francis is the first pope from South America.

Obama is the first Black to be president.

There you have it.  And by the way, America never sends it's leader anywhere without adequate protection and support staff so our president was accompanied by 700 security, staffers and White House press corps.  Good thing Michelle wasn't with him since she was off for two weeks in China with her daughters and mother and a few hundred more security and staff personnel.

The agenda in Rome, well that remains to be seen what was really discussed because no matter what the similarities between the two and their policies of embracing the poor there are some stark and highly explosive policy differences between them including ObamaCare forcing the church hospitals to dispense contraceptives, gay marriage, wars, massive refugee concerns and others.  

As the truth of what happened behind closed doors leaks out we will report on the latest developments.  By the way, did I mention Putin beat him to the Pope stopping by the Vatican on his way to hijacking Crimea?

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Memo to Congress - Fix Foreign Policy - Putin & Ukraine

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Being an American it is sometimes difficult to see the world through anything other than rose colored glasses.  Think about it.

Our principle source of information on foreign policy is a media that long ago stopped reporting the news and decided to make the news.  Their principle source for information are bureaucrats and politicians working for agencies like the State Department, the intelligence agencies, and groups like NATO and the United Nations.

Then there are the international banks, international corporations, international financing mechanisms like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank not to mention the vast array of foundations, think tanks, pharmaceutical companies supplying drugs to third world countries, defense contractors (including the most powerful of all the arms dealers) among the many special interests with a special interest in foreign affairs and all the money, power and perks found around such money pits.

The world has been controlled by these foreign affairs special interests since the beginning of the 20th century and the dawning of world wars.  The sad part of the truth is that they have all joined forces to find ways to use government and private resources to manipulate events around the world for the purpose of altering the foreign policy balance.

The sadder part of the truth is that in the course of their manipulation they are totally devoid of humanitarian principles and international law but serve a higher purpose, feeding greed and accumulating wealth.  Of course the media consistently paints a picture of serving the higher good by these groups but what they really meant was serving a higher god and their god is greed manifested in power and wealth.

We have pretty much been lied to about sinister purposes behind the foreign affairs of the past century and most certainly been lied to about the worst abusers of misdirected foreign policy.  Maybe we will wake up, or maybe we will keep having "isolated" conflicts that leave hundreds of thousands of people dead, millions and millions of people condemned to refugee camps, and more and more of the world's natural resources in the hands of people loyal to no government but their god Greed.

Look around you.  Listen to what the media is telling you.  The cover story of the day is "Putin is a bad guy - he wants to recreate Russia."  You hear it from the mouths of the Obama administration, it is parroted by the news media, echoed by our allies around the world (although with far less enthusiasm than in America), and applauded by Wall Street and the international banking community.

They also tell you Putin has no respect for international laws, international treaties nor international banking since he is destabilizing the world financial markets.

If I were the America public I would search a lot deeper into the motives behind those condemning Putin.  So far the Russian forces have done nothing more than to protect Russian assets in Crimea, namely a huge naval base on the Black Sea.

As a result he has earned the wrath of Obama and been bombarded by cream puffs called sanctions, economic sanctions at that, and oh yeah, Russia was tossed from the G8.  Now we seem to have a long history of using tough economic sanctions to punish errant nations and force compliance with our will.

Libya has been under US sanctions since 2011.  Sudan has been sanctioned since 2002.  Burma since 1997.  Syria since 1986..  Iran since 1979.  Cuba since 1962.  North Korea since 1950.  We also had economic sanctions against the former Soviet Union from 1948 until the collapse in 1991.

But only once in the past 66 years have US economic sanctions really worked and that was when we sanctioned our own closest allies, Great Britain, France and Israel during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956.  The three were going to invade Egypt in response to the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal and the Americans stopped them dead in their tracks when President Eisenhower started dumping British pounds on the world monetary market and cut off all American oil and gas to the three allies.

