May I Introduce Myself?
In these photos you may see things I treasure.
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A Middle Woman
Somewhere In America
You see a photo of an ordinary Middle Woman, somewhere in the heart of America. She is at stake in the worldwide war on terrorism. She and all Middle Women around the world who are like her are at risk. Those who, like Osama bin Laden, would destroy our country will destroy her if they can. Why? Lots of reasons.
She stands straight. Her clothing is utilitarian, functional to her employment. She is independent, on her own. She would probably welcome a good relationship with a good man, but perhaps no good man has come along who will commit decently and in good order to making it work. So she has not entered into a voluntary servitude to a lousy, using man. And she won't. She will be okay. On her own. People like her. People respect her. She is not rich. She is not poor. She has her work days and her days off, her holidays too. She earns her working person's wages, goes home tired at the end of a day and need ask no one permission as to how to order her life. Her relationship with her God is left to her to work out in her own way.
She is somewhere in America, but she may well not be an American. She may have come here for freedom, economically, personally, spiritually. She is included in this photo gallery to represent all Middle Women everywhere. She is included in this photo gallery to show I affirm her worth and value and I stand with her and all who are like her. I have left her photo first in this gallery, at the top of the page, to emphasize the importance I place on this issue.
If I should become President, these Middle Women, here in America first, yet also everywhere in the world, will be one of my important concerns. Although I wrote she is somewhere in the heart of America, let me put a little gloss on that: she and all those like her or who want to be like her are in the heart of America.
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A True Friend Is A Gift of God
You see a photo showing an American embroidery folk handwork, made by women in years now long past, a Sampler or Theorem some of them were called. You may not be able to make out the words. It says A True Friend Is A Gift of God. To the right of that is a gavel given me upon graduation from law school. I graduated from the Syracuse University College of Law. I completed my First Year of law school in a law school I helped create at Northern Illinois University at Dekalb, Illinois. At that time, the Illinois State Legislature had passd a law stating no new law school charters would be granted in Illinois. The University has a beautiful, graceful light stone library building. Outgrowing its size limitations, a huge square thing was built across the street from it to serve as a new library and all the books were removed from the lovely old library building. I said, that building should be made into a law school.
On my instigation, by networking with one of the Deans at a faltering towards bankruptcy Catholic law school located halfway between Dekalb and the City of Chicago, and roping in the University President, then a gentleman named Richard Butler if I remember aright and with the help of a fine civic and education minded Illinois State Senator, a Jew I think, named Richard Schwartz as I recall, arranged for the University to take over the faltering Catholic law school's charter. So I helped save The Roman Catholic Church from a major institutional bankruptcy and embarrassment. This was one of the many times I have worked cooperatively, as is my intent, with the Roman Catholic Church. This showed clearly that in America, we work best, for the good of all, when we of various branches of the Judeo-Christian tree join hands and work together rather than against one another. I attended my law school first year there on a Dean's Scholarship. Incidentally, this might be as good a place as any to point out clearly that, while yes, there are many problems with the Roman Catholic Church in America, all that pedophile priests stuff and some other things that have gotten a big load of publicity, which unfortunately seems pretty well-deserved, I have no intention of doing any kind of Catholic-bashing whatsoever. Although I often attend Catholic Churches and once completed the RCIA - Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults of the Roman Catholic Church - and recognize fully the glory and beauty of the ancient Church worship, I am not a Catholic. I am too much a free spirit for even the free churches - oh, Hal Lindsay, Jack Hayford even all those good electronic church people like Bishop T.D. Jakes, Bishop Eddie Long and Joyce Meyer from whom I am learning regularly - to be able to comport well within the strictures of a highly structured organization like the remnant in mystic form of The Roman Empire or such U.S. derivatives of the Anglican Church as "God's Frozen People" The Epicopalians. No, I will not be part of bashing the Catholic Church - which one will remember is not only a Church but also a Foreign Power with the attributes of a State, with which, working cooperatively, through good Ambassadors well I am thinking perhaps of young Ted Kennedy the Senator's son and some fine other possibles just now, we may accomplish great things - about issues that may intrude upon the civic well-being of America, such as the pedophile priests thing or the corruption within the FBI which has as its spine a major Catholic component -uhm well consider Hanson the FBI Agent traitor who sold FBI Secrets