Please see my new testimony page, in which I explained how I became a Christian by answering the survey questions.
Some debates are posted here, and my index of arguments pro and con are listed here.
Obama cuts missile defense as Iran test-fires missile that can hit Israel
Yesterday I linked to the story about Obama’s decision to weaken our nuclear capabilities, and a while back I blogged about the ACORN lawyer’s cuts to missile defense, just as North Korea was ramping up its medium-range missile program.
Here is a quick refresher:
Closing Velocity had some more details on the missile defense cuts. (H/T Hot Air)
Total cuts in missile defense: $1.4 billion or roughly 15%. Cancel second Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft, keep the one remaining ABL prototype as a testbed and revert to pure R&D. No increases in Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) deployment in Alaska. Remaining silos will stay unfilled. European GBIs will be decided on later during the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Termination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program.
Well, now we can add Iran to the list of nations emboldened by Obama’s weak foreign policy.
The Heritage Foundation reports: (from their 33 Minutes blog)
Earlier this week we mentioned Iran’s defiance and nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama’s too-friendly request to enter into talks with Iran, the necessity to build agreed-upon missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, and Israel’s desire to take more aggressive action against Iran. Today’s post reaffirms why we blogged about these issues.
My Way News reports that Iran test-fired an advanced missile today, with a range far enough to hit Israel, southeastern Europe, and our bases in the Middle East. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made this claim. So, despite Obama’s “tough” words of warning, Iran is busy developing and apparently testing its ballistic missile capability.
That Iran doesn’t have nuclear capability at this very moment is beside the point. A team of U.S. and Russian scientists just released a report stating Iran would have such capability in as few as five years. In light of this recent missile test-fire, will our president take a more aggressive approach to dealing with Iran, or will he stand by his decision to give the rogue nation a year-end deadline?
Here’s Nile Gardiner and a leftist journalist on MSNBC:
This reminds me of a quotation from Ronald Reagan’s debate against the 2nd worst president ever, Democrat Jimmy Carter.
And I’m only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. Now, I believe, also, that this meeting this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, which I believe is a responsibility peculiar to our country, and that we cannot shirk our responsibility as a leader of the free world because we’re the only ones that can do it. Therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong.
We had 8 years of constant terrorist attacks with the Democrat Clinton. We had 7 years of security, liberty and properity with the Republican Bush, who had the moral clarity, (from his Christian worldview), to oppose tyranny. Let’s see how well Obama’s diplomacy works. Somehow, I don’t think Obama’s appeasement of torturing, murdering dictators will be as effective as peace through strength.
UPDATE: Gateway Pundit links to details on the missile. Range is 2000 km, two-stage solid fuel.
Obama’s car regulations will kill more Americans than the Iraq war
The Heritage Foundation reports on Obama’s proposed regulations on fuel economy.
Time for practice. Time to pile into the…Toyota Prius? Maybe the Yaris. Or surely the Smart Car will do. Those are three of eleven cars that meet President Obama’s new emissions standards that include “nothing larger than a midsize sedan, even when you include hybrids.”
Eleven choices of vehicle? The soccer moms will not be liking that.
But it gets worse. It’s going to cost another 50,000 jobs added on to Obama’s massive count.
Keith Henessey writes: (H/T Competitive Enterprise Institute)
See Table VII-1 on page 586 of the NHTSA analysis. NHTSA estimated that the TC=TB option, which I’m using as a proxy for the Obama plan, would result in the following job losses among U.S. auto workers:
MY 2011
MY 2012
MY 2013
MY 2014
MY 2015
8,232
24,610
30,545
36,106
48,847
Compared to the Bush draft final rule, this is 37,000 more jobs lost.
Since I know this table is inflammatory, I will anticipate some of the responses:
- This is an estimate for the job loss from the TC=TB option analyzed by NHTSA in 2007. This is the closest proxy for the Obama rule, and I’m convinced it’s a good proxy until someone demonstrates otherwise. But technically, it’s not a job loss estimate for the Obama proposal.
- This estimate was done in a different economic environment (late 2008), and before the U.S. government owned 1.5 major U.S. auto manufacturers. My guess, however, is that these changed conditions should push the estimated job loss up from the above estimate, rather than down.
- There’s a false precision in the above table. It’s just what NHTSA’s model spits out. …I don’t put any weight on the precise annual estimates.
And it gets even worse than that.
Steve Milloy writes about the really bad problem on Green Hell blog: (H/T Gateway Pundit)
The Obama administration’s proposed mileage standards that will be announced today may kill more Americans at a faster rate than the Iraq War — his signature issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama’s standards will require automakers to meet a 35 miles-per-gallon standard by 2016 — four years earlier than the same standard imposed by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007.
As discussed in my new book Green Hell, the only way for carmakers to meet these standard is to make smaller, lighter and deadlier cars.
The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars increases annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715.
In contrast in the more than six years since the Iraq war began, there have been 4,296 deaths among American military personnel.
The Iraq war cost 550 billion and 4300 lives. And for this we got more liberty and security. Obama is spending trillions and trillions of dollars, and he wants to kill 2,000 Americans per year? I am not even talking about his subsidies to kill more unborn babies at home and abroad. This is on top of that!
WINTERY KNIGHT 
