PrairiePundit

Obama above 50% in only 10 states

2012-01-31T20:18:00.000-06:00

In 10 states plus the District of Columbia, a majority of residents approved of the job Barack Obama was doing as president last year, according to aggregated data from 2011. His greatest support came from District of Columbia, Maryland, and Hawaii residents, while Utah and Idaho residents gave him his lowest levels of support -- below 30%.

This does not look like a good start for Obama. Some of the states at the bottom of the approval charts are states in the Mountain West where Obama thinks he has to win. Even California is a state where he barely makes 50 percent.

NATO says Pakistan intelligence helping Taliban

2012-01-31T19:49:00.001-06:00

BBC:

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.
The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.
It alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders.
A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.
Pakistan has strenuously denied any links with the Taliban on previous occasions.
"We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI and some extremist networks," said US Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby, adding that the US Defence Department had not seen the report.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) and the Taliban.
The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.
It notes: "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly". It says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.
The report states: "As this document is derived directly from insurgents it should be considered informational and not necessarily analytical."

Despite Nato's strategy to secure the country with Afghan forces, the secret document details widespread collaboration between the insurgents and Afghan police and military.

...

It appears that Obama's draw down of troops is well before the Taliban are defeated. It is also another confirmation of the roll of Pakistan's ISI. This is not a good sign for future events in Afghanistan.

Obama's next trillion dollar deficit, and bad policies

2012-01-31T19:36:00.002-06:00

WSJ:

Tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect in January 2013 would slow the economy and raise unemployment next year unless policy makers strike a deal to keep those changes from kicking in or offset their impact, the Congressional Budget Office warned.
But while such an agreement would boost the economy in the short term, it also would expand the federal budget deficit over time if not combined with other policy changes, the nonpartisan CBO said.
Policy makers will have to decide soon how to handle the near-term economic strains as well as the future problems caused by rising government debt, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said.

"The longer that we wait as a country to make the sort of choices that we have to make, the harder it will be to make them," he said.

...

Obama would rather punish the rich than do something to help the economy. Rather than cut spending he will choose job killing policies.

Obama alienates the Catholic vote

2012-01-31T19:25:00.001-06:00

Fox News:

Holy war over health care law? Obama angers Catholic leaders

This is a group that strongly backed him in 2008.

Obama funded by the one percent

2012-01-31T19:21:00.000-06:00

Washington Times:

Sixty percent of Obama funds come from big-money bundlers

I think he is running behind his billion dollar projection.

Romney wins easily in Florida

2012-01-31T19:11:00.002-06:00

Fox has project Romney as the winner with 48 percent of the vote which is getting close to a true majority. Romney also got the late deciders. This means that even if Santorum had withdrawn it would not have made any difference.

Gingrich is going to stay in. I think it will probably take Super Tuesday to finish off the contest.

Romney did best with those looking for elect-ability. Romney also has the most cash to continue the fight.

The Washington Post says Romney gets a tea-party tilt.

Iran has been at war with the US for 30 years

2012-01-31T18:58:00.000-06:00

Michael Ledeen:

Almost everything you read about the “increasing tension” between Iran and the United States revolves around the rhetorical question, “will there be a war?” Whether it’s our own pundits or the Europeans who watch us, “war” seems closer every day. Look at the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, for example:
This is how wars start, through a process of hostile rhetoric, mutual ignorance and chronic miscalculation. Anybody in Tehran following the impassioned US debate on Iran will be aware that an influential Washington constituency, aided and abetted by leading Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, favours military action sooner rather than later. For these American hardliners, it is no longer merely a question of destroying Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities. Regime change is the name of the game because, it is argued, that is the only way to ensure Iran never gets the bomb.
If Mr. Tisdall knew as much about American politics as he should, he wouldn’t have credited Romney and Gingrich with the notion that “regime change is the only way to ensure Iran never gets the bomb.” That actually comes from the editorialists at the Washington Post. And if he knew as much about the origins of war as he should, he’d pay more attention to the Iranians’ messianic vision of global power — the quest for power being the central element in a nation’s decision to go to war, as the great historian Donald Kagan writes in his magisterial On the Origins of War.

But no matter, Tisdall is certainly right to say that war talk is abundant nowadays, in Washington and Tehran. And it often includes Israel, as well. It’s a depressing spectacle, because the pundits have systematically blinded themselves to the real context in which current events are unfolding, and this deflects otherwise serious people from thinking about the real world, which in turn means we do not have a serious strategy.

Serious thinking, and a serious strategy, must begin with the fact that the war is on. To repeat: the war is on. It’s been on for three decades. Ayatollah Khomeini declared war on the United States in February, 1979, and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been killing Americans ever since.

When they demonstrate in the streets and chant “Death to America!” what do you think they mean?

When they call us the “Great Satan,” do you think that’s the opening gambit in a negotiation to “normalize relations”? Iran and the United States had very warm relations before the 1979 Revolution, after all. The Carter administration desperately sought warm relations with Khomeini et. al.
...

There is more.

It seems every new administration must relearn this hard reality. They all think that the can "work with the Iranians." They can't. Iran is run by religious bigots who think they are on a mission from God to destroy us and our allies. I look for the moment when someone in the media asks Iranian leaders whether my statement is true.

Supply and demand lessons--too many batteries too few electric cars

2012-01-31T18:50:00.000-06:00

Daily Caller:

In the future, White House speechwriters might want to check the financial statuses of the businesses the president plans to tout as clean-energy success stories. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama praised Solyndra as a “true engine of economic growth.” Not long after, the solar panel maker went belly up. In his most recent State of the Union address, the president extolled the success of subsidies for manufacturers of electric car batteries. Two days later, battery maker Ener1 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Ener1’s bankruptcy is a blow to taxpayers — the company received a grant of $118 million from the Department of Energy’s $2.4 billion stash to jump-start the electric car industry — but it isn’t a surprise. A recent Scientific American article questioned whether U.S. battery makers would survive the early months of 2012: “In the short term, the world-wide capacity for making batteries far outruns the demand for electric cars. Market analysts expect a multi-year cull starting as early as 2012.” Although automakers have committed to producing over 800,000 electric vehicles in the next few years, battery makers worldwide already have the capacity to supply twice that amount. The Scientific American article singled out Ener1 as the U.S. battery maker most likely to fail. Ener1 had trouble securing customers beyond a single contract with a small upstart automaker that filed for bankruptcy in June 2011. With $90 million in debt, $74 million in assets, withering demand and strong competition from Japan, Korea and China, Ener1 hit the skids.

...

Not many people are willing to live with the limited range of electric cars that also take too long to recharge.

We are also seeing he problem with central planning by the government which is ignoring the basic laws of supply and demand in its push for "clean tech."

Obama misleads about government role in fracking

2012-01-31T15:46:00.002-06:00

Nicholas Loris:

President Obama has been on a kick to promote natural gas production. He said in his State of the Union address, “And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock—reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.”
There are two very big problems with this statement. First, it makes it sound as if the government invented the technology, commercialized it, and handed it over to private companies. Second, it assumes that if the government hadn’t invested in natural gas technologies, we wouldn’t be where we are today in terms of natural gas production. Both are far from the truth.
Well before the government invested in natural gas technologies, it was the private sector that established and developed hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), a process by which producers inject a fluid, composed of 99 percent water, and sand into wells to free oil and gas trapped in rock formations. Its roots go as far back as the 1860s, and in the 1940s, Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation began studying and testing the method, with a patent issued in 1949 and a license granted to Halliburton to frack on two commercial wells. In an overview of the history of fracking, Carl T. Montgomery and Michael B. Smith of NSI Technologies write:
In the first year, 332 wells were treated, with an average production increase of 75%. Applications of the fracturing process grew rapidly and increased the supply of oil in the United States far beyond anything anticipated. Treatments reached more than 3,000 wells a month for stretches during the mid-1950s. The first one-half million-pound fracturing job in the free world was performed in October 1968, by Pan American Petroleum Corporation (later Amoco, now BP) in Stephens County, Oklahoma.
Government involvement came years later. The Department of Energy partially funded data accumulation, microseismic mapping, the first horizontal well, and tax credits to extract unconventional gas. But in the driver’s seat was George Mitchell, who invested millions of his own money in research and development for fracking and horizontal drilling. His company’s geologist, Jim Henry, first identified Barnett shale as a possibility for more energy. Mitchell spent between $7 million and $8 million of his own money trying to successfully extract shale gas and eventually made it economically viable. He is behind the shale gas revolution, not the government.

...

I first learned about fracking in my oil and gas law school course in the early 1970s. It was not a new technology. I also learned about horizontal drilling which was not associated with fracking, but with stealing a neighbors oil. It was Mitchell's genius to combine the two for extracting larger amounts of oil and gas.

The oil and gas subsidy myth

2012-01-31T10:02:00.002-06:00

It is a good explanation of how the tax code works. It destroys the Obama demagoguery about energy firms.

Who knew?

2012-01-31T09:31:00.001-06:00

BBC:

Obama backs Pakistan drone raids

He does order the attacks after all. While I have nothing to do with them, I also back the attacks.

About those 22 million jobs?

2012-01-31T09:13:00.000-06:00

Obama seems to nave a numbers problem. The extra 19 million jobs were probably in the seven states he added to the US in the 2008 campaign.

Navy gets Raytheon to develop rail guns for ships

2012-01-31T09:08:00.001-06:00

Fox News:

A theoretical dream for decades, the futuristic railgun -- which uses magnets to shoot bullets for hundreds of miles at speeds of up to Mach 7 -- just took another step toward reality.

Military supply company Raytheon announced Monday that it had been awarded a $10 million naval contract to develop a way to supply enough juice to power the whopping gun -- which could someday reshape naval warfare.

"This new system will dramatically change how our Navy defends itself and engages enemies while at sea," said Joe Biondi, vice president of advanced technology for Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business.

Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the railgun uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7.

But it takes a heck of a lot of electricity to achieve such a velocity.

To supply it, Raytheon’s building a “Pulse Forming Network” or PFN. That's a large power system that stores up electrical power and then converts it to a pulse that is directed into the gun's barrel, John Cochran, the railgun program manager in Raytheon's Advanced Technology Group, told CNET’s News.com.

Navy scientists with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have been hard at work on the railgun itself for years, even as the agency admits it could take a decade or more to become practical. The ONR hit a new milestone last fall, successfully firing the railgun for the 1,000th time on Mon., Oct. 31, in Dahlgren, Va., -- edging the state-of-the-art weapon toward real-world deployment.

The next step: turning the test versions of the railgun into an actual gun. Current firings have been limited to Naval test facilities on dry land.

...

I think the China threat probably saved the rail guns. They allow the ships to defend themselves from a greater range than conventional weapons. The speed of the projectile is another advantage.

Global warming's frost bite

2012-01-31T08:36:00.001-06:00

IBD:

Global warming alarmists won't give up their campaign to spread fear and backward thinking until an ice bridge stretches from New York to Paris. Science, though, says they should.
Al Gore, who invented global warming hysteria, has most recently been found planning a trip to Antarctica where he will surely find evidence that man is overheating the planet.
This clearly insecure man who so desperately needs an audience that approves of his world-saving efforts says he will be taking with him "a large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries."
He expects them "to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica."
For Gore's reading material on this trip, we suggest he look at some data released by Great Britain's Met Office. He would find himself meeting head-on a terribly inconvenient truth.
According to the data, there's been no warming for more than a decade. The global temperature that Gore and the rest of the alarmist tribe are so concerned about was about one full degree cooler (as measured in Celsius) last year than it was when temperatures peaked in 1997.

...

The data does not support their theory, but I doubt it will lower their passion to control the world's thermostat through control freak government.

Why would anyone want to go there?

2012-01-31T08:32:00.001-06:00

Washington Post:

Pakistan struggles to attract tourists

The place is full of religious bigots who want to commit mass murder of those they disagree with and the government and the army seem to have only a casual interest in stopping them. They are also doing little of anything to stop these people from crossing the borders into Afghanistan or India to commit their mass murder operations. And, the object to the US doing anything to stop aggression from Pakistan on the ridiculous basis of sovereignty. If they really had sovereignty over their territory they would not let others use is as a base for attacks.

