JULY 29,2012
SUNDAY FUNNIES
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Monthly Archives: July 2012
MEDIA CAN’T HELP BLAMING IT ON THE RIGHT!
Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.
By Thomas Sowell
Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws.
(White House says Obama could address gun control issue; Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2012)
Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.
NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation 
between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in Colorado was named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a James Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado.
The fact has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and the other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been deluged with phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.
This is not the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link between conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was inspired by Rush Limbaugh.
Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.
But, where the shoe is on the other foot — as when the Unabomber had a much
marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore — the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking — or lack of thinking. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg and CNN’s Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the shooting, pushing the case for gun control laws.
You might never know, from what they and other gun control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.
Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Britain is a country with stronger gun control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States — and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.
Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries — and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun control laws. New York had strong gun control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.
It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed.
Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Any discussion of facts is futile when directed at such people. All anyone can do is warn others about the propaganda.
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See fellow SLOB take on Colorado shooter, over at Doo Doo Economics Blog: “James Holmes is a homegrown terrorist not simply a “nut job”.”
OBAMA HAS CHANGED: CLASS WARRIOR REPLACES “HOPIUM” SALESMAN
John Kass 
Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2012
Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2012 When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father.
But I didn’t have to close my eyes to see my dad. I could do it with my eyes open.
All I had to do was think of the driveway of our home, and my dad’s car gone before dawn, that old white Chrysler with a push-button transmission. It always started, but there was a hole in the floor and his feet got wet in the rain. So he patched it with 
concrete mix and kept on driving it to the little supermarket he ran with my Uncle George.
He’d return home long after dark, physically and mentally exhausted, take a plate of food, talk with us for a few minutes, then flop in that big chair in front of the TV. Even before his cigarette was out, he’d begin to snore.
The next day he’d wake up and do it again. Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even forMcDonald’s. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.
There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.
Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads.
I thought about this after I heard what Obama told a campaign crowd the other day, speaking about business owners and why they were successful.
“You didn’t get there on your own,” Obama said. “I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that? Somebody else made that happen?
Somebody else, Mr. President? Who, exactly? Government?
One of my earliest memories as a boy at the store was that of the government men coming from City Hall. One was tall and beefy. The other was wiry. They wanted steaks.
We didn’t eat red steaks at home or yellow bananas. We took home the brown bananas and the brown steaks because we couldn’t sell them. But the government men liked the big, red steaks, the fat rib-eyes two to a shrink-wrapped package. You could put 20 or so in a shopping bag.
“Thanks, Greek,” they’d say.
That was government.
We didn’t go to movies or out to restaurants. Everything went into the business. Uncle George and dad never bought what they could not afford. The store employed people, and the workers fed their families and educated their children and put them through college. They were good people, all of them. We worked together and worked hard, but none worked harder than the bosses.
It’s the same story with so many other businesses in America, immigrants and native-born. The entrepreneurs risk everything, their homes, their children’s college funds, their hearts, all for a chance at the dream: independence, and a small business of their own.
Most often, they fail and fall to the ground without a government parachute. But some get up and start again.
When I was grown and gone from home, my parents finally managed to save a little money. After all those years of hard work and denying themselves things, they had enough to buy a place in Florida and a fishing boat in retirement. Dad died only a few years later. You wouldn’t call them rich. But Obama might.
Obama’s changed. Gone is that young knight drawing the sword from the stone, selling Hopium to the adoring media, preaching an end to the broken politics of the past. These days, he wears a new presidential persona: the multimillionaire with the Chicago clout, playing the class warrior, fighting for that second term.
And he offers an American dream much different from my father’s. Open your eyes and you can see it too. He stands there at the front of the mob, in his shirt sleeves, swinging that government hammer, exhorting the crowd to use its votes and take what it wants.
DESPITE BEING “NUKED” ROMNEY JUST GROWS STRONGER!
Romney Edging Past Obama Nationally
It has been joked that we (America) “nuked” the Japanese twice and it just seems to have made them stronger.
The same might prove to be the case with Mitt Romney.
