Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Like all central planners, President Obama thinks his central plan for NASA is better than the last central plan for NASA. The best plan is to privatize NASA so the American people can redesign the space program to meet their goals, voluntarily funded, not the political goals of our masters funded by taking money from people by force.

The way Obama's rhetoric deceives compared to actions is often comical. In this case, while he's cutting NASA's budget, he talks about sending a man to the moon. This creep's a piece of work. But even as he cut NASA's budget, he still couldn't surrender control to the people. Government is the enemy of human advancement, and government control of our space program retards its advancement. Free NASA so our space program can advance to the next level.

TAX AND SPEND:

Here's some remarkable if understated honesty from Newsweek:

"Looking back, we may all remember April 15, 2010, as the day we got off cheaply. Why a growing deficit and increased spending on health care and Social Security nearly guarantee higher tax bills in our future."

It's good to see the mainstream media finally pointing this out. Too bad it waited so many decades.

The online tax revolt march site is slammed today. That's great news.

FOREIGN POLICY:

There's been much praise and criticism for Obama's nuclear arms treaty with Russia, which seems kind of silly since nobody has read the agreement.

"The text of the treaty, which will replace the 1991 START, which expired in December, has not been made public."

I hope it becomes public before it's signed next month. With Obama and Democrats' record on transparency, I wouldn't count on it.

This criticism of Obama's nuclear treaty seems spurious. Criticizing a treaty because one party may pull out of it seems silly. All governments reserve the right to unilaterally withdraw from treaties if they feel they're no longer in their interest. If the Russians withdraw, then we're not obligated to continue. And we don't have the text yet. If the text doesn't limit missile defense, then the agreement doesn't limit missile defense. It sounds like the Russians are just playing publicity games to try and get the US to stop developing missile defense. I think they do have their fingers crossed.

I find this criticism from the Heritage Foundation misguided as well. They claim:

"The Obama Administration released its overdue Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on April 6, 2010.[1] The review establishes five specific objectives for the future nuclear force of the United States. Missing from these five objectives is what should be the most important objective of all: defending the U.S. and its allies against strategic attack."

But immediately after printing that, they list the NPR's five objectives. Here's three through five:

"Maintaining strategic deterrence and stability at reduced nuclear force levels;

Strengthening regional deterrence and reassuring allies and partners;

Sustaining a safe, secure, and effective arsenal."

So the NPR wants to insure we have an effective arsenal for maintaining strategic and regional deterrence. That sounds like defending the US to me. It's not clear who the deterrence affects, so I can understand some concern by our allies, but I think this idea that the US guaranteeing a nuclear response to a nuclear attack on an ally is what prevents others from attacking them with nuclear weapons is baloney. The reason nobody attacks with nuclear weapons is there's nothing to be gained. What would China gain by attacking Japan with a nuclear weapon? What would Russia gain by attacking Germany? Or Poland? Such an attack would do irreparable harm to the attacker even without a nuclear response. The world economy would come to a standstill. Nations around the world would cut off trading and isolate the attacker, impoverishing it. The only reason to use a nuclear weapon is to stop an attack on your own country, and that provision is intact.  Rational people don't start nuclear wars.


Fanatics are another story, and responding to a nuclear terrorist attack with a nuclear barrage seems like the worst possible response. The response should wipe out the attackers without wiping out millions of innocents with them. Now I don't trust Obama for a second, so maybe all this is baloney, but we can only judge the text.

It seems to me that turnkey nuclear facilities as described in this editorial would help restrict nuclear proliferation and therefore increase nuclear security. Just because it's also an economic windfall for nations with more advanced nuclear programs doesn't make it otherwise.

Nice fact-box on nuclear powers.

POLITICS:

Tea partiers wealthier and better educated than average. So now leftists will paint them as rich people who don't want to pay their "fair share". It doesn't matter what the demographic is, Democrats are going to attack it.

I don't put as much stock in the list of heroes and targets for this specific tea party organization as this article seems to. I think the tea party movement is much more powerful as local, grassroots movements than this national organization.

The contract from America is pretty timid. Today looks like a banner day for the limited government folks, but one day won't change anything, and if this contract is the best they can do, ouch. If tea partiers don't defeat both Republican and Democrat incumbents, nothing will change.

LOCAL:

It has been unusually warm for April so far. Any day now, I expect to see Al Gore proclaiming this is evidence of the end of the world, as if the last 12 years of cooling never happened.

Local firefighters receive more than $1,000,000 in federal funds. That means that the federal government seized well over $1 million from people by force, wasted a bunch of it in Washington, then sent $1 million back to the firefighters. Only the propaganda press would consider this a good thing.