Obama wants to give these people a raise?

2012-01-31T08:01:00.000-06:00

Washington Times:

CBO says federal employees rake in much more pay

... and he would pay for the raise by laying off troops. Republican Sean Duffy is pushing a bill to freeze federal pay for another year.

Self steering bullets?

2012-01-31T07:57:00.001-06:00

Daily Mail:

A bullet that can steer itself has been developed by national security researchers for widespread use by the army.

US military researchers have developed the technology that will see regular army soldiers shooting with the accuracy of snipers.

In fact the four-inch-long, dart-like bullet is so effective that it can hit a target, guided by a laser, two kilometers away.
Wartime game-changer: The four-inch-long bullet has a sensor that activates tiny fins to steer it to its target
It works through an optical sensor in the nose of the bullet which detects a laser beam on a target.
The sensor then sends information to guidance and control electronics that uses an algorithm to calculate direction.

The bullet then steers itself, via tiny fins, to the target.

The game-changing ammunition was designed by Sandia – the US government arm which develops science technologies to improve national security.

...

There is a video at the bottom of the link above.

The bullet may require a team to achieve this accuracy, although the laser could be attached to the rifle firing the high tech shell. It will require a rifle with a smooth bore barrel. The bullet gets its stability from the fins.

Drone kills 15 in Yemen, including 4 al Qaeda leaders

2012-01-31T07:46:00.003-06:00

Daily Mail:

Up to 15 militants, including four Al Qaeda leaders, have been killed in an overnight airstrike in southern Yemen, it was reported today.

An unidentified drone attacked the militants as they were travelling in two vehicles, local residents said this morning.

The militants had been travelling east of the city of Loder in Abyan province when the attack took place.

A tribal leader said that between 12 and 15 people were killed in the attack, including at least four leaders in a local Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

One was identified by local tribal leaders as Abdel-Munem al-Fatahani, wanted by America for alleged links to attacks on the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000 and a French oil tanker in 2002.

Fatahani had survived at least two previous assassination attempts in recent years.

A spokesman for Al Qaeda confirmed this morning's strike but said only three members were killed and two were wounded. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

...

I suspect the drone in the attack was the more powerful Reaper which carries more Hellfire missiles. Al Qaeda has had some other reverses in recent days in Yemen where they have previously roamed rather freely because of the failure of the Yemen forces.

The drones fly out of nearby countries where the US has recently added bases. Oman is one of those countries.

EPA protecting nonexistent 'victims'

2012-01-31T07:38:00.001-06:00

William Yeatman:

Recently, I blogged about EPA’s big mercury lie. In a nutshell, the Agency claims that its ultra-expensive new Mercury and Air Toxics rule is appropriate and necessary in order to protect fetuses from developmental disorders. Yet, according to EPA’s own analysis, the new mercury regulation serves to protect America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen, who eat 300 pounds of self-caught fish reeled in exclusively from the most polluted bodies of water. To put it another way, this regulation, which costs $10 billion annually, safeguards a population that doesn’t exist.
Already, this ridiculous regulation is killing jobs....

...

Meanwhile the environmentalist are pushing light bulbs with mercury in them into everyone's home. I think the purpose of the regulation is an excuse to kill coal as a fuel for power plants.

The high cost of finishing Harvard, working for Sen.Kerry

2012-01-30T19:52:00.000-06:00

Daily Mail:

The Zuckerberg roommate who said no to Facebook and missed out on $400million

Sometimes the risk is in not taking chances.

Idiot watch

2012-01-30T19:15:00.000-06:00

BBC:

Afghan killed for birth of girl

Afghan men can be real pigs. This guy killed his wife when she bore their third daughter.

Long range Israeli drone crashes on test flight

2012-01-30T19:01:00.001-06:00

Washington Times:

A long-range Israeli drone capable of surveillance and bombing missions over Irancrashed Sunday near an Israeli air base during a test flight.
The Heron TP unmanned aircraft can stay aloft for 40 hours and has a range of 4,600 miles, theIsraeli air force said. The distance between Iranand Israel is about 1,000 miles.
Gen. Ido Nehushtan, commander of the Israeli air force, said new technology on the drone was being tested when the aircraft crashed into an orchard near the Tel Nof air base outside Rehovot.
A preliminary investigation indicated that human error and a technical malfunction contributed to the accident, the air force said, adding that the investigation is ongoing.
According to military sources, a wing that fell off the drone had been fitted with a highly advanced navigational device that might have interfered with the aircraft’s other flight systems.
The Israeli military’s most advanced drone has a wingspan of 85 feet, nearly that of a Boeing 737, and a payload capacity of 2,200 pounds. It was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries.
Known as the Eitan in Israel, the drone has platforms for surveillance equipment and for firing rockets, and can be used in a variety of mission such as aerial refueling, jamming communications and relaying ground control in Israel to manned aircraft over a distant target.

...

When working the drone would be well suited for flights over Iran and even attacking some targets there. Bombs needed to crash through Iran's bunkers would probably be too heavy, but the drone could help guide manned fighters to their targets.

Democrat tax boondoggle not helpful

2012-01-30T09:37:00.001-06:00

The Hill Poll:

No benefit from tax holiday, say a majority of voters

Voters are smarter than Democrats give them credit for.

Obama's low energy America

2012-01-30T09:12:00.001-06:00

Human Events:

President Obama loves to talk about energy independence. In his 2012 State of the Union address, he said he wanted to “lay out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last—an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values.” He also called for “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.”

The president mentioned energy two dozen times during his speech, but his actions are so strongly at odds with his words that he deserves credit for being able to keep a straight face while addressing Congress. Does he really think Americans have forgotten that he slapped down the Keystone XL pipeline project, just a week ago? Or that he destroyed the American offshore drilling industry in 2009?

Obama’s actions are not temporary mistakes that can be easily corrected by his successors. Those offshore drilling platforms are mobile. They were towed away to other oil fields, such as those off the coast of Brazil, where Obama spent billions of dollars to encourage the very same industry he forbids Americans to pursue, only to see Brazil decide to sell its oil to China, which struck a far better deal.

As for the Canadian oil that would have been carried into America by the Keystone XL pipeline, well, that’s probably going to China, too. Obama is murder on American commerce, but he has been very good for China.

...

The Sierra Club, in fact, is putting forth an argument that rings familiar and is as empty today as it was 40 years ago. The group argues that building the infrastructure will only encourage and prolong American dependence on oil, suggesting that by not supporting oil infrastructure, America will be forced to turn away from it and pressed to find successful alternatives. For those with long memories, especially in California, this thinking echoes the anti-freeway construction advocates of the 1970s – if new freeways encourage development and population expansion and the objective is to curb growth (at least for the anti-growthers of the time), then let’s not build freeways. Did not building the I-105 freeway stop Southern California growth? Hardly. California’s population nearly doubled to 37.6 million by mid-2011 from 19.95 million in 1970. And the I-105 eventually was built. The point is, the argument is all but empty. America is not likely to stop using oil anytime soon, and energy innovation will come whether or not the pipeline is built. Demand in world energy markets is intensifying and widespread “green sentiment” on left and right will push for it.

...

It is the same old failed argument from Big Green that created the energy shortages of the past. It is time to ignore these people and Obama and pursue and aggressive energy policy that creates American energy.

Obama's latest energy scam

2012-01-30T09:06:00.001-06:00

Institute for Energy Research:

The Obama-Salazar Offshore Charade

No new areas or being opened and what is being reopened is being done pursuant to laws already on the books. They are just trying to cover up for their job killing agenda and avoid the consequences of that agenda in the coming election.

They are just a political issue for the envious

2012-01-30T09:00:00.001-06:00

Washington Post:

President Obama's Tax Proposals Stand Little Chance of Passing

It is just part of his class warfare message. He has been looking for issues that can't pass so he can blame Congress for not passing them.

Immigration issue not hurting Romney with Hispanics

2012-01-30T08:55:00.001-06:00

Scott Conroy:

In this overwhelmingly Hispanic city of 225,000 just outside Miami, Mitt Romney was made to feel right at home on Sunday.
The Hialeah Police Department closed down streets surrounding his rally here and escorted the candidate's campaign bus as it rolled into a restaurant parking lot that was packed with a lively crowd of Spanish-speaking Republicans.

An animated coterie of introductory speakers bellowed into the microphone in both Spanish and English as the audience cheered and waved homemade signs that read “Vive, Romney!” and “Arriba, Mitt Romney.”

With a bouncy demeanor that made his crushing defeat in South Carolina just one week ago seem like a distant memory, Romney let on that he has victory here in his sights.

He beamed as his Spanish-speaking son Craig said a few words to the crowd in their native language, and the candidate’s grandson Parker extended his own “Hola.”

Romney’s appearance here was one of three well-attended South Florida rallies he hosted just two days before the pivotal primary on Tuesday.

As his lead over Newt Gingrich in the RCP averageof Florida polls has stretched to more than 11 percent, Romney brimmed with confidence as he played to the boisterous, largely Cuban-American crowd.

“If I’m president of the United States, I will stand with free people around the world and speak out for them and do everything in our power to bring freedom to the people of Cuba, and the people of Venezuela, and the people of Iran,” he said. “We will stand with freedom fighters all over the world.”

His trouble with winning over Hispanic voters was a key reason Romney lost the 2008 make-or-break Florida primary to John McCain.

But with all of the momentum apparently on Romney’s side this time, campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said that Hispanics were responding well to the candidate’s economy-heavy message. A key component of that message has been a relentless barrage against Gingrich for his past work on behalf of mortgage giant Freddie Mac....

Hispanics are drawn to an economic message that promotes jobs, just like most people. Democrats prefer to play to a tribal image of Hispanics as all former illegals who want all illegals to become Democrats. Their message is one of amnesty without consequences for those who break the law to get here.

Self deportation not a joke

2012-01-30T08:44:00.002-06:00

Karol Markowicz:

In a Republican primary season overloaded with second-tier candidates and gaffes, lots of people seem to be watching the never-ending debates with an ear for the next laugh line. After last Monday’s Florida debate, they seized on Mitt Romney’s suggestion that his immigration policy, rather than rounding up illegals, would have people “self-deport.”

“The answer is self-deportation, which is people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here,” Romney said.

It was an instant joke; everyone was self-deporting. Rick Klein, senior Washington editor for ABC World News, tweeted “pretty soon I shall self-deport from my couch, to gather more liquid to drink.” Andrew Sullivan, hyperventilating, live-blogged that it was “a new Romney verb.” Roll Call’s Ryan Beckwith tweeted that self-deport was a “new phrase to me.”

Later in the week, Newt Gingrich jumped on the Romney-mocking bandwagon, calling the plan “fantasy” and finding a way to work in class-warfare references to Swiss bank accounts, the Cayman islands and “$20-million-a-year income with no work.”

But is it so funny — or new? Why would anyone self-deport?

The answer is in the middle of Romney’s response: You’d self-deport because you don’t have legal documentation allowing you to work here.

So the mockable, hilarious and unlikely idea is an enforcement of existing law. It remains illegal to work in America without proper documentation; that we collectively look the other way doesn’t, in fact, make it legal.

The extremes don’t make serious arguments about “fixing” immigration. We can’t round up masses of people and send them home, despite Rick Santorum’s suggestion we do that because Mexico is “a great country” and “not Siberia.” We also can’t give blanket amnesty to people who broke the law to get here, unless we want to encourage millions more to do the same.

Some paint Romney’s position as far-right because a version of it has been supported by more zealous immigration opponents, but it’s actually a fair compromise. Enforce the laws, secure the border and give those who self-deport a fair track to US citizenship.

...

Actually self deportation has already been shown to be effective from Arizona to Alabama and in small towns in between who have made working here as an illegal difficult.

If you are going to control our borders you have to have consequences for coming here illegally. Democrats off no consequences for those who come without following the immigration laws. The consequence of that would be more illegal immigration as we saw after previous amnesties.

Oh, Come on

2012-01-30T08:10:00.004-06:00

NY Times:

Use of Drones to Protect U.S. Embassy Stirs Iraqi Outrage

Of all the things to be outraged about, this seems pretty low on my outrage scale. The drones are unarmed and they are just flying surveillance. Are the Iraqis afraid they will interfere with attack plans?

