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| 5/25 |
| 2004/9/20 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:33627 Activity:insanely high |
9/20 Shotgun Incident Seems to Worsen for Kerry
http://www.gunlaws.com/Kerrys%20Illegal%20Shotgun.htm
\_ You know the worst of it is that I sincerely believe he is
going to lose because of this asinine irrelevant crap. -John
\_ so for Democrats the laws are irrevelant
\_ the 2nd amendment is asinine and irrelevant?
\_ You're not listening to Herr John. Read and try again.
\_ No, he's going to lose because the Dems picked a bad
canidate. This other crap is just a side show.
\_ Side show? No. Kerry had a great speech today about Iraq.
The media will ignore it in favor of OMG DAN RATHER IS
TEH GAY!!!!11!!!!
\_ They probably fell asleep as he droned on and on and
on.
\_ 1000+ SOLDIERS DEAD IN IRAQ. OWNERSHIP SOCIETY
BULLSHIT. BILLIONS SPENT ON NONWORKING MAGIC MISSILE
DEFENSE SHIELD +4. BIZARRE PLAN FOR FREE MARKET
ECONOMY AND FREE TRADE ZONE IN IRAQ POST INVASION.
\_ [all caps rant delete]
\_ Hi aaron. Your drool is showing again.
\_ Your return on SS is < 2%. Young adults
today will likely receive a large, negative return on
payments to the Fed govt. If your so gungho on giving
money to people for free volunteer to increase your
tax payments. Considering Pyongyang and Tehran are
progressing quite rapidly with nuclear and missile
technology, TMD is looking better and better. TMD
works.
\_ Moving SS to private accounts would cost TRILLIONS.
Ask your favorite wonk how it would be paid for. No
one can give you an answer.
\_ LOL its your money. An opt-in plan would cost
"TRILLIONS" - you are full of it.
\_ Are you being obtuse? SS is pay-as-you-go. Current
payout are payed by current revenue. Covering that
gap will be untenable.
\_ You are arguing with a moron. Just thought you might
want to know that.
\_ If the opt-in plan lets people opt-out of paying the
payroll tax, then if enough people opt-in, there WILL
be a defecit of hundreds of billions a year not going
to pay current and future SS benefits. Add it up for
a few years and it IS trillions added to the national
debt.
\_ tmd? missile defense? explain your acronyms - danh
\__ theater missile defense, eg. patriot and ACL.
\_ I think the bush administration is throwing billions
of dollars at a nonworking nonviable faith based
missile defense shield. go read
http://slate.msn.com/id/2106853
here's one about how the missile shield won't be
tested till after the election, i can't imagine why:
http://csua.org/u/943
\_ But that's a 2% guaranteed, real dollar #, much better
than what you got investing everthing in Worldcom instead.
the shield won't work: http://csua.org/u/944 - danh
\_ So how much is a MIRVed ICBM hitting LA worth
to you? Not billions?
\_ About 2 bucks, at least that's what I'd pay to rent
the video and watch it over and over again. -John
\_ :( -- ilyas
\_ I'm not a homicidal gun nut, but I play one on MOTD.
\_ Last week I was no guts, no brains, and before
that I was a fanatical nazi. Wow, a pattern
develops. First I thought you might have some
trouble reconciling all my fascinatingly
multiple personalities, but now it's all becoming
clear to me! Thank you, thank you, Dr.
Kevorkian! -John
\_ what do you mean no guts? you are all
guts.
\_ Has it occured to you that there might be more
than one person making jibes at you?
\_ did you read the urls? the system the
bush admin is pursuing doesn't work. - danh
\_ I don't go to motherjones for an unbiased look at the neocons;
why do you post links from gun nut sites and pretend they're
going to be unbiased with regards to Kerry?
\_ State and federal gun laws have nothing to due with political
partisanship. Were the founders around today they would
be called gun nuts by leftists.
