I’ve read that the United States never celebrated our victory at the end of the Cold War, when communism collapsed with an almost miraculous suddenness. George Bush the Elder certainly did not want to crow over the ruins of the Berlin Wall, but the United States threw a hell of a party. It lasted 20 years.
     The party is over.
     With the mortal threat to mankind’s very existence removed with the end of the nuclear rivalry, our politics instantly began to trivialize. It’s hardly a coincidence that the first post-Cold War President was a man of highly questionable character who claimed that, “I feel your pain.”
     What pain? For the poor (and the Bible tells us the poor will always be with us) there is always pain but for most Americans, things were pretty good in the 1990s and 2000s. We were, and are, riven by domestic issues, which boil down to how our tax revenues are raised and spent, and the meaning of human life. Not trivial issues, but they don’t carry the weight for the average citizen that national survival and nuclear war do.
     No matter, we learned to talk our political concerns to death and back again, endlessly repeating our arguments to people who had already made up their minds, and to whose arguments we turned a deaf ear. Our politics was charmed by the sound of our own voices, our own “talking points.” We judged our leaders not so much by the message but by their ability to “stay on message.” And the message was sold, like soap, through endless mind-numbing repetition of slogans and bromides.
     At length politics gave way in the public’s awareness to the celebrity culture. More than ever we consume volumes of news and images about actors, singers, fashion models and socialites who are famous for being famous.
     We have obviously had a lot of time on our hands. But all of that is drawing to a close.
     Samuel Johnson once said "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." I hope by concentrating wonderfully we might avoid economic or military blackmail by the Russians.

     Russia is applying its great wealth... acquired by selling Western Europe its natural gas, to the rebuilding and reorganization of its armed forces. Little noted here, a few years ago the Russians publicly committed to rebuilding their Ground Forces back to the 600,000-troop level and raising the complete armed strength of Russia to that of the former Soviet Union.
     That means an army as large or larger than our own and comparably equipped with the latest in weaponry. Accordingly Russia is investing heavily in weapons technology (GlobalSecurity.org). One of the first fruits will be the debut sometime this year, of an advanced “fifth generation” fighter.
     We still have the advantage over the Russians in the sophistication of all of our arms, especially main battle tanks and fighter aircraft. Whether or not the advantage remains comfortable in the years to come is going to be a policy question on the mind of the next President, whomever he may be.

     It is obvious as we fight two theatres of a war on terror...  that we are light on troop strength. The Army and the Marine Corps need to be expanded in size significantly so that levels of commitment like those of Iraq do not mean that other fighting fronts are shortchanged in troop strength. We need two Armies, in essence: One is a light army of light infantry, airborne and air-mobile troops that moves fast in helicopters and armored personnel carriers like the M1126 Stryker and the Bradley fighting vehicle, and can handle wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.
     The other is a heavy army based around heavy infantry, conventional and rocket artillery, tank-killer helicopters and armored divisions trained to fight set-piece battles with heavy enemy forces. That will be our insurance policy for the Russians…and the Chinese if it comes to that.
     We have other work to do. We should tear a page from fiction and develop another subsonic aerial weapons platform like the B-52, but loaded with standoff weapons, the latest in electronic counter measures and electronic warfare equipment. A big all-purpose heavy bomber that can orbit outside of enemy airspace while dealing death blows from a distance.
      We need to inspect, update and/or replace and expand our arsenal of nuclear warheads. We cannot let the Russia or China think that a nuclear war is winnable. We will need to expand the fleet of submarines capable of launching nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles or cruise missiles. As the Russians expand their fleet, we will need more Virginia-class attack submarines to contain the threat. New surface ship acquisitions for the Navy need to be stealthy and fast. Unfortunately, last month, the Navy canceled development of the DD-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer, that perfectly fits this requirement. Only seven examples will be built. The number should be expanded back to at least 24.

     And there is much else to do. It will be expensive and it will call for sacrifices from projected future social programs. Europe is in no condition to defend itself, however. Once again history has chosen our country to be the guarantor of freedom and independence for other nations. One only hopes that the man we elect President this year is up to the enormous task of leadership ahead…or that he at least realizes there is such a task.

There is no reason on God’s green earth why Russia and the United States should ever come to blows.
     On the other hand, in 1914 there was no reason why Russia, France and England should have to have gone to war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. No reason except the insanity of power politics as practiced before the Great War.

     Russia has grievances against us that won’t go away. We blocked the Soviet expansion into Afghanistan by arming the Mujahideen. Once they learned how to shoot down Hind helicopters with Sparrow air-to-air missiles it was only a matter of time. We lured the Soviets into an arms race in the 1980’s they didn’t need to pursue. They didn’t have the cash to make it happen. When we tossed in the Star Wars chip, they had a breakdown of national will because they totally believed we could build a system that would negate their intercontinental rocket forces.
     Fooled ya! We’re still trying to make the damn thing work 20 years later. It was Ronald Reagan’s coup de grace to the back of the head of communism.

     Instead of propping up the USSR in gratitude...  for being liberated 60 years earlier, the ungrateful eastern European satellite nations gleefully quit the Warsaw Pact. Now they are mostly members of NATO and the European Union and out of Moscow’s grasp. The fact that the presidents of Poland and the Balkan nations dared travel to Tiblisi in the middle of the war, to proclaim solidarity in public with Georgia indicates enormous moral courage –and the knowledge that their security is America’s direct concern.
     Except for recently, with the fighting in Georgia, the Russian public regards the United States the Number One Enemy. Russians, from the man in the street to the ex-KGB operative who manipulates the president of Russia like a marionette—they all long for the days when Russia said “boo” and the United States and the West at large trembled.

     They long for the days when... in what they call the “near abroad” the leaders of nations on the Soviet periphery phoned Moscow to check before making a rest room visit. They don’t miss the respect the mighty Soviet Union generated; they miss the fear the USSR inspired. Bullying is a part of Russian life, families, neighborhoods, schools, even the armed forces, are riddled with bullies.
      Putin believes in the power of the bully. Disgusted after the terrorist attack on a grade school and subsequent massacre, Putin noted darkly that in this world, “The weak are to be beaten.”
      Georgia was made an example of because it was weak. Weakness inspires contempt in Russia. More than the so-called provocations in South Ossetia (really stirred up by the Russians themselves), more than “Pan-Slavic solidarity” with the Russian speakers in Georgia, Georgia’s major crime was to be weak. The Russian instinct, presented with the face of a homeless, weeping civilian, is to smash that contemptible face in with the heel of a jackboot, as Orwell said, forever and ever.

