The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Should Japan and South Korea Go Nuclear?
by Pat Buchanan
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Friday Top Headlines
House votes to send $15.3 billion Harvey aid package to Trump; funds government through Dec. 8 (The Washington Post)
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Trump’s debt deal was better than Paul Ryan’s, many Republicans admit (Washington Examiner)
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Katrina repeat averted? Over half of Americans (55%) approve of Donald Trump’s response to Hurricane Harvey (YouGov)
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While you aren’t watching, Trump is doing a great job of nominating lower-level judges (Washington Examiner)
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Equifax data breach exposes Social Security numbers, other data of 143 million Americans (The Washington Times)
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Associated Press reports on DACA in Chicago, refers to “undocumented citizens” (Associated Press)
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Homeland Security cancels massive roundups of illegals (NBC News)
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Environmentalists file new challenges to Trump’s border wall prototypes (The Washington Free Beacon)
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The U.S. now has more than 400 million privately owned firearms (The Truth About Guns)
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FBI chief sees no evidence of White House interference in Russia probe (Reuters)
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Defense Attorney: Democrat Menendez bribery trial an “attack” on Hispanic Americans (Hot Air)
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Policy: Betsy DeVos’ new approach to Title IX guidelines looks promising. (Washington Examiner)
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Policy: How Republicans can make good on tax reform. (Bloomberg View) ~The Patriot Post
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Iranian Spy Service Threatening,
Blackmailing Global Media Outlets
by Adam Kredo
{freebeacon.com} ~ Iran's clandestine spy network has been threatening and blackmailing scores of journalists, even going so far as to detain and threaten the family members of these reporters, in order to ensure positive coverage in global media outlets... according to a new report that estimates at least 50 international journalists have been threatened in just the past year. Iran uses its network of spies and its hardline judiciary to threaten journalists with punishment and in many cases detain family members in order to use them as leverage against Western reporters, according to a new report by Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, a watchdog group that advocates for freedom of the press... http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iranian-spy-service-threatening-blackmailing-global-media-outlets/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=923541b47f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-923541b47f-45611665.
American taxpayers, not
banks, deserve Fed interest payments
by Paul H. Kupiec
{aei.org} ~ Monetary policy has the Federal Reserve on a collision course the American taxpayer. Not only does the Fed pay banks to keep them from lending to businesses and consumers... the Fed’s interest on reserves policy has taxpayers subsidizing large domestic and foreign banks. A simple fix will shift interest on reserves payments from banks to taxpayers and simultaneously enhance the Fed’s ability to control interest rates. The solution is for Congress to create new mutual fund that earns Fed interest on reserves payments... http://www.aei.org/publication/american-taxpayers-not-banks-deserve-fed-interest-payments/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTm1Wak4yRTNOamMzWlRJdyIsInQiOiJrV0I5Q3NaK2NybVd4NnNQTnNiYmc3UnNncHB0ZXRkMjRUNUdrNHZzSTlwUkdRZE96Nzk5TDZMUStxZlZCSWxZeFYrR3k5K0FHYUVwZVZ6MXNGc2s5XC96Rlc5MGpyTUMwY3g0dTkwV0xKWlI0MEJFeVQwQlZDZ2hvYmZcL3Robm1zIn0%3D.
CBS Previews Steve Bannon Interview
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ CBS’s Charlie Rose is sharing snippets of an interview with President Trump’s former political strategist, Steve Bannon... Regardless of agreement or disagreement with the positions espoused therein; after watching these segments I’m left asking myself: what exactly is the value here? Who or what is the beneficiary of these interviews? What exactly is the purpose? https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/09/07/cbs-previews-steve-bannon-interview/
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Israeli jets said to hit
chemical weapons, missile site in Syria
by Stuart Winer
{timesofisrael.com} ~ Israeli warplanes in the early hours Thursday allegedly struck a facility in northwestern Syria where the regime is said to have stockpiled chemical weapons and missiles... The Syrian army confirmed in the morning that a military site near Masyaf was bombed, saying the attack was carried out by Israeli jets and killed two people. “Israeli warplanes fired several rockets from the Lebanese airspace at 02:42 a.m. on Thursday targeting one of the Syrian military posts near Massyaf, killing two army personnel and causing material damage to the site,” it said in a statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency... https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-planed-reportedly-hit-chemical-weapons-site-in-syria/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=2ff7a0e343-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-2ff7a0e343-54638825.
