With amazement, last week I read that the Obama White House nominated Erroll Southers to head up TSA. The amazing part was that Mr. Southers fully supports unionising the TSA. As reported by the Washington Examiner, Jim DeMint placed a hold on the Southers’ nomination until he answers one question

does he think TSA employees should be allowed to collectively bargain with the government on workplace rules and procedures? To date, Southers has declined to give a definitive response to DeMint’s question, even though it’s importance was highlighted by the attempted Christmas Day massacre of nearly 300 people aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253

Besides the pushing for the unionising of TSA, there’s another concerning issue about Mr. Southers that is reported today by the Washington Post. While at the FBI, Southers inappropriately accessed federal databases to obtain information on his estranged wife’s boyfriend. Then he misled Congress about the details of those events, but later retracted and corrected his story.

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.

and

Southers, a former FBI agent, has described inconsistencies in his accounts to Congress as “inadvertent” and the result of poor memory of an incident that dates back 20 years. He said in a Nov. 20 letter to key senators obtained by The Post that he had accepted full responsibility long ago for a “grave error in judgment” in accessing confidential criminal records about his then-estranged wife’s new boyfriend.

If for no other reason to reject Souther’s nomination, fake conservative Congressman Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins support this guy. Too bad he didn’t cheat on paying his taxes. He would have been a shoe-in and probably have breezed through this confirmation. Here’s a quote from Joe Lieberman’s spokesperson regarding Southers:

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Lieberman said the senator “believes that Erroll Southers is an outstanding candidate to lead the TSA.

Back to threat of unionising TSA, here is a list of some of the unions in America supporting the unionisation of TSA, as provided by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE):

State Feds

• Alaska State AFL-CIO
• Arizona AFL-CIO
• Arkansas AFL-CIO
• California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
• Colorado AFL-CIO
• Florida AFL-CIO
• Georgia State AFL-CIO
• Hawaii AFL-CIO
• Illinois AFL-CIO
• Indiana State AFL-CIO
• Kentucky AFL-CIO
• Massachusetts AFL-CIO
• Maryland State and D.C. AFL-CIO
• Michigan State AFL-CIO
• Missouri AFL-CIO
• Nevada State AFL-CIO
• North Carolina State AFL-CIO
• Ohio AFL-CIO
• Oklahoma State AFL-CIO
• Oregon AFL-CIO
• Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
• South Carolina AFL-CIO
• Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council
• Utah State AFL-CIO
• Virginia AFL-CIO
• Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• West Virginia AFL-CIO

Central Labor Councils

• Anchorage Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council (Pennsylvania)
• Central Florida AFL-CIO
• Central Oregon Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Chicago Federation of Labor and Industrial Union Council, AFL-CIO
• Cleveland Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Colorado Springs Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Denver Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
• Greater Boston Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Marion, Polk and Yamhill Counties Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO (Oregon)
• Martin Luther King Jr. County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO (Seattle)
• Metropolitan Baltimore Council of AFL-CIO Unions
• Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO
• Milwaukee Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Northern Virginia Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
• Northwest Oregon Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Oklahoma City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Orange County Labor Federation, AFL-CIO (Calif.)
• San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
• St. Louis Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• Washington Green Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO (Ohio)

Airport Unions

• Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

Unions

• AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) Local 2829 (Minneapolis)
• APWU(American Postal Workers Union) Local 125 (Minneapolis)
• APWU Local 1462 (Central Florida)
• APWU Local 247 (Colorado Springs)
• ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1005 (Minneapolis/St. Paul)
• BCTWGM (Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers’ and Grain Millers) Local 6 (Philadelphia), AFL-CIO
• CWA (Communications Workers of America) Minnesota State Council
• Florida Alliance for Retired Americans
• IAMAW (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) Minnesota State Council of Machinists
• Jobs with Justice, Central Florida
• Jobs with Justice, St. Louis
• LCLAA (Labor Council for Latin American Advancement) Central Florida Chapter
• LIUNA (Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 332 (Philadelphia), AFL-CIO
• Minnesota Nurses Association
• Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO
• UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) Local 1776
• UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) Region IV (Colorado)

Groups

• A. Philip Randolph Institute Central Florida Chapter
• Central Florida CLUW (Collation of Labor Union Women)
• Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
• Jefferson County Democrats of Colorado
• Labor Initiative of the Colorado Democratic Party
• Union Vets Council

http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?fuse=content&contentID=2089

If there were any questions about Mr. Souther’s intentions, here’s part of a quote sent to the AFGE by Mr. Southers himself:

“I look forward to joining you and adding value to the homeland security mission at TSA.”

It seems the momentum to build a gargantuan base of Democrat constituents though workplace initiatives rolls on. And you wonder why much of the stimulus money is being held back. It will continue to be funnelled to progressive organizations and political causes supporting progressive political candidates. The only problem here is that progressives are a minority in this country (albeit the wealthiest), and their political agenda is juxtaposed to the freedom and liberty America was founded on.

The progressive agenda will be crushed by those Americans that are continually having their freedom and liberty curbed. It’s only a matter of time.

THANKS JIM DEMINT!

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The first thing our “Homeland Security” Secretary did was to freeze ICE.