We are in the “kitchen sink” phase of the campaign, when the President’s people are 
throwing every thing they can at the Republican candidate. It has even been suggested that Mitt could be a (possible) felon!
Despite the blizzard of attack ads run by the Democrats, Mitt is now edging up over Obama in the newest polls.
The New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday shows Romney with a 45-43 percent lead over President Obama.
What should be even more disturbing for the President and Democrats are the number of Undecided: 4%.
Dick Morris, veteran pollster, believes that undecided voters always tend to break for the challenger.
Obama has been President for 31/2 years. The American voters know what they are getting from another Obama term as President. If someone is undecided, its only because he is waiting to see if Mitt Romeny is a decent replacement. (Which explains the Obama strategy of throwing every charge they can against Romney, regardless of the veracity, hoping to convince the undecided voter that Romney is an out-of-touch elitist who bullied gay kids back in Middle School, hates American workers and abuses his dog!)
Morris’ point is well taken; and can be seen clearly when applied to your personal life. If someone were to ask you, “Are you going to divorce your wife?”; you would only say, “I’m undecided” if you were considering it! A happily married man or woman would respond with, “No! Of course not!”
Which is why Obama is in such trouble.
If you add the 4% undecided to Romney’s total, his lead is beyond the margin of error.
Factor in also a poll taken by The Hill, that showed that a substancial number of Americans think Obama is transforming America FOR THE WORSE! This includes 20% of Democrats polled!
Are those 20% of Democrats likely to pull the lever for a man they think is screwing-up their country? Likely not. They may stay home; or they may vote for a change: Mitt Romney.
It is still early, despite the election being only 110 days away. But at this moment in time, momentum is shifting to Romney. Having spent millions of dollars and several months shooting everything they can Romney’s way, the Obama people might be thinking: We’ve nuked him, and it just seems to have made him stronger!
Read more: Staples vs. Solyndra
Mr. Romney helped create Staples, a start-up that worked and created tens of
thousands of jobs. Mr. Obama financed Solyndra, which did not work. Neither did Abound Solar. The many Obama alternative-energy ventures play in different market segments, but they struggle for the same reason: They serve political agendas more than customers.
(Reblogged from Wallstreet Journal Online)
SAPLES vs. SOLYNDRA
Mitt Romney needs to make a better argument for Bain capitalism.
Can a President seeking re-election with a stagnant economy and high unemployment really be winning the jobs argument against a man who backed hundreds of thriving businesses? Can a President who sank taxpayer dollars into green-energy failures now succeed by attacking an opponent who funded winning start-ups with his own money?
Yes, President Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney and the company he founded, Bain 
Capital, are deceptive and hypocritical. But Team Romney is compounding the damage from this character assault by conceding too much of the Obama critique.
When attacked for “outsourcing jobs,” the Romney camp responds by saying that Mr. Obama does it, too. Or the Romney campaign suggests that their candidate had already left the firm to save the Olympics when Bain was doing all the really bad stuff. Thus the trivial back-and-forth over when he really, finally, left Bain for good.
Tuesday’s Romney response was that Mr. Obama has collected more than $100,000 in contributions from Bain employees even as he has viciously attacked them.
This is a fair (if still insufficient) point, and the Romney campaign could add that the President may have benefited himself from Bain capitalism. Firms like Bain may have helped pay Mr. Obama’s salary when he taught law at the University of Chicago. While he was a professor there, the school ramped up its investments in private equity, enjoyed outsize returns and, according to a 2000 article in Pensions and Investments magazine, was a limited partner in more than 80 private-equity funds. The school won’t say whether Bain funds were among them.
But the next time Mr. Obama talks on the campaign trail about his rise from humble roots, he might also express some gratitude to the Mitt Romneys whose private-equity investments helped to build university endowments and thus helped underwrite Mr. Obama’s career in academia. Those same endowments have also helped pay for the education of thousands of middle-class students.
In any event, hitting Mr. Obama for his hypocrisy still won’t win the argument, if both men merely share the blame for acts of capitalism committed by Bain. Instead, Mr. Romney should enthusiastically defend Bain, and the job-creating contrast with Obamanomics that it represents. Did Bain have to cut some jobs as it built companies that ultimately created many more jobs? Yes, but its companies created more than they lost, and this dynamic spirit of improvement and enterprise represents a far better path to prosperity than the government-directed, political investing of Mr. Obama.
