The Right Stuff
By Don O'Nesky | 11/24/08 | 05:29 AM EDT | 0 Comments
****The Night We Waved Goodbye To America... Our Last Best Hope On
Earth****
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell - or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead. The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts. It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama's victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn't yet a children's picture version of his story, there soon will be. Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find...
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique. These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America's conservative party - the Republicans - to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
Read the complete article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America--best-hope-Earth.html
---Peter Hitchens, London Daily Mail
November 10, 2008
****Democrat Leadership Drops All Pretense Of Fiscal Restraint****
With Election Day not yet a month past, the Democrat's promise of fiscal responsibility has already been ditched. Wednesday, The Hill newspaper reported: "Even the most ardent deficit hawk among House Democratic leaders says the cost of overhauling the nation's healthcare system will be heaped on top of the snowballing federal debt, at least initially.... "Our objective is going to be [to] have a pay-go-compliant policy over the longer term," Hoyer said in an appearance at the National Press Club. "That may not be possible in the short term, given where we are."
This reinforces the rumor that the Democrats may do away with Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) budgeting rules for the next Congress. The PAYGO rules attempt to force Congress to make the same budgetary trade-offs that we make every day: If you can't afford something, don't buy it. Before the Democrats took power, they were strong supporters. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) pronounced in March that, "We're absolutely committed to pay-go... The Speaker is committed to pay-go. I'm very committed to pay-go. Our caucus is committed to pay-go."
Apparently, the concept of budget trade-offs, which the Democrats were so committed to less than a year ago, no longer applies when their party is about to be in the White House.
---Steve Keen, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/democrat-leadership-drops-all-pretense-of-fiscal-restraint/
****The Fat Lady Hums****
Experts say Iran now has enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel has operational plans to attack Iran. We may soon have more than the stock market to worry about. The problem with kicking the can down the road is that sometimes you run out of road. The West has been fiddling while Iran pursues a nuclear weapon. Now comes word that we can stop counting centrifuges and whistling past the graveyard. Iran has enough material to build a bomb.
According to a routine update issued Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s toothless watchdog, Iran had by early this month made 630 kilograms, or 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium. That's "a weapon's worth," says Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist at the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council -- enough for an advanced implosion-type weapon such as the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.
"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," agrees Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."
Actually, that's the easy part. Becoming a genuine nuclear power is a three-step process. You must be able to generate enough fissile material for a bomb. You need a delivery system -- that is, a ballistic missile. And you need to weaponize the material -- build the bomb and mate it to your missile. The hard part, according to Uzi Rubin, an engineer and missile expert who served with Israel's Defense Ministry, is producing enough weapons-grade fissile material. Under our Manhattan Project, it was only six months after plants at Hanford, Wash., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., produced enough weapons-grade material that the bomb makers of Los Alamos detonated the first nuclear weapon at Alamogordo, N.M.
It appears Israel may not wait that long, much less until Iran has a Shahab missile ready to launch with a nuclear warhead. In an interview published Tuesday in the German magazine Der Spiegel, Israeli air force Commander Ido Nehushtan said the IAF was "ready to do whatever is demanded of us." A strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, he added, "is a political decision" and not a "technical or logistical decision."
The Israelis have been practicing for this eventuality. On June 2, dozens of Israeli F-15s, F-16s and tanker-refueling aircraft conducted an exercise in the eastern Mediterranean, flying the exact distance they'd fly in an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Israeli air force includes the new F-16I Sufa (storm in Hebrew) built specifically to Israeli requirements. The planes have additional removable tanks and can carry enough fuel to attack targets well within Iran without having to refuel.
"If Iran continues its program to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it," Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said June 6 after the practice run. "The window of opportunity has closed. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear program." While Iran's low-enriched uranium is not quite weapons-grade, the Institute for Science and International Security, after reviewing the IAEA report, estimated that the further enrichment necessary could be done "within a few months." That would give Iran a nuke right around Inauguration Day.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312078810558292
****Obamabots Know Where You Live****
It's hard to pick out the scariest part of the still unfolding story of how unionized state government workers violated Joe the Plumber's privacy for political ends. The Columbus Dispatch reports today that President-elect Barack Obama supporter, donor, and director of Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services Helen Jones-Kelley "had no legitimate agency function or purpose" for pilfering the files of Joe the Plumber. Last month the Dispatch reported that Jones-Kelley personally requested state employees to search Joe's files after Joe publically criticized then-candidate Obama.
