Russia Opposes US/Polish Interceptor Missiles

The old Soviet Union, and now the Russians had, and have missiles near our coasts for decades in submarines, and we had and have missiles next to theirs.

 

What? Because you don’t see them, you don’t think about them?

 

They cannot be wished away.

 

And, yes, Moscow and most Russian cities have interceptor missiles ringing them, also, and we have ships at sea (particularly off Japan and Korea) with interceptor missiles also.

 

And, Israel has them also — some provided by us, and some of their own design.

 

Apparently nearly everyone can have interceptor missiles, but Poland can’t?

Union Madness

From today’s WSJ: “Meanwhile, General Motors said it will announce a multimillion-dollar investment next week in its Lordstown, Ohio, plant…”

 

Since GM is losing BILLIONS of dollars a year, why not expand into in a non-union state, as all foreign car makers are doing?

 

Because, the UAW would shut down GM completely! This is just another case where GM, and all northern industrials are being held captive until finally, to compete, they must close and move their manufacturing and assembly overseas.

 

At which time the Liberals blame the corporation, and not the union.

North County Schools

Today’s newspapers continue to tout small gains in school test scores, without acknowledging that the score improvement is from such a low level that ANYTHING is an improvement.

The most powerful political entity in this state is the teachers union! IF the teachers really wanted to do something about low-scoring Latino children, teachers through their union have all the clout in the world to change the system, but have you ever heard of a teachers union going out on strike for getting language proficiency required before mainstreaming students?

 

No, and you never will, because there has never been a teacher strike, and nationally there have been many teacher strikes, on any subject except more teacher pay and fewer teaching hours!

 

The reason we have so many tens of thousands of English Learners is that the State pays per seat – regardless of whether that seat is occupied by a citizen, or a rock! $30+ per day, per student – follow the money!

 

Until the teachers demand a change, American citizen students will suffer because the PTA will continue to go lockstep with the teachers, and the teachers will only worry about money.

 

California students rank no higher that 46th among states in reading and math, at the 4th and 8th grade, according to the federal National Report Card. In most cases, California students ranks 49th!

 

But our teachers rank NUMBER ONE IN TEACHER PAY, nationally. There is a cognitive disconnect between these numbers.

 

Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of

Teachers: “I’ll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues.”

 

That sums up the problem!

 

The solution is up to the teachers — they have the money, they have the vote, they have the clout!

 

What they lack is the will!

We’re Number One! We’re Number One!

The latest international rankings are announced by the Wall Street Journal, and we rank second in the world just behind Japan in corporate tax rate!

 

Now if your corporation is in a high tax state, like California, the corporate tax rate is even higher than in Tokyo – so we can say, “We are Number One! We are Number One.”

 

I am sure you have read the headlines of all of those terrible corporations that pay no taxes? Well, an analysis of the corporations paying no taxes shows that 85% also made no profits, which of course is unfair to liberals, I suppose. (General Motors lost $10 billion in the year in which they paid no taxes.)

 

(Senator Byron Dorgan {North Dakota} cited the GAO finding that 28% of large U.S. corporations paid no income tax in 2005. “It’s time for big corporations to pay their fair share,” Mr. Dorgan roared.)

 

European nations corporate tax rate averages 10% lower than U.S. corporate taxes, and we wonder why corporations move offshore, or as Budweiser did, to Europe. That is considered “unpatriotic” — as if there is some virtue in holding still to be punished.

 

Obama and the Democrats in general, want to RAISE corporate taxes. Of  course they expect corporations to hold still for this. Good luck!

Even the Washington Post Supports Drilling

The LIBERAL Washington Post editorializes FOR of-shore drilling (in fact for doing everything), and addresses environmental objections, thusly:

Drilling is pointless because the United States has only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. This is a misleading because it refers only to known oil reserves. According to the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), while there are an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil in the off-limits portions of the OCS, those estimates were made using old data from now-outdated seismic equipment. In the case of the Atlantic Ocean, the data were collected before Congress imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling in 1981. In 1987, the MMS estimated that there were 9 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels. In short, there could be much more oil under the sea than previously known. The demand for energy is going up, not down. And for a long time, even as alternative sources of energy are developed, more oil will be needed.

· The oil companies aren’t using the leases they already have. According to the MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8. Of those, only 1,877 were classified as “producing.” As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed “active.” Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense. (UNQUOTE)

Le Edwards Affair

The media knew about the Edwards affair, but the expose was being done by a less-than-honorable member of the MSM, so they CHOSE to ignore it. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post media critic addressed this last Sunday in his TV show Reliable Sources.

 

Of course there was more to it than that — the MSM ran quickly with the Limbaugh story, and others that were broken by minor players, so both the source and the object of the reporting were factors, as was the pain for Mrs. Edwards and family, and the fervent hope that the story was either not true, or it would die.

 

Each news outlet had all of those factors in the mix, and each used whatever factors made the most sense to it not to publish. The news outlets also made the conscious decision NOT to examine on their own, citing the lead that the Enquirer had, but factoring in also the fact that they would have to report the story if they could independently confirm it.