Mitt Romney tries to dodge the Tampa GOP debate

As has been reported by the media, Mitt Romney is trying to dodge the upcoming Tampa GOP presidential debate, which will be held before the Florida GOP presidential primary on January 31st.

Why is Romney trying to avoid it? Because he doesn’t want to debate with Newt Gingrich. And why doesn’t the Massachusetts RINO want to debate with him? Because he’s too afraid of him. In fact, he’s scared to death of him. Gingrich is an excellent debater and can take on anyone, while Romney is a lousy discussion partner who gets angry and discomfortable whenever he’s challenged, criticized, or asked a difficult question.

But if he can’t debate Newt Gingrich, how can he take on Barack Obama?

The answer is: he can’t.

Republicans must not nominate this proven RINO loser. If he were to win the GOP nomination, Obama would have a field day with him.

Obama has once again proven he knows nothing about defense issues

America’s worst president ever, Barack Obama, has once again proven he knows nothing about defense issues, including the defense budget. During his recent Twitter interview with the voters and with Democratic plants, Obama was asked (apparently by a Democratic plant) a question about whether he plans to cut defense spending to reduce the budget deficit. Obama replied:

“The nice thing about the defense budget is it’s so big, it’s so huge, that a 1 percent reduction is the equivalent of the education budget. Not—I’m exaggerating, but it’s so big that you can make relatively modest changes to defense that end up giving you a lot of head room to fund things like basic research or student loans or things like that.”

To borrow a line from Herman Cain: Mr President, with all due respect, you’re wrong.

Obama was wrong. With that reply, he has proven that he knows nothing about defense issues, including the defense budget. Firstly, the defense budget for FY2011 (the current fiscal year) is $530 billion, and the DOD’s base budget request for FY2012 is $553 billion. 1% of these sums is a microscopic $5.3-$5.5 billion, equals just 4.5% of the federal education budget (i.e. the budget of the federal Department of Education), which is $122 billion for the current FY. This is even less than the 7% that the Heritage Foundation claimed.

Cutting the defense budget by $5.5 billion would not provide enough money for student loans nor for basic research programs. And although Obama has not explained what he means by “modest changes”, it’s likely that for him, even cutting the defense budget by 15-20% would be a chump change.

And although he admitted that “We can’t just lop 25% off the defense budget overnight” and that the US military has legitimate equipment needs that must be funded, he nonetheless insisted that defense cuts are needed, prudent, required by a “strategy”, justifiable, and safe for America – which they are not.

As the DOD has reported on its website, Obama said during the Twitter interview that:

“Though he is committed to cutting the Defense Department budget as part of the overall reduction in the federal deficit, U.S.security and strategic needs must drive the effort, President Barack Obama said yesterday in his first Twitter town hall meeting.

Obama said he conducted the meeting to find out what the public thinks about how to reduce the federal deficit, what costs should be cut and which investments should be kept.

Responding to suggestions for cuts in the defense budget, the president said that is not an easy task.

“We can’t simply lop off 25 percent off the defense budget overnight,” he said. “We have to think about all the obligations we have to our troops who are in the field, and making sure they’re properly equipped and safe.” The need to replace outdated military equipment is another budget consideration, the president added.

“We’ve ended the war in Iraq, our combat mission there, and all our troops are slated to be out by the end of this year,” Obama said. And as Afghan forces take more responsibility for their country’s security, he added, U.S. forces will draw down there as well. But drawing down forces and beginning a new phase in Afghanistan must be done “fairly gradually,” he said.

Obama said that while decisions to cut defense spending will be tough, a reduction requires a balanced approach, as with any government program, to shrink the overall federal budget.

“Those who say that we can’t cut military at all haven’t spent a lot of time looking at military budgets,” he added.

However, the president said, the reductions must take place with the nation’s security in mind.

“One of the things that we have to do is make sure that we do it in a thoughtful way that’s guided by our security and our strategic needs,” he said. “And I think we can accomplish that.””

