Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/401392
How much would you borrow to buy some- thing that you would never use and might kill you and everyone around you? If we're talking about Uncle Sam's outdated and use- less nuclear arsenal, the price tag is $1.1 tril- lion. A better—and cheaper—idea might be doing what Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and a host of others wanted to do in the first place: Get rid of nuclear weapons. Here'sthebasicproblem: We've got about 4,800 nu- clear weapons in silos, on sub- marines, and in airplane han- gars that need to be fixed like old root canals. They're way past their sell-by date and more dangerous to us than to an enemy that no longer ex- ists, writes Eric Schlosser in "Command and Control: Nu- clear Weapons, the Damas- cus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety." By the way, that is now the scariest book I've ever read. It makes Revelations look like a Lifetime Movie. In a 2007 Wall Street Jour- nal oped titled "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," noted hippies and peaceniks George Schultz and Henry Kissinger (both former Republican Sec- retaries of State) and William J. Perry and Sam Nunn (each a Democratic hawk), argued that deterrence was dead as a military strategy because of the threat of nuclear terror- ism. Intelligence, not realpo- litik, is what stops terrorists from getting the bomb. And what's stopping Iran's nuclear program isn't our ICBMs but economic sanctions and diplo- macy. Getting nuclear weapons off this planet before we're all killed is a bipartisan idea. At the Reykjavik summit, Ron- ald Reagan and Mikhail Gor- bachev briefly agreed to "elim- inate... all nuclear weapons" before hotter heads prevailed. Reagan wouldn't give up our missile defense program, not understanding that the Soviet Union saw that as a threat. Inspired by Nunn, then- Sen. Obama worked diligently on nuclear non-proliferation in the Senate and made a nu- clear-free world a goal of his foreign policy as president that he articulated best in 2009 speech in Prague. "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act," said. "So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commit- ment to seek the peace and se- curity of a world without nu- clear weapons." In awarding him the Nobel Prize for Peace that year, the Nobel Committee specifically mentioned "special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world with- out nuclear weapons." Then Russia waged cyber war with Georgia and invaded Ukraine. Despite the fact that our vaunted arsenal failed to deter him—and economic sanctions are the only thing working right now—that inva- sion seems to prove the need for nukes. The most insidiously stupid rationale for reloading Ameri- ca's nuclear arsenal is that the China is building up its mil- itary. First of all, their navy currently consists of what has been described as a "crappy aircraft carrier" and a con- verted cruise ship. Second, who do you think is lending us the trillion dol- lars? Canada? Are we really so scared of a recycled Chinese love boat that we need to go into debt to deter our creditors' hypothetical future aggression? Almost no one with any ex- pertise thinks we need a Cold War-sized nuclear arsenal. The National Defense Panel's qua- drennial review calls the plans to "recapitalize" our nuclear arsenal "unaffordable," and in 2010 the Air Force estimated that we can get by with 311 nu- clear weapons. But no. We've already built a $700 million weapons factory in Missouri. Only about $1 tril- lion more to go, and we'll have another nuclear arsenal ready to deter any and all enemies, not including foreign and do- mestic terrorists, rogue na- tions, and non-state Islamic ji- hadist armies such as ISIL. We'll be spending our great- grandchildren's money to pro- tect us from a 1960s world. It's the one promise we can't af- ford Obama not to keep, and we have miles to go before we sleep. JasonStanfordisaregular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch. com and follow him on Twitter @JasStanford. JasonStanford Obama's $1 trillion broken promise Cartoonist's take Tonight's topic and guest speakers are focused on a timely statewide issue that nonetheless has local repercus- sions. The is- sue is election, or voter, integrity— cleaning up elec- tions by purg- ing voter rolls of dead and re- located voters. The guests will be Mike and Patty Smith of Corning; meet- ing starts at 6 p.m., Westside Grange. The Democrat left dis- misses the contention that vote fraud even exists, let alone swings election re- sults. The truth is that bal- lot boxes mysteriously disap- pear, or even appear; voters move but still vote in previ- ous locations; students vote at home and at their campus precincts; felons and nonciti- zens get their names added to the rolls. This primarily ben- efits the Democrat Party and effectively cancels someone else's legitimate vote. There are numerous rele- vant and unflattering (to Pres- ident Obama and his syco- phantic party acolytes) el- ements to the Ebola story. Going beyond my last 2 col- umns, I found the events of last week to be astonish- ing. First, I'll not over state or hype the situation because we don't live in a backward, third world nation of poor health and medical practices. America's path will not repli- cate a Hollywood disaster pic- ture with infections spread by merely breathing on each other. Locally, Ebola is an ir- relevancy. Similarly, unless you have made poor deci- sions to use, buy, sell, manu- facture or grow drugs, if you have no contact or interac- tion with the (unfortunately) ever-growing population of gang-bangers, if you haven't made poor judgments by be- coming personally hooked- or shacked-up with an abusive or psychotic