Militarization of Space Means U.S. Needs Space Defenses,

Adversarial nations now see outer space as a legitimate military theater from which to attack America’s military and economic interests, according to national security experts and members of Congress who favor strong countermeasures, including a missile defense system.

The functional difference between space-based military operations and missile defense technology is rapidly disappearing, Unless the U.S. works aggressively to fully exploit its technological edge in outer space, nations with hostile intentions will move to neutralize America’s advantage.

“If we don’t step up, we not only endanger ourselves, we really step back as the world’s leader. This is especially important in light of the other advances other nations are making, without any of the reticence our liberal friends in Congress have.”

The potential vulnerability of U.S. systems to attack was made evident last year when China used a ground-based medium-range missile to knock down a weather satellite orbiting some 537 miles above the Earth. U.S. strategic planners also need to anticipate less overt actions. Seemingly benign broadcast satellites, for example, could be used to jam U.S. systems in time of conflict.. [snip]

To date, opposition from “arms-control advocates” and congressional Democrats has constrained the development of space-based defenses...

[we'll be voting on a lot this November]

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Corrupted science revealed

Outsiders familiar with the proper workings of science have long known that modern Climate Science is dysfunctional.

Now a prominent insider, MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report entitled "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?"

His answer: A resounding "no."

Detailing the corruption, he names a series of names. Until reading this I did not know that

"For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore." Page 5

Although a bit lengthy, this very important report is highly readable and revealing...

[luckily, AT's summary is only a page yet still explains the method behind the hijacking - Recommended > ]

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NYT: Gov’t Should Attach ‘Green’ Strings to $700 Billion Bailout

Nationalization has its consequences. Just note the rhetoric coming from some prominent voices on the left. The government's foray into offering services normally provided by the private sector by bailing out aging mortgage giants gives it the power to implement "green" building requirements, according to the New York Times...

[as predicted {warned}]

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Democrats vow moratorium on offshore drilling to return in ’09

In a 370-58 vote, the House on Wednesday approved a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government operating. The CR does not include a renewal of the ban on offshore drilling, which has been in place for over 20 years.

House Democrats on Wednesday vowed to get a new offshore drilling moratorium enacted early next year, a day after learning they’d lost this year’s battle over an issue that dominated congressional politics for most of the summer.

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Spain will pay jobless migrants to return home

Spain will pay jobless immigrants to go home under new plans revealed. The measure was approved at a Cabinet meeting after a largely symbolic fast-track passage through Parliament. The plan, which will come into force in around a month, targets tens of thousands of non-EU citizens who have been laid off in Spain and are entitled to unemployment benefits.

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Crime, illegals and the jobs magnet

Perhaps no political issue better illustrates how out of touch Washington is than illegal immigration. Polling data shows that Americans overwhelmingly support a tougher stance toward illegals, yet the message does not seem to have gotten through to Congress, where powerful Democratic lawmakers are preventing floor consideration of two major pieces of legislation.

legislation. One is the SAVE Act, a bill to curb illegal immigration through stepped-up enforcement - in particular, more resources to enable federal, state and local authorities to arrest, detain and eventually remove illegals. The SAVE Act (H.R. 4088 ) is the number one legislative alternative to "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., mass amnesty).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blocked the SAVE Act from coming to the floor for a vote, and it is likely dead for this year...

[we'll be voting for more than just President in November...]

READ MORE then >

> The SAVE Act (H.R. 4088 )
Pelosi > (202) 225-0100
[email blocked to anyone outside her district - despite her being speaker of the house]
Your Congressman > https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
.

The Drumbeat

Probably the most important piece you will read this weekend.