The Inspector General report also found that Jones-Kelley committed a "wrongful act" when she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign money for Obama. The report also faulted other agency employees for their role in the computer checks on Joe and concluded: "the circumstances surrounding the unauthorized searches are exacerbated in light of the director's sending and receiving e-mail related to a political activity through state resources."
Ohio State Auditor Mary Taylor has called on Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to hold Jones-Kelley accountable: "I urge Gov. Strickland, who campaigned on the promise of running an ethical administration, to ask for the resignation or terminate Ms. Jones-Kelley immediately." So far, Jones-Kelley has only received one month unpaid leave slap on the wrist as punishment. Now we know how serious the left actually is about ethical government and protecting your privacy.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 21, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/21/obamabots-know-where-you-live/
****Promises, Promises****
Among the new president's many problems is how he'll square private promises made to hundreds of thousands of federal workers with his public promise to cut federal programs. According to the Washington Post, Barack Obama sent letters to workers at seven federal agencies, telling them he would, among other things: scale back private contracting, allow paid family leave, impose tougher industry regulation, add staff to the Social Security Administration, and expand bargaining rights to Transportation Security Administration officers...
Overall, Obama promised more spending to six of seven agencies. Defense was the only one that didn't get such a promise... He did concede that, given the government's grim fiscal picture, "we will need to look carefully at all departments and programs." The problem is that if Obama lives up to his promises to federal employees, he's going to have a hard time making good on his promise to the American people to "go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don't need and making the ones we do need work better and cost less." Doing that will mean cutting spending in these same agencies, and cutting federal jobs. Neither will go down well with the AFGE.
It's not that there isn't room to cut. Not one of the agencies Obama wrote to saw its budget cut in the Bush years. Most saw big increases. And even excluding Defense and Homeland Security, the federal work force grew by 5% to 1.1 million workers. Hopefully, Obama will realize that federal agencies have been anything but starved in the past eight years. Better to break a promise to an interest group than break one to the American people.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312078187254847
****Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Was Invented For GM****
Bankruptcy expert and George Mason University School of Law professor Todd Zywicki makes a concise case for why GM must enter bankruptcy before the federal government gets involved:
GM (or the others, but I'll use GM to illustrate the point) presents an unusually good case for Chapter 11 reorganization. GM is, in fact, the textbook example of what Chapter 11 was invented to do. GM almost certainly will not liquidate, and if it does, then this will almost certainly be beneficial from a social perspective because it will illustrate that the resources are better deployed elsewhere in the economy... The basic idea of a financially failed enterprise is that there are economic rents or "going-concern surplus" from the current deployment of assets. The idea of a Chapter 11 reorganization is to preserve this going-concern surplus or economic rents.
GM is a classic example of a firm that looks like a financially failed rather than economically failed. We have both physical capital and human capital with high firm and industry-specific value, namely factories and uniniozed work forces, which value would be lost if those assets were redeployed. It also has at least some going-concern value in its goodwill and namebrands.
What GM needs to do is shed labor contracts, retirement contracts, and modernize its distribution systems by closing many dealerships. It appears to need new management as well. Bankruptcy gives them the opportunity to do all that. So GM will almost certainly reorganize, as will the other car companies. GM does not look like an economically-failed typewriter manufacturer at this point, but rather a financially-failed company that needs to reorganize and go forward.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 21, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/21/chapter-11-bankruptcy-was-invented-for-gm/
****The Waxman Wane****
What could hurt a hurting economy more than an environmental extremist as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee? Meet Rep. Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills. It was a slim margin of 137-122 on Thursday when Democrats voted to buck seniority for next year's session and strip the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, Michigan's John Dingell, of the chairmanship of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. House's Hollywood liberal could be business' worst nightmare...
As Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner quipped, "Funny how Dems elected a guy to chair Energy and Commerce who opposes both." As chairman of the House Government Reform Committee for the last two years, and before then when Democrats were in the minority, Waxman has instigated a reign of terror costing American business hundreds of billions of dollars...
Waxman's agenda for the future includes the "Safe Climate Act," promising that "by 2050, emissions will be 80% lower than in 1990" -- a verbatim echo of Barack Obama's "New Energy for America" proposal. And it's worth remembering that Waxman's well-to-do, little-to-lose constituents see green activism the way other congressmen's voters view pork. He is the House's Hollywood liberal, representing Malibu and Santa Monica, as well as Beverly Hills... It all spells a perfect storm of environmental extremist control of government. Business -- and their employees, who may be victims of layoffs -- better batten down the hatches.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312077804618599
****Low Energy Costs Key To States' Success****
During his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama said electricity prices will "skyrocket" and his plans would "bankrupt the coal industry." It was a stunning revelation on the impact of a "cap and trade" system on jobs and our economy...
Natural gas is a wonderful, clean-burning fuel needed to heat our homes, fuel our manufacturing industries and possibly power transit buses and fleets. But using natural gas for generating base-load electricity is three times costlier than coal.
Nuclear power is our cleanest, most efficient source of energy, but it will take decades to get more reactors online. The French get more than 80% of their electricity from advanced nuclear and reprocess the spent fuel in a more efficient and safe way. If the French can do it, Americans can too!
Coal is abundant, readily available, relatively inexpensive -- and ours. The development of clean coal technologies has hugely reduced the emission of sulfur, nitrogen and other pollutants from coal-fueled electric plants. Our coal-based electricity generating plants are 70% cleaner today than in 1970, based on emissions per unit of energy produced.
We can keep energy costs down and encourage research and development by meeting our growing electricity needs with the most efficient and lowest cost resource available to us now: American coal. Rather than policies that cause skyrocketing electric bills and job losses, let's enact policies that use American resources to create American jobs for America's economic competitiveness and security. For the country's economic competitiveness, more base-load electricity should be powered by American clean coal and advanced nuclear plants.
---George Allen, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312075488335550
****Protectionism Promotion****
There are already so many good reasons Congress should deny the Big Three a bailout, but the cost it will inflict on America's free trade leadership could be the most dire. The Wall Street Journal's Matt Slaughter writes:
"Will a U.S.-government bailout go ignored by policy makers abroad? No. A bailout will likely entrench and expand protectionist practices across the globe, and thus erode the foreign sales and competitiveness of U.S. multinationals. And that would reduce these companies' U.S. employment, R&D and related activities. That would be bad for America. Rising trade barriers would also hurt the Big Three, all of which are multinational corporations that depend on foreign markets. In 2007, GM produced more motor vehicles outside North America than in -- 5.02 million, or 54% of its world-wide total. That year in China, the world's second-largest and fastest-growing automobile market by volume, GM continued to lead in market share and became the first global auto maker to surpass the one-million mark in single-year unit sales in China."
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/protectionism-promotion/
****This Could Push The Democrats Over The Edge****
Check this out. Click here and take a look at this one ballot in Minnesota. Minnesota, in case you don't know, is where the Democrats are busy stealing a Senate seat. Just 150 or so votes separate the incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and ultra-leftist Democrat Al Franken. Al Franken is actually taking this one particular ballot to the courts saying that the voter was obviously voting against Norm Coleman. Again ...just look at the ballot to get a clear idea what is going on here.
Are we going to allow the Democrats to use tactics like this to get their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? Well, that depends on the voters in Georgia. On December 2nd Georgia voters can prevent that 60-vote majority, no matter what Al Franken manages to pull off in Minnesota. The Minnesota Senate race will be determined by politicians ... the Georgia Senate runoff between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin will be decided by the voters ... and it's all going to rest on just who heads to the polls.
There is going to be much gnashing of teeth of the last roadblock - the possibility of a Republican filibuster - is removed from the path of Obama, Pelosi and Reid. There is absolutely nothing in Martin's past that indicates he would be anything other than Obama's dog washer and Reid's sock puppet in Washington.