It would seem they should be more outraged about their incompetent government and mass murder attacks by terrorist.

It is either global warming or an Al Gore visit

2012-01-29T18:23:00.002-06:00

Telegraph:

Snow to hit Britain
The big freeze will hit again this week with snow, frosts and freezing fog.

Global warming does appear to be overrated. This weather is unusual for Britain because the Gulf Stream nomally keeps the weather muggy, but not so cold.

Or it could be Cycle 25, a mini ice age for the rest of the century.

Canadian guilty verdict in Muslim 'Honor Killing'

2012-01-29T14:28:00.001-06:00

CNN:

A Canadian jury Sunday convicted a family of Afghan immigrants of the "honor" murders of four female relatives whose bodies were found in an Ontario canal.

Mohammed Shafia, 58; his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42; and their son, Hamed, 21, were found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shafia's three teenage daughters and his first wife in his polygamous marriage. Sunday's verdicts followed a three-month trial, in which jurors heard wiretaps of Shafia referring to his daughters as "whores" and ranting about their behavior.

"This is a good day for Canadian justice. Our democratic society protects the rights of all," Gerard Laarhuis, the chief prosecutor in the case, told reporters outside the courthouse in Kingston. "It's a very bad day, because this jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family."

At least one Shafia family supporter interrupted Laarhuis with shouts of "lies" and called the verdict a "miscarriage of justice." But others cheered the verdict as Laarhuis continued.

The three Shafia sisters -- Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 -- were found dead inside a car that plunged into the Rideau Canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Shafia's first wife, 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, also died.

The verdicts came on the second day of deliberations for a seven-woman, five-man jury in Kingston, about 280 km (175 miles) west of the family's home in Montreal.

Prosecutors said the girls' father, mother and brother all plotted to kill the four women in an "honor" murder. Investigators claimed that hours of wiretapped conversations reveal a premeditated plan to punish rebellious, Westernized daughters and their permissive advocate, Rona.

...

There is more.

These people remind me of pit bulls. You never know when they are going to go crazy and attack their own family. These crimes are unimaginable in a normal family.

Rubio says Obama made things worse

2012-01-29T09:37:00.001-06:00

It is pretty much classic Rubio.

Emails suggest Holder mislead on Fast and Furious

2012-01-29T09:28:00.000-06:00

Daily Caller:

Latest Friday night document dump shows Holder was informed of Fast and Furious connection to Brian Terry’s murder on day border agent died

The knowledge maybe indirect, but he seems to be definitely in the loop on the day Terry was killed.

Obama out of touch with his spending problem

2012-01-29T09:11:00.001-06:00

Chicago Tribune Editorial:

President Barack Obama knows the federal government has a big spending problem, and he is not reluctant to point it out. "The American people deserve to have their leaders come together to make the tough choices necessary to live within our means, just as American families do every day in these tough economic times," the White House said in November.
In his State of the Union address, Obama was not so keen on preaching austerity. As part of his plan to create an economy that is "built to last," he said it's necessary to "pay down our debt and invest in our future."
The phrase "invest in our future," we regret to report, is Washington-speak for "spend money." And in the current fiscal context, that means "spend money we don't have."
His speech to Congress contained a litany of new spending programs, from creating a new "Trade Enforcement Unit" to helping out homeowners who haven't been able to refinance their mortgages. Each one, taken by itself, can be defended. But added together, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation reports, they would require more than $20 billion in new spending.
The president says that doesn't matter because defense spending will be coming down by some $48 billion, for a net saving of about $28 billion. That sounds pretty good — until you consider that next year (according to the fiscal watchdog Concord Coalition), the government will most likely run a deficit of about $1 trillion.

...

Obama's spending addiction seems unabated by a lack of money. He thinks that taxing the rich will pay for his "investments." But Obama's history of investments is not as good as that of the rich. the economy would be better off if we let the rich make the investments and crate the jobs.

The biggest waste of money in history of world

2012-01-29T09:02:00.000-06:00

Michael Grabell:

...The stimulus was supposed to work like this: First, a flood of money in tax cuts, food stamps and unemployment checks would get consumers spending. A deluge of education and health-care money would stanch the bleeding in state budgets.

Then, a wave of “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects would kick in, creating new jobs repaving roads and making homes more energy efficient. As the economy got churning again, new investments in wind farms, solar panel factories, electric cars, broadband and high-speed rail would lead America out of the recession and into a 21st century economy competitive with the rest of the world.

But it didn’t happen like that. The White House’s economists, like nearly every forecaster, misread the recession. The state assistance wasn’t enough to plug the budget holes and, in many cases, the school aid merely delayed rather than prevented teacher layoffs. Infrastructure projects took months longer to break ground than the public had been led to believe.
...Even as the stimulus was pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in its first year, it appeared as if nothing was happening. The jobless rate skyrocketed, easily exceeding the poorly conceived chart Obama’s economic advisers had put together, showing that unemployment would never breach 8%.
Of the parts that were visible, it often seemed that the stimulus was providing money for everything. Instead of investing in a few marquee projects, Congress tried to make the stimulus a cure-all. There was money for every one of society’s ills, from cancer to cogongrass, from ailing infrastructure like bridges and rails to invasive species like Asian carp and Russian olive trees....In Michigan, human services officials estimated that 90% of the homes in line for weatherization work would need a historic preservation review. But as of late fall 2009, the office responsible had only two employees.

Public transit advocates expected a windfall for bus companies like New Flyer in St. Cloud, Minn. But the transit money took longer to get out the door because every grant had to be reviewed by the Labor Department to ensure that it wouldn’t have a negative impact on transit unions. And when the Chicago Transit Authority postponed an order because it couldn’t secure state funding, New Flyer announced that it would lay off employees rather than hire more....One of the little-appreciated aspects of the stimulus is that it was about much more than reining in the Great Recession. It was also about laying the groundwork for a new economy. The second part of the bill’s name, “reinvestment,” was intended to steer federal money toward long-term projects like clean energy, electric cars and high-speed rail — things that will probably take decades to achieve.

In this way, the stimulus was supposed to be a down payment. But all of these investments were predicated on the administration’s optimism that the public would continue to support Obama’s plans — and that Congress would pass comprehensive energy and infrastructure bills.

A fundamental argument I heard again and again was that Americans would come to embrace bullet trains as soon as they saw one up and running. This almost-platitude makes it all the more perplexing why the DOT repeated the flaw of other stimulus program and spread the $8 billion fund out like peanut butter.
...

There is much more in this long piece.

I think Grabell is too kind to this massive boondoggle, that started the trend in massive debt, that the administration doubled down on with Obamacare, and more top down government controls like Dodd-Frank. The Democrats have been a disaster under Obama and this was just the starting point.

Iraq abandons the Sunni al Qaeda fighters

2012-01-29T08:42:00.001-06:00

Washington Post:

Muhannad Mahmoud can’t find a place in the new Iraq.

The American military, which hired him and more than 80,000 other Sunni fighters to take on al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents, just left. But the insurgents certainly have not.

The Iraqi government, increasingly dominated by Shiite powers, is leery about hiring the fighters as security forces. And even if Mahmoud were able to land such a job, some of his fellow Sunnis are so distrustful of the new government that they would label him a traitor.

As a member of the Sons of Iraq, who were widely credited with helping the United States restore stability to the country several years ago, Mahmoud and his brethren say they have been pushed to the side — even as insurgents come after them daily.

“I am ready to fight them again,” Mahmoud said recently, taking a break from his job repairing power lines that run from a neighborhood generator to homes and businesses.

For years, the Iraqi government has struggled to carry out a U.S.-brokered plan to find military or police jobs for the Sunni fighters — some of them genuine heroes, some of them former insurgents themselves. How the government treats them over the coming months could present a chance for reconciliation — or threaten to widen the country’s sectarian divide, especially if Sons of Iraq members strike out on their own, or, worse, defect to groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

These days, even with the increased violence, the Sons of Iraq stand out, targeted by daily assassination attempts. Throughout Iraq, they are known more broadly by the term “Sahwa.” In the past week, four Iraqis connected to Sahwa were assassinated on a single day.

...

These are the people who helped the US break the back of al Qaeda in Iraq and destroy the al Qaeda brand world wide. It is a shame that the current government will not recognize their sacrifice and give them a place in the country. They should not let sectarian differences alienate these people. If they do they may die regretting it.

Don't blame the rich

2012-01-29T08:32:00.001-06:00

James Q. Wilson:

There is no doubt that incomes are unequal in the United States — far more so than in most European nations. This fact is part of the impulse behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members claim to represent the 99 percent of us against the wealthiest 1 percent. It has also sparked a major debate in the Republican presidential race, where former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has come under fire for his tax rates and his career as the head of a private-equity firm.

And economic disparity was the recurring theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” the president warned, “or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share.”

But the mere existence of income inequality tells us little about what, if anything, should be done about it. First, we must answer some key questions. Who constitutes the prosperous and the poor? Why has inequality increased? Does an unequal income distribution deny poor people the chance to buy what they want? And perhaps most important: How do Americans feel about inequality?

To answer these questions, it is not enough to take a snapshot of our incomes; we must instead have a motion picture of them and of how people move in and out of various income groups over time.

The “rich” in America are not a monolithic, unchanging class. A study by Thomas A. Garrett, economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that less than half of people in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still there in 2005. Such mobility is hardly surprising: A business school student, for instance, may have little money and high debts, but nine years later he or she could be earning a big Wall Street salary and bonus.

Mobility is not limited to the top-earning households. A study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that nearly half of the families in the lowest fifth of income earners in 2001 had moved up within six years. Over the same period, more than a third of those in the highest fifth of income-earners had moved down. Certainly, there are people such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who are ensconced in the top tier, but far more common are people who are rich for short periods.

And who are the rich? Affluent people, compared with poor ones, tend to have greater education and spouses who work full time. The past three decades have seen significant increases in real earnings for people with advanced degrees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that between 1979 and 2010, hourly wages for men and women with at least a college degree rose by 33 percent and 20 percent, respectively, while they fell for all people with less than a high school diploma — by 9 percent for women and 31 percent for men.

Also, households with two earners have seen their incomes rise. This trend is driven in part by women’s increasing workforce participation, which doubled from 1950 to 2005 and which began to place women in well-paid jobs by the early 1980s.

We could reduce income inequality by trying to curtail the financial returns of education and the number of women in the workforce — but who would want to do that?

The real income problem in this country is not a question of who is rich, but rather of who is poor. Among the bottom fifth of income earners, many people, especially men, stay there their whole lives. Low education and unwed motherhood only exacerbate poverty, which is particularly acute among racial minorities. Brookings Institution economist Scott Winshiphas argued that two-thirds of black children in America experience a level of poverty that only 6 percent of white children will ever see, calling it a “national tragedy.”

Making the poor more economically mobile has nothing to do with taxing the rich and everything to do with finding and implementing ways to encourage parental marriage, teach the poor marketable skills and induce them to join the legitimate workforce. It is easy to suppose that raising taxes on the rich would provide more money to help the poor. But the problem facing the poor is not too little money, but too few skills and opportunities to advance themselves.

...

When the poor keep doing the things that make them poor, taxing the rich can't make a difference in their lives. That is true regardless of race. The tendency toward unwed mothers means more children will grow up poor. The rich aren't seducing and abandoning these women. Irresponsible sperm donor fathers are a greater cause of poverty than income inequality.

Income inequality is just another excuse for Democrats to raise taxes so they will have more government money to spend to buy votes with.

Syria losing control?

2012-01-28T21:48:00.001-06:00

Daily Mail on Sunday:

'Half of Damascus falls to rebels' as breakaway army slowly seize control of capital from Assad regime

If true, it is probably caused in part by attrition of government forces.

Brit military cuts puts Falklands at risk

2012-01-28T21:34:00.000-06:00

Sunday Telegraph:

Britain could not reclaim Falklands, warns General

It is a point I have made in recent post. It is especially true with Obama in the White House where they could expect no support.

But the Guardian finds doubts growing in Argentina.