to the Soviet Russians for 18 years it seems. The question always asked about the FBI Agent traitor Hanson is why did it go on so long, why didn't anybody question his exorbitant monied lifestyle and so on, well it is because he was in Opus Dei a Roman Catholic prefecture of some kind that Catholics know about and accept although the Chris Matthews TV Show Hardball showed a woman initiate trying to escape the clutches of Opus Dei as one would a cult who explained that in Opus Dei they were taught not to recognize that an apple was not a pear and there is some other weird medieval stuff like beating themselves and wearing a kind of device that cuts their legs and all that, and, J. Edgar Hoover had made a policy contrary to the spirit of safeguards stated in the U. S. Constitution about no religious tests and he hired only Irish Catholics, which led the rivalrous OSS/CIA people to refer to FBI Agents as Foreign Born Irish which in turn exacerbated interdepartmental feelings, so FBI corruption today tends to be a Roman Catholic cultured problem. Well, in those cases, we have such tremendous individuals of Catholic background as major figures in our system - U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for example, a man of towering intellectual gifts, strength and integrity that regarding any such problems of Catholic impropriety affecting the civic order I would as President appoint him as an investigating Master Justice, backed up by The Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court John Roberts, who I believe is also a Catholic and maybe that former ACLU Chief Lawyer seemingly cold fish Jewish Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for balance. Great figures like them will be charged with probing coldly and clear-eyed, without regard to religious favoritism or bashing into some of these things if it becomes necessary, in such a way that no question of it being fair to Catholics or Catholic-bashing ever becomes an issue. They can be equally trusted to protect America and also to protect their fellow Catholics from unfairness. Also, they have their own lawmen to assist them with subpoenaes and arrests, independent of the FBI, The U.S. Marshals. The late U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun inducted me into a legal fraternity to which he himself belonged when he came to help dedicate the new College of Law I had helped create.
I then, in 1983, transferred to Syracuse University to complete my last two years of law school and a special International Law Program which was fully accredited by the American Bar Association. Syracuse University is a fine East Coast powerhouse school, home to an Institute For National Security and Counter-Terrorism, and in some strong company as one of only seventeen private AAIU Research Universities in America which have law schools including Harvard, Duke and The University of Southern California. I graduated in the top one-third of my class, quite respectable but not with any of the cum laude's, yet with some honors. I completed a dual U. S. Law and International Law program, earning an American law degree called these days a Juris Doctor or J.D., meaning Doctor of Law (changed a bit from my father's era; his law degree was called a Bachelor of Laws and Logic or LL.B., I think it was) and completing well an additional coursework curriculum in the law school in International Law.
This was a full program with its own international law review, The Syracuse Journal of International Law & Commerce on which I served as an Associate Editor. In the course of that international law review careful, exacting work I learned some interesting things such as the international legal concept of Historic Bays which may be relevant in areas of interest, for example, near China such as The South China Sea which is rich in oil deposits, The Straits of Taiwan, The Gulf of Mexico which is of considerable importance to Texas and in fact the USA, The Skaergaard of Norway - an offshore rock rampart - which has by international law extended Norway's right to rich oil and natural gas deposits (perhaps 1/3 of the world's natural gas) some 80 miles beyond usual limits out into both the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea if I remember aright and elsewhere. My thesis type major paper for the international law program dealt with The International Legal System, The ABM Treaty, and The Powers of the U. S. President in the Conduct of International Relations. An interesting part of my research for that paper was attending a conference near the Pentagon hosted by a military technical publication entitled Military Space, where among other things some eager people wanted me to "come meet this man, on the staff of Senator Shelby's Intelligence Committee, his name is something like Tenet, George Tenet." I declined to follow those eager pied pipers to meet this exciting figure, still, it was an interesting experience and I met and later networked constructively with many solid people in international law and relations.
I was awarded concurrently with and together with the J.D. a separate International Legal Studies Program Certificate, both academic credentials fully accredited by The American Bar Association. So, speaking in shorthand, I may be J.D., with International Legal Studies Certificate, Syracuse University College of Law, Class of 1985. On my business cards I have usually listed my work as United States and International Law and Relations and have preferred work involving both the United States and another country such as, most recently and importantly, China.