It might have been the only time in world history that an invasion was stopped by economic sanctions and probably the last time in history that sanctions actually served people rather than the financial interests impacted by the area.  No lives were lost in a costly invasion that would probably have resulted in major damage to the canal and massive disruption of the world economy since it was the gateway for oil to the western world.

So the bottom line is, economic sanctions don't work.

Just ask the Cubans who have lived with them for over 50 years.  In truth, economic sanctions only hurt the people in those countries who are already victims before we got involved.

Then there is the issue of violating international law, etc., etc.  So far no one has proven Russia or Putin violated international law.  On the other hand, the history books are filled with American violations of about every international law and treaty that exists dating all the way back to our treaties with the Native Americans.

People need to understand we have made it a practice to ignore the law, local, state, federal or international whenever it was useful for the economic interests of, well, certainly not our nation but more appropriately the financial manipulators who use our treasury as their money and our military as their private army.

Wake up...The latest NSA mess has proven our government totally ignores laws protecting things like privacy or unreasonable search and seizure and has run ramshackle over our Constitution and Bill of Rights.  It also violated every international law and treaty we have with our allies and everyone else.

Is drug traffic illegal?  Not if our intelligence agencies are involved like in Asia and South America.

How about the ultimate abuse, political assassination?  We've been there and done that.

Illegal invasions like we say Putin is poised to undertake in the Ukraine?  Ask the Iraq or Afghanistan governments how they feel about that.

Indirectly we are behind many more abuses of international laws and treaties like triggering the Arab spring revolutions and so many more I could write a book.

Yet our president and media stand up and declare Putin and Russia to be acting illegally and like a bully?  We, our government, needs to look in a mirror before it starts condemning anyone for illegal activity.

And while we are at it, I have cited a litany of ways we have directly violated international laws and treaties but there are far more indirect methods that have been used so other people take the blame.

Foreign policy today has little to do with assuring the quality of life for people, or their health, education or welfare.  Those who think we are spreading democracy throughout the world so we can thus protect the lives, freedom and opportunities for the suppressed masses have got it all wrong.

In the vast majority of the cases our foreign policy supports a financial concern of someone other than the American people and that is a bigger crime than the crimes we already commit violating international laws and treaties.

We need an independent re-evaluation of our entire foreign policy strategy.  We need to know if NATO and all other international groups serve the agenda to help people or just help special interests.

Putin was upset because the Ukraine wanted to join NATO and the European Union and we were behind the scenes making sure it happened.  What does a country like the Ukraine have to do with a North Atlantic defense group?  Maybe NATO has outlived it's usefulness and is now creating conflict to justify it's existence?

Maybe it's time to stop being hypocrites and start being leaders in finding peace, not causing war and unrest.

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The Obama Report Card - It's time to correct our mistakes

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Save a few billion dollars and fix what is broken - Romney in 2016

I doubt many people, Democrats in particular, want to review the consequences of having elected Barack Obama to the presidency the last two elections.  First there were the empty promises whose failure was blamed on Bush even though the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate the last two years Bush was president and the first two years under Obama.

Blaming Bush for what had to be approved by Congress is just plain hypocritical yet what did happen is we got ourselves into an economic quagmire the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

Still, it was obvious to candidate Obama in 2008 that we were in the midst of an economic catastrophe and if elected he would have to get us through the mess.  So he spent a billion dollars on his campaign and won with 52.9 percent of the vote, a mandate in the eyes of the Main Street media.

Now I admit I don't understand Ivy League math anymore than I understand voodoo economics but I do know a little about numbers and I know if just 4 tenths of 1% of the vote had voted for McCain instead of Obama then McCain would have been president.  Since when was less than 1% a mandate?

So we got Obama and soon it became obvious the promises of hope, deficit reductions, withdrawal from wars, working together, serving all Americans, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo prison and re-establishing America's prominence in the world were nothing more than typical campaign promises, empty promises at that.

