George A. Sprecace M.D., J.D., F.A.C.P. and Allergy Associates of New London, P.C.
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RAPID RESPONSE (Archives)...Daily Commentary on News of the Day
This is a new section.  It will offer fresh, quick reactions by myself to news and events of the day, day by day, in this rapid-fire world of ours.  Of course, as in military campaigns, a rapid response in one direction may occasionally have to be followed by a "strategic withdrawal" in another direction.  Charge that to "the fog of war", and to the necessary flexibility any mental or military campaign must maintain to be effective.  But the mission will always be the same: common sense, based upon facts and "real politick", supported by a visceral sense of Justice and a commitment to be pro-active.  That's all I promise.
GS

Click here to return to the current Rapid Response list

SATURDAY and SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 and 30, 2003

A variety of subjects today:

GS

THURSDAY and FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 and 28, 2003

Happy Thanksgiving.  On our travels to be with family, we were reminded first-hand about all the other Americans doing the same thing...including our President.  Atta Boy!   You don't lead by crying "charge", but by calling "follow me".  President George W. Bush is doing that. And a heart-felt thanks to all our men and women in arms.

Meanwhile, traveling - and waiting - and traveling provides ample opportunity to read.
Today's edition of the WSJ is particularly useful on timely topics (Opinion, ppA8,9)

GS

SUNDAY through WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 through 26, 2003

The Medicare Bill has passed both houses of Congress.   In the process, we have witnessed quite a show.  Demagoguery, thy name is Democrats.   The gang used every bogus argument in the book, except the race card, to defeat the bill.  Or did I miss that?
Meanwhile, the snake oil show called the Democratic Presidential  Candidates Debates continue to provide great fodder for next year's compaign.  Even Wesley Clark is hitting his stride in hyperbole and distortion.  The troublesome part of all this is that we have our troops engaged in the battlefield while this is going on.  In addition, we had better learn how to fight and win the current unconventional, guerrilla war that we are now in.  We would not like to have to learn those lessons on our own homeland - a definite possibility if we cut and run, as the Democrats are urging.  Furthermore, the Iraqi people are going to have to do more and risk more than they have done so far for their own freedom.   They must deserve what we are trying to give them, at their own personal risk and even at risk of civil unrest.  It is nothing less than what Americans had to do in 1776-1781  and in 1860-1865.

GS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2003

John F. Kennedy.  A pivotal Presidency, both for the benefit and to the detriment of our country.  A week of following the old and new evidence presented on the History Channel reinforces my earlier comment on the subject in this section (November 16-19, 2003).   And the cover-up goes on.   Rest in Peace, Mr. President.

GS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2003

Very often I use the words "Americans" and "America".   We all know about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", "equal protection under the law",  the "melting pot"....  We know that we have been seared in the fires of many wars, the worst of which for the national psyche having been the Civil War and Viet Nam.  We know that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Nixon affair produced much more cynicism than patriotism, especially in the younger generations that do not have the benefit of having experienced the just wars that showed our better natures.

But what is going on here?  Is ours a "melting pot" or a melting blob, an amorphous mass of irresponsible base desires and instincts, acted out at will with impunity and with no true compass - no "Rule of Law"?  And if there is a rule of law, is it the feel-good law of positivism, a situational Law like the "Recht Ist Recht" Law of Nazi Germany that "legitimized" all manner of immorality and atrocity?  Do we hold any "truths to be self-evident...."?   Or do we merely "tolerate" the killing of unborn babies in the tens of millions, piled-on obscenity throughout our national media, the repudiation of  "one nation, under God"...anyone's God,  the threat of dissolution of Marriage, the corner-stone of our society and the guarantor or our children's lives and rights....?  And if, as we learned today in a breathless news flash,  Cameron Diaz's bare breasts are worth 5 million dollars, is that for the pair, or is it 2 1/2 million for each???  Is anybody there?  Does anybody care?   Somebody had better care, and express that care in the shopping mall and in the election booth...or else we will have entered the decline and fall of the American Empire.

GS

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2003

Can anyone honestly have further doubt?  World terrorism will be the world war of the 21st century, if we do not destroy it now.  And by "we" I mean the entire civilized world: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish....  Turkey is the newest battlefield, as Jews, Turks and Britons were targeted in recent days in Istanbul while cooperative Iraqiis and all Americans are bombed in Iraq.  What are the lessons to be learned here?

Fortunately, America has in President George W. Bush the right leader at the right time.

GS

SUNDAY through WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16 through 19, 2003

GS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2003

The syndicated columnist Cal Thomas made an important point in his recent article entitled "What Freedom Means In The Middle East" (The Day, Thursday, November 13, 2003, Commentary, pA9).  He asserts that the 'massive and difficult undertaking' described recently by President Bush "...will be made even more difficult if Westerners think that Islamic nations want what we have".  However, he seems to attribute to the vast majority of Muslems the wishes and plans for themselves cooked up in recent decades by the Wahhabi, the despots and the terrorists, with no representation at all for "the wives of many of them and the mothers of them all".  First of all, that is no way to live, under any religion.  Secondly, the great Arab world that straddled much of the earth between about 700 AD and 1500 AD did not wither because of the Ottoman loss at the battle of Lepanto (1571).   All educated Muslems know that an unwillingness to evolve, in a way consistent with their own religion, led them to be left far behind.  That situation will not change unless they do evolve, consistent also with the realities of the modern world and with the desires and the rights of all human beings.  Meanwhile, any effort to take their unhappiness out on America will be severely countered.  This will be especially true after this administration and its friends in the world act to bring both the crazies of Israel and of Palestine to heel...an action long overdue.

