·       Obama Plays Truman With Buck Stops “Joke”

·       Russia Arms Vietnam Against China

·       Military Aid To Yemen To Double After Botched Christmas Attack.

·       China To Be More Aggressive

Sen. Harry Reid’s (D) Nevada racists comments has him on a hotspot and backing and filling. Of course Obama was immediately  forgiving. It was Reid who hypocritically blasted Sen. Trent Lott (R) Miss for comments supporting Strom Thurmond’s Dixicrats.

Obama has finally brought himself to confess America is at war, and with a wink and nod accepted blame for what he called a systemic failure leading up to the near fatal Christmas airliner bombing attempt.

The word “vigilance” is sometimes mocked as reactionary and jingoistic. But the failures in the war on terrorism – even rebranding in “non-war” terms — during the past few months have been failures of vigilance.

After warnings to American officials from his father, a radicalized Nigerian with ties to Yemen — holding a one-way ticket and no luggage — is allowed on a plane headed to Detroit. A man in Afghan military fatigues — covering a bomb vest — entered a CIA base in Afghanistan for an intelligence debriefing, without being screened – many died.  An Army psychologist — with a history of making provocative jihadist arguments and known to classmates as a “ticking time bomb” — is assigned to Afghanistan and reports for processing at Fort Hood – many more died.

After the Christmas attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano alarmingly concluded, “One of the things that may come out of this awful day is perhaps a renewed sense of urgency.”

Her statement is a confession that vigilance has faded over time. Some of this is a natural process — a human desire for normalcy, the tendency of civilized people to repress unpleasant realities. Vigilance is like a knife that dulls when it is not used.

Which is precisely why vigilance requires leadership. Urgency is either sharpened by rhetoric and expectation — or it is sharpened by tragedy.

Obama can’t be held responsible for every mistake at every level of government. But every level of government takes its cues from the president and his main advisers. And it is difficult to argue that the Obama administration has even attempted to create an atmosphere of urgency in the war on terror. The listless, coldblooded and clueless response of the Hawaii White House to the Christmas Day attack was only the most recent indication. Over the last year, nearly every rhetorical signal from the administration — from the use of war-on-terror euphemisms such as “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” to its preference for immediately categorizing terrorism as the work of an “isolated extremist” — has been designed to convey a return to normalcy, a contrast to the supposed fear-mongering of the past.

Add to this the Holderization of the war on terrorism. Attorney General Eric Holder began his work not with a high-profile assault on al-Qaeda but with a high-profile assault on the CIA — making clear to every ambitious officer that counterintelligence is a dead end of recrimination and legal bills. And now both the mastermind of Sept. 11, 2001, and the underwear bomber are headed toward celebrity trials. According to White House terrorism adviser John Brennan, the decision to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court was made almost immediately by the Justice Department — though the president now concedes that “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula trained [Abdulmutallab], equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

This civilian prosecution strategy would make sense if the goal is punishment for an attempted mass murderer. But it makes no sense if the goal is vigilance in the war on terrorism — gaining information to prevent future attacks. Abdulmutallab evidently talked a bit with FBI investigators when first captured. But any defense lawyer — and now he has one — will urge him to withhold information for use in bargaining with prosecutors down the road. The reality here is simple and shocking: A terrorist with current knowledge of al-Qaeda operations in Yemen has been told he has the right to remain silent.

As a foreign terrorist, he does not have that right (as even the Obama administration has conceded by its use of military tribunals in other cases). And granting Abdulmutallab that privilege only because he tried to commit murder on American soil is an incentive of disturbing perversity.

The president has occasionally talked of a war on terrorism. But lip service is different from leadership. In the war on terrorism, 2009 was not a year of urgency and vigilance. It was a year of lullabies, hot toddies and Ambien — though it nearly ended with a bang.

The crucial issue now is what will be done from this point forward, and frankly that is seriously in doubt.

Discalced (dis-KALST) adjective: Without shoes. ETYMOLOGY:From Latin dis- (apart, away) + calceare (to fit with shoes), from calceus (shoe), from calx (heel). The word discalced is often used of members of religious orders who go barefoot or wear sandals.

Vietnam is purchasing six submarines from Russia along with other weapons system in what analysts say is a bid to counter China’s growing regional military power.

Hanoi announced a large arms deal for the submarines last week amid concerns that Vietnam is preparing to defend its interests in the resource-rich South China Sea, where Chinese military forces have increased their presence and aggressiveness in the past several years.

“I think their primary rationale is to counteract the military build-up that the Chinese have had in the South China Sea,” said Richard Bitzinger, a regional defense analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

The arms deal was signed Dec. 15 during a visit to Russia by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Ironically Russia is reported to be selling $2.7 billion in arms to China.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Vietnam agreed to buy six Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines in a deal estimated to be worth $2 billion.

Disputes between Vietnam and China have been growing in recent months over disputed waters, including the Paracel Islands where Vietnamese fishermen have been harassed by the Chinese military.

Vietnam Deputy Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh called the maritime tensions “a matter of concern” two weeks ago. Analysts called it one of the most outspoken expressions of concern by Hanoi.

Dung confirmed in Moscow that the arms deal included submarines along with aircraft and “military equipment.” Advanced warplanes include 12 Su-30MK2 aircraft, among Russia’s most sophisticated export jets. The Su-30MK2 is comparable to the U. S. F-15 and superior to most other fourth generation fighters.  It is inferior to the U. S. made fifth generation F-22 (now cancelled) and F-35 joint strike fighter.

Good news for Gilbert Arenas. He got “Athlete of the Year” from “Guns & Ammo” magazine.—Leno . The momcompoop Arenas has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA for bringing a handgun into the locket room.

US official spokesmen have stepped up their rhetoric against al Qaeda in Yemen but do not have the manpower resources to open another anti-terror warfront in addition to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and to a lesser degree Somalia, Washington sources report.

 

This inadequacy is cloaked by the heated rhetoric, the closure of the US and British embassies in Sanaa for fear of a terrorist attack, the two governments’ declared intention of establishing a police force to fight al Qaeda in Yemen and a further injection of US counter-terror funding to the Sanaa government, although the chances of its survival - or president Ali Abdullah’s loyalty - are fairly low.

 

Yemeni “commentators” described as “productive” his talks in Sanaa Saturday, Jan. 2 with visiting Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, with regard to action against al Qaeda. But Washington has a problem with the Yemen president: In the ten years since al Qaeda blew up the USS Cole in Aden harbor, Salah has conducted a dual policy, on the one hand, posing as America’s faithful ally in the war on the Islamist extremists, while, on the other, maintaining close back-door ties with al Qaeda in Yemen and giving them his protection.

 

Yemen’s revolving door for captured terrorists is part of this two-faced presidential strategy and accounts for al Qaeda’s mounting strength in the country. Any effort to contain this strength would be further doomed if the Obama administration were to go through with repatriating to their homeland 100 Yemeni Islamists released from Guantanamo Bay.

 

The US president’s top counter-terror adviser John Brennan told US television audiences Sunday: “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses a serious threat” which would be exacerbated by its reinforcement.

 

The day after his talks with Gen. Petraeus, Salah detached troops for the provinces east of the capital to ward off al Qaeda’s increasing presence there, but this was no more than a token gesture. His deals with Washington are unlikely to stand up for more than a few weeks or lead to the culling of al Qaeda strength in the country and, anyway, he has no military strength to spare from his other warfronts.

