The Navy Is Not an Anachronism

The Foundation

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." --George Washington

Re: The Left

"[Barack Obama is] certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again [last] Monday night. Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. ... That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: 'You mentioned ... that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed.' Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry? Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces -- the principal projector of American power abroad -- is itself some kind of anachronism. 'We have these things called aircraft carriers,' continued the schoolmaster, 'where planes land on them.' This is Obama's case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn't know that for every one carrier, 10 times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts? Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310 and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America's vital interests requires 346 ships (versus 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue, as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires?" --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Government

"The Obama Administration's disregard for the law has struck again -- and this time, it's encouraging others to violate the law at taxpayer expense. ... The law in question is called the WARN Act, and it requires that federal contractors send employees layoff notices 60 days before a plant closing or mass layoff. The inconvenience: Massive defense spending cuts under sequestration are scheduled to hit on January 2, 2013. Defense contractors affected by the budget cuts would have to issue notice letters to employees by November 2 (four days before the election) to meet the January 2 start date for the spending cuts. The penalty taxpayers would pay: Employers who violate the WARN Act are liable to their former employees for 'back pay for each day of a violation' and 'benefits under an employee benefit plan,' as well as a penalty of $500 for each day that notice has not been sent to the local government where the layoffs will occur. As an example, Lockheed CEO Bob Stevens has said that 123,000 of his employees would receive layoff notices. If companies fail to meet the WARN Act's deadline, lawsuits from employees could result -- but the White House has provided a taxpayer-funded guarantee as a way to counter their fears of enormous litigation costs. This guarantee is not only unprecedented but also potentially unlawful. ... This is the ultimate abuse of the President's executive authority: inducing federal contractors to violate a federal law and promising to use taxpayer funds to reimburse them for any resulting liability that they incur for violating that law. Refusing to follow federal law has become the hallmark of this Administration, but the White House's latest arrogant, unlawful ploy goes even further and may end up costing the American taxpayer a great deal of money." --Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky and Amy Payne

For the Record

"The third-quarter GDP report was a nasty October surprise for a nation desperately in need of more jobs and higher take-home pay. The U.S. economy grew just 2.0% from July through September. At the current pace, the economy will grow just 1.8% this year, the same miserable pace as last year. ... As it is, the weak recovery has put the U.S. into a deep, deep hole: The weak report leaves the economy on a growth path far below its potential. This is the 'output gap.' ... If the recovery had been stronger, putting growth back on its traditional pace, cumulative GDP over the past five years would have been roughly $10.3 trillion higher. Or what if the Obama recovery had been as strong as the Reagan recovery? GDP this year would be $1.5 trillion higher than it is currently. Let's say from here on out, the economy [grows] at trend, say 3% of so. Because we never had those powerful 'catch up' years of above average growth -- say, 4% to 7% as in the Reagan recovery -- GDP levels will be lower in the future than they would be otherwise. GDP in 2037 will be some $5 trillion lower. And cumulative GDP losses over those years will be close to $100 trillion. ... The Great Recession never really ended. It just morphed into the Long Recession. And the Long Recession continues." --American Enterprise Institute's James Pethokoukis

Insight

"I don't know who started the idea that a President must be a politician, instead of a businessman. A politician can't run any other kind of business, so there is no reason why he can run the U.S. That's the biggest single business in the world." --humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

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Opinion in Brief

"We all say Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. But it's all still Denver, Denver, and the mystery that maybe isn't a mystery at all. ... Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. ... Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune. What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. ... [I]n some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors -- they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. ... People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen. They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president. And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger." --columnist Peggy Noonan

The Gipper

"Freedom is something that cannot be passed on in the blood stream, or genetically. And it's never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it's gone and gone for a long, long time." --Ronald Reagan

Culture

"I want to explain to you just how extremist the media is on abortion and just how much spinning in favor of killing kids the media does. According to Gallup polling, roughly a quarter of the population supports Richard Mourdock's position on abortion -- that the only exception in support of abortion should be the life of the mother. According to Gallup polling, roughly a quarter of the population supports Barack Obama's position on abortion -- any time during pregnancy until the moment of delivery. ... When the media chooses to report stories about abortion, the media consistently chooses to report stories like Richard Mourdock's statement and Todd Akin's statement, both of whom believe that children conceived as a result of rape are still human beings entitled not to be ripped apart in utero and scraped out of the womb or whatever procedure the child killers use these days. ... These members of the media have a vested interest in painting the pro-lifers as extreme and themselves as in the mainstream, despite an equal percentage of Americans agreeing with both sides. ... Then, of course, they also shape the news." --RedState.com managing editor Erick Erickson