Actually, I have spent more time “looking at”, reading, analyzing, describing, and devising amendments to, America’s (and Britain’s) defense budgets, as anyone who reads my blog and my articles knows. I’ve spent much more time doing it than Barack Obama or any other Democratic politician has. I’ve spent ca. 90% of my spare time doing so during the last 4 years. America can afford to withdraw its troopers from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and to zero its spending on these countries and the GWOT, but it cannot afford to reduce the size of its defense tooth or its base defense budget (which is already too small).

Obama claims that “our security and our strategic needs” should guide defense budget cuts and he thinks “we can accomplish that.” That is not true. One cannot accomplish defense budget cuts that would be consistent with America’s defense needs and strategic needs. Those needs dictate that defense spending be increased, not decreased. They do not require defense spending cuts; quite the contrary is true.

Therefore, one cannot credibly claim that “US security needs and strategy must drive the effort to cut defense spending.”

Moreover, it is ridiculous for him to claim that any cuts he will make to defense spending and America’s military will be justified by strategy. They will not. They will likely be arbitrary cuts that will weaken the US military. Moreover, they will be made SOLELY to meet Obama’s diktat of cutting defense spending by $400 bn over the next 12 years. Moreover, the DOD will likely lie that these cuts are justified, make up some excuses, and produce some “strategy” that will pretend to justify these unjustifiable defense cuts. (That’s what it did in 2010 with the QDR – it was written solely to justify Gates’ unjustifiable defense cuts.)

By ordering the DOD to cut defense spending by $400 billion, Obama has put the cart before the horse. He has ordered massive defense spending cuts and has told the DOD to find out how exactly to make these cuts.

I am appalled, but not surprised, by the fact that Obama is “committed” to reducing defense spending. He’s a wimpy weak Dhimmicrat, just like almost all of his party colleagues.

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=64583

The Heritage Foundation has rightly commented that:

“The President’s accounting failures aside, there’s an even bigger problem at work. Obama is of the belief that, for starters, $400 billion can be cut from the defense budget over the next 10 years without putting the military at risk. That’s in addition to the approximately $400 billion already cut by the Administration during the previous two years. In turn, he would take those dollars and apply them to pay for his pet projects at home.

The President is proposing those cuts irrespective of the military’s needs.

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that ill-conceived cuts to defense spending could increase America’s vulnerability in a “complex and unpredictable security environment” and that “the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators, and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power—the size, strength, and global reach of the United States military.”

But with the President’s proposed cuts, America’s base defense budget would be at its lowest point in more than 60 years (as a percentage of America’s GDP). Meanwhile, the threats Gates spoke of continue to materialize, while challenges remain in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and throughout the Middle East.

And then there’s the state of U.S. forces. Secretary Gates and the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel have agreed that the U.S. went on a “procurement holiday” in the 1990s. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz has stated that the present fleet of 187 F–22 fighters creates a high risk for the U.S. military in meeting its operational demands. The U.S. Navy has the fewest number of ships since America’s entrance into World War I. And yet the President sees fit to slash defense?

Contrary to Obama’s belief, the defense budget is not an ATM from which he can pull cash to pay for other projects. And he certainly can’t do it without causing further damage to U.S. military readiness. The Constitution demands that the U.S. government provide for the common defense. That’s a fact the President should keep in mind as he looks for ways to increase domestic spending amid a debt crisis.”

Sadly, yes, Obama sees it fit to deeply cut defense spending, as do his party colleagues and most Republicans (with few honorable exceptions such as Howard McKeon, Allen West, and Randy Forbes) – despite the fact that the PLAN is already larger than the US Navy, Russia and China are waging an arms race against the US, the Russian Navy has more SSBNs than the USN, the USAF’s current fleet of aircraft is the smallest and the oldest it has ever flown (with an average aircraft age of 24 years), the USAF’s ICBMs date back to the 1970s and need to be replaced,the USAF has only 20 stealthy bombers, and access-denial weapons are making current and potential future war theaters unsurvivable and unaccessible for nonstealthy aircraft and warships. The US military has huge legitimate modernization needs, yet both Democrats AND Republicans are committed to radically reducing defense spending, as is Obama.

