Brown = peerless science experts & plain logic

Green = watchdog on various environmentalist agendas, including Global Warming (aka Global Climate Change)

http://co2science.org/ features books, essays, etc all based in solid science

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches.html is the introductory page to a collection of Michael Crichton essays urging logic and science return to discussions on climate and related issues

http://dumboxbellowed.blogtownhall.com/ has articles such as “Five Global Warming Questions” and “Retired, Free To Advocate CO2 Reductions”

http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/ helps illustrate worldwide spread of ‘skeptics’, and delivers powerful factual debunking by arctic researchers like Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu

http://www.nipccreport.org/index.html gives blow-by-blow answers to the UN’s political attempt to be scientific about climate science. Heard of the discredited UN International Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC)? This is the non-governmental, non-political blowback of real science. John Adams once stated ‘facts are stubborn things’ and this site is loaded with all the facts of badly politicized science.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ highlights latest science and debunks deceitful assertions purporting to support Anthropologic Global Warming; highlights include much of Lord Monckton’sanalytic papers

http://sepp.org/is by peerless atmospheric physicist Dr S. Fred Singer; site helps organize international scientists’ pro bono work

www.solarcycle24.com gives daily solar activity updates, plus solar history charts.

http://www.heartland.org/ discusses a wide range of political issues, including Global Warming at http://www.heartland.org/suites/environment/index.html

http://www.heritage.org/LeadershipForAmerica/energy-and-environment.cfm is Heritage Foundation’s site dealing with energy & environment issues:  applying solid science to the politics

http://www.junkscience.com/ is often focused on environmentalist deceptions, but also addresses politicized issues besides Global Warming

http://mnfmi.org/ is where Minnesota Free Market Institute features the nation-quaking 4.5 minutes of Lord Monckton talking about the Copenhagen Treaty on 14 October 2009,

http://mnfreemarketinstitute.org/2009/10/22/new-monckton-presentation-video-includes-slides/#usermessagea is the link to obtain the entire Lord Monckton 14 Oct 09 presentation at Bethel University

http://www.ncpa.org/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD is where National Center for Policy Analysis watches a host of issues, including AGW (aka Climate Change)

http://www.stevefielding.com.au provides good tracking of worldwide politics of global warming, especially from the Australian perspective

http://www.climatedepot.com/ specializes in tracking the latest Climategate Scandal revelations: who is guilty of what falsifications, when, and what the likely real story has been al along

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/ is the Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, focused on countering the U.N.’s politicized IPCC reports;

   - its Manhattan Declaration lists over 850 scientists, and has another list for citizen endorsers

   - the ICSC site also lists over 30 additional websites with solid scientific credentials

http://www.petitionproject.org/ literally shatters Al Gore’s myth that ‘the debate is over’ with over 9,000 PhD scientists among 31,000+ American scientists total

   - Oregon Petition originated when the Clintons marched out almost 1800 social scientists urging urgent action to fight Global Warming

   - Oregon Petition quickly grew, solely by word-of-mouth, to over 20,000 actual scientists (by 1999) disputing the 1,800 social scientists

This essay responds to an Austin Hill article, “Note To Catholic Bishops: Obamanomics Is Evil, Too”, and to resulting comments posted at http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=note_to_catholic_bishops__obamanomics_is_evil,_too&ns=AustinHill&dt=10/11/2009&page=full&comments=true&submitted=true#postComments

Before the Reformation, Governments didn't do much to aid the poor; most government action, where it existed, was in ensuring just laws governed internally, and in prudently conducting affairs of state to internationally advance the national well-being. Charity? The Catholic Church's established monasteries (and such) cared for the down’n’out with large land holdings, herds of cattle/sheep/etc, and lots of crops. From these sources, the Catholic Church also attended to aged people’s retirement needs. Most Church holdings were staffed by monks (& nuns & such) who worked as much as they prayed; some became corrupt (as Luther pointed out), becoming rich even as they aided the poor and elderly. 

Then, in the Reformation, kings grew desperate to fund their wars. They sent assessors to the monasteries (and like places), then sent troops to seize all that was of value to the King. The former social safety net was no more; kings spent the wealth on affairs of state, not on citizens. The monks, nuns, etc were even displaced (most of the time) from their former lands. The poor became poorer. Kings (especially in England) created Debtors Prisons to horrible and yet so well described by Charles Dickens and others. 

Since giving up on healing the Reformation’s rifts, the Catholic Church has gotten into a habit of advocating to governments to help the poor. (Funny how socialists owe even that philosophical thought to the Catholicism that they despise.)

I assess government has no proper role in wealth redistribution; socialism has everywhere proven to be little more than a political front for political power grab, and has proven to have *nothing* to do with the general welfare of all citizens. On the contrary, charity is the proper realm of free-will offerings, not of forced taxed coercion. Governments should concentrate on Rule of Law (internally) and affairs of state (externally). Governments would then leave religious & secular charities unhindered in their proper role of caring materially & spiritually for those who are poor in wealth & spirit. Most especially, the government is wasteful in directly competing with private charities, pitting inefficient impersonal taxation against directly effective in-person free-will offerings. Government exerts a monopolistic & coercive effect in its ‘competition’ against charities, and yet is one of the most grossly inefficient mechanisms for relieving the plight of the poor. As European experience has proven since 1950, government welfare has hardly elevated the poor, but done yeoman’s work in impoverishing the middle class.