      Having beaten Georgia on the battlefield, Russia now wishes to humiliate her. Again and again. Today the Kremlin announced, “Georgian territorial integrity is a dead issue.”
     There are too many helpless people left uncrushed. Russia reserves the right to cross the border any time to smash them.
    We are flying in humanitarian supplies and, I hope weapons to rearm Georgian soldiers and militia. We are going to have to stand beside our friends when their noses are bloodied because they are our friends, and especially because they are weak. In this world, we Americans believe, the strong help the weak, whatever the risk.
     Russia is richer than ever in its history thanks to energy revenues. It has all the land it can use and all the raw materials. They simply aspire to smash a few faces from time to time as their God-given right and to scare the rest of the world.

     Which leads me to a question. Of the two, who is best suited to deal with Fascist Russia? Barack Obama, or John McClain? This is turning out to be much more important a presidential election than we had dreamed just 14 days ago.

There is a very good reason why, over the centuries, Russia has been symbolized by the bear. A bear can appear to be a big, clumsy furry thing, almost cute, until it gets angry. Then it takes your head off with one swipe of its razor-sharp claws and tears you apart and eats you.
     The Russian bear apparently is also a cunning creature.
     Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Russia, does not like the independent nations on the border of Russia, especially when they resist the regional influence of Russia and especially if they align themselves with NATO and the West. The republic of Georgia is a prime example.
     Lately Georgia’s behavior has been intolerable to Putin and to the Kremlin clique that wants to firmly re-establish a Russian zone of influence around the borders of the country. Georgia’s application to join NATO –thus far refused—was the final straw.

     The Russians set an elaborate trap for the Georgians, using Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia as bait. Most of the people in South Ossetia are ethnic Russians and have Russian passports. More to the point, they had Russian Army peacekeepers in South Ossetia keeping the Ossetians separte from the Georgians. South Ossetians have been trying to break away from Georgia since 1990. The region has its own government and constitution, but it has asked in the past to be incorporated into the Russian Federation.  
     It’s unclear who fired the first shots back on August 1, but soon the sides were exchanging shellfire and a terrible idea occurred to President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia: Why not put this South Ossetia problem behind us once and for all and invade the province while the rest of the world is focused on the Olympics?
     Saakashvili gambled that the Russians were bluffing in the past when they said they would react with force against any Georgian move into South Ossetia. Saakashvili may have counted on U.S. intervention if the Russian’s weren’t bluffing.
     Early Friday morning, Georgia attacked South Ossetia, quickly seizing Tskhinvali, the capital city of the 70,000-person region. There was a great deal of bombing and shellfire and Ossetian civilians and military were killed and injured…and perhaps, also some Russians.

     Putin had the provocation he was hoping for. On that very same Friday (August 8) the Russian 58^th Army began to pour tanks across the border into South Ossetia and Russian jets began to hit Georgian forces in Tskhinvali. The attacks soon widened to include the two military airbases outside the Georgia capital city of Tiblisi. The Georgian cities of Gori and Kareli and the port cities of Poti and Batumi were also struck.
     Today, Russian armor is said to have severed the country’s only east-west highway by taking the city of Gori. Meanwhile, other Russian forces have driven deep into the west of the country, apparently in support of the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
     The Georgians have reportedly lost 30 tanks in the fighting and 150 combat dead. There are no reliable statistics for Russia’s losses although Georgia claims at least 10 jets were shot down. Russia admits two have been lost.
     The Russians are making an example of Georgia.

     The whole idea of this trap, into which the Georgians fell, was to punish Georgia and to demonstrate to other neighboring countries how ruthlessly Russia is prepared to act when provoked. Putin will carve up Georgia like a Christmas goose and there will be very little the Georgians can do about it. The United States will not intervene.

      The war will end in the next few days with Georgia agreeing to a signed cease-fire and withdrawal from South Ossetia without preconditions. If the Russians want to carve an independent Republic of Abkhazia off the western end of Georgia, they’ll do it.
     What’s left of Georgia will still be independent, --President Saakashvili might even keep his job-- but “guided” by the brotherly Russians, who will then be in effective control of the only Caspian Sea-Black Sea oil pipeline to Europe not running through Russian territory. This will give Putin enhanced energy blackmail power over Western Europe.
    Of course, “guided” by the fraternal advice of Moscow, Georgia will drop its bid to join NATO. The American advisors will probably be sent home –to be replaced by Russians.

The viral video of him spending long minutes fussing with his hair…  in front of a mirror should have told Americans all they needed to know about arch-hypocrite and world-champion cheeseball John Edwards.
     Here you have a guy who is good-looking and all too aware of it. Like so many really handsome guys, he thinks some things are his by right. So if it turns out he has boyish good looks –and a middle aged, overweight, sick wife—it is the privilege of attractive men like himself to find sexual release with some other, sexier, younger woman.
     This is how men like him rationalize. They believe their needs are bigger than everyone else’s because of their superiority in other areas (see Clinton, Bill.).

     Here is a guy who runs for president… essentially because he knows he cannot get re-elected as Senator from North Carolina.
     Here is a guy who promotes division between the poor and other Americans, in order that he might become the “champion of the poor.” This is just a variation on his trial lawyer racket. He whips up a grievance and then goes hunting for the “deep pockets,”
     Here is John Edwards, champion of the little guy, who happens to live in a rural palace the size of some smaller high schools, and who cannot stand that someone is living in an unsightly trailer across the street.
     Here is a guy who charged $50,000 to give a speech on poverty.
     Here is the crusader against the hedge funds and –oops—here is his work for one: http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2007/07/25/john-edwards-phoneyism/. But that was to learn about how hedge funds relate to poverty in the United States…

     Here is a guy who can tell the public not to vote for him because his wife has cancer… but whose campaign website directed visitors to leave sympathy notes for the Edwardses and which contained a heart-rending letter from “Elizabeth and John” about their ordeal… Uh-huh. And this is the same Elizabeth he cheated on. This is raising hypocrisy to the level of Olympic gymnastics.

