A Note On Posting (Bumped)

Please note that I have shifted the vast majority of my posts over to the NoCoSurroundsThem blog for now. Posts will continue to appear here but mostly ones that I judge may not be appropriate for NoCoSurroundsThem.

Tell The Truth

Ace of Spades HQ: "This is Pat Condell's latest video. I have to say, I really like this guy, and it concerns me that he looks like he might have been sick lately. There was an unusually long gap between this video and the last one in December. Prior to that, it seemed like there were at least a couple of videos per month.

Anyway, he's kicking butts again in his blunt, brazenly honest fashion--but with a bit less energy and glee this time. In this one he attacks "the Islamophobia industry" and their complaints about negative coverage in the British media.

Added: For those of you who don't know, Condell used to do stand up. He's an ardent atheist, a converted liberal, and he is a very strong voice for freedom of speech and limited government. And he has balls of granite."
But if you follow the link and look at the second video you might be surprised about his brand of atheism. It includes freedom of religion. Just not freedom of actual -- as opposed to imagined -- oppression.

Another Christianist Apparently

EXCLUSIVE: AWOL Soldier Arrested Over Concerns of Second Alleged Plot to Attack Fort Hood - FoxNews.com: "At least one U.S. military serviceman has been arrested after raising concerns over another alleged plot to attack Fort Hood, Fox News has learned exclusively.

Pvt. Nasser Jason Abdo, an AWOL soldier from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was arrested by the Killeen Police Department near Fort Hood and remains in custody there. Authorities, however, will not say if Abdo is the one who raised security concerns.

Abdo was allegedly found with weapons and explosives at the time of his arrest, a senior Army source confirms to Fox News. He was arrested at around 2 p.m. Wednesday after someone called authorities to report a suspicious individual. "

Manipulated

Jack Cashill writes:"Say it Ain’t So, Ann!": "By this time, the FBI had interviewed 270 eyewitnesses who saw streaks of light in the sky converging on TWA Flight 800 before the explosion.

An easily manipulated New York Times would not interview a single one of them. I have talked to at least twenty. They all know what they saw and were never afraid to say so.

With the 1996 election just weeks away, officials were busily reassuring the public through the media that a mechanical failure brought down the airplane. They never did find the exact cause.

No matter. Soon enough Times’ reporters would be writing articles with titles like, “Pierre, Is That a Masonic Flag on the Moon,” and my beloved Ann Coulter would be citing them.

Say it ain’t so, Ann!"

Their Families Would Like To Know

Why Clintons kept mum about KSM plot: "In a chapter titled 'The Almost War, 1996,' Clarke takes credit for discovering the spontaneously exploding fuel tank theory that the White House ultimately embraced as the cause of TWA Flight 800's destruction.

If the fuel tank theory made any sense at all, Team Clinton would have been boasting about how they avoided 'an almost war' through patient restraint. Their silence is telling.

Even Clarke remained silent about KSM's flying bomb plot. He did not tell Condoleezza Rice word one about it when she took over as national security adviser in January 2001.

When the 9/11 Commission addressed this oversight, Clarke asked that he and his colleagues 'be forgiven for not thinking about [the plot] given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it.'

The 15th anniversary of the disaster two weeks hence presents the media one more chance to ask the Clinton cabal a simple question: Did you stop talking about aviation terror to keep TWA Flight 800 out of the conversation?

At least 3,000 families would like to know."

1,000 Seconds

Lightning in a Bottle: Antimatter Trapped for Nearly 17 Minutes - Techland - TIME.com: "Okay, so antimatter's nothing like lightning, really, but bottling it in a kind of containment field? Doesn't sound like the safest gig. More like something you'd catch Geordi La Forge trying during some wild hair zero-sum Star Trek plotline involving aliens, the Holodeck, rerouting power from life support, and a self-destruct sequence.

Thankfully nothing self-destructed when CERN researchers first created, then forced antihydrogen atoms to hang around for an unprecedented 16 minutes, 40 seconds. That's roughly 16 minutes and 40 seconds longer than the first attempt roughly a year ago, which only managed to snag antihydrogen for a trifling 172 milliseconds (about two-tenths of a second). The new results were published in Nature, impassively titled 'Confinement of antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds.'"

