Support Wounded Warrior Project and Obama Slides

My wife left me, limping and all, to drive down to Orlando to be with our daughter, son in law, Dagny and their pooches! Can you blame her?  I can't but tried!










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Half the proceeds from the sale of my modestly priced book goes to The Wounded Warrior Project!

The soft cover version is now available.

Dick Berkowitz, has written a booklet entitled:"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born."

By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert

Dick wrote this booklet because he believes a strong country must rest on a solid family unit and that Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."

He  hopes this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.

You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com that you can download and read on your computer, or print out if you want. Cost is $5.99

The book is now available in soft cover format at a cost of $10.99, thru www.brokerberko.com as well. 

Booklet illustrations were by his oldest granddaughter, Emma Darvick, who lives and works in New York.

Testimonials:

Dick, I read your book this weekend.  I hardly know where to start.  You did an excellent job of putting into one short book a compendium of the virtues which only a relatively short time ago all Americans believed.  It’s a measure of how far we have fallen that many Americans, perhaps a majority of Americans, no longer believe in what we once considered truisms.  I think your father would have agreed with every word, but the party he supported no longer has such beliefs.

  

I would like to buy multiple copies of your booklet..

You did a great job.  I know your parents would have been proud and that your family today is proud.

Mike

You wrote a great book.  The brevity is one of its strong points and I know it was hard to include that in and still keep it brief.  Your father in haste once wrote an overly long letter to our client, then said in the last sentence, “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

"Dick, I indeed marvel at how much wisdom you have been able to share with so few words.  Not too unlike the experience in reading the Bible. I feel that with each read of "A Conservative Capitalist Offers:…." one will gain additional knowledge and new insights…

Regards, Larry"

Dick , 
Your book is outstanding! Due to illness, I've been unable to read it in entirety until today .Your background is often very similar to mine (e.g. Halliburton's influence was very important in my life), and your thoughts reflect very closely the the teachings that I received from my parents and granddad. I will write a more detailed statement in the near future!
All the best,  Bob

Regarding your booklet, I have begun to read it and look forward to finishing it this weekend.  Congrats on getting it published and on the great reviews.  I know how much this booklet means to you and how important getting this message out to the public is.

P------

Bush dances with Wounded Warriors at his Texas Ranch.


 

I sent a copy of my booklet to Mrs. Barabara Bush with this note. We have corresponded for the better part of 15 years and she is as feisty as ever:

Dear Mrs. Bush:

I  trust this finds you and President Bush well.

I underwent knee replacement surgery and my progress has been impeded by scar tissue and age but I am doing what they tell me.  Water boarding  might have been easier.

Enclosed is a book I just wrote.  Perhaps your daughter in law  (Laura) might enjoy reading it and I hope you will find it interesting as well.

I continue to post to my blog site (dick-meom.blogspot.com) my thoughts and it appears the voters are finally coming to realize they were duped and I continue to believe Romney will win.

If not ,then Pogo will have been proven right once again – “The enemy is us!”

When all else fails lower your standards seems to be what grips our nation. Sad indeed

All the best.

Respectfully,

Dick Berkowitz

 10/19/12 12

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A dear friend, fellow memo reader an LTE writer expresses his thoughts regarding Obama's handling of the Libyan assassinations.  (See 1 below.)
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Tonight I attended a meeting of Gilee (Georgia Israel Law Enforcement Exchange.)
Gilee was begun twenty years ago by a friend of long standing, Professor Robert (Robbie) Friedman.  Robbie spoke for me only two months ago under the auspices of The SIRC (Skidaway Island Republican Club) on the topic of Israel - "What Next."

Robbie is now retired from Georgia State University where he was a nationally known professor of criminology.

Gilee's mission is to build a strong relationship between, the police enforcement agencies and personnel in Georgia with their counterparts in Israel and to learn best practices from each other.
In attendance from Israel were heads and assistant heads of Israel's Homeland Security, Airport Security, Police/Prison Administration.  Savannah was represented by the Chief of Police , Willie Lovett, Mayor Jackson and many of the local police officers as well as past attendees to Israel.

The Israeli delegation was headed by a female Brig. General.

