Now go ponder the above!
===
Facts are the curse Conservatives must bear. Liberals get a free pass.
Head versus heart and heart always wins because it tugs at one's emotions.
Reasoning just causes more questions! (See 1 below.)
===
A little non PC humor:
I was recently asked, ".....and now that you're older and retired, do you still have a job?"
I replied, "Yes, I am my wife's sexual adviser."
Somewhat shocked, he said, "I beg your pardon, what do you mean by that?”
"Very simple.
My wife said that when she needs or wants my f@#king advice, she'll ask me for it."
===
Eisenhower warned about the industrial military complex.
Israel must sell to earn the money to produce for themselves and thus creates a loop feed back problem. (See 2 below.)
===
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1) Fact-Free Liberals: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Words seem to carry far more weight than facts among those liberals who argue as if rent control laws actually control rents and gun control laws actually control guns.
It does no good to point out to them that the two American cities where rent control laws have existed longest and strongest -- New York and San Francisco -- are also the two cities with the highest average rents.
Nor does it make a dent on them when you point out evidence, from both sides of the Atlantic, that tightening gun control laws does not reduce gun crimes, including murder. It is not uncommon for gun crimes to rise when gun control laws are tightened. Apparently armed criminals prefer unarmed victims.
Minimum wage laws are another issue where the words seem to carry great weight, leading to the fact-free assumption that such laws will cause wages to rise to the legally specified minimum. Various studies going back for decades indicate that minimum wage laws create unemployment, especially among the younger, less experienced and less skilled workers.
When you are unemployed, your wages are zero, regardless of what the minimum wage law specifies.
Having followed the controversies over minimum wage laws for more than half a century, I am always amazed at how many ways there are to evade the obvious.
A discredited argument that first appeared back in 1946 recently surfaced again in a televised discussion of minimum wages. A recent survey of employers asked if they would fire workers if the minimum wage were raised. Two-thirds of the employers said that they would not. That was good enough for a minimum wage advocate.
Unfortunately, the consequences of minimum wage laws cannot be predicted on the basis of employers' statements of their intentions. Nor can the consequences of a minimum wage law be determined, even after the fact, by polling employers on what they did.
The problem with polls, in dealing with an empirical question like this, is that you can only poll survivors.
Every surviving business in an industry might have as many employees as it had before a minimum wage increase -- and yet, if the additional labor costs led to fewer businesses surviving, there could still be a reduction in industry employment, despite what the poll results were from survivors.
There are many other complications that make an empirical study of the effects of minimum wages much more difficult than it might seem.
Since employment varies for many reasons other than a minimum wage law, at any given time the effects of those other factors can outweigh the effects of minimum wage laws. In that case, employment could go up after a particular minimum wage increase -- even if it goes up less than it would have without the minimum wage increase.
Minimum wage advocates can seize upon statistics collected in particular odd circumstances to declare that they have now "refuted" the "myth" that minimum wages cause unemployment.
Yet, despite such anomalies, it is surely no coincidence that those few places in the industrial world which have had no minimum wage law, such as Switzerland and Singapore, have consistently had unemployment rates down around 3 percent. "The Economist" magazine once reported: "Switzerland's unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February."
It is surely no coincidence that, during the last administration in which there was no federal minimum wage -- the Calvin Coolidge administration -- unemployment ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent over its last four years.
It is surely no coincidence that, when the federal minimum wage law remained unchanged for 12 years while inflation rendered the law meaningless, the black teenage unemployment rate -- even during the recession year of 1949 -- was literally a fraction of what it has been throughout later years, as the minimum wage rate has been raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation.
When words trump facts, you can believe anything. And the liberal group think taught in our schools and colleges is the path of least resistance.
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2)Israel's Precision Strike Portfolio Grows Worldwide
By BARBARA OPALL
Standoff artillery, laser-guided bombs, precision tank rounds and
a host of other weapons initially developed for the Israeli military are
proliferating on the global market as demand grows for operationally proven
precision strike capabilities.
