printA transfer of funds via wire is faster than a good-will state visit. So brazen is Barack Hussein Obama about using the people’s purse to feather his own nest—that he doesn’t even bother with appearances. To upstage Mitt Romney’s campaign stop in Israel,
Obama is authorizing an additional $70 million in military assistance to [that country].
The official says the funds will go to help Israel expand production of a short-range rocket defense system. The system, called Iron Dome, helps Israel defend itself against rocket attacks.
(Politico)
Chicago politics? Make that DC as usual.
The American Founding Fathers believed that politicians had no right to be benevolent with funds belonging to the people.
From “Is Ron Paul Good For Israel?”:
HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE. For foreign aid, Israeli leaders have been forced to subordinate their country’s national interests to Washington’s whims. This is bad for both allies. Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane U.S. foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, especially Israel, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.
There’s something else that might surprise Americans, who’ve been convinced that unless they intervene to assist, Israel won’t make it. Israel’s doing alright. Relatively speaking, its economy is better than that of the US.
The crazies are threatening it on the north (Lebanon & Syria), the south (the lovely Egyptian revolutionaries), and the east (the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and beyond), but, as the US and most of Europe decline, Israel’s economy flourishes. Here are Israel’s fiscal fundamentals, courtesy of Bloomberg.com:
• GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year
• A raised credit rating of A+
• Very low unemployment
• “60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China.”
• “The largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.”
• A ranking of “third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI’s list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.”
• “Israel’s exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology”: This means the stuff the Israelis make adds real value and jobs, unlike Obama’s state-manufactured jobs, which result from moving money around.
SADLY, that thing we in the US celebrate and anticipate—the Arab spring—threatens commence, innovation and economic prosperity in the region’s most productive oasis.
On the military front, Israel doesn’t need American assistance with rocket-deflection technology. The Israelis (a contractor called Rafael and the US-based Raytheon) vastly improved upon the American patriot missile system that misfired so badly at Dhahran.
At the time, the Israelis had already identified the problem and informed the US Army and the PATRIOT Project Office (the software manufacturer) on February 11, 1991, but no upgrade was present at the time.[citation needed] As a stopgap measure, the Israelis recommended rebooting the system’s computers regularly, however, Army officials did not understand how often they needed to do so. The manufacturer supplied updated software to the Army on February 26, the day after the Scud struck the Army barracks.
To remedy the problem, the Israelis developed,
David’s Sling, expected to have a longer range than the Patriot and also to one day replace the Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in air defense missions.
As for a system designed to stop short-range rockets; the Israelis have that covered too. They’ve had to. How else do you live (and prosper) near the oasis known as Gaza?
My in-house wireless expert tells me that to deflect short range, small, fast-moving rockets, the RF radar tracking system of the Iron Dome is already “impressive.”
Israel is good to go.