Recycling You

Big bounce cosmos makes inflation a sure thing - space - 13 October 2010 - New Scientist: "IS OUR universe a recycled version of an earlier cosmos? The idea, which replaces the big bang with a 'big bounce', has received a boost: this vision of the birth of the universe can explain why a subsequent process, called inflation, occurred.

'The result puts the idea of inflation on firmer ground, and at the same time makes the bounce scenario much more credible,' says Carlo Rovelli, who was not involved in the work but studies quantum gravity at the University of Marseille in France.

Inflation is an episode of exponential expansion thought to have occurred fractions of a second after the big bang. It is needed to explain, among other things, why the universe today has the geometry it does, but explaining what triggered inflation is tricky."

Clouded

I'll take "corrupt" for $800, Alex:

Americans' Image of "Federal Government" Mostly Negative: "PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 7 in 10 Americans use a word or phrase that is clearly negative when providing a top-of-mind reaction to the federal government.

A Sept. 20-21 USA Today/Gallup poll asked respondents what they would say 'if someone asked you to describe the federal government in one word or phrase.' The accompanying chart shows the results in graphic form, with the words or phrases displayed according to how frequently they are mentioned.

Additionally, the complete list of verbatim responses to the question, along with basic demographic information on respondents, is available here."

Weapons

SMBlog -- 27 September 2010: "There are still many questions that haven't been answered, at least publicly, about Stuxnet. There are some that I suspect will never be answered in the open literature. But as I said in the first paragraph, I think we now have an existence proof for weapons-grade attack software. Policy-makers around the world need to take this into account; claiming it can't happen is no longer tenable. The real question is the cost of this sort of attack. Remember, though, that a single F-35 fighter plane is estimated to cost $112M 2010 dollars; that's not exactly cheap, either."

World Ending Soon: The Words "Crony Capitalism" Appear In Print In WaPo

Janet Tavakoli On The "Biggest Fraud In The History Of Capital Markets" | zero hedge: "T: Yes, but I wouldn’t say crisis. This can be done with a resolution trust corporation, the way we cleaned up the S&Ls. The system got back on its feet faster because we grappled with the problems. The shareholders would be wiped out and the debt holders would have to take a discount on their debt and they’d get a debt-for-equity swap. Instead we poured TARP money into a pit and meanwhile the banks are paying huge bonuses to some people who should be made accountable for fraud. The financial crisis was a product of our irrational reaction, which protected crony capitalism rather than capitalism. In capitalism, the shareholders who took the risk would be wiped out and the debt holders would take a discount but banking would go on."

Because The Are America

Gonzalo Lira On The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy | zero hedge: "If a big enough proportion of the populace—not even a majority, just a largish chunk—decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.

Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists—grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average—that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.

Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America—because they are America."

Vote Dane Brandt for Colorado State House District 53 - Fort Collins

Click the link and donate. I just did...

Dane Brandt for Colorado State House District 53 - Fort Collins: "As a citizen concerned about his community, Dane is ready to work to bring back fiscally responsible, business-minded representation to Colorado's House District 53.

Dane is for:

Lower Taxes
Less Regulation
Personal Choice in Health Care
Economic Stabilization
Personal Responsibility
Helping businesses create jobs
Tort Reform
Colorado's 10th Amendment rights
Smaller government
I-25 Expansion"

Lost In The "Wilders"-ness Of Europe

Power Line - A Warning From London, A Speech In Berlin: "There is a certain irony here. Wilders is being prosecuted for 'hate speech' because he says that Islam is a violent and totalitarian political creed. At the same time, he is given police protection because radical Muslims are trying to assassinate him. Truth, apparently, is not a defense to the charges that are lodged against Wilders. He continues:

I have been dragged to court because in my country freedom can no longer be fully enjoyed. Unlike America, we do not have a First Amendment which guarantees people the freedom to express their opinions and foster public debate by doing so. Unlike America, in Europe the national state, and increasingly the European Union, prescribes how citizens - including democratically elected politicians such as myself - should think and what we are allowed to say. ...

In my speech near Ground Zero in New York on September 11, I emphasized that we must stop the "Blame the West, Blame America"-game which Islamic spokesmen are playing with us. And we must stop playing this game ourselves. I have the same message for you. It is an insult to tell us that we are guilty and deserve what is happening to us. We do not deserve becoming strangers in our own land. We should not accept such insults. First of all, Western civilization is the freest and most prosperous on earth, which is why so many immigrants are moving here, instead of Westerners moving there. And secondly, there is no such thing as collective guilt. Free individuals are free moral agents who are responsible for their own deeds only. "

A Bakery Education

Smarter Than You Think - Aiming to Learn as We Do, A Machine Teaches Itself - NYTimes.com: "When Dr. Mitchell scanned the “baked goods” category recently, he noticed a clear pattern. NELL was at first quite accurate, easily identifying all kinds of pies, breads, cakes and cookies as baked goods. But things went awry after NELL’s noun-phrase classifier decided “Internet cookies” was a baked good. (Its database related to baked goods or the Internet apparently lacked the knowledge to correct the mistake.)

NELL had read the sentence “I deleted my Internet cookies.” So when it read “I deleted my files,” it decided “files” was probably a baked good, too. “It started this whole avalanche of mistakes,” Dr. Mitchell said. He corrected the Internet cookies error and restarted NELL’s bakery education.

His ideal, Dr. Mitchell said, was a computer system that could learn continuously with no need for human assistance. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “But you and I don’t learn in isolation either.”"

Well Exactly

Obama: 'We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan': "The Pakistanis were making another mistake by applying that same logic to India, in Jones's view. If Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks, struck there again, India would not be able to show the kind of restraint that it had then. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had barely survived Mumbai politically, would have to respond.

The options for Obama would be significantly narrowed in the aftermath of an attack originating out of Pakistan. Before such an attack, however, he had more options, especially if Pakistan made good on his four requests.

After the Jones-Panetta trip, Pakistan's cooperation on visa requests did improve. When I interviewed Obama two months after the failed Times Square bombing, he highlighted Pakistan's recent counterterrorism efforts. 'They also ramped up their cooperation in a way that over the last 18 months has hunkered down al-Qaeda in a way that is significant,' he said.

'But still not enough,' I interjected.

'Well, exactly,' Obama said."

Stretching Habitable

Interesting. And "only" 20 LY away. But not likely to be as habitable as the headline suggests.

US scientists find potentially habitable planet near Earth - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AFP) – US astronomers said Wednesday they have discovered an Earth-sized planet that they think might be habitable, orbiting a nearby star, and believe there could be many more planets like it in space.
The planet, found by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is orbiting in the middle of the 'habitable zone' of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which means it could have water on its surface.
Liquid water and an atmosphere are necessary for a planet to possibly sustain life, even it it might not be a great place to live, the scientists said."

SST Correlations

A MUST READ: European climate, Alpine glaciers and Arctic ice in relation to North Atlantic SST record | Watts Up With That?: "The following article shows, that decadal oscillation in North Atlantic sea surface temperature is the driving force behind observed variations in European climate during 20th century. Long-term North Atlantic SST trend is well correlated to European temperature station record, Alpine glacier retreat/advance and changes in Arctic ice extent as well."

The Good War

Belmont Club � Deep Moat: "However that may be, Borger asks his readers to step outside the inbred media world to consider the biggest damage inflicted by Woodward’s book: telling the Taliban in print just how anxious the President was to the cut and run. He writes:

The current strategy in Afghanistan is to turn up the pressure on the Taliban through the surge, while exploring the possibility of a settlement with the insurgents, shorn of their al-Qaida affiliates.

This strategy was sold to Obama, and he sold it in turn to his supporters, on the grounds that the surge would shorten the war. The strategy falls down if the Taliban leadership in the Quetta Shura – and its Afghan and Pakistani allies – become convinced that the presidential resolve is hollow and that they do not have long to wait before the foreigners leave.

One official involved in tentative contacts with the insurgents told me today: “They will say: If the Americans are that anxious to leave, why should we talk?”

But did the Taliban really need Woodward’s book to tell them that?"

Nameless

Belmont Club - President as Prologue: "Even Afghanistan were somehow stabilized Pakistan and the surrounding areas would continue to be a problem. The area from which “al-Qaeda can find safe haven to plot and kill more Americans” goes far beyond the formal Afghan border. What is almost totally absent from the administration’s public strategy are plans to defeat the wellsprings of the enemy strength: countering its ideology, deterring its state sponsors, drying up its sources of funds. Addressing these larger issues would require acknowledging that Afghanistan is merely a small piece in a larger, generation conflict resembling a New Cold War. A New Cold War not against a nuclear power, but against powers America is waiting to become nuclear.

How such a conflict should be fought should be a matter for national debate. What methods of diplomacy, cultural conflict and judicious application of force are best be used can be a subject for dispute, but the necessity of their objects should not. However, this in turn would require naming an enemy, and building a coalition against it across party lines for a multi-decade effort."

The Mansourian Muslim Moonbat

Obama is not a Muslim?

Moonbattery: "Or so we're told. But he couldn't lay on the Islamophilia that has been so trendy among liberals since 9/11 any heavier if he were."

While You Were Sleeping

Robert D. Kaplan - While U.S. is distracted, China develops sea power: "We underestimate the importance of what is occurring between China and Taiwan, at the northern end of the South China Sea. With 270 flights per week between the countries, and hundreds of missiles on the mainland targeting the island, China is quietly incorporating Taiwan into its dominion. Once it becomes clear, a few years or a decade hence, that the United States cannot credibly defend Taiwan, China will be able to redirect its naval energies beyond the first island chain in the Pacific (from Japan south to Australia) to the second island chain (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and in the opposite direction, to the Indian Ocean.

To wit, China is building a blue water navy, even as it is helping to fund and construct ports in Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Chinese will not have naval bases in these countries: India would find that far too provocative, and the Chinese are taking pains so others see their rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic. Rather, these harbors will be visited by Chinese warships and will provide warehousing for Chinese consumer goods destined for the Middle East. China is building a far-flung trading network, ultimately to be protected by its warships -- the British Empire refitted for a 21st-century era of globalization."

The Perestroika Deception

Have you read Sun Tzu? I'm guessing not.

Anatoliy Golitsyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In his book Wedge - The Secret War between the FBI and CIA (Knopf, 1994), Mark Riebling stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable'.[15]
According to Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats, Golitsyn's book New Lies for Old claimed that 'as early as 1959, the KGB was working up a perestroika-type plot to manipulate foreign public opinion on a global scale. The plan was in a way inspired by the teachings of the sixth-century B.C. Chinese theoretician and military commander Sun Tsu, who said, 'I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness.' Albats argued that the KGB was the major beneficiary of political changes in Russia, and perhaps indeed directed Gorbachev. According to her, 'one thing is certain: perestroika opened the way for the KGB to advance toward the very heart of power [in Russia].'[16]. It has been said that Mikhail Gorbachev justified his new policies as a necessary step to 'hug Europe to death', and to 'evict the United States from Europe'. [17]"

The Real Margaret Sanger

A bit of history you just might have missed:

The Sinister Abortion Specter Rises for Midterm | NewsReal Blog: "If anyone is anti-poor, it isn’t pro-life Republicans, it is the leftists behind pro-abortion groups with their hidden eugenicist agendas. The founder of Planned Parenthood—Margaret Sanger—aligned herself with eugenicists and created The Negro Project in 1939 with the goal of exterminating the black population. A decade� before the Negro Project, the American Birth Control League had laid the groundwork for her in its establishment of a birth control clinic in Harlem"

Absorption

Moonbattery: Open Thread: "Compliments of Zappatrust."

