• Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: July 18, 2012

    July 18, 2012 /

    The Morning Flap links for July 17th through July 18th:

    • Arpaio calls Congress to move on Obama eligibility– At the conclusion of a press conference led by Cold Case Posse chief investigator Michael Zullo that detailed the reasons the long-form birth certificate of President Barack Obama is a forgery, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it’s time for a higher authority to investigate the issue.Mr. Arpaio said he would like Congress … “someone” … to look at the material his investigative team had gathered. As he had told WND earlier: “Although I am having a difficult time deciding who to forward this information to given the fact that the obvious choices report directly to the president, I cannot stand by and hold on to information that threatens to weaken national security.”The press conference held Tuesday clarified some of the issues discussed in an earlier press conference held in Phoenix on March 1, at which the Cold Case Posse presented its initial findings of a six-month-long investigation into the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. “I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Mr. Arpaio said at the time.
    • Arpaio: Obama birth record ‘definitely fraudulent’– Investigators for an Arizona sheriff’s volunteer posse have declared that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is definitely fraudulent.Members of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse said in March that there was probable cause that Obama’s long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April 2011 was a computer-generated forgery.Now, Arpaio says investigators are positive it’s fraudulent.Mike Zullo, the posse’s chief investigator, said numeric codes on certain parts of the birth certificate indicate that those parts weren’t filled out, yet those sections asking for the race of Obama’s father and his field of work or study were completed.

      Zullo said investigators previously didn’t know the meaning of codes but they were explained by a 95-year-old former state worker who signed the president’s birth certificate. Zullo said a writer who published a book about Obama’s birth certificate and was aiding investigators let them listen in on an interview he conducted of the former state worker.

      The Obama campaign declined to comment on Arpaio’s allegations.