     Here is the guy who met with John Kerry in 2004 to interview for the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket and…

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling…

http://2008central.net/2007/05/31/bob-shrum-blasts-edwards-in-new-book/

     Let it be noted that when Ann Coulter inferred three years ago that Edwards was using his dead son politically, a storm broke over her head. How dare she! Elizabeth Edwards (who by now, we are told, knew of her husband’s infidelity) called in to her on the Chris Matthews show to take her to task for her “personal” attack.

     It was the lowly National Enquirer… as everyone knows by now, that broke the story, and it is the Enquirer’s grocery-line tabloid status that persuaded the big media outlets either not to try to verify the story or to do such a poor job reporting as they did.
     In The New York Times, editors and reporters from major media say they couldn’t find the evidence for a story when they looked. In other words, they were out-reported professionally by the Enquirer’s people?

     Here’s what you and I know: If it had been Mitt Romney, or John McCain with that woman, the story would have been rushed to press. The Times front-paged a super-thin gruel of rumor and innuendo about McCain and a woman lobbyist some months ago –only to have said story end up all over their faces in short order.
     The Enquirer had Edwards in October, before the primary season. If he had been forced out of the race early, what might that have done to the nominating process? Might Hillary Clinton have won the delegates as well as the popular vote? We’ll never know.
     Just because Edwards later dropped out of the race was no excuse for the media not to go after this story. Until yesterday, he was still a possible Obama cabinet pick and could have played a role, however small, at the convention. He was still news.
      But he wasn’t a Republican. So the big media let the matter slide.

One of the most naive, most irritating slogans of the left is “No blood for oil!” It’s a small phrase but it contains a world of ignorance, based on tired Marist theories about how the United States is really run.
     First, we have to look some facts very squarely in the face.

1.      The U.S. economy cannot run without oil. Period. The alternative is economic recession or worse. In other words, people lose their houses, their jobs and starve.

2.      If we voted an omnibus energy bill today... authorizing and developing clean coal, nuclear, fusion, wind, solar, hydro, tidal, natural gas, hydrogen and biomass alternative energy sources, it would still be years before any of them are able to generate a useful percentage of the energy needed for the grid or for transportation. For some of these technologies it will be decades before they are really practical.

3.      Precious and scarce natural resources cause wars. Men have fought over gold and other minerals. They have fought over farmland and for access to clean water. Japan launched its war with the United States and the Allies in 1941 for access to Indonesian and Southeast Asian oil.

4.      If you are going to source most of a vitally strategic economic material from overseas, you have to be prepared to fight for it.

    The sovereignty of Kuwait was an important issue when Iraq invaded that country in 1991, but the more important issue for the United States was whether we were prepared to let a vicious dictator like Saddam Hussein control the oil in the Persian Gulf region.

     Did American men and women die for oil? Yes they did, and in so doing they ensured that old folks in the northeast would have fuel oil in the coming winter and that millions of American families would live securely in an economy undisrupted by oil shortages or price gouging by Saddam. This was warfare in the direct national security interest of the United States. No blood for oil? No better reason!
     Today the United States maintains, if not the largest, the most effective, deadly and technologically advanced military establishment in the history of the world. One of the reasons we have to is because our supply of oil is located underneath some of the flakiest countries in the world.
     We need a powerful and expensive army, in part, because a country like Iran or terror organizations like Al Qaeda and Hezbullah can physically threaten the oil supply. We need a powerful navy and air force to support that army and to protect oil supply lines and choke points like the Straits of Hormuz.

     Part of the exorbitant cost of foreign oil is in the taxes we pay to maintain the military to protect that very oil.
     We should also add into that sum the incalculable cost of losing our best young men and women in wartime and the tragedy of other young bodies mutilated and torn by war.
     It is unavoidable that we must import some of our oil. It is entirely avoidable that we import so much that we have to assume the role of policeman for the world’s oil regions. We have enough oil on the Alaskan north slope, in shale deposits in the west, in the outer continental shelf, to satisfy most of our domestic requirements until, acting with national resolve, we bring those promising but-as-yet unfulfilled alternative energy sources “on line,” as part of a permanent mix that is 100 percent domestic.

     Energy independence means using all the possibilities... with the development of oil and natural gas here in the United States buying time for wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, nuclear and all the other alternative technologies. It means we will stop exporting about $700 billion more than we take in from oil producing countries.
     It means no American blood for oil.  

When I was the editor and publisher of The Sports Marketing Letter and then the Sports Industry Daily, I consistently opposed the awarding of the Olympics to Beijing, China.
     I don’t know if I would even attempt such opposition if the choice were being made today, because my opinion of the Olympics has dropped precipitously. The real business of the Games is not to assemble the youth of the world to conduct a high-minded test of athletic boundaries and achievement. It is to sell Coca-Cola a billion-dollars worth of advertising opportunities.
     It is not seen as an amazing opportunity to compare and contrast the most amazing athletes from around the world. It is seen as an amazing opportunity to gain enormous penetration and front-of mind awareness for ten or twelve multinational corporations in major media markets, using the tried-and-true attraction of sports to grab the attention of a mass audience.

     Modern television coverage of the Olympics has been rather ugly… from a sportsmanship point of view. I yield to no one in my patriotism, and absolute love for the United States of America. But the talk of “medal counts” and “USA Gold” absolutely misses the point of international athletic competition for the sheer love of sport, on which the modern Olympics was founded.
     There is too much politics in the Games, too much pressure to win, too much emphasis on money.

     Then there is China. In a replay of the 1936 Nazi Games… the authorities have swept the streets clean of dissidents and “anti-state” elements. The press has been muzzled. The hotels have been bugged and the Internet tapped into (with the help of friendly American companies). Religious expression (such as crossing yourself before or after a competition) has been banned as “propaganda” by the International Olympic Committee …the same IOC that promised that the Games would widen freedoms in China.
     And the Games go on while the fingers of the Chinese government still drip and reek from the freshly shed blood of their Tibetan colonial slaves. The Games go on while free speech is crushed. The Games go on while China pollutes the world with its million and one coal smokestacks. The Games go on while China still befriends the genocidal government of Sudan, which is massacring the people of Darfur.

     On the other hand…  the Chinese have ordered dog meat off Beijing restaurant menus in recognition of foreigners’ sensibilities. I get it: Our qualms about Chinese repression, state murder and collusion with genocide are one thing. But nothing must be allowed that turns rich tourists away from the local eateries! 