The Transition

Federalist No. 10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist. In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of course are less protected.

Brutus points out that the Greek and Roman states envisioned by many Americans as model republics (as evidenced by the choice of many authors on both sides of the debate to take Roman monikers) were small. Brutus also points out that the expansion of these republics resulted in a transition from free government to tyranny.[10]"

The Train At The End Of The Tunnel

New Supply Floods U.S. Housing Market: "With permanently depressed wages, massive unemployment, the most over-supplied market in history, no personal savings, and an economy in the early stages of a Greater Depression, there is no “light at the end of the tunnel” here – not in five years; not in ten years.

If this nightmare already sounds as bad as it could possibly get, you’re wrong. I (and other commentators) have said for years that reckless U.S. money-printing by the Federal Reserve, and even more reckless fiscal policy from the U.S. government has made U.S. hyperinflation inevitable.

With the entire U.S. economy drowning in $60 trillion in total public/private debt (plus an additional $70 trillion in “unfunded liabilities”), there is no way to even service this mountain of debt with the U.S.’s (relatively) tiny $13-trillion economy. The U.S. government must drive the U.S. dollar down to near-zero – so that all these U.S. dollar-denominated debts “evaporate” with inflation. However, what also evaporates is the wealth of all Americans (or at least all wealth which has not previously been converted into gold and silver)."

The Moonbat Test

Moonbattery: Classic Lord Monckton: "First-class countermoonbat and global warming hoax debunker Christopher Monckton takes the mickey out of a Kool-Aid–guzzling Greenpeace cultist:"

The Forgotten Man

Wow. Just Wow.

Michelle Malkin - Video: The Forgotten Man: "How would the Founding Fathers react to the fall of the constitutional republic and the rise of Barack Obama? Artist Jon McNaughton
puts it on canvas. Watch the video (I especially appreciate the criticism of Obama’s predecessor implicit in the clip and painting. As I’ve observed many times, the Big Government Republican paved and pre-socialized the way for the Big Government Democrat.)"

Have you purchased your print yet? I have. And you absolutely must check out the interactive version he has created here. Well done.

COTD: Afraid Not Bill

An Open Letter to Mr. Bill Gates | Watts Up With That?: "Dave Springer says:
September 11, 2010 at 12:35 am
Bill Gates writes:

“And everybody agrees that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation from the sun, which tends to produce a greenhouse effect.”

Afraid not, Bill. Everybody agrees that the surface absorbs shortwave radiation from the sun and the surface then emits it as infrared radiation which is absorbed primarily and overwhelmingly by atmospheric water vapor.

I’ve met Bill Gates and seen him speak on several occasions. Statements like this make his genius look like its limited to software architecture and monopoly-building."

Du'O (Part 7,493,835)

CNBC's Fast Money : Outlook Gloomy at Secret Billionaire Meeting - CNBC: "For 25 years, legendary Wall Street strategist Byron Wien, now with The Blackstone Group, has held summer meetings with high net worth individuals to get their outlook on the global economy and investing. This year’s group, totaling fifty individuals and including more than 10 billionaires, was decidedly pessimistic on the U.S. economy, investment opportunities and the Obama administration.

“They saw the United States in a long-term slow growth environment with the near-term risk of recession quite real,” said Wien, in a commentary to Blackstone clients. “The Obama administration was viewed as hostile to business and that discouraged both hiring and investment. Companies and entrepreneurs were reluctant to add workers because they didn’t know what their healthcare costs or taxes were going to be.”"

WrongO

Jamie Stiehm - Oval Office rug gets history wrong: "Yet somehow a mistake was made and magnified in our culture to the point that a New England antebellum abolitionist's words have been enshrined in the Oval Office while attributed to a major 20th-century figure. That is a shame, because the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate [MLK -ed] was so eloquent in his own right. Obama, who is known for his rhetorical skills, is likely to feel the slight to King -- and Parker.

My investigation into this error led me to David Remnick's biography of Obama, 'The Bridge,' published this year. Early in the narrative, Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, presents this as 'Barack Obama's favorite quotation.' It appears that neither Remnick nor Obama has traced the language to its true source.

Parker said in 1853: 'I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one. . . . But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.'"

Obama's fact checking machine seems to be down. Actually, it would more likely seem that it's never been up wouldn't it?

Whoops

Hot Air - So, the wage gap is true. Only, it’s men who earn less: "Time Magazine is now even admitting the gender wage gap against women is unfounded. And, in fact, that some women are presently out-earning men. According to Time, we should think this is super awesome. They even titled the article “At Last, Women On Top“. (I think that’s supposed to be titillating and edgy):

According to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group…."

Information

Power Line - The role of information in American "Islamophobia": "Thus, while only the most highly informed Americans probably could have imagined terrorist plotting or even pro-terrorist rhetoric in an American place of worship back in 2001, many can imagine it now, and with reason.

Judea Pearl, a professor at UCLA and the father of Daniel Pearl, sees the matter this way:

The American Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad.

Evidently, however, a sizable segment of the American public is not convinced that this leadership is doing an effective job of confidence building.

In public, Muslim spokespersons praise America as the best country for Muslims to live and practice their faith. But in sermons, speeches, rallies, classrooms, conferences and books sold at those conferences, the narrative is often different. There, Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theory is the dominant paradigm, and America's foreign policy is one long chain of 'crimes' against humanity, especially against Muslims."

Stuck

davidwarrenonline.com - NEWSPAPER COLUMNS: "Then suddenly, he tanked. Australians at large began to grasp the relationship between his pie-in-the-sky carbon schemes, punitive mining industry taxation, etc. -- and economic doom. It became clear that, under his leadership, Labour would be annihilated.

In June, he went down. One morning he was prime minister, but the next, his deputy, Julia Gillard, had replaced him, with a promise that the party would now steer towards the grey in the ideological spectrum.