\_ Were the founders around today, they would recognize that the
need for personal weaponry is antiquated and detrimental to
the progress of the nation. They'd also wonder how a bunch
of draft-dodgers were managing to run on a pro-war platform. |
| 5/25 |
|
| www.gunlaws.com/Kerrys%20Illegal%20Shotgun.htm The national clamor over the Democratic presidential candidate, who took possession of a Browning semiautomatic shotgun outside his home state, reflects a problem with the laws and should not be used to arrest and prosecute the man, Korwin says. "There are so many charges Kerry might face," according to Korwin, who has written seven books on gun laws, including the unabridged, plain-English federal guide, "Gun Laws of America." Since he has claimed publicly he owns firearms, chances are he has this critical piece of paper, Korwin says. While gun lobbyists are inflamed that Kerry introduced a law that would outlaw this particular type of sporting shotgun, and gun gifts in general, it is a good thing the law has not passed yet, because then it might be too serious a problem to simply ignore. Korwin says that calls to indict Kerry are premature and "most certainly overkill. John Kerry should receive the same lenient treatment any other citizen deserves when innocently violating these complex and non-intuitive rules." Unfortunately, federal authorities from BATFE have been known in the past to be inflexible in their enforcement of even minor technical violations (note that none of these felony violations involve a victim or any sort of harm). With widely circulated evidence, in the form of photographs of Kerry in obvious possession of the firearm, he may find himself subject to the long arms of the law. And more importantly, Korwin says, "Some of these laws are just foolish, putting honest citizens at enormous and unjustified risk, and are so complicated that even a presidential candidate and his staff cannot figure them out." National news reports picture Kerry proudly holding the gift in Racine, West Virginia, during a Labor Day celebration. Bringing the gun back to his home state would be an additional five-year federal felony, under the massive and bewildering federal gun laws, as previously reported by Bloomfield Press. The shotgun, identified in published reports as a semiautomatic Browning, was actually a semiautomatic Remington model 11-87. News reports suggesting it was a gift from Remington would be an illegal donation from a corporation to a candidate, and the value of the shotgun would exceed campaign donation limits as well. In a statement published in Gun Week, Remington CEO Tommy Millner denied any involvement with the gift, saying, "Rest assured, we were neither aware of this presentation in advance nor in any way supportive of its intent to support Senator Kerry. In fact, the Company remains amused by ongoing photos of Senator Kerry shooting without either ear or eye protection while discharging a firearm." Reportedly outraged at the implication of an illegal gift, Remington rushed the release a public statement denying any association with the gift, saying, "Remington Arms Company has made no endorsement of any presidential candidate. This endorsement and presentation by the UMWA was made independently of the Remington Arms Company and the Company did not coordinate with or endorse the actions of the union." A local of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) represents workers at the Remington plant in New York where the highly regarded shotguns are made. UMWA President Cecil E Roberts presented the gift according to Gun Week. The greatest news error however appears to be that Mr Kerry may have not accepted this gift, despite so many reports to the contrary, which cast the Senator as a pro-gun politician. Reporter Matt Drudge had previously noted that Kerry introduced a bill that would have outlawed this particular sporting shotgun, because it is semi-automatic and has "any characteristic that can function as a grip." This reportedly took place immediately after all the photographs were taken of the Senator holding the gun. The actual current location of the shotgun is not known. According to Workman's report in Gun Week, "Roeder acknowledged that Kerry could not legally have accepted the shotgun and taken it with him, anyway, under existing gun-control laws." It is not clear whether Roeder and the Kerry campaign were aware of this when the stories of the gift and photos were taken and widely circulated. Questions as to Kerry's intent, in leading the media to believe he was in fact a gun supporter, by smiling and gladly receiving the shotgun gift, are unresolved as this Bloomfield Press news release was posted. If they all retract their stories that Kerry accepted this gift, it will harm the image they conveyed of Kerry as a gun-friendly candidate, seen as necessary to win states like West Virginia. Al Gore lost largely democratic West Virginia (and Tennessee and Arkansas) in 2000 due to the gun issue, according to many observers. News outlets are known to sometimes be reluctant to retract stories. If the media refuses to retract the stories, or if the Kerry campaign fails to issue a correction, then all the published articles and photos stand as evidence that the candidate committed the felony offense. In an effort to help smooth the waters, nearly 3,000 news outlets nationwide are being notified of this situation by Bloomfield Press. Members of the public are encouraged to send this report to their own local newspapers and broadcasters. It is hoped that the media will contact Kerry directly, and then either retract the story, or confirm their account. Did John Kerry, in fact, receive a gift of a fine Remington shotgun? If Kerry did accept the gift as widely reported, and as a legal matter, his transfer of it back to an unidentified person in West Virginia, without involvement of a licensed dealer, a background check, and with no paper trail, may also be a felony. Gun-law expert Korwin is again calling for calm, as these unbelievably confusing laws are sorted out, so the democratic candidate for president can continue his effort to attain the highest office in the land. If the democratic candidate for president cannot figure out the gun laws, how on earth could mere gun owners be expected to do the same. Kerry deserves the same leniency we would all expect to receive. This is America, where we're all treated equally under the long arms of the law." |
