The Wall Street Journal describes a NATO agreement to expand a missile defense shield to cover all member countries in Europe. “Speaking to reporters on the summit’s sidelines, President Barack Obama said the allies had for the first time ‘agreed to develop a missile-defense capability that’s strong enough to cover all NATO European territory and populations, as well as the United States.’” This announcement came as the administration pushed an arms control treaty with Russia and discovered a new threat from North Korea.
The shield agreement will set up communications links to various missile-defense systems the allies, including the U.S., already have or are putting place. It will also set up a command and control network along the lines of that currently protecting NATO airspace.
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The shield is being extended as the administration tries to get the Senate to approve the START arms-control agreement. The agreement aims to cap U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals at lower levels. The obvious benefit of the treaty would be to allow the U.S. to concentrate defensive assets against other threats. But START has been criticized largely on whether it can be robustly verified. Some doubts remain. Pete Hoekstra has suggested that consideration of the START treaty should wait until the newly elected senators are installed.
The developments suggest a pivot in U.S. concerns away from an attack by Russia to an attack by newly emerging nuclear powers. In the Pacific, the obvious threat is North Korea. The New York Times says that evidence of additional North Korean nuclear facilities means that Pyongyang has not given up its nuclear ambitions.
“This validates a long-standing concern we’ve had with regard to North Korea and its enrichment of uranium,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.”
The new plant, whose modernistic technology, rich collection of centrifuges and up-to-date control room astonished Dr. Hecker, did not exist in the spring of 2009, just before international weapons inspectors were thrown out of the country. While North Korea has already tested two atomic bombs and produced other nuclear weapons, those were manufactured from the spent fuel harvested from a nuclear reactor, not from enriched uranium.
The New York Times itself detected Pyongyang’s uranium enrichment efforts — the “second path” to nuclear weapons aside from plutonium — in late 2009. However, Wired reports that the U.S. suspected that North Korea was on the second path as early as 2002. The NYT wrote:
SEOUL — North Korea’s announcement on Friday that its experiment in enriching uranium is at “completion stage” marks the strongest signal yet from Pyongyang that it is racing to develop a second method of making nuclear bombs. … For years, officials in Washington and elsewhere have debated whether North Korea was pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program. After years of denial, North Korea announced in April that it intended to enrich uranium.
“Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North’s secretive nuclear program, said the program had been built in secret and with remarkable speed.” He described North Korea’s uranium enrichment facilities as “stunning.” The fact that the signal was purposely sent by North Korea to the press in advance of a U.S. announcement of these stunning facilities suggests that either the administration wanted to keep hidden what North Korea intended to showcase or that it was genuinely surprised.
Reacting to these developments, the State Department dispatched a diplomat to Asia to talk to allies about the situation.
The U.S. State Department dispatched its North Korea envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to discuss the development with North Korea’s neighbors. He will arrive in Seoul on Sunday night local time for meetings on Monday with South Korean diplomats, then visit Japan and China later in the week.
Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association called the North Korea development a “tipping point” and urged the administration to ramp up its “engagement.” He characterized each previous crisis as a ploy by North Korea to move towards normalization and improve trade, which have led to agreements with verifiable constraints.
The START treaty might have made sense when there were only two significant nuclear powers. It makes no sense at all when there are multiple hostile states with nukes.
Do I recall dems and libs howling about SDI back in the day?
There were two problems. It could never work. It would upset the Russians because, working, it reduced their opportunity to decapitate us.
Yeah, like THAT’s gonna make a difference this time – not! Besides, no matter what the VP sez, if Teh One is an intellectual then I’m a Nigerian Scam winner.
wretchard, you used the headline but you left out the punchline, that Obama was against SDI as a candidate because it was “unproven”, and suddenly he’s Mr. Missile Shield.
And of course yes, he’s in the habit of using “IT’S A CRISIS!” instead of producing bills which can be read or successfully implemented. To that extent Obasmus is and always shall be, “Mr. Unproven”.
OT and outrageously self-aggrandizing, but it’s exciting, at least to me. This morning Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit linked to two of my sci-fi novels currently on Amazon, Almost Paradise and Soliloquy, and I wanted to share my euphoria with people I consider my friends. And now back to the real world and the START treaty.
There’s a bunch of “Almost Paradise” titles on Amazon. How did you deal with the issue of similar titles? Yours is this one I think.
With respect to the main topic, I think President Obama is going to realize, one way or the other, that the security framework he campaigned on will have to be modified and adapted as a practical matter. What is unclear is whether he still regards his basic security worldview as a sound one. In other words, whether his framework is failing only in the exceptions and not as a rule.
After spending an afternoon looking through the histories of the Malayan 1941-42 campaign, it was striking how many of its failures were rooted the completely wrong mental model of the British defenders. The adaptations left the basic flawed assumptions intact to the end. The “lessons learned” never questioned the basic errors of the model.
Those who fought the following campaigns, could, however, do so. They could re-think issues from first principles. One of the most liberating aspects of a fiasco is that it absolves successors of the need to remain loyal to an idea they still cannot reject overtly, but which has proven fatal. Therefore they reject it in fact but in a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” intellectual fashion.
The repeated failures of Obama’s ideas are probably based on the basic shortcomings of his worldview, which reflects the ‘enlightened’ outlook of much of Western Europe. It’s a crock and events, I think, will prove it so.
The West is still the stage of tinkering at the edges and not yet at the point where it is willing to ask itself: maybe we have got this whole problem fundamentally wrong. The hope is that they can evolve out of the errors and not wait for a sudden and painful awakening.
I shall adopt the comments of my betters: RUFKM?
6/wretchard
Was unaware of there being a bunch of similar titles. You have to give your book the title you think best fits and let it go from there, but obviously you cannot call your book Wuthering Heights. If your question is how does someone find your book on Amazon, you have to go by author. Amazon Books search Walter Erickson Almost Paradise will get you there. Amazon search Walter Erickson will get you a bunch of Walter Ericksons, including my four currently listed.
Walt
i guess this means that we aren’t going to get his nuclear weapon free world any time soon then. stunning.
Obama he be quite adrift
In spite he be God’s given gift
To all mankind on this green earth
Who longed for his appointed birth
He think he know what all is what
When all he know is diddly squat
He want the Russian treaty now
He know not why, he know not how
Election night he taste defeat
He think he not ever be beat
And now he act like he be miffed
No way to act for God’s great gift
The ‘go to’ place for information on North Korea is the blog ‘One Free Korea’ (http://freekorea.us/).
A recent entry is ‘U.N. Shocker! China Helps North Korea Cheat on Sanctions’ (http://www.freekorea.us/2010/11/19/un-shocker-china-helps-north-korea-cheat-on-sanctions/).
Actually, I wish Wretchard would place the website on his blogroll.
Obama is a bleeping F.R.E.A.K.
Back in the 1980′s the young, ambitious Senator Al Gore built his reputation on becoming one of Washington’s expert policy wonks on arms control treaties. That was no small issue in the day, rather it positioned Al Gore as a forward looking, progressive maven. I betcha that the pre-1991 Barack Obama was cut of the same cloth and travelled the same political horses.
The fall of the Soviet Union derailed all of that. Gore retreated to write “Earth in the Balance” and pick up the clarion call of environmentalism that sustains him till this day. It became a major submovement among the young Cliontonites flocking to Washington in the 1990′s, all of whom are still there, seething, since 2000. The political investment in environmentalism is simply astounding if you’ve never been privy to inside the beltway chatter. You might rightly guess environmentalism is a big deal from afar, but you may not appreciate the iron-grip it has on discourse in Washington till you’ve seen it up close and utterly ridiculous.
A huge swath of Washington intellectuals are completely clueless and untethered from any restraint issued by reality.
Barack truly is a cut above them. Joe Biden et al. are not joking when they describe Obama as a deep genius. Unfortunately, what they understand as a deep genius is what everybody else understand as a man who backed the wrong horse and seeks cover. Cap and Trade is not defensible in the end, neither is righteously bankrupting the coal companies.
So, to where does the deep genius pull back? His previous “deep genius” position: arms control. Did you laugh your head off when Barack Obama pulled up to the Kremlin, stepped up the microphone, and bravely announced, “The Cold War mentalities are over!” All this, only to slink into negotiating START III? Is that like Rocky IIIVX!?
What must be really troubling for Obama is that Washington chatter isn’t with him on this. Lots of time has fallen between the fall of the Soviet Union until now, and Obama’s own infantrymen do not understand what’s their fallback position. The arms control moves have not inspired a lockstep motion among them, they baffle about in Obama’s wake still having no strong opinion beyond carbon reduction numbers. That’s the eye they are trained to, not warhead numbers.
It’s a discordant set of investments, and Obama does not realize that the prior arms control investment has been a wash. Amazingly, we have President of the United States who is that stupid!
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-promises-us-death-thousand-cuts/story?id=12204726
OT…
Now AQ comes public and verifies my speculation that the systemic threat to our airfreighters was designed as FITNA.
It’s a war of economic direct action.
To go so public with this intel tells me that AQ never really wanted to down the planes. They wanted us to chase our tails. If dozens of airfreighters fell from the sky all over Europe and America the counter-blow would destroy the ummah.
Provoking just a limited response is what AQ wants.
That’s where 911 jumped the rails. OBL grossly underestimated our counter moves. Having us even more deeply involved in ‘adjusting’ middle east culture and diplomacy cannot be what he really intended.
As for getting the entire ummah enraged, engaged and fighting America: that really would be the end of the ummah. The’d get the shintoist treatment.
——-
WRT the treaty: it was written by Putin, not Clinton/Obama. What else do you have to know?
We already threw the Poles and Czechs under the bus.
With this treaty, we’d be throwing ourselves under the treads.
Color me cynical but I am very suspicious of any such proposal from the Obama administration. If implemented I think it will mean nothing more than the transfer of American technology to others who really don’t mind sharing it with our enemies under the table. And I am especially wary of Turkey these days.
The treaty has been on the shelf for almost 20 years until suddenly an Obama is in office and a Putin likes it all of a sudden.
Suddenly there’s a rush to ratify, but no one can explain what has suddenly changed.
((Here let me insert this timeline and point especially to March 09, 2010, when this writer of the double-sneaky nation-backstabbing USA banking laws which are killing us, joined the team))
So, perfectly understandably, Senator Kyl wants to see the latest negotiating transcripts. He wants to see what’s changed. But somehow he can’t see them. So he wants a few more months, until someone will let him see the transcripts, so he’ll know what was and wasn’t promised.