'The Falklanders eat fish and chips. How can they belong to Argentina?'
28 Jan 2012: A growing number of young Argentinians are questioning their nation's claim to the disputed islands

CenturyLink down all day in Texas

2012-01-28T21:14:00.002-06:00

The internet was not available for blogging today, but we will be back strong soon.

The case for Scott Walker in Wisconsin

2012-01-28T21:12:00.000-06:00

Stephen Moore:

The Most Important Non-Presidential Election of the Decade

It is do or die for public sector unions. Hopefully, they will fail in their attempt to remove Walker who is showing how important getting rid of the unions corrupt bargain with Democrats is to the well being of his state.

Tuning out Obama

2012-01-28T08:29:00.003-06:00

NY Times:

Some State of the Union Viewers Tuned Out Fast

People have been tuning Obama out since the debate over Obamacare. The more he talks the less people like him and his policies. I think the coming campaign is going to see his numbers in decline with every speech.

Energy reality check

2012-01-28T08:15:00.000-06:00

Loren Steffy:

President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for an “all-of-the-above” strategy to develop energy that’s “cleaner, cheaper and full of new jobs.”

He’ll be lucky to get one out of three.

It’s likely that our energy sources will become cleaner. Stricter pollution and carbon standards are inevitable, and the abundance of natural gas from hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. means it’s likely to become a viable alternative fuel – both for electricity generation and powering fleet vehicles. To drive home the point, Obama was in Nevada on Thursday touting the prospects for natural gas.

By 2040, natural gas will surpass coal as the world’s second-biggest fuel source behind oil, according to a recent study by Exxon Mobil Corp.

Obama wasn’t just referring to natural gas, though. He wants to improve the reliability of other sources – wind, solar, biofuels. For that, he wants to shift tax incentives from the oil industry to renewables programs.

Given that much of new fuel development is moving toward cleaner sources, it makes sense to offer tax benefits, but it shouldn’t be an either-or shift from conventional energy.

As we’ve seen with the collapse of natural gas prices, companies will simply shut in production if it isn’t economical, and the shift to cleaner fuels will stall. So it makes sense to maintain some tax incentives for “unconventional” plays such as shale drilling at least at lower prices, and marginal producing “stripper” wells.

If it’s jobs the president is worried about, we can’t afford to discourage fossil fuel production. While “green jobs” are increasing, they alone can’t solve our economic problems any more than renewables by themselves can resolve our energy issues.

Unfortunately, the administration always pitches its energy initiatives in terms of jobs. That may have political value in a struggling economy, but it undermines the purpose of government-funded research.

Innovation can’t be measured by short-term hiring. The Solyndra debacle should have made that clear. In his speech, Obama touted – and probably overstated – the government’s role in developing hydraulic fracturing, but he seemed to miss the lesson.

Houston’s Mitchell Energy benefited from some early government-funded research and maybe even some cost-sharing on early projects, said Bill Whitsitt, a spokesman for Devon Energy, which acquired Mitchell. But it took decades of private-sector financing, development and risk-taking to turn that government research into the current job boom.

...

Obama clearly overstated the government's roll in fracking tech. If anything the government, particularly the EPA is looking more like an impediment. The interior department is still strangling energy production on government owned tracts both on shore and off shore. If the government would get out of the way hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created in the private sector.

Government attempts to spur development in alternative energy have been a disaster for many. The stimulus money was wasted on technology that did not have a ready market. Some of the disappointments were caused by the failure of market manipulation laws such as cap and trade which would have tried to drive up the cost of convential energy to make the alternatives look more competitive.

Making border corruption harder

2012-01-28T07:59:00.001-06:00

Houston Chronicle:

As the threat of internal corruption dogs the ranks of border security forces, the Obama administration is considering regularly rotating agents to other locations to distance them from the persuasive power and money of Mexico's drug cartels.
Such a decision would subject locally recruited U.S. Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers to the periodic relocations already required for agents within the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other premier federal law enforcement agencies.
"It is something we are looking at very carefully," James Tomsheck, chief of internal affairs for Customs and Border Protection, told the Houston Chronicle in an interview. "It is too early to make a (final) assessment, but we certainly believe it does have an impact."
Four CBP employees have been arrested on corruption-related charges in the last four months. Another 132 CBP employees have been arrested since 2005 as a result of investigations by Tomsheck's 214 internal affairs investigators across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's 213 criminal investigators have arrested 178 CBP employees across the country as well since 2003 for criminal misconduct - including 26 in the last three years on corruption-related charges.

...

Sen. John Cornyn points out that we would lose local knowledge that pays off in recognition and tips. There is also the potential taht a shorter widown of opportunity could accelerate the corruption of agents. The move maybe worth a try, but it can't replace improved screening, training and supervision.

Pakistan and bin Laden

2012-01-27T20:55:00.000-06:00

The Hill:

Panetta: Officials in Pakistan had to know about bin Laden

It is informed supposition, but I tend to agree with him. Bin Laden had to feel protected or he would not have had such a small security force in the compound.

Obama's promises

2012-01-27T20:48:00.001-06:00

Mark Steyn:

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: "The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and good night! You've been a terrific crowd!"
I gather that Americans prefer something more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union's state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned.

...

It is there is the Democrat Senate's budget... oops. Like the non existent budget, the Democrats try tide their spending ways and spring a spending bill on the Republicans so they can charge them with trying to shut down government.

The problem with Islam ...

2012-01-27T20:39:00.002-06:00

Daily Mail:

Muslim couple 'murdered their three daughters in honor killings' - because they wanted to cut off 'the diseased limb of their family tree'

It makes some people crazy.

Is he supporting Newt?

2012-01-27T20:35:00.000-06:00

Daily Mail:

George Soros says there 'isn't all that much difference' between Romney and Obama

I doubt he is supporting Romney.

Uh-oh, ship carrying space launch equipment hits ...

2012-01-27T20:28:00.001-06:00

The Daily Mail has the story. The piece also has several more photos and a map of the location of the former bridge.

Nigerian Islamic religious bigots make their demand

2012-01-27T20:21:00.001-06:00

Guardian:

Boko Haram demands sharia law

No sane person would want to live under sharia law as administered by these kooks. It would just be a way of institutionalizing their religious bigotry and oppression.

Israel worried about Iran nuclear 'immunity zone'

2012-01-27T20:15:00.002-06:00

Telegraph:

Reviving Western concerns that his government is still contemplating unilateral military action against Iran, Ehud Barak gave one of the clearest signs yet that Israel's support for new US and EU sanctions remains strictly limited.
"We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear," he told the World Economic Forum in Davos. "And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table.
"It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them."
Although Israeli intelligence and military officials have privately spoken of Iran's nuclear programme entering a "framework of immunity", it is the first time that a senior figure in Benjamin Netanyahu's government has done so in public.
Israel's fears that it might soon be too late to launch military action were bolstered earlier this month when Iran announced that it had begun to enrich uranium at its Fordow plant, which is buried so deep within a mountain it may be impossible for Israeli warplanes or missiles to destroy.
Mr Barak's ministry believes that once the bulk of uranium enrichment is carried out at Fordow, Iran will be in the immunity zone. Israel also reckons that Iran could be in a position to build a bomb within months, although US officials have been quoted as saying that Tehran will not be able to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile for some years.

...

This story probably explains the need of the US to make a bomb that will be a more effective at penetration. I think without that bomb the Israels will feel compelled to take action before the material is moved into the deeper facility.

Global Hawk out performed by antique spy plane

2012-01-27T19:49:00.000-06:00

LA Times:

US may rely on aging U-2 spy planes longer than expected

The Global Hawk has been an expensive disappointment. That is pretty damning when you consider that a spy plane developed in the 1950s out performs it.

Obama's premature retreat from Iraq

2012-01-27T19:43:00.003-06:00

NY Times:

434 People Killed in Iraq Since US Pulled Out

And, counting. The Iraqis share some of the blame for Obama's premature retreat. Both sides should have found a way to keep US forces in the area to act as fair arbitrator of the distrust between the Shia and Sunni factions.

US seeks more powerful bomb to knock out Iran's nukes

2012-01-27T19:38:00.002-06:00

WSJ:

Pentagon war planners have concluded that their largest conventional bomb isn't yet capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, and are stepping up efforts to make it more powerful, according to U.S. officials briefed on the plan.
The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.

But initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, wouldn't be capable of destroying some of Iran's facilities, either because of their depth or because Tehran has added new fortifications to protect them.

Doubts about the MOP's effectiveness prompted the Pentagon this month to secretly submit a request to Congress for funding to enhance the bomb's ability to penetrate deeper into rock, concrete and steel before exploding, the officials said.

The push to boost the power of the MOP is part of stepped-up contingency planning for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear program, say U.S. officials.

The Defense Department has spent about $330 million so far to develop about 20 of the bombs, which are built by Boeing Co. The Pentagon is seeking about $82 million more to make the bomb more effective, according to government officials briefed on the plan....Developing an effective bunker-buster is complicated in part because of the variables, experts say. Penetration varies depending on factors such as soil density and the types of stone and rock shielding the target.

Boeing received a contract in 2009 to fit the weapon on the U.S.'s B-2 Stealth Bomber. The Air Force began receiving the first of the bombs in September, a time of growing tensions with Iran. The Air Force has so far contracted to buy 20 of the bombs, and more deliveries are expected in 2013, after additional tests are made.

Should a decision be made to use the MOP as currently configured, it could cause "a lot of damage" to Iran's underground nuclear facilities but wouldn't necessarily destroy them outright, Mr. Panetta said.

"We're developing it. I think we're pretty close, let's put it that way. But we're still working at it because these things are not easy to be able to make sure that they will do what we want them to."...

I suspect the bombs will be a priority weapon for Boeing and that they will be ready well ahead of 2013. If not the others may have to do.

I do not think an attack on Iran should be limited to just their nuclear production sites. We should knock out Iran's naval assets which it would use to attack shipping and block the Straights of Hormuz. I would also knock out its weapons and munition manufacturing, particularly those sites used to make lethal IEDs which could be used in countries in the region such as Afghanistan.

Iran is still the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, and we must knock out her assets used to facilitate terror including in some cases her proxies.

Obama team full of doubters on bin Laden raid

2012-01-27T19:26:00.001-06:00

Fox News:

Vice President Biden claimed Friday that Leon Panetta was the only member of the inner circle who definitively urged President Obama to green-light the raid on Usama bin Laden's compound, as Biden discussed new details about the behind-the-scenes deliberations.

Biden, speaking to the House Democratic Issues Conference in Maryland, candidly admitted that he told the president not to go forward with the mission. Biden said at the time he thought the administration should do more to find out whether bin Laden was actually inside the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

...

I find it stunning that there was so much hesitancy in going after this mass murderer. Panetta seems to be the only one who understood the importance of the mission and had confidence in our special ops team that was responsible for it. It shows you just how weak Obama's national security team is and why some of them characterized this obvious decision as a "gutsy call." It was in fact a no brainer that Americans expect from their leaders.

Moon madness?

2012-01-27T19:18:00.002-06:00

Toby Harnden:

Romney's Moon Mockery vs. Lunar Tunes Newt

I think Romney is closer to the mark on what our priorities should be. Newt is probably a decade or more too soon.

Does science hide its work papers?

2012-01-27T19:14:00.000-06:00

Washington Times Editorial:

Those who say man alone is responsible for overheating the planet frequently dismiss any role the sun might play. As can be seen in an ongoing freedom-of-information lawsuit leveled against the University of Virginia (UVA), sunshine is precisely what the heralds of climate catastrophe fear most of all.
The American Tradition Institute (ATI) is going after 12,000 emails sent or received by Michael E. Mann while he was on the staff of the publicly-funded university. Mr. Mann is famous for coming up with one of the “tricks” used to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. On Wednesday, ATI released a small selection of emails it hopes will convince a Prince William County judge that full disclosure of the rest is in the public interest.
In March 2003, for example, a trusted colleague of Mr. Mann’s emailed to find out how the UVA professor arrived at his conclusions. Mr. Mannadmitted he was missing crucial data and “can’t seem to dig them up.” Though he was working on this project on the taxpayers’ dime, he provided the information for the researcher’s personal use only. “So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first,” Mr. Mann wrote. “This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry’ one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things.”
David Schnare, a scientist and lawyer who runs ATI’s Environmental Law Center, said he was shocked that anyone claiming to be a scientist wouldn’t keep a detailed log of his research activities. “In science, there is no dirty laundry,” Mr. Schnare told The Washington Times. “Science progresses by proving to yourself that you were wrong, that your hypothesis was in error. Every time you’re wrong, it means you can cut off some area of research and start on a better one.”
The institute has about 200 emails that it obtained from a number of sources, including the Climategate leaks. The messages show preachers of imminent climate catastrophe like Mr. Mann weren’t interested in the kind of open discussion that allows scientific progress. Various exchanges included warnings to “PLEASE DELETE” the email after reading.

