Blogs For Victory

We’re powerless?

Somali pirates struck again yesterday, seizing an Iranian cargo ship holding 30,000 tonnes of grain, as the world’s governments and navies pronounced themselves powerless against this new threat to global trade.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the US military chief, pronounced himself stunned by the pirates’ reach after their capture of the supertanker Sirius Star and its $100 million (£70 million) cargo. Commanders from the US Fifth Fleet and from Nato warships in the area said that they would not intervene to retake the vessel.

Well, the reason we have a Navy is to keep the sea lanes open – if Admiral Mullen doesn’t understand this, then we need to replace him with an Admiral who understands the basic concepts behind Naval organization. To fight pirates and others who threaten the free passage of peaceful vessels is the primary task of the United States Navy.

So, what do we do?

From what I’ve been able to determine, piracy outside of territorial waters (and, in some cases, within it) can be attacked by any interested nation. In other words, there are no jurisdictional boundaries regarding piracy. If a pirate seized a ship of the coast of California, a Pakistani flagged warship could intercept it and punish the pirates under Pakistani law…and, of course, if a pirate captured a ship off the Pakistani coast, a US flagged warship could do likewise and punish under US law. So, the US Navy could go after these pirates and bring them to justice.

The pirates do what they do because large profits can be made and, of course, it is highly likely that the ship owners will rather pay the ransom than risk damage to their very valuable property. Trouble is, failure to act forcefully against piracy will just encourage more and more of it until the trade routes of the world are clogged with pirates essentially demanding high tolls to allow the mere passage of vessels. Can’t allow that to eventuate – on the other hand, we don’t want our Navy just endlessly chasing pirates around the backwaters of the world.

Solution: Grant letters of marque to American citizens to become a sort of auxiliary Navy, under ultimate US command, but operating outside the normal parameters of Naval organization and chain of command. The staffing would be former sailors and special forces troops. The ships would be reconditioned Spruance class destroyers (plenty of them in mothballs and with a bit of work they’d easily outmatch anything the pirates could come up with). They would patrol those backwaters, with access to US military intel and either intercept pirates on their way to a crime, or take back ships seized by pirates. The pay could be just about anything (we’d have no problem staffing up the ships – first off because they’d need far smaller crews than a regular US warship and, secondly, because there are lots of old sailors and special forces who are no longer up to snuff for the cutting edge, current military…but are more than sufficient for anti-piracy actions, especially as they would ultimately be backstopped by the regular Navy and special forces) – and when a ship is retaken from pirates, the prize for the crew would be 50% of the ransom the pirates were asking, distributed amongst those who participated in the rescue (this might require re-establishing what used to be called “prize courts”).

As these forces would be outside the normal rules of engagement for regular military and naval forces there would be none of the thorny issues about whether or not they have a right to a jury trial – and deals could be struck with interested parties in the areas of piracy for rescue crews to deposit captured pirates for a bit of rough and ready justice. Bottom line, we’d gain the ability to go after piracy without directly involving the US government, at minimal cost and with a great disincentive to piracy as once a few of the pirates are killed during rescues and/or swiftly dealt with once turned over to some national authority the pirates will start to get the picture.

The right way to do it:

Credit this idea to Robert Reich, the former Clinton administration official. We’ve had lots of disagreements with Reich in the past, and no doubt will in the future. But on this he’s right: If a bailout is to be given, the Big Three and their unions must thoroughly revamp their businesses, almost as if it were a bankruptcy. Call it a Chapter 11 Bailout.

Above all, the companies’ poisonous contracts with the United Auto Workers union have to be torn up. The problem is that the UAW, under President Ron Gettelfinger, remains adamant: No givebacks. This is financial lunacy.

Thanks in part to managerial incompetence, but mostly due to pricey union contracts, it costs American carmakers too much to build cars here; they can’t compete. When you fold in health care, pensions, hourly pay, vacations and the rest, average total compensation for a Big Three autoworker is $73.21 an hour, according to data cited by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry.

Toyota, Honda and Nissan pay a still-generous $44.20 an hour in total compensation — a cost edge of nearly 40%. Is it any wonder that Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t compete? Or that, after paying their workers, they never have enough cash left to retool?

Today the total market capitalization of the Big Three has fallen to about $7 billion. Is it better for the owners of those companies to suffer a total loss or for taxpayers to lose $25 billion? The answer is obvious. As such, the only case for a bailout is if it would force major changes on the industry. That won’t happen with current management in place or with giveaway union contracts that make the companies unviable.

And, remember, if Big Auto did go out of business, it would only be in the sense that the corporate bosses and union chiefs who currently run the show would be out of business – the plants, themselves, would either never close at all or only close for a short time as new management comes in and simply keeps things going, now without the corporate pinheads and self-destructive union contracts. The talk of millions of jobs lost is the typical Big Corporation/Big Government scare tactic when reality is about to overtake them – they don’t want to change, so they claim that if the taxpayers don’t pony up, we’ll have fire, famine, war and a plague of locusts o’er the land…don’t believe them. Its utter BS they are selling.

