Palo Alto Republican Women Federated January 2015 Our Speaker will be President: Edith Zitelli Kori Schake “International and National Security” Vice-presidents: 1st, Carol Greenleaf 2nd. Donna Danna 3rd. Nancy Gesell DATE: Thursday, January 22, 2015 PLACE: Michael’s Shoreline 2960 Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View TIME: 11:30 Social 12:00 Lunch PRICE: $23.00 Treasurer: Andrea Smith Recording Secretary: Shirley Campbell PARWF Website: Paloaltorwf.org Mailing Address: P.O. Box 60415 Palo Alto, CA 94306 Sorry, No Refunds. We are charged for lunches ordered. Reservation Deadline is January 16 Please make your check payable to PARWF Send to: Jo’Anne Zschokke 2285 Oberlin Street Palo Alto, CA 94306 Questions: Call Jo’Anne Zschokke at 857-9395 Edith Zitelli at 327-8777 Your Name (#1)____________________________________________ Guest Name (#2)___________________________________________ Your Telephone #___________________________________________ Please Check One: #1 #2 Breast of Chicken Florentine #1 #2 Crabmeat Cannelloni #1 #2 Wild Mushroom Crepes About Our Speaker In 2008 Kori Schake was senior policy adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign, responsible for policy development. In the previous year she was deputy director for policy planning in the State Department. During George Bush’s first term she was director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on the National Security Council. She has held the Distinguished Chair of International Studies at West Point, and also served in the Faculties of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Maryland’s School of Public Affairs. Her publications include “State of Disrepair, Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” and “Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance.” PRESIDENT’S 2015 MESSAGE As well as sending wishes that the New Year brings to each of you good health and many happy days, I am also sharing a few recent serious thoughts and suggestions for what PARWF might do in 2015. We are all aware of our nation’s continuous economic and social problems. I believe that this is the time for each of us to make a bona fide and repeated individual effort to help remedy the situation, even in small measure. On pages 6 and 7 of our current Directory is information about how most directly to contact national and state office holders. I suggest that each time something significant really “bugs” us we select the appropriate name from the Directory and spend ½ to 1 minute sending an email or making a phone call. Just do the math, we have 93 members and within one year, with very little effort, we could very easily make 1,500 contacts in 2015! This would make PARWF a working Club. The Battle of the Bulge (December 1944) Towards the end of 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower felt that Hitler’s Third Reich was near collapse. For six months, a half dozen Allied Armies had driven from the beaches of Normandy to the German border. Since 1942, the Soviets had been slowly grinding down the three German Army Groups that were positioned on the Eastern Front. As December of 1944 approached, the American 1st Army under General Hodges was situated between British General Montgomery’s 21st Army Group to the North and General Patton’s American 3rd Army to the South. However, for months the Germans had been secretly assembling equipment and transferred many battle hardened divisions from the Eastern Front. On December 16, 1944, over 200,000 well equipped Germans attacked 80,000 American troops through the Ardennes Forest. Among the American troops defending this 90 mile front were many inexperienced replacements. The German plan depended upon surprise, continuing poor weather to keep allied air power grounded, and speed to reach critical fuel American fuel supplies. Due to strategic bombing, the German economy was desperately short of petroleum. During the first few days, the Germans forced a massive Allied retreat creating a 75 mile bulge in the battle lines as the Americans retreated into Belgium. Now it was General Eisenhower’s time to muster reserves and make a stand. The 101st Airborne Division was relocated to join the US Army’s 4th Armored Division at the crossroads town of Bastogne, Belgium. Desperate to keep moving, and out numbering the Americans about 3 to 1, the Germans attacked day and night during very cold weather. When offered surrender terms, the acting commander of the 101st, General McAuliffe, replied “NUTS.” By the time the Germans deciphered this American expression, General George Patton had already turned most of his 3rd Army ninety degrees and was moving north to relieve Bastogne. By Christmas, Bastogne was relieved and the weather cleared to allow the Allied Air Power to destroy irreplaceable German equipment stranded without fuel. After major losses by both sides, the Germans retreated. By February, the “Bulge” was negated and in May the Third Reich made an unconditional surrender following Hitler’s suicide. Much of Western Europe lay in ruins with tens of millions dead and wounded. Mark Lindberg Mountain, View, CA MITCH McCONNELL: KEYSTONE PIPELINE Incoming Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to bring up the controversial Keystone XL pipeline as the first order of business when his Republican Party takes control of the chamber next month. “We'll be starting next year with a job-creating bill that enjoys significant bipartisan support. The first item up in the new Senate will be the Keystone XL pipeline,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters Tuesday. McConnell said he will allow Republican and Democratic amendments to the bill, which is being led