Israeli industry executives cite an expanding roster of international
customers and strategic partners seeking accurate, lethal and low-cost tools
for combating urban insurgents and so-called disappearing targets with
minimal damage to uninvolved civilians.
Rafael’s Tammuz, a standoff missile used to target rocket-launching squads
and renegade cross-border fire from Syria, and Elbit Systems’ Lizard
laser-guided bombs, used in Israel Air Force strikes on Gaza weapons
warehouses, are just two of the many locally developed systems deployed by
militaries on nearly every continent.
South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration announced Jan. 10
it would equip new AgustaWestland AW159 Wildcat maritime attack helicopters
with Rafael’s non-line-of-sight (NLOS) Spike missiles, the international
brand name for the Israeli Tammuz.
Officials in Seoul quoted by the South Korean press said the Israeli
missiles launched from helicopters or Humvees would support targeting
operations against rocket launchers, artillery tubes and commando forces
attempting to invade from the north.
Ron Kaplan, marketing manager for Rafael’s Tactical Precision Weapon Systems
Directorate, declined comment on the South Korean program. But he said the
company has 20-some customers for original, long-range and NLOS versions of
Spike, including Chile, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands and
Poland.
Designed for launch from wheeled or tracked ground vehicles and a variety of
helicopters, the electro-optically guided Spike NLOS offers three types of
warheads — anti-armor, penetration blast fragmentation and fragmentation —
for fire-and-forget strikes from ranges up to 25 kilometers.
In a Jan. 13 interview, Kaplan said Rafael recently added a laser detector
to the electro-optic seeker to improve effectiveness against time-sensitive,
so-called targets of opportunity.
“We’re augmenting all the advantages of our electro-optical seeker with
laser homing, which makes it easier to engage in some scenarios where
targets may be outside the seeker’s field of view,” he said.
Like other versions of the company’s Spike line of anti-tank missiles, Spike
NLOS enables “one-shot, one-kill” precision strikes through radio frequency
communication links that download images from the missile’s seeker directly
to gunners, and vice versa.
“Gunners see exactly what the missile sees all the way to the final fraction
of a second before impact,” Kaplan said.
He said Rafael recently completed an upgrade to its ground-launched,
long-range Spike, called Spike LR, which extends striking distances from
four to five kilometers. Rafael is under contract with two customers to
integrate the Spike LR on helicopters, he said.
“Within a year, we’ll have a mature system of Spike LR to be fired on
helicopters, in addition to infantry. It’s the same configuration and same
weight as existing Spike LRs … and for many users, this extra one kilometer
makes it a very attractive, low-cost option for attack helicopters operating
at closer range,” Kaplan said.
Bezhalel “Butzi” Machlis, Elbit’s chief executive, said the company is
consistently expanding its portfolio of precision strike and networked
command-and-control systems to meet global demand for sensor-to-shooter
capabilities.
Elbit’s precision strike air-, land- and sea-launched systems are
operational in dozens of countries. The company maintains strong joint
ventures in India, South Korea and Brazil, where Lizard laser-guided bombs
and other precision targeting systems are operational on Brazilian AMX
fighter jets and other platforms.
But aside from Israel, the company’s largest market is the United States,
where government contracts and strategic partnerships with US industry are
managed by Elbit USA, its Fort Worth, Texas-based subsidiary.
Together with Boeing, Elbit developed the seeker for the Laser joint direct
attack munition (JDAM), which converts the GPS-guided weapon to full
dual-mode capability. The two companies are in full-scale production to
supply Laser JDAMs to the US Air Force.
Retired Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, chairman of the board at Israel Military
Industries (IMI), the state-owned company slated for privatization this
year, said its precision rockets and tank rounds are operational in 10
countries.
“The world is moving toward lighter, more maneuverable, precision forces,
and IMI is vectoring our proven combat experience, our systems engineering
expertise, and our portfolio of multidimensional systems to meet growing
market demand,” he said.
2)Israel's Precision Strike Portfolio Grows Worldwide
By BARBARA OPALL
Standoff artillery, laser-guided bombs, precision tank rounds and
a host of other weapons initially developed for the Israeli military are
proliferating on the global market as demand grows for operationally proven
precision strike capabilities.