We were stampeded on the $700 billion bail out (and kudos to those few – left and right – who warned from the start that it was an idiot idea), but we must not allow ourselves to be snookered in to becoming Uncle Sugar for every corporate behemoth and corrupt union in the nation. Unions are, at best, useless – and more often downright destructive. Big corporations like GM are essentially devices designed to hide incompetence until the CEOs get their golden parachutes. The swifter these dinosaurs die off, the better our economy will be for it.

Democrats will fight tooth and nail for these bail outs – because unions shovel massive amounts of cash at the Democrats and, additionally, the corporate bosses are also more than happy to shell out to the Democrats in order to keep the corrupt government process going whereby well-connected corporations help Democrats write the tax laws to advantage big corporations and disadvantage any prospective competitors. Another bit of bull flop not to believe is the leftwing story that liberals fight against corporations – they fight off the corporations with all the determination of hookers fighting off Johns in Vegas on a Friday night…

Let them go belly up – if they are failing, then taxpayer money will only go to reinforce failure. Better to have done with them and allow a rational auto industry to replace the current failed system.

Imagine that – the Great Hopenchange thinks long and deeply and out of the depths of his all-wise soul comes the new Attorney General…a Clintonite who was dropped the ball in the disgusting last-minute Clinton pardon of tax cheat Marc Rich…who then took his new-found pardoned status and went right on in to Saddam’s Oil for Food scandal:

President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition…

…The only hesitancy about Holder’s selection was that he himself had reservations about going through a confirmation process that was likely to revive questions about his role in signing off on the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Although there is no evidence that Holder actively pushed the pardon, he was criticized for not raising with the White House the strong objections that some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York had to pardoning somebody who had fled the country. But after reviewing the evidence in the case, and checking with staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Obama aides and Holder both decided the issue was highly unlikely to prove an obstacle to his confirmation, one of the sources said–especially given the Democrats’ more sizable post-election majority in the Senate.

A partisan hack as Chief of Staff; an ambulance-chaser as White House Counsel, a crook’s dream as Attorney General…this is the change you liberals were demanding? This is what you wanted?

The incoming Obama Administration just gets worse by the day…

http://foxnews1.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/foxnews1-foxnews-pub01-live/current/videolandingpage/fncLargePlayer/client/embedded/embedded.swf

Scary.

More from Zogby:

 Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Zogby Statement on Ziegler poll.

Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film “Blocking the Path to 9/11” and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice..

And of course there is a lot more at HowObamaGotElected.com.

We’re back tonight. Tonight we’ll be talking about the results of the election, the proposed bailout of the auto industry, and the Minnesota recount…

 

Click here to listen from 6-7 pm EST…

Change which is absolutely freakin’ unbelievable:

Barack Obama has selected Gregory Craig as White House counsel, a move that will recall some controversial legal cases over the last few years…

…Besides defending Clinton through the impeachment process, an effort that Craig lost, who else had the benefit of Craig’s counsel?

* Elian Gonzalez’s father – Craig represented the father who demanded the return of his son after his estranged wife died trying to take Elian to freedom. Most people saw this as a thinly-veiled publicity stunt from Fidel Castro, attempting to embarrass the US. The dispute got resolved when Janet Reno ordered an armed assault on the house where Elian’s family in the US provided him a home.

* John Hinckley, Jr – Craig presented and won the insanity defense that allows Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin to spend weekends with his family now.

* Kofi Annan – The former Secretary-General of the UN hired Craig to defend his interests in the Volcker Commission probe of the Oil-for-Food scandal, which put billions of dollars into Saddam Hussein’s pockets while providing cash for Annan’s son, his deputies, and some allege Annan himself.

* Pedro Gonzalez Pinzon – A Panamanian legislator wanted for murdering an American soldier in 1992. The Dallas Morning News demanded that Obama force Craig to drop the case during the campaign, but no report of whether he did is easily available.

I doubt that any President has selected the defender of a presidential assassin as White House Counsel before now. Does anyone want to guess how long that takes to become a Trivial Pursuit question?

Everyone, even Castro’s goon, UN crooks and sundry cretins, has a right to counsel – but this is a tremendous misjudgement on the part of Obama. This is the worst sort of ambulance-chasing, celebrity lawyer we’re all sick to death of and, furthermore, someone who is clearly not capable of giving Obama that completely objective legal advice needed from the White House counsel’s office. The Obama Administration is taking on more and more of the look of an impending train wreck.

My prayer: I hope this report is just plain and simple wrong. Someone please tell me that Obama isn’t this obtuse…

Yep, nothing more important than getting the United States back on the side of butchering unborn children, because that is the loving and merciful thing to do, right?