...

The mask of competences is slowly being stripped from those who have claimed a consensus on the theory behind global warming. These emails should be released. To not do so will only confirm in the minds of skeptics that the proponents of the theory have something to hide.

Special ops get amphibious assault ship as base

2012-01-27T19:02:00.000-06:00

Washington Post:

The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East as tensions rise with Iran, al-Qaeda in Yemen and Somali pirates, among other threats.

In response to requests from the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, the Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos. Unofficially dubbed a “mothership,” the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, procurement documents show.

Special Operations Forces are a key part of the Obama administration's strategy to make the military leaner and more agile as the Pentagon confronts at least $487 billion in spending cuts over the next decade.

Lt. Cmdr. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, declined to elaborate on the floating base’s purpose or to say where, exactly, it will be deployed in the Middle East. Other Navy officials acknowledged that they were moving with unusual haste to complete the conversion and send the mothership to the region by early summer.

Navy documents indicate that it could be headed to the Persian Gulf, where Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for much of the world’s oil supply. A market survey proposal from the Military Sealift Command, dated Dec. 22 and posted online, states that the floating base needed to be delivered to the Persian Gulf.

Other contract documents do not specify a location but say the mothership would be used to “support mine countermeasure” missions. Defense officials have said that if Iran did attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, it would rely on mines to obstruct the waterway.

With a large naval base in Bahrain, and one or two aircraft carrier groups usually assigned to the region, the Navy already has a substantial presence in the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. Adding the mothership ship would do relatively little to bolster U.S. maritime power overall, but it could play an instrumental role in secretive commando missions offshore.

The deployment of the floating base could also mark a return to maritime missions for SEAL teams, which for the last decade have spent most of their time on land in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other details of the project became public Tuesday when the Military Sealift Command posted a bid request to retrofit the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport docking ship, on a rush-order basis.

Until December, the Navy had planned to retire the Ponce and decommission it in March after 41 years of service. Among other missions, it was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea last year in support of NATO’s air war over Libya.

Instead, the ship will be modified into what the military terms an Afloat Forward Staging Base. Kafka, the Fleet Forces command spokesman, said it would be used to support mine-clearance ships, smaller patrol ships and aircraft.

The documents posted by the Military Sealift Command in December, however, specify that the mothership will be rebuilt so that it can also serve as a docking station for several small high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEAL teams.

Among the vessels listed are Mark 5 Zodiacs, an inflatable boat that can carry up to 15 passengers but roll up into a bag, and 7-meter-long Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats, which can carry an entire SEAL squad.

SEAL teams also deploy from regular warships, but most vessels in the Navy’s fleet must patrol or move around on a regular basis. A mothership can stay in one spot for weeks or months, effectively serving as a floating base for commandos as they monitor coastal areas or prepare for amphibious operations.

...

There are several things I like about this plan, but staying in one spot for extended period of time makes this vulnerable to attack by hostile countries or the terrorist. This is especially true of the attacks similar to that on the Cole.

Having such a large mother ship also makes it harder for the special ops forces to get the element of surprise which is critical to their missions' success.

The idea definitely has merit but it is going to require the kind of execution our special ops guys have become famous for in recent years such as the recent rescue in Somalia.

Not too smart

2012-01-27T18:45:00.001-06:00

Houston Chronicle:

Gas needle on 'E,' and 3 burglary suspects get an 'F' for planning

They must have been looking for gas money.

Romney makes his case on immigration issue

2012-01-27T09:25:00.002-06:00

Romney is becoming a better candidate and his immigration stand is one taht conservatives should embrace.

The Obama strategy for defeat

2012-01-27T09:21:00.001-06:00

Arthur Herman:

Yesterday the Obama administration revealed how it plans to reorient our military in order to pay for the half a trillion dollars it wants in defense cuts over the next decade. Under the guise of creating a “leaner, meaner” and more mobile force, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Panetta will actually leave us with an Army, Navy, and Air Force that can be everywhere but fight nowhere; that’s able to act quickly but not decisively, and with few resources to deal with the unexpected — which tends to be the norm in strategic affairs — or project real power where it counts.
Even worse, the Obama-Panetta plan flies in the face of America’s experience in war over the last two decades.
The plan shrinks our Army and Marine Corps down to pre-9/11 levels, while slowing or halting new weapons programs, including replacement ships and planes, for the Navy and Air Force, including the next-generation F-35 fighter (which was supposed to be ruling the skies by 2020 but now will be making only the occasional cameo appearance). That will leave enough conventional forces, the administration insists, to fight one good long war if we need to.
Meanwhile, our operational emphasis will shift from big units and big bases to small, stealthy Special Ops forces and unmanned drone strikes (the one part of the budget that will see a big jump in funding, by 30 percent). These will operate from small “lily pad” bases scattered around the world like the new one planned for Darwin in northern Australia, where mobile Army units and Marine Expeditionary brigades can deploy to help local allies deal with threats, and then return to refit.
In short, Obama’s Team Six hit on Osama bin Laden, and his Predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, become the new paradigm for America’s future use of military power.
Let’s just hope our enemies cooperate. History strongly suggests they will do the opposite.
In fact, just about every administration and secretary of defense since the Cold War has aimed to create a leaner, meaner American military that’s more mobile and leaves a “smaller footprint” — while also requiring a smaller budget. Then events, and real-life threats, spoil their aim every time.

...

It should be noted that this is how the British Empire shrunk to a second and third rate power while trying to pay for social programs that even the richest nations cannot afford. It is still shrinking while socialism continues to destroy it from within.

The Obama energy kiss of death

2012-01-27T09:15:00.000-06:00

He is stimulating death warrants for alternative energy boondoggles. Eventually the rest of the voters will catch onto his wasteful spending.

Obama can't be trusted on energy

2012-01-27T08:43:00.001-06:00

Ron Arnold:

While trying to figure out what President Obama's combative State of the Union speech added to America's unity, let us ponder a non-presidential event during the last presidential election cycle.
In a 2008 "Meet the Press" interview, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels." She may have slipped on a banana peel of the mind, or perhaps she really didn't know that natural gas is a fossil fuel. Either way, it was clearly a harmless error not intended to confuse or deceive.
Apply that to the president's Tuesday remarks on energy policy. Harmless error or damaging duplicity? Obama tried to take credit for the current jobs and economic success of the natural gas boom:
"We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy."
The duplicity lies in the weasel word, "safely." Big Green's minions insist there's no safe way to develop fossil fuels and they comprise a lobbying and regulatory roadblock sufficient to heap mountains of delayed and rejected drilling permits on sites properly leased by oil and gas companies. They have Obama's ear -- and apparently the keyboards of his speechwriters.
The oil and gas industry isn't suffering in silence anymore. The whole industrial sector is furious enough with three years of Obama obstruction and obfuscation to sweep aside the maxim, "Take care not to spit against the wind -- or on your regulator."
Virginia "Gigi" Lazenby, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, responded to Obama's hubris, saying "the truth behind the veil is that this tremendous broad-based economic and energy security success is largely in spite of this administration's, at times, harshly anti-oil and natural gas policies, not because of them."
Lazenby and everyone else in the industry was still smarting from last week's outrageous Obama duplicity when he agreed with his Jobs Council on Tuesday and said America needs more fossil fuels, yet on Wednesday killed the Keystone XL Canada-to-Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline project, saying America needs to reduce our dependence on oil.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said, "In rejecting the job-creating Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama today chose to try and save his own job by pandering to his anti-pipeline environmental extremist voting bloc."

...

Obama has lost all credibility on the energy issue. He is too tied to the anti energy left and their carbon phobias. The best way to break through these roadblocks is to defeat Obama and the Democrats and get a real all of the above energy policy that does not strangle domestic energy production or pipelines from anywhere.

Egypt's war against democracy advocates

2012-01-27T08:22:00.002-06:00

Washington Post:

Egypt expands crackdown on NGOs

The Egyptian military should have its allowance cut. The US should cut off all funding until these people are free to move around.

Cutting troops a mistake

2012-01-27T08:18:00.002-06:00

Frederick Kagan:

President Obama’s new defense strategy champions the same arguments military downsizers have invoked since 1991: The United States must invest in technology and disinvest in active-duty military personnel. The plan unveiled Thursday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is based on two such tenets: It must “protect key investments in the technologically advanced capabilities most needed for the future . . . [and] no longer size active forces to conduct large and protracted stability operations while retaining the expertise of a decade of war.” The budget thus eliminates 92,000 soldiers and Marines on the premise that future wars will require new weapons systems but not large numbers of troops. Should America need more troops, this thinking holds, it will be easy enough to find them. Technology takes longer to develop and field.

These well-worn syllogisms are the reverse of reality. Technology development can be accelerated in wartime. The development of capable military leaders cannot.

Military technology rests on the technological status of society at large, especially today, when our military increasingly prefers modifying off-the-shelf solutions to building its own. A failure to invest in military technology does not stop the development of technology useful to the military, though it is an unwise and dangerous strategy.

Indeed, every major war of the past hundred years has prompted, in months, technological innovations that in peacetime would have required years. Even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — which were not supported by any significant technological or industrial mobilization — spurred the rapid fielding of systems and vehicles to counter improvised explosive devices, the primary technological challenge to our soldiers. It is easier, of course, to build mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles than an F-35 fighter jet. But it need not take two decades to build a stealth fighter or even to refurbish an aircraft carrier, if the equipment is urgently needed.

There is, on the other hand, no way to accelerate the fielding of good military leaders. Certainly soldiers can be recruited rapidly and their training courses shortened. Junior officers can be swiftly promoted, skipping the career steps and educational requirements of peacetime. More senior officers can be drawn from reserves and staff positions. During World War II, entire divisions were recruited, trained and deployed within a year. But the brigade and battalion commanders in those divisions did not know how to command brigades and battalions. The company commanders might not have seen combat. They learned awfully fast in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific — at a very high price in lives.

The development of military leaders cannot be accelerated beyond a certain point without seriously degrading quality. People can learn, adapt and assimilate experiences only so rapidly. Good software or other distributed learning tools help individuals master enormous amounts of information, but there are innate limits.

Military leadership is more than knowledge and technique. It requires fundamental changes in personality, patterns of thought and perception, emotional control and interactions with others. That is as true for fighter pilots as battalion commanders. Inexperienced leaders panic when seasoned veterans would calmly carry on; unseasoned commanders leap to conclusions where salted warriors comprehend the entire situation.

...

There is more.

Our adversaries are not choosing the strategies that fit the smaller number of troops the downsizing is requiring. Insurgencies require a greater force to space ratio than combat persisting operations which are about speed and combined arms firepower. Special ops counter terrorism raids are also inadequate to dealing with insurgencies, though they can degrade the insurgent leaders over time.

We make this mistake after nearly every war. At some point we should recognize the high cost of saving money on the military.

The scientist are rejecting global warming

2012-01-27T08:06:00.002-06:00

Opinion Journal:

...
In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"
In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

...

The consensus is crumbling because the facts on the ground do not support the theory or the computer models based on the theory.

There is another element of the theory that is only under challenge. The projections of dire results from warming are also unrealistic. I never bought into the apocalyptic consequences predicted by the theory. The history of prior warming periods did not support what they were saying.

Democrat Hispanic dreaming

2012-01-27T07:37:00.001-06:00

NY Times:

In Airport Run-In, Democrats See Help for Obama Among Hispanics

Democrats think President Obama’s heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on Wednesday could help him with Hispanic voters.

