The Coming Fighter Gap

Once again, Robert Gates has been shown to be wrong, wrong, WRONG on the F-22. And it's going to hurt us. Badly. Today, Mackenzie Eaglen and Lajos F. Szaszdi of the Heritage Foundation released What Russia’s Stealth Fighter Developments Mean for America, a look at what the forthcoming fifth-gen Russian PAK FA stealth fighter, meant to rival the F-22, will do to our hold on air superiority over the next 10-20 years and beyond.

Let's quote Secretary Gates, as per the paper's abstract:

"Defense analysts, officials, and industry personnel have long believed that the U.S. F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter would not face serious threats from foreign fifth-generation fighters for the next 20 years. In September 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates repudiated claims of a looming “fighter gap”—a deficit between the services’ fighter aircraft inventories and their operational requirements. “[T]he more compelling gap,” he argued, “is the deep chasm between the air capabilities of the United States and those of other nations.”"

Whoops. Thanks to Secretary Gates' termination of the F-22 program, ostensibly due to its expense (duh, you kept cutting it back, OF COURSE the price per aircraft is going to go up) at 187 aircraft, instead of the roughly 500 originally planned, and the serious problems with the F-35's various incarnations (none of which come close to matching the stealth or air-to-air capabilities of the F-22 Raptor), including rising costs which may even force the cost per plane near what we're paying for the Raptors. We may as well have bought the 500 Raptors, from a budgetary perspective.

To make matters worse, Eaglen and Szaszdi tell us the Russians will be looking to sell the PAK to people like Algeria, India, Vietnam, Libya, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and yes... the People's Republic of China. Doesn't that sound like a good time? They're all going to have fighters superior to the F-35 and the Typhoon, and the near equal of the Raptor. Maybe a LOT of them. Thanks, Gates!

Hopefully the GOP will do something to resuscitate the F-22, and quick, in Congress after the New Year. But in the current fiscal climate, I doubt it.

Gingrich strikes again... this time on health policy...

...spouting in this speech about hoe the right needs to move from rejection of federal helath policy (the correct and Constitutional course) to "replacement" (the neoconservadouche, liberal-lite course of action) to modernize conservatism.

PLEASE, someone shut this clown up!

Gerson just won't stop...

disparaging conservatives every chance he gets, like in this Post piece.

Listen to this clown:

"And even a vast political victory does not change an iron law of politics: The quality of candidates matters. Serious, mainstream Republican Senate candidates could have won in Delaware and Nevada. But Christine O'Donnell was not serious. And Sharron Angle - warning of "Second Amendment remedies" in case of political loss - was not mainstream. Weak, poorly vetted Senate candidates were the main reason that while Republican gains in the House were historic - the largest in 72 years - gains in the Senate were not.

O'Donnell and Angle were gifts of Sen. Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin to their party. Tea Party enthusiasm and shallow ideological purity were supposed to be better than outdated, "establishment" attributes such as achievement, wisdom or qualification. This approach to politics is expected of DeMint, who has gained national prominence by accusing his Republican colleagues of compromise. Coming from Palin, however, it is a threat to the Republican future."

First off, I admit O'Donnell was absolutely nuts and stood no chance. The upside is that she defeated Mike Castle, a Democrat in GOP clothing. Castle immediately had consultations at the White House after losing the primary to O'Donnell. That's a fair measure of his conservatism, or utter lack thereof. Better to have a real Democrat that we can oppose in 2016.

Angle was a Bidenesque gaffe machine at times, butwould have made a fine Senator and is personally a very nice lady. Reid's victrory was a function of his power as Democrat leader in the Senate and his seniority, as well as some ham-fisted tactics by the gaming industry and unions. Fortunately his son got housed in his bid for the state house.

But listen to Gerson... "shallow ideological purity"... You mean ACTUALLY STANDING FOR SOMETHING, YOU DOUCHE??? Please, shut up, Gerson. As much as you try and snow people, "Roman Catholic social thought" is never going to be an impetus of conservatism. Ever. It's liberalism wrapped in a religious shroud.

Jim DeMint is currently America's finest Senator (pending the arrival of Rand Paul) and has been for several years. Gerson could learn a thing or thousand from him. But, let's move on...

"This election season called that perception into question. Palin's support for O'Donnell showed poor political judgment. But Palin went further, also endorsing Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado, one of the most divisive figures in American politics.

Tancredo has made a career of fanning anti-immigrant resentment and lobbing ideological grenades. The people who voted Barack Obama into office, in his view, "could not even spell the word 'vote' or even say it in English." The National Council of La Raza is "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Miami is a "Third World country." Pope Benedict's embrace of immigrants is all about "recruiting new members," in an attempt at "faith-based marketing." "The guy sitting in the White House," says Tancredo, is a greater threat to the Constitution than al-Qaeda. "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"

It was one of the best outcomes of Election 2010 that Tancredo was exiled from any position of public trust. But it is disturbing that Palin found Tancredo to be the "right man for the job." Her endorsement raises the question of whether Palin has any standards for her support other than anti-government rhetoric. Either as a power broker or a candidate in the 2012 election, Palin's increasingly erratic political judgment should raise Republican concerns."

Guess what, Mikey? Tom Tancredo is not "divisive" (a word liberals whip out to imply racism or whatever when they're losing an argument badly) and is positively correct about all of the above. Go ahead..bring some logic, you DC loser. No? That's what I thought. I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, but she made a fine choice in endorsing the Tank. My only quibble is his not seeking the GOP nomination from the start. If he had, he'd have won easily.

This election cycle is a repudiation of Gerson and all his little GOP establishment friends. I can't wait for the day when McConnell and his ilk are cleaned out of leadership, both in Congress and the GOP itself. But hey, Gerson will insist on some kind of excuse. Douchebag conservatism at its finest.