| slate.msn.com/id/2106853 Missile Defense: Mission Unaccomplished When will Bush stop throwing billions at a failing project? Bush pushed missile defense as a major issue in the 2000 election. From the start of his presidency, he made it one of his top priorities. He revoked the 1972 Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty in order to pursue the program at full throttle. He tripled its budget ($107 billion this year alone, more than twice as much as for any other weapon system). He demanded that the Pentagon start fielding the system by the fall of 2004--that is, before the coming election--and indeed, last July, the first antimissile missile was lowered into its silo, a second is now in place, and eight more are scheduled to follow in the next few weeks. Keeping America safe from attack is the central theme of the president's re-election campaign. at a Boeing plant where a piece of the program is manufactured--has he scarcely mentioned missile defense? Perhaps because the program is having serious problems--and because Bush knows it's having problems. Click Here A few weeks ago, according to Pentagon officials, Bush received a briefing on the program's status from Gen. James E Cartwright, the commander of US Strategic Command, the branch of the military in charge of nuclear war planning (it used to be called Strategic Air Command). Cartwright, who was appointed to the command just last July, was a strange choice for the job. He is a career Marine officer, the first Marine ever to be named to the job. The Marine Corps has no involvement in strategic nuclear weapons and never has. But Cartwright--a former aviation wing commander who's spent the last few years in the Pentagon, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff's director of force structure, resources, and assessment--is known as a straight shooter (his nickname is "Hoss," like the Cartwright on the old TV show Bonanza). So Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent Hoss to toss the lasso around the nuke-gnomes at StratComm. ") Officials say that Cartwright is well aware of the serious delays and technical uncertainties plaguing missile defense and that he outlined the problems clearly in his briefing to President Bush. But he did uncover the fact that the Missile-Defense Agency has delayed--for the second time in two months and now until at least the end of the year--a crucial flight test of the interceptor. The pathetic fact is, the interceptor isn't ready for a test. Glitches discovered from the last test still haven't been fixed. The test crews are stumped by the cause, so they've sent it back to the factory to see if someone there can find a solution. And yet the Pentagon has decided that the thing is ready for production and deployment. The agency is proceeding with plans to deploy 10 of the interceptors over the next few weeks in silos at Fort Greely, Alaska. As Graham notes, it has been two years since the interceptors have been flight tested. The rocket booster designed to lift them into outer space--to collide with North Korean missiles as they arc across the heavens--has never been tested while carrying an interceptor. Nor has it been tested at more than half its required speed. The interceptors, launched by other means, did hit their target in five out of eight flight tests (the last of which took place in December 2002), but those tests were--not to put too fine a point on it--rigged. The targets were "lit up" so the sensors could spot them more quickly. The technicians knew where the target was coming from and where it was going. The hits were remarkable technical achievements, but they proved nothing about how the system would perform against a real missile in an actual attack (nor, in fairness to the MDA, were the tests intended to prove anything about that). Back in the early 1980s, after some scandals involving major weapons systems that were deployed before they'd been adequately tested, the Pentagon adopted a policy of "fly before buy." No system would graduate from research and development to procurement until it had passed a series of tests--not just "development tests," in which a weapon demonstrates certain technical milestones, but "operational tests," in which the weapon demonstrates it can do what it's supposed to do in an environment simulating combat. The interceptors at Fort Greely haven't passed development tests, much less operational tests. Yet they're being hoisted into their silos as we speak--10 in the coming weeks, 10 more scheduled for next year. According to Graham's Post story, the Pentagon's testing officials estimate in an internal briefing that the interceptors now being deployed would have only a 20 percent chance of shooting down a nuclear missile. An official familiar with the