 

The Obama administration, facing mounting public criticism of the security lapses which led up to the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas day, is picking its way through this minefield in response to American fears and demands for a tough hand against the terrorists.

 

In the last of his three speeches on the subject on Saturday, Jan. 2, President Obama fingered al Qaeda in Yemen as the authors of the attempt after its organization, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s claim of responsibility. Now, he must follow through with a form of retaliation, even though by now the Islamist terrorists’ have abandoned their known hideouts and gone to ground among friendly native tribes or Yemen’s lofty mountains in the south.

 

The threat of an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa is longstanding. Al Qaeda controls parts of four Yemen provinces, Abayan, Baida, Shabwa and Hadramout, covering nearly 200,000 sq. km, almost a third of Yemen’s total area (530,000 sq. km. - slightly smaller than California). No more than a skeleton staff of two or three officers normally mans the US embassy in Sanaa, the ambassador and most of the personnel working out of well-guarded and fortified safe houses. The British embassy diplomatic staff is likewise very small.

 

Yemen is sunk so deep in three chaotic wars against two insurgencies and al Qaeda that the notion of a police force is risible. So too is for the US to rely on its armed forces to contain al Qaeda.

 

Military sources report that for months now, Yemeni armed forces have been staggering from one defeat to another against the Houthi rebels in the north, further undermined by the pullout of Saudi troops last week.

 

An even more menacing insurgency led by the Southern Engine movement is fighting to separate southern Yemen from the North and declare independence from the strategic Red Sea port of Aden.

 

Yemen claimed to have carried out two air strikes against al Qaeda hideouts in Shabwa on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24. They were in fact the work of US drones.

 

The latter attack, which killed 36 al Qaeda high-ups, took place the day before the Detroit-bound airliner was threatened by an al Qaeda bomber.

 

The logical conclusion from this sequence of events is that American military action in Yemen had no effect on the plot to blow up an American airliner.

 

The most popular boys’ names in 2009 were Ethan, Noah, and Logan. The least popular boy name for 2009: Tiger Madoff Gosselin.- Leno

 

Sensing weakness and seeing opportunity the Chinese Foreign Ministry has reshuffled its leading diplomats with a view to waging a more aggressive “quasi-superpower diplomacy” in the coming decade. Foremost among the changes is the soon-to-be-announced posting of Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei to Washington.

He, 55, will replace incumbent Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong, who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 and is tipped to return home.

Meanwhile, the official Chinese media reported Jan. 4 that three new vice foreign ministers had been appointed. They are former UK Ambassador Fu Ying; former Japan Ambassador Cui Tiankai; and former Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun. The three rising stars are expected to be in charge of European, Asian and African affairs, respectively.

Of the three, the suave and elegant Fu, 57, has attracted the most attention. Of Mongolian descent and daughter of a PLA general, Fu is the second female diplomat since 1949 to have attained the rank of vice minister. (The first was Mao Zedong’s niece, Wang Hairong, who was vice foreign minister during the Cultural Revolution.)

A former ambassador to Australia and the Philippines, Fu has played a pivotal role in raising China’s profile in Europe and in boosting the country’s ties with the EU, its largest trading partner.

Yet it is He’s imminent move to Washington that has become the talk of the cocktail circuit in Beijing. A fluent English speaker who studied international relations in Switzerland for a year, He served in China’s missions in the U.S. and United Nations for many years.

Often spoken of as a future foreign minister, He is considered a hawk who will be pushing hard to establish de facto diplomatic equality between China and the U.S.

Just last month, He made headlines at the Copenhagen climate-change summit when he told a press conference that the U.S. representative, Todd Stern, “either lacks common sense or is extremely irresponsible.”

Many official Chinese analysts see Beijing taking a more aggressive stance toward the U.S. For example, Cui Liru, president of the prestigious China Institute of Contemporary International Research, sees “a new balance of power” between the superpower and the quasi-superpower.

“In the past, the U.S. was proactive and we tended to be reactive. In many areas, the U.S. was on the offensive and we were on the defensive,” Cui commented concerning bilateral ties over the past several decades.

“There will be some changes of posture in the coming 10 years,” the senior government adviser noted.

It is also significant that the generation of “returnees” — Chinese who had studied in the West — has gained dominance over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, also a former ambassador to the U.S., studied in Britain, as did Vice Foreign Minister Fu.

Vice Foreign Minister Cui has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.

It is a mistake, however, to think that diplomats who had received formal training in the U.S. and Europe tend to be more conciliatory toward the West. If anything, such officials tend to assume a hardline stance, if only to reassure the big bosses in the Chinese Communist Party that they have not succumbed to the proverbial “sugar-coated bullets of capitalism” during their years abroad.

The NFL Playoffs have begun with generally boring blowout games. Except for the overtime dustup between Green Bay and the Cardinals.

·       Russia To Save World from Asteroid Strike

·       2011 BCS Game To Be In 3-D.

·       Obama Plan to Disarm America

·       China Warns Obama Over Taiwan

·       2010 Election Predictions.

Happy New Year! Everybody was off for Christmas . . . And apparently, so was Homeland Security . - Leno

Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia’s space agency said Wednesday.

“We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done” to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

“Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed,” Perminov said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.

Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts.

Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new “space apparatus” designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth safely.

“There won’t be any nuclear explosions,” Perminov said. “Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this.”

In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space agencyNASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated “a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.”

“Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million,” NASA said.

RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres (18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 — closer than some geo-stationary satellites — and could shift course to hit Earth seven years after that.

Skeptics say the odds are it will miss Earth and the whole things is a Russian ploy to put dangerous weapons in space. Others point to the 1998 movie where a USA team sacrifices itself to stop just such a catastrophe and Russia’s desire to be a hero..Last week Russia unveiled plans for multiple manned and unmanned space missions to replace U. S. as space leader.

Cothurnal (koh-THUR-nuhl) adjective: Of or related to tragedy or tragic acting. ETYMOLOGY:From Latin, from Greek kothornos (a thick-soled laced boot worn by tragic actors in ancient Athenian tragedies).

Today is the 2010 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) national collegiate football championship game between slightly favored Alabama and Texas and if ESPN, owned by ABC, and Disney have their way next year’s game will be in 3D. That game plus 25 World Cup matches, college basketball and football, and the Summer X Games will also be shown in 3-D on home television sets according to ESPN.

Discovery Communications, Sony and Imax are also set to announce Tuesday a 3D network that would launch in 2011. The joint venture of the three firms doesn’t have an official name for the network yet, although it has created a logo that says “3D TV,” according to sources. 

ESPN has been testing ESPN 3D for more than two years. For example, it showed a USC-Ohio State college football game in select theaters and on USC’s campus.

viewers must have a 3D-ready TV set to see the 3-D broadcast, and might need a new set-top box. And yes, viewers also must wear 3D glasses.

Plus, the added cost of producing content in 3D will likely get passed onto the consumer, resulting in another cable pay tier similar to current high-definition packages.

The recent box office success of “Avatar,” which recently passed $1 billion worldwide and is set to become the #2 movie of all time behind director James Cameron’s own “Titanic,” has helped prove the 3D format can draw a stunning number of viewers. 

3-D has existed in some form since the 1890s. Frederick Eugene Ives patented his stereo camera rig in 1900. The camera had two lenses coupled together 1 3/4 inches apart. Many say the “golden era” of 3-D began in 1952 with the release of the first color stereoscopic feature, Bwana Devil, produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler.