I assess the Catholic hierarchy is wrong when advocating governments ‘care’ for their people in any manner of direct handouts (welfare, medicare, etc). Perhaps it’s time for the Catholic hierarchy to investigate ways of encouraging governments to simply get out of the way.

Could hardly be worse than what happens today.

Personal Stimulus:

2008, Bush:  $1,800.00 ($1.8 thousand)

2009, Obama:  $250.00 ($0.3 thousand)

  - Difference:   Obama gives me $1,550.00 ($1.6 thousand) less … one seventh …

Corporate Stimulus (Aprox):

Bush:          $1,630,000,000,000.00 ($1.6 trillion)

Obama:       $3,160,000,000,000.00  ($3.2 trillion)

   - Difference:   Obama deficit spending, just on stimulus: double Bush’s.

Allegations:

  - 2008:  Bush Jr was quite clear he was refunding peoples' taxes; his detractors claim the tax refund amount was too paltry to have bothered with. What is “one-seventh of paltry” ?

  - 2009:  Obama cannot account for where stimulus monies went; his detractors claim at least a significant amount of it went to his 2008 Campaign political supporters; we do know that Obama has closed down GM & Chrysler dealerships that have been profitable, if they failed to adequately support Obama in 2008.

[The following is copied here by request:]

What do LeRoy Carhart, Warren Hern, and George Tiller have in common? They are among an unknown number who perform abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy (the third trimester being the seventh, eighth, and ninth month!)

For two decades I have been proclaiming from the pulpits of America that abortions happen in the third trimester. Many Americans find it hard to believe. Now, in the aftermath of the death of George Tiller, this fact is getting a bit more attention.

The Associated Press reported on June 2 in an article by Eric Olson that physician LeRoy Carhart of Nebraska wants to continue performing abortions at this late stage, but he, as well as Warren Hern, also want to make sure enough physicians are trained in how to do so.

How many are we talking about? The AP story reported, "Carhart said 75 to 100 of the "several thousand" abortions he performs annually are in the third trimester."

Stanley K. Henshaw, a senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute, the research division of Planned Parenthood, and the best source of these statistics, is quoted in a June 5 Washington Post article as saying, "The information just isn't available...This is an area that we just don't know much about."

The Guttmacher Institute does report in its official statistics, however, that some 13,310 abortions each year are at 21 weeks or more of pregnancy (that is, 1.1% of the 1.21 million abortions per year). Of the 40 states that reported in 2005 to the Centers for Disease Control, 32 states reported abortions of babies 21 weeks or older.

This means that every day, 37 babies the size of a large banana are dismembered and decapitated - and these include healthy babies of healthy mothers...and it's happening legally.

These are babies that the mother can already feel moving. According to MedlinePlus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, these babies are storing fat on their bodies, their heartbeat can be heard with a stethoscope, they can hear, they have eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails and toenails. Incidentally, MedlinePlus calls them "babies." (See www.nlm.nih.gov/MEDLINEPLUS/ency/article/002398.htm ).

Many people wonder how they can get some traction in the seemingly intractable abortion debate. How can they get people to listen, or make pro-choice people believe that pro-life people have good reason to be against abortion?

My suggestion: start by discussing the facts I just mentioned.

It's morally legitimate to focus on late-term abortion; that doesn't deny that all abortion is wrong; it's simply a way to get the ball rolling, a pedagogical method of going from the most obvious to the less obvious, of starting with what people know and leading to what they don't know.

When people are astonished by these facts, as they will be, they are forced to re-evaluate just how much priority "privacy" and "choice" have over life. If they are "pro-choice," they are forced to figure out when in pregnancy the line is drawn - and why.

And now you're talking.

The text and audio of this column can be found online at www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2009/09-06-15-pro-choice-crisis.htm

Fr. Frank's columns are podcast. Click here for more information.

Capitalism, unregulated, has led to Robber Barons and concurrent treatment of workers as merely another cost of production. The point: greed led to dehumanization of fellow men (& women & children also in sweatshops even if not in the mines too). Caveat: is such dehumanization inevitable? Have all cases of relatively unregulated capitalism led to such excesses?

We often hear capitalism works on a recognition of greed’s power. 

 - Greed can be seen as an inherent evil. Greed has perennially been one of the 7 Deadly Sins (pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth).

 - What is greed? Greed is the drive to improve one’s lot in life, taken to extreme. Definition: “an overwhelming desire to acquire or have, as wealth or power, in excess of what one requires or deserves” (Webster’s New Riverside University Dictionary).  Therefore, a simple desire to improve one’s lot in life is NOT Greed, any more than eating for health & nourishment, is a desire to be a glutton.