briefing told me that the 20 percent estimate was "on the high side" of a range of probabilities. The full system is envisioned to entail three defensive layers. There is a "boost-phase intercept"--satellite-based weapons, orbiting over suspected nuclear sites, that would shoot down enemy missiles minutes or seconds after they're launched, preferably while they're still ascending in the atmosphere. Then there is the "midcourse intercept"--missiles or lasers on airplanes and ships, as well as in silos on the ground, that would shoot down the missiles as they arc through their trajectory in outer space. For the moment, the more exotic weapons in this scheme are years away from being developed, much less built. The un-modified Patriots, as we saw in last year's war in Iraq, still have trouble distinguishing missiles from airplanes (and have never successfully tracked multiple missiles simultaneously). Finally, all of these elements would have to be linked in an automatic data-processing network more complex than any such network ever constructed. The network would link a) the early warning radar that detects the launching of missiles to b) the release codes that fire the first layer of missile-defense weapons to c) the sensors that guide those weapons to the target to d) the sensors that detect whether the target was hit to e) the release codes that fire the next layer of missile-defense weapons ... The entire network would have to operate automatically (there would be no time for human control), and it would have to work without ever having been truly completely tested. With the software system for missile defense, there would be no chance for debugging. According to some officials, the engineers working in the bowels of the missile-defense program know this. They are proceeding as if it were a normal research and development project. They know that, at this stage, technically, that's all it can be. The thing is, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld see it as a fast-track procurement program ready for--and undergoing--deployment. This may be why Bush has refrained from proclaiming another "mission accomplished." The question now is whether he'll take the next step and realize that, given the program's true status, there's no point lavishing it with so many billions of dollars, especially when "homeland defense" against more real and urgent threats are barely getting millions. Photograph of missile on the Slate home page from Bettmann/Corbis. |
| csua.org/u/943 -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18975-2004Sep13.html All RSS Feeds Test of Missile Defense System Delayed Again By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A02 The Pentagon's last hope of flight-testing critical new elements of an antimissile system, before activating the system this autumn, appeared to vanish yesterday with the disclosure that the next flight test has been postponed until late this year, well past the November election. The Air Force general in charge of the program said the setback will not affect plans to begin operating the system in the next month or two. But the delay leaves the Pentagon pressing ahead with a system that will not have been flight-tested in nearly two years -- and never with the actual interceptor that will be deployed. that I would assume there's some political aspect to the delay." News Alert The postponement also comes against the backdrop of a wide disparity in estimates about the system's likely effectiveness that has emerged among key Pentagon officials. The Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator has calculated that the system may be capable of hitting its targets only about 20 percent of the time. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which is responsible for developing the system, offers estimates of greater than 80 percent, according to several officials familiar with the classified figures. The missile defense system, a top Bush administration priority, is designed to send interceptors into space to knock down enemy warheads. The first two interceptors have already been lowered into silos at a newly constructed launch facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, and more are to follow. Since the last flight test in December 2002, a number of critical hardware and software changes have been incorporated into the system, and officials have counted on the next test to gather critical data about the system's accuracy and reliability. Democratic lawmakers and other critics of the system accused the administration yesterday of playing politics with the test schedule, seeking to avoid the risk of an embarrassing flop during the presidential campaign. "This has been a program so fraught with political calculation, rather than strategic and scientific thought, that I would assume there's some political aspect to the delay," said Sen. Henry A "Trey" Obering III, MDA's director, attributed the delay solely to technical considerations. "I have not been asked, influenced or pressured one way or another with respect to putting this system through its paces, through its tests," he said in an interview, disclosing the postponement. The flight test, already delayed several times, had most recently been slated to occur at the end of September. Obering said he decided to delay it until the end of November after learning last week of a number of modifications to the test interceptor that were not checked out fully in ground tests. The modifications were made after the interceptor had been moved to a US launch site in the Marshall Islands, Obering said. The interceptor will now be shipped back to a US assembly facility for reexamination. Another factor contributing to the delay, Obering said, was the inability so far to find the root cause of a software glitch in the flight computer of the interceptor's booster rocket. That glitch led to an earlier flight test delay -- from mid-August to late September -- as the interceptor was removed from its silo to put in a new computer. Obering said the problems with the test interceptor should have no bearing on the deployment at Fort Greely. Although the interceptors being installed there underwent the same modifications as the test interceptor, they were thoroughly checked at assembly plants, he said. Further, the flight computer glitch seems to involve only test telemetry data, which is not an issue for the Fort Greely interceptors. |