Obama did bail out General Motors (who benefited from that?) and the banks but about 7 million people still are not working nearly 6 years later and no fat cat crooks are in jail.  He also gave us ObamaCare, which he personally guaranteed would lower the cost of health care, lower the cost of insurance premiums, let you keep your old doctor and let you keep your health insurance.

Thanks to his health care program he got re-elected in 2012, this time with just 51.1% of the vote after spending yet another billion dollars in his campaign.  Two billion dollars spent by Obama in just two campaigns could have fed a lot of hungry children and met the health care needs of a lot of refugees from his failed foreign policy.

Once again his Main Street media called it a mandate and a vindication of ObamaCare since there was absolutely nothing else to show for the first four years and by now the national debt had more than doubled since Bush left office.

The Obama 2012 people's mandate shrunk in half from 2008 and now a change of just 2 tenths of 1% of the vote would have made Mitt Romney president. 

As for his 2008 promises, he did pass health care reform but everything else remained as it was before he got into office.  Oh he did end the war in Iraq if you called leaving thousands of Americans behind ending anything and now more Iraq civilians than ever are being killed in sectarian violence.

As for the glorious ObamaCare promises, so far, none of those promises have come true.  Oh yes, and the national debt has now soared to over $17 trillion and Obama has no intention of fixing our future.

He ran on the platform that he had experience but I think we realize now that being a community organizer and part time state and federal senator does not substitute for real, hands on experience in the big jobs, the tough decisions and the ability to bring people together.

Ironically he also treated his opponent Mitt Romney mockingly and with derision when Mitt said Putin was a danger to our foreign policy and Obama scolded him that the Cold War was over and Russia being a threat to anyone ended in the 1980's.

In hindsight Obama might have been a little less arrogant as Russia has blocked his every move on Syria, Iran and North Korea not to mention destabilizing Europe as he stole Crimea from the Ukraine and has amassed troops on the border of the Ukraine as we await his next move.  Some paper tiger that Putin and again Romney was right but I hear no apology from the Obama camp.

  

This year he will lose control of both the House and Senate and it will take Hollywood spin the likes of which we haven't seen since the Clinton administration to hear what kind of mandate he has for his last two years in office, spin like I didn't inhale or I didn't really have sex.

What America needs is a Reagan type with real world experience, a demonstrated ability to work with both political parties, experience running a real office and organization, maturity in respecting all nations and peoples of the world, common sense, and is not enamored with the Hollywood crowd.  We need a break from politics and politicians.  Peace, stability, real hope, and integrity are sorely lacking in Washington but Romney just might be able to deliver them.

Oh my gosh, isn't that the choice we had in 2012 when 2 tenths of one percent too many of the people believed the Obama health care promises and re-elected him.  As I recall, Mitt Romney offered all those alternatives to the young, hip and confident candidate Obama.

If we only valued experience more than flash, maturity more than stubbornness, compassion more than partisanship and integrity more than expediency think how different things might be right now.

There are a host of good Republican candidates poised to run for president in 2016 but with Obama a sitting, lame duck president and his hands tied by a GOP congress you can bet the partisan rhetoric will be turned up even higher than right now.

Do we really want to spend billions trying to decide who should be president when we already vetted one candidate who survived the Obama onslaught and the media manipulation, was every bit the gentleman we sorely miss, has proven he can work with people of both parties for the public good, and even got health care right when he implemented it in Massachusetts?

Mitt Romney is still out there and time and again he has answered the call to public service whether in state or federal government or the Olympics.  He doesn't need to spend a billion dollars to tell you who he is.  He does know how to fix the economy, implement health care, and gain the respect of foreign nations.  Finally, he would have a great group of young and aspiring Republican governors and members of congress to bring into his administration.

Think about it.  It's never too late to admit a mistake and correct it.

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March Madness concludes 1st week amid carnage and chaos - Sweet 16 left standing

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After the first two rounds the NCAA March Madness has all the makings of the Mad Hatters Tea Party with upsets aplenty and about half the games last second thrillers and the other half last second laughers.

