Response to Molly Flynn's blog and all who want to sacrifice safety to be a little bit more comfortable !

This blog is in response to Molly Flynn's blog about her recent post "Hands-on security" . She argues that the x-ray machines and pat downs procedures done by TSA in airports are ridiculous. I completely understand why she is outraged about this security issue we are facing, but unfortunately I don't look at it the way she does. I don't think there is anyone on this planet that would like the idea of these hard core pat downs or x-ray scanner. I don't like to go through an X-ray machines either but I would rather do it to feel even 1% safer than not doing it and feel worried. She mentioned that she never heard of anymore successful attacks via airplane, yes but do you know why ? It isn't because terrorists are not thinking about doing it anymore or TSA prevented them from getting into airplanes, it is because they haven't been able to successfully blow up a bomb! Do you remember the underwear bomber ? He got into the plane and was so close to blow up the plane but his bomb didn't work properly. So do not think terrorists are not thinking about airplanes anymore. A serious security procedure is definitely needed to prevent these "highly talented" terrorists from getting into planes. Frankly, they are smarter than we think they are and our security procedure should get smarter everyday.

On the other hand, I do not think TSA's procedure is the best possible procedure ever; but since there is no better idea on the table yet, I would rather stick with this technology and this extensive pat down than nothing at all. Terrorism is a problem that we will have to deal with for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately terrorists' goal is to make our lives harder and we can't just ignore it. Even though I do believe that a TSA agent looking at my x-ray image is absurd but I also believe that blowing up into 1000 pieces in the middle of no where is absurd too. So until there is a better plan to prevent terrorists to get on the plane, I will stick with the existent technology and procedures.

WikiLeaks ... How future wars would take place

After the embarrassment of the U.S. department of state caused from leaked classified documents obtained by WikiLeaks, no one thought government’s response would make it even worse. Whether you think what WikiLeaks did was legitimate or not you have to give credit to the people behind it for being able to get these classified documents. Or maybe you should blame it all on the weakness of the U.S. cyber security over its documents. Recently, government warned federal workers and contractors not to attempt to read the classified documents on WikiLeaks on either government or personal computers. “To the contrary, classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority," the warning said. This is a great demonstration of how a bureaucratic organization, such as government, works. Everyone has access to these documents and instead of thinking about how this happened and try to fix the issue, they are sending warnings to their employees asking them not to visit the website. Like imposing their bureaucratic laws would do us any good in this situation.

On a recent interview to a cyber security agent of the department of defense by CNN, he said only 60% of defense’s computers are protected from serious hacking. He added that if someone downloaded a lot of classified data on a flash memory no one would figure out until after something like WikiLeaks happens. The U.S. government should start protecting its information from hackers so it won’t embarrass them in front of other nations and damage our diplomatic relationships. Also, government needs to learn that in the 21^st century it is almost impossible to hide anything from the public. In a world that WikiLeaks exist, government should try to be more transparent to its people. I think government could have handled the situation much better by taking actions before these documents were posted, at least they could attack the WikiLeaks’ website and shut their servers down. No expert would tell you that the U.S. does not have such an ability to shut down WikiLeaks’ servers but it is a wonder why these documents leaked in the first place. On the other hand, these leaks showed us one good thing about this administration and I should give Obama’s administration one score for that. WikiLeaks’ showed that all Arab countries have been begging the United States to attack Iran and “cut the snake’s head” but Obama administration and partly Bush’s administration resisted such a request. Whether we believe WikiLeaks’ present is going to benefit or harm us as a society, we have to find a way to deal with it and that is what our government hasn’t done yet. Until then, bravo to Julian Assange the guy behind WikiLeaks for at least giving a heads up of how easy it is to get cyber attacks.

My response to "The 51st state"

My comment to Nicholas Khoury's blog regarding "the 51st state".

Very interesting point he has made on his blog. Not that many people can realize that we are supporting Israel based on wrong reasons and wrong justifications. There are several reasons why we support Israel, the most important one as he mentioned, is that they are our only friends in the region and we need them to be able to stabilize the middle east (or at least this is what our politicians believe in). The other reason is that the Jewish community in the United States has so much power over our politicians, they are rich and that makes them influential. Newspapers and TV media are owned by the Jewish community and that makes them such a powerful "minority" in America.