Weeks ago I was saying that the political focus was going to be on Georgia after the general election. Finally I get something right. We need something to slow down the big-government goals of the Democrats. Georgia voters are that something.
---Neal Boortz, Nealz Nuze
November 21, 2008
http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/11/this-could-push-the-democrats.html
****Science Still Not So Settled****
Earlier this week, President-elect Barack Obama told a crowd of globe trotting jet setters in Beverly Hills, "The science is beyond dispute, and the facts are clear." Obama was referring to all the doom and gloom scenarios the enviro/left spews about the dangers of global warming. Obama is a busy man these days, so he probably missed a new study in Nature Geoscience. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports: "Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%. The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed... The team found by including realistic estimates of charcoal in their climate prediction models, the amount of CO2 predicted to be released from two Australian savannah regions under a 3ºC warming scenario was 18.3% and 24.4% lower than previously calculated."
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/science-still-not-so-settled/
****Europeans Getting What They Wanted?****
You probably don't remember it, but earlier this year Pew Research did a poll in Europe questioning European attitudes toward the U.S. Poll results showed that 58% of Europeans wanted to see the United States weakened. Could that have been one of the reasons Europeans were so solidly behind the election of Barack Obama? Did they suspect that he was a key to a weaker America? Now I call your attention to this story from Reuters. The National Intelligence Council has produced an analysis entitled "Global Trends 2025." The basics? The economic and political clout of the United States will decline over the next 20 years resulting in a more dangerous world with a plentitude of advanced weapons and scarcities in food and water.
The Europeans may well get what they wanted. How far into this process do you think we will get before they start screaming and begging for help from the U.S. as either Muslims or Russia embarks on a grand new adventure?
---Neal Boortz, Nealz Nuze
November 21, 2008
http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/11/europeans-getting-what-they-wa.html
****A Plan A Day Keeps Investors Away****
Earlier this week we documented how Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's erratic behavior has become perhaps the single most disruptive force in the global economy. But he is just one of many government actors throwing more uncertainty into an already volatile marketplace. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairwoman Sheila Bair has been pushing her own plan for propping up housing prices. Despite their integral role in creating this whole mess in the first place, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue their home price inflation efforts as well.
Not wanting feel left out, the Federal Housing Administration also has their own mortgage relief program. It too has been largely unsuccessful: During the first month of the program (launched Oct. 1), FHA received applications from only 111 borrowers. Now they want to change the program. In defense of this change, an anonymous official told the Washington Post: "When you have a plan a day you create confusion in the marketplace. . . . We've got to determine if there are ways to enhance the efforts that we've already taken."
If only this official had stopped at "confusion in the market place" he'd be dead on. All these government new government programs, program changes, and yes, even program "enhancements" are not helping. They hurt. When no one knows how the rules of the game are going to change -- and they seem to change from week to week -- the rational way for business and consumers to respond to is to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/a-plan-a-day-keeps-investors-away/
****Good News From Iraq****
MND-B Soldiers detain 2 in Baghdad's Rashid district
MND-B Soldiers detain 2 in Baghdad's Rashid district BAGHDAD - Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers detained a suspected terrorist and a known criminal in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad. Soldiers from Troop B, 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, detained an individual suspected to have associations with al-Qaeda in Iraq groups operating in southern Baghdad, and of initiating improvised explosive device attacks. Soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st BCT, 4th Inf. Div., detained a known criminal in Baghdad during a cache search in western Rashid's Jihad community.
Iraqi Police foil kidnapping attempt in Sha'ab
SHA'AB, Iraq - Iraqi Police thwarted a kidnapping attempt in Adhamiyah's Sha'ab neighborhood. The police, from the Sha'ab station, witnessed four gunmen in a white van in the midst of a kidnapping attempt. The IPs engaged the men with small arms fire, injuring one man who was later detained. The other three men escaped immediate capture and fled from the Iraqi Police and a Company E, 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 68th Armor Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division - Baghdad patrol that was dispatched to the area.
Later, a second kidnapper was arrested following a tip from a local resident. The resident notified an Iraqi Police checkpoint of a criminal who had taken refuge inside his home. Iraqi Police along with the Iraqi Security and Coalition forces are on the lookout for the other two men.
