Monday, May 25, 2009

For Obama, It's Time to Re-Think Spending Priorities

Two items which are currently of interest.

Five specific missile defense components are forecast to be the battlegrounds during this year’s debate.

Obama’s budget plan would reduce the planned number of deployed ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska and California from 44 to 30, keeping the remainder as backups or testing devices.

Many GOP lawmakers are angered at the move.

“This is the one system that protects the homeland from ICBMs that’s completely on our land, our territory, that’s under our control without having to ask permission to place it in a foreign nation,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions , R-Ala.

The president’s budget also would kill two problem-plagued futuristic technology programs: the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI), which was meant to hit missiles in their earliest stage, and the Multiple Kill Vehicle program, which was conceived to hit multiple incoming warheads at once.
Sen.
Richard C. Shelby , R-Ala., wrote to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) on May 13 calling on them not to halt the KEI project just yet. “Stopping work on the program now is irresponsible,” he wrote.

(N.B.: the M-16 rifle was also "problem-plagued" in its first couple of iterations. Ask anyone who was in VietNam about that first version of the weapon...)

I suppose that spending the money on ObamaCare is more important.

Does ObamaCare include fallout-sickness treatment?

North Korea claimed it carried out a powerful underground nuclear test Monday - much larger than one conducted in 2006 - in a major provocation in the escalating international standoff over its rogue nuclear and missile programs.

Pyongyang announced the test, and Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed an atomic explosion at 9:54 a.m. (0054 GMT) in northeastern North Korea, estimating the blast's yield at 10 to 20 kilotons - comparable to the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


The regime also test-fired three short-range, ground-to-air missiles later Monday from the same northeastern site where it launched a rocket last month, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources. The rocket liftoff, widely believed to be a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology, drew censure from the U.N. Security Council


On the other hand, losing the entire population of Los Angeles could make health-care less expensive in the short run.

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