And Don't Forget Shaviv

The Hebrew University debate on Global Warming | ScienceBits: "In my short presentations, I stressed a few major issues. First, there are no fingerprints proving that 20th century warming is necessarily human. Second, once you check the details, you find that there are notable inconsistencies. In particular, the AGHG theory predicts warming over the whole troposphere, while in reality, only the ground appears to have warmed over the past few decades, and that Earth's climate response to volcanic eruptions is significantly smaller than predicted by computer models. This is because these models tend to have an exaggerated climate sensitivity. Third, the only reason we can attribute the warming to humans, is because allegedly there is nothing else to blame, but there is, the increasing activity of the sun. And then I quickly showed some of the evidence showing that the sun affects climate through the cosmic ray climate link."

More CLOUD Foreshadowing

Evidence that cosmic rays seed clouds - physicsworld.com: "By firing a particle beam into a cloud chamber, physicists in Denmark and the UK have shown how cosmic rays could stimulate the formation of water droplets in the Earth's atmosphere. The researchers say this is the best experimental evidence yet that the Sun influences the climate by altering the intensity of the cosmic-ray flux reaching the Earth's surface."

Yamal and Hide-the-Decline

Yamal and Hide-the-Decline « Climate Audit: "The effect of using “all the data to hand” is potentially quite dramatic. The graphic below compares the Briffa 2009 chronology (red) to the average of site RCS chronologies for the 20 Vaganov sites in the 10-degree box. As you can see, there is considerable correlation between the two chronologies, though the Briffa version is spikier than the much larger Vaganov network. The discrepancy becomes very pronounced from the 1970s on – the Vagnov network shows the characteristic “decline” in the late 20th century that also characterized the large Schweingruber network, while the Briffa Limited Hangout network surges to new records."

The "Policies" Of Panicked Pre-school Politicians

Panic as Policy « Commentary Magazine: "Hysteria on the largest scale possible has become the default official response to all crises. A lay public furnished with near-instantaneous media coverage can be counted on to demand immediate and absolute measures so that the crisis can be scrubbed from consciousness, however crudely or illogically. And over-monitored leaders will be sure to comply. Today a politician can lose his job if he doesn’t swiftly change historical precedent to fit the frenzied misinterpretation of a still-breaking news story. This will continue to yield atrocious consequences.

We have become accustomed to seeing collective shock elevated to the realm of policy. In fact, it’s what we expect of responsible leadership. There’s an oil spill? Ban drilling. A shooting? Forbid even speaking in martial metaphors. A nuclear accident? Kill nuclear energy. This crude emotionalism is actually liberalism at warp speed. It demands that governments alleviate the immediate discomfort of the onlooker without regard for accuracy or consequence. It will produce many more historic disasters than it can manage."

We seem pretty much there already, no?

Downstream Of Green

Belmont Club » Downstream of Green: "And upstream too. The Daily Mail looks at the Chinese industrial area supplying the magnets for Europe’s clean wind farms. It’s a wasteland. The Chinese industrial area that is.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

But the Chinese don’t vote in British elections. They are not a relevant constituency for the Greens.  So who gives a damn?"

Whoops. ANd don't forget the maintenance problems.

For The Women

Everything you wanted to know about women's concealed carry.

Which Way The Wind Blows

Ex-Sandia engineer talks about some of the worst things that could happen in Japan | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com: "That, in turn, would cause a 'high-pressure melt injection' into the water-filled concrete cavity below the reactor. Because the concrete would likely be unheated, the reaction created by the sudden injection of the reactor's ultra-hot content would be immense, he said.

'It'll be like somebody dropped a bomb, and there'll be a big cloud of very, very radioactive material above the ground,' Allen said, noting that it would contain uranium and plutonium, as well as the fission products.

Should these events happen, the best outcome would be if the winds are blowing east and push the radioactive plume over the Pacific Ocean, he said. 'It (the radioactivity) will fall out in the ocean and everything will be fine,' he said.

The worst case, Allen said, would be if winds pushed a radioactive cloud south toward Tokyo and Japan's highly populated cities."