Some will recall that Stereo sound was a response to 3-D movies and called “3-D radio”

Obama’s plan to begin unilateral phasing out U. S. nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from the Pentagon and other US agencies, The Los Angeles Times reported late Sunday.

Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague last April in what many saw as an audition for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since then he has ended numerous defense programs including arguably the scraping air superiority F-22 fighter program, cutting the strategic bomber program, and reducing naval assets while China is arming to the teeth for a pushg against Taiwan and into the Pacific, and Russia is on the edge of military modernization and reexpansion.

But citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the Obama administration is now locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the US nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in country’s military strategy. Military commanders worry Obama’s plan is tantamont to disarming America and invites aggression against it and its allies who are already looking elsewhere for a reliable strategic partner.

Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission, the report said.

In turn, White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama’s preference for sweeping change, The Times noted.

The Pentagon has stressed the importance of continued US deterrence, an objective Obama has said he agrees with, the report said.

But a senior Defense official, who described the debate as “spirited,” acknowledged that some officials are concerned that the administration may be going too far, the paper pointed out.

Critics wonder what is to be gained by desolving the long held and successful “Peace Through Strength” ethos that formed the basis for the dissembling of the former Soviet Union and ending the Cold War without bloodshed.

 Investigators in the Florida Keys say they lured a suspected marijuana grower into turning himself in by leaving a ransom note in place of six seized pot plants.  Police left a number saying to call for the price to get his pot plants back. The grower called and offered $200 — the Einstein is in jail.

China on Tuesday again warned the United States against selling arms to Taiwan, amid media speculation that Washington could soon act on the island’s request for new weapons.

“We firmly oppose the US selling arms to Taiwan,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters at a regular briefing, saying Beijing has had “serious consultations” with Washington on the issue.

“We urge the US to recognise the gravity of selling arms to Taiwan… cancel any plans to sell arms to Taiwan and stop selling arms to Taiwan so as not to damage China-US relations.”

Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, despite warming ties with Beijing, has appealed to the United States for weapons, saying the island must stay on guard in light of the mainland’s sharp rise in military spending.

Taipei is reportedly seeking F-16 fighter jets as well as helicopters for military transport and rescue missions to modernise its ageing fleet, and Obama is expected to act on that request in the coming months.

Washington has been the leading arms supplier to independent Taiwan, despite switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing during the Carter presidency,.

China and Taiwan split in 1949. Beijing still views the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

During his visit to China in November, Obama reiterated that the United States believed there was only one China shocking the Taiwanese..

The United States is required by law to provide Taiwan with weapons of a defensive nature, under the Taiwan Relations Act.

US defense firm Raytheon said last month that it had been awarded a contract worth 1.1 billion dollars for new Patriot missile systems to Taiwan, but that the missiles themselves would be part of a separate contract.

China is increasingly confident that it can bull rush Obama getting what it wants as it surged into the Pacific.

In reelated news China is said to be interested in taking over as many as 200 U. S. radio stations which could give it a trangle hold on Americans’ information media.

The other day in Ohio, employees at a Wendy’s saved a man’s life. Apparently, they told him, “We’re closed.”– O’Brien

Neither Connecticut’s Democrat Senator Chris Dodd or Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.)  will seek reelection. Dodd is trailing badly in polls.

Nevada’s Democrat Senator Harry Reid is also expected to lose his seat as his popularity there has plummeted.

The party in the White House, with rare exception, lose ground in midterm elections. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 House and one Seante seat; In 1962 Kennedy lost 4 house seats but gained 3 senators; in 1970 Nixon lost 12 House seats and gained 2 in Senate; in 1978 Carter dropped 15 house members and 3 in Senate; Reagan lost 26 in the house and gain one Senator; Clinton set the record in 1994 losing 54 house members and 8 Senate seats. Ironically G. W. Bush is the only modern President to gain in the House and Senate adding 8 and 4 respectively in 2002.

Prognosticators predict a shift of at least 30 house seats and as many as 8 Senate seats in this November’s national election. Such loses would not give Republicans control but would shift the power center away from Obama. Republicans have to win 40 house seats and 11 in the Senate to take control – and that is unlikely. All 435 house members, 36 Senators and 37 state houses are up for grabs.

The history of midterm elections does not escape Obama and Democrats which explains what the near panic to push through his agenda before the 2010 campaigns heat up.  

The 2010 census  will trigger redistricting nationwide setting up major shifts across the nation in 2012 when odds are Obama will run for a second term in the White House  in an entirely new political environment  either building or reversing the 2010 outcomes.     

In most state the filing period has just opened or is about to begin. All candidates for the June primary must file, collect sufficient signatures from citizens who are reghistered to vote in the contested jurisdiction, and pay a fee to run for office.

The good news is that this Nigerian underwear bomber is now in custody. Remember the good old days when the only threat from Nigeria was spam e-mail? — Leno

·         Two-legged dog story inspires.

·         “Bat-out-of-Hell” tested

·         Paul Harvey “Rest of the story”

·         Merry Christmas: Now Get Out

·         CIA Knew About Mumbai Plot: Chicagoan Double Agent.

Anomie or anomy (AN-uh-mee) noun: Social instability and alienation caused by the erosion of norms and values. ETYMOLOGY:From French anomie, from Greek anomia (lawlessness), from anomos (lawless), from a- (without) + nomos (law). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nem- (to assign or take) that’s also the source for words such as number, numb, nomad, metronome, astronomy, and nemesis.

A two-legged dog has given hope to hundreds of amputee soldiers after learning to walk upright like a human.

Faith, a Golden Labrador-Chow Chow cross, was born with no front legs but was taught to walk by her determined owner using peanut butter as a bribe.   

Now soldier Reuben Stringfellow rescued the disabled dog in 2000 as a puppy after she was rejected by her scrap-yard dog mother. He named the puppy Faith. Originally born with three legs one had to be amputated when Faith was 8-months old.

Reuben, 17 at the time, asked his mom if he could fix her. His mom, English professor Jude Stringfellow, took Faith into the family home determined to help.

At first the family had to carry Faith to stop her falling onto her chest and chin  but after years of training – with a lot of encouragement and treats — Faith is now able to walk without assistance and can even hop and a skip if she needs to run.  

Faith who lives with Jude Stringfellow in Ardmore, Oklahoma is taken all over the States to boost the morale of US troops who have come back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The biology-defying pooch has gone on tour with Ozzy Osbourne and was even named an honorary Army sergeant.

Faith’s story shows how  amazing animals can be if given the chance. Many thought Stringfellow should have put Faith down early on, but her owner stuck with her.

Eliot Spitzer’s former hooker now has a sex advice column in the New York Post. Why do people get rewarded for this? Her number one piece of advice: Get the money up front.—Leno

This week the Boeing X-51 a scramjet designed for hypersonic flight (Mach 7, around 8,050 km/h or 5,000 MPH) went for a test ride slung under a B-52 flying above the Mojave Desert at Edwards AFB, in Central California. Next year an unmanned X-51 will go on free flight over the Pacific Ocean.

Theoretically a scramjet vehicle can achieve Mach 15 (about 11,500 Mph depending on air temperature and pressure the speed of sound is 770 Mph)

During the flight demonstrations, a B-52 will carry the vehicle to an altitude of about 50,000 feet and then release it. Initially propelled by an ATACMS solid rocket booster, the scramjet will take over at approximately Mach 4.5, and the vehicle will accelerate to a flight speed near Mach 6.