This is where the analogy with U.S. politics stops, for, under Australia's Westminster model, it actually is possible for a party caucus to dump a prime minister who has made a hash of everything. Under the U.S. system, Democrats who now realize that Barack Obama was the worst thing to hit them since Jimmy Carter are stuck with him for years to come. Nor is it possible to impeach a U.S. president for mere incompetence.

What the Democrats can do, and are doing, is run against their own president. With the prospect of annihilation approaching in mid-term elections this year, and ever more formerly safe Democrat seats in contest, those at greatest risk are making the biggest distance."

There's even a Democrat running as an "independent conservative" who voted with botox Nancy 96% of the time! You can fool all O the people all O the time!

O hell

Moonbattery: Open Thread: "Via Freaking News, on a tip from TED."

O hell.

828

Power Line - Back at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years on: "47 years to the day after participating in the great civil rights march on Washington, I returned to the same space for Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally. In 1963, a crowd of roughly 200,000 filled the 'reflecting pool' area below the Lincoln Memorial. Today's crowd packed that area as well as adjacent areas on all three sides. In fact, the throng extended most of the way to the Washington Monument, where the 1963 march began. To me, it looked like there were at least three times as many people at this rally.

The crowd was extraordinarily courteous and polite. I saw virtually no signs except on the way the gathering. Once at the grounds of the rally, I saw only American flags, a few 'Don't Tread on Me' flags, and one Israeli flag."

I caught most of the last two thirds or so on CSPAN. This was impressively done right down to the music.

Too bad only a couple of dozen showed up. And how violent and ugly and hateful it got -- just like Pravda the mass media said it would.

And please donate to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I did.

Positively Marginal

A Brief History of Economic Thought — By Jim Cox — rayharvey.org: "The marginal revolution of the 1870′s–with Carl Menger in Austria, William Stanley Jevons in England, and Leon Walras in Switzerland each writing independently and in differing languages–reestablished the correct marginal approach. As stated by Joseph Schumpeter in The History of Economic Thought:
It is not too much to say that analytic economics took a century to get where it could have got in twenty years after the publication of Turgot’s treatise had its content been properly understood and absorbed by an alert profession. p. 249
Unfortunately, the theory was perverted into a mathematized method with the rush to positivism in the 20th century.
The Austrian tradition of Menger was completed in the theories of Ludwig von Mises with the application of marginal utility analysis applied for the first time to money, which in turn led to the correct business cycle approach during the 1920′s."

Faces

Moonbattery: The Face of Sharia: "This is what our liberal ruling class so sanctimoniously sides with in the name of its bogus 'tolerance.' Yet Christianity, which no sane person could use to justify the barbaric behavior that characterizes the Muslim world, is considered beyond tolerable."

God Bless The Kuffar

Moonbattery: Pat Condell on Ground Zero Mosque: "Straight talk from Pat Condell on the latest intolerable provocation by Muslims and their liberal allies:"

Inconvenient

Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war | Washington Examiner: "Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.

The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation's Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.

The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict:"

Good Grief Gross

Gross Urges ‘Full Nationalization’ of Housing Finance - BusinessWeek: "Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. should consider “full nationalization” of the mortgage- finance system as the Obama administration plots the revival of a market that was at the center of the 2008 credit crisis.

“To suggest that there’s a large place for private financing in the future of housing finance is unrealistic,” Gross said today at a U.S. Treasury Department conference in Washington. “Government is part of our future. We need a government balance sheet. To suggest that the private market come back in is simply impractical. It won’t work.”"

Moonbattery: The Ant and the Grasshopper

Moonbattery: The Ant and the Grasshopper: "The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green…'"

PenguinOmics

Krugman in Bizarro land | Questions and Observations: "There may “legally” be a “trust fund”, but there’s nothing in it but government IOUs. The federal government has borrowed every dollar that was ever in the “surpluses”, put them in the general fund and spent them. Now this isn’t even arguable. This has been known for literally decades.

But Krugman insists that all the money that’s been taken from us for Social Security (FICA) is in a tidy heap in the “trust fund” which has run surpluses for decades.

Lord, anyone with the IQ of a penguin knows that there isn’t a dime of real revenue sitting in that account – it is stuffed to the gills with treasury bonds. To this point that hasn’t been a problem – because it has always taken in more than it paid out."

COTD: Fiery Rains

Belmont Club � If I had a Hammer: "24. Walt

Blameless lives and silver planes
Buildings down in fiery rains
Muslims cheering in the streets
Glorying in Muslim feats
Now a mosque they wish to build
Near the site the bodies filled
Smiling slyly as they claim
We are not the ones to blame
Gentle lefties take the hands
Of the killers whose demands
Lefty leaders bow to grant
Sneering at the people’s chant
That to build there’s a disgrace
And are told to mind their place
We have news for those who would
Build a mosque where once there stood
Buildings filled with kin and friends
Whose killers now Barack defends
Build your mosque in New York town
Don’t be surprised when it comes down
Along with all the Muslim dreck
Who think they have the right to wreck
The lives and dreams of other men
The 52s will show them when
We’ve had enough of killer’s ways
The end is coming, count the days

August 14, 2010 - 5:51 pm � Link to this Comment"

Large Brains And Big Guts

Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter : NPR: "Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.

It wasn't a very high-calorie diet, so to get the energy you needed, you had to eat a lot and have a big gut to digest it all. But having a big gut has its drawbacks.

'You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time,' explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.

Until, that is, we discovered meat."

Useful Idiots

Ace of Spades HQ: "Really good. Part 1 about Stalin (and they take the bark off the NYT and Walter Duranty), Part 2 about useful idiots about the Iranian Revolution and other horrors.

This is hard hitting stuff -- the BBC is state owned and yet they produce this.

Compare to the American media -- not paid by the government, but owned even harder.

BTW, contains the quote 'something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.'