So, with thermonuclear-weaponized MIRV’d ICBMs the topic, a few more months matters so much? With already nearly 20 years already on the treaty odometer?
Decades during which the treaty has been informally observed well enough to have kept the pot from boiling over? By informal agreement of the two sides –an informal which can continue forever if the two parties wish? –an informal which leaves BOTH sides (not just the single-party government side) free to quickly react to what the other side might decide to do?
Obama may not know a missile from a popsicle, but shirley he can see that the things have kept world war at bay for 65 years at a cost so low it’s not even in the frame of what armies cost, let alone war, let alone defeat in war.
But Obama says ratification is absolutely critical right now immediately! Hillary and the Brent Scowcroft wing of the GOP Rockefellerites say our national security is at stake!
But…yet…nevertheless…
Senator Kyl can’t have a look at the negotiation transcripts?
Senator Kyl can’t have a look at the negotiation transcripts?
***
Wonder which side of the debate Goergi Soros is on?
bl @ 17: Obama may not know a missile from a popsicle, but shirley he can see that the things have kept world war at bay for 65 years
Shirley says that war does not have to be kept at bay, war is the white man’s greed at play, best kept away by taking away their toys.
BTW, for those not so much into atomics…
IF you have Pu239 weapons…
And you want the Super Bomb, aka Hydrogen Bomb…
Then you want an enrichment program for U235…
Using U235 dramatically increases the performance of the Super Bomb as against U238…
There really is no comparison.
——-
Plutonium becomes an initiator for a hyper-compressed Uranium detonation = the Super Bomb.
So this latest Uranium enrichment project = Kim’s hunt for the H-Bomb.
——
One is reminded of Star Trek’s “A Private Little War” wherein Klingons ( Beijing’s PLA ) feed weapons technology at a hyper tempo to a primitive power ( Kim’s family business ) so as to game their rival the Federation ( the West ) into actually believing that the primitives are a bunch of hyper-techno brainiacs.
North Korea is but an adjunct to China’s imperial impulse. Everything we’ve faced with Shintoist Japan is now echoed in Red China.
Her military has entirely lost its tether.
WWIV is a conflict between Shame/Honor inculturation and rational thought.
It’s going to be an uphill fight.
Sen. Kyl wants a few billion more for nukes, and to keep Frank Gaffney and co happy in Washington’s anti-Russia Demintern lobby (gotta keep paying for those junkets to Tblisi, mind you, cuz the Georgians certainly aren’t). Buddy’s question of which side Soros is on kind of misses the point. Soros is always on the side that makes him the most money and gives him insider intel before his business rivals, whether it’s payment for services rendered in fronting NGOs for security services, or something else.
That’s all this brouhaha is about, other than lingering ‘never trusted those guys, never will’ sentiment in the GOP. But if I’m not mistaken, even a majority of Republicans polled say they’re for it. I suppose it’s always how the question is worded, or perhaps foreign policy is an area where it’s easy for elites to impose their views.
Anyway, the real rubber meets the road moment won’t be START, but when we’re going to get real with the missile defense system and how open it will be to the Russians. If we include Moscow and not Beijing (as I would support) then Oceania will have started to ally with Eurasia against Eastasia. And Eastasia won’t like it, anymore than they’re happy with Oceania inflating away the value of its currencies which Eastasia holds. Which brings us back to Blert’s comment above.
Personally, I’m praying WWIII stays confined to the realm of money printing and Chinese ambassadors dissing the Fed and Chinese rating agencies downgrading U.S. Treasuries. I would hate after 100 million people dying the last time all Keynesian solutions failed (World War II) for us to once again turn to War Keynesianism as the ‘solution’ to kill off a good chunk of mankind, inflate and bomb out the debts, and start over.
Senor Equis, the Most Interesting Man in the World
I’m confused here.
Is this the time to have a NIE leak about the Norks having put their program on hold four years ago?
Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association said that “…such talks are needed not only to clarify the costs of further defiance, but also to highlight the benefits of cooperation.
And what, pray tell, are the – meaningful – costs of further defiance? And having isolated itself from the rest of the world and deliberately starved it’s own people, who in their right mind could think that the DPRK could care one whit about cooperation?
People such as Daryl Kimball live in an ideological fantasy world upon which no facts must intrude.
Those of you who want some more Norkie pron, let me send you to http://www.kpajournal.com/
We (or at least Obama and his team) need some outside-the-box thinking.
We had a choice on the terrorist threat to airplanes — no weapons on board, or every passenger armed. We blew that one.
Now we have a choice on missile defense.
(1) Lots of investment in trigger-itchy anti-nukes. (That just the old Type I/Type II error in statistics — we will always have to set the system so that it is more likely to activate on a false alarm than to fail to activate on a real incoming).
(2) Or we go with SAD — Single Assured Destruction.
SAD — In the event of a nuclear attack on US territory from any direction, the following announced list places will be turned to glass, automatically. Initial list would be North Korea, Pakistan, Iran.
Want to get off the SAD list? Then prove to the world that you have got rid of your nuclear weapons, and that you have dismantled the capacity to manufacture any more.
By the way, Western governments are bankrupt. Anything we spend on building missile defenses will have to come out of pensions, welfare, schools, hospitals, roads, and subsidized “green” technologies. Does that make the decision any easier?
Walt @ #5: Wow! Not only do you rule on the ex tempore poetry, but you write bookz! I am an inveterate sci fi junkie and will have to check out your oeuvre. Thanks for being so danged creative.
On the topic: we’ve been gamed. Completely. Are we surprised? As usual, W nails the problem, which is largely in the mind. Our capabilities in the world are based on our model of the world. If the opponent can present false shadows on our screens, we will do exactly the wrong thing, and not even know it. How much have we dis-invested in real intel over the past decades? And whatever our intellectual capital may be, how much of it can be effectively deployed under the current leadership?
RUFKM is the new watchword.
Mr. X…
WWII was entirely started by your good buddy Stalin hooking up with Hitler, August 23, 1939, setting that tyrant loose upon the West.
Not holding to his commitment to invade Poland, Stalin told Hitler his army was too slow to mobilize, Stalin set himself up as the FINAL Europen Hitlerian target.
SPARE US your malign impressions of history, your ignorance of co-initiation of WWII — and of Lend Lease martial aid.
As in WWI, Russia knows how to start/ expand conflict. Yet it NEVER quite works out — for the Rodina.
Can Russians ever learn?
Kinuachdrach @ #24: Agree completely. SAD is the right way forward. A cheap way to demonstrate that we are just crazy enough to generate a really bad hair day for these wannabe’s. It’s their choice; and it’s their problem.
That’s the essence of it: don’t spend to defend. Leverage your assets, make the other side sweat.
We already know North Korea can make rather bad plutonium nukes. But making nukes from plutonium is a lot harder a challenge than making them from enriched uranium, which is relatively easy.
My question, to anyone out there who might know, is what would a nuke be like in power that is set off by a uranium bomb that is covered with a plutonium jacket?
North Korea already has plutonium. What happens when they get bomb grade uranium?
Tcobb…
You’ve got it all backwards…
Kim & Co HAVE perfected designs in hand. We’ve even intercepted them in Vienna on their way to Iran.
Kim’s only problems revolve around trying to build EVERYTHING himself.
He’s woken up.
Kim is IMPORTING ( from Red China ) the critical missing technology required to take his atomics the whole way.
This goes against his prior philosophy of self-production of EVERYTHING.
This importation policy is exactly why — overnight — Nork’s atomic program has leapt forward.
…a leetle bit o history can’t doo no harms
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=4135
Can’t recall who said it, but the normal progression of a new idea is:
1. Impossible, incredible, infeasible, will never happen.
2. Could happen but would be a bad idea.
3. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad but we still don’t need it.
4. Normal, reasonable, a good idea, a natural development and we always knew it.
So missile defense has progressed from a bunch of nuts fooling around with things best left alone, to a potentially harmful idea to be sabotaged by the Left at every turn (and I could tell you about some of them turns) to a cash cow for every scientist who could not think of a good reason to fund his personal empire (can tell you about some of that, too) to being embraced by the very people who decried it as a certain step to destruction.
The Europeans opposed SDI as being a way to Fortess America. Now, they want their MTV.
And note that we would not have come this far had we been overworried about treaties. As it was, the airborne laser missile defense concept I was involved with in the early 80′s with was killed by the ABM Treaty.
What blert said in #29, i have to say, was my thought also. means that PRC is not –as many have suspected all along –not as entirely tethered to protection of its Dollar hoard as i’m afraid too many have overconfidently believed. It has made an ideal misdirection, tho, perfectly suited to us dollar-hypnotized yankees –or to the believed-in caricature of us dollar-mad yankees.
Mr X, without getting lost in the weeds of such minor-to-the-masses individuals as Frank Gaffney being the mover of continental –uh, movements, let me throw in a quick note re the simple problem with this sort of treaty: the gov’t which cannot act without a public debate between adversarial parties in full reportage by the info-seeking press, is at a distinct disadvantage to the government which can simply ”do” what it wants –secretly, and keep it that way.
Now, this problem can be over-ridden if the latter government has (with witnesses to its goodwill) acted to build trust and credibility by deliberately not using its advantage to its advantage.
Not that this is impossible, but given human nature it is improbable, and we –the world –have copious evidence of just such fallibilty (see my wnd link, just for ‘start’ers –wot a nasty surprise, in event of war in Europe, those Czech SS-23s would have been!).
So, either USA needs to go ‘authoritarian’ single-party, only luckily governed by consent, or Americans will always have to be, in the long light of Alger Hiss and follow-ons –a little suspicious of momentous strategic national security treatys with said other party, and even, if we can learn anything from experience, go so far as to keep the gimlet eye on our own “arms control” syndicate.
As such, we have to depend on the Senator Kyls of the world to lend us a hand –really, for the sake of peace, the peace of life, not the peace of death.
#29 blert
If North Korea could import any kind of technology they want there would be no need for them to build facilities for making bomb grade uranium. Except for uranium jackets on hydrogen bombs neither the USA or Russia depends upon uranium for their nukes. When you can do better with plutonium its stupid and very expensive to use bombs that are set off by uranium. You only use uranium cores when you have no other options.
If North Korea had full access to Russian or Chinese technology they wouldn’t be bothering with enriching uranium to bomb grade material. Plutonium would do better and be cheaper if they had the technology to use it.