---Multi-National Corps - Iraq
November 24, 2008
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell - or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead. The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts. It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama's victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn't yet a children's picture version of his story, there soon will be. Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find...
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique. These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America's conservative party - the Republicans - to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
Read the complete article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America--best-hope-Earth.html
---Peter Hitchens, London Daily Mail
November 10, 2008
****Democrat Leadership Drops All Pretense Of Fiscal Restraint****
With Election Day not yet a month past, the Democrat's promise of fiscal responsibility has already been ditched. Wednesday, The Hill newspaper reported: "Even the most ardent deficit hawk among House Democratic leaders says the cost of overhauling the nation's healthcare system will be heaped on top of the snowballing federal debt, at least initially.... "Our objective is going to be [to] have a pay-go-compliant policy over the longer term," Hoyer said in an appearance at the National Press Club. "That may not be possible in the short term, given where we are."
This reinforces the rumor that the Democrats may do away with Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) budgeting rules for the next Congress. The PAYGO rules attempt to force Congress to make the same budgetary trade-offs that we make every day: If you can't afford something, don't buy it. Before the Democrats took power, they were strong supporters. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) pronounced in March that, "We're absolutely committed to pay-go... The Speaker is committed to pay-go. I'm very committed to pay-go. Our caucus is committed to pay-go."
Apparently, the concept of budget trade-offs, which the Democrats were so committed to less than a year ago, no longer applies when their party is about to be in the White House.
---Steve Keen, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/democrat-leadership-drops-all-pretense-of-fiscal-restraint/
****The Fat Lady Hums****
Experts say Iran now has enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel has operational plans to attack Iran. We may soon have more than the stock market to worry about. The problem with kicking the can down the road is that sometimes you run out of road. The West has been fiddling while Iran pursues a nuclear weapon. Now comes word that we can stop counting centrifuges and whistling past the graveyard. Iran has enough material to build a bomb.
According to a routine update issued Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s toothless watchdog, Iran had by early this month made 630 kilograms, or 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium. That's "a weapon's worth," says Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist at the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council -- enough for an advanced implosion-type weapon such as the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.
"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," agrees Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."
Actually, that's the easy part. Becoming a genuine nuclear power is a three-step process. You must be able to generate enough fissile material for a bomb. You need a delivery system -- that is, a ballistic missile. And you need to weaponize the material -- build the bomb and mate it to your missile. The hard part, according to Uzi Rubin, an engineer and missile expert who served with Israel's Defense Ministry, is producing enough weapons-grade fissile material. Under our Manhattan Project, it was only six months after plants at Hanford, Wash., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., produced enough weapons-grade material that the bomb makers of Los Alamos detonated the first nuclear weapon at Alamogordo, N.M.
It appears Israel may not wait that long, much less until Iran has a Shahab missile ready to launch with a nuclear warhead. In an interview published Tuesday in the German magazine Der Spiegel, Israeli air force Commander Ido Nehushtan said the IAF was "ready to do whatever is demanded of us." A strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, he added, "is a political decision" and not a "technical or logistical decision."
The Israelis have been practicing for this eventuality. On June 2, dozens of Israeli F-15s, F-16s and tanker-refueling aircraft conducted an exercise in the eastern Mediterranean, flying the exact distance they'd fly in an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Israeli air force includes the new F-16I Sufa (storm in Hebrew) built specifically to Israeli requirements. The planes have additional removable tanks and can carry enough fuel to attack targets well within Iran without having to refuel.
"If Iran continues its program to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it," Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said June 6 after the practice run. "The window of opportunity has closed. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear program." While Iran's low-enriched uranium is not quite weapons-grade, the Institute for Science and International Security, after reviewing the IAEA report, estimated that the further enrichment necessary could be done "within a few months." That would give Iran a nuke right around Inauguration Day.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312078810558292
****Obamabots Know Where You Live****
It's hard to pick out the scariest part of the still unfolding story of how unionized state government workers violated Joe the Plumber's privacy for political ends. The Columbus Dispatch reports today that President-elect Barack Obama supporter, donor, and director of Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services Helen Jones-Kelley "had no legitimate agency function or purpose" for pilfering the files of Joe the Plumber. Last month the Dispatch reported that Jones-Kelley personally requested state employees to search Joe's files after Joe publically criticized then-candidate Obama.