Today a shipment of toys is leaving a warehouse in California. In the retail world preparations for the Christmas season are well under way. Toys at this warehouse that have made the long trip from factories in China are about to go on the final leg of their journeys, to retailers all over the western United States. Freight companies are moving them by the case, the palette and the trailer-load.
     And the freight company taking today’s shipment to market is charging 73 percent of the normal hauling fee as a surtax to pay for fuel, which has gone through the roof.
     This time last year, west coast diesel averaged about $1.58 a gallon and the fuel surcharge that UPS applied was equal to about 11.80% of the volume or truckload freight hauling charge for the shipment. Now west coast diesel is at $4.66, an increase of $3.07 a gallon, and UPS’s fuel surcharge at that price is 75.40 percent.

     That is going to add a lot to the price of toys... because someone has to pay for that diesel fuel. The manufacturer is shelling out more for the shipping, of course, but those costs will have to show up in the wholesale price the toy retailer pays. He or she will have to pass that along to the consumer.
      And what the consumer is going to do is pass along the price increase, in the form of fewer or less expensive toys, to his children on Christmas morning. Since everything retailers sell has to be shipped, that means everything else that people buy at Christmas will be affected, from clothes and food to fuel and travel.
     Oil is the foundation of the entire economy. We use it for fuel and lubricant and we make plastics, pharmaceuticals, fabric and a score other useful and necessary things from it. Not only is there no Christmas, there is no daily life without it.

     Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doesn’t get this. She doesn’t get that U.S. wells are drying up and that the undeveloped leases are not likely to produce oil. She doesn’t know that just to replace existing oil stocks, we have to resume exploration and drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf. She does not understand what you and I are going through, trying to pay heating bills, electricity bills, buying groceries, filling the gas tank –because she is a rich and powerful person who does not have to do those things herself.
     Does anyone seriously believe that the fashionable and elegantly coiffed Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, sits at her kitchen table late at night, bills spread out, her head in her hands, wondering how she is going to pay the light bill? Does she have to make the choice between sweltering in the heat without air conditioning or gassing up her car to get to work? Does she have to make the humiliating decision to ignore a bill this month, so she will have enough cash left over from her paycheck to buy groceries for her kids?

     Pelosi is the classic example of a rich liberal who feels free to prescribe social policies for all us lesser beings... causing us real hardship, because she is a superior individual, who knows better than we do what is in our own best interests.
     Unalterably, Pelosi refuses to allow a house vote on new drilling because, as she told The Politico, “I am trying to save the planet; I am trying to save the planet!” How grandiose a purpose, how noble a mission! Meanwhile people who do not enjoy the pay and perks of Speaker of the House are going to do without this Christmas. They are starting to do without right now, in fact.

     Speaker Pelosi had been telling her fellow congressional Democrats…  that if they want to publicly support drilling, in order to get re-elected, that she will permit them to blame her for not letting drilling come to a House vote (The Politico, August 5, 2008).
     What a cynical exercise on the part of the Speaker. She fully believes that after November, with a Democratic Congress and Obama in the White House, all the political pressure to allow drilling will be off and she can get down to her real agenda, which is global warming. That will mean either a carbon tax (and higher energy prices) or carbon rationing (restrictions on the use of energy). This would install the government in every home as a decision maker: Fuel for the car or heat for February? Lights on after 8 or an early bedtime? This is a nightmare.

Barack Obama, meet Herbert Hoover… There is a lot more resemblance between the über-old-white-dead president and the hip, urbane Democratic candidate from the cover of GQ than meets the eye.
     Both of them have the very important trait of being unable to stare an unpleasant fact in the face.
     While Hoover was president, years of margin buying on the stock exchange began to catch up with investors. In those days you could buy a dollar’s worth of some stocks for as little as 10 cents down. The 90 cents you didn’t pay was the margin. For reasons that economists are still trying to figure out, but which include the fall of the far-off Austrian schilling and the effects of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the people selling the stocks needed their 90 cents. Now. All at once.
      People who thought they had, say, a portfolio worth $1,000 (which was a lot of money in 1929), discovered that instead, they owed $900. People were forced to liquidate their savings, sell their businesses, their houses and their personal possessions to pay off these debts. So many businesses closed and downsized that a full third of the labor force lost their jobs.

     In those days there was no welfare safety net... There was the “dole,” which could be the state or the city or a church group passing out bread or coal to the needy. Al Capone opened a string of soup kitchens. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Al Capone was doing more to materially help poor people than Herbert Hoover.
     Hoover starved the people to death over a principle. Principles matter, but hungry bellies matter more. Hoover believed that a welfare state would corrupt the character of the country, devalue work, and encourage idleness. Ironically, he was a hero in Europe, where he spearheaded Belgian relief after the Great War. There was nothing wrong with eroding Belgian character, but he would not do it to Americans.

     So instead of offering relief, Hoover offered encouragement. “Prosperity is just around the corner,” Hoover said. With all the grass growing in the streets you couldn’t even see the corner. “The fundamental economic basis of this country is sound,” Hoover averred. The only sound was of children crying with hunger.
     Hoover, the chief executive of the United States, pronounced himself unable, as a matter of principle, to address the crisis: “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.”
     And it was that quote which reminded me of something Barack Obama said a few days ago.

     Let me preface this by saying that Obama was trying to be factual… In Springfield, Missouri, Obama said, "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups…. You could actually save just as much."
     Wow. There is an estimated 1.6 trillion gallons of oil to be had in the Outer Continental Shelf. That number, written out, is 1,600,000,000,000 gallons. That is the oil supply the Republicans want to drill. Is that how much we are wasting by riding on soft tires in a year? Or six years? Or 50 years?
     According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if cold tire pressure is adjusted to specification on all cars, we would effect a 3.3 percent savings of fuel. Our total gasoline consumption in a year is 142.3 billion gallons, according to the DOE; so Obama is wrong about the amount saved, but not about that fact that gasoline would be conserved.

     But here’s the problem... Checking your tire pressure is not going to roll back gasoline prices from $4 a gallon back to $2.50 or even $3.50. Being told that Prosperity is just around the corner (like wind and solar power) is hopeful and encouraging. Being given something we can do to save a buck is a nice gesture.
     Unfortunately, encouragement, gestures, bromides, helpful hints and principled stands that fly in the face of the overwhelming will of the people don’t get the job done. In order to get out of the Depression, America had to take a big gamble and let Franklin D. Roosevelt essentially rebuild the structure of American society from the ground up.
     The Republicans are asking for something much less risky. They are simply asking to drill holes in the ground. What principle is it that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hold to be more sacred than the well being of working Americans?
     Herbert Hoover did a century’s worth of damage to the Republican Party by his insistence on the principle of “rugged individualism.” Are the Democrats willing to sacrifice the White House and destroy their party for the benefit of the Greenland ice cap and the beach residents of Santa Monica?