I think Democrat delusions about Arizona are about where they were when they thought they could defeat John McCain there four years ago. What Obama has done is remind voters who want strong border enforcement what they do not like about Democrats in general and Obama in particular. He has been pandering to illegals with his lawsuit against Arizona and has made the majority of Americans disgusted with his policies. Only liberals have missed this.

There is also a disconnect between Hispanics in general and and those here illegally. Hispanics are not threatened by border enforcement if they are in this country legally. Beyond tribal affiliation there is no logical reason for Hispanic voters to worry about vigorous enforcement of immigration laws. For some reason Obama and other liberals have a real problem with the rule of law when it comes to illegal immigration.

Sanctions biting Iran

2012-01-26T19:15:00.002-06:00

Arab News:

Iran devalues in bid to stop rial’s slide
TEHRAN: Iran has announced an 8 percent devaluation of the rial and said it would enforce a single exchange rate, aiming to stamp out a black market where dollars have soared due to fears over new sanctions imposed by the West.

Times are likely to get tougher inside Iran. The stubbornness is bearing a cost.

About those private investment firms

2012-01-26T19:11:00.000-06:00

IBD:

Public unions so opposed to private equity firms like Bain they invest billions there

Mitt is not the only one whose retirement is being paid from those investments.

Teens launch Lego character into space

2012-01-26T18:52:00.002-06:00

Guardian:

Two Canadian teenagers have sent a Lego man into the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere using a home-stitched parachute and equipment found on Craigslist.
Two weeks ago, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, attached the plastic figurine replete with maple leaf flag to a helium balloon, which they sent 80,000 feet into the air.
The pair managed to capture the entire journey into the blackness ofspace, including the descent, which lasted 97 minutes, using four cameras, at an entire cost of just £254.

...

You can watch the video of the ride with a Link to this video. It is really kind of cool.

Falklands posturing

2012-01-26T18:42:00.000-06:00

Telegraph:

Minister: Argentina lacks power to seize Falklands

I question whether the UK or Argentina have the means for another war. But Argentina still has its illusive dreams so something could happen to provoke war over the islands.

Another Obama clean tech boondoggle goes bust

2012-01-26T18:32:00.002-06:00

CNNMoney:

Electric car battery maker Ener1 filed for bankruptcy Thursday, three years after receiving a $118.5 million grant from the U.S. government.
Ener1 (HEVV), which makes a variety of energy storage devices under different subsidiaries, is the parent company of EnerDel, the car battery division that received the government grant to help build a manufacturing plant in Indianapolis.

Unlike bankrupt Solyndra, the advanced solar panel maker that became a lightning rod for critics of Obama's stimulus spending when it closed its factory and liquidated, Ener1 promised its business will proceed as usual.

The company said the "voluntarily initiated" bankruptcy filing won't impact any of its subsidiaries, including EnerDel.

"The restructuring will not adversely impact their employees, customers and suppliers," the company said in a press release, noting there will be no layoffs as a result of the action.

The company blamed the bankruptcy on a slower than expected demand for electric vehicles....

The Obama administration had unrealistic expectations about the desire of consumers for electric vehicles. It appears that even with the bankruptcy the company still has unrealistic expectations about the market for their product. It is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Obama wants tax break for trucks running on cheap natural gas

2012-01-26T18:26:00.002-06:00

Businessweek:

President Barack Obama said tax breaks for natural-gas powered trucks will help the U.S. cut its dependence on imported oil.
Obama, in his second day promoting policies laid out in his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, proposes a credit equivalent of 50 percent of the extra cost of purchasing a natural gas-powered truck compared with one that runs on diesel or gasoline.
Developing natural gas “could power our cars and our homes and our factories in a cleaner and cheaper way,” Obama said in the text of remarks in Las Vegas at a United Parcel Service Inc. natural gas refueling station built with the aid of money from the economic stimulus. “We, it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We’ve got a lot of it.”

...

The cheap price of the fuel should be enough of an incentive for businesses to invest in equipment that will save them money. I am all for the trucks running on natural gas, but I do not think they need a subsidy as an inducement.

Conservatives rise up against Gingrich

2012-01-26T09:11:00.001-06:00

Politico:

The right drops a bomb on Newt

Several conservatives argue Newt is not one of them.

Navy's X-47B is a game changer

2012-01-26T09:06:00.000-06:00

LA Times:

The Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers.

What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone's ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

"Lethal actions should have a clear chain of accountability," said Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist and robotics expert. "This is difficult with a robot weapon. The robot cannot be held accountable. So is it the commander who used it? The politician who authorized it? The military's acquisition process? The manufacturer, for faulty equipment?"

...
"It's a different world from just a few years ago — we've entered the realm of science fiction in a lot of ways," Cuellar said. "New rules have to be developed as new technology comes about, and this is a big step forward."

Aerial drones now piloted remotely have become a central weapon for the CIA and U.S. military in their campaign against terrorists in the Middle East. The Pentagon has gone from an inventory of a handful of drones before Sept. 11, 2001, to about 7,500 drones, about one-third of all military aircraft.

Despite looming military spending cuts, expenditures on drones are expected to take less of a hit, if any, because they are cheaper to build and operate than piloted aircraft.

All military services are moving toward greater automation with their robotic systems. Robotic armed submarines could one day stalk enemy waters, and automated tanks could engage soldiers on the battlefield.

"More aggressive robotry development could lead to deploying far fewer U.S. military personnel to other countries, achieving greater national security at a much lower cost and most importantly, greatly reduced casualties," aerospace pioneer Simon Ramo, who helped develop the intercontinental ballistic missile, wrote in his new book, "Let Robots Do the Dying."

...

The X-47B will not only land itself, but will also know what kind of weapons it is carrying, when and where it needs to refuel with an aerial tanker, and whether there's a nearby threat, said Carl Johnson, Northrop's X-47B program manager. "It will do its own math and decide what it should do next."

The major difference between the X-47B and flying bombs is that the X-47B is smarter and can return for another mission. We already program missiles to hit precise targets once they are launched, they just have a one way flight. I don't see a real problem with the flight controls of a drone being operated through a computer.

Shale gas savings could exceed $100 billion

2012-01-26T08:26:00.001-06:00

Businessweek:

Natural gas prices that slumped to a 10-year low this month could save U.S. consumers $16.5 billion on home energy bills over the course of a year, according to a senior economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
U.S. households might see total savings from lower gas prices of as much as $113 billion a year through 2015, including tack-on effects such as lower product prices and higher wages generated by cheaper fuel, according to energy industry consultants IHS Inc.
The projected savings is “an unbelievable amount of money,” said Greg Ebel, chief executive of Spectra Energy Corp., during a Jan. 17 interview. “That’s better than any tax cut you’ve seen out there, better than any government handout.”
If consumers end up pocketing more than $100 billion due to low gas prices, it could add a “significant” piece to U.S. gross domestic product growth for 2012 or 2013, said Robert Solow, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in economics. “If that figure is right, it’s a substantial amount,” Solow said in a telephone interview yesterday.

...

There is more.

We are just starting to realize the benefits of the shale gas revolution that has produced thousands of jobs and will now produce billions in savings for consumers. We should also eventually get savings from oil production if the administration will get out of the way. Increased production there should eventually reduce the world price, and even if it does not the reduced transportation cost will be a savings.

This savings has to be disconcerting to liberals who were counting on increased prices to make less efficient alternative energy look competitive.

Good question

2012-01-26T08:17:00.006-06:00

Reporter To Reid: Isn't GE Paying No Taxes Bigger Deal Than Romney?

The Keystone debate

2012-01-26T08:15:00.001-06:00

Krauthammer: Keystone Opposition Has "Desperate, Intellectually Stupid Argument"

Obama can't avoid this criticism.

Running against media madness

2012-01-26T08:11:00.000-06:00

Larry Elder:

Newt Gingrich Is Exposing the Corrupt Media

It is a good piece. He ask some good questions about the bias that favors Democrats.

Anti energy left dirties the environment

2012-01-26T08:02:00.001-06:00

Nicolas Loris:

For all of President Obama’s talk Tuesday night of boosting US energy production, he has a huge problem: The American left — a vital part of his political base — seems determined to force us down the opposite path. Indeed, the “Big Green Extreme” fights energy even when it means harming the environment.

Take Obama’s decision last week to halt the Keystone XL pipeline. It defied common sense. Letting the oil flow from Canada to refineries in Texas would have generated thousands of high-paying US jobs (hence the unions’ anger with the president), given our nation’s flagging economy a big boost and reduced our energy dependence on less-friendly and less-reliable suppliers.

Plus, killing the pipeline is a clear loser for the environment. The oil from Canadian tar sands isn’t staying in the ground. It’s heading overseas via tanker to China, where it will be refined under regulations far looser than ours. Every step of the way, the process is less “green” than the Keystone route.

Oh, and we’ll have to import more oil via tankers from overseas, or carry crude oil from Canada in trucks or on rails.

The assault on energy is relentless. Last year, the US Chamber of Commerce identified 351 energy projects stalled by “not in my backyard” suits, regulatory red tape and, of course, endless challenges from greens. Almost half these projects (140) are renewable-energy ones.

In Alaska and Idaho, for instance, environmental groups are challenging hydroelectric projects, claiming they could threaten fish habitats, water quality or tourism. Wind and solar projects, meanwhile, face opposition because they might threaten desert tortoises or migratory birds.

...

Why do Democrats pay attention to these people? Perhaps they are just as unintelligent when it comes to energy. The rejection of the Keystone project may go down in history as one of the least intelligent decisions by a president. If the Obama administration thought it could get in front of the criticism of this decision, it has stepped in front of the freight train that will have to be carrying the oil at four or five times the cost of the pipeline. That is only good news for Warren Buffett who is an owner of the train.

Obama's ridiculous energy policy

2012-01-26T07:52:00.002-06:00

Mackubin Thomas Owens:

In his State of the Union speech, PresidentObama had barely cleared his throat when he outlined his vision for an American “future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.” Just days before, he had delivered a crippling blow to his own plan.
Mr. Obama’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Alberta,Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, is one more example of his administration’s ongoing war on fossil fuels - and the most recent example of how the president promises the exact opposite of what he is delivering. What better way to sever our dependence on those “unstable parts of the world” than to switch a major portion of our oil imports from dictatorships to a stable democratic neighbor, starting now?
Instead, the administration continues to squander taxpayer funds on “green energy” debacles such as Solyndra and the entire renewables/electric-car agenda - which, even in Mr. Obama’s plan, will only yield significant benefits in the far future.

...

There is much more.

This is the kind of criticism the President should face from now to November on his handling of energy. When the Republican candidates quit beating each other up they should get around to Obama's failed energy policies and the prospects of prosperity for the US if we unleash the private sector energy production.

Obama's auto bailout BS

2012-01-26T07:43:00.002-06:00

Charles Lane:

President Obama is proud of his administration’s role in rescuing the U.S. auto industry, via government-financed restructurings of General Motors and Chrysler.
But in campaigning for re-election on this aspect of his record, he has shown an unfortunate, and remarkably ungracious, tendency to distort the record of his predecessor.
Specifically, Obama told an Iowa audience Wednesday that “the administration before us, they had been writing some checks to the auto industry with asking nothing in return. It was just a bailout, straight -- straightforward. We said we’re going to do it differently.”
Uh, not exactly. President George W. Bush never gave the companies an unconditional bailout. He reluctantly loaned them money in return for what The Detroit Free Press described as “deep concessions” — and he did so in part so that Obama would not have to take office amid a full-blown industrial meltdown.
In fact, Bush had precious little time to deal with the fast-moving GM-Chrysler meltdown in the waning days of his term.
In December 2008, Congress, controlled by Democrats, punted the issue. At that point, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson persuaded Bush to lend the troubled car companies $13.4 billion to keep them alive until Obama took office, plus some additional weeks.
Not only did Bush aides consult with Obama’s team the entire time, but Paulson also pushed back against GOP free-market purists who were willing to let GM and Chrysler go into Chapter 11.
Amid the crisis, Bush said publicly that he would not dismiss Detroit’s pleas out of hand because “I feel an obligation to my successor.”
The loan was, indeed, conditional, including requirements for paying down debt, limiting executive compensation and reducing wages and benefits for autoworkers. It demanded detailed restructuring plans by Feb. 17, 2009. To be sure, there was an escape hatch: the deal allowed the companies to miss their restructuring targets as long as they provided the Treasury Department with a convincing rationale by March 31, 2009.
Still, everyone understood that Obama would be in the saddle by then, so it would be up to him, not Bush, whether to let the autos off the hook. GM and Chrysler could not afford to simply ignore the loan terms in the interim.

