Monthly Archives: July 2010

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not just surviving cancer, but thriving in it

Today, my mom finishes 6 weeks of radiation to treat Stage 2 breast cancer. While most people think she is quiet and shy — the fact is she probably is in some ways. But since my dad passed away roughly 10 years ago she has slowly become more confident in dealing with life’s many issues. She has negotiated a car purchase, re-modeled a bathroom and maneuvered through Medicare all on her own.

But she really proved her strength when she was diagnosed with breast cancer early this summer. When Drs. Caughran and Padulla from Grand Rapids’ Lack’s Cancer Center informed her that she had stage 2 breast cancer and would need 6 weeks of radiation, my mom’s only response was that she had lots of travel plans this summer so they needed to fit the treatments around her busy schedule.

Since the fright of breast cancer hit our family, I have been surprised by how many people are dealing with breast cancer in their own family or with a loved one. One friend bluntly told me that she has been through it with her sister, her mom and her grandmother and all are healthy and mentally stronger because of the disease. Most women seem to not only know someone with breast cancer but to be completely unafraid of their most common form of the deadly disease.

My mom was no different. She was initially diagnosed with Stage 1 cancer and told that she was probably a good candidate for radiation treatment twice a day for five days. But she wouldn’t have surgery to remove the lump until she went off to California on a previously scheduled visit to family and friends. “I’m having the surgery when I get back,” she said confidently. “They have to get the paperwork together anyway so I’m not canceling my trip.”

The trip to Southern California returned her to Michigan energized with a renewed commitment to beat cancer and get back to her life. Then, after her second surgery to remove more cancerous cells than we previously thought, her diagnosis was updated to Stage 2 cancer and she was counseled to go through 6 weeks of daily radiation. Stretching the radiation treatment into 42 days of the summer was the most troubling for my mom. Her travel plans were important to her mental state and she refused to sacrifice her busy life to cancer. She insisted that the radiation treatments start at a time that coincided with the end of one long trip and finish before the beginning of another. She even adjusted certain daily treatments, doing one in the early morning and the next in the late afternoon so she could take a quick two day trip to accompany her granddaughter on an out-of-town birthday celebration. She has been busy traveling to see friends in Indiana, spending long weekends in Tennessee and attending family functions in Michigan and Minnesota – all fit in around surgeries, appointments and radiation treatments.

Cancer taught my family that my mom is much stronger than we ever thought. Faced with a devastating diagnosis, she just kept going and living – never complaining. And in the process, she proved she isn’t just a cancer survivor – she is a cancer thriver. My mom finishes her 42nd day of radiation on Thursday. And leaves promptly for a 10-day cruise to Hawaii.

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the obama team at the UN is weak

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has been on the job for 18 months now, but she doesn’t have much to show for it. Her record of accomplishments and performance on behalf of the American people is embarrassing. While Rice has been active in the social scene of Washington and The White House, a study released by the uber-serious non-profit group Security Council Report suggests that the past year has been the most inactive Security Council since 1991. Rice missed crucial negotiations on Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium, she failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women and three other UN Committees, she failed to call-out Libya when they were elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, she recently delivered an Iran sanctions resolution with the least support Iran resolutions have ever had and she called her one and only press conference with the UN Secretary General on the issue of texting while driving. For an Administration that promised to utilize the UN and improve our reputation around the world, its dinner party circuit strategy isn’t making America more secure.

Much of the blame for the weakness belongs to Rice and her habitual silence. Rice has not conducted the hard negotiations nor done the sometimes unpopular work of engaging the UN on the United States’ priority issues. When Rice does attend UN negotiations, she is all too willing to avoid confrontation. While other foreign Ambassadors speak fondly of Rice and the Obama Administration’s easy ways, they have been weak negotiators for the American people.

This lack of American leadership at the UN has resulted in the general Security Council inactivity spotlighted in the study by the Columbia University-affiliated group – Security Council Report.

The Report says:

“In 2009 the total number of Council decisions (resolutions and presidential statements) decreased by 26 percent from 2008. The number dropped from 113 to 83, the lowest level since 1991.

Resolutions dropped from 65 to 48 and presidential statements from 48 to 35.

This significant trend is also mirrored in a matching reduction in formal Council activity. The number of formal Council meetings decreased by 20 percent, from 243 to 194.

