Palin, Jackson, hunger, climate… Mail 20110825

Mail 689 Thursday, August 25, 2011

Governor Palin and the Return of Jacksonian Foreign Policy, Condi Crush

Jerry,

I thought you might be interested in this article on Gov Palin’s Jacksonian foreign policy and the link to her facebook post.

http://conservatives4palin.com/2011/08/governor-palin-and-the-return-of-jacksonian-foreign-policy.html

IMHO, the Gov is doing a masterful job of backpedaling from being the first to advocate imposing a No Fly zone. Someone, perhaps you, must have explained what was involved in destroying a country’s air defenses so that our aircraft can operate safely. I would be pleased if any of the candidates aside from Ron Paul would ask why we have reneged on the peace settlement negotiated with Gadaffy after the capture of Saddam inspired him to surrender his WMD. Everyone seems to be focusing on their outrage about the Lockerbie bomber being released. None seem to remember that it was Obama rather than Bush who signed off on that.

On another note, FOX News reports that Gadaffy had a large photo album devoted to Condi Rice who negotiated the peace with him. One cannot fault him for taste. I suspect that no world leader will develop a similar infatuation with Hillary.

Jim Crawford

Palin has indeed made a clear statements of principle. In general I tend to agree with her, but with reservations. There are times when it is necessary to use force without exerting the power of the Republic. In the long forgotten past we dealt with that sort of thing by having a Department of War and a Department of the Navy. Navy was junior to War. By custom Navy including the Marines belonged to the President, and he could do pretty well what he thought was needed; but if he wanted to involve the Army, which was the Department of War, he had to go to Congress. We managed pretty well on that principle for a long time.

I am neither isolationist nor interventionist, but I do agree that sending in the troops in matters of less than vital interest needs careful consideration, and all these things require more cost/benefit analysis than we seem to be giving. The problem is Viet Nam: we were right to go there, and as Reagan observed it was a noble thing to do, defending the liberty of the South; after the South fell came reeducation camps and other recriminations. That is all fading now. But of course there was a hard to explain US interest. If containment was to work the USSR had to be contained. Viet Nam was a long way from the USSR, expensive to supply, and easier for us logistically. It became a long war of attrition and it did a lot to drain the Soviets (Afghanistan did a lot more). As a Campaign of Attrition in the Seventy Years War it was in fact a success, but a damned expensive one – wars of attrition always are. And we did win it. By 1972 North Viet Nam could send 150,000 troops south, and despite surprise they were utterly defeated. More than 100,000 troops lost, two armored divisions lost, fleets of trucks lost; all at a cost of a few hundred American casualties. The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam held fast under that hammer, and with US support won a big victory. That was all thrown away in 1975 when the Congress voted to support South Viet Nam with 20 cartridges and 2 hand grenades per troop, and forbade US air support, so we saw the pictures of helicopters pushed into the sea and the shameful flight from Saigon; had the US provided the support in 1975 that we provided in 1972 the outcome would have been different. Note that in both 1972 and 1975 the wars were the result of an invasion from the north, not Viet Cong insurgents.

The Cold War ended, and the US has since made friends with Viet Nam; we may yet return to Cam Ranh Bay. Meanwhile we replaced the conscript army with the new Legions, all volunteers. Supposedly we adopted new rules as well, but over time we began to commit the troops piecemeal into places where our interests were murky and the goals unclear. Now we are in the longest war of our history and the goals are still unclear.

The US conscript army in Viet Nam bears little resemblance to the modern Legions. It is more powerful than the armies Jackson would have known, and American obligations world wide are deeper and more complex than any Jackson faced.

At present, though, the greatest threat to America comes from the 7% exponential growth of government spending; until that is contained, we will not get out of the wretched morass we are stumbling into. The Legions can’t take us of this trap. We built it ourselves. Palin’s Jacksonian policy is one we can afford; it is not clear that we can afford anything else. We have to conserve and rebuild our military power, because we can’t afford not to. There are growing threats to American interests – to vital interests—and we have to keep the strength to meet them. A Jacksonian policy has that advantage.

