Dear CCI Followers,

There is little to rejoice over regarding the latest moves from the Biden administration. However, it is getting “kick back” from some important places, such as this article below from The Hill.

The Hill in 2019 was ranked second among all U.S. news sites for political readership, second to CNN, and ahead of Capitol Hill competitors such as Politico.

As of 2020, the newspaper claims to have more than 22,000 print readers. The Hill is distributed for free in newspaper boxes around the U.S. Capitol building, and mailed directly to all congressional offices.

Back when I was calling on members in the 90’s and 2000’s, there always was a current issue of The Hill prominently placed in their Congressional waiting rooms.

Please read this piece on understanding or misunderstanding Russia printed a few days ago.

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Dear CCI Readers,

We get all sorts of responses to emails that we send out to our CCI list. This one below is from an acknowledged Air Force “Missiler” of earlier years, Larry Rhoades. I thought you might enjoy his reflection on our $100 Billion for nuclear weapons and asked his permission to print his note, which he graciously gave.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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Why is America getting a new $100 billion nuclear weapon?

Bulletin
February 8, 2021
By Elisabeth Eaves

America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane. It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot.

The US Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.

On September 8, the Air Force gave the defense company Northrop Grumman an initial contract of $13.3 billion to begin engineering and manufacturing the missile, but that will be just a fraction of the total bill. Based on a Pentagon report cited by the Arms Control Association Association and Bloomberg News, the government will spend roughly $100 billion to build the weapon, which will be ready to use around 2029.

To put that price tag in perspective, $100 billion could pay 1.24 million elementary school teacher salaries for a year, provide 2.84 million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital stays for covid-19 patients. It’s enough to build a massive mechanical wall to protect New York City from sea level rise. It’s enough to get to Mars.

One day soon, the Air Force will christen this new war machine with its “popular” name, likely some word that projects goodness and strength, in keeping with past nuclear missiles like the Atlas, Titan, and Peacekeeper. For now, though, the missile goes by the inglorious acronym GBSD, for “ground-based strategic deterrent.” The GBSD is designed to replace the existing fleet of Minuteman III missiles; both are intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. Like its predecessors, the GBSD fleet will be lodged in underground silos, widely scattered in three groups known as “wings” across five states. The official purpose of American ICBMs goes beyond responding to nuclear assault. They are also intended to deter such attacks, and serve as targets in case there is one.

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Dear CCI Friends,

A startling review by Paula Day, a Maine attorney and CCI volunteer.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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The Last Handoff

By Paula Day

Immediately before the Biden presidential inauguration, the New York Times Magazine ran an article, “The Last Handoff”–– a review of the Obama/Trump transition, a leap into “uncharted waters,” according to the author.

It was a provocative title that brought to mind the upcoming transition from Trump to Biden, certainly an event less charted than the one before.

Consider the similarities: both the 2016 and 2020 elections were so close that the  electoral college votes were critical; the losing sides were so incredulous that each insisted the winning side had somehow rigged the outcome.  Clinton acknowledged Trump’s win in 2016, but the Democrats, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Congress and mainstream media spent the next four years discrediting Trump to the point of trying to have him indicted for colluding with Russia. Donald Trump refused to concede and spent two months after the election insisting that he was the legitimate winner.

Had the Times acknowledged these similarities, its readers might have considered “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Surely there can be no benefit to the country in this level of hysterical partisanship.

But a Balanced View was not what the Times had in mind.
It invested thousands of words in white on an ominous black background accompanied by suggestively sinister graphics, rehashing not one but three of the most thoroughly debunked cliches of the last four years: 1) the Russian “hacking” of the DNC emails, 2) the Steele Dossier, and 3) an exhaustive re-telling of the Michael Flynn story.

The only possible reason for the appearance of this January 11 article could be one more attempt to breath life into the cold corpse of Russiagate.  No matter how flimsy the accusations against Russia, Russia must remain the enemy by those in power. The article spins mundane facts into deceptive propaganda and we are reminded yet again that “the constant repetition of a lie is far more persuasive than the demonstration of truth.”

Read it and weep.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/11/magazine/trump-obama-presidential-transition.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage.