BAILEY: Threats in the hemisphere

The first agenda item the U.S. needs to address is a national security issue called energy independence. We need to get our independence NOW, not 10 years from now when Obama proposes the technology to catch up and 40 years after that for the infrastructure and business processes. With energy independence, we then have the ability to begin serious sanctions and work with other South American democracies to form a South American Treaty Organization to quell his Bolivarian visions. The evolution of multilateralism in conjunction with the global legalists has made the compliance issue a regional one. China has already realized this with it agreements and Russia is making its move now but with intimidation. Disbanding NAFTA will not exactly build confidence in the U.S. for these types of efforts regardless of what the Democratic party thinks or does to get elected. It's time to vote the national security risks out of office and someone with a sense of reality in. John Bolton may not have played well with others but he sure didn't norm the U.S. and its interests into oblivion.

Norman Bailey commentary is no surprise since he was the head of the anti Cuba-Venezuela group in the State Department until he was fired. His allegations of Venezuela being undemocratic is totally off base. Elections for Governorships and Mayors were won by the Chavez party with a majority vote. That is Democracy. For the last 16 quarters their GDP has grown by an average of 10%, so they are taking care of their people. The people that were disqualified to run for public office have been indicted for corruption and they include people in the Chavez camp as well. There is absolutely no evidense that the relations of Venezuela and Iran is nothing other than for business purposes. Iran and Venezuela have join ventures in auto and tractor manufacturing plants, a corn flower processing factory, a bicycle factory, and other similar projects. Stop blaming other people, or trying to control other people's resources, and lets start doing something about our own energy independence. The question is, what incentive do the oil companies have to drill here at home? when they are making record profits as it is now. We, the people, need to start demanding that our government act to our benefit and not to the benefit of oil corporations.