Unfortunately, the american people don't understand what is the cost of this support. A lot of people might find it surprising if I say that 9/11 was indirectly caused because of our support for Israel. Arab community see us as the devil advocate that supports Israel, a nation that kills innocent Arabs. Our support for Israel has made middle east countries to hate us. Is it any wonder that middle east is the only region of the world that we are struggling with? We make a fool of ourselves by supporting a nation that ignores the United Nations and other international regulatories such as the Atomic Energy Agency. We support Israel no matter what they do and what they say and that is wrong. As a side note I should mention that I am proud to be an American no matter what but these ridiculous policies need to end soon for us to be able to maintain peace in the middle east and other parts of the world.

Democrats and their poor communication abilities !

No one likes to see people with no jobs, no one likes to see people losing their houses and certainly no one likes to pay more in rent, grocery or anything else. More importantly, the president definitely doesn’t want to see any of these and president Obama is not aside from this. From two years ago when this administration came to work it started an extensive work toward the economy recovery. Our economy needed a lot of support when this administration took the office due to irresponsibility of the previous administration. The administration’s work toward making new regulations, helping banks so they won’t create more mess than now and creating new programs which then led to new jobs never stopped despite the critiques from right and left. Democrats, as well as republicans were destroying this administration’s economy plan. But the truth of manner is when you believe deeply you are doing the right thing and when most of economists tell you that you are doing the right thing, you have got to swallow the attacks and keep fighting and fighting until you get some apparent results back. That is what this administration and this president has been doing for the past two years. What most of us don’t understand is that these results might take a long time before we can see it’s affect on our daily life but one thing that one needs to consider is the fact that it could be a lot worse than what it is now and the work of this administration has prevented that.

The Commerce Department released a preliminary report this morning indicating a 2 percent annual rate increase on third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP). This is up from 1.7% percent in the second quarter. If our president was a republican and our house and senate were dominated by republicans, any sign of recovery such as a 2.4% grow in GDP would mean celebration after celebration for more than a week about what a great job they did. They would brag about this achievement and how hard they have been working to get to this point. But since our president is a democrat who can’t sell anything all we got from him after this GDP release was “Our mission is to accelerate that recovery and encourage more rapid growth”. Democrats need to learn from republicans to sell their product If there is one thing republicans can do good is to sell their product ( most of the time to sell the product that they don’t have ). I think the American public needs to be more patient about the economic recovery plan and the president needs to be more enthusiastic about these results.

Republican's need to chill out for a second !!

This week, president Obama was attacked again because of his comments at a town hall meeting covered by MTV. After a federal judge ruled the “don’t ask don’t tell”policy Obama has responded by appealing the decision. Dave Lindorff critiques Obama’s stand not only on this issue but also destroys all he has done over the past two years.

First, lets take a closer look at what Obama really said at the town hall to a woman who asked him about the issue of “Don’t ask don’t tell”. Obama said explicitly “I have said very clearly, including in a state of the Union Address, that I am against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and that we are going to end this policy”. He also explained why he can’t just sign an executive order to end this policy “congress passed a law that took away the power of executive branch to end this policy unilaterally”. Now, he has been active getting the support of the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff for the first time and the secretary of defense. He also believes that enough senators in the Senate will vote to remove this constraint on him to sign the executive order to appeal this Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy.

Second, Dave Londorff talks about why we shouldn’t be surprised that he is not taking any actions. I don’t understand why do republicans don’t get it? It takes longer than 2 years for some policies to affect our lives. Dave talks about how his health care is going to raise insurance costs for everyone and his bank reform has made everything worse than before and we still have unemployment. If Dave had looked over, at least took a glance over Obama’s health care policy he would quit blogging and go fishing with his right wing friends. Most of Obama’s health care reform hasn’t even started yet, and those who have started take a longer time than this for you to observe it. Without these bank reforms we would have been in a huge dig that your beloved president Bush threw us in with unemployment of 20% instead of 9%. Obama is not a superman, lets give him at least those 8 years that Bush had and then observe his policies from outside. The guy is trying his best to save this country. Lets not forget that we went from a C average history major to a law professor from Harvard.