 - Effects. Greed, unchecked, led to Robber Barons at least in the USA and in Britain. Some capitalists, like some of any group, will become fanatics. Are robber barons capitalism’s fanatics, or at least one brand thereof? We may not know the answer, but we do know that far from all capitalists become robber barons.  Probably, for every robber barron (or, today, 'golden parachute executive), we can find at least one noted philanthropist to match.  Philanthropists are but one example of the opposite of a robber baron.  But even more basically, greed is not the all-consuming factor in capitalism.  Capitalism’s essence, seen in all the  is that it allows each person to use natural talents to better his lot in life – and the lot of those he cares about or does honest business with. Just as eating tends to gluttony in many, capitalists often tend to greed of robber barons.  

 - Analogy time. Greed is much like an amazingly attractive force. A tool one can use: capitalists can simply avoid the excesses of greed. But there are possibilities still, when one finds himself already far down the path to greed, and greed becomes overwhelmingly powerful. He can make the moral decision to shear away from greed’s sucking force. That decision can be codified into law, just as is codified the morality to not steal or kill in any other ways. 

    Other examples abound, such as

      - the highly-publicized myths that the Founding Fathers were Secularists, not the Christians they themselves claimed to be.

      - the now receding myth that the Treaty of Tripoli was somehow a proof that religion must be banned from the American Experiment, when it was merely a clause trying to explain to Muslim countries that the USA, unlike all other countries of the day, had no officially supported state religion.

    “Exception becoming the rule” isn’t just for history.  Historical examples are simpler due to Americans’ lack of history education.  Modern-day examples are possible due to Americans’ lack of education in mathematics, rhetoric, & logic.  Relative Morality is truly evil, since it makes a lie or a murder (or any other evil) into a moral virtue whenever the lie/murder/etc can be arguably seen to advance an agenda.

      - NBC planting explosives in a Ford to show how nearly all Fords explode on impact (1978).  (So, a rigged-to-explode pickup is a valid expose on sparks igniting gas tanks ... how?)

      - 60 Minutes rigging visuals to show how jeeps ‘always’ roll over even at very low speeds.  (Note how the powerful visual over-emphasizes a very low statistic merely quietly mentioned in the background narrative?)

      - Diane Sawyer’s recent ‘expose’ on how being armed in a classroom (or any public venue) would get you killed, but cell phones would save lives.  (How does the following filmed play-acting prove anything?  The play-acting paintballing perpetrator enters the classroom, shoots the instructor, then somehow zeroes in on the only armed individual.  Meanwhile, the armed individual is fumbling to grip an unfamiliar paintball weapon in an unfamiliar location -- while wearing bulky gloves?  How does telling the perpetrator 'there is one armed individual' represent reality that there would probably be zero armed individuals in the room?)

Liars lie. Stupid to state the obvious? 

What about …

 - when Liars drown out the obvious in a cacophony of lies?

 - when a culture commonly questions established thoughts not on the basis of weighing competing evidence, but merely because it’s fashionable to question anything already established merely because it’s ‘established’?

1. The problem:

Lies reap often & deeply from ‘the law of unintended consequences’. 

In ‘objective reality’, lies are the true ‘gift that keeps on giving’. Lies spread suspicion, hurt, and resentment -- in ever widening circles. The spread is especially true among cultures around the world that adhere to, as the best available form of justice, versions of any/all of the following:

 - ‘an eye for an eye’

 - ‘might makes right’

 - ‘rule by self-appointed elites’ (Gnosticism, whether secular or theocratic)

 - ‘the ends justify the means’

Politics, nature, and all other forces in the world are as they are, not as Liars would wish them to be. 

 - Liars ignore ‘objective reality’ to their own peril, even if gaining power in the short term. Prestige, wealth, and the other trappings of power, are never secure; they are less so when built on lies. Power built on lies also afflict the Liar with an interior unease, which breeds (among other things) paranoia. In addition to the overt hurts directly from lies, the varying levels of suspicion (even short of paranoia) also lead Liars to spread unease.

 - Lies also afflict the innocent who Liars subjugate. 

 - Lies also afflict the innocent who Liars merely interact with. 

Liars actually often aim to self-aggrandizement via intentionally hurting the innocent. At best, Liars are merely uncaring if their lies hurt the innocent. Even at ‘best’, Liars are incompatible with Inalienable Rights, more-less the Right of Free Will that underpins the specific Inalienable Rights.

2. Current examples:

 - Defense & Deficits. Liars use economic crises, real or invented, to further denude national defense. Liars conveniently ignore that social spending amounts to *more than three times* the spending on national defense, and that social spending has about doubled in the last couple decades, while defense spending declined 40%, then has remained steady or declined until slight increase in 2008. 

 - Pot & Kettle. The liar often has the nerve to compound the lies’ original dissonance, by hypocritically accusing their opposition of ‘politics of personal destruction’ when the opposition dares to point out lies. This is not new. Recall the no longer taught moral tale, about the thief running from the scene of the crime, who shouts “Stop! Thief!” while pointing further ahead, just long enough to make an escape in the lie-generated confusion.