...

Obama has to be one of the most ungracious, unappreciative Presidents in history when it comes to appreciation of the efforts of his predecessor to ease the transition. Perhaps he has a partisan short term memory problem. He still blew with the auto bailouts, screwing the bond holders and making a gift tot he unions whose contracts were the main culprit in bringing the companies to ruin. His pretensions that the companies would not have gone through a Chapter 11 reorganization without the government are just ludicrous.

Obama's 'fairness' fraud

2012-01-26T07:16:00.001-06:00

Opinion Journal:

Remember the moment in 2008 when Charlie Gibson of ABC News asked Senator Barack Obama why he would support raising the capital gains tax even though "revenues from the tax increased" when the rate fell? Mr. Obama's famous reply: "I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness." Well, we were warned.
Here we are four years later, and President Obama on Tuesday night linked the term "fair" to U.S. tax and economic policy seven times. The U.S. economy is still hobbling out of recession, real family incomes are falling and 14 million Americans are unemployed, but Mr. Obama declared that his top priority is not to reform the tax code to promote growth and job creation. His overriding goal is redistributing income.

... The Buffett rule is rooted in the fairy tale that taxes on the wealthy are lower than on the middle class. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office notes that the effective income tax rate of the richest 1% is about 29.5% when including all federal taxes such as the distribution of corporate taxes, or about twice the 15.1% paid by middle-class families. (See "How Much the Rich Pay," January 23, 2012.)

This is because wealthy tax filers make most of their income from investments. Such income is taxed once at the corporate rate of 35% and again when it is passed through to the individual as a capital gain or dividend at 15%, for a highest marginal tax rate of about 44.75%.

This double taxation is one reason the U.S. has long had a differential tax rate for capital gains. Another reason is because while taxpayers must pay taxes on their gains, they aren't allowed to deduct capital losses (beyond $3,000 a year) except against gains in the current year. Capital gains also aren't indexed for inflation, so a lower rate is intended to offset the effect of inflated gains....

When it comes to taxes it is pretty clear that Obama has an overrated intellect. The guy is just too ignorant of economic consequences of his desires. That is being charitable, because the alternative would make him just too cynical to be believed.

Rove channels Axelrod

2012-01-26T07:07:00.000-06:00

Karl Rove:

In a rare moment of senior-presidential-adviser-to-senior-presidential-adviser telepathy, I overheard the private thoughts of David Axelrod as he prepared to appear on television Tuesday night, following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address:
Well, this is about as pleasant as a dentist appointment. Sure hope we're right that no matter what the question is, all I need to say is, "President Obama believes everyone should get a fair shot, everyone should do their fair share, and everyone should play by the same set of rules." Say it loud, say it proud, say it again and again.
Speaking of which, I love that line about "asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary." Sure, the top 10% pay 70% of federal income taxes, so billionaires already pay more taxes than their secretaries, and no one's really for doubling capital gains taxes. But it sounds so good, and stokes so much anger toward the rich.
I did enjoy how Barack went after Congress. A couple of times it looked like he was going to turn around and slap Boehner for obstructing his agenda. Hope it helps voters forget we Democrats controlled both chambers for two years and got pretty much everything we wanted. Now we have to pretend it never happened.
But do I really have to appear on Chris Matthews again? He's always interrupting me with "It's true" or "I agree." Good lord, he even calls me Barack's "much beloved senior strategist" and says that Obama has "done great things, he's put points on the board." Valerie loves that stuff—soaks it up—but it's too much for me. On the other hand, we have to fire up our true believers—and what better place than on Matthews?
Matthews toadies too much, but Candy Crowley challenges me more than I want—like pointing out that there are 1.7 million fewer jobs since Barack took over and dropping that CNN poll on me that says Romney leads by 13 points on who can best get the economy moving again.

...

There is much more. It is good stuff.

It attacks the current Obama narrative effectively. I am sure that Axelrod will want to avoid head to head discussions with Karl rove this fall.

Unions burn through $$$$$$$$$, but Walker leads

2012-01-26T06:24:00.000-06:00

Red States:

...In 2011, union bosses and other outside groups spent tens of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to recall six Republican state senators and are spending millions more now trying to recall Scott Walker.

The millions union bosses are now spending—paid for by union members throughout the country—has Democrats getting nervous that the money spent might strain union coffers too much prior to the November elections.According to the Hill:
Unions have made ousting Walker a top priority and are poised to spend heavily in Wisconsin. But Democratic strategists and some senior political experts within the labor movement believe the initiative should have been launched before the November presidential election.

Labor officials are also looking at investing resources in Indiana, a red-leaning state, to battle controversial right-to-work legislation backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R).But the Wisconsin fight will consume far more resources. This is a stomach-churning prospect for Democrats and their allies because the labor expenditures could come just months before the general election, when money will be needed for more important battlegrounds such as Ohio and Florida.
As union bosses continue to pour money into Wisconsin, union members nationwide may begin to wonder if, in fact that is money well spent—especially since, Scott Walker’s poll numbers are still ahead of his (potential) Democratic rivals....

It should cut into their ability to support Obama and other Democrats this fall. Even if it does not it is going to leave the unions with emptier wallets and in places like Wisconsin they will have a tough time refilling them because the state is no longer collecting dues for them.

What has to be really scary for the unions is the fact that Walker's reforms have made Wisconsin more solvent and more competitive at securing private sector jobs.

Misplaced optimism

2012-01-25T20:50:00.000-06:00

Washington Post:

Raid touted as another example of hallmark of future U.S. missions

Raids are transitory operations that cannot hope to replace persistence operations. Some conflicts require taking and holding real estate to deny it to an enemy and to keep an enemy from using that real estate to launch attacks of his own.

While we are obviously getting better with our raids they have limited applications and by themselves would make wars longer and more bloody.

Castro does not support GOP

2012-01-25T19:05:00.001-06:00

Guardian:

Fidel Castro attacks 'idiocy and ignorance' of US Republican race

For a guy who took a relatively prosperous country and led it into abject poverty to describe other politicians who oppose him as idiots and ignorance probably shows another reason why he failed. At least he created the world's largest antique car collection.

Good news for the state fairs

2012-01-25T18:58:00.003-06:00

Telegraph:

Fried food heart risk 'a myth'

Cajun deep fried turkey is also instantly more healthy.

Newt is wrong on immigration

2012-01-25T18:47:00.001-06:00

The Ticket:

Newt Gingrich mocks Romney for his ‘self deport’ immigration plan

States that have passed tough immigration laws have already seen massive self deportation. Recently Alabama saw its unemployment drop after jobs held by illegals were taken by citizens when the illegals left voluntarily. Self deportation works because the illegals will not stay if they cannot find work. I recall in Houston a chopper from a TV station was confused with one from ICE and it caused mass panic and people piling into their cars to leave. Newt is just wrong about the issue. Ironically, he has also supported self deportation in the past.

Even the BBC noticed the departure of illegals from South Carolina because of a lack of jobs and a tough new law.

Philippines may bring US back to counter China

2012-01-25T18:25:00.001-06:00

Washington Post:

Two decades after evicting U.S. forces from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines is in talks with the Obama administration about expanding the American military presence in the island nation, the latest in a series of strategic moves aimed at China.

Although negotiations are in the early stages, officials from both governments said they are favorably inclined toward a deal. They are scheduled to intensify their discussions Thursday and Friday in Washington prior to higher-level meetings in March. If an arrangement is reached, it would follow other recent agreements to base thousands of U.S. Marines in northern Australia and station Navy warships in Singapore.

Among the options under consideration are operating Navy ships from the Philippines, deploying troops on a rotational basis and staging more frequent joint exercises. Under each of the scenarios, U.S. forces would effectively serve as guests at existing foreign bases.

The sudden rush by many in the Pacific region to embrace Washington is a direct reaction to China’s rise as a military power and its assertiveness in staking claims to disputed territories, such as the energy-rich South China Sea.

“We can point to other countries: Australia, Japan, Singapore,” said a senior Philippine official involved in the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the deliberations. “We’re not the only one doing this, and for good reason. We all want to see a peaceful and stable region. Nobody wants to have to face China or confront China.”

The strategic talks with the Philippines are in addition to feelers the Obama administration has put out to other Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, about the potential for bolstering military partnerships.

...

China is making this an easy sell with their expansive claims in the South China Sea that go well beyond what is recognized as their territorial waters. It broadens our base from Guam and other small islands making it harder for China to concentrate its attacks on the US.

The strategic redeployment from the Middle East is almost breath taking in its speed. It is enough to make you think something is up with China.

Nagging

2012-01-25T11:18:00.001-06:00

WSJ:

Meet the Marriage Killer
It's More Common Than Adultery and Potentially As Toxic, So Why Is It So Hard to Stop Nagging?

Obama cuts and paste from previous speeches

2012-01-25T09:34:00.000-06:00

The RNC ad does a nice job of cutting and pasting the tapes of the last three SOTU speeches.

Obama's Big Green Albatross

2012-01-25T09:26:00.002-06:00

Holman Jenkins:

Barack Obama may believe a lot of things, but he probably doesn't believe the Sierra Club is key to his re-election. His decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline will cost him votes but he did it anyway.
We'll admit that Mr. Obama's global warming talk has often seemed to us perfunctory. Perhaps we mistook his lack of heat for a lack of conviction. He just released his first 2012 campaign ad and it's a paean to green energy. Maybe he's no less a believer than Al Gore, for all the problems this might seem to pose for what we thought we knew about our president.

...

The truth is, the theory may be popular, but the evidence has thus far eluded the tens of billions spent on climate science. The temperature data are so noisy that they reveal no pattern connecting rising CO2 in the industrial age with temperature trends. Some say because CO2 is a "greenhouse" gas, shut up, case closed. But the known relationship between carbon and climate doesn't actually indicate a big reason to worry.

To produce worrisome scenarios, climate models must posit "feedbacks" that magnify the impact of CO2 by 300% to 500%. A cynic notices that these models became especially popular in the '90s, when measured warming exceeded what could be attributed to CO2, so new fudge was needed to preserve CO2 as the culprit.

...

Oil, in Mr. Obama's world, is a "Republican" interest group; anything that's good for the oil industry is bad for the alternate power structure he's been trying to build with handouts and mandates for green energy.

Mr. Obama's relationship with global warming may indeed be perfunctory, but he understands the necessity of shibboleths to rationalize and justify the "investments" he's dishing out to manufacture a support base whose need for subsidies and regulatory favors jibes with the Democratic Party's need for donations. Oil sands are the "dirtiest" fossil energy, requiring great releases of CO2. To approve Keystone, then, not only would undermine his side's crucial shibboleths. It would compromise his own credibility as a leader who can be trusted to deny advantage to "Republican" industries and deliver it to "Democratic" ones....

But Big Green has been a big flop and Obama's rhetoric cannot cover up the failures of his "investments" in big green. Those failures are going to be a part of the election issues the Republicans will push in 2012 no matter who the nominee is. The public strongly favors the Keystone pipeline and Obama is already on the defensive about it.

Obama's state of decline

2012-01-25T09:07:00.001-06:00

Walter Russell Mead:

Liberalism on Life Support

Voters are rejecting it, and Obama's CPR is not working.

