Monthly Archives: June 2008

National Insecurity, Space Patrol

Space Race with ChiComs?

Uh…not unless we start to run! Otherwise it’ll be a default loss for us, and we’ll be on a slide down towards Eurotrash style mediocrity.

Buzz Aldrin: Invest in Nasa to beat the Chinese to Mars

Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, has issued a stark warning that America must invest now in the space agency Nasa, or surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Aldrin revealed that he intends to lobby Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential candidates, in an effort to ensure they find sufficient funds for Nasa’s goal to establish a permanent base on the Moon and then send a manned mission to Mars.

This would be really BAD in so many ways…Russia and China literally holding the high ground?

Mr Aldrin, 78, said: “To me it’s abysmal that it has come to this: after 50 years of Nasa, and after putting about $100 billion into the space station, we can’t get our own astronauts to our space station without relying on the Russians.”

Really!

He said his message to the next president is this: “Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we’re going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.”

Any bets on this getting the attention of either of the major presidential candidates? No?

Didn’t think so. How sad.

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SCOTUS Gets it Right!

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Americans have right to guns under landmark ruling

Individual Americans have a right to own guns, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday for the first time in the country’s history, striking down a strict gun control law in the U.S. capital.

The landmark 5-4 ruling marked the first time in nearly 70 years the high court has addressed the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It rejected the argument the right to keep and bear arms was tied to service in a state militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia said for the majority the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with militia service and to use it for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense in the home.

As far as the Chief is concerned this is not only a good decision…but it is the only rational one that could have been made based on the Constitution.

The really scary aspect of this is…what if the Court had gone the OTHER way…opening the floodgate for libDonk persecution of gun ownership…and with no legal protection left. A 5-4 decision is, as the saying goes, “a close-run thing”. Fortunately reason prevailed, and all sorts of unpleasantness can be avoided, at least for now.

It sure is fun to listen to the libs shuckin’ to try to interpret their way out of this one…with Daley’s Chicago regime next in the NRA sights, there must be some really interesting conversation going on with his machine’s candidate, the messiah B.O. himself trying to backpedal and sound like he’s not REALLY against guns.

The Chief also notes, most of the commentators, certainly those of the MSM drive-by persuasion, ignore the REAL 2nd Amendment gorilla in the corner – namely that said right to bear arms was NOT to enablle hunting, personal protection, fighting off Indians, or whatever. The real reason to insure that the citizenry was armed was to act as a limit to the government…so it it got too uppity, it could be overturned as may be necessary…just like it was in 1776!

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B.O. – Machiavelli Would Approve!

Brooks: The two Obamas

…as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

This piece is pretty good stuff…informative and worth a look.

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A Light in the GOP Forest

Fiscal Medicine Man

McCain shows signs of choking on another big issue, but at least there are SOME congressional Republicans that have the right idea.

When John McCain met privately with Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin after a political event in the Milwaukee suburbs on May 29, the Republican presidential candidate might not have realized that he had just come face to face with an opportunity and a test. Ryan showed him his plan to reform the economy. McCain expressed interest and said he would turn it over to his campaign’s economists.

Ooops. Bad move:

That was truly ominous. If the Kemp-Roth tax cut had been handed over to economists three decades ago, it probably would have died in its crib and aborted the national and Republican revival under President Ronald Reagan.

…and the good news part is:

Ryan’s plan is more sweeping than the proposal by his former boss and mentor Jack Kemp, who dealt only with taxes. In 70 pages, Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” shows the way to reform taxes, control spending and brake runaway entitlement outlays….

Ryan fears potential national disaster is ahead because we “will exceed the European extent of government and bring our economy to extinction.”

ABSOLUTELY!

He foresees the U.S. government share of the economy rising from 20 percent to a calamitous 40 percent by the time his three children (ages 3, 4 and 6) reach their 30s, requiring a doubled tax rate. President Bush’s appropriations rose $49 billion over the last year, and the Democratic-controlled House upped that ante. But spending enacted by Congress is dwarfed by statutory increases in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements.

Ryan’s Roadmap makes a serious effort to cut appropriated spending. Ryan calls it “Gramm-Rudman on steroids” (referring to successive spending control measures beginning in 1985). But his boldest thrust comes in radical changes to entitlements, including an option for persons under 55 to buy private retirement insurance, plus reduced benefits and delayed retirement for Social Security. His internal revenue reform would amount to an optional modified flat tax (advocated in principle by McCain) and substituting a small business-consumption tax for the corporate income tax — while holding federal taxes to 18.5 percent of gross domestic product.