Nope. Thermonuclear weapons get most of their energy from burning the common U235, because they produce fast neutrons. No need to enrich. Furthermore, Pu makes a better primary.
NK is probably enriching Uranium because the technology for making a U-235 (HEU) bomb is a lot easier than that using Pu, even though HEU is much, much harder to obtain.
And I agree with the poster above that this is imported technology. The Axis of Evil still has two members who cooperate closely on nuclear and missile technology. Iran has oil to trade to NK for U-235, and nobody is going to attack NK to stop their U-235, because they already hold South Korea, and to a lesser extent, Japan hostage.
What happens when iranazoids start blowing up NK infidels?
Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association called the North Korea development a “tipping point” and urged the administration to ramp up its ‘engagement’. He characterized each previous crisis as a ploy by North Korea to move towards normalization and improve trade, which have led to agreements with verifiable constraints.
Friend friend they are only waving a gun at you because they are shy and seeking to have normal mutually beneficial relations. Why don’t you ask your daughter to bring him a fresh drink?
Men like Mr Kimball should not be allowed in the back door even. They should be made to wear stripped suits and chased down the street with dogs.
#34. SChaser
When you said “the common U235″ I think you really meant to say “the common U238.”
Here’s a question: A man comes into the emergency room with an infected toe. He has a high white blood cell count and a fever. What do you do?
Well, if he is a young and healthy man you might give him some antibiotics and send him home. But what if he is a diabetic? And what if he is allergic to the antibiotic you wanted to prescribe?
So three days later he returns with pain in his calf, a swollen leg, an even higher fever, and red streaks going up his leg. He also is having some shortness of breath. Fortunately you took a culture from his first visit. You check the results and see he has MRSA — methacillin resistant staphlococcus aureus. So what do you do now?
Well, perhaps you admit him to the hospital for intensive intravenous antibiotics. Perhaps you call in a surgeon to see whether there is an abscess. The thought of amputation crosses your mind, but you are a great fan of “Lonesome Dove,” and Gus is your favorite character and Gus drew a gun on the doctor who wanted to amputate his other leg (the first was already gone).
So you admit the patient, who indeed was a diabetic, and start heavy duty IV antibiotics. The patient agrees with this treatment and his family is terrified of the possibility of an amputation.
But three days later the patient is even worse. Now the infection has advanced to his groin. Your surgeon colleague says that a radical amputation is now necessary. The entire leg and half the pelvis is going to have to go.
But after the operation the patient is still doing poorly. He now has MRSA bacterial endocarditis. Even if he lives, he may need to get a replacement valve after recovery.
While we don’t want to go around chopping off toes for little reason, sometimes the most aggressive initial treatment is the most conservative one.
TCobb… Yes, my bad. The common uranium isotope is U-238.
inside the batman a walt erickson wants out
batman,
I thought you dealt with ugly secretions (or is it accretions) from the neck up.
Speaking of which there is an oozing orifice on the last thread. The BC is either being tagged teamed or one overachiever is using multiple masks. Is someone about to invade Georgia again?
f4/35; damn good question –could it be that a “just cause” is sometimes ‘just ’cause you gotta say something‘?
anyhoo, the NoKo jiHad might suddenly explode in a zombie jamboree ?
***
BftP/41; i’ve been noticing a lot of elderly white men suddenly appearing in the media –medicare PSAs suddenly lingering on them, Peter Lewis’ (see who he is halfway down here) Progressive Insurance ads are suddenly featuring them, and of course closer to home here, where one of the early fusillades of snark included a ref to the 2012 election. Has the word gone out across Obamaland that older retired white men are starting to act up and need –before that 2012 election –a tad of stroking? Jeez i guess i could’ve used a better word –oh well, i’m old too –120.
Walt,
Congrats on the books, and the Insta-plug.
Now, if I can only find the time to read them…
Cheers,
L3
“But if I’m not mistaken, even a majority of Republicans polled say they’re for it.”
Mr. X, it was a bent poll. The question was “Do you favor reducing nuclear arms? To which most normal people will answer “yes”. That IS NOT what START does. START lowers the number of ready to fire weapons from 2200 to 1500. The USA has it’s full allocation of 2200. Russia has about 1200, which is all they can afford. So START allows Russia to build rebuild more weapons while requiring the USA to dismantle 700. If the question had been written like the treaty was, the response would have been different.
My question is “What does the treaty do for America? After all, aren’t treaties suppossed to advance the Interests of the USA?
Since when has parity in any military field been in America’s interest? What about all those American that have died over the centuries to make the USA stronger then any other nation on this planet? Doesn’t this treaty spit on their graves? Russia wants the treaty because it makes them equal with the USA in nuclear weapons. They CANNOT gain that equality on their own. If they could they would have 2200 nukes ready to go today. So this treaty gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
Think Russia isn’t the enemy? hen why did they violate the NPT to help Iran build nuclear weapons? Why did the invade Georgia, an ally of the USA. Georgia sent troops to Iraq. Germany and France didn’t.
Russia violated both the UN Charter and the CSI treaty when they invaded Georgia.
Hill-de-beast is pushing the big lie when she says we need this treaty to verify Russian agreement. That is a bunch of hooie, to quote Col. potter. First the USA has been counting Russian nukes a ‘ell of a lot longer then START has been around. WE did it from ’49 to ’96 without any treaty. That is over 50 years. And for most of that time got better numbers then we did during the last START.
It is a fact that Russia cheats on the treaties it signs. Going back longer then the USA has existed. So it’s a given that they will cheat on the new START. The questions are will we catch them and will we do anything if we do?
START is purely political. It is like Chamberlains “Peace in our time”.
More fiction then fact. First it only counts weapons ready to go that are considered ‘Strategic”. Thousandss of weapons on both sides are not counted because they are considered ‘tactical’, None of the weapons stored in Europe are counted. The only US Navy nukes counted are those on the boomers. The sub killing nukes are considered ‘tactical’. I guess if that sub is tied up to a pier, that city would be considered collateral damage.
START is both fiction AND treason.
L3, let me channel walt here:
“I suggest BUY the damn things now and worry about readin’ ‘em whenever”
#42. buddy larsen
As they say, you are only as old as you feel. As for myself, I truly hate being 4000 years old.
Tc/46; jeeeez, man –no sheet –thas gettin UP thar –say high to King Tut for me wouldja?
***
s/44; i’m having a hard time finding it, but somewhere a few months ago, buried in a blizzard of soothing rhet about “New Start” was a quick few words about an ad hoc add-in concerning a russian site that would not be on the list to be inspected.
Elsewhere i’ve read of much NATO and USA concern –some few years ago but inexplicably dying out –about the southern Urals Yamantau Mountain Complex. I’m wondering if 1 + 1 = 1, but can find little definitive on the web so far.
some stuff gets pretty close.
…anyhoo, if “New Start” –rechristened after Obama’s itty-bitty tweaks, as they are presented to us (itty bitty tweaks that got Russia to jump-ratify and keeps Putin and Medvedyev in the pix grinning like possums eatin’ doo doo, as they say down souf) –has surrendered a freebie nuclear weapons research, fabrication, storage, & launch site inside a 400 sq mile underground city capable of supporting 60,000 people, with a multiplex of brand new heavy rail line spurs connecting to the national infrastructure, then it was most likely because the Russian side insisted upon the exception, because they knew it would be granted, and this insistance was in all liklihood because the Russian negotiators hope to finish construction in time for the All-Central Asia trans-regional Tiddliwinks Championships, and reasonably want no interruptions.
***
BTW, that ex-congresswoman from California’s 10th District, that was tapped March 09 2010 to enter the “New Start” itty-bitty tweak process, is referred to by FireDogLake’s hard-left but not stoopid Jane Hamsher as “Ellen Tauscher (D) BofA” –
Walt, I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth setting up a Walt site with your books on it and FB and Twitter groups to go with it as well.
Walt, please see comment #91 on the previous thread, the second point of view thread. i made a paltry little nothing joke at your expense, which i think will appeal to you –
President Barack Obama said the allies had for the first time ‘agreed to develop a missile-defense capability that’s strong enough to cover all NATO European territory and populations, as well as the United States.’
President Obama said this?
Folks, it’s time to really start worrying (just in case you weren’t already…).
(Oh, by the way, did our Salamander-in-Chief happen to mention that Turkey is now calling the shots regarding that missile-defense capability?….)
There is some real confusion about the utility of U235 atomics.
Let’s keep it simple: they are militarily useless.
Only ONE was ever used.
IT WEIGHED TEN TONS.
It took a massive aircraft and complete air dominance to deliver it effectively.
It is a complete DEAD END for missile thrown warhead designs.
Beyond that, U235 is an American agitprop redirection designed to point the American public in the wrong direction. Actually discussing atomics on their merits just figures to draw out more information than any American administration cares to see in the public eye.
BOTH the Russians and the Americans have swapped out U238 and replaced it with U235. Not withstanding the mumbo jumbo the authorities have released to the public about fast neutron ignition hyper compression of U235 gives and even better burn — the difference is dramatic. This translates into an ever cheaper, lighter and more powerful weapon.
Here’s the beauty of it: one can easily layer it up with sub-criticalities. After the primary kicks off the entire layer cake flips into hyper compression. The U235 detonates BEFORE it gets too hot from fast neutrons WHICH BLOW THE CAKE APART BEFORE A SWEET BURN.
All of the above engineering is now out of the bag.
Sorry about your miss-impressions, Tcobb, SChaser.
While it is certainly possible to wrap the package with U238 — in bigger, nastier designs — and get an additional kick, the conversion rate stinks. This design has been dropped from missile tipped weapons — just too heavy,
By comparison the conversion rate for ‘cold’ hyper-compressed U235 is crisp — so much so that now U235 is the cheapest explosive. ( vs Pu239 ) This is why the Super Bomb uses Pu for the Primary trigger and U235 for the major energy release. It also explains why — long before nuclear power reactors were successful — America ramped up U235 production at Oakridge as against just ramping up production at Hanford (Pu239). That occurred even as military interest in U235 bombs collapsed: Fat Man had killed Little Boy on the economics AND safety.
——–
The take away from all of this is that Kim has a solid Plutonium design in hand from the Chinese.
Now he’s moving on to building a Super Bomb.
Iranian money is paying the freight. So, when he gets it figured out in such a manner that the PLA can duck and cover, Iran will have Super Bombs for her newest missiles.
Iran and Kim are well along to solving their staging issues WRT long range rockets. Once that is done it’s only a matter of scale.