Freezing ICE

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered a review of the ICE raid in Bellingham, WA. The New York Times reports “A high-level official in the Department of Homeland Security said that Ms. Napolitano had not been informed about the raid on Tuesday before it happened, and that she was seeking details about its planning and scope. ‘She was not happy about it because it’s inconsistent with her position, and the president’s position on these matters,’ ” This is the chance for the new administration to set policy for ICE based on the administration’s professed positions and values. link

Chalk this up as another broken promise from Obama, who said during the campaign that he would hold employers responsible for using illegal labor at the expense of American workers.

Then he appoints the incompetent open borders advocate “Janet Napolitano” as head of homeland security. Yeah, I fell a lot safer with her at the helm. If we can’t have workplace enforcement, we can’t end illegal immigration, which is just the opposite of the REAL agenda that is at work here, which is amnesty.

Ending E-Verify, a program that is 99.5% accurate is the next step these so called “leaders” will try. It’s pretty sad and pathetic policy on the part of Napolitano, especially during this time of high unemployment and a sinking economy.

Next, she identifies patriots, such as returning soldiers, as “Right-Wing Extremists“, while ignoring the true threat of radical Islamic Jihadists, referring to terrorist acts  as  “man-made disasters”.

Now, in the wake of a Christmas day terrorist attack, Napolitano stated “the system worked”.  Only after she realized how utterly ridiculous her statement was did she backtrack her remarks and reverse her position.

At this point, how can anyone, including the left, support her continuing in the position of Homeland Security Secretary? She is clearly not up to the job and she never has been. This is just another example of a flawed appointment by the Obama administration and she should be forced out of this extremely important post.

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Obama agrees to a tentative deal with the Russians to cut our nuclear arsenal by one third over the next 10 years.

MOSCOW – Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev confidently committed to a year-end deal to slash nuclear stockpiles by about a third on Monday, but the U.S. leader failed to crack stubborn Kremlin objections to America’s missile defense plans — a major stumbling block to such an agreement.

The planned START replacement pact — the centerpiece summit agreement — calls for each side to reduce strategic warheads to a range of 1,500 to 1,675, and strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500 to 1,100. Current limits allow a maximum of 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles. The new treaty, as conceived, would run for 10 years. Each side would have seven years to reach reduction goals with the final three years used for verification.

Medvedev called the plan a “reasonable compromise.” link

I have no problem reducing the number of nuclear weapons in our arsenal but I can’t help but wonder if we are maintaining the ones we actually need to defend ourselves. I haven’t heard of any plans to refurbish any of our existing weapons and we know they must be aging.  In a report from 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested the next president consider what nuclear middle-age and decline means for national security.

It has always been true that we can’t sit on the nuclear weapons stockpile without working to maintain the purity of the materials. Uranium and transuranics (e.g., Plutonium) do decay, albeit most isotopes with very long decay half lives (e.g., Pu-239 has a half life of 24,100 years). Decay introduces impurities into the material, and purity is a requirement for miniaturization of nuclear weapons, something the Chinese have not yet learned like the U.S. (this means that weapon delivery is made easier).

But by far the larger effect of decay is tritium, which is used as material for fusion in thermonuclear weapons in conjunction with the fission to enhance their power. The half life for tritium is 12.32 years. In other words, as the stockpile sits, its effectiveness decays away. This must be considered in thinking about national security as we move forward into the twenty first century. In the ongoing work to maintain the effectiveness of the stockpile, TVA won a bid for a government program to produce Tritium (this is done by activation of Lithium) at their Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant.

How does Obama stack up against the nuclear stockpile? Opposed. link

I’ve seen no indication there are any plans to improve our aging nuclear arsenal, which provides the deterrent of mutually assured destruction, save for some minor maintenance listed on the NSA website.

The future of the U.S. nuclear stockpile remains uncertain. It’s a fine Utopian notion to think that we can live in a world free of nuclear weapons but it’s not a realistic proposition.

I’m not opposed to reducing our nuclear arsenal, so long as we upgrade and improve what we have left.  There are new scientific discoveries taking place that obsoletes our current nuclear arsenal. Science daily has a great article on the isolation of “element number 9″, which could change the world.

ScienceDaily (July 25, 2002) – LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 24, 2002 – Sometime after midnight on Feb. 25, 1941, in a cramped, third-floor laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley, Glenn Seaborg, Joseph Kennedy and Art Wahl for the first time isolated a new, man-made element, number 94, one that would change the world.

Today that element, plutonium, is the main ingredient of weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Those weapons now are older – and the plutonium inside them has been aging longer – than any earlier stockpile weapons. So researchers at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos National Laboratory are trying to hurry along the plutonium aging process to learn how long the metal will last and how that might affect the stockpile.

The nation stopped making new weapons in 1989 and stopped underground nuclear testing in 1992. Researchers at Los Alamos, which designed five of the seven weapon systems in the U.S. stockpile, play a major role in certifying each year that those weapons are safe, secure and reliable.

Certification depends on understanding how the plutonium cores of the weapons, known as pits, will change with age. link

While we are seeking to cut the number of nuclear weapons in a deal with the Russians, we need to leverage new technology and continue to ensure we have the proper deterrents in place to maintain our national security.

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