The scramjet like all “thrusters” applies Newton’s third law of motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In any propulsion system, a working fluid is accelerated by the system and the reaction to this acceleration produces a force on the system. A general derivation of the thrust equation shows that the amount of thrust generated depends on the mass flow through the engine and the exit velocity of the gas.

In the hypersonic combustion scramjet, the losses associated with slowing the air flow would be minimized and the engine could produce net thrust for a hypersonic vehicle. The scramjet uses external air for combustion, it is a more efficient propulsion system for flight within the atmosphere than a rocket, which must carry all of its oxygen. Scramjets are ideally suited for hypersonic flight within the atmosphere.

China is known to be working hard on scramjet powered hypersonic flight but is believed to be behind the U. S. effort.

Whoever “wins” this race into hypersonic flight will have a clear military advantage for an array of applications including hypersonic cruise missiles.

An example of a need for speed can be seen in what happened on Aug. 20, 1998, when the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, stationed in the Arabian Sea, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan, hoping to take out Osama Bin Laden. With a top speed of 550 mph, the Tomahawks made the 1100-mile trip in 2 hours. By then, Bin Laden was gone — missed by less than an hour. That’s where scramjet comes in.

The U. S. military has developed “Global Strike” a non nuclear capability to obliterate a target anywhere on earth and the scramjet cruise missile plays a critical role in it.

The need is based on hitting a treat as quickly as possible to destroy nuclear, or bio-toxin threat before it can be deployed against the U. S. or allies.

One idea is for warheads deployed by ICBM or SLBM which take time to reach their target or via an air launched scramjet cruise missile filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Everything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated and be delivered 20 times faster that today’s cruise missile.

ABCs diminutive George Stephanopolis looks like he is standing in a hole beside normal sized adults on GMA,

Were it not for a security guard who was remiss in his duty, the nation might never have heard, or heard of, legendary radio personality Paul Harvey — because he would have been dead at age 32.

Harvey, who died in February at age 90, was known for his trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” and had been heard nationally since 1951 when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.

At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on over 1,200 radio stations, and his syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers.

But early in his career, Harvey narrowly escaped with his life when a publicity stunt backfired, according to an FBI file obtained by Newsmax through the Freedom of Information Act.

In February 1951, Harvey — then a reporter at an Illinois radio station — sought to publicize what he felt was lax security at federal installations by climbing a 10-foot fence and gaining access to a restricted area of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

His overcoat got caught in the barbed wire at the top of the fence, and he was apprehended almost immediately by a security guard.

He was held at gunpoint and FBI agents were sent to question him. An FBI document said Harvey was “questioned not detained.”

But Illinois presented the case to a Federal grand jury, seeking to charge him with “making public, information regarding national defense,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. However, the jury did not indict him.

The story doesn’t end there. The most intriguing piece of information in Harvey’s FOIA file is a report that the guard who seized Harvey was suspended “because he failed to open fire immediately.”

Leslie Groves, wartime head of the atomic bomb project, said the guard who seized Harvey “had every right to shoot him.”

Harold Urey, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry, said he was disappointed that guards did not shoot Harvey. Urey conducted research that aided the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons. Related work was carried out at the facility that later became Argonne.

And Harvey acknowledged in a radio broadcast that “I risked getting shot.”

Now you know “the rest of the story.”

According to MSNBC, Tiger Woods paid some of his mistresses between $5,000 and $20,000 a month to keep quiet about his affairs. That’s the second bailout plan this year that didn’t work.– Leno

A Massachusetts father is outraged after his 8-year-old special needs son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross on December 2^nd. The boy was assigned to draw something that reminded him of Christmas.

Maxham Elementary School decided the second-grader had created a “violent drawing.” A spokesman for the school linked its the action to “safety protocols.”

The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross. Admittedly the child confused the Christmas with an Easter image.

The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro, Mass.

The child is a special need student and was made to leave school with the recommendation that a psychiatrist do an evaluation. In fact the school forbade the boy’s return without the psychiatrist OK.

The father was flabbergasted when he learned his son had to undergo an evaluation.

The child gets specialized reading and speech instruction at school, has never shown any tendency toward violence; has never been suspended.  

The 8-year old went for the psychological evaluation at his parents expense the next day and was cleared to return to school the following Monday after the psychological evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others. 

The boy, however, was traumatized by the incident, which made going back to school very difficult, the father said. School administrators have approved the fathers request to have the boy transferred to another elementary school in the district. 

This is not the first time that a Taunton student has been sent home over a drawing. In June 2008, a fifth-grade student was suspended after creating a stick figure drawing that appeared to depict him shooting his teacher and a classmate. 

That teacher contacted the police to take out charges in the 2008 incident. Common sense prevailed and no charges were filed.

A health care bill passed the U. S. Senate with 58 Democratic and  1 Independent and 1 avowed Socialist votes, and now goes to conference with the House of Representatives. The Senate bill contains over a thousand earmarks for Democrat pet projects.

Courts documents in the criminal case against the David Headley, who was arrested in Chicago in October for suspected involvement in the Mumbai, India terrorist siege, suggest the Chicagoan US citizen may have been a double agent for the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Lashkar e-Taibe and US intelligence. This suspicion, also the subject of leaked media reports from US, Indian and Pakistani intelligence sources, is severely straining relations between New Delhi and Washington.

 

Counter-terror sources report that New Delhi suspects the CIA knew in advance about the Mumbai attack, in which 177 people died and 500 were injured, and were aware of Headley’s links with its LeT perpetrators, al Qaeda’s operational arm in Pakistan, but omitted to forewarn Indian authorities for fear of touching off a military showdown between India and Pakistan.

 

Israel was not tipped off either although the Chabad Center of Mumbai, where six people were killed, was a special target

 

Rancor against Washington was registered in New Delhi where an official at the Indian Ministry of the Interior confirmed Wednesday, Dec. 16, said that his government “is looking into whether Headley worked as a double agent.” A former counter-terrorism officer in the Indian foreign intelligence service said: “The feeling in India is that the US has not been transparent.”

 

The atmosphere between the two countries is not helped by the FBI’s refusal to let Indian anti-terror officers question Headley, who is believed to have led a Chicago-based cell which set up Islamist terrorist operations world-wide.

 

Sources add: The court records show that the Chicago-based Headley was pressed into service by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in 1977 after he was caught smuggling heroin from Pakistan to America. They also show that he became an FBI informant after al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. After that the FBI and CIA were directed to coordinate their counter-terror work. The Indians assume that the CIA must have been aware of the Chicagoan’s existence, and certainly picked up on his frequent trips to India with side trips to Pakistan to meet his Lashkar e-Taibe associates.

 

Whether he worked directly for the CIA will probably never be proven.

 

Indian security authorities are also asking who paid for Headley’s frequent trips to Europe and India on missions to locate targets for terrorist attack, gather intelligence and chart Lashkar e-Taibe routes to target. He would then carry the information and guidelines to the Pakistani LeT operations headquarters.

The Chicagoan was clearly a staff member of the group and participated in its planning conferences. Some Western intelligence sources believe he may have been pulling the strings from Pakistan during the three-day terrorist siege of Mumbai in November 2008.

