Take and hold the high ground!

Today's Washington Post carries an article by Marc Kaufman about the United States' dependence upon satellites for various purposes and our consequent vulnerability to attacks upon that space-based infrastructure:

For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry -- and the perceived need to defend them ever more urgent. And that, in turn, is reviving fears in some quarters that humanity's conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth's boundaries.

We can see things begin to go wrong here. We do find out later who these people who "fear . . . that humanity's conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth's boundaries" are (I'll give you a hint - they are the left-wing socialist usual suspects), but we are never told why this is something we need to "fear".

After all space is outside of Earth's biosphere. Blowing up bombs, even nuclear bombs, there will not cause any collateral damage to anyone or anything on Earth. You see nobody actually lives in space. Mr. Kaufman never bothers to explain why moving warfare into the cold sterile reaches of outer space where not even so much as one snail darter or spotted owl could be inconvenienced is something we should be fearing, rather than working to achieve.

Some Democrats and representatives of other nations are becoming more vocal in their concern about the administration's rhetoric and possible plans regarding space defense. Although the 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, allows only peaceful uses of space, some believe that the United States is moving toward some level of weaponization, especially related to a missile defense system.

Both the new space policy and Joseph's speech "left a lot of room for weaponization of space, which is something that our members have been very concerned about for a while," said Loren Dealy, spokeswoman for the Democratic majority on the House Armed Services Committee. "It also took a very unilateral approach and did not address the issue of multinational agreements to protect satellites that are there."

Told you. The same sorry list of left-wing socialists who can be reliably counted upon to oppose anything which is in the best interests of the United States or freedom and prosperity in general.

I hope you caught the part about how we are supposed to depend upon "multinational agreements to protect satellites that are there". You see to the Democrat Party, and the left in general, having an "agreement" is all you need. Of course Neville Chamberlain found out how much an "agreement" with a tyrant is worth. What is it about the character of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that makes anyone think that they can be trusted when men like Hitler and Stalin could not be?

The fact is that a rogue state like North Korea or Iran could cause a greater disruption of American life by using their nukes to attack our satellites than they could by destroying a city. The fact is that the "weapons in space" genie is out of the bottle and is never going back in again. Just as we are finding out that efforts to control nuclear proliferation are ultimately useless we will see that efforts to avoid the militarization of space will also prove useless.

The fact is that the most fundamental duty of a nation is to protect its people from enemies, foreign and domestic. The United States has the ability, due to its scientific and technological superiority and its vastly stronger economy, to develop a space-based military infrastructure.

There is no excuse not to do this. The benefits to the US are are almost incalculable. I don't have the time or space here to go into every scientifically possible "High Frontier" weapons system that could be built but suffice it to say that if the US and its allies developed the full potential of space-based weaponry even at the level of technology available today waging any kind of conventional warfare against the US or its allies would become impossible.

It would be impossible for Red China to cross the Strait of Formosa with one ship, plane or missile, unless the US allowed it. It would become impossible for Russia, no matter how imperialistic and totalitarian it decides to once again become, to reabsorb any of its former satellite countries, unless the US allowed it.

And before anyone starts to worry about an arms race in space remember this. The first nation or alliance of nations to build the basic framework of an orbital military presence can deny any other nation or group of nations permission to develop its own orbital military infrastructure. The fact is that getting from Earth to space is hard while moving around in space is easy. If you are already there it is not all that difficult to keep anyone else from following you.

Russia opposes any US militarization of space because the only thing it has left to give it any kind of international clout is its nuclear arsenal. China opposes any US militarization of space because it knows that its plans to achieve hegemony in Asia and challenge America on the world stage will evaporate if its military power becomes moot. Europe opposes US militarization of space because of their own inability to participate with us as anything but charity case hangers-on. Their domestic welfare states are at the point where they consume so much of their GDP that they simply can't afford to undertake anything of that magnitude. The UN will oppose us because of the reflexive anti-Americanism of a body which is predominantly made up of representatives sent by various Third World despots.

I would say that the quality of the opposition to US efforts to militarize space alone guarantees that it is the right thing to do. After all when the "rogues gallery" of the UN, Europe, China, Russia and (I'm sure) the Islamic World think something is wrong it almost has to be right.

The murderer suffered. Cry me a river!

From The Washington Post:

MIAMI, Dec. 15 -- Executions by lethal injection were suspended in Florida and ordered revamped in California on Friday, as the chemical method once billed as a more humane way of killing the condemned came under mounting scrutiny over the pain it may cause.

Gov. Jeb Bush (R) ordered the suspension in Florida after a botched execution in which it took 34 minutes and a second injection to kill convicted murderer Angel Nieves Diaz. A state medical examiner said that needles used to carry the poison had passed through the prisoner's veins and delivered the three-chemical mix into the tissues of his arm.

[. . .]

"This demonstrates that there is no happy and kind and nice way to execute someone," said David Elliot, a spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Execution is a messy business."

Nor should there be you idiot moonbat. This isn't medieval Europe where you could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread or burned at the stake for having a cat named Pywackett. In today's America you have to murder someone in cold blood with some special added ingredient of evil in order to merit the death penalty.

I am sick to damn death of people bleeding all over the place for these monsters. I don't give a rat's ass if they suffer; in fact I hope they do suffer. Let the method of execution match the method of murder for the amount of pain and fear inflicted.

I support capital punishment and I am willing to pull the lever on the gallows or pull the trigger on the firing squad or give the lethal injection or drop the pill in the gas chamber or drop the blade on the guillotine or, in the case of people who rape and murder children, spend a couple of days working on them with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

If you oppose capital punishment are you willing to match that level of commitment? Are you willing to personally underwrite the room and board and other incarceration costs of a murderer for life? Are you willing to stand responsible for any harm they may do to to prison employees or fellow inmates while behind bars or any harm to members of the public should they ever escape or con some parole board or governor into letting them go?

If not then shut the frak up. The rest of us are tired of listening to your bleating.

The WaPo has an epiphany

From The Washington Post:

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.

[. . .]

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.

This is not a mystery. To explain let me tell you a story. My cousin's wife developed cancer back around 12 years ago. It was a tumor in her throat about the size of her fist. To kill the tumor and save her life her doctors used radiation and chemotherapy.

The treatments were very hard on her. They left her sick as a dog, they compromised her immune system and made her hair fall out. She suffered greatly but had she not endured the treatment the cancer would have killed her.

Chile had the same problem as my cousin's wife. A cancer was growing within the nation and would have killed it if drastic and painful measures were not taken. Socialism and the political left which champions it are as deadly to a nation as cancer is to a human body. When it appears it must be rooted out with utter ruthlessness otherwise it will bring a nation and people to ruin, poverty and slavery.

The pain that Pinochet put Chile through was difficult to endure however it was necessary. For an example of what Chile would look like today had it not been for Pinochet one only need to look to Cuba.

As even the Post is forced to conclude:

By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.

The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

The earlier the cancer is diagnosed the less drastic the treatment need be. Last month America developed a small tumor. We can easily remove it in 2008, but if we wait much longer the US will need a convulsion like Chile's and I'm not sure that we have a Pinochet waiting in the wings to save us.