——–
It’s so cute the way Putin & Co are following in the style of the ISI.
1) Damage the security of the West.
2) Then demand funding and protection from the West, particularly the latest technologies.
3) Recycle, repeat…
Obviously, hyper-compressing U238 gets you absolutely nothing. It’s a neutron SINK.
it’s not just the ISI using the Fabian retreat to attack –the $4b Obama is trying to bribe Kyl with just replaces R&D money already taken back via previously canceling the weapons-modernization research programs.
Barry M is so right –what a transparent ploy –we lock in an crappy dangerous perhaps fatal position now in return for a promise of Safety and Security way way waaay down the road –maybe if and when unless.
Hell, why if it’s gonna be available then, we don’t all just have it NOW? and skip all the interim “Oops, did we eff up?” that’s coming straight at us.
Our president is lying to us about a distant shield, he has zero intention of us having such –and in this lie to the western peoples, the russian leadership is cooperating with our administration to sell it.
Three entities in the model here, Obama admin, Russia admin, and the western peoples, and guess which two of ‘em are in cahoots against the third?
The prudent thing to do would be to wait a few months before ratifying START. There is no pressing reason to ratify it now; and if it is as unexceptionable as described, no reason why it will not be ratified in the New Year.
The forces at the disposal of Iran and North Korea, while destructive, are nothing near enough to inflict a fatal blow on the West.
Yet having said that, the current trends are unsettling. The ratchet is turning all in one way. The danger though growing slowly is growing monotonically. If the crisis is not imminent it is nevertheless inevitable. The question is then not if a crisis will come, but when it will come.
And the administration has no answer to reversing the trend. Nothing it has done or is proposing offers any realistic prospect of changing the direction of events. Like some kind of horrible deficit or subprime crisis, we are only told it is “contained”. That may be good enough for just now. But it will not be good enough in the very near future.
There is something terribly wrong with the mental model of the administration. And something even worse in the apparent fact that they are happy with it.
WWIV is a conflict between Shame/Honor inculturation and rational thought.
The Shame/Honor part I get. Mithridates kicked the Romans in the teeth because he could – at the time. Human nature doesn’t change.
However, public policy, foreign and domestic, based on rational thought hasn’t been seen in these here parts for some time. Heck, we’re still two generations removed from even acknowledging that maybe it would be a good idea for reality to play some role in human affairs.
The Obomination and his administration is in the clutches of what I call PMA disorder. PMA ( Positive Mental attitude) is a good thangie, but like all good thangies, it can be overdone. Attitude can produce results, but it never guaranties them. PMA alone won’t get the job done. At some point you have to make a plan, roll up your sleeves and work that plan.
If your plan is flawed, no amount of PMA or work will help.
Rational people who observe that their plan isn’t producing the results expected, re-examine everything and start over.
The Obomination may be the ‘smartest guy in the room’, but he isn’t very rational. Some of his minions stretch the boundary on “Loon”.
May be smart as a whip but don’t have the common sense god gave a goose.
Meanwhile and OT, did you see Sara last night? When she meets Pootie for the first time, she needs to call him Halibut. By ‘mistake’, of course. Apologise and ask him if he wants to go fishin’. To steal a commercial moment; ‘There is tuff and then there is Sara tuff’.
Something is really wrong here-Lugar, and Obama went on a secret mission in 2007. Obama was arrested, and his passport confiscated for 3-4 hrs. Why the secrecy? Was that the start of his mission regarding START?
Obama, and his crew are misfiring on all cylinders; the recent missile out of California; why hush hush? Would this nat be a national security issue?
Since when has a president the power making the biggest armsdeal ever in the US in the amount of 60b? While congress in recess?
What is wrong with this picture?
Blert @ 52:
Nork’s strategy (contrary to what the “journalists” think) has always been to create a system of danegeld where Kim’s extravagant lifestyle has to be paid for by the western countries. Every few years, Kim (or his successor) will wave his nuke (there’s probably only one) and the west will dutifully send him a check.
By coincidence I just happened to watch the night before a documentary “A State of Mind” by Daniel Gordon, “that offers a rare look into the communist society and the daily lives of North Korean families”, specifically the preparations for the “Mass Games”, a spectacular extravaganza what celebrates the glorious leader. Watching this film what struck me was the absolute dedication of the participants and their unvarnished hatred and contempt for the United States. Unsettling, to say the least.
What’s the worry? It’s not like the North Koreans are terrorists; Bush took them off the terror list years ago.
11. Walt
Well doneSir, You are at the top of your game this day.
Obama may not know a missile from a popsicle, but shirley he can see….
Stop calling me Shirley!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself
HR/63; –LOL –Airplane! –the best single item to come out of the 70s –filmed in 34 days in summer 1979, using a 707.
Hey, all of you should reserve judgment until you get the vapid opinions of BC, Sensei and Matthew on this delicate issue, don’t you think?
‘Tweet’ from Obama’s Blackberry:
‘Kim; We gotta talk.’
Arms control advocates need to learn one word: “China.”
…and Duggan don’t mean the dishes, either –
No, we’re in a bad bad spot, folks –three trill bilked loose while we were in the kitchen making coffee, and a sudden new serious need for DoD spending –
Rand Paul was saying last night –Huckabee’s show was it? –that the gross overhead for our armed services personnel is the same as it was with fifteen million in uniform –looks like we need a lot less tail and a lot more tooth –
…forgot to say, the number is now three million, with the same o/h as the 15 mm era. Rand Paul should have but didn’t say if that is an inflation adjusted number.
“I think what it is, is he’s so brilliant. He is an intellectual.” And therein lies the problem.
(1) On nuclear weapons: both U235 and Pu239 are fissile and either can be used alone in single stage weapons based on the implosion design, but only U235 can be used in the much more simple but inefficient gun design.
(2) On the 2010 START treaty: if the treaty is passed in its current form, it will not only put the US at a severe disadvantage in treaty compliant numbers of weapons, but also, by linking defense with offense, it would cripple our ability to defend against nuclear attack by rogue nations or NGOs such as AQ.
The treaty counts each Russian bomber as one weapon, whereas each Russian bomber can carry 16 gravity bombs or 8 missiles. Russia has 76 bombers. So, the actual count is:
(a) 2100 (Russia) vs 1550 (US) strategic weapons if Russian bombers are used as standoff platforms with missile mounted warheads
(b) 2700 (Russia) vs 1550 (US) strategic weapons if Russian bombers are loaded with gravity bombs
Plus: 2000+ (Russia) vs 200 (US) tactical weapons not covered by the treaty (I don’t know the number of Russian tactical weapons – 2000 is the minimum estimate based on what I have seen in the public domain.)
So, at the bottom line on counting numbers – Russia would be fully in compliance with the treaty with 5000 (or more) nuclear weapons compared to 1750 for the US.
We might note that the issue of Russian cheating has been handled by relaxing the verification procedures relative to the prior START treaty, making it less likely that cheating would be detected.
(3) On North Korea: there are a couple of hints that NK may be working toward a two stage thermonuclear device as their first weapon, rather than following the traditional path. In such a device, while either U235 or Pu239 can be used in the first stage, U235 would be used as the sparkplug for the second stage.
If there is any truth behind such speculation, then the threat posed by North Korea is much greater than has been discussed in public. But, let me be clear – I am only speculating at this time.
(note – I treat the NK claim that they are developing a two stage weapon as no more than a hint based on the historical credibility of NK claims.)
This is not true.The Hiroshima weapon (MK-I) weighted 4.5 tons, not 10, but more importantly: US HEU weapons included the T-1 ADM (weight 150lb); the W-9 HEU warhead, 280mm artillery projectile, weight 880 pounds, and others. In other words, HEU weapons ranged in weight from 150lbs (deliverable by small missiles) to 4.5 tons. See http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html for a comprehensive list of US weapons.
Ah, a conspiracy theory.
When discussing emerging nation capabilities, it is more important to look at the range of technologies than the optimization. Yes, U238 provides a better burn as a tamper, but it costs a whole lot more. So if you have a limited amount of it, you don’t use it for such.
You are discussing designs not used because of their large size and inefficiencies. Nobody uses the layer cake design – although an emerging nation could, having not mastered the engineering of a three stage weapon.
As has the entire idea of a layer-cake design for the same reason. Modern weapons use the T/U three stage design, which is much more complex and is the only design which can be scaled beyond 1MT.
It uses Pu for the primary because Pu is the best choice for any fission weapon. It uses Pu OR U235 for the spark plug. It uses Thorium or U238 or U235 (if available) for the tamper, which is where the major energy release takes place. For a clean bomb, the major energy release takes place in the fusion stage.
Which leaves you with the problem of explaining the U235 weapons used by the US up to 1980.
So, getting back to your primary assertion that the HEU means the Norks are building a thermonuclear device – the answer is: no, it does not. The easiest, most reliable nuclear design (for a beginning nuclear power) uses HEU. Heck, the Norks couldn’t get a Pu implosion bomb to do anything other than fizzle – is it a surprise that they would have a backup HEU program -especially in conjunction with Iran which doesn’t have the Pu breeder reactors?
If there is an electronic record in the future after whatever all of this is leading up to, many comments and their authors here (and elsewhere) will be looked back upon as the proverbial canaries in the mine.
Along with the certain cheating on any treaty, the Russians are moving ahead with their “5th Gen” fighter program, a steady if not overwhelming stream of new weapons and equipment and as noted, modernizing her nuclear arsenal. China with a much more aggressive military procurement policy, who is nearly through refitting the former Russian carrier and expect it to sail in 12-24 months. Also note that China plans to have multiple carriers by 2020. (Given that time frame should be able to become competent if not proficient at the complexities of naval aviation) Lastly the recent revelation that many of our Pacific bases are extremely vulnerable to a conventional decapitating rocket attack. These are all just things I’ve read updates on in the last week or two.
There are just so many connected and seemingly unconnected events (the “ratchet” as Wretchard referred to it) moving the larger picture in the same direction. A veritable powder-keg, for sure and to top it off, we’re either being led by the damnedest incompetent fools to ever run the country, some sort of neo-Manchurian plot or both.
Buddy: I’m a native of Kentucky but live in Florida now so had no personal say in the Rand Paul game. I’ve never been a particular fan of his Father, though I can’t help but agree with him on many issues. It’s the ones in which we disagree (questioning 9-11) that make it difficult. Nevertheless, regarding his Son I have great confidence that Rand Paul is not going to be our everyday politician. I believe he’s going to kick some $*** up when he gets there and obviously, I think some needs to be kicked.