 

Indian counter-terror sources believe that data which Headley may have leaked from his Pakistan conferences to his American controllers may have prompted a US warning to New Delhi in July 2008 that a large-scale terrorist operation was in store for Mumbai. When two months went by and nothing happened, the Indians relaxed and lowered their security alert level.

 

Headley stands accused of making five reconnaissance trips to India to set up the Mumbai attack in September 2006, February and September 2007, and April and July 2008.

 

On one or more of those trips he traveled disguised as a religious Jew, scouting the Chabad Center and other Jewish locations. Israel was never informed that Lashkar e-Taibe had set its sights on Jewish and Israel centers in India.

 

President Obama has signed a new $1.1 trillion spending bill. See, the reason it’s called a spending bill is they get to spend it and we get the bill.== Leno

·         “Bad” Big Screen TVs Banned in California

·         Economy In Chaos

·         Is Obama Tough Enough : National Journal

The Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation’s first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions. On Tuesday, executives and consultants for the Arlington, Va., trade group asked members of the California Energy Commission to instead let consumers use their wallets to decide whether they want to buy the most energy-saving new models of liquid-crystal display and plasma high-definition TVs.

But those pleas didn’t appear to elicit much support from commissioners at a public hearing on the proposed rules that would set maximum energy-consumption standards for televisions to be phased in over two years beginning in January 2011. A vote could come as early as Nov. 4.

California already limits the amounts of power that appliances like refrigerators can consume or they can be banned from sale in the state.

Critics say that more regulations in the state where nearly 18% of residents are either unemployed or underemployed will put more pressure on family budgets and cost more jobs. Business groups point to an unwholesome overregulated business climate as an important reason for the state’s record high unemployment, and lose of businesses to neighboring lower taxes and less regulated states.

“The United States can be counted on to do the right thing, after having tried all other conceivable alternatives.” Winston Churchill.

The U. S. Census Bureaus’ Population clock projects total populations at 307,726,048 and those 307 million Americans are having record deficits piled onto them to the tune of $4,700 for every man, woman and child for a massive $1,420,000,000,000 – that’s ONE TRILLION FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS.

That is more than three times the most red ink ever amassed in a single year  which was $450 billion.

The federal government spent $46.6 billion more in September than it took in. September is usually a month that records a surplus.

“The rudderless U.S. fiscal policy is the biggest long-term risk to the U.S. economy,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. “As we accumulate more and more debt, we leave ourselves very vulnerable.”

Forecasts of more red ink mean the federal government is heading toward spending 15 percent of its money by 2019 just to pay interest on the debt, up from 5 percent this fiscal year.

Friday’s report showed that the government paid $190 billion in interest over the last 12 months on Treasury securities sold to finance the federal debt. Experts say this tab could quadruple in a decade as the size of the government’s total debt rises to $17.1 trillion by 2019.

Without significant budget cuts, that would crowd out government spending in such areas as transportation, law enforcement and education. Already, interest on the debt is the third-largest category of government spending, after the government’s popular entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and the military.

As the biggest borrower in the world, the government has been the prime beneficiary of today’s record low interest rates. The new budget report showed that interest payments fell by $62 billion this year even as the debt was soaring. Yields on three-month Treasury bills, sold every week by the Treasury to raise fresh cash to pay for maturing government debt, are now at 0.065 percent while six-month bills have fallen to 0.150 percent, the lowest ever in a half-century of selling these bills on a weekly basis.

The risk is that any significant increase in the rates at Treasury auctions could send the government’s interest expenses soaring. That could happen several ways — higher inflation could push the Federal Reserve to increase the short-term interest rates it controls, or the dollar could slump in value, or a combination of both.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the nation’s debt held by investors both at home and abroad will increase by $9.1 trillion over the next decade, pushing the total to $17.1 trillion decade under Obama’s spending plans.

Tax revenues fell 16.6 percent, the biggest decline since 1932.

Government debt will reach 76.5 percent of gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced in the United States — in 2019. It stood at 41 percent of GDP last year. The record was 113 percent of GDP in 1945.

Much of that debt is in foreign hands. China holds the most — more than $800 billion. In all, investors — domestic and foreign — hold close to $8 trillion in what is called publicly held debt. There is another $4.4 trillion in government debt that is not held by investors but owed by the government to itself in the Social Security and other trust funds.

The CBO’s 10-year deficit projections already have raised alarms among big investors such as the Chinese. If those investors started dumping their holdings, or even buying fewer U.S. Treasurys, the dollar’s value could drop. The government would have to start paying higher interest rates to try to attract investors and bolster the dollar.

A lower dollar would cause prices of imported goods to rise. Inflation would surge. And higher interest rates would force consumers and companies to pay more to borrow to buy a house or a car or expand their business.

“We should be desperately worried about deficits of this size,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “The economic pain will be felt much sooner than people think, in the form of much higher interest rates and much higher rates of inflation.”

If all that happened rapidly, it could send stock prices crashing and the economy tipping into recession. It could revive the pain of the 1970s, when the country battled stagflation — a toxic mix of inflation and economic stagnation.

Paul Volcker, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, responded by raising interest rates to the highest levels since the Civil War in a determined effort to combat a decade-long bout of inflation. His campaign pushed banks’ prime lending rate above 20 percent in 1981 and sent the country into what would be the longest post-World War II downturn before the current slump. Unemployment jumped to a postwar high of 10.8 percent in December 1982.

That and the chaotic foreign policy of then President Jimmy Carter lead to a seismic political shift ending his presidency after one term. More and more see close parallels now to then.  Except with the new element of massive foreign owned debt.

Is Obama Tough Enough?

Neither foreign leaders nor U.S. lawmakers fear the vengeance of the president, critics say.

A year ago, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden offered up one of his classic off-script observations that pained Barack Obama’s political advisers. “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” he predicted. “Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

His comments raised anew the question that Hillary Rodham Clinton had tried to exploit in her “3 a.m. phone call” ads: whether this youthful senator, with limited experience on the world stage, would be tough enough to handle the high-stakes challenges that he was sure to face.

Nine months into his term, President Obama has still not settled that question, but a narrative is emerging among some columnists, pundits, and academics across the political spectrum that Obama’s low-key, cool, cerebral style, while reassuring on many levels, lacks the punch that is sometimes needed to advance an agenda in Washington, and in a perilous world.

Neither foreign leaders nor U.S. lawmakers fear the president, according to this critique. They are comfortable defying Obama’s wishes and pursuing their own agendas without concern for the consequences. Even when the president has made it clear — publicly and privately — that he strongly favors a certain course of action, others sometimes appear to find it easy to reject his appeals.

“Obama has created an atmosphere of no fear,” says Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and the author of several presidential biographies. “Nobody is really worried about the revenge of Barack Obama, because he is not a vengeful man. That’s what we love about him — he is so high-minded, and a conciliatory guy, and he tries to govern with a sense of consensus — all noble goals, but they don’t get you very far in this Washington knifing environment.”

“He has been all carrots and no sticks so far,” observed a veteran Senate Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. Obama’s style “has to be more Lyndon Johnson. Half, ‘I love you, but I’ll stick this screwdriver right through your heart in a second if it is to my advantage.’ On the fear question, I don’t think he or his team is feared.”

Brinkley agrees: “He needs to be more like LBJ or Theodore Roosevelt. He has to change his tactical framework, if his personality will allow it, to being a much more in-your-face, cutthroat, high-minded nationalist, pushing the country’s agenda to the people.”