Here’s the only reason for hope in this situation:

It is hardly likely the Republican leadership will embrace Ryan’s daring agenda if it cannot even bring itself to temporarily forgo pork-barrel spending by passing a moratorium on earmarks. But Ryan represents a younger breed of reform Republicans who now have junior leadership positions.

Ryan, 38 and the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, has been working closely with freshman Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, 43, who has been named chairman of the national platform by Minority Leader John Boehner, and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, 45, the party’s chief deputy whip. After what is expected to be another bad GOP defeat in the 2008 congressional elections, Ryan, McCarthy and Cantor could constitute the party’s new House leadership.

One can only hope!

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Triumph of Thuggery

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Official: Mugabe wins re-election after opposition pulls out

Zimbabwe opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said Sunday he would not participate in Friday’s presidential runoff, provoking dismay from international observers and handing an apparent victory to President Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change party decided to pull out of the vote because of violence and arrests targeting his party and its supporters. “A free and fair election is impossible,” Tsvangirai told reporters Sunday. “We in the MDC have resolved that we will no longer participate in this violent, illegitimate … sham of an election process.”

It’s a real shame what’s happened in Zimbabwe. It’s potentially one of the most productive areas in Africa…but under the mis-rule of Mugabe, the country is verging on famine, and has an inflation rate that is so high and out of control (tens of 1000’s % OR MORE!) that there is literally no way to accurately determine it.

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Nothing is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, …

GPS failing? Blame the Northern Lights

Scientists have discovered that the natural light shows of the Northern Lights – or Aurora Borealis – interfere with the signals from global positioning satellites, which are used by sat-navs to pinpoint the locations of vehicles, boats and aircraft.

The intense electrical activity created in the atmosphere by the Northern Lights decreases the accuracy of the system, telling drivers that they are on a road they are not actually on or causing receivers to lose track of their position entirely.

Being able to read a map, the Chief personally thinks that while GPS is kind of neat stuff, it’s a bit of overkill for automotive travel. Now, if he were sailing a 35 ft. sloop from San Diego to Nuku Hiva, that’s another story…but even then, he had better know D.I.Y navigation…just in case!

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House Democrats Proclaim Socialist Goal

House Democrats call for nationalization of refineries

The Democrats in the House are showing their true colors: Red!

House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

They also reasserted that the reason the Appropriations Committee markup (where the vote on the amendment to lift the ban) was cancelled so they could focus on preparing the supplemental Iraq spending bill for tomorrow.

At an off-camera briefing, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the same. And a senior Republican House Appropriations Committee aide adds that “there were multiple reasons for the postponement” including discussion on the supplemental. But the aide said there was the thought that Democrats may wish to avoid a debate today on energy amendments.

Here are the highlights from briefing.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling: “We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

…no doubt in accordance with their Soviet style “First 5-Year Plan”

HUH? Like we want the GOVERNMENT to control “how much gets into the market”??? This from the folks who say we need to cut back on our use of automotive transportation, and limit the use of petroleum in the name of the quasi-religious myth of human-mediated glowbull warming? The same government that has the pattern of spending more for less results on a habitual basis?

G-d help us all if they pull this one off!

Defense Matters!

Charges Dropped in USMC Case

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Military judge dismisses charges in Haditha killings

A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis. Col. Steven Folsom dismissed charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani after finding that a four-star general overseeing the case was improperly influenced by an investigator probing the November 2005 shootings by a Marine squad in Haditha.

“Unlawful command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice,” Folsom said. “In order to restore the public confidence, we need to take it back. We need to turn the clock back.”

This turned out well. The fix was in against Chessani, and the others…but there was enough of a public flap created about this, that not even Donk Cong. Murtha’s statement of the guilt of the Marines, and the willingness of the USMC top brass of the time to throw some troops under the bus of political correctness was able to prevail.

The Chief isn’t holding his breath waiting for Murtha to apologize for his “rush to judgement” statements against the Marines.

National Insecurity

A Positive Note!

McCain attacks Guantánamo ruling

A good one from McCain…after all too many instances of moonbattery lately from him on oil drilliing, glowbull warming, etc.