 - Debate. Liars take half-baked science to enact involuntary worldwide wealth redistribution (even economic collapse), and push for U.N. mandates to tax & make binding laws, disguised thinly in the name of an invented human effect on global climate. Then they invent more ‘evidence’ to smear all who would say otherwise, especially including tenuous (and outright invented) ad-hominem attacks (aka “politics of personal destruction”) that don’t actually address the evidence.

 - Free Speech. Liars insist on asserting their world view of morality, in the public square. Hypocritically, they attempt to silence differing moral viewpoints. Liars poison the discussion with doublespeak, not least by asserting a constitutional ‘freedom of speech’ is instead an imposition of morality.

 - Majority Protection. Liars trump up charges, no matter how minor, to ruin their opponents’ reputations. Meanwhile, they ‘circle the wagons’ around their own who are actually guilty of similar and far worse offenses. Compare treatments to Packwood v. Studds, Hillary v. Newt, DeLay v. B. Clinton, among others.

 - History. It’s been fashionable to overturn centuries of knowing Matthew wrote the first gospel. Liars use embedded lies in this one. The only evidence is a presupposition in a “Q” (aka “source”) document. Not only does “Q” not exist today, but all of history fails to mention any “Q” ever existing. One relies on imagined evidence to overturn evidence-based assessments?

 - Guns. Liars claim inanimate objects must be banned, so they don’t kill people.

3. The solution:

It is not the person who calls a lie a lie, who is the dissonant troublemaker. Rather, it is the liar who causes the troubling ‘politics of hate’.  We have forgotten this.

A truth must be lifted again from subduction within rampant cacophony of lies, including lies that question human knowledge merely for the specious sake of engaging in questioning everything: lies keep on giving pain, over & over again; lies must be exposed & snuffed out. This truth is long overdue, and must again be made obvious.

Do we really want arsonists assuming leadership roles in our supposed fight against the fire ???

How long will we remain popularly duped ???

The article (located beneath “Article Begins”) may not be legit; it came in an e-mail with no further attribution than what’s shown below.  It also may not be honestly titled; it wanders among both military and financial issues, despite the title.

Regardless of attribution & focus,the ‘article’ hits all the pertinent hilites but four.

1. Reagan increased military spending. Deficits soared. Why? He was unable to secure “line item veto” he had campaigned for. Shocking increases in social spending was the price Tip O’Neal’s Democrats extracted for Reagan’s military buildup. Reagan’s buildup won the Cold War, and we continue to life off that buildup with a military starting to make Carter’s ‘hollow force’ pleasant by comparison.

2. Bush Sr, after the Kremlin gave up the Cold War, severely slashed (aprox 40%) military spending. Clinton deepened the cuts. Both presidents (Bush Sr and Clinton) dramatically increased social spending, so deficits continued apace. Clinton increased the deficits, until Gingrich came along with his Contract With America.

3.  Democrats and RINOs stopped Bush Jr from heading off the mortgage mess, particularly circa 2005. Democrats ran the last conservative leadership (hilited by Gingrich, DeLay, Lott) out of town, with help from RINOs, and without Bush Jr lifting a finger. The coup was 1998-2002. Deficits continued to soar, and military spending continued to shrink, only at times ‘staying even’ after 9/11, until slight increase in 2008. Social spending increased 40%, now comprising well more than 60% of the federal budget.

4. The ‘article’ focuses on young, idealistic presidents, ignoring the sager heads of their party within Congress. (Congress makes law, including budgets. President can heavily influence, but in the end merely enforces law.)

Yet, as the bottom line says: somehow Democrats have avoided the blame!  

 - The Liberals generally, and Democrats specifically, shifted the blame onto RINOs, calling them conservatives. It’s a fascinating pair of lies, starting to look like Pinocchio’s nose: commit the crime, blame co-criminals and passers-by; venomously assign labels, harkening to previously proffered false threats from the opposition party/ideology ...

 - Conservatives are also afflicted with the blame, falsely in their case. Liberals & RINOs joined to kick the conservative leaders out of office -- the deeply immoral political price for fighting this mess! What a fascinating triple lie: Liberals did it, but claim others did; Liberals blame conservatives, who actually fought it; Liberals invented scandals to remove conservative leadership faster than legal processes could exonerate the accused, so that Liberals could push the agenda that now has us all in hot water.

Jimmy Carter became our 39th president at the young age of 52. He was a one-term governor from Plains, GA, where he managed the family peanut farm and taught Sunday school. He was also a graduate of the Naval Academy and served seven years in the Navy, leaving as a lieutenant.

       He came to power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the resignation of President Nixon. The public wanted change and someone new, and Carter was an ambitious, hands-on politician who promised better days. As good as his intentions were, however, the things he tried were not successful. In fact, he created far more serious problems than he ever solved.