The thrust of her presentation was the various steps being taken to make the national police of Israel more effective, more responsive to the needs of their local citizens.

All various major categories of crime in Israel are showing declining trends so the Israeli Police must be doing something right.

I have been a supporter of Robbie's efforts for well over a decade and if you ask any Georgia law enforcement attendee they will tell you the Israel program is one of the highlights in their career. Police Chief Lovett openly stated he would love to be invited back.
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Obama's Iran deal offers economic relief for temporary slow down in nuclear development?  (See 2 below.)
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Trust the candidates or The Heritage Foundation with respect to certain claims in their second debate.
You decide. (See 3 below.)
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As I previously wrote, the air is coming out of the Obama balloon. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) "There is now vast and conclusive evidence that the Obama administration knew and knew well that the attack on our Benghazi embassy and the slaughtering of our ambassador, Chris Stevens, was not a riot. No, it was not a riot, induced by revulsion to an internet production supposedly maligning Islam. It was a terrorist plot, conceived and executed by al ‘Qaeda on the anniversary of their massive assault on our homeland.

The cover-up instituted by the Obama administration was done for political purposes. The sole intent was to delay blame until after the November 6^th election. This subterfuge ranks up there with Nixon’s Watergate, indeed is very much worse. Nixon’s Watergate did not involve National Security, this cover-up arguably does. No one was killed in Watergate.

We are supposed to believe, based on our current President’s strident campaigning that, since he alone was able to slay Bin Laden (seemingly without help from our Special Forces) then Al Qaeda was history. No threat. No more.

“It would be a real problem for this story if there was an orchestrated Al Qaeda attack in Libya, thus the cover-up. Poor Ambassador Stevens happened to be caught in the middle of this cover-up strategy, thus was denied sufficient security to ensure his safety. I guess that fits with the theory that when you make an omelet, you must break some eggs.

This, in my opinion, is a much worse breach than Nixon’s Watergate tragedy could ever be. Why, then is not the National Media braying for Obama’s head, as they did for Nixon’s?

I leave it to you, dear reader, to come up with the answer to that question. In the meantime, please register my revulsion with the behavior of this administration regarding  this issue, and indeed, in most of their foreign policy. Lead from behind, indeed."

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2)OBAMA CUTS DEAL WITH IRAN OVER NUKES

Sanctions to vanish in exchange for 'temporary' halt in enrichment work

By REZA KAHLILI

Iranian and U.S. negotiators have reached an agreement that calls for Iran to halt part of its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of many of the U.S. sanctions against the Islamic regime, according to a highly placed source.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expects a letter from President Obama in a few days guaranteeing the details of the agreement, arrived at recently during secret negotiations in Doha, Qatar.

The source, who remains anonymous for security reasons and is highly placed in Iran’s regime, said that once Khamenei receives Obama’s guarantees, he will authorize an announcement by Iran on a solution to the nuclear crisis before the U.S. presidential elections.

The agreement calls for Iran to announce a temporary halt to partial uranium enrichment after which the U.S. will remove many of its sanctions, including those on the Iranian central bank, no later than by the Iranian New Year in March. Iran is in the throes of massive inflation and citizen unrest because of the sanctions.

French intelligence verified today that Yukiya Amano, the current director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been given the go-ahead by the U.S. to be ready to travel to Iran and announce the agreement, according to Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former intelligence officer in the regime who has defected to Europe.

The source in Tehran said Khamenei has made it clear that unless he receives Obama’s written guarantees, he will not begin the process, which would dramatically boost Obama’s re-election chances. If the guarantees are not given, Khamenei has warned, Iran will speed up its nuclear program.

The guarantees would ensure the regime’s right to peaceful enrichment, quickly remove many of the sanctions, accept that Iran’s nuclear program does not have a military dimension and relieve international pressure on the regime while it continues its nuclear program. Also, the U.S. would announce that the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists was the work of a foreign country, though Israel would not be named, to increase legal pressure on Israel.

According to the Iranian source, a previous Obama letter to Khamenei indicated that it’s best for the regime not to give any motive to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, a message that was re-emphasized in the Qatar negotiations.