John McCain on Friday described the decision by the Supreme Court to allow Guantánamo Bay prisoners to challenge their detention in US courts as “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country”. The Republican presidential candidate said he agreed with the four dissenting justices on the nine-member court that foreign fighters held at the detention camp were not entitled to the rights of US citizens.

He criticised Barack Obama, his Democratic opponent, for supporting the decision and said it highlighted the importance of nominating conservative judges to the Supreme Court. His remarks represented a hardening of his position from his more moderate initial response to the ruling on Thursday, signalling a strategic decision by the McCain campaign to make it an election issue.

As noted in a previous posting…stuff like this only re-emphasizes the critical nature of the judicial appointment process.

National Insecurity

Lib SCOTUS Judges Do Thier Own Thing

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Court says detainees have rights, bucking Bush

Logic? We don’t need no stinkin’ logic!

In a stinging rebuke to President Bush’s anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.

The Chief likes the statement made by Jon over at SD Politics about this:

I think the dissenters are likely correct. This is an example of the courts stepping in to superimpose their policy preference for that of the president and Congress. While granting habeas corpus rights and access to civilian courts to enemy combatants might be good policy (emphasis on “might”), that doesn’t mean that the Constitution demands it.

Why might these people not have such rights? First, terrorists have no legal rights, not even under the Geneva Accords. Why? First, they are not soldiers. They do not fight for a nation, therefore they are not signatories to the Geneva Accords and cannot claim protection. Their very method of action, not wearing uniforms and targeting civilians, violates international law. By not fighting for a nation and not wearing a uniform they do not even have the rights of POWs, rights granted to legitimate soldiers, which terrorists are not.

Remember all the depictions in old war movies, with partisans, spies, infiltrators, etc. were subject to summary execution?
This actually happened frequently…with both sides.

The precedent for this for the United States goes all the way back to the hanging of British Major Andros, who was involved in carrying communications while in civilian clothes in the Benedict Arnold case of treason.

The rule has been: no uniform, no legal rights – life, and death is tough! The GITMO crew is getting off easy!

G-d help us from more liberal SCOTUS Judges…which brings us back again to the matter of the upcoming Presidential election: Obamanation, Abomination; same difference!

National Insecurity

Obamanation Abomination: A Continuing Story!

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Obama Adviser Leads Delegation to Damascus

A foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama is scheduled to arrive in Syria today as the leader of a RAND Corp. delegation.

Zbigniew Brzezinski will travel to Damascus for meetings as part of a trip Syria’s official Cham News agency described as an “important sign that the end of official dialogue between Washington and Damascus has not prevented dialogue with important American intellectuals and politicians.”

This CANNOT be a good thing for the U.S.

Mr. Brzezinski’s visit to Syria, a country President Bush has accused of arming terrorists and ordering political assassinations in Lebanon, is in many ways in keeping with a theme of the Obama campaign. The Illinois senator in August said during a Democratic debate that he would be willing to meet with foreign adversaries, earning a rebuke from Senator Clinton, a Democrat of New York, who said such an approach would be “naïve.” On August 24, Mr. Brzezinski, a one-time national security adviser to President Carter, announced in an interview on Bloomberg’s satellite news channel that he was endorsing Mr. Obama, and he has been an adviser to the campaign since.

Apparently B.O.’s foreign policy attitudes will be just what he said they would be…talk to anyone, anywhere, and “We don’t need no stinkin’ preconditions!”

A spokesman for the senator’s presidential campaign, Tommy Vietor, said the campaign did not know Mr. Brzezinski was leading the delegation. “The first we heard of this trip was from you,” he said. He added: “Brzezinski is not a day-to-day adviser for the campaign, he is someone whose guidance Senator Obama seeks on Iraq.”

OF COURSE NOT! (At least not to be recognized while there’s a campaign to worry about.)

A supporter of Mrs. Clinton, Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York, said he found it hard to believe that one of the Illinois senator’s main advisers would not know that his visit to Syria would appear to have the tacit consent of the Obama campaign. “People are going to say if you are advising Obama, you are representing Obama,” Mr. Engel said. “At this time when we are in the middle of an election, I can’t believe that for him to go to Syria at this moment would not appear he was going with at least some tacit approval of the candidate he is advising. I would think he would realize that,” Mr. Engel said.

D’ya think?