Such observations are prompted in part by Obama’s public setbacks. Even when such incidents are small, their sheer number costs the president political capital, critics say. He has been rebuffed, for example, on matters that are not likely to have lasting significance, such as his call for the Scottish government not to release the Lockerbie bomber; his involvement in state political campaigns, which included trying to talk New York Gov. David Paterson out of running in 2010 and lobbying former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder to support Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds; and his trip to Copenhagen to make a personal plea for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics.

In each case, those to whom Obama made his pitch rejected it. The Scottish authorities released the bomber, Paterson said he’s running, Wilder went public with his decision not to endorse Deeds, and Chicago’s bid was denied in the first round.

On larger issues, Obama has faced challenges from within his party, such as on the disposition of detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison. In the House, 88 Democrats recently deserted the administration’s position and joined Republicans on a nonbinding recommendation to instruct the conferees on an appropriations bill to forbid relocating the detainees on U.S. soil; the move complicates the White House’s efforts to close the facility. The conferees managed to find compromise language to tamp down the controversy, while skirting such nettlesome issues as the disposition of dangerous detainees whose prosecutions are difficult.

Even Obama’s friends on Capitol Hill privately grumble that he foolishly set a deadline to close Guantanamo by January without first developing a plan to pull it off. That failure invited Democratic lawmakers to jump ship on what has become a hot political issue as Republicans whip up fears among constituents that keeping detainees in prisons in their communities will invite terrorist attacks.

“He should not have put a timetable on it,” said Simon Serfaty, who follows global affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has written many books on international relations. “He is now finding out it’s harder than he thought.”

Meanwhile, on his top domestic priority — the most sweeping health care legislation since LBJ’s push for Medicare as part of his Great Society — Obama is faulted in some quarters for his mixed signals on the importance of the so-called government-run insurance program, or “public option,” to compete with the private sector.

Is it important as a counterweight “to keep insurance companies honest,” as he said in his September 9 speech to a joint session of Congress, or is it “just one sliver of [reform], one aspect of it,” as he commented at a town hall meeting in August?

At the same time, Obama’s efforts are complicated by Congress’s rock-bottom poll numbers — a recent Gallup Poll put voters’ disapproval at a whopping 72 percent. Those numbers, along with a recent uptick for Republicans, have made Democrats increasingly nervous about the fallout from contentious issues such as health care reform and climate change.

The efforts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to push Obama’s agenda is colored by the fact that he is facing a difficult re-election fight next year. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is finding it a big challenge to keep her ideologically diverse caucus together.

Obama clearly hoped that in choosing as his chief of staff Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a Chicagoan with a take-no-prisoners reputation who helped his party regain the House in 2006, he would have an enforcer with credibility on Capitol Hill. True to his oft-quoted saying, “You never allow a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel clearly has his fingerprints on all of the White House’s major initiatives. But his no-nonsense style doesn’t always play well, especially in the Senate. As one longtime Democratic Senate aide put it: “Rahm is effective but not supereffective — not that magic touch.” When pressed on why that is the case, the staffer paused, and said: “He doesn’t give enough deference; there is sort of the whippersnapper thing.”

As if the challenge of dealing with worried Democrats is not enough, the president has struggled in the international arena with recalcitrant friends as well as determined enemies. U.S. allies have provided only modest support for the Afghanistan war; entreaties to other countries to take custody of Guantanamo Bay detainees have had limited success; and Israel summarily rejected Obama’s repeated public demands to freeze its settlements in the West Bank as an inducement to Arab leaders to engage in the peace process.

“There are moments when fear is useful, when people have to realize who’s in charge and there may be consequences for bucking the person in charge,” said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas (Austin).

Style or Substance?

The most immediate challenge concerns Obama’s very public reassessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Somewhat stunningly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in the region, publicly and bluntly dismissed a course of action under consideration by the White House (and reportedly favored by Biden) that would reduce the scale of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

That alternative, McChrystal opined, would lead to “Chaos-istan.” When asked if it could work in practice, the general said, “The short answer is no,” and he called it “a shortsighted strategy.”

Those comments sparked glee among conservatives and provoked push-back in the form of editorial commentary and headlines about the effrontery of the military commander.

McChrystal’s frankness startled experts in international relations. “I find it amazing that McChrystal would be speaking out the way he is at the very moment when the White House is engaging in a review of his recommendations, and [McChrystal is] explaining that there is no alternative to what he is suggesting,” Serfaty said.

But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Armed Services Committee chairman, downplayed the significance of McChrystal’s comments and even said they could help Obama. “He gave an honest answer to a question that was asked in public, and I don’t think that is a confrontation at all with the president,” Levin said in an interview. “As a matter of fact, that may be reinforcing the president’s view that that particular alleged approach of Biden is not the way to go. [McChrystal] was being asked about a point of view which may not represent at all the president’s point of view, so his saying that he doesn’t agree with what Biden allegedly has said may as a matter of fact be very helpful to the president.”

Helpful or not, an inevitable question arises: Would such a high-ranking military officer have been so publicly dismissive of military options under consideration by previous presidents?

James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said he could not imagine such a scenario during the George W. Bush administration. Referring to Bush’s vice president and Defense secretary, Thurber said, “Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld were feared, and [Bush] went along with them. Then, once they made a decision, they didn’t [mess] around.”

Despite all of the questions about whether Obama might be more successful if he had the element of fear to go along with the goodwill toward him, nobody can doubt the president’s willingness to tackle some of the most difficult issues, from pressing for health care reform despite obvious political risks to intervening in the economy in ways unfathomable a few years ago.

“He is having problems for just one reason — he is trying to do big things,” said David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University. “He is trying to make big changes. If he were to propose a health bill that made just a little, incremental change, it would have flown through the House and Senate with no trouble at all. Very few presidents of recent vintage have tried to do big things. When they did try, except at the very beginning of their administrations, they often failed. Lyndon Johnson didn’t face anything like this when he was doing his big things.”

Defenders insist that Obama’s understated approach, as contrasted with the blunt style of his predecessor, has produced some positive results. These political observers say that the president’s tough stance toward Iran after its secret uranium enrichment plant was revealed has yielded promising, albeit preliminary, results as Tehran has agreed to allow international inspectors to examine the facility.

The unexpected announcement on October 9 that the president had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize might help boost his stature in the international arena as he presses the case to make Iran come clean. But it will likely do little to enhance his domestic political standing. Republicans and other critics immediately characterized the honor as premature, a symbol of Obama as a global rock star, the darling of political elites, who has failed as a leader to deal with the pressing economic problems of average Americans.

Others say that Obama is hardly a political lightweight and will flex his muscles when he feels that a tough stance is warranted. As proof, they cite his ouster of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner in March and his threat in July to veto an important Defense spending measure if it contained funding for additional F-22 fighter jets that the president argued were not needed.

“He got his way on the Defense bill,” Levin said. “He issued a veto threat, and it worked. I don’t know if you call that twisting arms — I don’t. I call it being forthright in public. He wasn’t twisting arms behind the back or threatening people’s projects back home.”

Buchanan of the University of Texas has his own list of high-risk stances where the president has shown strength. “Near as I can tell, Obama is willing to make calls that aren’t necessarily popular. He may be about to do so in connection with Afghanistan. He made some calls that were challenging, to say the least; remember the pirate hostage situation [in April, when Obama authorized Navy snipers to shoot Somali pirates who were holding an American captive], which was a high-risk call because if it backfired, it would have been a messy, sticky situation.”