One constructive achievement as a China hand was to arrange the invitation for and escort Judges of the Beijing Supreme People's Court to visit our Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles and later escort our Judge, The Honorable Peter J. Mirich, who had been for some years the President Judge of the Court in our city (which has since been changed as all such Courts have been administratively merged into a huge system with hundreds of Judges) and had hosted the Chinese Court here to make a reciprocal visit to the Beijing Supreme People's Court and the Xi'an Court of Appeals Courts in China. One of the topics discussed between the Chinese Judges and the American Judge, who I must say presented himself and comported himself simply yet most impressively, dealt with the educational and professional standards of the American Judiciary, which, actually, are extremely high. Not too long after these exchange visits, I noticed while reading The China Daily, the official state English language newspaper in Beijing which is an outlet for the government to let the world know some things, some 1600+ judges had been summarily thrown off the bench in China, with the implication being they had only been appointed there due to their Party membership rather than educational qualifications. Significant reforms were taking place - as some of the senior Chinese Judges commented with subdued but heartfelt appreciation to us - in part due to our exchanges and, the educational standards for becoming a Judge in China were raised to a minimum of graduation from a four year university with a Bachelor's Degree. It is clear China is making serious efforts to become more in line with the best standards of the international legal system.
You may find more interesting aspects of China in Chapters 10-12 titled Chapters of the Heart which includes The Black Buddha in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and Chapter 18 titled Trained By Russians and the China page of this web site.
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You see a sailboat with a red and white striped sail. I bought this when I travelled to another jurisdiction working on a case where someone had been held for many months without trial. As I have become sensitized to this problem through this experience I will likely take it into account in dealing with our justice system if I become President.
One of my background fields of expertise, acquired when President Richard Nixon was pushing to professionalize the field of Law Enforcement, that is Police Work, is in Law Enforcement. It came about in this way. I had an unusual opportunity to purhase a Civil War era house for a very low price. I bought it and moved into it. While bringing it up to 20th century stndards, I enrolled in the local community colllege and entered the Law Enforcement curriculum. The courses were things like Criminology which was I recall was taught by an Abnormal Psychology Professor, Criminalistics which was taught by a Science Professor named Dr. Loganathan who had immigrated here from India whose son I believe was a Virginia Tech Professor who was concidentally one of those killed in the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy as he had a distinctive name and I saw in one of the televised memorial ceremonies I believe my old Professor now completely white-haired and looking wide-eyed and suffering a great loss and I take a personal moment here to express to him my great gratitude and respect for the learning I had from him and my deep sorrow for his loss, and one which used as a textbook a book titled Evidence For The Police Officer which was taught by a retired career Chicago FBI Special Agent who said he had some difficulty getting the books for the class and who taught us the FBI's time-honored Plonk protocol for warrantless wiretapping. The classes were full of State Troopers in their big ol' Smokey Bear hats and heavy duty winter uniforms as President Nixon's program, called LEAP - the Law Enforcement Education Program - which was intended to raise police officers' training to university degree levels nationwide paid for the officers' tuition. I paid for my own. I did very well in the program and was inducted into the National Honor Fraternity for the Junior College level, Phi Theta Kappa. This is not Phi Beta Kappa, the National Honor Fraternity at the four year university degree level to which I did not rise during my last two years of university.
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My Coast Guard Officer's hat, called a Bancroft, its maker's name. A Gideon Bible. I have been since 1990 and am now active in The Gideon International, which is said to be the largest free association of evangelical Christian Business and Professional Men in the world. Here, and also in a course called Men's Fraternity taught early in the mornings at local churches which is based upon a curriculum developed by Robert Lewis, I have learned to be what we call a Prayer Warrior, using Prayer first as the great weapon to fight against and pull down adversary spiritual strongholds which seek to harm us, and to put on what the Bible calls The Full Armor of God. If there is a spiritual dimension - as well as a purely military one - to this worldwide terrorism conflict which has been and continues to be thrust upon us, and it seems we have seen enough of terorist leaders who call themselves Religious Leaders and actually Holy Warriors so that few today will argue the struggle is only in the material dimension of bullets and bombs but is also in the struggle for hearts and minds, souls and spirits, of overcoming fear, of strong hope, of good joy and the Peace of God that surpasses all understanding, that kind of heart and mind and spirit preparation may be necessary for an American leader to be able to encounter on equal terms an enemy who plans to make what he sometimes terms Holy War and sometimes a nuclear hellstorm inside America. The plans Osama Bin Laden has to make a nuclear hellstorm, and just what this means, in America are documented in a book published in 2005 by Paul L. Williams which I believe is titled The Al Quaeda Connection, International Terrorism, Organized Crime, and the Coming Apocalypse. A DVD Boxset of The Winds of War, starring Robert Mitchum with Ralph Bellamy as President Franlin Delano Roosevelt, stands together with the Bible and a DVD of Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.