Supporters of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are confident that President-elect Barack Obama will reverse the Bush administration’s 2002 decision to stop the $40 million it received in U.S. funding. The policy was instated because of UNFPA’s support for China’s one-child policy, which includes coercive abortion practices.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D – N.Y.) said the funding will be approved by the Democratic majority Congress. Her comments came while speaking Wednesday at a press conference at the National Press Club where the 2008 U.N. report on world population was released.

“You know the president will have to do nothing,” said Maloney. “He will just have to let the will of Congress go through. One of the changes is that UNFPA will be funded,” CNSNews.com reports.

The Bush administration in 2002 had stopped funding the organization, citing the Kemp-Kasten Amendment which prohibits funds from being available to organizations or programs determined to be supporting or participating in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization programs.

In July of 2008, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte announced that for the sixth year in a row, the government had determined that “UNFPA provides support for and participates in the management of the Chinese government’s program of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.”

And I know that all of you, my fellow Americans, are delighted that in some small way we, too, will be involved in forced abortions and sterlizations in China. When we think about the poor, frightened woman being forced to have an abortion, we can take real pride in being Americans, can’t we?

Oh, the joys of a liberal, Democratic Administration – with such advances in the battle for equality for women and death for children, can federally funded abortion on demand be far behind?

Heh (content warning).

Interesting:

In her seminal book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel writes about the real political divide — not left versus right, but what she calls stasists versus dynamists. The former fear change and want to use government power to minimize it, if not eliminate it. The latter accept that improvements in the human condition require change by definition, and understand that the best way to ensure it is to allow individuals the freedom to make choices, with consequences, both good and ill, to be borne by them.

By these definitions, both presidential candidates in this election were largely stasists.

Can’t say that I agree with that, but is in a fascinating concept – fascinating, to me, in the indicator of how widespread sheer misunderstanding is in our modern world. We’ve been far too long on this road, and its time we got off it.

As a campaign theme, “change” worked great for Obama. In reality, of course, Obama proposes very little of the change he ostensibly campaigned on, but we are in for some radical changes that were little mentioned during the election (we will get, for instance, a lot more abortion funding out of Obama even though that wasn’t mentioned on the campaign trail, but we won’t get a major shift in Iraq policy, even though Obama was on and on about it). Please observe one thing about the late, unlamented Presidential campaign – neither candidate talked about doing what is right. Curiously enough, I happened to hear Ralph Nader just before election day and in his own kooky but sincere way, he was talking about doing what was right, as he saw it. His tiny vote total can be taken as an indicator of what always trying to do the right thing can do to you, at times.

Change is a word which masks what is really going on – an attempt to avoid the hard and fast, “this is right or this is wrong” of it all. And don’t get me wrong here; John McCain is as guilty on this score as Obama. The jury is out on President Bush, and may not come in for a century. Former President Clinton is the archetype of the leader who will change daily in order to avoid doing what is right and thus risky. Taking one thing with another, we’ve had only a few President’s who were determined to do what was right all or most of the time. Reagan was one; so was Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and, of course, George Washington.

This is not to say that these men made no mistakes – each of them has a large number of rather stunning mistakes in the performance of their office. But the key to all of them was their burning desire to do what was right and the unflinching way they adhered to what was right, as best as they could determine it. And if you think we’re poor in having so few such leaders, please observe that in the entire rest of the world in the entirety of human history, the number of leaders who also tried to do what was right is, perhaps, even less than we’ve had in our 225-odd years. St Louis of France, for certain. Confucious, though he wasn’t in charge. Ashoka of India. Mandela. Christina Alexandra of Sweden, perhaps. Not much, to be sure.

To fault Obama and McCain for not doing what most people don’t do is unfair. On the other hand, to call for perish-the-hindmost change at all costs is insane. What we want is leaders who will try to discover the right thing to do, and then go on and try to do it, come what may. If doing the right thing calls for the complete overturning of a particular institution, then we must do it. If doing the right thing calls for rigid adherence to the existing rules of an institution, then we must do it. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and if you’re not actively seeking to do the right thing, then you run a high risk of doing the wrong thing, even if unintentionally.

That is the word.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, it would seem.

This is the part of politics most people shouldn’t have to see – Obama wants Hillary neutralized, at least for the first couple years, and by putting her in the Cabinet, he gets that. Hillary, meanwhile, has a lot of debts to pay off and the only want to get the money is via Bill’s “speaking fees”, and he will now have influence to peddle with this “foundation”. Actually, I’m going to hand it to Obama on this one – rather clever, if cynical, political ploy.

The larger worry I’m developing is that Obama appears unwilling to make a decision which risks Obama’s political prospects. In the advancement and defense of Obama, Obama is quick and decisive…on everything else he floats around like a feather blown on the wind. The various parts of the Obama Administration may fly very much out of control – someone has to make hard and fast decisions, and if Obama won’t, other’s will – to the detriment of national policy. Honestly, its better to have a series of wrong decisions made than a series of correct half-decisions.

Obama has a steep learning curve, and for the sake of the United States and the world I hope he realizes (a) how little he knows and (b) is determined to master his job.