So what team is playing far better than their NCAA seeding?  Kentucky, of course, along with Louisville.  These are the defending national champions of the last two years and one of the greatest rivalries in America yet they were seeded 8th, Kentucky and 4th, Louisville.

I think there is a media bias against Kentucky teams most likely because they are dominant forces in basketball.  Certainly it is not from the fact Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky although didn't the Civil War end about 150 years ago?  Or not?

Anyway the tournament selection committee clearly does not like freshman dominated teams any more than the Associated Press basketball poll.  John Calipari's "One and Done" coaching philosophy of recruiting freshman who will jump to the pros rather than finish college is quite controversial to say the least.

So in the last AP poll of the season before the tournament Kentucky was no where to be found among the top 25.  Even the USA Today/ESPN experts poll had Kentucky far down at number 21.  Louisville fared better finishing number 5 in AP and 4 in USA Today/ESPN.

So there are 4 number one seeds, one from each region.  One might think the top four teams in the rankings would be the top four teams.  Louisville was in the top four in USA Today/ESPN and #5 in AP so should have been seeded 1, or 2 at worst since the top 8 teams should be number 1 or 2.  Louisville landed number 4.  What is that all about?

Ashley Judd loves UK

As for UK who did not even make the top 25 in the minds of the sports writers, a week ago they lost to the number one team in America, Florida, in the SEC conference championship in the last second 61-60 and a week later they beat Wichita State, seeded #1 and ranked #2 in the nation, the only unbeaten team in the tournament, 78-76 ending the Shockers quest for a national title.

No doubt it will be remembered as one of the best fought games in NCAA tournament history and both teams fought valiantly and could have won but the Kentucky Wildcats did win.  What the newspaper writers forgot to mention, however, when telling us how great Kentucky has become in spite of having all freshmen as starters, is they didn't even think enough of UK to put them in the top 25 and they seeded them way down at 8th.

When was the last time an unranked team played the number 1 and 2 teams within a week losing by 1 point and winning by two points?  Are you kidding me?  The people doing the polls for national rankings and tournament seedings should go into politics where everybody knows the polls are nonsense.

Now the press hype will turn to the Kentucky - Louisville game next Friday at Indianapolis, just across the border from Kentucky.  Not only is it s bitter rivalry but both coaches, John Calipari of UK and Rick Pitino of Louisville have won national championships.  In fact both won national championships for UK, then Pitino won another last year for Louisville.  It will be entertaining.

Other notable survivors doing quite well were Arizona and Virginia, both seeded #1.  Florida struggled but also advanced.  There are still 2 #11 seeds, 1 #10 seed and 1 #8 seed left in the Sweet 16.  Giant killer Dayton, coached by Archie Miller, brother of Arizona coach Sean Miller, is the most valid Cinderella team and if both teams keep winning the brothers would meet in the championship game.

Before the season started I wrote a profile on Kentucky basketball saying we should watch both schools and both the men's and women's teams this year.  So here we are at tourney time and UK and Louisville are about to square off in a classic quarter-final battle to see who gets to the semi-finals while the women's teams, both UK and Louisville, survived the women's first rounds and both are seeded #3, a testament to Kentucky basketball and of course the foresight of the Coltons Point Times.

Just kidding...

PS  As much as I like the UK Wildcats, my heart remains with the Arizona Wildcats where long ago I once played.

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Busted - The Millions in the Billion Dollar Bracket

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With a huge sigh of relief the Buffett boys and their insurance companies escaped paying out a billion dollars for a perfect NCAA bracket and the end came astoundingly fast.  Before the first round of 64 was over the 15 million entries were through, finished, done, busted.

For all the excitement the end came just 25 games into the 32 first round games.  Not a single entry made it through the first round.

According to contest officials, when Memphis beat George Washington in the 25th game it was over.

Can the Gators be stopped?