Israeli industry executives cite an expanding roster of international
customers and strategic partners seeking accurate, lethal and low-cost tools
for combating urban insurgents and so-called disappearing targets with
minimal damage to uninvolved civilians.
Rafael’s Tammuz, a standoff missile used to target rocket-launching squads
and renegade cross-border fire from Syria, and Elbit Systems’ Lizard
laser-guided bombs, used in Israel Air Force strikes on Gaza weapons
warehouses, are just two of the many locally developed systems deployed by
militaries on nearly every continent.
South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration announced Jan. 10
it would equip new AgustaWestland AW159 Wildcat maritime attack helicopters
with Rafael’s non-line-of-sight (NLOS) Spike missiles, the international
brand name for the Israeli Tammuz.
Officials in Seoul quoted by the South Korean press said the Israeli
missiles launched from helicopters or Humvees would support targeting
operations against rocket launchers, artillery tubes and commando forces
attempting to invade from the north.
Ron Kaplan, marketing manager for Rafael’s Tactical Precision Weapon Systems
Directorate, declined comment on the South Korean program. But he said the
company has 20-some customers for original, long-range and NLOS versions of
Spike, including Chile, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands and
Poland.
Designed for launch from wheeled or tracked ground vehicles and a variety of
helicopters, the electro-optically guided Spike NLOS offers three types of
warheads — anti-armor, penetration blast fragmentation and fragmentation —
for fire-and-forget strikes from ranges up to 25 kilometers.
In a Jan. 13 interview, Kaplan said Rafael recently added a laser detector
to the electro-optic seeker to improve effectiveness against time-sensitive,
so-called targets of opportunity.
“We’re augmenting all the advantages of our electro-optical seeker with
laser homing, which makes it easier to engage in some scenarios where
targets may be outside the seeker’s field of view,” he said.
Like other versions of the company’s Spike line of anti-tank missiles, Spike
NLOS enables “one-shot, one-kill” precision strikes through radio frequency
communication links that download images from the missile’s seeker directly
to gunners, and vice versa.
“Gunners see exactly what the missile sees all the way to the final fraction
of a second before impact,” Kaplan said.
He said Rafael recently completed an upgrade to its ground-launched,
long-range Spike, called Spike LR, which extends striking distances from
four to five kilometers. Rafael is under contract with two customers to
integrate the Spike LR on helicopters, he said.
“Within a year, we’ll have a mature system of Spike LR to be fired on
helicopters, in addition to infantry. It’s the same configuration and same
weight as existing Spike LRs … and for many users, this extra one kilometer
makes it a very attractive, low-cost option for attack helicopters operating
at closer range,” Kaplan said.
Bezhalel “Butzi” Machlis, Elbit’s chief executive, said the company is
consistently expanding its portfolio of precision strike and networked
command-and-control systems to meet global demand for sensor-to-shooter
capabilities.
Elbit’s precision strike air-, land- and sea-launched systems are
operational in dozens of countries. The company maintains strong joint
ventures in India, South Korea and Brazil, where Lizard laser-guided bombs
and other precision targeting systems are operational on Brazilian AMX
fighter jets and other platforms.
But aside from Israel, the company’s largest market is the United States,
where government contracts and strategic partnerships with US industry are
managed by Elbit USA, its Fort Worth, Texas-based subsidiary.
Together with Boeing, Elbit developed the seeker for the Laser joint direct
attack munition (JDAM), which converts the GPS-guided weapon to full
dual-mode capability. The two companies are in full-scale production to
supply Laser JDAMs to the US Air Force.
Retired Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, chairman of the board at Israel Military
Industries (IMI), the state-owned company slated for privatization this
year, said its precision rockets and tank rounds are operational in 10
countries.
“The world is moving toward lighter, more maneuverable, precision forces,
and IMI is vectoring our proven combat experience, our systems engineering
expertise, and our portfolio of multidimensional systems to meet growing
market demand,” he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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