"NOPE" stands for…  “Not on Planet Earth,” and it is the motto of that wing of the Democratic Party that refuses to consider drilling for more oil. It is not, by any means, the motto of the whole party.
     It is the rallying cry however for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the congressional Democrats, whose position on drilling for oil is beginning to look more and more like a dusty little hill in Montana where George Custer probably said something like, “We’ll hold 'em here,” as thousands of unhappy Native Americans poured out of the villages along the Little Big Horn to see what the bluecoats were up to now.

     For the first time in recent memory…  the Democrats are bucking the public on a major issue. Most polls place support for new oil drilling around 75 percent.
     It’s not just $4 gas that has captured the public’s imagination. Heating bills have doubled and trebled in the Northeast. My personal monthly budget fuel oil payment for my small house went from $120 a month to $241. My electricity is generated by burning oil. That has gone from about $180 a month to $400. A budget plan I worked on all year so that we could get by was blown to bits and I did the only sane thing a reasonable man could.
     I had a heart attack Thursday night.
    
     I’m back home now... 20 pounds lighter, a bit weaker and none the better off financially for the experience.
     What will give you your heart attack?
     Maybe it will be that first bill from the electric company this summer. I have to have at least some AC on, or I have trouble breathing our polluted Connecticut atmosphere. Maybe you can turn off the AC and avoid a myocardial infarction anyway.
     Maybe it will be the letter from your heating company stating what they intend to ask for fuel oil this winter. If you have an extra $3,000 or $4,000 maybe you can install natural gas heat and avoid atrial fibrillation….

     Look, there are a lot of good reasons…  to resume exploration and drilling. I can think of several off hand:

1. We don’t have to send troops overseas to defend oil we drill for in the U.S.
2. We don’t have to come hat-in-hand to ask a king, sheik or emir for extra oil.
3. Oil drilled offshore does not have to travel thousands of miles at risk of spilling.
4. The current oil leases don’t have very much oil. We have to find new oil fields.
5. Although some wells will take 10 years to produce, others will take as little as one.
6. We are running out of oil in the wells we already have open and we’ll have to start drilling new wells soon just to stay even.
7. Dollars are not exported out of the U.S. for domestic oil. This will strengthen the dollar.
8. The new oil will buy us a little breathing space to bring wind power on line for 20 percent of our electricity generation.

     What drilling will not do is make oil companies “rich.”  …Most oil companies are not the private domain of a Rockefeller. The owners of Exxon Mobil are investors in mutual funds and institutions. Vanguard Fund is prominent as is College Retirement Equities, Washington Mutual Investors Fund, and so forth. These represent thousands of people, all with a share of equity in the business. The profits pay their retirement bills and are plowed back into the business.
     I suppose hitting the oil companies with a windfall profits tax will make some people feel good. But as with all such taxes, the people paying the tax will be the people who buy gas and oil for fuel: you and me.

     Just to be fair… oil prices did not give me a heart attack. Lots of things did. The timing was just …very apt.

Yesterday Senator Harry “We’ve Lost the War” Reid… raised the hopes of just about everyone when he offered the Senate Republicans four amendments to the Oil Speculation bill the Democrats are pushing in Congress.
    To briefly review, the Democrats believe its evil oil futures buyers, like California public employee union pension funds, that are responsible for the rise in the price of oil (and $4 a gallon gasoline) rather than supply and demand, like the Republicans believe. The Republicans and about ¾ of the adult population of the United States, wants us to explore and drill on the outer continental shelf and desolate places like ANWR. The Democrats oppose this.
   And when it became certain yesterday morning that the GOP amendments to the Speculation Bill would be about allowing new exploration and drilling, Reid hastily took the offer of Amendments off the table. The Republicans in their turn blocked a media protection bill and a bill offering tax breaks for the development of alternative energy and a shield for middle class taxpayers against the hated alternative minimum tax.
     The Republicans are going to make an issue of oil drilling whether or not Bush decides to call Congress into an August session to deal with the problem. “The only thing standing now between the American people and these vast oil resources is the United States Congress,'' Bush said yesterday, striking a theme for the campaign.
     Meanwhile, in the House, the membership voted to adjourn for the summer on Friday. All the republicans and a pack of blue-dog Democrats kept the vote close, giving the adjournment a one-vote majority. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is finding something less than unanimity among her party when it comes to drilling, but she seems to be holding the line against any party insurgents. The Democrats have too much to lose this fall to show a disintegrating front on energy.

      We must all be prepared to continue to shell out north of $4 a gallon…  for gasoline. That’s the cost of saving the plant…as well as a doubled electric bill and a trebled fuel-oil bill.
     You know, if you were to scratch the surface of a congressional Democrat, like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, you would find that they really believe outrageously expensive gasoline is a good thing. Until last month the Democrats were ready to present us with a 500-page global warming bill that would have raised the tax on gasoline anyway as a measure more or less forcing fuel conservation. Why? To reduce the rate of emission of greenhouse gasses, which many believe, are dangerously warming the climate –or which may not be dangerously warming the climate, depending on whose research you believe.
     Actually, the research on global warming is complex and contradictory. Both proponents and skeptics believe their data is irreproachable, definitive and settled. Both side mock the intelligence of the other, leaving in doubt such trivial matters as: Is global warming happening at all? How bad will the warming be if it is happening? Is it man made or a solar/cosmic ray phenomena? What would we have to sacrifice to turn it around? Can we turn it around? Can we turn it around if China and India don’t want to help?

     It is highly politically incorrect for me to say this... but these questions still require an answer. For many of us unscientific types, being presented with a mass of speculative facts and figures about what is going to happen to the climate by the end of the century is not of much cheer when we have the concrete problem of paying our bills by the end of the month.
     Most of us haven’t got the leisure to worry about the fate of the polar bear, the thickness of the Greenland ice cap, or a prospective 12 or 16 or 30” rise in the level of the sea. We are worried about keeping our jobs, paying our bills and maintaining a decent standard of living. If the Republicans want to adopt that rhetoric in the upcoming energy wars, they might just do well with it.