Mr. Romney can happily claim credit for Bain’s entire impressive history, rather than just the period through 1999. He has every right to do so as the company’s founder. And it will help illuminate the basic difference between his Bain career and the President’s 3.5 years running America’s economic policy to deliver 8.2% unemployment.
Mr. Romney’s Bain worked so well that it became the model for an entire industry. Mr. Romney helped create Staples, a start-up that worked and created tens of thousands of jobs. Mr. Obama financed Solyndra, which did not work. Neither did Abound Solar. The many Obama alternative-energy ventures play in different market segments, but they struggle for the same reason: They serve political agendas more than customers.
Mr. Romney has attacked Mr. Obama’s Solyndra investment in particular, but he hasn’t linked it consistently to the President’s failed model of government-led investing or contrasted it with the successful culture Mr. Romney built at Bain.
What Bain did is what all successful organizations do: Seek to deliver products and services that are better, faster, cheaper. In some instances that means fewer employees, even if Mr. Obama still can’t or won’t grasp the concept that we live in a competitive world. How many readers of this editorial have jobs today because the founders of their companies figured out how to spend more money on a slower manufacturing process to create goods of lower quality?
Overall, Bain capitalism means more successes than failures, and many more jobs. In March of this year, the managing directors of Bain Capital wrote to their investors and reported that, over the firm’s 28 years, companies backed by Bain have grown their revenues more than twice as fast “as both the S&P and the U.S. economy.”
The managers went on to note that after Bain invested, companies have grown their revenues by more than $105 billion globally, including $80 billion in the United States. Bain-backed companies, they added, have opened more than 5,000 stores and facilities during their ownership.
Mr. Romney may have thought that debating Bain was a distraction from focusing on the failed Obama economy. But with Mr. Obama using Bain as his main argument against Mr. Romney’s record as a job creator, the Republican has no choice but to fight back or he’ll lose the election. Americans will choose Bain capitalism over Solyndra crony capitalism, if Mr. Romney makes the case.
A version of this article appeared July 18, 2012, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Staples vs. Solyndra.
PELOSI DAUGHTER’S DOCUMENTARY OUTRAGES LIBS!
Documentary filmaker Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, has made a video that has liberal’s hair on fire!
Recently screened in March on “Real Time With Bill Maher”, the video interview of people waiting to go into an urban welfare/employment office. The results are both humerous and sad:
When President Obama says that the most productive of our citizens are not doing “their fair share”, he should pause to reflect upon the lack of any contribution on the part of folk at the bottom end of the productivity curve.
These interviews are examples of why so many hard-working Americans resent paying more taxes so that these folk can loiter on the street, living off of our labor!
INTERNATIONAL THREAT ALERTS
(Allegedly By John Cleese: British writer, actor and tall person)
The ENGLISH are apparently feeling uneasy due to recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere; and have therefore raised their security level from “MIFFED“ to “PEEVED.”
Informed sources report that security levels may be raised yet again to 
The English have not been “A BIT CROSS“ since the BLITZ in 1940; when tea supplies nearly ran out.
Terrorists have been re-categorized from “TIRESOME” to “A BLOODY NUISANCE“.
The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada (and the Spanish Inquisition).
The SCOTS 
have raised their threat level from “PISSED OFF” to “LET’S
GET THE BASTARDS!!” They don’t have any other levels. (Which explains why they have been the “shock troops” of the British army for the last 300 years!)
The FRENCH government announced yesterday that it has raised its 
terror alert level from “RUN” to “HIDE“. The only two higher levels in France are “COLLABORATE“ and “SURRENDER“. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.
ITALY has increased the alert level from “SHOUT LOUDLY and EXCITEDLY” to “ELABORATE MILITARY 
POSTURING“. Two more levels remain: “INEFFECTIVE COMBAT OPERATIONS“; and “CHANGE SIDES“.