The number of press statements, which is one indicator of Council decision making at the informal level, also decreased by 23 percent, from 47 to 36.”

While Rice launched her tenure at the UN with a glamour spread in Vogue Magazine by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz showing her kicking back in an empty Security Council Chamber, she seems to not enjoy the Chamber when it’s full of diplomats. During the Haiti crisis, Rice was not only absent from the Security Council vote to expand the UN’s peacekeeping operation, but she also failed to call an emergency meeting in the immediate aftermath to request more help. In fact, 7 days after the Haiti earthquake left tens of thousands of people in the streets without food or shelter, it was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that came to the Security Council to request more troops – the American Ambassador hadn’t bothered.

Earlier this summer, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Israel’s raid of a ship headed to Gaza — and the United States was represented by the deputy at the US Mission. Reporters, UN members and activists were mystified as to why Susan Rice was a no-show during the roughly 12-hour negotiations which left Israel fending off global criticism without the top American diplomat to help. The UN Security Council ultimately issued a statement on the situation in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 1, after starting deliberations on Monday, May 31 – the American Memorial Day holiday. Rice never showed up for any of the meetings. Coming on the heels of Rice’s silence and absence from the meeting where Iran was elected to the UN Women’s committee and Rice’s refusal to call out Libya after it was elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, Rice’s performance is leaving Americans wondering if she really wants to be the American Ambassador to the UN.

More than 30 human rights organizations appealed to Rice before the crucial Human Rights Council membership vote in an effort to get her to find another country to run against Libya. The activists pleaded, “This contravenes the 2006 promise that the reformed Council would bring competitive elections, and sets a poor example.” The groups urged Rice to do something. But Rice ignored the human rights leaders’ appeal and didn’t try to make a competitive race for Libya. Rice didn’t speak up to highlight the problem, didn’t try to find another candidate and couldn’t utter Libya’s name to condemn Libya’s successful election after the vote.

Rice‘s avoidance of tough negotiations on matters important to America is unfortunate, but her lack of engagement on UN budget reform is shameful. U.S. citizens pay 22% of the UN’s regular budget, 26% of the UN Peacekeeping Budget and give millions more in voluntary contributions to a plethora of other UN programs. They deserve an ambassador who doesn’t duck a messy public fight with other countries looking to spend American taxpayers’ dollars.

But perhaps the Rice’s most astonishing failure was that she only was able to get 12 of the 15 countries on the United Nations Security Council to vote for increased sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons. On Fox News Sunday, Rice jumped to defend the Obama Administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush Administration and that there were “abstentions”.

Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own poor performance look better isn’t factual. The vote was the first Iran resolution for the Obama team but not the first time the Security Council pressured the government of Iran to suspend all nuclear enrichment-related and reprocessing activity. President George W. Bush and his team wrote, negotiated and forced a vote of the 15 nations that sit on the Council a total of five times. Three Iran resolutions under Bush passed unanimously. Two other resolutions passed with only one country voting against sanctions and one country abstaining (singular abstention, not plural as Rice claimed).

After so much hype about President Barack Obama’s foreign policy engagement strategy, the UN resolution was remarkably weak, took too long to get and received less support than Bush’s team’s. Bush lost two countries’ support in five Iran resolutions; Obama’s team led by Rice lost three countries’ support in one resolution. It’s ironic that the Obama team labeled the Bush team devoid of friends around the world. Obama’s foreign policy weakness and acquiescence has made him an international celebrity guest, but it isn’t producing the promised results on U.S. foreign policy priorities. The Obama team’s poor performance calls into question its overly diplomatic strategy to lead the world through excessive talk.

Rice has gambled this past year that keeping America unengaged at the UN is the best way to keep the Obama Administration, and herself, popular with other countries. But while the newly released report suggests that the Security Council has been cordial and pleasant in 2009, the number of crisis situations, international conflicts and peacekeeping operations haven’t decreased. No meaningful improvement has been seen to the international issues monitored by the Security Council; in fact, the study suggests that some situations have gotten worse. Without American leadership at the UN, countries just continue to talk and socialize at the U.S. taxpayer’s expense.