Of course our hearts must go out to the dead and injured from the earthquake and tsunami. But if the situation continues to be uncertain at the nuclear plants or gets worse, the economic impact of Tokyo and environs being relatively deserted and off-line as seen in recent news reports in itself is non-trivial in terms of world supply chains. Never mind what the financial markets are doing.

Carbon For Thee

Moonbattery: Carbon Emissions: "The know-how just isn't there to generate electricity reliably and affordably using archaic windmill technology, no matter how much of our children's money Comrade Obama pours into the pockets of his crony capitalist enablers at GE. They haven't even come up with a lubricant that can keep the noisy bird-chopping monstrosities from bursting into flame:"

A Conspiracy Theory? Umm, Nooooo...

Beck’s Matthews-Mocked Conspiracy Confirmed: Video of US Communists, Socialists & Labor Unions Working With Muslim Brotherhood-Associated Groups | The Blaze: "Posted on February 4, 2011 at 10:10am by Naked Emperor News"

And speaking of the history of this particular "conspiracy" you might want to look at "Emulation, The Sincerest Form Of Holocaust". Click through the clipping and you can read the full thing as written by that far right wing nut-job -- what's his name? -- oh, yeah Alan Dershowitz. You need to read his book "The Case For Israel" and especially the chapter on Haj Amin Al-Husseini.

Oh. And you might want to plan on being in Denver May 4th.

Meet The Boss

Moonbattery: George Soros, Obama's Boss: "Übermoonbat George Soros — the Nazi-collaborating Jew who bought and paid for the Democrat Party — isn't just an enemy of the state, he's an enemy of the human race:"

Don't Hold Your Breath

Greenland ice sheet: Information from Answers.com: "On the ice sheet, temperatures are generally substantially lower than elsewhere in Greenland. The lowest mean annual temperatures, about −31 °C (−23.8 °F), occur on the north-central part of the north dome, and temperatures at the crest of the south dome are about −20 °C (−4 °F)."

An Alarming Update

Power Line - Was 2010 the Warmest Year Ever?: "That didn't get the warmists where they were trying to go, so they have now changed the data by eliminating or drastically reducing the urban heat island effect. NASA now shows very different data for the period 1880-1999 from what it published in 1999. This animated GIF shows how the alarmists changed their own data to create the false impression of a climate crisis:


You probably assume that NOAA and NASA have made their raw data available to independent researchers, along with explanations of the adjustments they have made. But no--those agencies have resisted Freedom of Information Act requests for the original, raw data. One of the most important things the new Congress can do is to force these government agencies to level with the American people and explain the manipulations to which they have been subjecting weather data for years."

NOTE: The animated gif isn't working -- click through to see the original...

Should You Switch?

Verizon iPhone 4: Should You Get One Now? | Shelly Palmer Digital Living: "Verizon has been busy shouting as loud as it can about LTE (Long Term Evolution), its new 4G network. It will not be long before Verizon starts to offer 4G mobile devices, like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 4G, Motorola’s Xoom, any number of Android smartphones and a ton of other 4G LTE stuff.
Which begs for the question: With 4G around the corner, why would you commit to a two-year contract in February 2011 for a 3G device? It makes no sense at all.
If Apple continues its MO of one new iPhone per year, you can expect the iPhone 5 to debut this spring/summer. Will it be a 4G LTE compatible device? I hope so. If it isn’t, it will have no chance competing with the Samsung, HTC, Moto and other 4G LTE devices that will be everywhere by then."

The New Rendition

Belmont Club » Noblesse Oblige: "When Malaysian naval commandos boarded a ship captured by Somali pirates and rescued 23 hostages in the Gulf of Aden they had a secret weapon. South Korean naval special forces employed the same device, when they “stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing all 21 crew members and killing eight assailants in a rare and bold raid on Somali pirates.” The wonder weapon of the Koreans, though less potent than that used by the Malaysians was that they were neither European nor American.

What you can do depends on what papers you carry. In 2008 the Times Online reported that “the Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights. Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.” Their chances of doing the same in Korea are probably vanishingly small."

Boo!

Moonbattery: Separated at Birth?: "Quadruplets:"

End Of The Holocene TwoFer Update

New record cold temperatures in Minnesota | Watts Up With That?: "From NWS Duluth, MN, an old record beaten by five degrees:

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN
518 PM CST FRI JAN 21 2011

...RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE SET AT INTERNATIONAL FALLS MN...

A RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE OF -46 DEGREES WAS SET AT INTERNATIONAL
FALLS MN TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF -41 SET IN 1954."

You might not only note that these temps are not particularly in line with the end of winter as we know it but you might also note that the Minneapolis Metro area shows almost a text book illustration of the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI; Minneapolis is near the bottom about 1/3 over from the left).

Heh. Unless you're in International Falls that is...

End of the Holocene you ask?


You are on the temperature plateau at the very right end of this graph that shows 350,00 years of temperature history from the Vostok ice core. Al Gore forgot to mention it's hardly impossible that it will end during your lifetime.

And he's sitting in his beachfront mansion laughing at you.

Today's Stopped Clock Watch

Instapundit » Blog Archive » “POLITICS:” ProPublica: Why a Gruesome Pennsylvania Abortion Clinic Had Not Been Inspected for 17 …: "According to the grand jury report [2][PDF] released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers. . . .

The grand jury report said that one look at the place would have detected the problems, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the place since 1993. Here’s the grand jury report, in surprisingly strong language:

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. “Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer.”

I’m surprised to see the lefty outfit ProPublica pick up on this."

Cementing The 7th Century

Power Line - "Offensive Jihad": "But in the current context, this means that it is permissible to wage jihad against a country if anything 'necessary' to Islam according to (hard-line) clerics' interpretations is blocked (polygamy, child marriage, special privileges at work places, building mosques anywhere, permitting the wearing of head scarves or burkas).

In practice, according to this doctrine, then, any non-Muslim can be attacked anywhere. Thus, mainstream, powerful clerics are now calling for a seventh century-style jihad against non-Muslim lands even if the victims cannot be accused of attacking Muslim ruled lands. Merely to 'extend God's religion' to others is a sufficient motive. Mustafa says that two of Islam's main schools have always endorsed offensive jihad, but I doubt if he would have made that argument ten or 20 years ago.

Of course, that doesn't mean most Muslims will accept this new stance. But it does mean that radical groups now have mainstream support for their most extreme, aggressive behavior."

Today's Episode Of Dishonest Alarmist Jack*ssism

Trenberth reacts: edits speech to fix copying, leaves “deniers” | Watts Up With That?: "Well that’s what I get for taking a nap today. I had been checking Dr. Trenberth’s manuscript regularly at the AMS website, and of course while napping he (or somebody) changed it. Of course Steve McIntyre caught it and points out the changes. Good for him.

For those that wish to examine the original, I saved it here."

Gruesome Assassination COTD

44 - Jared Loughner's behavior recorded by college classmate in e-mails: "Abraham Lincoln (1865) - killed by John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat
James Garfield (1881) - killed by Charles J. Guiteau, a Democrat
William McKinley (1901) - killed by Leon Czolgosz, Democratic Anarchist
John F. Kennedy (1963) - killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, Communist

Attempts on:

Andrew Jackson by Robert B. Randolph, Democrat Liberal
Franklin D. Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara, Democrat Liberal
Harry S. Truman by Pedro Albizu Campos, Nationalist Socialist
Gerald Ford by Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, Socialist
Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr., Registered Democrat"

Let me be clear. This guy Loughner guy was completely nuts. End of story.

But if the left wants to position this guy on the right then they're nuts too. This is absolutely despicable behavior that doesn't even rise to the level of childishness.

Rubio 2012 Watch

Marco Rubio gives a Reaganesque answer when it comes to bipartisanship « Cubachi: "I think we should only oppose their bad ideas, and they have a lot."

Memory hOle Update (Part 49,739)

Twitter / 'Jim' 'Treacher': As @markos screeches about ...: "As @markos screeches about Palin, just remember that he hosted this: http://twitpic.com/3o7s5c And now it's gone: http://j.mp/fH7YBd"

Are You Sentient?

Lindzen Testimony | Climate Skeptic: "Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of their implications.

1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.

2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments.

Given the above, the notion that alarmingwarming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC."

Asia Bibi Lives In Hell ...