As reported exclusively by WND Oct. 4, a three-person delegation led by a woman on behalf of the Obama administration traveled to Qatar about Oct. 1 and met with Iranian counterparts, including Ali Akbar Velayati, the former foreign minister of the Islamic regime and a close adviser to Khamenei on international matters.

In the meeting, according to the source, the U.S. delegation urged an announcement, even if only on a temporary nuclear deal, before the U.S. elections to help Obama get re-elected. A Romney presidency, the delegation said, would surely move more toward Israel, and the Iranians were reminded that Obama has stood up to Israel against any plans to attack Iran. The regime’s delegate was urged to understand that if Iran does not stand by Obama, Israel will attack Iran.

Days after the WND report, Ali Akbar Salehi, the regime’s foreign minister, in an
interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, stated, “If our right to enrichment is guaranteed, we are prepared to offer an exchange.”

The same message was relayed by several other officials of the regime.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently in Kazakhstan that the sanctions can be lifted immediately if Tehran worked with world powers to address questions about its nuclear program.

In the Qatar meeting, according to the Iranian source, the American woman delegate, who has had several meetings with Velayati during the past several years, jokingly told Velayati that she will be the next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in a second Obama administration and that it would be wise for Iranians to invest in U.S. real estate.

In the past five months, four meetings were held in the U.S. with the Islamic regime’s surrogates to hash out what was to be discussed at the Doha meeting. The source identified Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, as the head of the U.S. effort to engage Iran. Also identified was Cyrus Amir Mokri, assistant secretary of the Treasury Department for financial institutions, as another member advising the president on the issue.

Jarrett’s family has known the Velayati family since their stay in Iran in the 1950s, the source added. Jarrett’s father worked at the Namazi hospital in Shiraz, owned by an Iranian family that has been influential with the regime after the Islamic Revolution.

WND contacted both the U.S. State Department and the White House, asking about the Doha negotiations, who led the delegation from the U.S., whether Obama will provide the written guarantee, what negotiations the U.S. has pursued on its own and what is known about Amano’s plan to travel to Iran for the announcement.

The State Department declined to respond to multiple calls as well as email inquiries. A spokeswoman said the White House would not comment.

The European Union, which increased sanctions on Iran last week, fears back-channel negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran will leave it out. EU leaders are seeking to send a group of representatives from seven European countries to Tehran to strengthen their position with the regime over the nuclear program and their economic interests.

The Iranian currency, meanwhile, has hit another historic low, falling to 43,000 rials to one U.S. dollar. As reported recently, a secret memo by the Intelligence Ministry to regime officials has warned of major riots in Iran due to dire economic conditions.

Another internal report by the government’s Economic Commission indicated that government foreign currency reserves will run out in the coming months and that it will have difficulty meeting payrolls for public employees who could lose 50 percent of their pay.

Many within the Iranian opposition believe that if the West continues to pressure the Islamic regime and supports the aspirations of the majority of the Iranian people who resent the regime and its ideology, the regime will face a nationwide uprising and will collapse from within, changing the geopolitics of not only the region but the world.

However, if the regime is provided a lifeline for whatever reason, not only will it get the bomb but it will take Iranians and the world hostage for decades to come, they believe.

An Oct. 8 WND report revealed another secret nuclear site in Iran. The regime’s nuclear scientists have successfully completed testing of a neutron detonator and have nearly completed design of a nuclear warhead.

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

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3)