       The centerpiece of Carter's foreign policy was human rights, and he did achieve one noble success - a peace treaty between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin. Unfortunately, that later led to Sadat's assassination at the hands of Muslim radicals.

       Many people felt Carter was a good man who worked hard and meant well. But he was naive and incompetent in handling the enormous burdens and complex challenges of being president. He wrongly believed Americans had an "inordinate fear of communism," so he lifted travel bans to Cuba, North Vietnam and Cambodia and pardoned draft evaders. He also stopped B-1 bomber production and gave away our strategically located Panama Canal.

       His most damaging miscalculation was the withdrawal of U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, a strong and longtime military ally. Carter objected to the Shah's alleged mistreatment of imprisoned Soviet spies who were working to overthrow Iran's government. He thought the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, being a religious man, would make a fairer leader.  

       Having lost U.S. support, the Shah was overthrown, the Ayatollah returned, Iran was declared an Islamic nation and Palestinian hit men were hired to eliminate opposition.  

       The Ayatollah then introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization, paying $35,000 to PLO families whose young people were brainwashed to kill as many Israelis as possible by blowing themselves up in crowded shopping areas.  

       Next, the Ayatollah used Iran's oil wealth to create, train and finance a new terrorist organization, Hezbollah, which later would attack Israel in 2006.

       In November 1979, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Not until six months into the ordeal did Carter attempt a rescue. But the mission, using just six Navy helicopters, was poorly executed. Three of the copters were disabled or lost in sandstorms. (Pilots weren't allowed to meet with weather forecasters because someone in authority worried about security.)  Five airmen and three Marines lost their lives.
        So, due to overconfidence, inexperience and poor judgment, Carter undermined and lost a strong ally, Iran, that today aggressively threatens the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world with nuclear weapons.
 
But that's not all. After Carter met for the first time with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the USSR promptly invaded Afghanistan. Carter, ever the naive appeaser, was shocked. "I can't believe the Russians lied to me," he said.

       The invasion attracted a 23-year-old Saudi named Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan to recruit Muslim fighters and raise money for an anti-Soviet jihad. Part of that group eventually became al-Qaida, a terrorist organization that would declare war on America several times between 1996 and 1998 before attacking us on 9/11, killing more Americans than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
 
On Carter's watch, the Soviet Union went on an unrestrained rampage in which it took over not only Afghanistan, but also Ethiopia, South Yemen, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Grenada and Nicaragua.

       In spite of this, Carter's last defense budget proposed spending 45% below pre-Vietnam levels for fighter aircraft, 75% for ships, 83% for attack submarines and 90% for helicopters.

Years later, as a civilian, Carter negotiated a peace agreement with North Korea to keep that communist country from developing nuclear weapons. He also convinced President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to go along with it. But the signed piece of paper proved worthless. The North Koreans deceived Carter and instead used our money, incentives and technical equipment to build nuclear weapons and pose the threat we face today.
  
Thus did Carter unwittingly become our Neville Chamberlain, creating with his well-intended but inept, unrealistic and gullible actions the very conditions that led to the three most dangerous security threats we face today: Iran, al-Qaida and North Korea.

 
On the domestic side, Carter gave us

       inflation of 15%, the highest in 34 years;

       interest rates of 21%, the highest in 115 years; and

       a severe energy crisis with lines around the block at gas stations nationwide.
 
In 1977, Carter, along with a Democrat Congress, created a worthy project with noble intentions -- the Community Reinvestment Act. Over strong industry objections, it mandated that all banks meet the credit needs of their entire communities.

       In 1995, President Clinton imposed even stronger regulations and performance tests that coerced banks to substantially increase loans to low-income, poverty-area borrowers or face fines or possible restrictions on expansion. These revisions allowed for securitization of CRA loans containing sub prime mortgages.

       By 1997, good loans were bundled with poor ones and sold as prime packages to institutions here and abroad. That shifted risk from the loan originators, freeing banks to begin pyramiding and make more of these profitable sub prime products.
 
Under two young, well-intended presidents, therefore, big-government plans and mandates played a significant role in the current sub-prime mortgage mess and its catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and international economies.
 
Hardest-hit by the mortgage foreclosures have been the citizens that Democrats always claim to help most -- inner-city residents who fell victim to low or no down payment schemes, unexpected adjustable rates, deceptive loan applications and commission-hungry salespeople.
 
Now we're having to bail out at huge cost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the very agencies that were supposed to stabilize the system. In time, this should improve the situation. But the party of Carter and Clinton that midwifed our mortgage mess now wants to be trusted to take over and have the government run our entire system of health care!

       And everyone is blaming Bush for our current problems.

A defunct Russian satellite has collided with a (formerly) operational Irridium satellite. It’s the first actual accidental orbital collision –the first in which ‘space junk’ (other than a paint chip) has hit a functioning satellite.  The 30+ years of fear & hype have finally come true.