The facts show that the Bush style that Obama routinely ridiculed and derided produced better results than his exaggerated diplomacy has achieved. If you are comfortable living in a world where America has no more influence than China, then you may like Obama’s softer, quieter, weaker America. Iran certainly loves the breathing room they got from Rice waiting 17 months before increasing the pressure on their illegal nuclear weapons program. And allies like Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon now find it easy to ignore Obama. It isn’t popular to say, but the world needs a strong America. The world needs an America that leads our allies and isn’t troubled by certain charges of hubris from elites on the Upper East Side of New York City or in capitals around the world. One thing is clear – Obama’s easy professorial attitude isn’t winning us votes.

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clinton signals her frustration with obama’s weak foreign policies

It sounds as if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has had enough. Her new strong tone on North Korea is a welcome, albeit overdue, shift. The Obama Administration’s North Korea policy for the past 18 months has consisted of public relations ploys of pretending to get tough on the rogue state and a propensity to re-package the hard work of the Bush team and call it something new and improved. Her announcement that the Obama Administration will enforce the existing sanctions on nuclear related materials and luxury goods going in and out of North Korea is yet another example. While many members of the mainstream media have fallen for the Obama team’s marketing efforts, veteran North Korea experts and UN observers aren’t fooled. Still, Clinton’s new forceful language signaled that even she believes the current policy isn’t working and more must be done. She, seemingly alone among the Obama Administration foreign policy team, is aware that success in North Korea requires more than just talking.

What Secretary Clinton really said is that the Obama Administration will finally start enforcing the demands placed on North Korea during the Bush Administration. Although the announcement claims to be fresh and innovative, the only thing new and improved is that the Obama team is admitting that its global celebrity status isn’t enough to convince other countries to actually act on their international obligations.

Even South Korea, who has the most to lose from a provocative North Korea, isn’t buying the “new” argument from the Administration. “I don’t really think there’s anything new,” Han Sung-joo, a former South Korean foreign minister, told the Christian Science Monitor. And he is correct.

In 2006, U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton led the UN Security Council to unanimously pass an unequivocal resolution, number 1718, stating that all UN members must inspect all cargo going in and out of North Korea to ensure that there is no transfer of any nuclear related products or luxury goods. The language is absolute and written under the strongest possible terms – that is to say it acts under Chapter 7 of the UN’s charter which allows countries to use legal force to restore international peace and security. It was also passed just 5 days after North Korea conducted a nuclear test.

In 2009, 18 days after yet another North Korea nuclear test, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice and her team re-packaged resolution 1718 into their own UN resolution with the same mandates but different language in an effort to look like they were doing something new. While many in the media took the bait, analysts who took the time to look at the language of both resolutions concluded there was nothing in Rice’s resolution that wasn’t already barred in the original Bush Administration resolution. With inspections required on every ship and plane going in and out of North Korea, it’s impossible to suggest that searches are somehow new. The only thing that may be new is that the Obama team is consistently leaking the details of vessel seizures to David Sanger of The New York Times. And in return, Sanger has been all too willing to act like something is actually new with their North Korean policy.

The hard work the Bush team did in passing unanimous Security Council resolutions and the ridicule from Obama and Rice at the time now seems ironic given the poor performance the current Administration has in passing strong resolutions. Much of the blame for the weakness belongs to Rice and her habitual silence. Rice has not conducted the hard negotiations nor done the sometimes unpopular work of engaging the UN on the United States’ priority issues. When Rice does attend UN negotiations, she avoids confrontation. It took Rice 103 days to move the Security Council to issue a statement after North Korea sank a South Korean ship that killed 46 sailors. And on Iran, Rice was only able to get 12 countries to support new sanctions compared to the Bush team’s unanimous support for three separate resolutions. Secretary Clinton seems all too willing to let Rice’s failed record stand alone. Clinton has done little to help her fellow cabinet member with international negotiations and State Department insiders say that the two seldom speak or coordinate directly.

While Obama has long believed that his personal story alone would compel leaders to follow him, Clinton’s frustration with the Administration’s lack of progress on issues like North Korea and Iran is beginning to bubble up. Today’s tough talk of enforcing previous international obligations is the first sign Clinton has given that she is irritated with the weak Obama policies. But it isn’t the first time Hillary Clinton disagreed with Barack Obama’s foreign policy vision. During the 2008 campaign, candidate Clinton called candidate Obama’s ideas on rogue nations “naïve”. Clinton also criticized Obama as someone that “wavers from seeming to believe that mediation and meetings without preconditions can solve some of the world’s most intractable problems and advocating rash unilateral military action”. Clinton went on to say, “We need a president who understands there is a time for force, a time for diplomacy and a time for both.” But in perhaps her strongest criticism of Obama, she said he would need “a foreign policy instruction manual” if elected.