Obama's State of Denial

2012-01-25T09:03:00.000-06:00

Yuval Levin:

Toward the end of his State of the Union address, President Obama delivered a paragraph that was so blatantly absurd and self contradictory as to actually become clarifying—so incoherent that it shed a bright light on his thinking and his grave dilemma. It’s hard to believe he actually said this, but he did:
I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That’s why we’re getting rid of regulations that don’t work. That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program.
The examples he chose of course jump out as ludicrous: K-12 education in America is thoroughly dominated by the government, and the president has not proposed to make it less so. (And state governments, by the way, are also governments.) “Getting rid of regulations that don’t work” is certainly an unusual way to describe the regulatory agenda of this administration, which has involved a series of unprecedented delegations of authority to regulators (especially in health care and financial regulation) and which continues every day to spew forth an interminable array of costly, complex, and highly assertive rules that will give the federal government (and the executive agencies in particular) previously unimagined discretion over vast swaths of our economy. And “relies on a reformed private market, not a government program” is surely the most unabashedly dishonest and Orwellian way yet devised to describe Obamacare—a law that begins from the premise that the solution to our health care financing problems is to make the government an even greater provider and purchaser of health insurance, would spend well over a trillion dollars in the coming decade on yet another health care entitlement program and on the expansion of an unreformed Medicaid system, would micromanage the insurance industry in ways likely to make it even less efficient, would employ even heavier price controls in an otherwise unreformed Medicare system, and would raise half a trillion dollars in taxes on employment, investment, and medical research.

But even more galling than the examples was the very use of the Lincoln quote itself, which makes precisely the opposite point to the one made by the rest of the president’s speech. This speech offered a vision of a profoundly technocratic and activist government, with its hands in every nook and cranny of the nation’s economic life—a government guiding particular business decisions and nudging individual choices through just the right mix of incentives and rules to reach just the right balance between fairness and growth while designing the perfect website for job retraining programs and producing exactly the proper number of “high-tech batteries.” The president described the government’s bailout of the Detroit automakers as a roaring success and then said “What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.” If he thinks that all the tasks he laid out for government are things that people “cannot do better by themselves” then he must have a very high opinion of how well government can do things, or a very low opinion of how well people can do things by themselves, or (most plausibly) both.

The intensely activist tone of the speech also meant, of course, that no real attention could be paid to what was the dominant theme of our political debates over the past year: Our out-of-control deficits and debt....

...

There is more.

This is a good take down on Obama's performance. It is a response he probably thought he had defeated with his own rhetoric, but Levin makes clear how disingenuous that rhetoric was. Obama tries to roll his opponents arguments, but fails

Why the charges are bouncing off Newt

2012-01-25T08:50:00.001-06:00

Jonah Goldberg:

Newtzilla is back.

Six weeks ago, during the last Newt Gingrich surge, I wrote here that “conventional weapons are useless against Newtzilla. . . Everything bad about Gingrich — the flip-flops, the wives, the ego — is known. Once voters have convinced themselves they can overlook that stuff, it’s hard to change their minds simply by repeating it.”

For a while, it looked like the relentless artillery fire from Mitt Romney’s “super PAC” had felled the gray-maned leviathan in the cornfields of Iowa. But as anyone who has studied the oeuvre of Toho Studios (makers of more than 25 Godzilla films) knows, this is what usually happens to the heroic creature in the second act.

Godzilla always seems to be vanquished by King Ghidorah (aka Monster Zero) or some other nemesis, only to come back at the end, his atomic breath destroying all who stand in his way.
Newtzilla is a different kind ofkaiju (Japanese for “strange beast” or “giant monster”) but not that different. Like Godzilla, he has remarkable healing powers, allowing him to recover from charges that he wanted an open marriage and that he parasitically fed on Freddie Mac.

His own version of atomic breath is quite formidable. Just ask CNN’s John King and Fox News’ Juan Williams. He draws power from the popular resentment of the GOP establishment that he has been part of for decades and the widespread burning desire to make the press corps — conservative media included — march around the public square in dunce caps.

That the GOP elite is desperately trying to stop him only makes his support grow.

For most of the primary season, Gingrich insisted voters should support him because he’s a great debater and can defeat President Obama by challenging him to three seven-hour debates — or is that seven three-hour debates? It was tactically smart but also a bit silly. Obama can always decline. Also, beating a president in a debate doesn’t automatically translate into beating him in the Electoral College.

Newt’s changed the argument. “People actually misunderstand what’s going on,” he explained Saturday night after his South Carolina win. “It’s not that I am a good debater. It is that I know how to articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people.”

That’s the great thing about Gingrich: He can make describing himself as the divine manifestation of the vox populi sound self-deprecating. Still, he’s basically right. He’s managed to transform into a spokesman for all of the rank and file’s frustrations, insecurities and grievances as well as their hopes and ideals.

...

The negative campaign is not working this time just as it failed Newt with his Bain attacks on Romney. While the charges are more substantial, they are bouncing off Newt the way they bounced off Reagan when presented with a stark choice of supporting conservatism or liberalism. Romney is going to need a positive message or Newt is going to be the nominee.

Obama speech lacked Oomph

2012-01-25T08:41:00.003-06:00

John Podhoretz:

Barack Obama doesn’t have his mojo back. Last night’s State of the Union was so pedestrian that even its most provocative sections — proposing new taxes and new witch hunts — had little rhetorical power or oomph.

The candidate who suggested his victory in the Texas primary would be remembered as the moment at which the waters of the ocean would literally begin to recede has entirely lost his capacity to inspire — or to frighten his rivals — by his oratorical gifts alone.

Without that force, and without much of a record to run on, he instead turned the classic State of the Union laundry list into his own personal Amazon.com gift registry. If Congress wants to be nice to him and to the American people, he said, it will send him various bills with lots of goodies in them, and when they arrive, all he’ll have to do is sign for them.

Please. The president knows the horrifying reality of the mounting deficit and the unprecedented debt, and the nightmarish charts showing the public sector eating up the entirety of the national GDP over the next two decades. Even if he succeeds in ending the Bush tax cuts at the end of this year, the windfall to the Treasury will be eaten up instantly by existing demands.

And yet, he proposed no fewer than six new federal projects in the first half-hour of the speech. You get the sense that even the liberal congressmen and senators standing and applauding have no real expectation that any of those proposals will ever, or could ever, become law.

The president whose signature pieces of legislation will cost the Treasury more than $2 trillion — and who did not succeed in creating an explosion of economic growth — is in a terrible position to propose new spending plans. He already tried it last September in his “pass this bill now” speech, and that effort was stillborn.

...

There is more.

Since my racing sailboat was named Oomph, Pohoretz point struck home. Obama was in fantasy land with a wish list and not practical programs to get us out of debt and get the economy moving. He is a man divorced from reality when it comes to economics. His millionaire tax proposal is nonsense on stilts designed to appeal to the envy crowd.

Newt, conservatism on a roll

2012-01-25T08:33:00.001-06:00

Aaron Gardner:

With Speaker Gingrich having won South Carolina, and now polling ahead of Gov. Romney in Florida and nationally, there is one question that keeps popping up. What is it about Newt Gingrich that conservatives voters find appealing? Rush Limbaugh has at least part of the answer:
To those of you in the Republican base, this isn’t complicated. Newt is winning. He is on a momentum roll here because he can articulate conservatism, that and he’s willing to take it to Obama. I have said for the longest time that whoever does that, whoever articulates conservatism with passion, with love, cause that’s love of country, with good cheer. Conservatism is inclusive. Somebody who can articulate it happily, proudly, with good cheer cannot be beat.
Rush is right, Newt articulates conservatism. He does it very well and he rarely misses an opportunity to do so in grandiose fashion. This in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal. In all honesty, articulating conservatism isn’t all that hard, especially when our focus is leaning more and more towards conservative populism.

...

Gardner finds a redemption theme in Newt's latest levitation. He is certainly appealing to conservatives who do not trust Romney. Romney is going to have to overcome that distrust and just pounding on Newt's apostasies probably will not be enough. He is going to have to have a positive conservative message hat shows he can take on Obama on the issues and prevail.

Ninth Circus tries to shutdown logging with mud puddle rule

2012-01-25T08:25:00.001-06:00

David Freddoso:

If jobs are on President Obama's mind, he should care about the U.S. logging industry. In 46 of the 50 states, forestry ranks in the top 10 manufacturing industries. It employs about 2.5 million Americans and pays $87 billion in wages annually. Its annual sales are $230 billion, including exports of roughly $35 billion.
Those jobs and that revenue now face a man-made crisis -- more specifically, a Big Green environmentalist-made crisis. Obama's administration could weigh in on either side.
For 35 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has understood silviculture -- the act of harvesting trees, as opposed to processing them -- to be an agricultural activity, not a manufacturing one. The distinction is vital because of particulars in the Clean Water Act. Runoff from "point-source" manufacturing facilities (including saw mills) is closely regulated. Permits are required, and an involved monitoring and remediation process is prescribed.
On the other hand, the "natural runoff" from forest roads -- basically mud puddles that accumulate in ditches -- has never required such permits or monitoring. It is cared for through what is known as "best management practices."
But in the case Georgia-Pacific West Inc. v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals turned this long-standing rule on its head. The court said that the EPA has been misinterpreting its own rules for 35 years, and that, in fact, forest roads must be regulated in similar fashion to factories and power plants.
The Ninth Circuit decision, if upheld, would crush forestry in the Pacific Northwest. As Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon put it, "One court would shut down forestry on private, state and tribal lands by subjecting it to the same, endless cycle of litigation."
The many millions of dollars needed to obtain EPA permits ($160 million in Washington state alone) are actually the easy part. The hard part begins with the monitoring and remediation of mud puddles along tens of thousands of miles of forest roads.
It ends in the courtroom, where the Clean Water Act's citizen lawsuit provision would allow anyone to drag foresters, landowners or local governments any time a puddle is improperly neglected.
The Clean Water Act has historically empowered well-funded Big Green environmental groups to tie up industrial activity in court. Other provisions of federal law force taxpayers to pay them any time they succeed.
The Ninth Circuit's ruling could empower them to shut down entire forests and many livelihoods. Imagine trying to do business, knowing that at any moment, a well-funded group of litigious environmentalists -- like the plaintiffs in this case -- could shut you down.

...

This is another example of liberal job killers and a liberal court that lacks common sense. Not only does the logging industry provide millions of jobs, it also provides materials for home building and other products that are important to our economy. They are much more important than mud puddle regulation. Congress should also look at repealing parts of the Clean Water Act that lead to this kind of judicial abuse. They could start by not allowing Big Green to profit from this kind of litigation.

Oil companies not liable for dead birds

2012-01-25T08:15:00.002-06:00

Crowell.com:

In a decision with broad implications, a federal judge in North Dakota recently dismissed three criminal cases brought under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by the federal government as part of a targeted enforcement action on the "North Dakota oil patch." See United States v. Brigham Oil & Gas L.P., -- F. Supp. 2d --, 2012 WL 120055 (D.N.D. Jan. 17, 2012). The federal government argued that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act should be broadly interpreted to impose criminal liability for actions that indirectly result in a protected bird's death. The U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota rejected this sweeping interpretation of the Act and dismissed criminal Informations filed against three oil and gas companies on whose properties protected birds had allegedly been found dead. The court's reasoning is applicable to numerous legal activities that may indirectly kill migratory birds, including oil and gas activities, wind energy operations, and mining activities.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act, passed in 1918, criminalized a long list of actions relating to migratory birds such as "pursue," "hunt," "capture," "sell," "purchase," and "barter." 16 U.S.C. § 703. The pivotal issue in the case was the proper interpretation of the words "kill" and "take" in that list. The court interpreted them narrowly to mean actions taken with the intent to kill or take a bird, not actions that merely happen to kill or take a bird. In support of this interpretation, the court relied on the plain language of the statute, precedent from the Eighth and Ninth Circuits narrowly construing the statute,see Newton County Wildlife Ass'n. v. U.S. Forest Serv., 113 F.3d 110, 115-16 (8th Cir. 1997); Seattle Audubon Soc'y v. Evans, 952 F.2d 297 (9th Cir. 1991), as well as other district court cases in which courts have declined to impose criminal liability for legal activities that incidentally resulted in bird deaths. See United States v. Ray Westall Operating Inc., No. CR 05-1516-MV, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130674, at *1 (D.N.M. Feb. 25, 2009); United States v. Chevron USA, Inc., No. 09-CR-0132, 2009 WL 3645170 (W.D. La. Oct. 30, 2009).

...

The court reached the proper decision, but the case shows how far this administration's hostility to oil and gas production will go in trying to criminalize their existence. It demonstrates the hostile environment they are creating for the production of oil and gas. The case makes a mockery of Obama's pronouncements bragging about increased oil and gas production under his administration.