partner, and if your world of contacts are peo- ple similarly situated to your- self, you have very little risk of being a victim of any vio- lent crime. By the way, I discovered in my last gun permit class just why it's true: locally, being a victim of an "active shooter" in a public place or a home in- vasion by a stranger is highly unlikely. On average, there are about 1.5 gun permits per 1,000 Californians; in Shasta County (it's likely similar for Tehama County) there are about 30 carry permits per 1,000 people. That means that a gun-carrying criminal is very unlikely to encounter an armed citizen in California— only one or two out of a thou- sand people. Locally, however, the criminal can expect that, out of every 30 or so people, there will be someone with a concealed, legally carried gun. That means at least one in ev- ery restaurant, grocery store, business or church. Not the kind of odds favoring a long life for the criminal shooter. Now, I'll sum up the re- markable developments on the Ebola front: All of the argu- ments for not implementing travel bans, or at least restric- tions, are bogus and, when ut- tered by anyone in the Obama administration, endanger the American people. It is irrefut- able that, had travel by any non-U.S. citizen from the Afri- can nations plagued by Ebola been banned—had that ban been in place from the start, an infected Mr. Duncan would never have entered America and no American health work- ers would have subsequently become infected. That deci- sion was on Obama alone to make and implement and he blew it to the detriment and ongoing expense of hospitals, doctors, nurses and our gen- eral public. The minute that some- one else becomes infected, traceable to Duncan or those nurses, the buck stops with Obama for those infections or deaths. I hope and pray that doesn't happen; however, Obama can't appoint his way out of responsibility or culpa- bility. It's ludicrous to state that authorities can't track the travel history of anyone legally entering our borders (and once again a border fence could have been built by Obama; Congress voted for and funded it) because passports are stamped for precisely that pur- pose. I read that Obama is in an angry snit over the poor, pathetic response of his fed- eral government—he should go yell at a mirror. Then, to pile prevarica- tion on top of outrage, Demo- crats—with a major assist by the Associated Press—drew first political blood by their Tourette Syndrome response blaming the sequester. Some hack from the National In- stitutes of Health, Dr. Fran- cis Collins, swung into action whining about budget cuts, "a 10-year slide in research support," as an excuse for not having a vaccine. Then a funny thing happened on the way to figuratively lynching Republicans for heartlessly pulling the plug on medical research: The truth came out. Almost simultaneously, Washington Post's fact- checker Glenn Kessler gave the "GOP Cut CDC Funding" story his "whopper" rating— "four Pinocchios," while the UK Daily Mail and others re- vealed that the NIH's budget doubled from 2000 to 2008 and has remained around $40 billion per year for Obama's entire term. That's right, the global NIH budget, as well as the sub-budget for the Na- tional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, doubled under President Bush and re- mained elevated subject only to Obama's request or a small sequester cut. That massive budget also funded a host of ridiculous projects: "Zombie Novella," "Origami condoms," "poop-throwing skills of chimpanzees," "30-something binge drinking partiers," "un- circumcised South African tribesmen," and on and on. Obama did take time from his endless golfing to appoint as an Ebola "Czar" political hatchet man Ron Klain, who knows as much about medi- cine as I know about rocket science. Apparently, we are in the very best of hands, folks, and that's the sad truth. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at don- plsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Voting integrity and Obama's response to the Ebola threat Only about $1 trillion more to go, and we'll have another nuclear arsenal ready to deter any and all enemies, not including foreign and domestic terrorists, rogue nations, and non-state Islamic jihadist armies such as ISIL. We'll be spending our great- grandchildren's GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Assemblyman Dan Logue 150Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95928, 530895- 4217 Senator Jim Nielsen 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879- 7424, senator.nielsen@sen- ate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown State Capital Building, Sacra- mento 95814, 916445-2841, fax 916558-3160, governor@ governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa 507Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415393- 0707, fax 415393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer 1700Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510286- 8537, fax 202224-0454 Contact your officials Don Polson All of the arguments for not implementing travel bans, or at least restrictions, are bogus and, when uttered by anyone in the Obama administration, endanger the American people. It is irrefutable that, had travel by any non-U.S. citizen from the African nations plagued by Ebola been banned—had that ban been in place from the start, an infected Mr. Duncan would never have entered America and no American health workers would have subsequently become infected. That decision was on Obama alone to make and implement and he blew it to the detriment and ongoing expense of hospitals, doctors, nurses and our general public. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, October 21, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6