Congratulations to Walt and apologies for the length of this as I usually am more comfortable just taking “the show” in, and I say that with great affection.
50/Buddy
Just read your 91 from previous thread. Actually I’m a low key guy except when I think about Obama, hear about Obama, read about Obama or am in the presence of someone who is even thinking about Obama. Other than that I’m just a good old boy from Philly.
Walt
49/Wretchard
Interesting suggestion. Will comment at length via email.
Nukes are a topic I know nothing about. However, I know a lot about Leftie popular talking points. One thing you hear relentlessly when arms control talks come up is “we already have enough bombs to blow up the world x times” (insert various alarmist numbers for x). So if we can blow up the entire world, why do we need anything else?
I’ve always wondered about the truth of that song. Given the source, I highly doubt it, but I don’t have an accurate response to it, and I’d like one. If I can get one anywhere, I know I can get it here.
As a sub-topic, we also hear about the “doomsday” bomb, one bomb that can take out the entire world. Truth?
i hope we all take notes on ScenarioA’s numbers in #71.
The ‘game of three’ will always be two on one, and the other two here share a landmass, thus their gov’ts could be liquidated in a war with the other. The USA, the north American continent is the odd man out –and it has wonderful food-producing, resource-loaded (resources being held in place unexploited as far as the regulatory agencies and Lawfare can do so), geographically sweet treasures.
Using that para as a background, many themes explain themselves.
Kim is shooting for the Super Bomb — not back pack nukes which are vastly more expensive per erg.
Only the Super Bomb — missile mounted meets his strategic requirement to sit at the big table.
Ditto for the mullahs — and they’re the ones funding the whole project.
It is the mullahs that have shut down Kim’s obsession with ‘Self Reliance.’ They are impatient to end the world/ and absorb Araby. ( Sunnis FIRST, then the Jews and Christians, then the polytheists.)
With the Super Bomb in hand there is no end of protection money available from South Korea.
——-
By the time this evolution is complete, even New Zealand will have an atomic bomb program.
take-away imho, the balance of power is shifting maybe much more, and much deeper and longer-lasting, than we have been let to know, and two, that lifelong diehard anti-SDI opponent Obama has suddenly and inexplicably –except for a need to lie the Start II treaty into ratification –made a 180 degree spin.
–but not in any sensibly explained way, but just in a sudden manifestation of love where yesterday was hate.
–a show of near-disassociation, as if he cannot comprehend that anyone would remember or care what he just said only yesterday.
And, no explanation, not even a visible move away from any need for explanation, of what happened in the infinite space between.
It’s freakish –like Albert Speer’s rally-architecture –what part is real? What part is illusion? What is really there, what is merely light & shadow?
…what i mean is, the sensibility, the rhetoric –today the American people and the peoples of Europe are vulnerable, else they’d need no great shield like the one suddenly in the cloud. Today O wants to respond to our need to feel secure, to have confidence in the future.
So, WTF was going on yesterday?
I mean, this is not exactly the latest shovel-ready project here –this is life and death –how can such a grave matter be a big nothing one day, and overnight become so vital and critically important that there’s not a moment to lose in ratifying Start II?
It’s not that it don’t add up –that would be messaging incompetence –i’m afraid it’s that it does add up, and not to any sort of incompetence, not on this issue –where every glyph is calibrated.
The left says the guy is Lincoln, the right says he’s Carter –what if he’s really Patrice Lumumba?
Would someone please explain where the funding is coming from for ANY type of anything? Every dollar has a constitutency prepared to take the nation down if their funding is cut.
Most economists forecast years, perhaps decades before we will recover to pre 1997 levels of prosperity. Think the ChiComs, the Sov’s, etc will step back and make it easy for us to recover? That would be a NO. AQ’s thousand cuts going away? Again NO. Plus they are in a population explosion and have already infiltrated Europe and Dearborn. The EU working their economic world out? Again NO. Nukes spreading like smallpox in the ME and South America? YES.
The NRO just launched the largest satellite ever and lets pray it’s armed with Mirved nuclear weapons because we’re not getting out of this hole without a shooting war …bet on it.
Talk of nuclear treaties is simply empty jaw-jaw.
I’ve heard it all now.JOSH says missiles are white mans toys.Chinese aren’t white Josh. HE SAYS take the toys away from the boys….HE MEANS .only take America’s toys away. Josh,you are the very soul of a LIBTARD.You should work for Soros…sorry,you probably do.
Habu, don’t forget that the USA is a Democracy. We replace our leaders at regular intervals with very little fuss and bother. Our enemies don’t. They have no leaders waiting in the wings, no regular means of secession. That means Russia, China and the Mad Dog Mullahs are vulnerable to decapitation strikes.
All we need is a POTUS with some balls. Sara would be ideal.
Send a B-2 to Moscow with a W-61 dialed to 100Kt. So much for Putin. Blame it on the Mullahs. Then we nuke them in retaliation. 2 down 1 to go. The Chinese will be very friendly by this point. VERY, VERY, VERY friendly. As in Asking Junk Bond Ben what they should set their exchange rate at. Nuke ‘em anyway. NEVER give a sucker a chance to win.
If Truman had nuked China back in ’51, the world would be a much better place today. It would have saved millions of lives.
Habu was selling securities and buying gold, and standing on soapboxes hollering about the derivatives-driven meltdown, a full two years before anyone i know of or read of even began to smell the smoke, much less feel the fire.
Josh ‘freewheels’, captain grumpy –throws a lot of stuff in the air, seeing what has weight coming back down –he’s on your side –go back thru archives, you’ll see.
Anyhoo, the Constitution wanted a native-born son for president LONG before there was a nuclear weapon. Pretty smart, becuz whaddaya do with a POTUS African continent-centric, or/and western Pacific Islamic-centric, who could leave the entire north American continent a smoking wasteland, and never miss a beat mystic-chords-wise?
82. stoicheion
Political Science 101
Habu, don’t forget that the USA is a Democracy
Please, please, stoicheion the USA is a REPUBLIC not a democracy.
Homework assignment. Read the Federalist papers and then recite the Pledge of Allegience.
The word democracy shows up in NEITHER the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution. jeez.
Otherwise I like your nuking ideas.
Just, go on back to central Africa or the western Pacific –undamaged and now in the catbird seats, now vastly more powerful with the Big Guys (or at least the baddest guy) all blowed up — and ascend that throne, that big man whodunnit ALL. Lamumba. God.
Wicked, wicked Soros
jeez –listen to me –my day spent contemplating national security ain’t going too well –
FBI and SEC went on balls-out attack on the markets today –some timing –why didn’t they grab the wallstreet assholes a year ago?
Simple –now, Nov 02 can have caused another crash –and act now to leverage the mess in Europe against the western system –
This day should not pass without a shout out to Marine Corps marksmanship.
During my years in the CIA there were still many old OSS hands around who simply smiled when Nov. 22 rolled around. Many bought a round for the house in the out of the way pubs we frequented.
Spain foreshadowed WWII.
The Soviet Mafia’s take down of Ireland foreshadows the move against the DTCC.
In all of the ‘Irish’ discussion I’m amazed to see the short memories of the MSM and the Financial Media.
The original hyper-boom in Ireland was linked to crazy lending by ‘Irish’ banks run by Soviet Mafia tycoons. How crazy? Try 80% of GDP = ‘private’ bank lending in Ireland.
These ‘institutions’ sucked in British depositors by offering EURO deposits at a market + interest rate.
Once the boom peaked, the oligarchs ‘lent’ themselves billions of Euros and skipped town.
Strangely for such wealthy players, they’ve been unable to make the payments on their notes.
Criminal Warrants have been issued by Ireland.
Strangely, the gentlemen involved no longer reside in Europe — they’ve gone back to the Rodina. How ODD.
Once these ‘private institutions’ were de-capitalized a panic set in — in BRITAIN that is. London used it’s heft to get the foolish Irish Government to step up and bail out British depositors. Since that time Dublin has just been twisting in the wind.
Bailing out British depositors destroyed the Irish economic locomotive.
Any attempt to increase taxes upon Corporate America, ( Irish Tax Sham Division ) will cause the tax accountants to bolt.
Ireland needs to declare bankruptcy ASAP. It’s her only route out of the Irish miracle. At the same time every effort must be made to eject recent immigrants. Their drain on government coffers together with social strains make them sure targets for abuse and revenge. They must be sent home before it really gets ugly. After all, from time to time the Irish have been known to lose their temper.
We need to quit playing the Obamanation’s games. As the saying goes, screw me once–shame on you. Screw me twice–shame on me.
The present administration has no intention of erecting a missile defense network despite the rhetoric to the contrary. Its merely a lure to get support for the Start II treaty, and of course, what he wants must come first. After that the missile defense network will be abandoned for reasons which can be generated as needed when the time comes.
Its just like the DREAM act. Obama wants it passed as a “down payment” for (later) passing Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Its like his pre-election promises about
“health care reform.” Pay me now, I’ll deliver later. Only he never does. He takes the money and runs all the while gloating to himself about how stupid the rube was and is.
He’s just a street hustler who has been elevated far above his natural position by the Goddess of Affirmative Action.
Look people, the “Anointed One” makes his chess move’s and us babbling humans need to realize that the unbelieving conspiracy “heathen” understate the issues when they say that Obama is a radical. Alas, they know not the secrets we are all going to witness. The “Anointed One” is amazing (and according to Biden: he’s so brillant), and takes the people at the highly efficient Post Office and sends them right over to the Student Loan Program. The “Anointed One” knows all. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the Obama mega-money-raising engine whirred on at high speed, until the result became inevitable: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the “Anointed One.”
I am not surprised to hear these stinking lies about our “Anointed One,” it should be apparent to anyone that this was coming down the pike. I do have a couple questions about future process steps concerning these developments? When the “Annointed One” decides to start bar-coding everyone, will we get to decide if the mark is on our hand or forehead? Allot of people will prefer the hand, (especially women of course), unless your a porn actress or something along those lines. Also, my girlfriend was wondering if the Administration will be getting fashion advice from Hollyweird or the New York City crowd? We are both agree that the Administration “Maoies” as the “Anointed One ” so lovingly calls them,will be getting uniforms similar to the SS uniforms in Germany in WW2. With big letters abreviating “Barack’s Socialists.” So shall we start calling them the BS?
