Blogs For Victory

Some times the guys over at the Department of Defense get something very right – this is one of those times:

A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it’s quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA.

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

The result: a weapon that can hit a target 100 miles or more away within minutes…

And married to other technology we have, it can hit that target with pin-point accuracy. And the Navy hopes to eventually extend the range to 200 miles.

This gun, perfected and deployed, will ensure US naval dominance in the 21st century. Everyone will have to play catch up with us and we’ll already be several steps ahead on the latest refinements of the technology. With this weapon, we not only dominate the seas, but all land masses within about 150 miles from the sea…which is where, as it turns out, most people in the world live.

The Navy hopes to have a deployed weapon by 2025 – as we’ve only spent $211 million and we’re a good ways along, I’d like to see if we can get it by 2020, or even a bit earlier. This is a game-changing weapon: we can use it to entirely dominate an enemy’s coasts; destroy their naval forces from hundreds of miles away; shoot down ballistic missiles. We will, once again, become the un-attackable (by conventional means) Great Power, and thus regain complete diplomatic and military freedom of action.

Let’s hurry this one up…

A comment on today’s very strange press conference from Bryan Preston over at Pajamas Media:

…Here’s what I saw. I saw a current president who has never looked less interested in doing his job. I also saw a former president who never lost interest in doing that job. Obama’s demeanor and body language suggested that he’d rather be anywhere but where he was, and then he followed through and actually bolted for the door. Clinton’s demeanor was that of a passionate wonk trying to sell a policy he actually cared about, that he thought would be good for the country. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t even his own policy that he was selling.

I saw a president who, for a few minutes a least, ceded his job to his predecessor. He’d failed to sell his own policy, so he needed and got some rescue from Clinton…

Any of you out there see it? I was out and about all day today and so missed the entire news cycle until just now. This is just bizarre – do we have a man in the White House who is in any way up to the job?

From ABC News:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the man behind the publication of more than a 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, could soon be facing spying charges in the U.S. related to the Espionage Act, Assange’s lawyer said today…

It is strange that someone would be indicted for failure to use a condom…but, then again, in the world of liberalism, they might have made that a crime. For me, though, what is central here is that Assange illegally obtained secret US documents and then used them to jeopardize US national security – he’s a spy; he should feel lucky, if we get our hands on him, that he only gets sentenced to life in prison (and Manning should thank his lucky stars if we decide not to shoot him as a traitor).

Failure to indict Assange as a spy would be a gross failure on the part of the Obama Administration – so, the ball is in their court. It is sad, though, that it took the release of information damaging to Obama before the Administration started to take this seriously. But all can be repaired – if the spy and the traitor are brought to justice.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…Put simply: Our country is on the path toward bankruptcy. We must turn around before it’s too late, and the Roadmap offers a clear plan for doing so. But it does more than just fend off disaster. CBO calculations show that the Roadmap would also help create a “much more favorable macroeconomic outlook” for the next half-century. The CBO estimates that under the Roadmap, by 2058 per-person GDP would be around 70% higher than the current trend.

Is Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap perfect? Of course not—no government plan ever is. But it’s the best plan on the table at a time when doing nothing is no longer an option.

Let’s not settle for the big-government status quo, which is what the president’s commission offers. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to make these tough decisions so that they might inherit a prosperous and strong America like the one we were given.

Ryan’s plan offers us a way out of the impasse – the system where we’re committed to national bankruptcy by adherence to the failed, Keynesian economic policies of the New Deal and Great Society. Palin points out earlier in her piece that the deficit commission does nothing to really tackle entitlements and, indeed, offers a back door to a single-payer health plan as ObamaCare costs skyrocket. The only reasonable plan we have right now for long term fiscal stability is Ryan’s – and Palin is right to back it.

We should make the Ryan plan a centerpiece of our 2011 legislative effort and, as Obama and Reid will block implementation, our major issue heading in to 2012. Palin’s actions here allow us the opportunity to start pressing our weak-kneed Congressional GOP on the matter. Most of them are simply afraid to tackle entitlement reform as that will open the GOP to a Democrat smear campaign in 2012. Trouble is that we’re going to get that smear campaign whether we act on entitlements or no – and, additionally, I think the American people are ready for a serious debate on the matter; now is the time to act.

By default, Sarah Palin is becoming the GOP leader. While there is much to be said in favor of Speaker-elect Boehner as well as some others in the Congressional GOP, none of them – other than Ryan – have really stepped up to offer the radical yet simple solutions necessary to solve our problems. Sarah Palin is showing she has the raw guts necessary to do the right thing – it probably helps that she’s been slandered continually for more than two years by the left and has thus developed the thickest of political skins. But however that came about, she’s the person standing forth and leading the way. A bit more of this and she’ll have the 2012 GOP nomination wrapped up easily, if she decides to run.