In a recent puff piece about her in The Politico, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi --fan of longitude (“‘I have always loved longitude,’ Nancy Pelosi says before breaking into laughter. ‘I love latitude; it’s in the stars. But longitude, it’s about time…’”) and future chair of the Democratic Convention in Denver—declares it simply, “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet.”
     To Pelosi, “saving the planet,” means fighting any Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy,” Pelosi says. So there. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/12122.html.
     So let us redefine our terms. By “save” Nancy Pelosi means stopping offshore oil exploration and drilling and by “planet” she means the ritzy beaches of Santa Barbara and vicinity in California which were soiled in an oil spill 35 years ago that helped to launch the careers of politicians like …Nancy Pelosi.

     I’m all for Pelosi sticking to her guns… and sticking it to the Republicans on this issue –and for all the usual ulterior motives. Frankly the GOP hasn’t any other strong issues to save its legislative bacon this fall besides $4 a gallon gasoline. Pelosi and the Democrats are handing this issue to the Republicans on a platter.
     A very strong wave of anti-Bush feeling is about to drastically cut down Republican membership in the House and Senate, making those bodies, perhaps, veto-proof for the Democrats.
     Then along comes the oil price crisis, which the public believes (correctly) can be relieved by a commitment to drill and explore for more oil, the current untapped leases to which the Democrats constantly point having no –-for want of a better word—oil.
     There is oil on our continental shelves. There is oil in the bleak wastes… Sorry. I mean “pristine beauty” of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it, that oil is going to stay there.
     Instead of the massive and immediate relief in oil price futures that the announcement of drilling and exploration would bring, Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid of the Senate offer us –revenge against the speculators.

     You know the speculators, don’t you? They are retired public employees, pension fund holders and former teachers who have invested in funds that trade futures in oil. The U.S. output of oil is dwindling, and the remaining oil supply offers a slim surplus of just 2 million barrels a day worldwide. This (and demand from China and India) makes oil scarcer than it used to be, thus raising the price. The futures buyers pay the price –thus guaranteeing the future supply of oil.
     The public is not exactly thirsting for the blood of former school nurses who are getting by in their Golden Years on earnings from their investments. But Senator Reid refuses to entertain Republican amendments to the anti-speculation bill that would allow drilling. And Nancy Pelosi would see to it such amendments aren’t even heard in the House.
     This makes the Democratic Congress the Bad Guys in this controversy, in which the public supports drilling (74 percent of likely voters support drilling, 18 Percent oppose, 8 percent not sure – Zogby International 26 June, 2008 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/257903)--but the Democrats are willing to adjourn the Congress for the Summer at the end of this week, rather than to allow drilling.   
     DigitalJournal.com put it aptly: “A vast majority of likely voters, across the political spectrum are in support of offshore drilling, which pits the Democratic leadership against the will of the people.”

     What President Bush should do, if he is smart, is to call Congress back into session in August and let them try –and again fail—to pass energy legislation. Then he and Senator McCain can label this a “do-nothing Congress,” taking a page from Harry Truman’s 1948 playbook. Obama will have to take a stand on the issue –and of course he will not desert his party—then the Republicans will have an issue that might save the White House for them and perhaps cut the losses in Congress.

Numbers don’t lie… The Gallup organization has predicted the winner of the 2008 presidential election. The next president if John McCain…if you’re a USA TODAY reader. If not, then Barack Obama is the next chief executive. Allow me to elucidate.
    Gallup conducts polling for the USA TODAY daily newspaper. When they polled for the Monday paper, Gallup asked “likely voters” whom they support in the election right now. A month ago, McCain trailed Obama in a poll of this type by 6 points. In the survey published Monday, McCain was leading Obama by 4 percentage points. The numbers were collected between Friday and Sunday from a sample of 791 voters.
     Gallup notes a difference between “likely” voters and “registered voters,” the difference being that the likely voters may have voted more often in the past (which makes them more apt to vote in the future) and say they have given a certain amount of thought to the election --while the “registered” respondents are counted whether or not they voted in the past.
     Polling all registered voters for the general media and not just USA TODAY, Gallup finds Obama comes out the winner with a nice post-World Tour bounce of eight points in the daily poll as tallied on Sunday, July 27, with 48 percentage points to McCain’s 40. The average score for Friday through Sunday is Obama 48.33 percent to McCain’s 40.33 percent. Gallup interviewed 2.674 registered voters over the three-day period.
     BUT… Counting registered voters just for USA TODAY, a sample of 900 interviewees, Gallup finds Obama leading with 47 percent to McCain’s 44 percent –a three-point lead.
     Is the difference in sample size? Gallup counted more voters for it’s standalone poll and fewer for its USA TODAY poll. Between likely and registered voters they got two different results. It stands to reason, from this pundit’s perch, that Gallup accurately predicted the outcome of the election, at least in one try out of two.
     Or, as they say in horse racing, “Pick ‘em.” It does make you wonder what's the value in having polls anyway, when they can be soinaccurate. Let's face it. There is something goin on here between the  likely voters and the registered voters. One group is not being  forthcoming, I fear, about their true intentions.  If that isn't the problem; if the size of the sample is what is making the difference; then perhaps we shouldn't even be taking notices of samples smaller than 1,000 interviewees...

     Going by the gut… which is the highly unscientific way that most of us predict political outcomes, Obama is still the favorite. He is the one exuding a glamour not seen in presidential politics since Reagan, or perhaps even Kennedy. Boss Tweed once said, complaining of Thomas Nast’s political cartoons, “My voters can’t read but they understand those damn pictures!”
      William Marcy Tweed’s complaint was echoed by Richard Nixon’s people in 1960, after the debate with John F. Kennedy. On radio, listeners tended to think that Nixon had bested Kennedy. On television, Nixon, who was recovering from the flu, looked gaunt, His gray suit melted into the background. He may have had just a hint of 5 o’clock shadow. People tended to just stare at the handsome, tanned, fit-looking Kennedy in his dark blue power suit. TV viewers gave the debate to Kennedy.
     And that’s what’s going on now. McCain looks like a sack of wet cement. Obama looks like the cover of GQ. Never mind that Obama has shifted his position in so many areas. Never mind his narcissism on the World Tour trail. We instinctively like leaders who look the part. Obama does.
     Republicans may be consoled that McCain has kept it as close as he has. When you distill all the results of all the polls the answer you get is “dead heat.” And that may be an advantage to McCain because Obama’s camp thinks their man has already won. That kind of arrogance, or hubris, if you will, often earns the reward prescribed by Aristotle: downfall.