Note the other category, for a moment. A year ago, China hit a satellite on purpose. A few months later, the USA did similar.  Both created debris clouds. Differences: 

 - China used ‘might’ as it used a purpose-built anti-satellite rocket to advertise its arrival on the Anti-Satellite Scene; USA used ‘finesse’ as it quickly reconfigured operational Air Defense assets for an ASAT mission

 - USA aimed at hitting a satellite at a point in the orbit where all debris would quickly de-orbit due to atmospheric frictional drag; most chunks would burn up in the atmosphere, the larger ones (if any) were aimed for an empty “broad ocean area”. China’s debris will be in orbit for a long, long time. Most media outlets have forgotten this simple orbital fact. [Most media personnel understand space issues less than they understand their own bias.]

Back to main topic.

 - LEO extends from the upper atmospheric fringes to about a thousand miles: 200-1,000 miles above mean sea level (MSL)

     - - some are in normally inclined orbits, like the International Space Station and (when flying) the space shuttle. Manned missions are the heaviest, so don’t generally go higher than they have to. ISL & space shuttle orbit at about 250 miles above MSL. Space Shuttle is literally incapable of getting higher than 800 miles ASL

     - - some are in polar orbits, such as the low-altitude high-resolution weather satellites NOAA operates.  These orbits allow overflight of all (or nearly all) of Earth's surface, with greater or lesser frequency depending upon altitude and inclination.

 - GPS satellites, and now a few other satellites too, are in the ‘medium Earth orbit’ (MEO):  8,000-12,000 miles above MSL

 - Most communications satellites, aside from Irridium, are geo-synchronous (GEO): 23,000 miles above MSL. 

     - - Most of the geosynchronous satellites are geostationary too:  23,000 miles above MSL and right over the equator.  Arthur C. Clarke was the first scientist to postulate a satellite could ‘hang’ in one place in the sky like GEO sats do in “the Clarke belt”

     - - The ‘weather satellite images’ we’re used to seeing come from the 5 international-agreement GEO satellites that are weather watchers, not comms satellites.

     - - for those who have direct-to-home satellite TV, the Dish Network and DirecTV satellites are in the Clarke Belt.

Nevertheless, for possibly the first time in the space age, there is an accumulation of debris that *may* have reached dangerous levels. Why? Earth has a ‘vacuum cleaner’, at least for LEO debris. Every 11 years, the Sun has a ‘solar maximum’, pumping its maximum amount of energy outwards, including to Earth. This energy collides with the Atmosphere, exciting molecules and causing Earth’s atmosphere to expand a bit. Atmospheric expansion functions to slow down functioning satellites & orbiting debris in a much faster timespan than satellites normally face.   

Most people don’t realize that the International Space Station requires, even during Solar Minimums, periodic boostings back to a higher orbit. Reason: Earth’s tenuous atmosphere, even at 250 miles altitude ASL, slows ISS down, and so ISS continuously loses altitude in deference to gravity’s inexorable pull.

The “solar max vac”, in fact, provides periodic disappointments as favorite satellites’ orbits decay faster than desired. Solar maximums were responsible, along with budgetary decisions to not intervene, in bringing down Skylab (1979) a mere several years after launch. There had been plans for the Space Shuttle to visit Skylab, rehabilitate it, and shuttle crews to it. The country didn’t feel the treasure expended in Skylab was worth saving. Instead, we later had to start all over; penny-wise, pound-foolish. Likewise, the Russian nuclear-powered satellite (Cosmos 954, 1978) and MIR (2001) were de-orbited during solar maximums. MIR was intentional, to control it’s impact location. Cosmos 954 and Skylab was completely uncontrolled. They are only 3 examples of deorbits during ‘solar max’.

The last solar maximum was several years ago, and we are currently in a rather extended solar minimum that *may* now be showing signs of giving way to the start of the next solar cycle. Old Sol is just taking his time in starting the new solar cycle. Our ‘spacecraft junk vacuum cleaner’ won’t kick in again for at least a few more years – it all depends on the timing & intensity of the solar maximum.

We have yet another ramification of “It’s the Sun, Stupid!”

 Question: As shown below, do most objections to the F-22 ultimately reveal themselves as: “in the future we can do it this way because we now do it this way”?

 Duck Archer challenges this blog’s readers to assess the thinking patterns in this essay, and then go forth to see if *any* F-22 objections don’t also end up putting cart before the horse!

 a. Some say the days of U.S. Air Force aircraft ‘going low’ are over. 

Maybe. But forever surrendering part of the atmosphere is a foolish – and needless -- concession to the enemy. 

Some have said, “Long-distance killing is the next-best thing to being there.” As ghoulish as the phrase may sound on first read, it has meaning. There will always be people wanting to do harm to others. The best way to be sure of ending the fight favorably is by being close enough for two very critical steps: to wield all possible force, and to be able to carefully assess the results. Long-distance ranges make things much tougher! Hence, “long distance” is merely next-best, something to do if you must. Another way to consider this point is the old adage, “Get there the firstest with the mostest” [emphasis added].