The blue and white china boot is from The White Swan Hotel, the fine first China-Western joint venture I believe, which is located next to the U. S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China where I did some work as a completely independent U. S. and International Lawyer which was good for both America and China. If the Good Lord is willing I will be happy to return to China as President and work togther with Chinese old and new good friends in a perhaps heretofore unexperienced cooperative relationship to bring into being some extraordinary economic and political advances I have in mind. Some preliminary groundwork has already been prepared in previous meetings in Beijing with my friend the Secretary General of The Association For Relations Across The Straits of Taiwan, for example, which may only be brought to fruition by a U. S. President - a reason of central importance in my seeking the Office - working in harmony, as the Yin and the Yang, with the intelligent and adaptive Leadership and People of The People's Republic of China which has stood up now modernly in a new way.
A Beefeater Guard from the Tower of London, brought back from our honeymoon, behind which not quite seen is a Tivoli Guardsman of Denmark, one of the world's longest standing Democratic Monarchies. During World War II Adolf Hitler sent the King of Norway, King Christian the Tenth I think the elderly man was a message saying they should combine their two countries under one Leader. The King of Denmark wrote back that he appreciated the idea but felt he was too advanced in years to rule two countries at the same time. In the fine film Out of Africa Meryl Streep portrays the author Isek Dinesen I think it is spelled who when questioned by certain British aristocrats as to where Denmark will stand in a war between Germany and Britain she says "On its own, I hope. We do have that tradition." It is that spirit which leads so many in the world who know something of the true character of this fine little nation, including me, to stand with Denmark in such times as may arise. Behind everything in the cabinet is a black and white photo from Caesarea Maritima, the ancient capital city of Pontius Pilate. The blue cobalt glass is from the shop of an Arab friend in Old Jerusalem. There is an ironic truism, often written about, a saying that for many Americans in Israel "if you want a friend, look for an Arab".
It is certainly true that, should I become President, I will continue a policy of George W. Bush to recognize in our own country at least that our own good American citizens, workers, and their families who are of Arab descent should not be adversely acted upon by being singled out, extensively profiled nor preyed upon by U. S. and other law enforcement authorities merely due to their heritage. In our country, this is a matter of Equal Justice Under The Law For All and respect for differing cultures, customs and the free expression of viewpoints in the Marketplace of Ideas. A children's sing-song doggerel says it this way : Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Names Can Never Hurt Me. So no one need not be overly offended by every little thing that is said, done or written.
The 2 books on top of the tv are those mentioned in item number 6 on the Platorm Page of this web site.
The yellow silk tie was a gift from fine Chinese friends.
The black shirt? What . . . I have watched as you have and picked up such pearls of wisdom as are dispensed by Barbara Walters, Star Jones and friends on the daytime television program The View - that is: black is wonderfully slimming.
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The crystal cat is Linda's. When we were first married she told me she had always had cats. I had grown up with a dog, a wonderful big, gentle, happy, loving black labrador retriever. Our dog was tortured by a cruel neighbor teen. Afterwards, he ran away a few blocks and hid himself under some blankets in the garage of his former owner. I was the one who went searching for him and found him. I saw the piteous, shattered state he had been reduced to. We had to take him a hundred miles or farther in the car to a farm in West Virginia where he could run free and live out his years without fear. This incident sensitized me as a young boy, who is still in part in this man I am now, in a terrible way to this issue.
One consequence is I have come to appreciate and rely upon the very professional, fine Doctors of Veterinary Medicine, the ubiquitous "Vet" with which our country is blessed. Caring for the animals of other people day after day, for years after years, these unsung heroes the D.V.M. s are a great blessing to America which we should always remember.
It is probable this incident involving our dog will temper my policies as to interrogations of enemy combatants, perhaps even the worst terrorists, towards methods and procedures which are, as a man who may have told me he was the retired CIA Head of Station for a major European city said, without the infliction of pain still highly effective.
Well, Linda asked me early on, all innocent about it you know, if we could have cats. I said No Cats. You know. "I am the Man. (Making a fist and bringing it down slowly and firmly on the table like the gavel of God Himself. [Cringe . . .]) No cats." Mark Twain once answered an aspiring writer who asked how to understand human nature so well as to be able to write psychological books about people to "keep a pair of cats." We now have five cats, each of which we rescued from an abusive or stray kind of situation. Partly this shows the power of Linda the Hon and Blissville. It also reflects in part the influence of the book The Cat Who Came For Christmas, which I highly recommend for all
If you are interested in learnng what surprising things the federal government, your government, has spent your tax dollars on in electrical experiments between mother cats and their kittens of all things, this great book by Cleveland Amory, the former editor of the Harvard Crimson who once wrote that for a writer there is little left in life after being the editor of the Harvard Crimson, and once also wrote to me. Yet both he and Linda Greenhouse have clearly shown that is not completely the case.