Looking at that action and the firing of Wagoner, Buchanan said, “I don’t think there is a failure of nerve; I think there is a departure from comfortable conventional wisdom. But that is how most presidents that we now regard as worth their salt operated in their times.”

Several political operatives also say that comparisons with Lyndon Johnson are misplaced and that, at any rate, it’s premature to draw conclusions about Obama’s toughness, given his short time in office.

“He ought to be judged not by his style but by his results,” veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum contends. If, in addition to the far-reaching $787 billion stimulus legislation that passed in February, Obama wins passage of a health care bill and financial reform legislation and ultimately “something” on climate change, “it would be a massively significant presidency even if he doesn’t choose to knock people’s heads around,” Shrum says.

As for taking a page from LBJ’s book, Shrum noted that Johnson benefited from the legacy of John F. Kennedy during a period of national reconciliation after the president was martyred, and from the lopsided partisan margins that Democrats had amassed in the 1964 elections when they wound up with 68 seats in the Senate and a 295-140 advantage in the House. “If we had 67 seats [instead of 60] in the Senate right now, the public option wouldn’t even be discussed. It would just be enacted,” Shrum said. “I don’t buy the analogy to Johnson.”

Afghanistan Test

The debate over Afghanistan became personal when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took to the Senate floor on October 1 to push his proposal to require McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to testify before Congress no later than November 15. His move was obviously designed to increase pressure on Obama to grant McChrystal’s request for as many as 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

Levin led the charge against McCain’s amendment to the Defense appropriations bill and proposed an alternative — that the generals testify “promptly” after Obama makes a decision rather than by “an arbitrary deadline.”

“To put a commander in the field at a public hearing to try to pressure a commander-in-chief to reach a certain result is unacceptable, inappropriate,” Levin declared.

Such arguments did not deter the senator from Arizona, last year’s GOP presidential nominee, who has been increasingly blunt about the high-stakes nature of this decision. McCain said during the Senate debate that unless the effort in Afghanistan is “properly resourced” — that is, as McChrystal recommended — “we are doomed to failure.”

McCain then unloaded on Obama’s top advisers, charging that they were reluctant to send more troops out of political caution. The administration was “trying to find the exit sign” out of Afghanistan, he said. “It has been broadcast all over television that there are individuals — including the vice president; now, unfortunately, the national security adviser [James Jones]; the chief political adviser to the president, Mr. Rahm Emanuel — who don’t want to alienate the left base of the Democratic Party. That is what this is all about.”

“I fear that domestic political considerations are impacting a decision which has to do with the future security of the United States,” McCain concluded.

Jones responded bluntly on CNN’s State of the Union on October 4: “I worked for Senator McCain when he was a [Navy] captain. I’ve known him for many, many years, and he knows that I don’t play politics, and I certainly don’t play it with national security and neither does anyone else I know. The lives of our young men and women are on the line. The strategy does not belong to any political party, and I can assure you that the president of the United States is not playing to any political base. And I take exception to that remark.”

Still, the fact that McCain, a Vietnam War hero and the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, would level such a charge is telling. When asked whether the accusations showed a lack of respect for the White House, Levin was adamant that Obama is focused on the difficult issues in Afghanistan and would not be distracted. “I don’t think the president is going to be worried about who he alienates and doesn’t,” he said. “I think he is going to be and is concerned about what is the most effective policy for Afghanistan for America’s security.”

On the White House driveway after he and other congressional leaders met with Obama on October 6 to discuss military strategy in Afghanistan, McCain continued to drive home his concerns. “I’m very convinced that General McChrystal’s analysis is not only correct but should be employed as quickly as possible.”

When a reporter asked McCain if this decision was a test for Obama as commander-in-chief, McCain was quick to respond. “Of course it is,” he said.

No Marching Orders

When Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress last month on his priorities for health reform, he took a markedly different approach from that of Bill Clinton 15 years before. In 1994, Clinton issued a blunt warning in his State of the Union address.

“If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start all over again,” he said.

Clinton later reflected that his threat was a mistake. “I did it because a couple of my advisers had said that people wouldn’t think I had the strength of my convictions unless I demonstrated that I wouldn’t compromise,” he wrote in his memoir, My Life. “It was an unnecessary red flag to my opponents in Congress. Politics is about compromise, and people expect presidents to win, not posture for them.”

In contrast to Clinton, Obama has not tried to dictate to Congress the details of the legislation; instead, he has provided general principles that he favors. That strategy has prompted plenty of second-guessing

“It’s hard to march if you don’t have marching orders,” said Charles Jones, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin who has written several books on presidents’ relations with Congress. “If it’s ‘We may go this way or we may go that way,’ it is hard to go back to the office and say, ‘We know what we are doing here.’ “

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., says that the more hands-off style does not show weakness but rather reflects a strategic decision by the White House about the best way to get major legislation passed.

“Once the White House made the decision to let Congress try to work out these issues, certain consequences followed,” Whitehouse said. “One was to keep a certain amount of hands-off to let us do our thing. People who have a particular cause or purpose in the debate would love to see the president, who obviously has the biggest voice in town, speak out and draw hard lines on issues that are important to them. There are a lot of people who are disappointed that he hasn’t. But I think that speaks more to the strategic decision to let us try to work this out through that period than it does to any lack of toughness on the part of the man himself.”

Even as he stayed out of the nitty-gritty, Obama weighed in to prod legislators to move the process along. Shortly after Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Finance Committee’s Health Subcommittee, signaled in early September that he was not going to support the measure that the so-called Gang of Six members of the full committee had produced, Obama met with him at the White House.

Rockefeller, a staunch proponent of the public option, had made no secret of his unhappiness that six panel members had been calling the shots. “The rest of us are sort of sitting there blinking,” he told reporters. “So it’s an unusual process. And I don’t think it’s a good one.”

Obama, a source said, made the case that the measure would be shaped more to Rockefeller’s liking as it wended its way through the legislative process. But he suggested, according to this source, that unless Rockefeller voted with him on the first step — to get the bill out of committee — they may never get to the final step.

Essentially, Obama’s message was that Rockefeller could trust him to improve the bill, though it would not be 100 percent of what the senator wanted. It was, the source said, both the carrot and the stick. Those efforts paid off when, on October 13, the senator from West Virginia supported the bill as the committee approved it. (Rockefeller was unavailable for an interview.)

Ultimately, the verdict on the efficacy of Obama’s style will depend in significant part on whether health care legislation passes, said Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. “Health care could be his hammer — if he gets it, he will have proven that his style works, that you don’t have to be an in-your-face LBJ type to get significant health care reform. But if it falls apart or he gets a tiny piece of it, then there will be criticism that he is ineffective and not tough enough.”

• Obama’s “Free Speech Chief of Police”
• Obama Job Approval Lowest Ever: Others Plummet Too.
• Holder/Obama At War With CIA
• U. S. Places Priority Order for Bunker Buster Bombs

“Ribbon of Shame” Congresswoman Capps Finally Holds Town Hall Meeting On Why She Supports “Universal Health Care.”

Obama appointee, don’t call him a Czar, Mark Lloyd, is the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Lloyd has been openly critical of private media companies in Venezuela, where Lloyd believes that Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez is trying to implement a popular democracy.   

Lloyd, who worked as a broadcast journalist at BC and CNN, has come under fire from Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck and Seton Motley of the Media Research Center for his stance.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski appointed Mark Lloyd, a former senior fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), to be the FCC’s “Chief Diversity Officer” or the so-called “Chief of Free Speech Police.”  