GS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2003

GS

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2003

"Crime does not pay".  Those of us who are getting a little long in the tooth remember learning that saying right after "Dick and Jane".  But more recent  generations have been learning the opposite lesson from the activities of some judges and lawyers.  From the relative slaps on the wrist for corporate executives whose malfeasance ruins tens of thousands of lives, to the chump change that corporations are fined for similar activities, to the 90+% of felonies that are plea-bargained down and out of serious jail time, to lawyers who conveniently forget that they are also "officers of the Court"....
And then we have today's travesty by the judge who decided that several late teenage punks who brutalized their teammates this summer should avoid fitting punishment by charging them as "juveniles".  What lesson is to be learned here by so many already out-of-control juveniles nation-wide, and by their stupid and/or cowering parent(s)?

Well, now the victims and their parents should sue the parents of the "juveniles" under Federal Civil Rights laws.  If the offspring are not held responsible, the parents certainly should be.

GS

MONDAY through WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10 through 12, 2003

I have learned that the current edition of The Economist, the British publication,  has an article examining the differences  between Europeans and Americans.  The findings:

No wonder that we feel so good, and they feel so bad.

In addition, a recent public television program highlighted the rise and fall of the British Empire, from its intentional, single-minded and often ruthless expansion throughout the globe, to a point at which one-third of the population of the world was under British rule...and then to its decline and fall, beginning with the "jewel in the crown" - India.  Such was the fate of all other imperialist nations.  America went through a very short period of similar expansionist tendencies a century ago; but we learned fast.  We learned more in Viet Nam.  Then came the most important lesson, on 9/11/01.  From now on, our overseas activities will be guided by the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense.

And then comes Algore, who recently "accused the Bush administration of exploiting Americans' fear of terrorism for political gain."   What a jerk!

GS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2003

How is "merely" using pot or cocaine, without even considering the issue of selling illegal drugs, endangering the security of this country?  By supporting a massive and highly lucrative international drug trade that has direct ties - economic if not also political - with world terrorists.  And by far the largest market for those drugs is the United States. That was the evidence and the message presented by a journalist specializing in the Latin American scene during the most recent presentation sponsored by the Southeast Connecticut Committee On Foreign Relations.  Focusing on the situation in Columbia, although describing working connections with Venezuela, Lybia and Turkey, she described how a nearly one billion dollar rebel operation that controls nearly 40% of that country is financed: approximately one-half through the sale of illegal drugs; and the remainder through extortion, kidnapping.... These are "equal opportunity" criminals who work for money, for warped ideals, or for both.   It is thus time for all Americans to demand and to support an effective "war on drugs": not just  "cops and robbers" scenes and an occasional flashy "bust", but mandatory long jail time for drug pushers of any size, the choice between jail time and effective rehabilitation for drug users, and a guaranteed availability of drug treatment sites in timely fashion.  None of this exists now, and one might ask: why not?  I will leave the conspiracy theories to others.  But, after 9/11, the drug war is a related war that we must win, by eliminating the predominant source of demand for the products.  One step that needs to be taken is to allow private physicians, on a voluntary basis and with adequate compensation and oversight, to provide the ample medications and administration sites and followup.  This is not a task which they would relish. But they could be counted on to do their part.

GS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2003

There is always something to say about Public Education, and it is rarely good, thanks to the organized efforts of the teachers unions, of the "educators", and of their bought-and-paid-for politicians.  Perhaps the non-unanimous election of the new Chairman of the Connecticut State Board of Education is a good sign.  Betty J. Sternberg is described as "a behind-the-scenes leader in several of Connecticut's most significant education initiatives of the last two decades...." (The Day, Thursday, November 6, 2003, pA1)  If some people in the Education Establishment were aganst her election, she has to have done something good.  Good luck to her.  Meanwhile, the news from other fronts is not as good.  Please see the article by Joe Klein entitled: "How the Teachers Killed a Dream", (Time Magazine, November 3, 2003, In The Arena, p27); "The Charter Boom", (WSJ Monday, November 3, 2003, Review and Outlook, pA14).  This latter editorial concludes as follows: "The unbridled hostility toward this promising new model for new public schools from the beneficiaries of the rotten status quo - school boards, teachers unions and central bureaucracies - should remind us that their opposition isn't limited to vouchers.  It's to anything that would hold them accountable."   For further evidence, please see the offerings under "Public Education Politics" on this web site.

GS

THURSDAY and FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 and 7, 2003

GS

SUNDAY through WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2 through 5, 2003

A number of gathering thoughts:

GS

FRIDAY and SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31 and NOVEMBER 1, 2003

Today is time to catch up on some recent very informative articles on issues of the day.

By this time, you have discovered a pattern here, relating to the Wall Street Journal, the best and most balanced newspaper published today.  At least it is a good antidote for addiction to the New York Times.

GS


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