The GERMANS have increased their alert state from
“DISDAINFUL ARROGANCE” to “DRESS in UNIFORM and SING MARCHING SONGS.” They also have two higher levels: “CONQUER the WORLD” and “THEN LOSE.”
The BELGIANS, on the other hand, are all on holiday (as usual). The only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
AUSTRALIA, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “NO WORRIES” to “SHE’LL BE ALRIGHT, MATE!” Two more escalation levels remain: “CRIKEY! I THINK WE’LL NEED to CANCEL the BARBIE this WEEKEND!” and “THE BARBIE is CANCELLED! BUGGER!” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
Urban Dictionary: “Harry Reid” Now A Boring Sexual Act!
(Courtesy of Daily Caller; by Taylor Bigler)
Ladies and gentlemen, do your significant others a favor and try not to pull a “Harry 
Reid” when you get home at night.
Thanks to Urban Dictionary — a site where users submit definitions for slang terms — the Senate majority leader’s name now means a boring sexual position!
“Harry Reid” is defined as: “A sexual position where you climb on top and then do absolutely nothing.”
The site helpfully uses the term in a sentence, “I spent so long trying to talk her into bed that when I finally got on, I pulled a ‘Harry Reid’ and fell asleep.”
The definition continues to say that the term is “[n]amed for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Under his lack of leadership, the Senate failed to pass a budget in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. He also blocked votes on numerous jobs bills passed by the House of Representatives.”
“GREEN NAVY” INSANITY UPDATE: REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS STRIKE BACK!
July 12th Update:
FROM THE NEW AMERICAN
REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS AND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS CRITICIZE THE “GREEN NAVY” INITIATIVE AS NEITHER COST EFFICIENT NOR CLEAN!
Republican lawmakers are unimpressed with President Obama’s “Green Navy” initiative; which pushes the fleet to use “green fuel”; something that will cost almost seven times more than conventional fuel.
Last month, Senators James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) were given bipartisan approval to add amendments to the Defense Authorization Bill that would restrict the use of biofuels.
The Hill explains:
Inhofe’s measure relieved the DOD from buying biofuels if they cost more than traditional sources. Petroleum cost about $3.60 per gallon Monday. McCain’s provision barred the department from building biofuel refineries unless authorized by law. Both passed with a 13-12 vote in the Armed Services Committee.
McCain noted:
“There are many areas of research that are wholly appropriate to the Department of Defense mission, such as efforts to extend the life and reduce the weight of batteries, adapt solar technologies to battlefield conditions, and reduce fuel consumption through more efficient engines and weapon systems. But defense funds should not be used to invigorate a commercial industry that cannot provide an affordable product without heavy government subsidies.
“This is not a core defense need and should be left to the Department of Energy, which received over $4 billion last year for energy research and development and related programs, or to the private sector to take the lead. In a tough budget climate for the Defense Department, we need every dollar to protect our troops on the battlefield with energy technologies that reduce fuel demand and save lives. Spending $26 per gallon of biofuel is not consistent with that goal.”
Meanwhile, despite the Navy’s efforts to go green, Environment News Service contends that the use of biofuel will actually pollute the ocean:
U.S. groups oppose plans to use the biofueled vessels to sink three obsolete U.S. warships off Hawaii during the RIMPAC war games later this month. They say toxics aboard the target ships will contaminate the sea and the old vessels should be recycled instead.
In fact, environmental groups have already petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency and gone to court in an attempt to put RIMPAC on hold because of the sinking exercise (SINKEX) scheduled during the RIMPAC. This year’s SINKEX would be the first since the moratorium was place on the exercise last year by the Chief of Naval Operations, as well as the first since the Sierra Club and Basel Action Network filed a formal complaint against the EPA.
According to ENS:
The groups warn that SINKEX operations violate U.S. ocean dumping regulations, including the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act; and the Toxic Substances Control Act; as well as several international treaties such as the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter 1972, known as the London Convention; the Stockholm Convention on Persistant Organic Pollutants; the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal; and a variety of OECD agreements.
The groups point out that in addition to the environmental concerns, sinking the ships deprives the U.S. ship-recycling industry of resources. The cost of sinking the ships is estimated at $27.6 million, not counting the loss of hundreds of American ship-recycling jobs.
