Joe Biden is wrong on missile defense

Joe Biden is supposed to add foreign policy credibility to the Obama ticket. But Senator Biden has been consistently wrong on at least one crucial national security issue: The steadily spreading danger of strategic missiles and nuclear weapons.

(Snip) In the US Senate, Joe Biden consistently resisted missile defenses, a position that seems more and more reckless with every passing month.

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US needs missile defense

Borrowing a theme from the presidential contest, Vice President Dick
Cheney said Tuesday that the possibility of a 3 a.m. emergency call to
the White House is all the more reason for the next commander in chief
to follow through on President Bush's plans for a national missile
defense.

"It's plain to see that the world around us gives ample reason to continue working on missile defense," ... "In 1972, nine countries had ballistic missiles, today, it is at least 27. And that includes hostile regimes that oppress their own people, seek to intimidate and dominate their neighbors and actively support terrorist groups."

Bush has set in motion a more modest version of Reagan's original plan.

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Iran to Get Russian Anti-Missile Defense

Russia is preparing to equip Iran with a powerful new air defense system that would dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack, Iran's defense minister said Wednesday. The S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system is capable of shooting down aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missile warheads at ranges of over 90 miles and at altitudes of about 90,000 feet.

Russian military officials boast that its capabilities outstrip the U.S. Patriot missile system.

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Russian meddling not over

Moscow - Russia's parliament unanimously approved resolutions on Monday calling for the recognition of two rebel regions of Georgia as independent states, a move likely to worsen already strained relations with the West.

(Snip) Both houses of parliament, which are controlled by Kremlin loyalists, swiftly approved non-binding resolutions calling on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognise the pro-Moscow breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are internationally recognised as part of Georgia.

[that only counts if the 'international community' is willing to do something]

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Europe Betrays Itself in Georgia

Europe has been the cause and battleground for all three World Wars of the 20th century. For that reason there has been one supreme question in world affairs since Hitler and Stalin: Can Europe ever learn to avoid repeating its own suicidal history? [snip]

Yet today, Europe has flopped itself into an abject kow-towing posture toward Moscow. Former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder --- by far the worst German leader in six decades --- has just blamed Georgia for getting itself invaded by Russia. [snip]

NATO is a mutual defense pact, which translates as "we help you and you help us." NATO has kept Europe secure for sixty years. But it's all been one-way -- we've defended them with the Berlin Airlift, by building up European armies, in proxy wars in the Middle East, Korea and Vietnam, and in finally by getting the Soviets to let go of their European colonies.

We've done our share. What did Europe do after 9/11? Other than raging at the victim? George W. got ripped by our good 'friends' in Europe. It wasn't just a lot of screaming and yelling. Europe's military response to 9/11 was pathetic beyond belief. It still is.

Well, here's an honest European's opinion, Matthias Doepfner, the CEO of the Axel-Springer publishing group:

"These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewellery when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbour's house. Appeasement? That is just the start of it. Europe, thy name is Cowardice."

This is the biggest international development since the end of the Cold War. The West has knowingly junked the most important policy lesson of the 20th century: Don't give in to armed bullies. This failure will come back to bite us.

You can bet on it.

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China's totalitarian games

CHINA, THE world's largest dictatorship, ruthlessly represses freedom at home while abetting the vilest tyrannies abroad. Letting such a regime host the Olympic Games, many people warned, would prove a mockery of the Olympic charter, which is dedicated to the goal of "promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."

The International Olympic Committee repeatedly seconded that motion. "We are convinced," IOC president Jacques Rogge assured one interviewer, "that the Olympic Games will improve human rights in China." He told another: "We believe that the Olympic Games will have definitely a positive, lasting effect on Chinese society."

Well, the Games have certainly had a lasting effect on one part of Chinese society - the 1.5 million men, women, and children expelled from their homes in Beijing to make room for the construction of Olympic facilities and urban beautification projects. To clear them out, the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions found, Chinese authorities resorted to "harassment, repression, imprisonment, and even violence."

When thugs host the Olympics, thuggish behavior can be expected. According to Reporters Without Borders, 22 foreign journalists were attacked or arrested during the Games. At least 50 human-rights activists were arrested, harassed, or forced to leave Beijing. Scores of websites related to human rights, Tibet, and Darfut were blocked or digitally attacked. Far from easing up, Beijing turned the Olympics into an opportunity to intensify its crackdown on dissent.

As in 1936 and 1980, the 2008 Games were a showcase for a dictatorship. In such a travesty, Americans should have played no part.

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2 Chinese protesters ordered to year in labor camp

Beijing - Two elderly Chinese women who applied during the Olympic Games to protest the loss of their homes have been ordered to spend a year in a labor camp, a relative said Wednesday, as more foreign activists were detained. The women were still at home three days after being officially notified they would have to serve a yearlong term of reeducation through labor, but were under surveillance by a neighborhood watch group...

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The Real Population Bomb

It's been 40 years since Stanford University population biologist Paul Ehrlich warned of imminent global catastrophe in his book "The Population Bomb." As it turns out, the book was aptly, though ironically, named.