We are America, land of freedom...oh, except if you are gay or lesbian

Last week Democrats tried to advance a bill that would overturn the “Don’t ask, don’t tell “law. Under this 17 years old policy, the military is barred from questioning a service member’s sexual orientation (don’t ask) and gay men and lesbians are allowed to serve only if they keep it secret (don’t tell). Unfortunately they couldn’t overcome a filibuster by 40 republicans to repeal this shameful policy. Editorial Tony Perkins, a Marine Corps veteran and president of the Family Research Council, thinks this 1993 law should stay. In his editorial he says that “ a soldier must represent his or her country and maintain military discipline 24 hours a day”, no doubt about that but what evidence does he have to suggest that homosexuals can’t maintain their military discipline 24 hours a day? And how dare does he exclude our fellow Americans from representing the country that we all love? Instead of hiding behind the shelter of ignorance we should face the facts that gays and lesbians are part of our society. Back in the day a lot of Americans didn’t want to accept blacks into the society but now we know how deeply wicked that idea was.

He argues that if we pass the law we would discriminate against those with traditional values and that would drive many such people away. Are we willing to discriminate the right of our fellow Americans to serve for their country just because some prejudice serviceman’s don’t like to serve with gays and lesbians? Isn’t that the same thing as saying blacks shouldn’t be in the military because those with “traditional” values would go away. The truth is those with “traditional “values should suck it up and change their prejudice attitude toward this issue. Bible advocates slavery so should we make that into a law too because it might be in “tradition” values of some people? No, slavery is not a social norm anymore and this don’t ask don’t tell policy is no different than the segregation era of military. Whoever doesn’t like to serve with his fellow country man that is a little bit different from him should quit the military and don’t serve. Prejudice is not honored and prejudice soldiers shouldn’t represent our country. He also, just like most republicans, gave wrong statistics about how many Americans want to keep the law as it is in his editorial. “A recent polling company survey found that 48-45% plurality would prefer to keep the law as it is”, this is not true base on a Gallup poll in May, 70% of Americans said they favor allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly. What needs to be considered here is if we want to continue the discrimination against gays and lesbians or we want to be the country that respects anyone with any background and differences.

Editorial : Tony Perkins

Wicked actions don't have boundaries !!!

I've seen the name "Pastor Terry Jones" all over the news these days . There shouldn't be any one that doesn’t know about his controversial threat to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the September, 11, 2001. In my opinion burning Quran is equally crazy as suicide bombing, yes they are different in many ways but both actions are deeply wicked. These people are the reason we are living in such a shallow world in the 21st century. I am not for capital punishment but the existence of these people sometimes makes me wonder if there needs to be one.

He is just as crazy, radical and extreme as that Muslim who wants to kill innocents to show his nonsense idea. Sure he got famous by all the media attention he managed to get during these times but not only he destroyed religious people’s image AGAIN but also he promoted hatred all around the world. He also managed to destroy the United States reputation.

"We are burning the book," Jones said. "We are not killing someone. We are not murdering people." Yeah you are not murdering anyone but not only you are causing a lot of people to die because of your actions but also you are disrespecting a lot of people’s belief. No matter how you feel about Islam, whether you hate it or like it, you shouldn’t disrespect 1.5 billion people who believe in this book. I don’t agree with most of the stuff that is written in this book but that doesn’t give me the right to burn it. Now, of course you could argue that he had his freedom of speech and the right to do whatever he wanted to and I sure can’t disagree with you. And I can argue back that he could be charged with criminal actions and actually get sued by the families of our soldiers due to indirect cause of their sons/daughter’s death. I am sure Secretary Gates briefed him about these consequences that if anything happens to our troops your life is going to get screwed and that is why he canceled his circus show.

General Petraeus the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, specifically mentioned that burning Muslim’s holy book “could cause significant problems” . This administration has tried his best to show that our war is not a war with Muslims it’s a war with terrorists, its funny to see how an entire work of a government can be demolished just by an act of an individual like Pastor Jones. There have already been deaths because of protests all around the world to object this wicked action. I don’t think anyone would love the idea of burning someone else’s holy book , whether it is Bible or Quran or Richard Dawkin’s book. Thanks to Obama and his administration to send a strong message to the world condemning his actions and stopping it indirectly by letting him know about the consequences of his extreme actions.

Citation/ Reference (September 7th, By the CNN Wire Staff )