“The hypocrisy of the Navy’s new ecological ‘Great Green Fleet’ demonstrating its “greenness” by sinking ships containing globally banned pollutants off the coast of Hawaii is particularly ironic,” observed Colby Self of BAN’s Green Ship Recycling Campaign. “But the realization that this choice by the Navy to dump poisons into the marine environment is not only unnecessary, but also is costing Americans hundreds of green recycling jobs, makes this SINKEX program both an environmental and an economic insult.”
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On December 16, 1907, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
sent sixteen new American battleships on a historic voyage around the world. This “Great White Fleet“, as it came to be known (due to the freshly painted white hulls of each battleship), heralded the appearance on the world stage of a new power-player: The United States of America.
Though the Great Powers of the day were likely unaware of it at the time, it was also the harbinger of the coming age of American global dominance.
Some 105 years later, the USNS Henry J. Kaiser left port at Puget Sound, WA, last week on perhaps an equally historic voyage. The Oiler carried in its storage tanks nearly 900,000 gallons of biofuel blended with petroleum; to power the cruisers, destroyers and fighter jets of what the Navy has taken to calling the “Great Green Fleet“: the first carrier strike group to be powered largely by alternative fuels.
History may well look back on this day as the harbinger of the end of American global dominance.
Naval power is real power. It represents the ability of a nation to project power in furtherance of its interests anywhere in the world. At least since the release of Alfred Thayer Mahan‘s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783 in 1890, nations and governments have understood that on a planet that is primarily composed of oceans, naval power is the ultimate instrument of hegemony. As such, there is no greater expedient of American power or symbol of its global leadership than the US Navy.
But such power does not come without an equally real price: navies are expensive.
The year that Teddy Roosevelt launched the Great White Fleet, the American Navy’s
budget was $107,372,000. By the end of WWII, with America taking over Britain’s role as sovereign of the seas, that budget had grown to a staggering $29,190,924,000. (It’s almost quaint to remember that $29 billion was once considered a large number, even in Washington!)
The Navy’s budget in 2012 has grown to $161.4 billion; just under 5% of the total Federal budget. Now, as a percent of total spending, that is far less than it was in 1945; when that $29 billion navy represented 27% of the Budget (Federal Budget 1945: $106 billion).
However, the United States is at a time of trillion-dollar deficits (the Federal deficit last year was reported at $1.3 trillion; thought the real number may have been as high as $5 trillion). Congress is enacting draconian cuts on defense through sequestration; that will reduce Defense spending from about 20% of the overall budget in 2012, to a meagre 13% by 2017.
This is the fiscal backdrop for the Obama “Green Navy” initiative. So, what is the cost of conversion to a lean, “green” Navy?
Currently, the cost of standard “conventional” fuel is $3.60 a gallon. The cost of going “Green”? A whopping $26-a-gallon!
At such a time of shrinking budgets and belt-tightening, how can the Obama Administration and the Navy justify their “Green Navy”, which will see the cost of fuelling the fleet increase seven-fold?
The answer is that they cannot.
Navies, like armies, exist for the purpose of defending their nations, projecting power and fighting (and, presumably, winning) wars. Yet politicians (and political Admirals and Generals) cannot resist using our military as a petri dish for social experimentation. Sometimes these experiments are beneficial to the military and society as a whole; such as when the military began to desegregate the races in the late 1940s.
However, social experimentation can never be allowed to hamper the military in its prime mission of defending the country and protecting its interests throughout the world.
By vastly and unnecessarily increasing fuel costs at a time of intense budget strain, the President’s “green” policy threatens to not only hamstring the Navy; it will possibly cripple our ability to patrol and protect the vital sea lanes that are the life-blood of our economy.
With a greatly reduced budget to work with, how will the Navy respond to these higher fuel costs? Will they build less ships to replace the aging ships currently scheduled for decommission? Likely, yes (and this at a time when our over-all fleet strength is the lowest it has ever been since the end of World War One!). Will they cut-back on training missions by ships and aircraft, 
which consume this costly fuel at prodigious rates? Again, the likely answer is yes. Will deployment of forward elements across the Pacific and into the Indian Ocean; where an increasingly belligerent Iran threatens to close the Persian Gulf to international shipping, become fewer in both number of ships and frequency of mission as budget constraints keep our fleet in harbor? Without a doubt, yes again.