What I can’t stand is the incredibly bad deals that everyone makes with the Chinese. The latest is the technology tranfers that Boeing made that have enabled the Chinese to produce a direct compeitor to Boeing’s bread and butter.
Will China Kill Boeing’s Most Important Airplane?
The reasons for this have everything to do with some bizarre mental construct that has nothing to do with the way the Chinese actually deal.
No, we don’t have enough bombs to blow up the world X times. We do have the ability to essentially destroy civilization as we know it, should the bombs be targeted to that purpose rather than their actual purpose: taking out the opponents nuclear force (takes several warheads per target) and his industrial capacity (wiping out his cities).
No. However, it is possible to generate extremely high amounts of fallout by coating a bomb in material that becomes highly radioactive after the detonation. I have never heard of anyone doing this in a serious program.
If you take the total amount of fallout generated from detonating every weapon in the world, a large number of people would survive. If the radiation were evenly distributed, everyone would get less than 40 Rem, which at most slightly increases cancer risk. But, of course, it wouldn’t be even close to evenly distributed, unless everything was air bursts. Hence most people would suffer less exposure.
Blert, Stoiechion, please take it easy on Mr. Ken-, er, Mr. X. It couldn’t have been easy coming back from the dead, writing that Long Telegram to State, etc. And there is the heavy lifting of persuading disbelieving audiences that a nation that spans eight time zones and possesses thousands of nuclear weapons fears being encircled. Russia gets to assert its interests, you see; nations across its borders don’t get to assert theirs. Forget starving Ukranians by the millions. Forget Ribbentrop-Molotov. Forget Katyn. Russia is a not a misfit nation doing very dangerous mischief. It is a Victim of History fearing more of same. You see Poles and other former captive nations trying to protect themselves. Vlad, his little pal in the elevator shoes, and Mr. X see Gustav III and his 18th Century Swedish hordes trying to roll all the way to Moscow, or something. Got it? Good.
44. stoicheion
Mr. X, it was a bent poll. The question was “Do you favor reducing nuclear arms? To which most normal people will answer “yes”.
Really! You know this how?
O, most “normal” Americans cannot name two Justices of the Supreme Court. Indeed, most cannot name their own Representative. They do, however, sometimes vote and nearly half pay no Federal income tax.
Electronic implants in the name of national security…..why not just give us tatto’s a la Hitlerian “security”..when they come to implant me they might as well bring a toe tag.
Missile shield? Whats wrong with a sea-container-launched missile from the other coast?
While we’re truthin’ here, can we dispose of two recurring shams?
1) That pols who vote Obama’s way believe a single thing he says –it’s just that he provides them cover with the public –pols back home can invoke the party discipline, or ‘he’s brilliant, an intellectual’, or ‘hmm, not a racist are you?’ or some other saccharine appeal to the ‘story’ of a young minority fella who kicked down the traces of the old failed ways of the past –IOW, it’s the era of complete bullshit.
2) Pols that ‘didn’t read the bill’. They DID read it –every time, every one of them, in every case (how else they gonna ensure they get their share of the swag?) –the leftwing of the party has been writing these bills for 20 years, and they’ve had staffs of dozens of three-figure lawyers all along the way, daily parsing every word, and educating the boss.
But the new regs and rules and taxes are SO bad, that they are calculating that it is better to simply lie, if cornered, and say they haven’t read the bill, and hope for the best of two bad choices, that a show of chagrin will work in concert with goodwill and poor memory to keep their craven ass in office.
They KNOW the bills are so horribly rotten to people’s lives and liberty and property that if they were to admit to having read them, they may not get re-elected, not to mention stay healthy. So they claim, by the dozens and hundreds, to have ‘not read the bill’.
part of the scam is making the bills so prolix, long, turgid, and incomprehensible, that the private person will sympathize with their rep, who is after all only one of 535, and can’t really be expected to change the way ‘everybody does it’.
So, what we are seeing is a “conspiracy” to be “the congress that couldn’t read those two thousand page bills”. But has learned a lesson and won’t do dat no mo!
Dick Morris says O is using exec orders to for environmental regulations and card check which the pubbies will in congress will defund and criminalize if they can. Morris concludes that Obama didn’t learn anything from the election.
Obama Using Executive Orders To Implement Radical Agenda
#96. buddy larsen
Hell buddy, if we did away with the shams a lot of very, very, very important people would go to prison.
We can’t have that. Society would simply collapse if the political parasites who feed upon it were somehow thrown out of the host. –or so that’s what the parasites tell us.
And who are you going to believe: the political parasites or your own lying eyes?
Posit two drycleaners or clothing stores or pizza parlors across the street from each other.
They’re in competition, and both are limited by roughly equal lack of sufficient capital with which to expand or price lower for mkt share, to outcompete the other.
Both are worth about let’s say, real estate included, ten million bucks. One owner dies at 11:59 PM Dec 31st 2010, and the other at 12:01 AM January 1st 2011.
Two minutes apart.
The first company pays zero estate tax, and the second pays four million dollars estate tax ($2m exclusion, 50% thereafter).
Which company will be operating profitably 12 months from now, and which will be boarded up with graffiti all over the plywood?
How do you feel about your government if you are a member of the second family?
Is this any way to run a country? What are they after anyway –a revolution in the streets?
Charles…
Morris has a VERY clunky site.
BTW, strange that he can’t remember that his former client was not President in 1992.
BL…
You’re being naive.
Family number 1 assassinated their patriarch: he was worth more dead than alive.
Family number 2 needs to register their death certificate with MERS. Solved!
Let’s say, by coincidence (and for ease of ‘rithmnetic) each company has $1m debt and five heirs, and all ten heirs have four kids each.
The 2011 death tax causes a sale, $4m to estate tax, $1m to debt, $1m each to the five heirs. The heirs do a generation pass-thru and each of the grandkids gets a couple hundred thou, enough for a college education.
The 2010 death and the sold-off competitor which doubles business for the ongoing enterprise, leaves that company in 12 months debt-free & worth $20m.
Each heir is worth $4m, and each grandkid is worth $1m, enough to leverage starting their own businesses or buying into the income stream of the core business, expanding it still further –they can hire, maybe, the grandkids from the other family, who will come out of school with zero capital.
Ten years later, the owner grandkids are multimillionaires, the other set is still punchin’ a time clock.
Two minutes, and two destinies change for two families for generations to come.
Is this what the Founders had in mind for the government to be doing?
***
blert/101, no sh-t, that ain’t funny!
What are they after anyway –a revolution in the streets?
What they are about is a transfer of the wealth of the middle class to the politically connected rich and the poor. The connected rich get their assets; the poor gets their income.
The very idea that the peasants might revolt never really occurred to them. But that’s just because they’re stupid. The dimmest retards of all are the retards who are convinced that they are geniuses. The French Revolution demonstrated that pretty well, as well as to what the fate of retards who are infected with hubris might come to.
…meanwhile, that $4m that consigned the hardworking risk-taking Family2 to working generations for the increasingly wealthy family1, well it paid for one of Pelosi’s office parties.
I am the very model
of a modern libtard moby!
sorry grump, just pointing out our POTUS’s beliefs. I wonder how the Kenyan / Indonesian / Communistan views the Chinese anyway? China to Kenya circa 1960 was – mostly nothing, other than Mao’s home. Indonesians probably look askance at the Chinese minority, like most southeast Asian countries. Communistically of course Mao is a rock star. So, I’d predict Obasmus is 2/3 positive towards our little red (or otherwise non-white) brothers.
Buddy @ 78. I know you know this. Remember when Buraq back in the campaign of ’08 was going to be balance budget guy, the tax cutting guy and the tough on the mullahs in the stan guy? How only those making over $250 K would pay more taxes? The guy will say whatever is conveniently helpful to swing a crowd at the moment. Then forget it. What Buraq says means nothing. Absolutely Nothing. I am not even sure a past lie even registers in his memory. This missile defense con is just Buraq hiding behind conservative sounding rhetoric again. It’s an old ploy with him.
Scenario @71. Great thread changing comment. The relaxation of verification standards comment kinda shoots down ol’ Jersey Joe’s need for boots on the ground. Many months ago I seem to recall at BC discussion of unprecedented access to our Nuke facilities for the Ruskies in this treaty.
Arms control has been a farce since the beginning, an aspect of detente – also a farce, except perhaps for Carter/Vance, one of whom eventually came around. I’m sure those Czech SS-22s were well known or presumed by our guys, perhaps even prior to their deployment. The great tragedy of the Kremlin’s rise is that, far more than would ordinarily be the case, international conflict has been, for lack of a better word, secret-ized. And the greatest difficulty is that our government cannot communicate the truth of the threat candidly. As buddy points out, thats an irreducible structural asymmetry. So our Republic has been subverted at least to the extent that the American electorate cannot vote on foreign policy, except regarding sentiment, because he Does Not Know what the true state of our relationship with our enemies is. But why is there this remarkable continuity in strategic disposition, alliances, and strategies from President to President, despite campaign rhetoric? Because on Morning 1, New Pres walks into his first real intel briefing, and the intelligence liaison says to him: “well, we know you said X and Y on the trail, and we’re mindful of your need, for the sake of legitimacy and stability, to do something similar to what you said you’d do, but really [produces photos] what about THEM apples!?”
Just sign the damn thing. Let’s get this show on the road. The sooner the public deterioration of relations with Russia the better for the American electorate’s chances of addressing the real state of things. I presume we also cheat on arms control agreements; we couldn’t be stupid enough not to.
The gray terror is going to increase over the next two years – one of these times, this Cessna is going to have a bomb in it:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/22/dc.airspace.violated/index.html?hpt=T2
Krauthammer made an interesting point on the Fox All Stars tonight: forget about pressuring NorKor, pressure China by standing up nuclear weapons programs in RoK and Japan, if they’ll have them.
As for ultra-liberal affirmative action Obama coming around to claim Missile Defense – Ronaldus Magnus’ STAR WARS’ descendants – as his second big victory, after his first big victory of ending the war he rose to fame as demanding to surrender – is fantastic, in the original meaning of the word.
However, we’d be much further along if President Affirmative Action hadn’t surrendered the Ballistic Mid-Course Defense (read “longer range, higher altitude, faster, more capable”) system last year. Now, let’s see if they put the huge amounts of new funding in the Defense budget to build sufficient quantities of AEGIS/Standard and THAAD systems to pull off this new missile defense (read “shorter range, lower altitude, slower, less capable”) system.