    • President Obama’s jobs panel missing in action– President Barack Obama’s Jobs Council hasn’t met publicly for six months, even as the issue of job creation dominates the 2012 election.At this point, the hiatus — which reached the half-year mark Tuesday — might be less awkward than an official meeting, given the hornet’s nest of issues that could sting Obama and the council members if the private-sector panel gets together.
    • Romney Shreds Obama Economic Philosophy in Southwest PA Stop– Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney contrasted his economic philosophy with that of President Obama by using the President’s own statements against him during a campaign stop in southwest Pennsylvania Tuesday afternoon.Standing in front of a large sign that read “Obama’s Upside-Down Economy” at Horizontal Wireless Services in Irwin, Romney addressed a speech Obama made last week in Roanoke, VA where he said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” while speaking on the role of government-funded infrastructure in U.S. commerce.“I’ve got to be honest: I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business,” Romney said. “In my own view, what the president said was both startling and revealing.”Romney countered Obama’s statement with his own five-point plan to mend the U.S. economy, including loosening regulations on coal, oil and natural gas, improving international trade policies, balancing the federal budget, improving the education system and encouraging “economic freedom.”
    • Romney: Obama Trying To Change ‘The Nature Of America’– Mitt Romney repeatedly seemed to question whether President Barack Obama believed in the American dream in an energetic campaign speech Tuesday, calling his rival’s approach to leadership “foreign” and accusing him of trying to change “the nature of America.””President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success, and I will change that,” Romney told more than 1,000 cheering supporters at an oil and gas services company in suburban Pittsburgh, after the president told a Virginia audience Friday that all Americans benefit from government investment in infrastructure and education.
    • Romney on Tax Returns: ‘I’m Simply Not Enthusiastic about Giving Them Hundreds or Thousands of More Pages to Pick Through, Distort, and Lie About’ – Earlier today, Mitt Romney spoke with NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE about life on the trail, his meeting with Dick Cheney, and his upcoming trip to Europe. He called from western Pennsylvania, where he will later hold a rally at a wireless company.
    • Obama Kills Welfare Reform– Determined to destroy Bill Clinton’s signature achievement, President Barack Obama’s Administration has opened a loophole in the 1996 Welfare Reform legislation big enough to make the law ineffective. Its work requirement — the central feature of the legislation — has been diluted beyond recognition by the bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services.On Thursday of last week, HHS issued regulations that modified — gutted — the work requirement. Its new regulations allow the states to substitute education programs for work to get welfare benefits. The regs say that “vocational educational training or job search/readiness programs count as well” in meeting the basic condition that recipients work in order to receive welfare benefits.
    • Romney Should Release the Returns – Mitt Romney is steadfastly resisting calls to release additional years of his personal tax returns, arguing — not without good reason —that this demand is part of a fishing expedition by the Obama campaign, which hopes to exploit Romney’s personal wealth and successful business career as part of a class-warfare election strategy. Romney argues that whatever he releases will not be enough to satisfy the Obama campaign and its factota in the media, who are, once again, proving their bias and double standards. Romney is right, but he should release the returns anyway. Let them go fish.
    • Letters to Leon Panetta– A bipartisan group of Senators is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to provide more than $300 million in promised funding needed for modernizing the aging U.S. nuclear weapons complex.Separately, two senior House Republicans want Panetta to explain whether U.S. intelligence estimates of when Iran will have long-range missile capabilities changed and whether U.S. missile defense plans are adequate to counter them.The senators—led by Senate minority whip Jon Kyl and including six Republicans, one Democrat, and one Independent—stated in a June 29 letter that the president’s budget for nuclear weapons fell $370 million short of the amount required under 2010 legislation.
    • Cheney, Lockheed CEO deliver dire warnings of impact of automatic cuts– Former Vice President Cheney made a rare trip to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to give House and Senate Republicans a dire assessment of what $500 billion in cuts to the Pentagon budget would mean for national security.Cheney’s appearance came amid a concerted lobbying push from the defense industry, which is trying to persuade Congress to act now on the sequester by warning the cuts will lead to massive job losses
    • Christie, Priebus raise cash for Romney in North Carolina– ABC’s affiliate in Raleigh reports that Chris Christie and Reince Priebus raised at least $187K for Mitt Romney at a high-priced fundraiser in North Carolina last night.Their star power attracted about 75 guests. It was a who’s who of big name conservatives from the multi-millionaire Art Pope to Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.The cost to hear Christie and Preibus speak was between $2,500 and $75,000 per couple.
    • Christie reportedly eyed for RNC convention keynote– The word is going out quietly to Republican activists across New Jersey: If you’re going to the GOP convention in Tampa next month, be sure to be there by Tuesday night, Aug. 28, because Gov. Chris Christie is going to be giving the keynote speech that night.“We’ve been told that’s the night to be there, that’s when the governor is going to speak. They’re saying he’s the keynoter,” one top party activist told The Post yesterday.
    • @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-07-18 – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-07-18
    • Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s Comments On His Home, California – Will California Be Downgraded Like Pennsylvania? –
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Afternoon Drill: July 17, 2012 – The Afternoon Drill: July 17, 2012
    • Crony Capitalism With Barack Obama and Steve Westly – Flap’s Blog – Crony Capitalism With Barack Obama and Steve Westly
    • Will California Be Downgraded Like Pennsylvania? – Flapsblog.org – Will California Be Downgraded Like Pennsylvania?
    • (404) http://t.co/k13 – RT @ppppolls: Obama’s approval numbers in Iowa have flipped from narrowly positive (49/46) to narrowly negative (47/49): …
    • Obama leads in Iowa – Public Policy Polling – RT @ppppolls: Our newest Iowa poll finds Barack Obama leading 48-43, down from a 51-41 advantage on our May poll there:
    • Obama has investments in companies that ship jobs overseas | WashingtonExaminer.com – RT @philipaklein: New post: “Obama has investments in companies that ship jobs overseas”
    • President 2012 Poll Watch: Obama 48% Vs. Romney 46% – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Poll Watch: Obama 48% Vs. Romney 46%
    • Gallup: U.S. Unemployment Down to 7.9% in Mid-July – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Gallup: U.S. Unemployment Down to 7.9% in Mid-July
    • The Morning Flap: July 17, 2012 – Flap’s Blog – The Morning Flap: July 17, 2012
    • Flap’s California Morning Collection: July 17, 2012 – Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Morning Collection: July 17, 2012
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: March 12, 2012

    March 12, 2012 /

    A Newt Ginrich – Rick Perry GOP Ticket?

    These are my links for March 9th through March 12th:

  • Missile Defense

    Ground Based Missile Defense Test Fails Over Pacific

    December 16, 2010 /

    The Missile Defense Agency was unable to achieve a planned intercept of a ballistic missile target during a test over the Pacific Ocean today. The flight test included the successful flight of an intermediate-range ballistic missile target from Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and a long-range interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

    I am not feeling any more secure as the Missile Defense Agency acknowledges yesterday’s failure.

    A test of the sole U.S. defense against long-range ballistic missiles failed on Wednesday, the second failure in a row involving the system managed by Boeing Co (BA.N), the Defense Department said.

    “The Missile Defense Agency was unable to achieve a planned intercept of a ballistic missile target during a test over the Pacific Ocean today,” Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. No preliminary explanation of the failure was provided.

    The miss brought the so-called ground-based midcourse defense’s batting record to eight intercepts out of 15 tries, as reckoned by the Missile Defense Agency.

    “This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system,” Riki Ellison, head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a booster group, said in a statement. He said it raised troubling questions about the reliability of the 30 or so interceptor missiles deployed in silos in Alaska and California.

    The test was a repeat of a Jan. 31 exercise in which an advanced sea-based radar had not performed as expected.