10/17/2012

Heritage Experts Analyze Second Presidential Debate During last nightb s debate between President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, Heritageb s policy experts were live-blogging their analysis of the ideas discussed. Below are some of the highlights of our expertsb reactions to the major points made. Join us today at 11 a.m. ET for a Google hangout as Heritage experts discuss the debate with state and national bloggers. You can watch the hangout on our Google+ page. Submit questionsb starting nowb on Twitter with the hashtag #HeritageFan. b Getting Tough on Chinab : The Truth About Trade President Obama said during the debate that he signed three trade deals. Not true. Obama was left three free trade agreements on his desk when he took office. Those deals and many others were initiated, negotiated, and signed by President Bush. The one trade agreement that Obama has prioritized, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) involving now 11 countries, was also initiated by President George W. Bush. What Obama did was to delay passage of agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama that were already completed. He did so to appease labor unions and others in his political base. During the three years of waiting for the President to submit the U.S.-Korea FTA, the U.S. lost $30 billion in exports. The United States needs an energetic, committed trade policy. We need a TPP that is truly a free trade agreement and of sufficient scale to make a major impact on the U.S. economy. That means accommodating the worldb s third largest economy and U.S. ally, Japan. In means folding in other willing free trade partners like South Korea. And it means putting TPP on a timeline that gets it completed, passed and implemented as quickly as possible. b Getting tough on China,b something both candidates claimed to aspire to, is goodb as long as what is meant by that is ensuring China abides by its international trade commitments. But this is not enoughb it is not a trade policy. The U.S. needs to create opportunity with trade, not just manage bad behavior. b Walter Lohman Chinese Currency Manipulation and U.S. Employment Governor Romney suggested that Chinab s currency manipulation was related to business activity and job creation in the U.S. However, as Heritageb s Derek Scissors showed, there is in fact little to no relationship between Chinab s currency policy and U.S. employment: [T]he exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar has no direct effect on American prosperity or American jobs. It never has. Seventeen years ago, China sharply devalued the yuan against the dollar. Yet American unemployment fell for years afterward. Since 2005, the PRC has been slowly raising the value of its currency, which is what protectionists say they want. And American unemployment has soared. There are, however, other policies the U.S. President and Congress should pursue to return America to a place where businesses want to invest and hire workers. These include pro-growth tax reform, reducing undue regulatory burdens on the economy, and enabling energy exploration and production. b Romina Boccia Did Someone Say Libya? The issue was raised in the debate: What did the Administration do about security before the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and how did it respond afterward? It was the question that the President never clearly and explicitly responded to. When it comes to how the White House respondedB to the attack, the Administration has a lot of explaining to do. Itsseries of explanations was muddled and misleading. When it comes to responding to the attack, Americans of course expect that our government will go after the perpetrators. The questions of how our government responded to the terrorist threat in Libya, however, still has to be answered. b James Jay Carafano Are Oil Companies Sitting on Leases? Are oil companies sitting on leases? The short answer is no. President Obama made this statement tonight, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar routinely makes this statement. But as Kathleen Sgamma, Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for the Western Energy Alliance, recently testified: By looking at the statistics over time, it is evident that industry has become much more efficient over the last several decades. While we used to hold 80,000 leases and produce on 24% in 1988, we now hold just 49,000 leases and produce on 46%. Secretary Salazarb s statements that this shows industry is intentionally leaving leases idle is tired rhetoric that fails to take into account the huge obstacles the federal government places in the way of oil and natural gas producers, and the fact that not every lease has recoverable oil and gas. Just because oil companies arenb t drilling, this does not mean that no activity is occurring on that land. Environmental review, permitting, seismic research, and exploration may be occurring. But even that fails to address the real problem: The environmental review and leasing process takes entirely too long. Rather than implementing an efficient leasing process, the Department of the Interior added three unnecessary and duplicative administrative regulations to the leasing process in 2010. Oil companies are not sitting on leases; they are simply not being issued by the DOI, or the DOI is making it more difficult to actually obtain the leases. b Nicolas Loris Energy Production on Federal Lands Has Fallen While President Obama made the familiar statement that oil and gas production is the highest it has been in eight years, Governor Romney was right to point out that this was driven by production on private and state lands. Oil and gas production on federal lands is, in fact, down. According to a recent report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), energy production decreased 13 percent on federal lands in fiscal year (FY) 2011 when compared