| csua.org/u/944 -> www.defensetech.org/archives/001068.html RUMMY HEARTS MISSILE DEFENSE EX-PENTAGON BIG RIPS ANTI-MISSILES President Bush's missile defense system, to put it plainly, "doesn't work." And tests of the program "so far have been more tightly scripted than a modern political convention." It's the words of former Pentagon testing chief Phillip Coyle. anti-missile push, and breaks down the system's many, many problems: On Thursday, July 22, 2004, the first ground-based missile interceptor was installed in a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska. deployment, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency hailed it as "the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks." If North Korea began assembling an intercontinental ballistic missile, huge rockets that must be launched from fixed launch facilities, highly visible to US spy satellites, our military would blow it up on the ground immediately. Our military would not wait to see if they could intercept the missile when it was going thousands of miles per hour in space. We would blow up the whole ICBM launch facility with the same weapons that we have seen work so effectively in Iraq and Afghanistan, satellite and laser guided bombs and missiles. But what if we didn't see North Korea preparing an ICBM? This is because if we didn't see it, our missile defenses wouldn't work either, since they depend on our seeing it first with satellites too. Not that our missile defenses have demonstrated realistic operational capability with existing satellites; and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, are years behind schedule and billions over budget. The intended X-band radar systems for missile defense also are delayed and missing. With these major elements missing, the system being deployed has no demonstrated capability to defend against a real attack. When asked in a NATO press conference if he would deploy a missile defense system that that didn't work and that had not been adequately tested, President Bush replied, "And for those who suggest my administration will deploy a system that doesn't work are dead-wrong. Of course, we're not going to deploy a system that doesn't work. We'll only deploy a system that does work in order to keep the peace." Unfortunately, three years later, that's exactly what President Bush has done, deployed a system that doesn't work and hasn't been adequately tested. All of the MDA flight intercept tests so far have been more tightly scripted than a modern political convention. In these tests, the target launch time, the flight trajectory, the point of impact, what the target looks like, and the make-up of other objects in the target cluster have all been known in advance to guide the interceptor. No enemy would cooperate by providing all that information in advance. And if that weren't enough, the target reentry vehicle has carried a radar beacon, showing the interceptor, "Here I am." Considering all the artificial targeting aids in these tests, what is surprising is not that some of these tests have succeeded. What's surprising is that some have failed, including the most recent test in December 2002. Just a week later President Bush announced his decision to deploy the ground-based midcourse missile defense system in Alaska! The Missile Defense Agency says they can't test the system realistically until it has been deployed. The Missile Defense Agency was testing the system from Kwajalein and Vandenberg when I was in the Pentagon, well before the construction began at Fort Greely. But as soon as President Bush announced his decision to deploy the system the priority went to construction and deployment. As you know there hasn't been a flight intercept test since December 2002, now 20 months ago, one week before the President made his announcement. But not because they couldn't have continued the test program as planned. And of course they won't actually use Fort Greely for missile test launches anyway because of safety concerns. And they do not test what they are actually deploying, namely a system with no X-band radar (and no radar beacon) using Cobra Dane and Aegis ships instead, no SBIRS satellites using DSP instead, and interceptors that depend on prior information. This is like deploying a new military jet fighter with no wings, no tail and no landing gear. THERE'S MORE: "The most dangerous thing about having this system is that someone on our side might be tempted to behave in a crisis as if it were real," says Defense Tech reader MB "Wth our current national leadership, it's hard for me to conceive of a scenario other than accidental launch where the US having a virtual but not actual missile defense system does not increase the probability and degree of brinksmanship that political leaders might engage in." |