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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Which is true?

In the last 48 hours, I have listened more than usual to some of the call in shows on the radio. Here is a list of five statements. See if you can recognize which of these five I heard stated on the radio:

1) Obama is a Communist who named Tsars in his administration to throw off those who thought he was a Communist. After all, the Communists in Russia came when the Tsar in that country was overthrown.

2) The Chinese are buying land in the US an opening up factories. These areas have been designated free trade zones by Obama. The Chinese are bringing in Chinese workers to get the jobs that these new factories produce.

3) Those in Congress who want president Obama to ask Congress for authority to continue with the Libya War are Republicans who all said exactly the opposite when George Bush was in office.

4) It is ridiculous to say that the wild fires raging in Arizona were started in whole or in part by illegal aliens.

5) Those who question the need for a continued presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are isolationists like those who wanted the USA to keep out of World War II.

The facts are listed below.
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If you said that I heard all of this stated like a fact on the radio, you are correct. Sadly, none of the statements is even remotely true, but that did not stop the people from saying them. Statements 3 and 4 even came from supposed news reporters, but they were just as incorrect as the others.

Let's look at the five: First, Obama is not a Communist. He may be a European style Socialist, but that is a very different thing. The use of the tsar term is one of long standing here in the US; it did not start with Obama. Second, there are no Chinese free trade zones in the USA; nor are there any Chinese workers coming (legally) into this country. Third, those who say the president must get congressional authority to continue in Libya are about half Democrats and half Republicans. Further, Bush sought and got Congressional authority before fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no comparable situation during the Bush Adminsitration. Fourth, no one has stated in public who caused the wild fires iin Arizona. They may have been the result of natural causes, an undoused camp fire or arson. Since that has not yet been determined or disclosed, speculation that it might have been illegals who caused the fires makes as much sense as speculation that the fires were set by lightning. the truth is that either no one knows or else no one is saying. Last, pre war isolationism had as its central tenet, the idea that the USA needed just to keep out of foreign entanglements; we were to let the Europeans solve their own problems. That is a far cry from re-examining the strategy for dealing with the Muslim terror threat. The question is what will work the best for the USA. Fifty years ago, Kennedy said that the USA would bear any burden and pay any price for freedom, etc. After that, some thought that more involvement was always better than less. That may have been true when dealing with the Soviet Union. It is not necessarily the case when the opponent is Al Qaeda.

Frequently, I criticize people for not giving the intelligence of the American people enough credit. After listening to the radio this weekend, I may re-think that position.

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