It is utterly unacceptable for Obama to use defense spending as an ATM from which to finance his pet projects.

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/07/what-obama-doesnt-know-about-defense-spending/

Welfare spending is the LARGEST item in the federal budget.

<BODY>

Liberals and libertarians constantly decry defense spending as excessive and single it out for reductions. Yet, defense spending is microscopic compared to welfare spending.

Today, welfare spending is the largest item in the federal budget, standing at $888 bn out of the $3.6 trillion of the federal budget, that is, almost 25% of it.

The $888 bn sum represents ALL federal welfare programs, but doesn’t include non-welfare-programs (and therefore doesn’t include the SS program nor the Medicare program).

These 70 welfare programs are spread among 14 different federal agencies.

When Bush left office, annual federal welfare spending was already gargantuan – $522 bn – and was larger than Bush’s last defense budget ($512 bn in 2008 dollars, which is $517 bn in today’s dollars). But Obama significantly increased welfare spending – by $366 bn by FY2010, that is, more than 50%.

Already during FY2009, Obama increased welfare spending to $697 bn – by $255 bn, i.e. 48.85% – but now, welfare spending is even higher ($888 bn per annum).

The $366 bn welfare spending growth since January 2009 is the largest welfare spending increase ever. And yet, even though welfare spending is the largest cause of America’s budget deficits and America’s debt, Obama intends to continue to grow it. He plans to spend $1 trillion per annum on welfare programs by FY2014 and has set a plan for the federal, state and local governments to spend $10.3 trillion on welfare programs during the next several decades. Of that sum, $7.5 trillion is to be spent by the federal government itself, and $2.8 trillion by state governments as a result of federal diktats.

Historically:

1) Since LBJ began the “War on Poverty”, the federal government has spent $15.9 TRILLION (in 2009 dollars) on welfare programs. (By contrast, the combined cost of every war America has ever fought, including the Revolutionary War, was $6.4 trillion in 2009 dollars.)

2) Welfare spending has always been the fastest-growing part of federal spending. It has grown by 292% (yes, by 292 percent) since 1989, while the SS program and the Medicare program have grown by 213% since 1989.

3) In 1965, welfare spending was only 1.2% of GDP. Today, it accounts for 5.92% of GDP, while defense spending stands at a meagre 3.56% of GDP.

4) Obama’s FY2010 welfare spending ($888 bn) is larger than the entire sum spent on the Iraqi war than the Bush Admin ($622 bn).

5) Already as of FY2000, welfare spending cost over 4% of America’s GDP (while Clinton deliberately kept defense spending at 3% of GDP, the lowest level since FY1941). During the Bush era, welfare spending was always higher than ANY other item in the federal budget except the SS program.

6) As of 7th March 2001, federal welfare spending cost 4.4% of GDP.

7) The welfare spending level as of 2000 was $434 bn in 2000 dollars, that is, $549.88 bn in FY2010 dollars. This sum is larger than the defense budget of FY2000, the defense budget for the current fiscal year ($534 bn), and the proposed defense budget for FY2011 ($547 bn). Of course, the FY2010 welfare spending level is not $434 bn, it is $888 bn.

During the 1990s, there was a much-vaunted, but minor, welfare roll reform, which reformed only ONE of the 70 federal welfare programs, namely the “Aid for Families with Dependent Children” program (and that reform was abolished by Obama’s stimulus package). The other 69 federal welfare programs remain unreformed to this day. None of these 70 programs were ever abolished.

The US Census Bureau constantly lies, “Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money.” and claims that “poverty levels” are high. But it counts only 4% of welfare spending as income.