Seems to be a popular idea – from Bloomberg:

A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a poll shows…

…Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo…

Republicans and Independents are more likely than Democrats to favor abolishing the Fed – naturally, as Republicans and Independents are developing a hearty mistrust of government, while Democrats still tend to look upon government as lord and master of us all. But the big news here is that a majority, overall, favor at least some stern action to bring the Federal Reserve under control.

I am one of those in favor of abolishing – and, just to really bury the idea, I’m also in favor of a return to the gold standard for our currency. We daren’t have a bank which can manipulate the value of our money. What has happened since the Federal Reserve was created is a gigantic erosion of the value of our money – depending on how you look at it, the dollar of 1913 (the year the Fed was created) has lost 90 to 99% of its value. If your grandpa had put a dollar aside in 1910 thinking that it’d be great to give you in 2010, he’d find a dime…or maybe a penny…there to give you today. Our wealth has essentially been stolen by the central bank – and given to the various banks around the United States and the world which routinely screw the pooch in their “investments”.

Get rid of the Fed, get back to coining money and only issuing set amounts of paper currency backed by gold and silver in the US Treasury. This will allow us to really have an economy based upon hard work, savings and careful investment…people take care of real money, after all…fake money printed up at will by the Federal Reserve? Its treated like Monopoly money by the banksters and bureaucrats, and thus our collapsed economy and $13 trillion in debt.

Oh, and by the way – you know how its said that everyone has a purpose in life? Well, we’ve all kinda wondered what Ron Paul’s purpose is – turns out, he’s authored a book called End the Fed…and he’s going to be in charge of House oversight of the Federal Reserve. The stars have aligned and the man and the hour have met…

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From The Hill:

The Senate on Thursday dealt a severe blow to the repeal of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law, dimming the chances for the Clinton-era ban to be scrapped this year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) failed to garner the necessary 60 votes for a procedural motion to start considering the 2011 defense authorization bill, which contains a provision to repeal the ban on openly gay people serving in the military. The final vote was 57-40…

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are trying to revive it as a stand-alone bill to be voted on after the tax deal (the reason it failed at cloture is because the GOP has clearly stated that tax and budgetary issues must come first – no vote on anything until that is done). We’ll see what happens if they manage to bring it up again – and cloture doesn’t necessarily mean approval because a lot of “2012 Democrats” are looking over their shoulder wondering how such a vote will appear at election time.

The bottom line on this is that DADT should not be considered in this Congress – it is has been soundly rejected by the American people and thus only the most pressing of issues should be considered before adjournment. DADT, plus or minus, is not a vital issue for the United States at the moment – it can be addressed next year.

More on that great economic recovery Obama has brought us – from Bloomberg:

U.S. home values are poised to drop by more than $1.7 trillion this year amid rising foreclosures and the expiration of homebuyer tax credits, said Zillow Inc., a closely held provider of home price data.

This year’s estimated decline, more than the $1.05 trillion drop in 2009…

Of course, it all started in 2006 – but Obama said he had the fixin’ for what ails us…where is it?

Complete and utter failure – that is Obamunism.

The unforgettable voice of Nat King Cole

Once again, how’s that recovery thingy working for ya? From the Wall Street Journal:

More people tapped food stamps to pay for groceries in September as the recession and lackluster recovery have prompted more Americans to turn to government safety net programs to make ends meet.

Some 42.9 million people collected food stamps last month, up 1.2% from the prior month and 16.2% higher than the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Nationwide 14% of the population relied on food stamps as of September but in some states the percentage was much higher…

One federal program I don’t have much complaint about is food stamps – regardless of what else is going on, no one in America should ever go hungry (though, of course, we must continually check to make certain we aren’t just supporting layabouts who can find work if they’d but try). But you can’t build an economy on food stamps – nor on unemployment benefits. We need work – and not just any, old work but work which creates wealth.

We’ve been entirely asinine in our economic policies since the start of the recession. We should be building and expanding farms, factories and mines but all we’ve done is bail out banks and tinker around with nearly useless things like “green jobs” and “shovel ready projects”. If we’re going to spend trillions more (and we will) over the next few years, then we should at least get something out of it – next “quantitative easing” by the Fed should result not in more money for the banksters but, instead, involve flashing some cash at people who hold down real jobs. If Bennie and the boys had wanted to do something at least modestly useful they could have sent every living American $10,000 each over the past three years…certainly would have done more for the economy than helping crooks stay rich (and we’d be no more bankrupt today for doing that than we are, anyway).

Unfortunately, I don’t think too many people in DC even realize what the problem is, let alone have any conception on how to fix it. Look for more people to be thrown on food stamps and unemployment…our economy burns down, our leaders fiddle away…

HAT TIP: Mish’s