It's always there. Day and night. Rain or shine. It comes at you from every direction. It comes over the TV, the radio, at work, at school, in music, in the newspapers, from the politicians, in conversation with others, even in church. It wears you down. It robs you of the will to resist its message. Even short-lived victories, which stop it briefly, leave you with the knowledge that it will return; each minor victory bound to be lost to the redoubled efforts of this patient and persistent force. You can't escape it. It never stops.... [snip]

It's the drumbeat of the left. It pervades every activity. It is post-structural, post-modern, post-everything in the parlance of the day. It is tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist. It insists that there are no rights and wrongs, no moral absolutes. It turns everything upside down in its looking glass world. It denies the correctness of all that produced what our culture revered before the deconstruction of the world in accordance with its tenets... [snip]

Generally, these perversions are manifested in bigger government, more laws, more bureaucracy, more regulations, more taxes, and government controlled redistribution of wealth, more collectivism, less individualism, and less freedom. We all hear it constantly: government must do more to ensure Americans avoid the consequences of their choices. We all know the song, sung to the cheers of the unthinking throngs who would give up their very humanity for the promise of a free lunch... [snip]

It is said that a fish is not aware of the water in which it swims since it is totally immersed in it...

[Highly Recommended > ]

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Don't sell America's economy short

There have been plenty of crises in the past -- the stagflation and oil-price spikes of the 1970s, the savings and loan debacle and soaring trade and budget deficits of the 1980s, the popping of the dot-come bubble and the terrorist attacks in the early 2000s -- that led many observers to predict that the United States would soon go the way of Rome.

What the pessimists ignore is that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. Indeed, the World Economic Forum has ranked the United States as the world's most competitive economy for the last two years. Its statistics show that per-capita [explaining China] gross domestic product in the U.S. has consistently grown faster than in other developed economies since 1980.

America's competitors display other weaknesses that become apparent in times of crisis. As Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson noted over the weekend in the Washington Post, while the U.S. stock market has declined roughly 18% this year, China has seen a fall of 48% and Russia of 55%. "These figures are not very good advertisements for the more regulated, state-led economic models favored in Beijing and Moscow," he wrote.

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Meanwhile, in the media...

[NOTE: all Policy Position comparisons can be found by going HERE - or by typing "policy positions" {in quotes!} in the Search Blog box in the upper left corner of page.]

Policy Positions Re: TRADE


How do Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) differ on trade? The National Journal compared and contrasted the two presidential candidates.



MCCAIN ON TRADE

Trade agreements:

• McCain calls himself an "unashamed and unabashed defender" of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement and criticizes Obama's "protectionist NAFTA-bashing."
• He supports a pending free-trade agreement with Colombia and backs the pending South Korea free-trade agreement, citing Seoul's pivotal role as a strategic ally in Northeast Asia and in Iraq.
• He has voiced support for an eventual free-trade agreement with the European Union.
• He promises to seek an end to all agricultural tariffs and farm subsidizes that are not based on clear need and to "aggressively promote trade liberalization at the World Trade Organization."
• He vows to hold "every nation we trade with to the commitments they have made under the agreements we have signed."

China:

• McCain says that a robust trading relationship with China, America's fastest-growing export partner, is in the best interest of the United States.
• To that end, in 2000 he voted in favor of permanent normal trade relations with China, which opened the door for Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization.
• He argues against focusing too much "in isolation" on the overvalued Chinese currency.
• He pledges to pressure Beijing on food and product safety and on intellectual-property protection.

Displaced workers:

• McCain would deposit a portion of each person's unemployment insurance taxes into a "lost-earnings buffer account" that workers could use to cover expenses when they lose their jobs.
• Traditional unemployment insurance would kick in if the new account was exhausted within 26 weeks.
• A worker would receive any unspent funds upon retirement.
• He would also give workers access to a flexible training account to provide quick assistance in seeking new skills.

Source: "McCain on Trade," in "Where They Stand," National Journal, August 30, 2008.

For text:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php



OBAMA ON TRADE

Trade agreements:

• Obama proposed renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement to bolster labor and environmental standards.
• He promises to use future trade agreements to raise labor and environmental 'standards'.
• He opposes the Colombia agreement because of violence against union leaders, but promises to work with Bogota to deepen the bilateral relationship.