The Victory Lap Ends… Barack Obama came home this week after his “World Tour” in which he celebrated his impending election as President of the United States of America.
     This was so momentous and historic an event that the three network news anchors accompanied him on the voyage …only to find that his “availabilities” to the press were going to be rather limited.
     In making this trip Obama stood some traditional notions on their head. One is the notion of the “Middle East fact-finding trip.” Obama found the facts first and then took them East to educate the leaders there on what the situations are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel. It went down pretty well with al-Maliki in Iraq. He endorsed Obama’s 16-month troop withdrawal plan. Thanks to The Surge, which defeated the insurgency, shattered Al Qaeda in Iraq and crippled the Shiite militias, leaving Iraq in 16 months now looks kind of doable.
      That’s no excuse, however, for reporters to try to embarrass Obama by asking him if, had he known then what he knows now, he would have supported the Surge. Of course not, he answered, since his way –to start to withdraw two years ago—might have worked better!
      I do not make this stuff up. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You can look it up…”

     Berlin was always to be the highlight of the Victory Lap… Two of the past century’s most recognizable moments of presidential triumph took place in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate (which stood where communist East Berlin was walled off from West Berlin). It was where JFK declared “Ich bin ein Berliner,” (which translates into “I am a jelly doughnut,” a “Berliner” –but Kennedy’s noble heart was in the right place) and Ronald Reagan demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down that wall!”
     Strong stuff. Strong presidential stuff. Obama wanted his moment at the Brandenburg Gate too.
     Slight difficulty, the Germans pointed out, JFK and Ronald Reagan were Presidents of the United States when they made their speeches. Kennedy and Reagan had both demonstrated, forcefully, that they would put the security of their own countries on the line in defense of freedom. The people of Berlin and of Germany understood this. This knowledge and background is what gives those precious moments in history their force and meaning. As tactfully as possible, the Germans indicated to Obama that he would have to be President, or have achieved something to stand in the spotlight hitherto reserved for Kennedy and Reagan.

    Obama did speak… but it was an odd affair all around. As one German official put it, you would never see a German candidate give an election campaign speech on the Mall in Washington, with the Capitol or the Lincoln Memorial as a background. So what wasa Obama doing in Berlin? When the question was put to a campaign aide, the aide retorted that it wasn’t a political speech; that when the President of the United States speaks overseas it is never a political speech… At which point a reporter mildly interjected that Obama isn’t the President…yet.
     Instead of the Brandenburg Gate, Obama got the Victory Column relocated onto a traffic circle by Hitler during his redesign of Berlin. About a half million people turned out to hear Obama, and each was served a nice bowl of oratorical oatmeal. Obama uttered platitudes against walls that divide different peoples (the Berlin Wall divided Germans..ahem!), joked that he was probably not the kind of American official they were used to seeing (unless they had seen Colin Powell or Condi Rice), boasted he was a citizen of the world, and led a chorus or two of “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” (okay, I made that last item up). Even to claim he was a jelly doughnut would have made a more lasting impression.
     Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news publication summed it up: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings." The visuals were nice though.

     Obama may have thrown a brief snit fit while in Germany... Just before he was to go to the U.S. Military hospital in Landsthul to visit some severely injured G.I.s he was reminded by the Department of Defense that his visit would have to conform to DoD regulations. The rules are that no campaigning is allowed using the wounded soldiers as props for a visual. To his credit, Obama had already dis-invited the press to accompany him. When told he could not bring any of his campaign staff. He cancelled out completely.
    In a press release the campaign explained that Obama “decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.” McCain’s retort was that it is never inappropriate for a public official to visit wounded soldiers.
     If Obama had shown up alone to pay his respects to our wounded soldiers. I am sure it would have been as big a thrill for them as it would have been if he had brought his speechwriters, photographers and spin doctors.
     On the whole, however, I have to rate Obama’s trip a success. He looked presidential while McCain looked like a bag of sand –if you could see him at all.

Like 1962 All Over Again? The Russians have denied that they plan to base their Tupolev 160 bombers in Cuba, in retaliation for our construction of anti missile defenses in Eastern Europe to counter a possible Iranian threat. Whew! Crisis averted….
     Do you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962? CIA recon aircraft spotted the Soviets building launch bases for medium-range ballistic missile on Cuba. The news was leaked from Senator Kenneth Keating’s (R-New York) office and was shortly confirmed by the U.S. government.
     President Kennedy addressed the nation to underscore how serious a threat the missiles were and it began to look like the United States would have to use force –air strikes or perhaps a ground invasion—to neutralize those bases. JFK ordered a naval quarantine of Cuba. For a few tense days lit looked like the crisis would grow into a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and the USSR. College students came home to die with their families. People stocked up canned goods in the basements of their homes.
     Suddenly, behind the scenes, a deal was struck. Nikita Khrushchev, then the Chairman of the Soviet Communist Party, backed down. He ordered his missile and nuclear weapons back home, and we secretly withdrew our own medium range missiles from Turkey.