Obama’s foreign policy weakness and acquiescence has made him an international celebrity, but he isn’t producing the promised results on our international priorities. The Obama team’s poor performance calls into question its overly diplomatic approach and its fixation with trying to lead the world through excessive talk. But Clinton signaled that she is frustrated with just talk and wants action. Clinton’s reference to the Bush Administration’s North Korea sanctions resolution is a sure sign she wants more than a PR strategy to deal with rogue nations. It remains to be seen if the Secretary of State has enough capital inside the Administration to start teaching the President a few things about being tough with dictators.

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tough north korean sanctions started in 2006 with Bush

the main stream media will try and tell you that tough sanctions on north korea started in 2009 with the obama administration…but they didn’t. the obama team re-packaged the bush team’s work.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/21/north-korean-sanctions-aim-luxury-items/

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the white house continues in campaign mode

http://www.politico.com/%20grenell%20on%20shirley%20sherrod

Obama’s White House is still in campaign mode. And the political appointees they hired to lead federal agencies are in campaign mode. This team isn’t governing America thoughtfully. They make quick and short term decisions based on political calculation and media coverage designed to quickly move public opinion. The Shirley Sherrod incident only highlights the partisan calculation this White House and its allies do on a daily basis.

For example, Robert Gibbs’ has been biting and condescending toward Republicans and all non-Democrats from the moment he stepped on the podium. Rahm Emanuel has been caught pounding the White House’s political opponents in Congress rather than seeking common ground on policy decisions, budget decisions have been designed to maximize the impact to political groups rather than creating jobs or building the economy and multiple weekly parties and celebrations for supporters have supplanted the hard work expected by the American people. This White House is quick to react and quick to throw a party but slow to leave the presidential campaigning behind.

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robert gibbs misled on meet the press

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is a campaign style spokesman who thrives on political spin. But after almost 18 months of acting as the official White House Spokesman, he shouldn’t be allowed to spin foreign policy facts on Meet the Press without pushback from David Gregory or other journalists. On Sunday, Gibbs tried to spin the Obama Administration’s policies on Iran and North Korea by misrepresenting the facts about the support the Obama team got at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Gibbs either doesn’t understand what happened at the UN or he is lying. Gibbs repeatedly referred to “bringing everyone to the table” to support “the strongest sanctions” the UN has ever placed on North Korea and Iran. He also said that the Bush Administration didn’t have the support of Russia and China on their sanctions resolutions in “September or October 2008” and that the Obama Administration has “better relationships with countries” and “improved relationships….that make our Country safer.” But the facts show that Gibbs is wrong.

Gibbs should know that the Obama team, lead by UN Ambassador Susan Rice, failed to get a unanimous vote on the first and only Iran sanctions resolution this administration has authored. In fact, the Obama team failed to get the support of Lebanon, Turkey and Brazil. Of the 15 members of the Security Council, Rice and the Obama team only received 12 votes – the least amount of support we have ever seen for a UNSC sanctions resolution on Iran. While Gibbs claims that everyone is at the table, the Obama table has more empty seats than the Bush table had. Despite what Gibbs tries to spin, the Bush team got fewer NO votes in 5 resolutions on Iran than the Obama team got on their one and only resolution.

Additionally, Gibbs needs to go back and look at the Security Council roll call vote and video footage from UN resolution #1835 that passed on September 27, 2008. While Gibbs claims on Sunday’s Meet the Press that Russia’s and China’s support was unclear, they both clearly raised their hand to vote in favor of the resolution. That resolution, which called on Iran to “comply fully and without delay” with SC demands and IAEA directives, was written, negotiated and forced to a unanimous vote 7 days after the IAEA issued their then-latest report on Iran’s illegal uranium enrichment. Gibbs’ claim that we didn’t know where Russia and China stood is laughable when you can actually watch the video showing the Chinese and Russian diplomats with their hands in the air.