Lloyd is a proponent of the Fairness Doctrine and wrote that the Doctrine, and other regulatory tools such as localism and diversity mandates, should be employed by the FCC to limit the number of conservative voices on the air and supplant them with liberal voices.

Lloyd has suggested fining conservative radio stations up to $250 million and giving the proceeds to national public radio. According to polling conducted by Zogby International and The O’Leary Report, most American voters disagree with what Lloyd prescribes.

At the FCC, Lloyd is in a position to try to influence and control media content by making statements and issuing directives on media “diversity” and fairness.

At a 2008 “media reform” conference sponsored by the arch-liberal Obama financier George Soros-funded Free Press organization, Lloyd declared that the Marxist revolution in Venezuela under Chavez was “incredible” and “dramatic” but that the “property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled” against the would-be dictator and supported a coup against him. However, Lloyd said that Chavez wised up and “then started to take the media seriously…”

 The implication of these remarks is that Chavez dealt with his opponents in the media by trying to control or silence them, and that Lloyd supports that strategy when dealing with opponents of revolutionary Marxism here in the U.S.

Accuracy in Media, which published the book, The Death of Talk Radio?, has been warning for years that the liberal/left has a plan to silence conservative media voices. Lloyd appears to be the point man in this scheme.

The process has accelerated in Venezuela. Indeed, the National Press Club of the U.S. noted in an Aug. 6 statement that it is “distressed by the Venezuelan government’s recent actions to intimidate and bully the country’s media. The government of Venezuela has taken a series of steps since July 31 that threaten to destroy press freedom. On July 31, the government revoked licenses for more than 30 private radio stations and a Venezuelan minister has said more than 200 other stations are under investigation. Venezuela’s attorney general recently proposed a ‘Special Law Against Media Crimes’ that would punish journalists who present a ‘false perception’ or ’cause a panic.’ Venezuela’s journalist association says the law will ‘criminalize journalism.’”

National Press Club President Donna Leinwand said that “These actions are designed to sow fear among journalists whose reporting challenges or criticizes the government. If the government persists, it will erode free expression. We call on the government of Venezuela to allow media organizations to operate unfettered.”

It is apparent that Chavez is using the government to force private companies out of the media business and restrict and investigate the remaining independent journalists. This is a process that apparently meets with the approval of “progressives” such as Mark Lloyd in the U.S.

Could this be the plan for the U.S. as well?

Obama Job Approval Falls Faster and Farther Than Any Other President Since World War II.

30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11.

Most voters now expect that the situation in Afghanistan will get worse over the next six months. That’s up fourteen points over the past month. At the same time, the number worried about a terrorist attack in the United States has declined.

 

The climate change legislation passed by the House of Representatives earlier this summer receives mixed reviews from the public.

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s down a point from yesterday and the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove.

Obama’s sagging job approval is bleeding to Congress with 57% of American voters now saying kick them all out and start over.

Individual members of Congress are also taking a beating such as: Harry Reid and Chris Dodd who are both trailing in reelection polls.

Congresswoman Lois Capps’ (D) CA. who represents its 23^rd District, the so-called Ribbon of Shame, job approval in her wildly liberal hometown of Santa Barbara is down to 54% with 40% disapproving and the balance undecided. Capps’ recently reversed refusal to hold townhall meetings on healthcare blew up resulting in numerous independent townhalls up and down the 200 mile long coastal district, and even protest at her office.

 

Obama Will Address Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.

Kent Clizbe, a former member of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, paints a grim picture of the days after 9-11 and right to today in an exclusive report for Newsmax. 

Clizbe writes that after President Clinton’s emasculation of the CIA it was left to a small group of men, and a few women with vast amounts of intelligence experience to fan out across the world to run operations against terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon and only because of the astonishing bravery of a few airline passengers were attacks stopped on the White House or Capitol.

The FBI, a domestic law enforcement agency, did not have the ability or skills needed to track down and strike the attackers overseas. The Pentagon, with F22s, nuclear aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and battalions of the best armor in the history of mankind, was like an elephant attacked by a mouse - mighty, but helpless in its mammoth rage.

Our best hope, says Clizbe, was in the hands of the gray-bearded intelligence professionals Supplementing the skeleton crew of staff officers left in the wake of Clinton’s anti-intelligence scourging of the CIA, the volunteers went to the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, to the most remote and isolated outposts in the world to stop the next attack.

Their mission: Seek and destroy the terrorist planners, facilitators, trainers, financiers, and their infrastructure wherever they were. They were guided by the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s motto, to: “Deny, Disrupt, Destroy.”  

While that was going on, where was Eric Holder?

Well before leaving President Clinton’s employ, he orchestrated the pardons of several Puerto Rican separatist terrorists. Then in 2003, as a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, Holder’s client, Chiquita Brands, admitted paying to support terrorist death squads in Colombia and paid a $25 million fine. Plus Holder’s law firm was representing - for free - 16 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.

Now Holder is America’s top law enforcement official as Attorney General and at the epicenter of what Clizbe labels the Holder/Obama Global War on the CIA (GWCIA)  It has only just begun, as it debuted with “grisly revelations” of revving drills, gunshots in the next cell, and threats against a terrorist’s children. The GWOT is not for the faint of heart, nor the queasy. No war ever has been. There may be “slight improprieties” stashed in the CIA’s closets, but the liberal-appeasing GWCIA is foolhardy and dangerous.

Mike Spann, was the first to die in the GWOT. He won’t have to worry about the Holder/Obama GWCIA. But others in the agency are very worried. While we sacrificed to achieve incremental victories, Holder and Obama plotted and schemed - not against those “evil-mongers” who killed our countrymen, but against those of us hunting the terrorists.

“Something is rotten in Denmark. The odor is not from Langley, Mr. Holder. ”

When Obama’s CIA Director appointee Leon Panetta learned of the Obama/Holder scheme he erupted in a profanity laced tirade at the White House threatening to quit.

Former ebay CEO and candidate for California Governor Meg Whitman campaigned in Santa Barbara this week.

In view of new information about Iran and North Korea’s underground nuclear facilities, the US Air Force has asked to speed up the delivery of 10 to 12 giant Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford.

 Unusually, military sources report, the order has been trebled in less than a year after Congress was first asked for $68 million to buy four MOPs by the US Pacific Command which covers the Korean area and US Central Command which oversees Iran. On Aug. 3, the Pentagon announced a decision to accelerate delivery and again on the 30th for the order to be filled as soon as possible by July 2010 at latest.

 Gen. Shackelford said: “These are purchases beyond just those needed to test their capability. In other words (the military is seeking to) build a small inventory of, I believe, 10-12 bombs.”

The 20-ton, 21 foot, MOP, using GPS and inertial guidance to find its target, can penetrate 200 feet underground, and is the latest of a line of American super bombs. Reportedly the massive bombs can be dropped by the B-2 stealth bomber and carries 7,500 pounds of high explosive hitting with pinpoint accuracy.

 If one of these things pops through the roof of an underground facility and goes off in such a contained space it would ruin your whole day.

 Whether or not this is just posturing or a serious warning to North Korea and Iran is, as it should be, unannounced.

A McClatchy-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that 40 percent of Americans favored the sort of health overhaul that Obama’s been talking about and 45 percent opposed it. Three-fourths also wanted incremental change versus fixing everything at once.