Senate passes Harvey
relief, spending, and debt ceiling bill
by Al Weaver
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ The Senate on Thursday easily passed legislation reflecting President Trump's surprise deal with Democrats to provide billions of dollars in Hurricane Harvey relief... and extend federal spending and borrowing authority into December. The package passed the upper chamber by an 80-17 vote. Both Texas senators, Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted in favor of it... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-passes-hurricane-spending-debt-ceiling-bill/article/2633722?utm_campaign=Washington%20Examiner:%20Breaking%20News&utm_source=Washington%20Examiner:%20Breaking%20News%20-%2009/07/17&utm_medium=email
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Should Japan and South Korea Go Nuclear?
by Pat Buchanan
{townhall.com} ~ By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world's attention.
What else does he want?
Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," wrote Sun Tzu. Kim likely has something like this in mind.
His nuclear and missile tests have already called the bluff of George W. Bush who, in his "axis of evil" speech, declared that the world's worst regimes would not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons.
Arguably the world's worst regime now has the world's worst weapon, an H-bomb, with ICBMs to follow.
What else does Kim want? He wants the U.S. to halt joint military maneuvers with the South, recognize his regime, tear up the security pact with Seoul, and get our forces off the peninsula.
No way, says President Trump. Emerging from church, Trump added, "South Korea's ... talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!"
On Monday, South Korea was accelerating the activation of the high-altitude missile defense implanted by the United States. Russia and China were talking of moving missile forces into the area. And Mattis had warned Kim he was toying with the fate of his country:
"Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam or our allies, will be met with a massive military response."
As the United States can only lose from a new Korean war in which thousands of Americans and millions of Koreans could perish, the first imperative is to dispense with the war talk, and to prevent the war Mattis rightly says would be "catastrophic."
China has declared that it will enter a new Korean conflict on the side of the North, but only if the North does not attack first.
For this and other reasons, the U.S. should let the North strike the first blow, unless we have hard evidence Kim is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
But if and when we manage to tamp down this crisis, we should ask ourselves why we are in this crisis. Why are we a party to this frozen conflict from 1953 that is 8,000 miles away?
The first Korean War ended months into Ike's first term. Our security treaty with Seoul was signed in October 1953.
That year, Stalin's successors had taken over a USSR that was busy testing missiles and hydrogen bombs. China was ruled by Chairman Mao, who had sent a million "volunteers' to fight in Korea. Japan, still recovering from World War II, was disarmed and entirely dependent upon the United States for its defense.
What has changed in six and a half decades?
That USSR no longer exists. It split, three decades ago, into 15 nations. Japan has risen to boast an economy 100 times as large as North Korea's. South Korea is among the most advanced nations in Asia with a population twice that of the North and an economy 40 times as large.
Since the KORUS free trade deal took effect under President liar-nObama, Seoul has been running surging trade surpluses in goods at our expense every year.
The world has changed dramatically since the 1950s. But U.S. policy failed to change commensurately.
The basic question that needs addressing:
Why do we still keep 28,000 troops in South Korea as a trip wire to bring us into a second Korean war from its first hours, a war that could bring nuclear strikes on our troops, bases, and, soon, our nation?
We cannot walk away from our Korean allies in this crisis. But we should look upon the North's drive to marry nuclear warheads to ICBMs as a wake-up call to review a policy rooted in Cold War realities that ceased to exist when Ronald Reagan went home.