Ehrlich predicted that, "In the 1970's, the world will undergo famines hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death. Forty years later, no such mass starvation has come to pass. In fact, global deaths due to starvation have been halved despite the global population having more than doubled.

Ehrlich also fretted that we were depleting the world oxygen supply by paving terrestrial areas, burning fossil fuels and clearing tropical forests...

Ehrlich also warned that manmade global warming would melt the polar ice caps and raise sea level by 250 feet...(even out fear-mongering ’20-foot tidal wave’ Al Gore)...

Ehrlich proposed a Department of Population and Environment to implement population control laws. The goal was to maintain world population at “one or even two billion,” which he suggested “could be sustained in reasonable comfort for 1,000 years if resources were husbanded carefully" [6.6B and counting...][snip]

Given how Ehrlich’s predictions turned out, you might think that he vanished into the dustbin of Chicken Little history or at least revised his ideas, right?

Wrong. The Stanford professor is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and has been honored by the United Nations, MacArthur Foundation, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Ecological Society of America and the American Institute of Biological Sciences -- to name just a few.

Worse, he’s still at it...

[hey, scare mongering is more profitable than ever...]

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Free grocery bags targeted for extinction in California

The plastic grocery bag is fighting for its crinkly life. From the city of San Francisco to Los Angeles County, more than a dozen local governments around the state have proposed or passed plastic-bag restrictions, ranging from recycling mandates to outright bans.

Now, a proposal in the Legislature would put a 25-cent fee on all disposable bags – paper or plastic –

[had enough yet?]

Assembly Bill 2769
Your Assemblyman = http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

[no? ... ]

LET'S DRILL OUR WAY TO LOWER TAXES

Opening our vast domestic resources, both on- and off-shore, to responsible oil and gas development would produce an influx of tax revenue from additional lease sales and royalties, as well as from income and excise taxes, says Andrew Moylan, government affairs manager for the National Taxpayers Union.

While oil and gas development won't fill government's coffers overnight, it will provide a down payment in the near-term, and big windfalls in the out-years that can help deal with some of the most intractable tax problems we face, says Moylan.

[or we could just keep shipping 700 Billion $ a year to our 'friends' supplying us oil. {how do you think Russia is paying for its games in Georgia?}]

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Britain's decay now obvious

... But my goodness the decay is obvious even to those who still live here, which is why for the first time in recorded history more people are leaving the country than coming to it. [snip]

The reasons have little to do with economics. Working families are wealthier, more financially secure and have better material prospects than ever before. ... Yet polls reveal they are less happy and content than were their parents or grandparents... [snip]

... crime has made not only the major cities, but also many of the small towns and backwaters ... It is estimated by moderate experts that 60% of teenagers carry knives and the number of stabbings, often fatal, reflect those figures. And then there's the [police!] no-go areas... [snip]

Taxes are high, soccer is a narcotic, violence is fun, drinking is liberating, national identity is vulgar strutting, religion is for the Yanks, reading books is for losers and reality television and cell phone monologues matter more than mom and dad and self-respect - to say nothing of basic manners... [snip]

One of the consequences of this is that the Muslim population has increasingly rejected British culture, isolating themselves from English secular decay [leading to the police no-go areas] [snip]

It's a lovely place to visit but, unless you are extraordinarily wealthy, a difficult place in which to live. How I wish this wasn't so.
Where did Britain go?

[policy has consequences. bad policies, {such as a welfare state providing wide swaths of the populace idle time and no focus, the promotion of 'multiculturalism' over national societal standards, and recognizing any portion of Sharia law as a parallel to the Rule of Law (sad irony, that last)}, have bad consequences.
We will go this way if the many forces seeking it here aren't thwarted by citizen action.]

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DRUG COMPETITION -- "BIG-BOX STYLE"

Research shows that the price of identical generic drugs is 115 percent higher on average in Canada than in the United States. In September of 2006, U.S.-based Wal-Mart launched an innovative prescription drug plan that allowed customers to buy a 30-day supply of prescription drugs for only $4:

• The Wal-Mart plan covers 361 generic prescription drugs.
• Wal-Mart claims that the $4 prescription drug program has saved consumers and their insurers more than $1 billion nationwide.

Canada cannot reap the benefits of a competitive market for generic prescription drugs because of the reimbursement policies of the government-run, publicly-funded drug plans.

Wal-Mart's drug program should provide Canadian policy makers [and us] with a simple lesson: prescription drug policies that allow price competition through market forces improves consumers access to drugs while lowering their cost.

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A RECIPE FOR RECESSION

If the proposals espoused by candidate Obama ever became law, the American economy would suffer a serious setback, says Michael J. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford University and senior fellow with the Hoover Institution. [snip]

• The top 35 percent marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6 percent; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Obama's new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4 percent) increases the total combined marginal tax rate on additional labor earnings (or small business income) from 44.6 percent to a whopping 62.8 percent.