(Oh, this is how tough this is on leftist apologist intellectuals: FoxNews wouldn't air this because it seems too bating and would get them too much criticism. For example, here's a lurid fact the documentary notes: Walter Duranty wrote the 'poetry' for Allistair Crowley's psycho-sexual Satanic rituals and often was bound in chains and had crosses carved in his chest. Another historian notes, flatly, the Soviet archives say he was being blackmailed over 'sexual misdemeanors' of unknown types.

It's really like, Whoa. This dude is hard-core!

Oh, and he lays Stalin's victims pretty much at the useful idiots' feet and refuses to make excuses for them.)"

Warped Poppycock

Ace of Spades HQ: "This isn't the first time Obama has spouted this same warped poppycock.
From his Cairo speech in 2009:

“Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”
.............................

And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library.”

'Islam has always been a part of America’s story.'

Indeed!
That would be the same Treaty of Tripoli that was essentially a protection racket against the United States, requiring that tribute be paid to avoid being the victim of piracy.

That would be the same John Adams who reluctantly figured that bribing the pirates of Barbary was cheaper than military engagement (out of an understanding that the political will and money for creating the necessary naval force was out of reach for the time being).

And that would be the same Thomas Jefferson who, with his great knowledge and understanding of the Koran, reversed our course and decided that military engagement against the various Muslim states engaged in piracy was the only sensible way to proceed.
And then bombarded their coastline, invaded them, and persuaded them to find a new hobby."

LauraW pretty well smashes this one out of the stadium. And her ending points out how "plus ca change, plus ca meme chose":

The best that can be said about our regard for Islam at the time is this: The United States' concern was for the economic and physical safety of the United States' interests and people and there was no religious conflict in effect (“The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”).

That's it. We don't have a problem with you because of what you believe, but because of what you do.

It's pretty much the same deal now, frankly.

Couldn't Think Of One

The Unconstitutional Congress | Hoover Institution: "In 1800, when the nation's capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., all of the paperwork and records of the United States government were tightly packed into 12 boxes, and then transported the 150 miles to Washington on a horse and buggy. That was truly an era of lean and efficient government.

In the early years of the Republic, government bore no resemblance to the colossal empire it has evolved into today. In 1800, the federal government employed 3,000 people and had a budget of less than $1 million ($100 million in today's dollars). That's a far cry from today's federal budget of $1.6 trillion and workforce of 3 million.

Since its frugal beginnings, the U.S. federal government has come to subsidize everything from research into Belgian endives to maple-syrup production to the advertising of McDonald's french fries in Europe and Japan. In a recent moment of high drama before the Supreme Court, during oral arguments involving the application of the interstate-commerce clause of the Constitution, a bewildered Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the solicitor general to name a single activity or program that our modern-day Congress might undertake that would fall outside of the bounds of the Constitution. The stunned Clinton appointee could not think of one."

Con-fessions

Libertarian Quotes - now at LQuotes.com: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.": "Confessions of a 'Public Servant'
by Mr. X

This article originally appeared in the May 1995 Free Market.

You're looking for a job. You want to get paid several times your worth, come and go when you please, work only when you feel like it, take as long a lunch as you want, and get ten paid holidays per year and six weeks paid vacation per year. There's only one way to go: work for the federal government.

Few Americans, I'm afraid, have any idea, what it's like. If they did, there would be a political earthquake. As a member of the Parasitic Class for 15 years, I have witnessed and participated in this corrupt and grotesquely unfair system first hand. I am both qualified and morally obligated to expose it."

RTWT.

L'Ancien Regime

The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien R�gime: extravagant and out of touch with the American people – Telegraph Blogs: "What the great French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would make of today’s Obama administration were he alive today is anyone’s guess. But I would wager that the author of L’Ancien R�gime and Democracy in America would be less than impressed with the extravagance and arrogance on display among the White House elites that rule America as though they had been handed some divine right to govern with impunity."

RTWT. Note that there are 874(!) comments as I post this and it at least starts out looking like they're mostly Americans (the Telegraph is British) starved to ditch MSNBCNBCBSNYeT! Gardiner pretty much nails it too...

Kulaks

American Kulaks - Ricochet.com: "My friend the Crazy Uke is a mortgage guy; he’s getting me another refi. Years ago - oh, decades - we sat up all night in the back booth of a college restaurant and argued politics; now we sit around the kitchen table of the house he helped us buy, sign endless forms and documents, then pour a drink and agree about politics. I changed. He didn’t. As the son of Ukrainian DPs, he had anti-Soviet and anti-statist ideas poured into his marrow as he grew up, and his accounts of his parents’ lives during the famine and the war were not inconsiderable elements in my political education. It’s one thing to have a college bull session about the Cold War; it’s another to argue with a guy who was actually detained by the KGB and kicked out of the Eastern Bloc."

COTD: Monkey Business

Gateway Pundit: "I got this in an email and was amused at the fitting parallels with todays politics;

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another Monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the snot out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm."

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs OR even why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Finally, after replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my fellow monkeys, is how Congress operates – And precisely why we need to REPLACE all the original monkeys this November.

Yes, we need to do this. But we need to figure out how to do more, don't we? Washington wasn't kidding when he warned about allegiance to political parties now was he?

Behind The Bullsh*t

Pleasure and Vacation Policy Michelle (Why is Michelle Reportedly Meeting Arab Officials In Spain?): "Read and translated by both Victoria Delsoul and aruanan for accuracy,Victoria Delsoul wrote:

It says, that it's going to be a meeting between Michelle Obama and prince Salman bin Abdelaziz, governor of Riyadh and brother of the deceased Rey Fahd of Saudi Arabia; whereas there would be another meeting of the first lady with the owner of the Malaga CF, businessman multimillionaire, son of the Secretary of the Interior of Qatar and member of the real family qatar�, Abdullah Al Thani.
- - - - - - - - - - -

It is important to point out, that nothing about her meeting with the above named has been mentioned in the Lame Stream Media, just out of character scolding and gripes about the expense of her trip!