The Inspector General report also found that Jones-Kelley committed a "wrongful act" when she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign money for Obama. The report also faulted other agency employees for their role in the computer checks on Joe and concluded: "the circumstances surrounding the unauthorized searches are exacerbated in light of the director's sending and receiving e-mail related to a political activity through state resources."
Ohio State Auditor Mary Taylor has called on Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to hold Jones-Kelley accountable: "I urge Gov. Strickland, who campaigned on the promise of running an ethical administration, to ask for the resignation or terminate Ms. Jones-Kelley immediately." So far, Jones-Kelley has only received one month unpaid leave slap on the wrist as punishment. Now we know how serious the left actually is about ethical government and protecting your privacy.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 21, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/21/obamabots-know-where-you-live/
****Promises, Promises****
Among the new president's many problems is how he'll square private promises made to hundreds of thousands of federal workers with his public promise to cut federal programs. According to the Washington Post, Barack Obama sent letters to workers at seven federal agencies, telling them he would, among other things: scale back private contracting, allow paid family leave, impose tougher industry regulation, add staff to the Social Security Administration, and expand bargaining rights to Transportation Security Administration officers...
Overall, Obama promised more spending to six of seven agencies. Defense was the only one that didn't get such a promise... He did concede that, given the government's grim fiscal picture, "we will need to look carefully at all departments and programs." The problem is that if Obama lives up to his promises to federal employees, he's going to have a hard time making good on his promise to the American people to "go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don't need and making the ones we do need work better and cost less." Doing that will mean cutting spending in these same agencies, and cutting federal jobs. Neither will go down well with the AFGE.
It's not that there isn't room to cut. Not one of the agencies Obama wrote to saw its budget cut in the Bush years. Most saw big increases. And even excluding Defense and Homeland Security, the federal work force grew by 5% to 1.1 million workers. Hopefully, Obama will realize that federal agencies have been anything but starved in the past eight years. Better to break a promise to an interest group than break one to the American people.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312078187254847
****Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Was Invented For GM****
Bankruptcy expert and George Mason University School of Law professor Todd Zywicki makes a concise case for why GM must enter bankruptcy before the federal government gets involved:
GM (or the others, but I'll use GM to illustrate the point) presents an unusually good case for Chapter 11 reorganization. GM is, in fact, the textbook example of what Chapter 11 was invented to do. GM almost certainly will not liquidate, and if it does, then this will almost certainly be beneficial from a social perspective because it will illustrate that the resources are better deployed elsewhere in the economy... The basic idea of a financially failed enterprise is that there are economic rents or "going-concern surplus" from the current deployment of assets. The idea of a Chapter 11 reorganization is to preserve this going-concern surplus or economic rents.
GM is a classic example of a firm that looks like a financially failed rather than economically failed. We have both physical capital and human capital with high firm and industry-specific value, namely factories and uniniozed work forces, which value would be lost if those assets were redeployed. It also has at least some going-concern value in its goodwill and namebrands.
What GM needs to do is shed labor contracts, retirement contracts, and modernize its distribution systems by closing many dealerships. It appears to need new management as well. Bankruptcy gives them the opportunity to do all that. So GM will almost certainly reorganize, as will the other car companies. GM does not look like an economically-failed typewriter manufacturer at this point, but rather a financially-failed company that needs to reorganize and go forward.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 21, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/21/chapter-11-bankruptcy-was-invented-for-gm/
****The Waxman Wane****
What could hurt a hurting economy more than an environmental extremist as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee? Meet Rep. Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills. It was a slim margin of 137-122 on Thursday when Democrats voted to buck seniority for next year's session and strip the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, Michigan's John Dingell, of the chairmanship of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. House's Hollywood liberal could be business' worst nightmare...
As Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner quipped, "Funny how Dems elected a guy to chair Energy and Commerce who opposes both." As chairman of the House Government Reform Committee for the last two years, and before then when Democrats were in the minority, Waxman has instigated a reign of terror costing American business hundreds of billions of dollars...