As for appeasing the Russians, sher, that’s about as good an idea as appeasing the Iranians, appeasing the Palestinians, appeasing the NorKors and Chinese … what’s next, appeasing Al Qaeda?
Everyone who lived through Carter could see this coming – a weakling in the White House emboldens our enemies and makes the strategic peace more endangered for the entire world.
Can’t wait for the next Defense Budget, US and Euro – how much do you think it needs to grow? How likely is it to grow?
“Please, please, stoicheion the USA is a REPUBLIC not a democracy.”
In theory, Habu, in theory. In practice it’s a despotic regime ran by tyrants in black robes. Don’t believe me? Ask the good people of Arizona, or perhaps all those in California that voted against gay marriage and then had some gay judge blow them off.
One thing conservatives need to do while we control the state houses is put in a law like Iowa has that allows citizens to recall judges. So when they jump the Shark they can be spanked and sent to bed hungry.
Habu/86 – I’ll bite. Who was the target on 11/22?
93. allen
The poll was a CNN poll that was published on-line. Unless you are just trolling or job interviewing for the Soros collection of blog trolls. We called them ‘attack roaches’ at ITM. Pity that never caught on.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/11/16/rel16d.pdf
pinched
“As you may know, President Obama and the President of Russia recently signed a treaty to reduce
the number of nuclear weapons of each country, but the treaty will not take effect until the U.S.
Senate votes in favor of it. Do you think the U.S. Senate should or should not vote in favor of that
treaty?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START_treaty
pinched
“The number of operationally inactive stockpiled nuclear warheads will remain in the high thousands in both the Russian and United States inventories.”
Basically, New Start is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It just allows Russia to do what they could never do on their own, establish nuclear parity with the USA.
A real treaty that matters would be to reduce ALL nukes to a dozen or so for EVERY country on the planet. Exceptions get nuked.
Instead we have the Russian diplomats raping the USA while the State Department holds us down.
No Senator voting for this treaty will ever be re-elected.
111/86 … errrr, ?? indeed.
s @ 110: Or the good folks of California, who have had popular initiatives overturned by judges for years, for far less than sufficient reason.
Or for that matter ask Scooter Libby, but is that a judicial problem, or a rogue prosecutor, or both?
Can’t wait until we have the TSA porn patdown appealed (!) to the robes under 4th amendment terms, see what a wise latina and a Harvard administrator have to say about it.
/my head spinning like a weathervane in a hurricane
blert – where’d you get that info on the russia/irish debt thing?
Habu, you guys celebrate JFK’s assassination? Pissed about Bay of Pigs or something?
A factor that favors uranium weapons in the case of North Korea is, believe it or not, safety. While North Korea has done far more missile development and testing than the limited “space launches” they have conducted would indicate, they are still going to have big time reliability problems with any ICBM they launch.
And if you have a choice between a Uranium bomb or a Plutonium one on a missile that might come back down on your own territory, guess which one you would prefer. Anyone would any sense at all would not arm the warhead until it was well into it’s flight, far downrange. So it if comes back down a minute after launch it is going to go Splat! rather than Boom! And Uranium splats are much preferable to Plutonium ones.
good stuff here on the genesis of that ‘superbomb’ story, the ‘Tsar Bomb’, the largest ever by far.
Also good-looking Heritage Foundation title on the nutzenbolts of the verification ‘relax’. Other stuff too. hit a lucky search term combo –
unsk/106; oh hell yes, i remember every freaked out word of it –it was almost a joke, you could see him every other speech playing good cop/bad cop with himself –and NARY a word in the MSM about it –beats any damn thing i ever saw –we have a score to settle with the media but jeez, might as well criticize the Crab Nebula –
but tell me, grasshopper, what would you think if you were playing head-to-head poker, but the other player could call how many of his cards you get to see when the bets are called and it’s show time? If he wants you to just accept his word that his fifth card makes a flush or a full house? Who is going to have all the chips at the end of the game? and all strictly legal!
you have to tell the wife, yes you lost the rent money, but the other guy did NOT cheat –y’all played by the rules! Will she think to brain you with a frying pan because you gave way on them rules? Nah, nobody is THAT stoopid, she will surmise.
dan @ 107: I presume we also cheat on arms control agreements; we couldn’t be stupid enough not to.
what you mean ‘we’, paleface?
If you are the Norks, you would prefer the HEU bomb. Plutonium is not nearly as toxic as the alarmist would make your think, and the Norks don’t really care if a few hundred of their people die from Pu induced cancer.
An HEU bomb (probably gun type), OTOH, is harder to keep safe from an accidental detonation than a PU bomb.
dan
From Drudge…
At least two Russian citizens are being ‘pursued’/ have criminal warrants issued by Ireland WRT to ‘loans’…
And if you’ll recall when Ireland’s banks got her in trouble — she attempted to get liquidity from MOSCOW instead of the West !!!
It didn’t work out.
Not being the master of Google that Buddy is I haven’t been yet able to pull up their names.
The essence of their fraud was ‘control fraud’: they managed to get on the inside of the target banks and direct the funds to themselves. By the time that the authorities figured out what had transpired the funds were long gone and the notes ‘secured’ by overpriced trash.
When one of the players was interviewed ( FT IIRC ) in Luxembourg he railed against the Irish – -blaming them for ruining his ‘deal.’… And, no, he had no intention of submitting himself to Irish justice. … And with that he was off to the Rodina.
It seems that the European wide criminal warrants have made further western operations too hazardous.
several very good posts right now on Powerline about Obambus and foreign policy, including esp:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/11/027742.php
Dan/115; i’d guess that this must be akin to the sensibility habu was talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5IWK9sRYTs
blert/120; if you’ll recall couple years (?) ago the 135 billion in treasuries intercepted on the Ital/Swiss border, two japanese carrying –who were released next day and disappeared? Later the docs were said to be forged? The arrests came in Venezuela, 15 people inside the national bank were in cahoots with Russian mob in Canada (i’ll bet the Toronto Dominion Bank). The notes were being deposited in the banks and loans were made on them –which when the loans went bad, the perps would say “i had no idee the treasuries were forgeries” —-and kept their jobs because there was FIFTEEN of them backing each other.
When Watchovia bought Golden West Financial, and went bust over the purch of subprime trash at the top of the market in 2006, turns out that the Sandlers and other Soros gangsters who got so much of the goodies at a dime on the dollar was in cahoots with the CEO of Watchovia, to push the GWF purch thru –of course he was forced out –just as the venzolanos were, but no crimes could be proven –
blert, when do they say the incriminating events occurred? after ’98, i presume?
josh – yeah i’d bet we cheat on arms control. we are reputably very bad and clumsy at deception. i think that’s got to be wrong; its not like strategic deception is something so difficult we can’t possibly even mimic it, and its benefits are obvious. Not least because we could observe its effects on a global scale in every culture. Plus what choice do you have? It’s not like you’re going to just sit there watching your enemy manuevor under cover of a half-dozen bullshit narrative half-believed by abused populations, particularly when you are the real target. Even if we don’t outright cheat, we have to at least accomodate the enemy’s movements in an effective way.
But with our strategic deterrent? No way. If we have to reduce deployed delivery vehicles or number of warheads and MIRVs or whatever it is, there’s going to be a clause that says “and will be regarded as ‘mothballed’ for purposes of this Treaty if the warhead is located at least ten feet from the nearest Jeep truck.” This treaty has no meaning. Just sign this damn thing already and get back to nuking the Chinese economy with monopoly money.
ha – right i forgot about that scene.
Regarding the START treaty, I have more faith in the Russian’s intentions — which are at least rationally self-serving — than in ANY POLICY that Urkle O’Bumble might advance.
There is no evidence of any of the actions, legislation, policies, or appointments by O having any benefit. It is only possible to say that some of his actions have been slightly less damaging to the nation than most of them.
By the way, Obama has really used up any credibility on that bullshit of “it’s an emergency, and we MUST do this RIGHT NOW!”
josh/121, that powerline link is devastating –just devastating –how does one end up making enemies of both sides in the MidEast? By being a clueless fool? –or by being a sly master of the road to literal Armageddon? –pick one for me, i can’t decide –
dan @ 123: it’s just the old Lone Ranger / Tonto joke, y’know? I hope that “we” are smart enough to cheat all over, of course, but the “we” in the white house? I dunno. Mebbe, mebbe not.
buddy @ 126: clueless fool, or tool of the devil, or (c) all of the above.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45312.html
all you need to know about Noose Tart is right there in the pictcha
Mr. Cut Off Limbs Wired Genitals To Generators Manner of Jing Kisskhan and Mizziz Dixie Mafia, with a sad sack german 9mm semi-auto in the forlorn –i mean foreground.
Kerry’s an idjit, couldn’t pour ketchup out of the bottle if the instructions were written on the bottom.
…couldn’t find his ass in a closet with both hands and the light on –but he can sell you the StartII Treaty as easily as he flew to Nicaragua and came back with a chamberlain Munich scrap, sold your congress that Danny Ortega was not a soviet stooge –which, as soon as congress had then duly killed the Contra money and gone on summer break, Ortega hopped in a Ilyushin & flew to Moscow and got 500 million bucks shovel-ready money from brother Brezhnev. Kerry, of course, duly, when congress reconvened, made a blustery speech about having been misled. Meanwhile, Irangate was soon afoot, leading to a-probably-watching-all-along Kerry exposing the ”scandal” which occupied RR for most of Reagan II and basically ruined his second term. And Kerry had saved another commie pal! Ho Chi Minh was SO proud!
Just put nukes in Japan and South Korea. Then see how long it takes China to do something about North Korea. Do not worry about China bombing us, remember you do not destroy your own property!
south Korea just today or yesterday made a request to have tac nukes installed –’as a message’ Noko will have to take note of –
the admin replied that it will ”take it under consideration”
If Obama does accede to the SoKo request, i’ll eat my hat. and my boots and my hoss.
Timing.
RT @YonhapNews: (URGENT) Four S. Korean soldiers wounded by N. Korean artillery fire: military officials http://bit.ly/fnmFVE
@WSJ Breaking: North Korea fires at South Korean island, South Korea returns fire http://on.wsj.com/gMmg1z
I’ve read, oh maybe 25 books for the lay person on nuclear weapons history, technology, nuclear medicine & epidemiology. Twenty years ago my bitty little production studio was commissioned by a certain emergency management organization to prepare programs on nuclear civil defense, shelter prep, medical effects of ionizing radiation, calibration and use of radiological instruments, et cetera. If pressed, I can tell you the difference between a proton and a crouton, but I’m no scientist. I have to keep going back to refresh my memory about details.