So whether the odds were 1 in 128 billion or 1 in 9.2 quintillion it didn't really make any difference how many zeros were added, no one was going home with the goods.
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Obama & Putin - Don't Let Politics & Egos Trigger Economic Chaos

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There is one thing our leaders seem to have forgotten in their war of words and brinkmanship, their clash of egos and their refusal to compromise and that is millions, maybe even billions of people will have to bear the brunt of the hardship for whatever they do.

Here in America we are still struggling to get over a terrorist attack on 9-11, two of the longest and most ill-conceived wars in our history and five years of Obama and his policy of intellectual constipation as a better alternative than truth.

Now that political partisanship as mastered by the president has effectively paralyzed our government and there is really very little more damage that can be done to the national reputation there is a danger of detachment by the two political leaders that spells danger to the millions they represent and the millions more they could harm.

We pretty much recognize that Putin is going to do whatever he thinks will contribute to the resurrection of a Russian Empire as that seems to be his destiny.  Whether such an Empire will embrace the brutal Communism of Lenin and Stalin remains to be seen.

Here in the colonies we seem to have forgotten a lot about the history of the world and I suppose when your own history is barely 500 years old, it would be hard to relate to people and places dating back 5,000 years or more.

Well consider this.  When the Soviet Union collapsed and we tried to impose our cherished system of Democracy on the people freed from the yoke of Communism did it ever occur to us we might be making a mistake?

Of course not.

Our Constitutional principles of individual freedom and equal opportunity should be enjoyed by everyone.  But can it be?  People fled to America to be free.  But what about the people who never left their homeland?  People like the Russians, Muslims, Asians and others.

I traveled to Russia during the conversion from Communism to chaos and it did not take me long to realize our freedoms and our opportunities were alien to a civilization that lived under the rule of Czars for over 1,000 years before the iron-fist control imposed by Communism.

None of the average Russians I reached out to had a clue what democracy meant and the thought of electing their leaders had never happened in thousands of years.  In fact, many of the people who grew up under Communism and were cared for from cradle to grave felt being cared for was far more important than how much wealth could be accumulated.

In other words, they didn't deny Americans to be who were are but seemed to be asking why can't you respect us for who we are.

We seem to forget it has taken us 500 years to master our own destiny.  The first half were spent under the same English, French or Spanish systems our ancestors fled and the last 238 years have been spent trying to figure out how to make democracy work.

Think about it, just 150 years ago we were ending the Civil War that threatened to destroy our fledgling experiment in democracy so we have really only been at it, the art of governing the people in peace, for 150 years.

When you think about the American wars, riots against wars, abuses by businesses, corruption by governments, lack of civil rights, etc., since the Civil War ended one wonders if we have even reached a state of maturity yet as far as our form of governing.

In truth, we don't really know what is best for ourselves, we are a work in progress, and we sure don't know what is best for the rest of the world.  If we do not recognize the history and respect the expectations of people in other countries then we should not impose our will and ways on them.

Of course every human being should enjoy individual freedom and have equal opportunity but that certainly does not happen overnight, not even over hundreds of years.  And that might not even be what the people want.

Obama and Putin are trying to impose on the Ukrainian and Crimean people what they see is best for those people.  I already wrote that Crimea was far more a part of Russia and the Ukraine more a part of Europe.

At the same time, Russia's most valuable asset, oil and gas, are dependent on a series of pipelines running across the Ukraine to the Black Sea and Europe.  They have a right to expect them to be protected just as we have protected our oil and gas interests in many countries in the Middle East.

No one's hands are clean and conscious is clear when it comes to wealth and power and those in power must be accommodated if anyone wants to share in their wealth.  Every time we try to change the balance of the world things get bad, economies are disrupted, people lose their jobs, savings and sanity and the rich, well they just keep getting richer.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and on and on are proof of the folly of wealth-driven foreign policy.  With the United States and Russia two of the most wealthy nations on Earth in terms of natural resources and economic wealth, maybe it is time to reconsider whether our foreign policy should be dictated by economic incentives or concerns for the needs of the people.

If so I expect a far different outcome than what we have today.                

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