Another fascinating fact: Jesse Jackson Jr, is also along on the trip. Yes, son of shakedown artist himself."

Somewhere, Anne Frank Spins In Her Grave

neo-neocon � Blog Archive � Coming soon to a country near you: decoy Jews?: "Decoy Jews are now being used by police departments in the Netherlands—that is, cops disguised as Jews—a response to increasing reports that Jews wearing skullcaps cannot travel the streets of some European cities such as Amsterdam without being harassed:

Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walk the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.

Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes."

In fact, her spinning should be quite audible I would think...

At Least So Far As They'll Announce

FT.com / US / Economy & Fed - Fed set to downgrade outlook for US: "The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.

Faced with weak economic data and rising fears of a double-dip recession, the Federal Open Market Committee is likely to ensure its policy is not constraining growth and to use its statement to signal greater concern about the economy. It is, however, unlikely to agree big new steps to boost growth."

Senility?

Hot Air � Ding Dong, Dong-Feng!: "It’s the combination of weapons China can increasingly bring to bear that the US Navy is worried about.� If we’ve got one big, honking set of tactical constraints imposed by the Chinese submarine threat, another posed by the Chinese attack aircraft threat, and another posed by supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, adding the DF-21D as a flight-ops harassment problem makes it that much harder for our forces to keep their heads above water:� to use our weapons to actually attack the enemy, rather than just to defend ourselves.

(And yes, George and Meredith Friedman, authors of The Future of War, called this prospect for our carriers “senility,” and predicted it in theory, if not because of the particular threat posed by the DF-21D, back in the mid-1990s.)"

Bigoted New Yorkers

Shut Up, He Explained | The Weekly Standard: "Knowing nothing, or wishing to know nothing, about the mosque, Bloomberg took it upon himself to lecture his fellow New Yorkers on their obligation to be true to “the best part of ourselves.” That part is apparently the part of us that allows at once for intellectual obfuscation and moral preening. Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero. He could not be bothered to take seriously the reservations and objections of a clear majority of his constituents. “In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that.” So public sentiment be damned. There’s nothing to be learned from the ignorant and bigoted residents of New York."

Nitwits?

TheTerrorWonk Plus: Terrorists: Nitwits or Masterminds?: "Recently, in the Atlantic Monthly Daniel Byman and Christine Fair (two first-rate analysts) argue that the reality is that the terrorist enemies of the United States are not highly disciplined religious fanatics – but in fact are a bunch of nitwits. The article is interesting, provocative, and makes some important points. But we cannot dismiss the terrorists as nitwits quite yet – they’ve had failings in attacking the U.S. homeland directly, but they have also had some important successes.

Byman and Fair point out the many cases of terrorist incompetence such as the Times Square bomber, the UK doctors, and the Miami jihadis. In many regards, I agree with them. Terrorist groups are extremely constrained in their efforts to hit “far targets.” I’ve argued that this is a logistical issue. With intelligence agencies worldwide on high alert it is increasingly difficult to move operatives long distances. This complicates long-range terror strikes."

Better Late Than Never

A day late... - Winds of Change.NET: "A DAY LATE..."

Something Is Rotten In Denmark

CO2 Science: "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Interglacial Warmth"

COTD: Drill Baby, Drill

Nature Spills More Oil Than Man — By Far — rayharvey.org: "It should also be noted that a population of sea otters have recently, last several years, tried to reestablish itself off Coal Oil Point, where there are very dense kelp beds. The otters were eradicated some time ago to protect the sea urchin and abalone fishery. Point being, that in an area with massive amounts of oil seeping into the water daily, the otters still chose to live here rather than any other place on the coast. And on top of that, commercial fisherman place their lobster traps off Coal Oil Point every October when the season begins. Oil can kill, yes, but it is not as toxic as the agro-environmentalists would have you think. Funnily enough, there was a study done that showed that increased pumping at Platform Holly, which is just offshore from Coal Oil Point, actually reduced the amount of natural seepage. In others words, more drilling actually lessened the amount of oil in the water."

Even The NYeT Has Noticed

Power Line - Two Americas: The Reality: "Earlier tonight I noted with some derision the 'two Americas' of John Edwards' myth. However, as we have noted before, there are indeed two Americas: the fault line just doesn't lie where Edwards and other liberals place it. Rather, the key dividing line in American politics is between a strapped private sector and a flush, overflowing-with-cash public sector. Intuitively, it is odd: one might have assumed that those who pay the bills would look out for their own needs over the interests of those whom they employ. But this hasn't happened. A large majority of voters have been asleep at the switch, and public employees have been awarding themselves constantly-increasing salaries and pension benefits. Those benefits have now swelled to the point where there is no possibility that taxpayers can fund them.

The situation has gotten so dire that even the New York Times has noticed."

And note the focus on Kolorado (which is rapidly becoming Kaaleeforneeuh).

Ignorance

Krugman’s Ignorance - The Corner - National Review Online: "�Megan McArdle:

Last night, a few of us were discussing Paul Krugman’s apparent erroneous belief that Paul Ryan should have gotten the CBO to score the revenue side of his plan, but didn’t because he was attempting to put one over on the American people.� As far as I know, scoring tax bills is still the job of the Joint Committee on Taxation, not the CBO–but no one bothered to blog it because, as far as I can tell, we all assumed that we must be misreading Paul Krugman.

But no, I didn’t misread; Krugman has two follow-up posts on the topic.� It seems as if he’s really not aware that the JCT, not the CBO, typically handles the official scoring of tax legislation; “CBO” is not, in any of the policy circles I’ve run in, some sort of shorthand for the JCT (especially since there’s–ahem!–some rivalry there)."