Chinese leaders, perhaps reading Mahan, are building a “blue water”, ocean-going navy of their own. China understands that who controls the sea controls the land. Beijing’s leaders must be looking upon this Obama “green” Navy insanity with grim amusement.
You can bet that Chinese plans for future naval dominance will not be hampered by ships that burn $26-a-gallon “green” fuel.
Either should ours.
China’s “Great Red” fleet
D-DAY LOOMS FOR SECOND AMENDMENT!
ARMS TRADE TREATY MUST BE DEFEATED!
Obama’s attempt to engineer a backdoor gun-ban through the United Nations!
By Dick Morris
Published on TheHill.com on July 10, 2012
Without much fanfare and with as little publicity as possible, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will go to New York City to sign the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), now in the final stages of negotiation at the U.N. The treaty marks the beginning of an international crusade to impose gun controls on the United States and repeal our Second Amendment rights.
The ATT is nominally geared toward the purpose of stopping international arms sales to gangs, criminals and violent groups. But, as is so often the case with U.N. treaties, this is merely a convenient facade behind which to conceal the ATT’s true intent: to force gun control on the United States.
Secretary Clinton will doubtless succeed in inserting language into the treaty asserting that it in no way is meant to restrict our right to bear arms. But even this language will be meaningless in the face of the overall construct set up by the treaty.
The ATT is to be administered by an International Support Unit (ISU), which will ensure that “parties [to the treaty] take all necessary measures to control brokering activities taking place within [their] territories … to prevent the diversion of exported arms to the illicit market or to unintended end users.”
The ISU will determine whether nations are in compliance with this requirement and will move to make sure that they do, indeed, take “all necessary measures.” This requirement will inexorably lead to gun registration, restrictions on ownership and, eventually, even outright bans on firearms.
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said it best: “After the treaty is approved and 
comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and that it requires Congress to adopt legislation to restrict the ownership of firearms.”
Bolton explains that “the administration knows that it cannot obtain this kind of legislation in purely a domestic context. They will use an international agreement to get domestically what they couldn’t get otherwise.”
The treaty makes no sense otherwise, except as a circuitous vehicle to achieve gun control in the United States. The vast majority of all small arms and light arms exports (the ostensible focus of the treaty) are from sales by the governments of the United States, Russia, China, Germany and Israel. Individual or corporate arms trafficking is a distinct minority. But it is to absorb the brunt of the treaty’s regulations.
Insofar as the treaty restricts governmental action, it bars governments from arming 
“illicit” groups in other nations. This provision could well be interpreted to ban U.S. arms sales to Iranian or Syrian dissidents. It could even be used by China to stop us from selling arms to Taiwan, since the U.N. does not recognize Taiwan as a nation, but rather an entity occupying territory that should belong to China.
And let’s not forget how well the United States has done in reducing murders and other crimes despite the absence of comprehensive gun controls and bans. In 1993, there were 24,350 homicides in the United States. Last year, there were 13,576 (despite a growth of 60 million in the population). Only 9,000 of these murders involved a firearm. (Less than one-third of the highway deaths each year in the country.)
Obama has left gun control off his legislative agenda so far. Now his strategy becomes apparent: Use international treaties to achieve it.
And bear in mind that under the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution, we would be obliged to enforce the ATT despite the Second Amendment. International treaties have the force of constitutional law in the United States.
If it is ratified during the lame-duck session of the Senate this year, then nothing can ever change it. Goodbye, Second Amendment.
Right now we need 34 courageous Republican senators to step up and demand that Hillary not sign the treaty, and indicate their intention to vote against its ratification if it is submitted. Only such an action can stop this treachery in its tracks.
Go here to sign petition to stop this treaty in its tracks!!
In a related story, the NRA comes out swinging against this treaty!!
Word Warrior of So Cal 