to FY 2010. The official moratorium and de facto moratorium as a result of a molasses-like permitting process reduced planned capital and operating investments by $18.3 billion and cost the Gulf more than 162,000 jobs in just the past two years. Federal production in the West has experienced a similar fate: The Administrationb s delays on permitting oil and gas projects public lands are preventing economic activity. In Utah and Wyoming, for instance, projects held up by the National Environmental Policy Act process are preventing the creation of 64,805 jobs, $4.3 billion in wages, and $14.9 billion in economic impact every year. b Nicolas Loris Immigration: Finally, Debate Touches the Third Rail For the first time in two debates, the issue of fixing our broken borders and flawed immigration system was finally addressed by the two sides that want to occupy the White House. They offered two very different approaches and a distinct choice. One approach is to change the laws to accommodate the unlawful population that is already hereb an approach that will not only not fix the problem, it will just make America a magnet for more problems. The other approach is to make the laws work and create a legal system that gets employers the employees they need when they need them to grow the economy and create more jobs. There are good answers to address these tough problems. What we need in Washington is leadership that is willing to do the job. b James Jay Carafano Tax Plan Details: No Taxes on Savings Governor Romney, when giving more details on his tax plan tonight, discussed that families making $200,000 or less would face no taxes on savings. The Heritage Foundationb s New Flat Tax would deduct savings immediately from taxable personal income, and savings would remain tax exempt until spent on consumption. This would lead to greater financial security for the American middle class by providing incentives for greater personal savings. The New Flat Tax, as outlined in Heritageb s Saving the American Dream plan, would replace todayb s convoluted tax system with a simple, neutral, and transparent tax system that would allow America to achieve its full economic potential. b Romina Boccia The Auto Bailout and Bankruptcy President Obama once moreB criticized Governor Romney for saying GM should go bankrupt. But Romney tonight finally cleared the record, pointing out thatB that is exactly what happened b GM and Chrysler DID go bankrupt. But, as Obama confirmed,B the administration didnb t stop there b it nationalized the firms. Taxpayers are still some $25 billion in the hole and still own a quarter of the shares of GM. Bankruptcy was the right solution; a bailout was not. b James Gattuso ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) President Obama's Closing Act: An Epic Collapse   Hugh Hewitt   The ongoing collapse of President Obama's campaign may lead to some extraordinary stunts during Monday's last debate, but no matter what he tries, it is very unlikely that the president can reverse the enormous momentum behind Mitt Romney's campaign. (One data point. Congressman John Campbell, a frequent guest on my radio show, polled his district this week. It is Califronia's 45. John McCain carried it by 4.7 points in 2008. Mitt Romney is almost 20 points ahead in this cycle. Campbell reports that this sort of result is showing up across the country.) The nation is simply finished with a president whose rhetoric has never been matched by his actions, and whose performance has removed Jimmy Carter from the bottom of the rankings of the modern president. The president of course has his passionate supporters. These are the same people that spent last Tuesdaynight declaring him the winner of his second meeting with Mitt Romney, and Wednesday and Thursday trying to infuse the word "binder" with game-changing significance. They are the same people who spent Friday denying that "not optimal" was not a big deal. "Binder" --big deal. "Not optimal" --no deal at all. That's the state of the Obama campaign: A nearly Orwellian effort at making some words matter and others disappear while facts are pushed aside It hasn't worked. It won't work.. Mitt Romney by contrast followed two very strong debate showings with a wonderful set of remarks at the Al Smith dinner, the third time in two weeks that he has reassured those just tuning into the presidential campaign that he will be a steady and reliable force for good in the Oval Office. Romney was ready for his close up. This is the primary reasion behind his surge. And what a surge. Romney was up seven points in Thursday's Gallup tracking poll, and even the very partisan Democratic polling firm PPP has Romney ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire on Friday. The president is hdidng from reporters to avoid more Libya questions, and when he hand-picks a safe zone --a comedy show hosted by a huge ally-- he still falls on his face, and not just with the "not optimal" comment but with his doubling down on clsoing Gitmo. The market shudders, the queasiness about earnings, the goofy jobs data --all this and more is fueling the growing, now urgent sense of a need for a big change. A U-Turn. And Mitt Romney is the beneficiary. Every motorist who gases up between now and election day (especially those in California) should recall last Monday's debate and the direct question to the president about gas prices which he refused to asnwer. Every Amerian who knows a recent or soon-to-be college graduate should keep in mind Jeremy's question which the president refused to answer. The answer they should remember is the president's to the comedian about Benghazi and how the massacre there wasn't "optimal." There is a 1980 landslide forming, and while the MSM is doing its best to pretend it isn't there and that the race is still close. It isn't, and it won't be. The electoral cake is baked.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------