Misconceptions

What Beer Deregulation Can Teach Us - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: "One of the common misconceptions about libertarian enthusiasm for deregulation is that it's some kind of (presumably paid-for) philosophical cover for wanting the very richest Corporates to be even richester. Speaking as a libertarded conspiracy of one, my favorite bedtime deregulation stories are about stuff like beer, air travel, and talking about politics on radio and TV, where after you lifted restrictions that in retrospect sound like they came from another planet, people do what the normally do when left alone—create all kinds of interesting new artifacts, businesses, and even ways of life. Regulations so often piss me off because they so often fall disproportionately on the backs of the little guy, while the big guy—even/especially the one whose misconduct precipitated the regulation in the first place—walks off with a well-lobbied exemption. Generally speaking, the fewer activities are illegal, the freer us opposable-thumbs types are."

Panic

Kudlow: A Democratic Panic Attack? — CNBC Stock Market and Economy News - CNBC: "The bottom line? Panic over this stalled economy may be setting in.

The unemployment rate is hanging stubbornly at 9.5 percent and economic growth looks to be slipping to only 2 to 3 percent. In order to get unemployment down significantly, the economy has to grow by at least 4 percent.

Inside July’s jobs report, small-business household employment dropped by 159,000 jobs — a very bad sign. In the three months to April, this survey produced 417,000 new jobs. In the three months to July, it fell by 151,000.

At the same time, private payrolls in the corporate survey rose by only 71,000 in July, compared with an expected gain of 100,000. In the three months to April, payrolls gained by 154,000. Over the past three months, payrolls have increased only 51,000. They need to grow at a better-than 200,000 monthly pace in order to reduce joblessness."

What Problem?

Chart of the Day, and a scary one too | Questions and Observations: "Just in case you were wondering."

O Nuts And Negotiations

Power Line - Mahmoud the Nut: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discoursed on history at a conference in Tehran:

Ahmadinejad said the September 11 attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington D.C. had been trumped up as an excuse for the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Maybe he's been reading Democratic Underground.

Speaking at a Tehran conference, Ahmadinejad said there was no evidence that the death toll at New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the attacks, was as high as reported and said 'Zionists' had been tipped off in advance.

'What was the story of September 11? During five to six days, and with the aid of the media, they created and prepared public opinion so that everyone considered an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq as (their) right,' he said in a televised speech.

No 'Zionists' were killed in the World Trade Center, according to Ahmadinejad, because 'one day earlier they were told not go to their workplace.'"

Sounds like a perfectly sane chap to me. Let's negotiate! Negotiate? Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes:

The Democrats are saying 1) The war is lost; 2) Let's negotiate; 3) The Constitution is trashed; 4) They steal elections; 5) We support the troops.

You've got to hand it to these Dems. They're certainly consistent. They revere their history, except for the corrupt, neo-con deviations between 1941 and 1963. I wonder if Nancy Pelosi's great, great, great grandfather was there in 1864, inking the quill.

One Arrest

iowahawk: Undocumented Imam's Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism: "NEW YORK - Charges of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination filled the air this afternoon outside the just-completed Cordoba House, the gleaming new $100 million 15 story mosque and Islamic cultural center near the ruins of New York's World Trade Center, following a tense 5-hour standoff prompted by the mosque's refusal to host a wedding between a lesbian African-American woman and her blind white transgendered partner.

Over 200 NYPD officers and multicultural crisis counselors were bused to the site to quell the simmering 17-way tensions between Muslim, Black, LGBT, immigrant, disabled, and lawsuit community activists. The scene was punctuated by outbursts of pushing and shoving, including a brief confused intramural scuffle among members of Reverend Louis Farrakan's Nation of Islam, but the only serious injuries reported was a hernia suffered by a legal aide distributing plaintiff's briefs. The incident resulted in one arrest, a 7-year old girl who was seen operating a lemonade stand without a permit."

Ripped from the day after tomorrow's headlines in our looming cesspool of competing interest group politics. RTWT. When iowahawk is on a roll, he's unstoppable...

COTD: Kadaver

Hot Air � Video: 7-year governor laments gov’t impact on business: "This is the tip of the iceberg. One experience with the Coastal Commission or the Air Quality Management Districts or the Regional Water Quality Control Boards or any any of the other State, county, city or other local government agencies is enough to send any potential employer looking to set up in another state. And the attitude of these government employees is that we’re here to serve them. California’s dead. The maggots and vultures are just picking over the cadaver."

Here comes another wave of refugees east to "help" make us "Kolorado". Sigh.

COTD: Corruption Watch

� Federal Judge Colluded with Prosecutors and Law Enforcement, then Presided over Trial - Big Government: "I don't know why this is news. Federal judicial corruption has been running rampant for a long time. First clue is, most, if not all federal judge-ships are bought and paid for through campaign M.O.N.E.Y donations. How in the world can a president that was elected from one part of the country, be able to appoint hundreds of district court judges that he knows little about, that are located in another part of the country? Yes, some come through recommendations, but most are appointed from a M.O.N.E.Y donors list.

I agree with a above poster that stated if a few dozen of these corrupt rascals were impeached, then maybe the rest would get the message. It ain't gonna happen. Why? Because the federal courts have congress cowarding under their desks under the courts self manufactured term of 'judicial independence.'"

In case you were wondering what sustains this particular pool of corruption...

Corruption Watch

Instapundit: "FEDERAL JUDGE COLLUDES? If this report is accurate, impeachment is warranted."

Illegals and the slave traders who whip them need to be deported and jailed as appropriate.

But judges who corruptly attempt to do so need to be impeached also. No "buts".

American Soil

Belmont Club � The Foundations of Our World: "As the New York Times remembers Hiroshima, try this quiz. Name the two greatest losses of civilian life in the Pacific war. Hint. In both cases the civilian casualties were greater than Hiroshima’s. In one case the event took place on American soil.