He ONLY used to be a National Security Advisor, why would he expect anything like that? Of course, he WAS in the Carter administration…with the absolute worst foriegn policy and national security record in the nation’s history.

B.O. promises more of the same

China Watch, National Insecurity

ChiCom Notes

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A couple of relevant items pertaining to recent doings of the Comrades of Beijing.

Lawmaker says Chinese hacked Capitol computers

A Virginia congressman says the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China. In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Frank Wolf says he has been told by the FBI that four computers in his personal office were compromised.

The Virginia Republican says that similar incidents – also originating from China – have taken place on computers of other members of Congress and at least one House committee.

Why would they be so uncollegial as to do this?

A spokesman for Wolf says the four computers were being used by staff members working on human rights issues. Wolf is a longtime critic of the Chinese government’s human rights record.

Dang! That pesky old “human rights” again. Unlike the ACLU’s version of human rights issues, like being offended by someone peacefully praying, for example, ChiCom human rights problems often involve the injection of a 9 mm bullet to the back of the head…with the cost of said bullet being billed to the victim’s family.

…meanwhile, on a different note highlighting something that’s more of a problem with Washington than Beijing:

China’s Drilling for Oil in America’s Backyard

House Republicans want the American people to know that right now — around 60 miles off the coast of Key West, Fla. — China is drilling for oil, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba.

But 1,200 miles north of Key West, Democrats in Washington are blocking the United States from conducting its own environmentally-safe oil and gas exploration in similar U.S. coastal areas, said a news release from House Republican leader John Boehner’s office.

Democrat Congresscritters, wooden rail, hot tar, feathers. Some assembly required.

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Giving Fair Warning? Sounds like a plan!

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Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace ‘open carry’

Those who wear their guns in full sight are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm a common accessory.

Hmmmm. The Chief likes it!

Very interesting that this piece about pieces is in the generally leftish L.A. Times…and it’s not treated negatively…although they do of course get in the obligatory cautionary anecdote about some dork who decided to turn a shotgun against the police when they questioned him walking down the street with it.

Not a biggie…IMHO, the dork got what he deserved when the law returned fire and established the perp’s eligibility for the Darwin Award.

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Viral Organization Actively Replicating

ACLU unveils big expansion plans for US heartland

The American Civil Liberties Union announced by far the largest fundraising campaign in its 88-year history Monday, eying a dramatic expansion of its work on social justice issues in relatively conservative states such as Texas and Florida.

The campaign’s goal is $335 million, with $258 million already raised through behind-the-scenes solicitations over the past year, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said. Major donors include billionaire financier George Soros, who gave $12 million through his Open Society Institute.

George Soros? ’nuff said. It’s an ill wind for sure.

Officials of two conservative legal groups often at odds with the ACLU were not pleased by the fundraising announcement, which came during the ACLU’s annual membership conference in Washington.

“The most dangerous organization in America is trying to become more dangerous,” said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

Mathew Staver, founder of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, said the ACLU “already has been an antifamily and in some cases anti-religious liberty and anti-life organization. Any future expansion would simply increase its destructive presence and be concerning to people of conservative, moral values,” Staver said.

The Chief fully concurs.

Culture Wars

Church of England: Still Alive & Kicking

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Church attacks Labour for betraying Christians

The policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have helped to generate a spiritual, civic and economic crisis in Britain, according to an important Church of England report.

WHAT? Ingsoc is spiritually deficient?

Labour is failing society and lacks the vision to restore a sense of British identity, the report says in the Church’s strongest attack on the Government for decades. It accuses the Government of “deep religious illiteracy” and of having “no convincing moral direction”.

No moral direction? Religious illiteracy? DUH! Somehow they must have stumbled into range of getting clotted by ye olde cluebat.

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Drill Here & Now!

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The Bakken oil formation and national security

Here’s some more on the Bakken formation…previously noted here…which potentially has more oil than Saudi Arabia under the northern plains.

Yesterday, Bloomberg News published a story about some young oil developers and their rush to bring the Bakken oil formation, located in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, into major production.

The Bakken formation has been a minor producer of crude oil for over a half century. What has increased this formation’s potential is the arrival of mature horizontal drilling technology, now combined with water fractionating recovery techniques. These techniques could turn the Bakken formation from an inconsequential dud into perhaps the largest oil field on the planet.