by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D. An attempt to hold a vote on the pipeline in May collapsed in the Senate over a partisan dispute on amendments. “We'll hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments, but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process,” he said. The soon-to-be Senate majority leader said he is hopeful a vote on the “very important, job-creating bill” can be scheduled early in the session. McConnell declined to say what the Senate would work on after Keystone, saying he’ll announce that “a little bit later.” While Republicans are solidly behind the long-stalled pipeline, the project has divided Democrats and liberal-leaning groups. Environmentalists oppose the proposed pipeline, which would carry Canadian crude oil from Alberta's tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast, while labor groups and some Democratic lawmakers from oil states want the jobs the project would create. But McConnell said there already are almost 20 pipelines in the U.S. that cross either the Mexican or Canadian borders, and to suggest one more would harm the environment is ludicrous. “Multiple studies, over and over again, [are] showing no measurable harm to the environment” if Keystone is built, he said. “People want jobs. And this project will create well-paying, high wage jobs for our people.” A measure to approve the pipeline failed by one vote in November in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But GOP lawmakers believe that with support from centrist Democrats, they could get the 67 Senate votes needed to override a veto from President Obama. From: “The Partiot Post: www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/” Are Facts Obsolete? December 30, 2014 - Thomas Sowell Some of us, who are old enough to remember the old television police series "Dragnet," may remember Sgt. Joe Friday saying, "Just the facts, ma'am." But that would be completely out of place today. Facts are becoming obsolete, as recent events have demonstrated. What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob atmosphere toward the police. Grand juries that examine hard facts live in a different world from mobs who listen to rhetoric and politicians who cater to the mobs. During the controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin, for example, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus said that George Zimmerman had tracked Trayvon Martin down and shot him like a dog. The fact is that Zimmerman did not have to track down Trayvon Martin, who was sitting right on top of him, punching him till his face was bloody. After the death of Michael Brown, members of the Congressional Black Caucus stood up in Congress, with their hands held up, saying "don't shoot." Although there were some who claimed that this is what Michael Brown said and did, there were other witnesses -- all black, by the way -- who said that Brown was charging toward the policeman when he was shot. What was decisive was not what either set of witnesses said, but what the autopsy revealed, an autopsy involving three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Michael Brown's family. Witnesses can lie but the physical facts don't lie, even if politicians, mobs and the media prefer to take lies seriously. The death of Eric Garner has likewise spawned stories having little relationship to facts. The story is that Garner died because a chokehold stopped his breathing. But Garner did not die with a policeman choking him. He died later, in an ambulance where his heart stopped. He had a long medical history of various diseases, as well as a long criminal history. No doubt the stress of his capture did not do him any good, and he might well still be alive if he had not resisted arrest. But that was his choice. Despite people who say blithely that the police need more "training," there is no "kinder and gentler" way to capture a 350-pound man, who is capable of inflicting grievous harm, and perhaps even death, on any of his would-be captors. The magic word "unarmed" means nothing in practice, however much the word may hype emotions. If you are killed by an unarmed man, you are just as dead as if you had been annihilated by a nuclear bomb. But you don't even know who is armed or unarmed until after it is all over, and you can search him. Incidentally, did you know that, during this same period when riots, looting and arson have been raging, a black policeman in Alabama shot and killed an unarmed white teenager -- and was cleared by a grand jury? Probably not, if you depend on the mainstream media for your news. The media do not merely ignore facts, they suppress facts. Millions of people saw the videotape of the beating of Rodney King. But they saw only a fraction of that tape because the media left out the rest, which showed Rodney King -- another huge man -- resisting arrest and refusing to be handcuffed, so that he could be searched. Television viewers did not get to see the other black men in the same vehicle that Rodney King was driving recklessly. Those other black men were not beaten. And the grand jury got to see the whole video, after which they acquitted the police -- and the media then published the jurors' home addresses. Such media retribution against people they don't like is part of a growing lynch mob mentality. The black witnesses in Missouri, whose testimony confirmed what the police officer said, expressed fears for their own safety for telling what the physical evidence showed was the truth. Is this what we want? Grand juries responding to mobs and the media, instead of to the facts? Palo Alto Republican Women Federated P.O. Box 60415 Palo Alto, CA 94306
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