Waxman's agenda for the future includes the "Safe Climate Act," promising that "by 2050, emissions will be 80% lower than in 1990" -- a verbatim echo of Barack Obama's "New Energy for America" proposal. And it's worth remembering that Waxman's well-to-do, little-to-lose constituents see green activism the way other congressmen's voters view pork. He is the House's Hollywood liberal, representing Malibu and Santa Monica, as well as Beverly Hills... It all spells a perfect storm of environmental extremist control of government. Business -- and their employees, who may be victims of layoffs -- better batten down the hatches.
---Editorial, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312077804618599
****Low Energy Costs Key To States' Success****
During his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama said electricity prices will "skyrocket" and his plans would "bankrupt the coal industry." It was a stunning revelation on the impact of a "cap and trade" system on jobs and our economy...
Natural gas is a wonderful, clean-burning fuel needed to heat our homes, fuel our manufacturing industries and possibly power transit buses and fleets. But using natural gas for generating base-load electricity is three times costlier than coal.
Nuclear power is our cleanest, most efficient source of energy, but it will take decades to get more reactors online. The French get more than 80% of their electricity from advanced nuclear and reprocess the spent fuel in a more efficient and safe way. If the French can do it, Americans can too!
Coal is abundant, readily available, relatively inexpensive -- and ours. The development of clean coal technologies has hugely reduced the emission of sulfur, nitrogen and other pollutants from coal-fueled electric plants. Our coal-based electricity generating plants are 70% cleaner today than in 1970, based on emissions per unit of energy produced.
We can keep energy costs down and encourage research and development by meeting our growing electricity needs with the most efficient and lowest cost resource available to us now: American coal. Rather than policies that cause skyrocketing electric bills and job losses, let's enact policies that use American resources to create American jobs for America's economic competitiveness and security. For the country's economic competitiveness, more base-load electricity should be powered by American clean coal and advanced nuclear plants.
---George Allen, Investor's Business Daily
November 20, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312075488335550
****Protectionism Promotion****
There are already so many good reasons Congress should deny the Big Three a bailout, but the cost it will inflict on America's free trade leadership could be the most dire. The Wall Street Journal's Matt Slaughter writes:
"Will a U.S.-government bailout go ignored by policy makers abroad? No. A bailout will likely entrench and expand protectionist practices across the globe, and thus erode the foreign sales and competitiveness of U.S. multinationals. And that would reduce these companies' U.S. employment, R&D and related activities. That would be bad for America. Rising trade barriers would also hurt the Big Three, all of which are multinational corporations that depend on foreign markets. In 2007, GM produced more motor vehicles outside North America than in -- 5.02 million, or 54% of its world-wide total. That year in China, the world's second-largest and fastest-growing automobile market by volume, GM continued to lead in market share and became the first global auto maker to surpass the one-million mark in single-year unit sales in China."
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/protectionism-promotion/
****This Could Push The Democrats Over The Edge****
Check this out. Click here and take a look at this one ballot in Minnesota. Minnesota, in case you don't know, is where the Democrats are busy stealing a Senate seat. Just 150 or so votes separate the incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and ultra-leftist Democrat Al Franken. Al Franken is actually taking this one particular ballot to the courts saying that the voter was obviously voting against Norm Coleman. Again ...just look at the ballot to get a clear idea what is going on here.
Are we going to allow the Democrats to use tactics like this to get their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? Well, that depends on the voters in Georgia. On December 2nd Georgia voters can prevent that 60-vote majority, no matter what Al Franken manages to pull off in Minnesota. The Minnesota Senate race will be determined by politicians ... the Georgia Senate runoff between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin will be decided by the voters ... and it's all going to rest on just who heads to the polls.
There is going to be much gnashing of teeth of the last roadblock - the possibility of a Republican filibuster - is removed from the path of Obama, Pelosi and Reid. There is absolutely nothing in Martin's past that indicates he would be anything other than Obama's dog washer and Reid's sock puppet in Washington.
Weeks ago I was saying that the political focus was going to be on Georgia after the general election. Finally I get something right. We need something to slow down the big-government goals of the Democrats. Georgia voters are that something.