But that’s not why this discussion makes my head hurt.
In most respects, the technical points are meaningless. Debate about technological issues, even enormous differences in weapon efficiencies, is a waste of breath when the leader of your nation is a man out of his reckoning whose word to his own countryfolk means precisely ZERO.
Look at the horse manure being foisted off on every single American citizen who wishes to travel by passenger air service. I would not complain about being frisked buck naked, with photos of my less-than-attractive old-guy bod posted for people to snicker at, if for a single instant I had any faith that the Dems and the Marxist-in-Chief actually were doing anything substantive about the problem of terrorism.
While they are ordering TSA agents to touch LAW-ABIDING citizens in ways that would get anyone else charged with sexual assault, the administration, and the DEMS AT EVERY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT are scurrying around groveling and kissing up to Muslim groups with WELL-DOCUMENTED TERRORIST LINKS.
When Somali Pirates (who happened to be — forsooth! — MUSLIMS) took Merchant Sea Captain Richard Phillips hostage, our pResident tried to rush an FBI NEGOTIATING TEAM to the U.S. Navy ships on station BEFORE the SEAL TEAM could arrive. Despite his claims to the contrary, Obama seems to have issued orders AGAINST initiating any violent action against these authentic third world victims of Evil European Colonialist Oppression, so the on-scene Commander had to wait for the situation to deteriorate to the point that he could act on his own initiative under provisions of the 1957 INTERNATIONAL Law of the Sea treaty. Considering the politically-forced trial of U.S. Navy SEALS for some minor bruises to a TERRORIST they’d captured in Iraq, I’m frankly surprised the SEALs who rescued Captain Phillips haven’t been arrested and charged with insubordination, along with the Commanding officer of the U.S. Navy ships.
While U.S. and NATO troops were being maimed and killed by Taliban, the Cipher-in-Chief squandered six months making his theater commander General McChrystal cool his heals. After having characterized the Afghan effort as the “Real War” while dismissing Iraq as a sideshow he refused to make a decision, refused to even meet with the General. He then approved only about 3/5 of the troop totals HIS OWN CHOSEN COMMANDER HAD TOLD HIM WERE ESSENTIAL. He has imposed rules of engagement that leave combat troops running out of ammunition while waiting for approval of artillery or close-air-support. THIS HAS RESULTED IN NUMEROUS NEEDLESS DEATHS AND INJURIES TO AMERICAN COMBAT TROOPS. That is, Rules of Engagement imposed by our own Commander-in-Chief.
OUR PRESIDENT.
When a profoundly suspicious (and statistically bizarre) explosion destroyed a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and allowed oil to flow from the sea floor, our President made enormous efforts to stymie all plans and actions meant to mitigate and clean up from the spill. At the same time, he immediately used the event as justification for stopping development of domestic petroleum.
We stupid loser citizens are supposed to shut the hell up and accept that drilling efforts by United States companies pose a vast horrific danger, but the tens of thousands of Gulf rigs owned and operated by ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES are nothing to worry about. At the same time Democrat federal judges have ruled that the U.S. has no right to drill in its own territorial waters, the Democrat-controlled Congress is even lending BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras to help them finance THEIR deep water oil drilling rigs. (Don’t take MY word — do a search on some of these key words: “$2 Billion dollar U.S. loan Petrobras Tupi Oil Field Santos Basin”)
INSANE or CRIMINAL?
Either way, it is PERVERSE —
SCREWING THE United States into impotence.
WHY?????????
GOD HELP US. Are we in thrall to traitors and monsters, whose every action is calculated to weaken, emasculate, infect, degrade, and hobble a great nation? Are they not all the more effective because fully half of the country’s voters can’t afford to admit they’ve been sucker-punched by a lorry-load of sorry rascals?
Does any sane person believe the shadow puppet-masters controlling the empty suit in the oval office are going to just shrug and say, “Drat the Luck! Our lunge at world domination just didn’t work out. Guess I’ll take up fly fishing.”???
how much will SoKo take, before it has had enough? jeez, i wish Seoul was further south –
***
good lord, MF, i just had the thought, Obama is almost worth it to get to read your purple rage –
ahg, losing my mind, losing my milo minderbender
–off to the sack, to rise at fo and see wazzup wit Koreas, SEC, FBI, Start II, fart goo, maRkety diddly doo
BL…
You idiot!….
This is REAL cotton candy!
Buck up and swallow!
And…
Get down out of that tree!
Buddy, I wish titillating your voracious reading appetites were the great labor facing us.
But just two final notes…
1) North Korea today has fired approximately 50 artillery and rocket rounds on a South Korean island community of about 1200 souls. The Wallstreet Journal Online article doesn’t have any information on casualties.
2) Based on something my brother mentioned, I did a little follow-up on the guy who originated the crude threat to a TSA agent about “touching my junk.” Seems he “opted OUT” of BOTH the scan and the Pat-down. It may interest you to know that the TSA is authorized to levy a fine of up to $11,000 for refusal to submit to both of these; once you’ve gotten to that area, the TSA seemingly is OBLIGED to do one or the other; to refuse to submit is approximately the same as resisting arrest.
According to the TSA BLOG (http://blog.tsa.gov):
“AIT is optional for everybody. However, if you decide to opt-out of AIT screening, you must undergo alternative screening, which will include a pat-down. As I’ve said before, there is nothing punitive about it- it just makes good security sense. Obviously a passenger can’t completely opt out of all screening if they opt out of AIT. That would not make good security sense. AIT is deployed to help us find non-metallic threats, so if you’re selected for AIT and choose to opt-out, we still need to check you for non-metallic threats. That’s why a pat-down is required. If you refuse both, you can’t fly. It is important that all screening procedures are completed. This ensures that terrorists do not have an opportunity to probe TSA’s procedures by electing not to fly just as TSA’s screening procedures are on the verge of detecting that the passenger is a terrorist. Also, it’s important to remember that TSA screens nearly 2 million passengers daily and that very few passengers are required to receive a pat-down.
Some have asked why we just don’t use the handwand. Good question. Threats can be both metallic and non-metallic. Pat-downs, like AIT, allow us to screen for nonmetallic threats that handwands would not find.
And finally, the $10,000.00 question of the day… Will you receive a $10,000.00 fine if you opt out of screening all together and leave the checkpoint? While TSA has the legal authority to levy a civil penalty of up to $11,000.00 for cases such as this, each case is determined on the individual circumstances of the situation.”
Excuse me, but I thought the working definition of A POLICE STATE was a government which arbitrarily can stop law-abiding citizens and bully and intimidate them into submitting to forced intrusive searches of their persons and property, ON PAIN OF VIOLENT ARREST AND PROSECUTION FOR RESISTING.
WTF ARE WE ALLOWING TO GO FORWARD IN THIS COUNTRY?
How long will it be until you have to present papers to uniformed ACORN GUARDS at every street corner? How long will it be until you have to send a letter to a local Kommisar to request permission to travel on business to another city? (“… and before permission is granted you must provide documentation of your planned itenerary, business, whether you intend to carry any valuable property or cash, or any passengers, what is their relationship to you, and oh, by the way, you are reminded you cannot take all members of your family out of this jurisdiction at the same time!”)
112. stoicheion
93. allen
The poll was a CNN poll that was published on-line. Unless you are just trolling or job interviewing for the Soros collection of blog trolls. We called them ‘attack roaches’ at ITM. Pity that never caught on.
There is medication for what ails you. There is no medication, however, for your indecipherable writing skills. For example, I am willing to bet one billion “crapotnics” that English sentences should not end with a preposition.
Re: CNN poll
I find it a very good idea to link to the polls I quote or paraphrase. The same is true for the articles I wish to use to make a point, as my entries at the BC will attest. Otherwise, “normal” folk will think you are merely blowing smoke.
112. stoicheion
You posited “normal people”. Where did you find “normal people” in that poll?
It was my opinion that you were making a personal judgment. That remains my opinion.
I doubt your ability to define “normal people”. I do not doubt your ability to see your opinions as those held by “normal people”.
“Weather conditions have improved tremendously over the mainland, so you won’t have any trouble at all seeing the target. Of course, we mustn’t forget, that means that they won’t have any trouble at all seeing you.”
–Major Danby, Catch 22
This alleged “problem” is so easily solved I cannot believe it has not been. All the US has to do is blockade North Korea, recruit S. Korea to join in the blockade by land, and then say to the North, by pamplet from the sky if necessary: “We’ll give you all the food, medicine, money, seed corn, factories, machinery, etc. you need. All you have to do is deliver Kim Jung Il and his whole family to us, Adopt a constitution modeled on the US and S. Korea, issue a Proclamation to reunite with the South based on that single Constitution, and become a democracy with period elections supervised by the South. The US wants nothing for itself except to be relieved of nuclear blackmail.” The problem should be solved if you look at
listverse.com/2010/05/30/top-10-crazy-facts-about-kim-jong-il/.
If it works we have a whole new arrow in our quiver, and we can actually pride ourselves on being progressive. If it does not work, what’s the worst that can happen? Who’s going to go to war to protect that idiot who is as close the grave as Castro? Speaking of which, who wouldn’t want to see Fidel’s head on a stick? God Save and Long Live the American Navy and Marines!
Blert
Wasn’t it rather Island?
cuz Ireland, I can only read , it was rather german and brittish investments
please could you give me your drudge article link ?
I agree Obama will not let South Korea or Japan have nukes. They are our allies, Obama only gives weapons to America`s enemies!
The US is severely limited in what it can to to North Korea, because the Norks hold many millions hostage to their weapons – mostly around Seoul (which is within artillery range of NK), and also in Japan.
Hence they continue to get away with killing people, proliferating nukes, and generally causing trouble.
Any approach to cause regime change runs a significant risk of igniting an irrational, but extremely deadly war, with millions of deaths in the first hours.
Very neat, well-built looking little town, with those blasts going off in the background knocking out some lovingly-kept real-estate improvements. Pretty crappy deal for them citizens. Pretty shitty thing to do, fire off artillery into a civilian village like that. What a load of gall. ROK will have a limit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101123-716001.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-russia-to-drop-dollar-in-bilateral-trade-2010-11-23
Soros and Obama will be dancing in the street
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-23/china-russia-sign-energy-accords-no-gas-price-breakthrough.html
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15709669&PageNum=0