China:

• Obama chastises the administration for taking no action against Chinese currency manipulation.
• He co-sponsored legislation that would make currency undervaluation a subsidy and, as a result, would likely permit countervailing duties to be applied to Chinese imports. [Q: who gets the money from duties?]
• This bill would direct the Treasury secretary to initiate negotiations with Beijing to revalue its currency.

Displaced workers:

• Obama wants to update the existing Trade Adjustment Assistance program to include service workers.
• He would create flexible education accounts to retrain workers.
• He would provide retraining assistance for workers before they lose their jobs in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation.
• He would provide assistance to hard-hit communities and improve the health care tax credit for dislocated workers.

Source: "Obama on Trade," in "Where They Stand," National Journal, August 30, 2008.

For text:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php

THE SPENDING EXPLOSION

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), federal expenditures on everything from roads to homeland security to health care will reach 21.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) next year. Federal outlays could be higher as a share of the economy than at anytime since World War II, says the Wall Street Journal.

In this decade alone, federal spending has increased by almost $1.2 trillion, or 57 percent. And the federal deficit is expected to hit $407 billion for fiscal 2008 and $438 billion next year. However, the deficit is expected to be only 3 percent of GDP, which is in line with the average of the last 30 years.

Contrary to popular belief, the Bush tax cuts and the war on terror are not the reason for the budget crisis, says the Journal:

• Until this year federal tax collections have been surging, and since the 2003 tax cuts have become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion.
• This year, revenues have declined by.8 percent due to the $150 billion bipartisan tax rebate that hit the Treasury.
• Without these nonstimulating rebates, federal tax payments would have climbed another 2.5 percent.
• Defense spending is $605 billion this year, or about 4.5 percent of GDP.
• That only seems large by comparison to the holiday from history of the 1990s, when defense fell to 3 percent of GDP.
• As recently as 1986, defense spending was 6.2 percent of GDP.

The real problem is a "substantial increase in spending" that is "on an unsustainable path," says the CBO. This year alone, federal agencies have lifted their spending by 8.1 percent, with another 7 percent raise expected for 2009. In the two years that Democrats have run Congress, federal expenditures are up $429 billion -- to $3.158 trillion.

Rather than sort through priorities, Congress is just spending more on everything, adds the Journal.

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"Tax Cut" is Income Redistribution

During his Fox News interview with Bill O'Reilly, Sen. Barack Obama responded to one question where the statistics contradicted his position by saying that "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics." He then went on to say that 95 percent of Americans would get a tax break under his economic plan. [snip]

Only 62 percent of Americans pay federal income tax, meaning that 38 percent get a 100 percent refund of any taxes withheld. So Mr. Obama's 95 percent that will receive money from the government includes roughly 33 percent of Americans who pay no income tax, yet would receive a government check of perhaps $1,000 or more.

That is pure income redistribution. Some pundits argue that this is Keynesian demand-side economics. It is not. Having the government take money from business entities or affluent individuals and giving it to those who pay no federal income taxes is not Keynesian. It's Marxist.

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CBS: Obama Tax Policy Better For Middle Class

"Obama's plan is to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and use the savings for a middle-class tax cut... A recent study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center says Obama's plan would give a cut of more than a thousand dollars to families making between $37,000 and $66,000 a year. Under McCain's plan, they'd get just $319."

The "non-partisan" Tax Policy Center is actually a product of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. [and CBS knows it]

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Violence in Iraq Continues to Drop, Corps Commander Says

Violence in Iraq – even in the midst of the holy month of Ramadan, which has seen increases in violence in the past – continues its downward trend, the commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq said today.

“We've experienced continued low levels of violence, with 15 of the last 16 weeks remaining below the 200-attacks-per-week mark,” he said. “In Baghdad, … we've averaged less than four attacks per day for the last 13 weeks.”

It’s notable that the decrease has continued during Ramadan, Austin said.