     It won’t happen again and here’s why: The United States and Russia have no conflicting interests to fight over.
     Until 1991, you’ll remember, it wasn’t Russia, it was the Soviet Union we faced as an adversary –an ideological adversary. The government in Moscow not only had the usual nationalistic motives driving policy, but it had motives of political ideology that dictated policy. The governing class had a positive duty (they believed) to advance the cause of communism and the eventual worldwide proletarian revolution –the patrimony given to them by Lenin.
     Therefore if some emerging country in West Africa declared itself the socials brothers of the Soviet Union, the Soviets would flood that nation with arms, advisors and economic aid. Our side might up the ante with aid to the democratically inclined people of the next country over, or our side would assist the freedom-loving anti-government rebels. In another region the opposite may be true, with the central government enjoying U.S. backing, while the rebels and socialist brothers in the neighboring country benefited from Soviet largesse. Vietnam springs to mind. Win or lose, back in the USSR Moscow housewives still had to stand in lines to buy bread and meat (when available). As for us, we always had guns and butter…
     The bottom line was that it was too expensive for the USSR to prop up regimes in Eastern Europe, Africa, Cuba and Asia with economic and military aid. When Ronald Reagan opened an arms race with the Soviets in the 1980’s, the Soviet economy collapsed. The Soviets pulled out of all their international adventures and even out of some of the USSR’s federated republics like Kazakhstan, Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine.
      Communism fell around the world. The government in Moscow now thought of itself as Russian, not communist.
      And as Russians, what strategic interests do they have that conflict with the United States? Our systems do not prevent either country from competing in any regional marketplace; there are no barriers to trade. We are not competing for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, the Angolans or the El Salvidorans, which saves Russia and the United States a lot of money in military aid. For the great powers of the world, the issues in the Third World are poverty, food and public health, especially AIDS prevention and treatment –not whether the economy is centrally planned or free market.
     As for the traditional reasons for aggression, what do the Russians have that we would go to war to obtain? Before you say “oil,” please remember that it would be much, much less expensive to buy Russian energy than to fight for it.
     In other words, any dispute between Russia and the United States has to be contrived, because there is no natural or logical point of conflict between the two countries.
     So why are the Russians so upset about missile defense in Poland?
     It is part of the Russian national character to be paranoid about the intentions of its neighbors. When you consider the Crimean War, the invasion by Germany in World War I and the devastatingly close call the Russians had with Nazi Germany in World War II, you can better appreciate Russia’s paranoia.
     It is also important to remember that the Russians have not been exactly giddy with joy over losing their status as a superpower. The Russians feel humiliated, even at this late date, and blame the Americans, who were the “main enemy” since the days of Lenin. Telling the people that the United States is the author of all their problems is just good old-fashioned domestic politics in Russia.
     Thus, even a solely defensive system is seen as “aimed” at Russia. Our job is to convince them that it is not a threat, by any and all diplomatic means. We don’t want the Russian government actually believing its own propaganda
    There may be other friction points in the future, but none of them will amount to a logical reason for Russians to shoot at Americans.

A reader retorts…That America is not solely responsible for the problems the Mexicans are having with the drug gangs. He cites the growers, official corruption and the Mexicans who smuggle the stuff into the States as bad guys. Fair enough.

     According to him, I am saying in my previous blog, “America is bad. American drug users are bad. American government (war on drugs) is bad. The poor Mexicans are just somehow unwitting pawns being manipulated by Bob the crack addict in Philly...” Then he asks, philosophically, “Which came first: the crack addict or the Mexican coca grower?”

     Well, the addict came first. He discovered how to abuse the drugs and created a market for them. Until then, hemp was only good for making rope, poppies were decorative flowers, and coca was a leaf Indians chewed in the South American rain forest. …And no one would even think of ingesting a product made from Drano and Sudafed.

     Don’t get me wrong. The drug gangs in Mexico and Central America are really dangerous, really evil characters who deserve whatever punishment the Mexican government can apply to them. At the same time, it’s a shame we have to bankroll them and thus financially support the narco-terrorism and murder along Mexico’s border with the United States.

Another reader remarks… “Speaking as someone who has been deep in Mexico many times, I think the crack addict came first. However, Mexico has been abysmally poor for my whole life, and all of that is the result of the population of Mexico making one dumb decision after another, starting about 1910. Their top down Marxist economy set them up for takeover by the drug lords. and when we put the heat on Colombia, Drug Central moved north. I no longer plan to retire there. Too bad.”

     I have to agree that Mexico has been a poor steward of its own national fortunes for the past 100 years. The end of the Diaz regime marked the beginning of a succession of revolutionary governments each of which did its bit in ruining the economy, allowing lawlessness and betraying the hopes of the very people who put them in power. This the Mexicans were able to do very much on their own, with minimal interference from the United States.

     Now Mexico is entering an era in which organized crime, in the form of the drug gangs, is threatening to take over effective control of the country. President Calderón is showing considerable moral and physical courage in taking on the narco trafficantes. Now if there was only some way we could reduce the “demand” side of the economic equation, to give our friends in Mexico the edge…

     We managed to export a big part of our drug problem to Mexico in the past few years when we made it much harder to acquire ephedrine and pseudophedrine cold medicines like Sudafed. You need a considerable amount to cook up a batch of crystal meth. But federal law has put these OTC medications behind the pharmacy counter. To buy them, you need to flash an ID and sign a log book --something would-be drug dealers feel shy about doing.

     The result has been a drastic reduction in the “mom and pop” meth labs here in the States, and the creation of “super labs” turning out "ice meth" on an industrial scale in Mexico. The ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is imported from India and China (or made domestically) and cooked in Mexican labs. The resulting “ice” is very pure, very potent, and highly in demand.

     Huge amounts of money are involved in the trade. A 2007 federal raid on one lab in the Chapultepec district of Mexico City –an upscale neighborhood at that—yielded $205,000,000 in United States currency. That was just one drug operation. The Mexican government is trying to restrict precursor chemical production, but that raid demonstrates that the drug gangs have all the capital they need to keep the trade up and running with only sporadic shortages due to law enforcement

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, in their drug threat assessment for 2008, the problem with Mexican drug trafficking organizations is not staying south of the border: “Mexican methamphetamine distribution networks are expanding in many U.S. drug markets and have supplanted many local midlevel and retail dealers in areas of the Great Lakes, Pacific, Southeast, Southwest, and West Central Regions. Mexican DTOs have expanded their methamphetamine distribution networks, particularly in methamphetamine markets previously supplied by local distributors.

     “Law enforcement authorities in cities, including Akron (OH), Hannibal (MO), Dallas and Houston (TX), Mobile (AL), Nashville (TN), Oklahoma City (OK), Orlando and Tampa (FL), Pueblo (CO), and Richmond and Shenandoah (VA), report the growing prevalence of Mexican DTOs at all levels of methamphetamine distribution in their areas and a concurrent increase in the availability of ice methamphetamine. Furthermore, law enforcement reporting indicates that in some cities--including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Fort Worth (TX), Memphis and Nashville (TN), and Oklahoma City--Mexican DTOs are exploiting their relationships with Hispanic and African American gangs as a means of controlling methamphetamine distribution at the midlevel and retail level."

      Your friendly, neighborhood dope dealer is being replaced by a different kind of businessman. If you welched on a $50 debt you were cut off. If you don't pay the Mexican trafficker his $50, you'll be cut up.

     Looks like a whole new front has opened in the War on Drugs.