Also, how much of our fear of low flight comes just from a current inability to do so – with old-technology all-metal airframes?  Which is the cart, which the horse?  I bet there are circumstances today where we wish we had a real low-level ability with which to keep adversaries off-balance. 

Deciding to stay high, to hit targets down low; isn’t that too much cart in front, to protect a horse the hard way? 

 - Who’d have imagined in the 1970s:  an A-10 attacking from high-altitude?  But the A-10 story may not be over.  History teaches clearly “everything old is new again”.  Tools change, though basic concepts remain time-tested constants.

 - Consider the B-52: high, then low, now high again… (And the aviation enthusiast may note how the B-52’s history seems to mirror our aviation strategy generally … )

First, in the 1950s-1960s, the B-52’s combat realm was stratospheric, where it could operate essentially above anti-air weapons’ altitude limits. Then enemy air defenses shot down Gary Powers’ U-2, as the expanding network of SA-2 missiles gradually closed off the geography available to high-altitude airplanes. This development is what sealed the B-70 program at only 2 XB-70 aircraft. SoB-52s lost tail guns, but gained active electronic counter-measures (ECMs) to confuse radar signals – whether radars of ground units, of interceptor airplanes, or of air-to-air missiles. 

But then advances in those SA missile guidance systems got too good for ECMs. In this newly lethal second B-52 operational phase, B-52 crews found themselves training at hilltop heights in very uncomfortably large & lumbering aircraft -- most certainly not meant for flight in very dense air! B-52s trained to make very-low-level attack flights, to sneak under radars (and hide behind terrain). 

But this soon proved impossible, too, when enemy air defenses developed “look down see down” airborne radars – interceptors could now distinguish planes from ‘ground clutter’. So, in their third operational phase, smart engineers mated B-52s with stand-off weapons: air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). The B-52s could again fly in their designed high-altitude environment, sending the ALCMs into the “penetrate enemy air defenses” regions. In these days of ubiquitous Global Positioning System, we tend to forget how hard it was to figure out how to send unmanned weapons at hilltop height against well-defended targets. 

b. Some say our obsolescent all-metal technology can keep going.

Three challenges: costs of misuse, everything ages, times change.

(1) What is the cost, paid by using a plane in ways it was never designed for?   

 - What of the A-10 today? It madly sucks air, in a limited flight envelope ‘up high’. Its wings were designed for very thick air, not sparse air ‘up high’. It senselessly lifts heavy titanium cockpits well above its designed thick-air realm, eating fuel not just at new altitudes, but in the very clawing for altitude. Besides the wear & tear on the engine, sucking in comparatively rarified air, what is the needless cost in fuel? What is the required maintenance & engineering, to discover and capture some efficiencies of fuel & engine wear? What are the operational/survivability costs, from trying to maneuver in atmospherics for which the plane was not designed?

 - Consider B-52 crews, going low. The plane was designed for warfighting from the stratosphere. So, down low, the B-52 crews got jarred nearly to death, yanking & banking among the terrain in a craft not designed for madly maneuvering in turbulent thick air so close to ground … Now, they can fight from designed altitude, but only in USA-controlled airspace. We don’t have enough airplanes, any more, to control all the airspace we’d like to all at the same time. And our combatant aircraft numbers keep dwindling.

(2) What is the cost, paid by using a plane for decades longer than originally designed for?

The answer must focus on a rhetorical question: How many air hours can we steal with good re-engineering & forward-thinking? 

(3) What is the cost we must pay to the adage ”times change”?  

The winning bet is that our future will include adversaries that close-off our current relative invulnerability ‘up high’. Maybe they will do it simply with overwhelming numbers of anti-air weapons – atop near-par aircraft in their own right.  Then what will we do?  That future may come sooner than we desire, if our adversaries have even half brains and even a little courage … which they seem to possess at the least.  So ‘going low’ may again become the survivable way - but only if we have equipment to do it. 

 - As we already must admit, our adversaries note we don’t go low today. Inevitably, they’ll develop & field weapons that threaten us ‘up high’. F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s will get chewed up – if the geriatric airframes don’t break apart in flight of their own accord. 

 - When the enemy denies ‘up high’, we’re back to trying to terrain-mask our aircrafts’ sight, sound, heat, and everything else. And, we’ll then have to reflect on what the B-52 crews learned (even as they suffered skeletal problems):  yank, bank, puke, crack apart. The Apollo 10 Crew may have pridefully radioed, from a few dozen miles above the moon:  “we is down among ‘em”. But a spacecraft in the airless void behaves far differently than an aircraft in an atmosphere – and likewise different are the demands on the human body, its sense of balance, and resulting ability to fly & fight among the mental & physical fatigue.

Tying Up 4 Parts.

Times change. Old stuff gets ever more costly to maintain. Old stuff can be used in only so many new ways. These three sentences are truisms. They are objective reality, regardless how we might wish the world to be.

 - Crossbows yielded to muskets, which gave way to rifles. 

 - Airships yielded to biplanes, which yielded to monoplanes; then jets pushed propellers aside.