But Gibbs is not the only Administration official to spread misinformation about the Bush team’s record at the UN. Shortly after the June 9, 2010 SC vote on Iran sanctions where the Obama team got only 12 votes in favor of the resolution, UN Ambassador Susan Rice also tried to distract attention from her poor performance by misleading Fox News Sunday viewers about the Bush team’s vote count. Rice jumped to defend the Obama Administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that previous Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush Administration and that there were “abstentions”. Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own meager results look better isn’t factual. It was, in fact, one of three Iran resolutions the Bush team got passed unanimously. Two other resolutions passed with only one country voting against sanctions and one country abstaining (singular abstention, not plural as Rice claimed). Not a bad accomplishment for a team that the Obama Administration labeled devoid of friends around the world.

Gibbs’ claims of better relationships with other countries also seem suspect if those friends don’t actually support us on priority issues. The Obama team consistently confuses kind words with actual commitments and votes. While some countries clearly like the softer stance from the Obama Administration, they also aren’t being convinced to support us. The Obama team waited 17 months before they brought forward a UN resolution pressuring Iran with additional sanctions. In that time, the Iranians made unfettered progress toward a nuclear weapon with less pressure and inquiry from an international community celebrating the fact that they weren’t being confronted by the U.S. with the Iran question.

Gibbs’ performance on Meet the Press suggests that he either consciously misled viewers on the Administration’s UN performance or he isn’t paying attention to Susan Rice’s performance. Either way, the White House press corps should challenge his statements and make him correct the record.

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give American entrepreneurs access to the oil spill now!

Grand Isle, Louisiana – Sitting on the Gulf of Mexico looking out into a vast coastline of small islands and thousands of acres of marshland gives you a great perspective as to just how difficult it will be to clean the incoming oil from plants, sand and animals of all types. The thick oil kills most everything it touches. In fact, we were instructed by Buggy Vegas’ employees at Bridge Side Marina to buy Dawn dish soap before leaving in our boat to tour the oil spill in case we touched the oil. “You have to get it off your skin immediately. It kills animals so just think what it will do to your skin,” one young captain told us. It’s clear that the marshes and fragile ecosystems are going to be destroyed when the oil hits them. But talking with local captains and fishing experts you begin to realize that the plants are not gone yet and we should be fighting to keep the oil from getting to shore. While there are plenty of new ideas, cutting-edge technology and thousands of interested volunteers, there is little access to the oil that is about to kill most everything in its path. While BP is responsible for the spill, the Obama Administration is responsible for denying access to those that want to help clean it up.

Many American entrepreneurs and Midwest inventors are begging the Obama Administration to allow them to get in the water and try out their ideas on how best to pick up crude oil from the salty ocean in and around Grand Isle, LA. But the President and his Administration says the oil spill is off limits to inventors and even the volunteers that want to help. And that means that some of the best ideas to pick up the oil, stop the oil or clean it up are not being used. The bureaucracy that has been created by BP and the federal government to hear ideas and inventions is like a reality show – with multiple rounds of tryouts and cuts and endless voting from secret judges. Most ideas are being tested in secret and under alternative conditions by the inventors themselves because access to the real oil spill is being denied. But local residents have listened to the out of towners and their big ideas more than the federal government has – and the locals want action. “If this was hitting the Florida beaches then Washington would be acting a lot faster,” said one frustrated resident.

Dan Sinykin, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, runs Monterey Mills and is one of the many inventors eager to help. Sinykin spent a considerable amount of his own money to travel to the Gulf with his team to showcase his industrial fabric that grabs the oil once it touches it. A Monterey Mills video showing its fabric went viral on the internet, catching the attention of the U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins and thousands of everyday Americans.

In one day of touring, I spoke with six entrepreneurs from all over the country eager to prove that they could help. Every one of them had paid their own expenses to research and develop their product and personally invested in trips to multiple cities in and around the Gulf region to make their case. And none of them could actually get an official appointment with any decision maker. “I’ve had my application in with BP and the federal government for 60 days, I haven’t heard a thing,” said one frustrated inventor of a high tech oil skimmer.

But what troubles the locals most is why people have to prove they can help. Why not take assistance from wherever we can get it? And most importantly, why is the Obama Administration deferring authority to BP? This oil spill is so massive that BP and the Obama Administration should be asking — moreover begging — Americans for their ideas and time. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs and do-gooders are having to plead even for attention, much less to be able to help. We’ve been watching oil pour into the Gulf for 78 days now; isn’t it time President Obama got out of the way so American innovators can help solve the problem?

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