“We did see a small spike in attacks over the weekend,” he acknowledged, “but I can tell you that even with the spike, we are well below what we saw last year and the year before that.”

While events are moving in a positive direction, there remains much to do, he said.

“The environment here … can change rapidly, and so we have to guard against things that could change our course,”

the general said.

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France to Stay Course in Afghanistan

The French lower house voted Monday to maintain a troop presence in Afghanistan despite crumbling public support. The lower house of Parliament voted 343 to 210 to keep France's 3,300 troops in Afghanistan and nearby areas. The upper house, the Senate, will also vote on the issue.

The French government is also to send more helicopters, equipment and an extra 100 troops to Afghanistan following the recent death of 10 of its soldiers in an ambush near Kabul.

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Iran gives full powers to hard-line Guards in Gulf

Iran announced Tuesday that it has put the elite Revolutionary Guards in charge of defending the country's territorial Persian Gulf waters in what appeared to be a hardening of its stance in the vital oil route.

U.S. commanders in the Gulf have in the past said they find Guards ships more confrontational than the regular Iranian navy, which until the new order was responsible for Iranian defenses in the Gulf.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Triumph

Imagine yourself as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now in your fourth year as president of Iran and about to make yet another appearance at the U.N.'s General Assembly in New York... [snip]

... since you took over you have installed thousands of centrifuges, spinning uranium roughly at a rate of a bomb's worth of fissile material every year. You've also caused Russia and China to split with the rest of the Security Council over stiffer penalties. Better yet, the Bush administration has gone from refusing to negotiate, to offering conditional negotiations, to pursuing low-level negotiations and now, lately, feeling its way toward tacit diplomatic normalization.

All that without you bending an inch toward the West.

Above all, you have given the world time to digest the notion that Iran will inevitably become a nuclear power, and that nothing can be done to stop it.

Will Americans agree to open a third military front in the Middle East? Does Israel want to roll the dice on a bombing run that will spark another bloody regional war but retard Iran's nuclear programs by at most a few years? How will the U.S. afford its epic Wall Street bailouts if you shut down the Straits of Hormuz?

Surely your enemies will take no such risks. Which is why you're pleased that the more far-seeing Americans are coming around to your point of view. Look at former CIA spy Robert Baer. Mr. Baer has a new book arguing that the U.S. ought not "to stand in the way of Iran's quest to dominate Islam." He thinks Israel's nuclear arms should be put under U.N. supervision. He believes the U.S. and Iran are ripe for the kind of alliance Nixon forged with Mao.

It cannot surprise you that such ideas are now taking root with the American intelligentsia; useful idiots always contribute to the revolution...

[this is the cost of communicating weakness: he's been convinced by Western Idiots that we'll do nothing, pushing us toward the least desirable option - again]

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Radical environmentalists part of economic meltdown

Collapse of financial institutions is just part of a disturbing failure of leadership in the business segment of society.

It is part of a wider crisis of leadership at all levels of society, but is the most immediate and potentially dangerous right now. The business world pushed by government has capitulated to greed and deception and has put people in financial jeopardy.

Sadly, all this plays to a conundrum identified by David Lillenthal, Big business is basic to the very life of this country; and yet many--perhaps most--Americans have a deep-seated fear and an emotional repugnance to it. Here is monumental contradiction... [snip]

The financial debacle is serious but ultimately small change compared to the cost of unnecessary programs to deal with non-existent global warming, natural climate change and many other so-called environmental problems.

Business with collusion from government began the capitulation when it surrendered to the bullying of environmentalists. It was exacerbated when they exploited the opportunities to make money from peoples’ fears and lack of knowledge, but none of which resolved any problems.

In the long run, this will be more devastating and costly to political freedom and global economies. It is already costing the poor people of the world with higher costs or even complete unavailability of the very basics of life. It is more than mere financial greed, which people despise but expect.

It includes greed but is also deliberate and cynical exploitation...

[which will impact our childrens' lives more than our own if not stopped]

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