Excuse the ramble. It has been a very long day.

Not that it seems to matter, but…

…is a VAT constitutional?

Charles Brumbelow

I would think so. We have had federal excise taxes for a long time,

==

VAT

Canada has the GST, a value added tax, AND the conservative government is cutting government spending to balance the budget. A responsible government can do both.

The US problem is the automatic increase in government spending. The VAT is a separate issue.

I’m for reducing income tax and adding a VAT. Make users pay tax on what they consume, not on what they earn.

John Galt

I would be in favor of consumption rather than income taxes myself, limiting income taxes to incomes over, say, $100,000 a year. But I have no confidence that imposition of consumption taxes would accompany reductions in income tax. Rather they opposite, I would say; and just now feeding the beast is the worst thing we can do. Adding new revenue just gives them more to spend. But yes, I agree, it is better to shift tax burdens to consumption tax rather than income. Encourage savings and investment and earning. You want less of something, fine people for doing it.

Dr. Spencer on global warming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvObfrs3qoE&feature=player_embedded

A very good presentation. About 9 minutes.

Phil

It becomes clear over time that we simply do not understand what forces climate. It now appears that solar activity has much greater effects on clouds than the models suppose. There are other factors we have ignored that keep inserting themselves. Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get; and it’s pretty clear we can’t predict the weather. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/25/cern_cloud_cosmic_ray_first_results/ 

As for me, I’d want a way to turn back the CO2 climb if we find it produces harm, but so far I have not seen evidence of harm. CO2 is good stuff if you’re a wheat plant.

1 in 4 American Children Go Hungry?

I have a hard time believing this, but here it is:

<.>

In high school, Katherine Foronda trained herself not to feel hungry until after the school day had ended. She wasn’t watching her weight or worrying about boys seeing her eat.

She just didn’t have any food to eat or any money to buy it.

"I thought, if I wasn’t hungry during class I’d be able to actually focus on what we were learning,” said Foronda, now 19.

Every day, children in every county in the United States wake up hungry. They go to school hungry. They turn out the lights at night hungry.

That is one of the stunning key findings of a new study to be released Thursday by Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks and the largest hunger charity in the country.

As many as 17 million children nationwide are struggling with what is known as food insecurity. To put it another way, one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life, according to the study, "Map the Meal Child Food Insecurity 2011."

Those hungry children are everywhere, and with the uncertain economy, the numbers are only growing, experts say.

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http://abcnews.go.com/US/hunger-home-american-children-malnourished/story?id=14367230

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Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

And yet the latest nanny state war is on obesity. I don’t know. My Boy Scouts used to cook Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and the local church sponsors delivered some of the dinners to locals, but we never knew to whom; we also took the Scouts in uniform to the skid row missions to deliver holiday dinners, on the theory that this would be beneficial to both the recipients and the Scouts. I don’t know just who does go hungry in the US; certainly there are enough free school meals and Food Stamps given out to alleviate most of it? I am sure there are some residual needy, but surely we have gone about as far as one can on this?

Fannie, Freddie Takeover Could Be Key To Obama Jobs Plan | FoxNews.com

Jerry,

This is astonishing.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/25/fannie-freddie-takeover-could-be-key-to-obama-jobs-plan/#ixzz1W2zVZyOX

Would it not be better for the govt to recapitalize the banks by buying up the bad mortgages then offer the borrower a favorable loan modification?

Jim Crawford

Housing is going to fall again, and until it does the bubble can’t be burst nd ended and a normal market restored. If the government becomes the landlord does that help? Should we tax those who have paid their mortgages in order to support those who did not? Who laid that obligation on those who have retained their jobs and made their payments? I do not know the origin of the right to have a house, nor of the obligation for someone else to pay for it.