Casualties
Hiroshima 70,000–80,000
Battle of Manila 100,000
Nanjing 300,000

The Local NYeT

Faster, Please! � Iran and the Plot to Blow Up JFK Airport: "You may recall that back in 2007, some arrests were made in New York City in connection with a terrorist plan to blow up fuel tanks at Kennedy Airport. Now, three years later, the trial is on, and you can read about it – indeed you must read about it — in the — get this! — local news section of the New York Times. It is indeed quite a story, and it is written by one A.G. Sulzberger, a surname that undoubtedly gets due respect at the Times.� But it’s tucked away under local news instead of appearing on the front page, for reasons best left to the editors (although I have a pretty good guess about the main reason).

According to the story, one of the accused, a former official in Guyana by the name of Abdul Kadir, was wired to the government of Iran.� After first denying that he had been in touch with Iranian officials in Venezuela, Kadir admitted the contacts. Indeed, he was arrested in Trinidad three years ago while en route to Iran via Caracas."

A Toast To HugO

clipped from www.slate.com Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap. Even his macabre foraging in the coffin of Simón Bolívar was initially prompted by his theory that an autopsy would prove that The Liberator had been poisoned—most probably by dastardly Colombians. This would perhaps provide a posthumous license for Venezuela's continuing hospitality to the narco-criminal gang FARC, a cross-border activity that does little to foster regional brotherhood. Many people laughed when Chávez appeared at the podium of the United Nations in September 2006 and declared that he smelled sulfur from the devil himself because of the presence of George W. Bush. But the evidence is that he does have an idiotic weakness for spells and incantations, as well as many of the symptoms of paranoia and megalomania.

What Kind Of Dumb Ass

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

No Understanding

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com During the summer of 1940, after losing thousands of men and virtually all of its ground armor and weapons following their evacuation from Dunkirk, many felt that -- barring a miracle -- there was no rational reason for Britain to stay in the fight. Joseph Kennedy, America's ambassador to Great Britain and father of the future president, told Americans that "democracy was finished" in England, as he sought a meeting with Hitler "to bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany." Britain's new prime minister, Winston Churchill, saw things quite differently and used the soaring power of oratory to restore, rally and mobilize his citizens. There was never going to be "an understanding" between democracy and the Third Reich.

His Last

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com But if there is a victory (or even just an absence of civil war) it will be down to the Iraq surge that President Bush instituted and Senator Obama vehemently opposed. For that matter, as Politico acknowledges, it was Bush who, for better or for worse, instituted the troop withdrawal policy for which Obama today took credit. It is far from clear that Bush's Baghdad "Dream Team" (Boot's phrase) can repeat its past success in the context of an ever-diminishing U.S. military presence. If it cannot, Obama's "first step" in his "victory lap" might be his last. In any case, it's telling that Obama is relying just about entirely on Bush era policies and personnel as he tries to find something in the world to brag about.

Going Through Hell With A Gasoline Can

clipped from hotair.com Granted, the competition’s stiff, but the other contenders are jokey. Not this one. West is already enough of a rock star among grassroots conservatives that I assume you don’t need much background, but for the few who don’t know what the ad is about, this will set you right. All the core military virtues are here: Tough on the enemy, protective of his men, honest about his actions. As character references for job applications go, you can scarcely do better.

"Fairness"

clipped from pajamasmedia.com ROGER KIMBALL: Laffer vs. Zakaria — Who’s Right? “I do not expect that argument to make much of an impression on Fareed Zakaria or anyone else carrying water for the Democratic establishment. Why not? Because the economic effect of reducing taxes is for them a secondary consideration. What matters most to them is the political effect of raising taxes. . . . I believe the primary motivation was touched upon by Alexis de Tocqueville when he observed that the passion for equality was such in America that many people would ‘rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.’ And here we touch upon the toxic core of Obama’s economic policy: the admixture of economics, which is a pragmatic art or science, with the idea of ‘fairness,’ which is a moral or (more accurately) a moralistic issue.” Personally, I believe that “fairness” consists in the fruits of my labor not being taken by corrupt hacks to redistribute to their cronies in exchange for votes. Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:33 pm

It's The Data

clipped from chiefio.wordpress.com GHCN V2 All Data Anomalies 1800 to Date Segmented at 1990 Well, first off, notice that a trend line fit to the annual data is just about dead flat right up until about 1990. (That is the very thin blue line at near the zero line) The change of “duplicate numbers” or “modification history flag” on thermometers starts to hit in about 1986-1987 but those records have a matching entry from the prior “duplicate number” until about 1990 when “the reveal” is done and the older series of “duplicate numbers” are dropped. You could put the segment break at 1987 and get similar results, but I chose 1990 as that is when the data series are left to stand on their own. At that point we see a dramatic increase in the slope of the trend line as “AGW suddenly begins”. But, IMHO, it’s not the world that’s warming, it’s the data…

An American Guesser

clipped from www.gadsden.info In December 1775, "An American Guesser" anonymously wrote to the Pennsylvania Journal: "I observed on one of the drums belonging to the marines now raising, there was painted a Rattle-Snake, with this modest motto under it, 'Don't tread on me.' As I know it is the custom to have some device on the arms of every country, I supposed this may have been intended for the arms of America." First, it occurred to him that "the Rattle-Snake is found in no other quarter of the world besides America." The rattlesnake also has sharp eyes, and "may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance." Furthermore, "She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. ... she never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her." Many scholars now agree that this "American Guesser" was Benjamin Franklin.

Don't tread on me.

Morally Superior

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Yesterday, I claimed that, while liberatarian candidates like Rand Paul are uncomfortable with "fudging" their views, liberal candidates seem quite willing to fudge their beliefs in order to gain office. An email from one of my favorite Power Line correspondents, Scott Smith, prompts me to suggest the following explanation for the difference: liberals think their ideology makes them, above all, morally superior; libertarians think their ideology makes them, above all, intellectually superior. Moral superiority, for many who feel it, is not compromised by deceptive statements made in the name of gaining the power to "do good." But intellectual superiority is compromised by any statement that is incorrect or intellectually lazy.