Karl Rove, establishment tool.

Here he is ripping on the victorious Christine O'Donnell.

This guy sucks in every way, shape and form. It makes me vomit that his book is subtitled "My life as a conservative in the fight" when he's spent the past 10 years tearing down conservatives and boosting moderates and neocons. Please, go away, Karl.

Cuccinelli takes on the EPA ruling and the IPCC

This is another example of why I support this man. He is doing everything he said he would do. Not least was his promise to take on the overreaching federal government. The Washington Post has the story on his filing a petition in federal court Tuesday against the Environmental Protection Agency (as well as one with the EPA itself...good luck with that one) for a review of EPA's decision to brand carbon dioxide a danger to public health, and thus subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. All of this stems from the politically motivated, demonstrably false 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has mainly been in the news lately for the errors in it and the attempt to cover them up ("Climategate") by left wing global warmists.

Here's hoping Ken is successful and gets this ruling thrown out.

UPDATE: (via RWL) Ken had a press conference yesterday where he ripped the IPCC and the "science" as "unreliable, unverifiable and doctored." Good times. Predictably, the environmental nuts showed up, including the VA Sierra Club, and talked about how bulletproof their "science" is. Keep right on thinking that, guys. AS RWL points out, the DCPost reporter, Helderman, makes a lot of excuses for the IPCC and slants the story. THIS is why no one regards them as neutral. It's not an opinion piece, is it?

Cuccinelli nails it on federalism...

... in his brilliant op-ed in the Washington Examiner. He lays out the basics of why federal power is limited, and why any sort of "individual mandate" is illegal and unconstitutional. THIS is why I worked for him, putting out signs, making calls, etc. That's actually extremely unusual for me to explicitly support a politician. Now that he's been elected to statewide office, he's rewarding my faith.

In stark contrast, read this Politico article on the same issue from Tuesday. Waxman is so impossibly arrogant. He, along with avast majority of Congress (both parties), just don't get it. They think "federalism" means supremacy of the federal government in all things, all the time. Please, people, TRY and read the Constitution, The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers before you run for public office.

Go, Ken, go!

EDIT: And Connolly, too, in that Politico piece.

The Democrats show their true colors...

...supporting punk-level vandalism of campaign signs. Not that I'm a big fan of Bob McDonnell, but I think he's going to hold off Deeds.

Nice job, guys, what's next, throwing that fake blood at campaign offices again. Winners, I tell ya.

Yet more evidence of why the 'stimulus package" hasn't worked

Mark Steyn destroys the porkulus.

Heritage and the CBO on "cap and trade"

Heritage's view of the "cap and trade" national energy tax scheme is proven right by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Senate has GOT to stop this blatant power grab by the greens and the left, it's despicable.

HR 2454 passed... what now?

... I'll tell you what, keep fighting. We have an excellent chance to keep this piece of unconstitutional social engineering garbage from passing the Senate.

A bit of a rundown on just HOW bad it is...

Firstly, there is no version of the bill that was passed (yet)... and it contains placeholder provisions, which are categorically unconstitutional.

Secondly, it won't have the purported effect on the economy. Not even close.

Thirdly, despite the administration's sticking its fingers in its ears and screaming "I can't hear you!!!", it won't create any jobs. That has been tried elsewhere.

Obviously all this only scratches the surface, the worst of it is the sheer hubris of its supporters to think they can ignore the Constitution on an even greater scale than the federal government already does, and how they label skeptics as "deniers", as if this was akin to denying the Holocaust.

These people are going to do their worst to force us all to live how they want, where they want, the way they want. This is only the beginning. Health care, right to work, all sorts of things are in their cross hairs. I just wish conservatives could move half as fast as the liberals have since Obama was sworn in. You have to almost admire them on that level. Having said that, this is war, and we libertarians and conservatives have to win.

Call your Congressmen & Senators...

and demand that they vote against HR 2454, better known as the "Cap & Trade" national energy tax bill. It's based on alarmist "global warming" junk science pushed by leftists with a vested interest in reaching certain scientific conclusions. Absolute rubbish. This is just another piece of social engineering manufactured by socialist wackos. Stop it in its tracks.

Tom Tancredo coming to GMU this evening!

Found out about this thanks to BVBL.

Tom Tancredo is being hosted by the Mason chapter of YAF at the Johnson Center tonight at 7:00, Meeting Room E. I will be there to show my support, hear what he has to say about patriotism and assimilation, and show my Patriot pride. Rep. Tancredo has been an absolute hero on immigration issues. He founded the House Immigration Reform Caucus, and played a huge role in stopping John McCain and George W. Bush's collaboration with the left in 2006 and again in 2007 to ram through amnesty bills. I have met the man twice and both times he was extremely personable, very unlike the rhetoric you hear about him from the left. I would encourage all of you to come out and attend.

I have also heard that our "friends" at certain racial student groups and leftist organizations are going to try and disrupt the event. So let's get a ridiculous turnout and show them they have no chance, not now, not ever. I will make it a point to... express my appreciation to these moonbats and race-baiting charlatans should they put in an appearance.

See you all there.

Afterward, I'm going to either the Damon's in SUB 1 or Brion's to catch the end of GMU finally notching a win down at Trask.

Q and O thumps the New York Times... HARD

Chris linked this at Mason Conservative, but I just can't help but pile on. Q and O hammers the NYT trying to defend Dodd, Frank and Raines, and pin it all on Republicans.

Not so fast, weasels.

Russell Brand (whoever he is)

I just can't let that crap at the VMAs go... I have no idea who he is, but Mr. Brand... please shut the f**k up and mind your business, you stinking emo Europansy. Nice hair too, jackhole.