One of the reasons why welfare costs are so high is that there are many single mothers in the US. Almost all single mothers are dependent on welfare programs. These single mothers alone get welfare rolls worth $350 bn per year. Last year, 41% of all newborn American kids were born out of wedlock. (By comparison, as of 1963, 93% of newborn American kids were born to married parents.) Of course, 70% of unmarried single women voted for Obama, because they always vote for the guy who offers the biggest giveaways.

Another reason is the ethos. Before the 1960s, troubled individuals applied to their local government or to a private charity (e.g. the Salvation Army). A downtrodden individual had to explain how he got into trouble and how he intended to rescue himself from it. He was monitored to ensure that he wasn’t lying. Welfare program costs were relatively small. Today, with minimal qualifications, you can receive welfare rolls if you’re willing to bother to come to your mailbox once a month.

Before the 1960s, welfare programs were seldom talked about, because they weren’t compelling issues. They were small programs operated by local governments, and were available only to truly downtrodden individuals. Today, the welfare state is a national scandal. Obama has hiked welfare spending to $888 bn per year during just 16 months, and there is a permanent dependency class.

Yet, politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) are refusing to reduce welfare spending. They seldom even talk about it. Instead, they are working to cut the meagre defense budget in order to maintain and expand federal welfare programs. Recently, a panel of pacifists convened by Congressman Barney Frank of MA called for $1 trillion defense spending cuts – which means a total abolition of the US military for 2 fiscal years. Obama proposes to reduce defense spending by FY2012 by $92 bn, to a meagre level of $457 bn, while he continues to increase welfare spending so that the welfare bums who voted him into office will vote for his Congressional allies.

Why do politicians continue to sabotage America’s defense while increasing (rather than reducing) welfare programs?

Because these programs have an entire dependency class that lives off them, depends on them (and therefore on the federal government, which wants as many people as possible to be dependent on it, so that it can manage them like puppets), and is not willing to surrender them. This dependency class will vote out of office any politician who proposes to reduce (or eliminate) welfare programs.

On the other hand, defense has very few defenders (myself an a few other people) and no constituency to defend it. That’s why for the last 57 years politicians have been shamelessly using the DOD as a piggy bank to finance their bloated, unjustified, unnecessary domestic programs while lying that the defense budget is “profligate”.

The sources:

http://blogs.examiner.net/blogs/teapartykccom/prez-spends-more-welfare-spent-entire-iraq-war

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/Means-Tested-Welfare-Spending-Past-and-Future-Growth

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Married-Fathers-Americas-Greatest-Weapon-Against-Child-Poverty

<script type=”text/javascript”>
    var infolink_pid = 109683;
    var infolink_wsid = 0;
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://resources.infolinks.com/js/infolinks_main.js”&gt; </script>

</BODY>

The new START treaty WILL constrain America’s missile defense

Today, Obama signed a disastrous START treaty with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev. The treaty is fundamentally flawed, and Obama is trying to convince reluctant Republican Senators to vote to ratify it by lying to them that this treaty will not limit missile defense anyhow.

Obama is lying. The treaty WILL constrain America’s missile defense. The entire treaty is flawed, disastrous and unacceptable for any defense conservative, but the most disastrous clause of all is the missile defense clause. Obama and his Republican useful idiot, Richard Lugar (a liberal Republican from Indiania), claims that the clause is only declaratory and that it’s not legally binding. Obama is lying, because the clause IS legally binding, as confirmed by the Russian foreign minister:

“It appears that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov isn’t quite ready to pop the champagne on the new nuclear arms reduction agreement due to be signed in Prague this week:

Russia will have the right to exit the accord if “the U.S.’s build-up of its missile defense strategic potential in numbers and quality begins to considerably affect the efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow today.

The issue of missile defense was the major sticking point in negotiations over the treaty, particularly after the United States announced plans to build new facilities in Bulgaria and Romania.