    Well, more testing and development is in order and at least with the GOP control of the House there will NOT be an attempt to defund the Missile Defense Agency. Being that the Democrats and President Obama have been reluctant to support missile defense, the GOP success in November looms even bigger.

    But, there is nothing better than success and Boeing will have to demonstrate it or make way for other contractors. Missile defense is too important for failure.

  • Missile Defense,  Ronald Reagan

    Missile Defense Watch: United States Navy Uses Laser to Shoot Down Drones

    July 20, 2010 /
    This new unclassified silent video shows during a recent test, a Navy laser using a tracking system from Raytheon to shoot down the unmanned aerial vehicles with lasers

    The money quote of the day: “The targets came in over the ocean, and it was a good day for lasers, bad day for drones.”

    Indeed.

    Remember when the LEFT including Vice President Joe Biden used to ridicule President Reagan and Star Wars?

    Political cartoon by Michael Ramirez

    Previous:

    The Missile Defense Archive

  • Barack Obama,  Missile Defense

    President Obama to Kill Missile Defense With New Space Treaty?

    June 29, 2010 /

    Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

    Well, the President and Vice President have never been fans of a National Missile Defense program and this new treaty may put a dagger in it is heart.

    The THAAD (terminal high altitude area defense) interceptor has been maligned for years as a failed, overly expensive missile defense system. That’s mostly due to the missile’s volatile initial testing phases during the mid-1990s, when the program was wrought with failure after failure — not unusual for the testing cycle of any new weapon system, particularly one as sophisticated as THAAD. In early 2000, Lockheed engineers went back to the drawing board, worked out the bugs, and were back launching the hyper-accurate interceptor by 2005. There hasn’t been a test failure since (just yesterday there was another successful intercept), a record sturdy enough for the Army to stand up two batteries of the critical system in the past two years. The launchers were designed explicitly to intercept SCUD type missiles, and are also capable of killing an ICBM payload when it’s in the terminal phase of flight. Given the widespread proliferation of ballistic missiles, the need for such a weapon is pressing.

    It’s a shame then, that President Obama could inadvertently ban the THAAD system through yet another constricting treaty — and I’m not talking about the START follow-on. Yesterday the New York Times reported that: 

    The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a space policy that renounces the unilateral stance of the Bush administration and instead emphasizes international cooperation, including the possibility of an arms control treaty that would limit the development of space weapons.

    In recent years, both China and the United States have destroyed satellites in orbit, raising fears about the start of a costly arms race that might ultimately hurt the United States because it dominates the military use of space. China smashed a satellite in January 2007, and the United States did so in February 2008.

    The new space policy explicitly says that Washington will “consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies.”

    The State Department says details are forthcoming, but this sounds like a veiled reference to the PAROS treaty (prevention of arms race in outer space) or–at the very least–a like-minded document. Because certain types of ballistic, air-launched, and ship-launched missiles can be modified to kill satellites, such a treaty would be devastating to the national security and military capabilities of the United States (and all but kill missile defense)..

    This, in spite of successful tests of the THADD System – such as yesterday’s.

    June 29, 2010: Test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system. 100% intercept success rate, going 7 for 7.

    I doubt President Obama will be able to secure the votes to ratify this treaty but the Democrat LEFT’S intent is clear – kill the Missile Defense Agency by any means/excuse/rationale.

    Remember in the 1980’s when the Democrats ridiculed President Reagan by saying the missile defense systems were Star Wars and would not work? Now that the technology works, and is deployed, they continue to turn their backs.

    Amazing……..

  • Missile Defense

    United States Successfully Tests Airborne Laser on Ballistic Missile

    February 12, 2010 /


    Courtesy of the Missile Defense Agency

    Airborne Laser Testbed Successful in Lethal Intercept Experiment

    The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile. The experiment, conducted at Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off the central California coast, serves as a proof-of-concept demonstration for directed energy technology. The ALTB is a pathfinder for the nation’s directed energy program and its potential application for missile defense technology.

    At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

    This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform. The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies.

    Less than one hour later, a second solid fuel short-range missile was launched from a ground location on San Nicolas Island, Calif. and the ALTB successfully engaged the boosting target with its High Energy Laser, met all its test criteria, and terminated lasing prior to destroying the second target. The ALTB destroyed a solid fuel missile, identical to the second target, in flight on February 3, 2010.

    The high-powered Airborne Laser system is being developed by Boeing Co., (BA.N) the prime contractor, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

    Boeing produces the airframe, a modified 747 jumbo jet, while Northrop Grumman (NOC.N) supplies the higher-energy laser and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) is developing the beam and fire control systems.


    Boeings Airborne Laser (ABL) will locate and track missiles in the boost phase of their flight, then accurately point and fire the high-energy laser, destroying enemy missiles near their launch areas.

    President Reagan who initiated the development and deployment of national missile defense would be proud.

    Technorati Tags: ,