Reader Comments

"Regarding Mark Alexander's column, Romney v Obama, Adult v Adolescent, if you bought a car from a dealer and it turned out to be nothing like the advertisement, would you buy a second car in four years from the same dealer? If you loaned a great deal of money to someone for a deathly sick friend and then found out the money was spent on other things, and wasted on terrible investments like untenable green energy scams, would you offer to loan them more money? Then why in the world would anyone, including Colin Powell, ever vote for Obama a second time? My mother always said, 'Once burned, twice shy.'" --Old Desert Rat in Las Vegas, Nevada

"The simple facts are that the perfect storm of 2008 is gone, this presidency has been the worst in our history and everyone knows we're not better off than we were four years ago. Romney will get his mandate." --Mac in Arizona

"Your observation that 'Romney should end every speech at every stop between now and November 6th with this bottom line: "Obama can't be trusted,"' nails it. Just maybe the squishes running Romney's campaign will figure that out." --Demsarerats in Oregon

"After reading the Friday Digest on national security, I must say, not to downplay the importance of the economy, but national defense has always been my number one concern -- always was, always will be -- for without it, you won't have to worry about the economy." --Namvet_68 in Pennsylvania

"When I heard the president's retort comparing the U.S. Navy ships to horses and bayonets, I heard a commander in chief who is woefully ignorant of the role the U.S. Navy plays is projecting U.S. might in an unstable and hostile world. His presuming to lecture Governor Romney about submarines and aircraft carriers merely underscored his monumental ignorance!" --Patrick in Houston

"Aircraft carriers still need minesweepers, anti-submarine escorts and other surface vessels to protect them, and tankers (for jet fuel) and other transport vessels to keep them supplied while at sea. Submarines also sometimes need the assistance of other vessels to carry out their mission. Large-scale amphibious and littoral operations are still impractical, if not impossible, with only aircraft carriers and submarines. I am appalled that Mr. Obama still doesn't have a basic understanding of naval operations after nearly four years running the White House." --MNIce in Minnesota

Political Futures

"White House records show dozens of radical Islamists have made hundreds of visits to the White House since 2009. ... Many visits have taken place this year. The potential security breaches were revealed in a new report by the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism following a year-long probe. ... The meetings have coincided with homeland security policy changes the White House guests and their front groups have clamored for, including purging language such as 'radical Islam' and 'war on terror' from the government's official lexicon. The administration also recently censored Islamic references in thousands of pages of counterterrorism training materials used by the FBI, Homeland Security and Pentagon, while firing many of the trainers who wrote or used the materials. Former FBI special agent John Guandolo, who after 9/11 investigated Islamic terror groups from the bureau's Washington field office, told IBD that the same suspect Islamist figures who have penetrated the White House have also successfully lobbied to purge the names of hundreds of high-risk Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood from the U.S. no-fly list." --Investors Business Daily's Paul Sperry

The Last Word

"They had eyes in the sky, ears on the ground -- and emails in the pipeline within minutes after the attack on Benghazi began. They watched and listened in real time, as terrorists stormed the compound, firing rocket propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles. An email sent during the seven-hour long battle that claimed the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, and agent Sean Smith is entitled, 'Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.' Add it all up and the conclusion is inescapable: the Obama administration is embroiled in the biggest scandal since Watergate -- and a thoroughly corrupt mainstream media has tolerated a blizzard of lies about every bit of it, hoping it won't derail the president's re-election. ... We now know that either a decision was not made to rescue the four Americans who were killed -- or that one was made to abandon Mr. Stevens and three other Americans to their attackers, based on risk assessments the State Department, White House and Pentagon refuse to make available to the public. Despite that stonewalling, the reality that we had military resources as little as an hour away in Italy -- and the reality that the last two Americans who died, had managed to survive six hours into the attack, has also been made public. ... If this isn't the Mother of All October Surprises, then nothing is. And if Americans are vapid enough to give this poser of a president four more years, they deserve everything they get." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team