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This photo is no beauty shot. Well, that is ok, now you can say you've seen me at my worst. It was taken the day after I had cataract surgery in one eye. The surgery was spectacularly successful. I have been wearing glasses for thirty years and now I don't need them anymore at all in the eye that had the surgery. My vision there is just almost 20/20. I can read the smallest letters on the eye doctor's vision chart. The reason for all the bruising under my eye is that a small blood vessel near the eye broke and there was some bruising from that which was unrelated to the cataract surgery itself. I include this rugged photo for a specific reason.
The Opthalmologist who performed the surgery has a very typical Islamic name. I was actually afraid to go into surgery with him because of that. My fears were to the effect that, as Arab and other major media constantly tell us with a constant bombardment of the most graphic words and jarring images, there is a worldwide jihad being declared and exerted to the death against all Americans by the amorphous force of Osama bin Laden, the Arab street and the worldwide Islamic ummah.
With all that, was I going to let this stranger whose name means Mohammed invade the region of my body where a slip of a scalpel could go right into my brain? NO WAY! Are you kidding me? I'm as paranoid as the next guy, and I recall Dr. Henry Kissinger saying that even paranoids have real enemies.
Well, one thing and another happened. I ended up scheduling the surgery to be done by this Doctor. The Doctor was just great. The results were spectacular. An additional note: for this surgery I had a lengthy regime of four eyedrop medications. These were dispensed to me by a woman Pharmacist completely wrapped up in a traditional Islamic dress including headdress. Can you believe it? She didn't poison one of them.
Well, there you have it. I have gone through this I am sure to learn something I need to learn. I haven't completely processed this.
Yet, if I become President, it will surely inform, color, temper and moderate outside influences on my thinking on the inter-civilizational issues manifesting themselves just now between Islam and the West and particularly with America. These range from Linda the Hon to an author under the pseudonym Anonymous whose excellent book Through Our Enemies' Eyes I think it is urges America to grind her enemies to dust militarily.
Whatever war making is thrust upon us, if I am President, I will never be able to escape the fact that I will be looking at the problem with eyesight given back to me, as Jesus did for several people, amazingly, by people from the world of Islam. So, I share this photo expressly for this purpose, to credit this for such factoring-in as should be.
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Santa Claus Likes Chinese Food!
'Twas The Night Before Christmas and here I am eating Chinese Food in a Hong Kong restaurant. Now we can explain to our children why we always leave only Cookies and Milk next to the fireplace for Santa, instead of real food, and why we do it the last thing at night on Christmas Eve. You see, Santa does not only care for American children, he also must visit China's children and bring their Christmas toys and joys. In China these gifts are for all kinds of people, not only those who believe in the Christian religion but also Buddhists and other religious people, those who consider themselves good atheist Communists and just plain old Free Thinkers, business people out to make a yuan and, actually, anyone who like Jesus Christ Himself loves children. So, you see, just as it is important to keep Christ in Christmas, it is also important to keep Santa in Christmas. Like the television commentator Bill O'Reilly says "We're looking out for the Kids!" Santa sleighs down the International Dateline from The North Pole to China. He sleighs all over China and makes deliveries to Chinese children early in the evening. Did you know the Gift Chinese children ask for most is to have an American child their own age as a Pen Pal friend? Sometimes Santa and children's parents arrange this for Chinese and American children through one of the fine Pen Pal organization programs. China has over one billion people and so many smart and happy kids! By the time Santa has visited all of their homes, he's just plain tuckered out and needs a good hot meal. Then Santa stops in Hong Kong for a big Chinese dinner. After he has had dinner he sleighs on over the Latitude to America, arriving here late at night - that is how the Latitudes got their name! Sometimes Santa brings letters and cards from Chinese children for their American children pen pals. Santa sleighs over here from Hong Kong so quickly - in less than an hour after eating Chinese food, can you believe it - that he only needs the nice snack of Cookies and Milk we leave out for him.
Mothers and Fathers tell your children . . .
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This web site has been paid for by the Principal Committee To Elect John W. Stevenson President of The United States of America in the 2008 Election.
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