At the same time as the Obama administration is heralding a strategic “pivot” towards Asia and the growing threat of Chinese military modernization, the U.S. Navy continues to put on a brave face in the middle of a growing readiness crisis. While not new, this alarming trend was highlighted again this week when Navy officials announced that, for the second time in seven months, the USS Essex, a Marine Corps amphibious assault ship, has failed to meet a commitment at sea due to equipment failure or maintenance issues.

The Navy’s No. 2 wasn’t understating the problem when he told Congress last year: “The stress on the force is real. And it has been relentless.”

This is not an isolated occurrence. A high operational tempo over the past decade has put an incredible strain upon all of America’s military. As fewer ships spend less time at home making repairs, regular wear and tear takes a heavy toll. In fact, in 2011, nearly one quarter of the entire surface fleet failed inspection. The Navy has 22 cruisers in service and every one of them has cracks in the aluminum superstructure. Meanwhile, half of the Navy’s deployable aircraft are not combat ready and engines aboard two F/A-18s have caught fire aboard ships underway.

While the Navy has shrunk by 15 percent since 1998, it has deployed a relatively constant number of ships at sea at any given time. Between two major wars in the Middle East, a third in Libya, anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa, disaster relief in Asia, and maritime deterrence in the Western Pacific, the U.S. military has increasingly been asked to do more with less.

The USS Essex was supposed to take part in Cobra Gold—a joint exercise with Thailand—before it had to back out due to mechanical problems. In many ways, this incident can be seen as a metaphor for the entire shift to Asia. On paper, it sounds like a smart and forward thinking policy—it even involves allies and burden-sharing. What’s not to love?

Read More at The American By Mackenzie Eaglen, The American

Barack Obama’s poorly received State of the Union speech deserves a second look. Conventional wisdom pronounced the SOTU a relatively weak Obama effort. It was. Diffuse, filled with the usual enemies, it pulled together various back-filed policy ideas into a proposal he called, with a straight face, “An Economy Built to Last.”

Bemused election-year observers remarked that both ObamaCare and the nation’s entitlement bomb passed unmentioned. In his reply, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels noted that we are not going to be able to outrun the simple math on entitlement spending. That’s true. We can’t. But Mr. Obama just may for the next 10 months.

How? By exploiting political vulnerabilities in the Republicans’ case against his presidency. Republicans think it’s all about the bad economy. It is. But Barack Obama is going to do something his opposition wouldn’t think possible. He’s going to take ownership of the American economy. Not the real one, but the one he’s just made up, “the economy built to last.” It won’t last long, but long enough.

In the days after his Washington lecture, Mr. Obama took a shorter version of his SOTU speech on the road—to Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona, states he needs in November. On the White House website, you can see him give this campaign tuneup speech at the new, $5 billion Intel chip-fabrication plant in Chandler, Ariz. It’s worth watching and pondering. You’d think the best and the brightest would be beyond Mr. Obama’s crude populist pitch. You of course would be wrong.

About 6,000 Intel employees—young, well-educated technology sophisticates—applauded and cheered Mr. Obama from start to finish. Even when he ripped into those awful American companies with factories overseas, such as their own employer. “An America where we build stuff and make stuff and sell stuff all over the world.” (Applause.)

Read More at The Wall Street Journal By Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal

Yesterday, Mitt Romney caused a stir when he made the following remarks about the poor during an interview with CNN:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Following this comment, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien prodded Romney to clarify his remarks.

“We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor…. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus…. The middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.”

The media, Democrats, and many Republicans are painting him as out-of-touch, while expressing their concern that he is apathetic to the plight of the poor. However, they are missing the point. The real outrage is not that he doesn’t want to do more for the poor; it’s that he thinks they are taken care of with the welfare state. Worse, he believes that the welfare state is, more or less, functioning properly. Fear not, ‘any minor glitches would be repaired by Mr. Fix It.

It is precisely this sentiment that makes Romney disqualified for the Republican nomination. Romney doesn’t believe that the welfare system is fundamentally flawed; that the welfare state is the consummate enemy of the poor; that unlimited welfare is what perpetuates and exacerbates poverty. He thinks it is working relatively fine, albeit in need of some minor tweaks here and there.

As Senator DeMint noted, this could have been a teachable moment – a moment for Romney to shine. He could have gone on offense by explaining how it is these very welfare programs that have failed to deracinate poverty, even though they have been in place for decades. He could have shown how the only thing that is stimulated by these programs is the dependency of the program itself. $30 billion spent on food stamps gives rise to $60 billion, which now gives rise to $80 billion. He could have defended the inherent compassion of conservative free-market policies in weaning people off these programs and creating upward mobility.

Read More at Red State By Daniel Horowitz, Red State

On top of the campaign to pressure New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to release terrorist killer Judith Clark from prison, the far-left is asking President Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist who was convicted of the execution-style murders of FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams.

February 4 has been declared “International Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier,” who was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.

A group working for Peltier’s release, in an email to its supporters, says, “Several high-level meetings (some with Administration officials) are expected to occur in Washington, D.C., in early 2012.” No officials were named, however.

The campaign has the support of actor Danny Glover, whose film company, Louverture Films, has taken up the cause of freeing the convicted killer. The Glover company, which has received over $19.7 million from the Marxist regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is involved in the publicity campaign for “Wind Chases the Sun,” a film that glamorizes Peltier.

Another Danny Glover project, “The Black Power Mix Tape,” features former Communist Party activist Angela Davis.

Read More at Canada Free Press By Cliff Kincaid, Canada Free Press