Russia insists that the agreement includes a link between offensive and defensive systems.

“Linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding,” Lavrov said today.”

The sources: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/06/lavrov_russia_may_pull_out_of_nuke_deal_if_us_expands_missile_defense

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-06/russia-may-exit-new-arms-deal-if-u-s-boosts-missile-defense.html

Of course it is legally binding. That is EXACTLY why Russia forced Obama to agree to that clause as a precondition without which Russia would’ve never signed the treaty. Russia’s goal was not only to convince the US to gut its own nuclear arsenal and the delivery systems – the nuclear arsenal will be reduced to just 1550 nuclear warheads and the number of delivery systems will be reduced only 800 – but also to constrain America’s missile defense so that it will NOT develop any further and will NOT appear anywhere beyond the US.

And the Russian foreign minister warned the Obama Administration and the American public, in no uncertain terms, that if America does develop its missile defense, Russia will withdraw from that treaty, just like it withdrew from the START-II treaty after President Bush withdrew America from the ABM Treaty and began building a missile defense system.

So this treaty is a 100% victory for Russia, a capitulation by Obama to the Russians, a boon for Russia and all other aggressors around the world. Moscow, of course, will never comply with the treaty – just like it didn’t comply with SALT treaties. It has managed to convince the US government to gut its own nuclear deterrent while also surrendering missile defense.

The only institution that can stop this disastrous treaty now is the US Senate.

So please call your Senators and tell them that you will NEVER vote for them if they vote for this treaty.

Nomination of Charlie Crist for the C4G’s Comrade of the Month Award

I hereby nominate Comrade Charlie Crist (who is competing against anti-Communist Marco Rubio for the GOP’s Senatorial nomination for Florida) for the Club For Growth’s Comrade of the Month Award.

Charlie Crist has reinstated the spending reductions that the Floridian legislature (whose lower house is led by Rubio) enacted, and instituted the largest Floridian state tax hike since the 1980s. He also campaigned together with America’s socialist president, Comrade Barack Barackovich Obama, for the porkulus (officially called the ARRA), which several state governors, including Mark Sanford and Bobby Jindal, rejected. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Comrade Charlie Crist endorsed Comrade John McCain for the Presidency because he agrees with McCain’s high-tax, high-domestic-spending policies. Comrade Charlie Crist is a true socialist, a true Marxist, a true liberal.

The Club For Growth should award, on the next occassion, the Comrade of the Month Award to Comrade Charlie Crist.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for the national anthem.

The Soviet national anthem, that is.

A reply to Kyle-Anne Shiver’s plan for the ME

Yesterday, a friend of mine, Kyle-Anne Shiver, published her ME-related plan. She called on VT to be expelled from the Union and on the same state to be given to the Jews. That is to say, she called on the Vermonters to swap countries with the Jews.
She rightly based her plan on the reason that the Vermonters produced Howard Dean, but she omitted to mention another infamous anti-American Vermonter, Jess Bachman, who has produced a doctored poster depicting the US Federal Government’s FY2009 budget. This poster is unfair because it, and its webpage description, have unfairly classified many non-military expenditures as “military” and claimed that only the discretionary budget is a credible testimony on the USFG’s “priorities”. Jess also argued with me for a long time about how the DOD is supposedly overfunded.

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

And sorry, Kyle-Anne, but no plan for the ME will work unless America becomes independent from foreign oil. Unless she does, America will need to guard the ME’s oil reserves against her competitors. Let me unveil the Philadelphian Project, which will address this issue, today. The Philadelphian Project, named after Philadelphia (the city where the American Declaration Of Independence and the US Constitution were written, adopted and unveiled), is a compilation of my recommendations for the US Federal Government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Constitution

http://iflynavy.w.interia.pl/thephiladelphianproject.doc

Although a similar project (the Lexingtonian Project) prepared by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is imperfect, McCain nevertheless deserves to be praised for it, because his plan is better than Obama’s.