 - Likewise, ‘all-metal airplanes’ are going the way of the Model-T. 

The F-22/F-35 is the next step in the see-saw between offense and defense. To see current success and project to a decade from now is putting cart before the horse: you cannot actually get there from here; the competition will definitely beat you to the destination!

One cannot expect a winning fight when one’s airpower is obsolescent – more-less obsolete or antique – but one can expect to live like rats scurrying from one cave to the next, and losing manpower all the way. The last century of warfare has taught clearly – without exception – that absent control of the air (today’s ‘high ground’), you have only one hope of winning: morale. It’s frightfully costly to win by wearing down the enemy’s will to fight. Indeed, across the board, it’s far easier to win by eliminating the enemy’s ability to fight. We sure lost in Vietnam, but don’t forget the Viet Cong suffered horrendous losses for their win. Note how quickly we won Desert Storm when we dominated the air – and with far fewer casualties (on both sides) than any ‘experts’ feared, going in. Saddam’s front-line forces were all reduced below 50% before the ‘left hook’ decked our adversary in just a few weeks. Indeed, the last century of warfare bears out a truth: absent air control, you can win only in the very costly arena of morale.

Remember the equation: Threat = Ability + Intent. 

The equation goes for assessing enemy threats. But it’s a 2-way equation. It also measures our ability to fight.

History marches on, whether we stay in step or not. We will abjectly need the F-22 in ten years, when its painfully slow production rates have fielded enough of the 183-airplane force in sufficient numbers to make a difference … at least, a difference in one spot of the globe. 183 is pitifully small. In objective reality, the USA is the richest country ever in world history – even after the mortgage balloon burst!

If the USA cannot afford an Air Force of F-22s (and an Air Force & Navy of F-35s), then it’s only because we foolishly THINK we cannot afford it! We need the F-22. We need to start & continue producing, now!

3. The burning need:  time marches on.

Metal fatigue will make our current aircraft completely incapable in another ten years.  Most would still be capable of flying, but not under combat loads.  Remember, longirons are failing, and old all-metal planes are already breaking up in mid-air.  Those that aren't breaking up are still requiring ever more hours in detailed maintenance and upgrade facilities -- reducing availability across the board.  Worse, retrofits only postpone the inevitable ...

Procurement Lags:

As to new aircraft:  remember we need time to get procured equipment fielded, into battle plans, and into exercises so we really know how to use them – not just theoretically (or even in computer simulations of theory). 

In a decade, could we win with current aircraft supplemented by F-22s?  I doubt it.  But I pose that the cost would be horrendous if we did win.  China in a decade will not be a pretty adversary.  Our current fighters will strain mightily by then;  'in a decade' is when China, Russia, and Islam all pose foreseeable threats far greater than today’s world poses:

 - China WILL seriously threaten our interests in Taiwan, not to mention Korea, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, et al.  China will threaten with quantity of modern aircraft and (more ominously) relatively inexpensive high-tech air defenses that will seriously hurt us.  Already, China possesses anti-carrier weapons that will keep our aircraft carriers at arm’s length.  With 1970s-era airplanes, plus a handful of stealth at far-away Guam, Air Force would have nothing to offer, to replace ‘persistent’ air presence China is increasingly forcing the navy to position ever more distant (in event of war).   

 - Russia’s re-emergence will have re-armed that country, which may not be all that friendly.  Worst case:  xenophobic ultra-nationalists (a Russian historical tendency), whether with a resurgence of 1900s atheistic communism or not.  Best case:  western-friendly leader like Gorbachev or Catherine the Great, who would actually trust and welcome a western alliance --- an alliance that maybe we could make actually useful to Russia and it’s long vulnerable southern borders.  As if Russia's gradual transition from President to Dictator isn't worrisome all on its own, recent international events in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Georgia, and Ukraine (among others) indicate Russia's western-friendly leaders are about as scarce as USA's conservatives have been in the last several years.

 - Islamic countries’ oil income could indeed well-fund militant Islamic resurgence like we’ve not seen in 600 years.  I propose this is an Islamic funding decision made more likely if we slide along with old all-metal fighters that they can counter with metal-seeking and heat-seeking hand-held SAMs.  That oil is also a potentially lethal chokehold on Japan, and would severely hinder us (the USA) and our European allies.  We have the ability to drill and solve that problem, except for environmentalists --- but that’s another dissertation.  We also have the spacefaring technical ability to dramatically reduce oil needs in non-vehicular uses, which would entirely remove the petroleum stranglehold by reducing the petroleum quantity needs mostly just to vehicles --- but this too is another dissertation.

c.  Why now??

Some say our current fighter aircraft fleet can serve us well for another decade.  Good!!

We will need that hypothetical decade, to acquire stealth aircraft in sufficient quantity for any big fight we hope to fight from navy carriers as well as from allies’ land bases.  A decade from now is when the current monopolar world doubtless will have changed again…

Again, most F-22 presentations concentrate on high-end threats.  Don’t forget the low-end!