---Neal Boortz, Nealz Nuze
November 21, 2008
http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/11/this-could-push-the-democrats.html
****Science Still Not So Settled****
Earlier this week, President-elect Barack Obama told a crowd of globe trotting jet setters in Beverly Hills, "The science is beyond dispute, and the facts are clear." Obama was referring to all the doom and gloom scenarios the enviro/left spews about the dangers of global warming. Obama is a busy man these days, so he probably missed a new study in Nature Geoscience. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports: "Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%. The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed... The team found by including realistic estimates of charcoal in their climate prediction models, the amount of CO2 predicted to be released from two Australian savannah regions under a 3ºC warming scenario was 18.3% and 24.4% lower than previously calculated."
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/science-still-not-so-settled/
****Europeans Getting What They Wanted?****
You probably don't remember it, but earlier this year Pew Research did a poll in Europe questioning European attitudes toward the U.S. Poll results showed that 58% of Europeans wanted to see the United States weakened. Could that have been one of the reasons Europeans were so solidly behind the election of Barack Obama? Did they suspect that he was a key to a weaker America? Now I call your attention to this story from Reuters. The National Intelligence Council has produced an analysis entitled "Global Trends 2025." The basics? The economic and political clout of the United States will decline over the next 20 years resulting in a more dangerous world with a plentitude of advanced weapons and scarcities in food and water.
The Europeans may well get what they wanted. How far into this process do you think we will get before they start screaming and begging for help from the U.S. as either Muslims or Russia embarks on a grand new adventure?
---Neal Boortz, Nealz Nuze
November 21, 2008
http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/11/europeans-getting-what-they-wa.html
****A Plan A Day Keeps Investors Away****
Earlier this week we documented how Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's erratic behavior has become perhaps the single most disruptive force in the global economy. But he is just one of many government actors throwing more uncertainty into an already volatile marketplace. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairwoman Sheila Bair has been pushing her own plan for propping up housing prices. Despite their integral role in creating this whole mess in the first place, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue their home price inflation efforts as well.
Not wanting feel left out, the Federal Housing Administration also has their own mortgage relief program. It too has been largely unsuccessful: During the first month of the program (launched Oct. 1), FHA received applications from only 111 borrowers. Now they want to change the program. In defense of this change, an anonymous official told the Washington Post: "When you have a plan a day you create confusion in the marketplace. . . . We've got to determine if there are ways to enhance the efforts that we've already taken."
If only this official had stopped at "confusion in the market place" he'd be dead on. All these government new government programs, program changes, and yes, even program "enhancements" are not helping. They hurt. When no one knows how the rules of the game are going to change -- and they seem to change from week to week -- the rational way for business and consumers to respond to is to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.
---Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
November 20, 2008
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/20/a-plan-a-day-keeps-investors-away/
****Good News From Iraq****
MND-B Soldiers detain 2 in Baghdad's Rashid district
MND-B Soldiers detain 2 in Baghdad's Rashid district BAGHDAD - Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers detained a suspected terrorist and a known criminal in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad. Soldiers from Troop B, 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, detained an individual suspected to have associations with al-Qaeda in Iraq groups operating in southern Baghdad, and of initiating improvised explosive device attacks. Soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st BCT, 4th Inf. Div., detained a known criminal in Baghdad during a cache search in western Rashid's Jihad community.
Iraqi Police foil kidnapping attempt in Sha'ab
SHA'AB, Iraq - Iraqi Police thwarted a kidnapping attempt in Adhamiyah's Sha'ab neighborhood. The police, from the Sha'ab station, witnessed four gunmen in a white van in the midst of a kidnapping attempt. The IPs engaged the men with small arms fire, injuring one man who was later detained. The other three men escaped immediate capture and fled from the Iraqi Police and a Company E, 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 68th Armor Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division - Baghdad patrol that was dispatched to the area.
Later, a second kidnapper was arrested following a tip from a local resident. The resident notified an Iraqi Police checkpoint of a criminal who had taken refuge inside his home. Iraqi Police along with the Iraqi Security and Coalition forces are on the lookout for the other two men.
---Multi-National Corps - Iraq
November 24, 2008
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