Consider. North Korea devotes 25 percent of GDP to defense. South Korea spends 2.6 percent, Japan 1 percent. Yet these mighty Asian allies, who run annual trade surpluses at our expense, require us to defend them from a maniacal little country right next door.
After this crisis, South Korea and Japan should begin to make the kind of defense effort the U.S. does, and create their own nuclear deterrents. This might get Beijing's attention, as our pleas for its assistance with North Korea apparently have not.
Already involved in land disputes with a nuclear-armed Russia and India, China's dominance of Asia -- should Japan and South Korea acquire nuclear weapons -- begins to diminish.
"As our case is new," said Abraham Lincoln, "we must think anew and act anew."
{townhall.com} ~ By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world's attention.
What else does he want?
Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," wrote Sun Tzu. Kim likely has something like this in mind.
His nuclear and missile tests have already called the bluff of George W. Bush who, in his "axis of evil" speech, declared that the world's worst regimes would not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons.
Arguably the world's worst regime now has the world's worst weapon, an H-bomb, with ICBMs to follow.
What else does Kim want? He wants the U.S. to halt joint military maneuvers with the South, recognize his regime, tear up the security pact with Seoul, and get our forces off the peninsula.
No way, says President Trump. Emerging from church, Trump added, "South Korea's ... talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!"
On Monday, South Korea was accelerating the activation of the high-altitude missile defense implanted by the United States. Russia and China were talking of moving missile forces into the area. And Mattis had warned Kim he was toying with the fate of his country:
"Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam or our allies, will be met with a massive military response."
As the United States can only lose from a new Korean war in which thousands of Americans and millions of Koreans could perish, the first imperative is to dispense with the war talk, and to prevent the war Mattis rightly says would be "catastrophic."
China has declared that it will enter a new Korean conflict on the side of the North, but only if the North does not attack first.
For this and other reasons, the U.S. should let the North strike the first blow, unless we have hard evidence Kim is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
But if and when we manage to tamp down this crisis, we should ask ourselves why we are in this crisis. Why are we a party to this frozen conflict from 1953 that is 8,000 miles away?
The first Korean War ended months into Ike's first term. Our security treaty with Seoul was signed in October 1953.
That year, Stalin's successors had taken over a USSR that was busy testing missiles and hydrogen bombs. China was ruled by Chairman Mao, who had sent a million "volunteers' to fight in Korea. Japan, still recovering from World War II, was disarmed and entirely dependent upon the United States for its defense.
What has changed in six and a half decades?
That USSR no longer exists. It split, three decades ago, into 15 nations. Japan has risen to boast an economy 100 times as large as North Korea's. South Korea is among the most advanced nations in Asia with a population twice that of the North and an economy 40 times as large.
Since the KORUS free trade deal took effect under President liar-nObama, Seoul has been running surging trade surpluses in goods at our expense every year.
The world has changed dramatically since the 1950s. But U.S. policy failed to change commensurately.
The basic question that needs addressing:
Why do we still keep 28,000 troops in South Korea as a trip wire to bring us into a second Korean war from its first hours, a war that could bring nuclear strikes on our troops, bases, and, soon, our nation?
We cannot walk away from our Korean allies in this crisis. But we should look upon the North's drive to marry nuclear warheads to ICBMs as a wake-up call to review a policy rooted in Cold War realities that ceased to exist when Ronald Reagan went home.
Consider. North Korea devotes 25 percent of GDP to defense. South Korea spends 2.6 percent, Japan 1 percent. Yet these mighty Asian allies, who run annual trade surpluses at our expense, require us to defend them from a maniacal little country right next door.
After this crisis, South Korea and Japan should begin to make the kind of defense effort the U.S. does, and create their own nuclear deterrents. This might get Beijing's attention, as our pleas for its assistance with North Korea apparently have not.
Already involved in land disputes with a nuclear-armed Russia and India, China's dominance of Asia -- should Japan and South Korea acquire nuclear weapons -- begins to diminish.
"As our case is new," said Abraham Lincoln, "we must think anew and act anew."
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