New year in congress

The GOP has the majority in the House of Representatives.  They have cut down the majority of the Democrats in the Senate.  However this does not guarantee nothing.  The GOP faces great challenges that can doom them in 2012.  The party is basically divided in to conservatives and moderates.  Both sides are important to the survival of the party.  Who every is elected as the Republican candidate for president needs a partner who is on the other side of the party.  Conservatives might not like to hear that but Conservatives really do not have the numbers to guarantee sucess all the way to the White House.

Things must get accomplished in the house.  Bills must get passed and sent to the Senate and hopefully to the President.  The House of Representative must produce.  Bills must get passed.  The growth of government must be slowed.  We must return to pay as you go, so their is responsible fiscal government.  This includes DOD.  Reform must be introduced to all aspects of government purchasing and procurement.  Out dated agencies must be shut down.  Duplicated agencies must be merged.  Good stewardship must be shown with the taxpayers money.

It can not be smoke and mirrors.  it will hurt the party and the country.  We need bold thinking and leadership.  Unfortunately I do not see it in the Republican Party.

D. McNabb benching

While I believe that the trading of D. McNabb to the Redskins was a signal that they felt they could not win with him.  I was never a big fan of McNabbs.  While I believe was a great quarterback, I felt something was missing.  He reminded me of Jim kelly of the Buffalo Bills.  He could not wing the big one.  I do not understand the choice of the Redskin's picking him now.  That said, Shannon totally mis-handled the situation.

Are conservatives being conservatives

I have been evaluating my political beliefs recently and am wondering as a conservative should I be for extending the current tax cuts.  Would not it be more responsible as conservative to support their termination so the debt and deficit can be decreased.  We have not started to cut back the federal budget and we are taking more income away from the goverment.

Would not a more responsible thing to do is to work on cutting back federal spending.  To give all programs a serious review.  To insure good stewartship of the tax payers money.   for a example; maybe certain programs can be change to a grant program and run at the state level instead of the federal goverment.

I though that was a major reason for the Tea Party protest?

A true conservative idea would be to end tax cuts.

If ending the tax cuts would bring in more money to the government and we follow a pay as you go method as we did in the 1990s with funding programs; would that not be beneficial in ending helping to solve our budget issues.  I wonder if this whole change thing we went through this last election was a hoax.  We need to make hard choice and it is appearing obvious that maybe no one is willing to do this.  The same thing goes with the deficit commission.  It appears there will not be enough votes to send it to congress to give them a tool to start working on solving our fiscal crisis. 

WikiLeaks

I personally do not see any major damage from these leaks.  It validates many things we already know.  Russia is corrupt, Pakistan is in a fragile state, Arab leaders want us or Israel to attack Iran and China has been hacking our computers.

The founder of Wikileaks did this for transparency in government.  If you noticed the highest level of security status was secret.  So what do you think that diplomats are now going to do.  Change the level and means of communicating.  So it will be harder for this thing to happen again.  This will have the opposite effect of transparency.

Korea

The current situation worries me.  While North Korea has used military aggression  since the end of the Korean War to antagonize South Korea, South Korea has shown great restraint.  North Korea has tried to assassinate the South Korean President numerous times.  It has blown up a South Korean Airline.  In the 1960s both sides and the US were basically at a low intensity conflict.

While it is not in the best interest of South Korea to allow this to blow up to a full blown conflict.  It also can not allow this aggression to continue or grown and it must strike back in a calculated military manner.  The US must seriously consider taking prudent military steps to be ready for the unthinkable and support the south Koreans in what ever means necessary.

Also the causalty rate with be similar to the first Korean war.  The same goes for the rate we lose equipment to combat.  I hope we are ready.

MD-11 & KC-X

I never understood why the Air Force has not expanded and modernize it fleet of KC-10.  Especially in the last 15 years or so.  The MD-11F is the newer and modernize version of the DC/KC-10.  It is a little longer and bigger.  They could have started slowly getting rid of the KC-135 sooner.  http://www.Boeing.com/commercial/md-11family/

Even now they can bring MD-11F on board to replace the older KC-135. There is a need for interm tanker before KC-X comes on board .  The rumblings now are that the KC-X will be awarded to EADS with the KC-45.  This is due to the change in congress and foreign countries are taking deliveries with less problems then Boeing.

I think the MD-11F is a good stopgap measures that can expedite the replacing of KC-135 and modernize the the refueling fleet.  There are many great things with the KC-135 as a refueler and had a chance to witness numerous refueling in it.  I can not understand why the Air Force just did not come out with a request for a new aircraft based on the KC-135 airframe.  However it is time to replace it, to include the E-3, joint star and other intelligence platforms using that air frame.