• People respond to what they get to keep after tax, which the Obama plan reduces from 55.4 cents on the dollar to 37.2 cents -- a reduction of one-third in the after-tax wage!

Despite the rhetoric, that's not just on "rich" individuals, explains Boskin. It's also on a lot of small businesses and two-earner middle-aged middle-class couples in their peak earnings years in high cost-of-living areas. His large increase in energy taxes would disproportionately harm low-income Americans. And, while he says he will not raise taxes on the middle class, he'll need many more tax hikes to pay for his big increase in spending.

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Half See Pro-Obama Bias and Say Media Make Economy Seem Worse

More than three times as many Americans see a media tilt in favor of Democrat Barack Obama than toward Republican John McCain. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey released Monday, of 1,000 likely voters.

Exactly half, 50 percent, “believe the media makes economic conditions appear worse than they really are,” a separate Rasmussen Reports telephone survey posted on Monday determined.

Meanwhile, the “Scapbook” section of the latest (July 28) edition of the Weekly Standard magazine dubbed Newsweek “Obamaweek” and illustrated the media's infatuation with Obama by displaying images of six Newsweek covers featuring Obama, five of them just this year.

[no bias here...]

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‘Economic Disaster’ Brought to You by Obama, News Networks

The American economy is a “disaster.” The media have been singing that song for at least a year. When a presidential candidate recites the refrain, it’s news.

Or it should be.

But in the election of 2008, such a ridiculous claim earned Democratic Sen. Barack Obama compliments from the mainstream media, not well-deserved critique.

In most places, Obama’s comment would simply be laughed at.

“If the economy is in recession, why are business durable-goods orders and shipments booming?” Kudlow asked, noting that non-defense spending is up and concluding: “Business looks pretty healthy to me.” [snip]

The last four years have been a case study of how the media can misrepresent and undermine the economy. Journalists aren’t satisfied with a downturn. They make seemingly endless connections to the Great Depression - more than 70 times in the first six months of the year - and that’s just on the three broadcast networks.

Apparently, that economic delusion worked with Obama and his speechwriter...

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Police: Mexican Cartels Give OK to Hit U.S. Targets

El Paso, Texas - Warring Mexican drug cartels have given their hit men permission to cross into the United States to kill their targets, according to warnings received by U.S. authorities. Police and federal agents told The Associated Press about the warnings Monday, and official along the border are beefing up security.

(Snip) U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol officers have also been told about the threat and have ramped up security at border crossings.

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Rendell: Obama coverage was embarrassing

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give “closing remarks” during this afternoon’s Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s George Stephanopoulous and CBS’s Bob Schieffer — but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage

"Ladies and gentleman, the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing," said Rendell, in the ballroom at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "It was embarrassing."

Rendell, who backs Obama in the general election, began debating Brokaw about the campaign coverage, including the on-air comments by Lee Cowan, and when MSNBC came up, Rendell went after the cable network.

“MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."

At that point, PBS's Judy Woodruff, who was moderating the moderators event, said:

"Why don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down."

That was met with applause from the crowd of big-time media figures, which included Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill, Al Hunt, and Chuck Todd...

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What Democrats believe

The fuzzy language of the actual Democratic platform and the candidate’s recent centrist makeover notwithstanding, it will still be safe to say that he and the vast majority of his fellow Democrats accept, among others, the following propositions:

> That exploring and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, offshore or just about anywhere is bad. So, too, are nuclear power, coal and any other kind of energy source except windmills.

> That racial preferences must be preserved because assumptions of group entitlement and grievance are central to how most Democrats perceive American society. Group rights are now more important than individual rights as we move toward a new caste system based on race, ethnicity and gender. Anyone alarmed by such trends is racist or sexist.

> That the use of American military power is to be avoided and appeasement of various kinds should be used instead to deal with potential aggressors like Iran and North Korea. Democrats are the doves of American politics and no Democratic president should continence the use of military force without United Nations approval.

> That health care should be reformed by moving toward some version of socialized medicine similar to the British system, or at least Canada’s. Any proposals that would shift health care (or anything else ) in a more market-oriented direction are, accordingly, to be vigorously opposed. Socialism may be dead as a viable ideology, but Democrats realize that the more people dependent upon government for the necessities of life, the more Democrats there will be.

> That the war on terror should be halted because the terrorist threat is overblown. Indeed, the far bigger threat all along has been the Bush administration and its overzealous anti-terrorism policies.

> That all nominees to the federal courts must embrace the idea of a “living” constitution, defined as a constitution flexible enough to mean whatever judges choose it to mean. This way, liberals can achieve through the courts and ideologically congenial judges those things that the Constitution might not permit and / or which elected legislatures won’t enact.

Democrat politicians inwardly agree with all of this, but shrewdly recognize that such a mélange of environment extremism, abortion on demand and blame-America-first pacifism doesn’t appeal much beyond the faculty lounge; hence, the slipping and sliding and obfuscating and repositioning that will occur between Denver and November.

[safe in the knowledge that the Old Media will help keep their secrets]

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/235272/