... and if our President is Christian you certainly wouldn't know it by his support of her. RTWT:

The American Spectator : Thank God These People Are on the Other Side of the World: "Here's an alternative explanation to the story. These people are crazy. They live in a world that most Europeans left behind when Hieronymus Bosch hung up his paintbrushes -- a world that most contemporary American leave behind somewhere around first grade. I remember well the panic we all felt that year trying to escape some particularly unpopular girl's 'cooties.' After another year, however, the terror subsided. We began to lead rational lives. Not so in the great Islamic Republic. The phobias, irrational fears, superstitions, and delusions that most cultures would ascribe to madness are part of daily life. The place is a lunatic asylum. Thank god they live on the other side of the world. But of course, as 9/11 showed, that's not really true anymore. And they do have a nuclear weapon, too -- think of that."

Feynman on science, religion, and communism

If only he were still alive:

The Reference Frame: Feynman on science, religion, and communism: "Around 12:00 in the first part, he discusses why communism is the opposite of science because it has no tools to adjust the direction. The debate is always over. You may replace 'communism' by 'global warming' and get an equally valid appraisal."

Full transcript is here. RTWT.

A Clarification On CERN CLOUD

The Reference Frame: CERN: CLOUD nucleates clouds as expected: "The Nature Climate Blog has informed its readers that the first results of the CLOUD (cosmics leaving outdoor droplets) experiment at the Center of Europe for the Research of Nuclei (CERN) are ready to be published. The writer of the blog entry was probably shown the results.

The summary? They confirm that the clouds are being nucleated by the radiation at the rate that was expected in the newest models, whatever these models are (and be sure I would like to see some details, too). So the effect is surely nonzero.

Henrik Svensmark told me a year ago that the CLOUD experiment is somewhat redundant because the existence of the basic effect behind cosmoclimatology has already been pretty much established by their own experiments in Denmark. But it may be true that the CERN logo is needed for some additional people to notice."

Omageddon Baby, Omageddon

Welcome to freezing in the dark:

Power Line - Is Obama Intentionally Damaging Our Economy?: "In his recently released book Leadership and Crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recounts an exchange with President Obama during the Gulf oil drilling moratorium. (Full disclosure: I co-wrote the book with Jindal.) After telling Obama that the moratorium would potentially cost tens of thousands of jobs, 'The president went on to assure me that anyone who lost their job would get a check from BP. When I explained that BP might not write them checks because it was the federal government that imposed the moratorium the president said, 'Well, if BP won't pay the claim, they can file for unemployment.' I was amazed by the level of disconnect. The people of Louisiana want to work, not collect unemployment or BP checks.'

GIGO COTD

Amen:

Do clouds disappear? 2 « Calder's Updates: "Brian H says:
20/07/2010 at 08:56
A model is as good as the plugs that keep it from leaking to death."

9,099

2010 – where does it fit in the warmest year list? | Watts Up With That?: "So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010.  Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list."

Radical-in-Chief Update

Weigel on Marxism - By Stanley Kurtz - The Corner - National Review Online: "Also, the Marxist undercurrent that has always infused “democratic socialism” in America has never entirely disappeared.  That is a revealing fact as well.  A significant threat to liberty that inheres in even the most reconstructed socialism.  This comes out in various ways in Radical-in-Chief.  The Marxism question is complicated.  Marxism gets transformed and downplayed in modern democratic socialism, but it never goes away.  That is the reality of Obama’s socialist community organizing world.       

It would be a mistake to make too much of that fact, but also a mistake to deny it.  The book does not score cheap points but lays out the reality of modern socialism in all its complexity.  The result is scary, but it’s a legitimate concern, based on a fair and nuanced portrait of modern democratic socialism and its place in community organizing, not a bogus invocation of the Gulag."

What? You haven't read "Radical-in-Chief" yet?

Or Maybe Not

Moonbattery: Affirmative Action Explained: "Affirmative Action is so obviously unjust, unconstitutional, counterproductive, and morally wrong, our liberal rulers must have some really good reasons for continuing to impose it decade after decade. Or maybe not:"

And in case you want some data to support his comments about Asians, see here. Luckily, FDR's concentration camps for the Japanese during WWII have been written out of the history books to avoid total liberal brain lock. So voila, no conflict to resolve!

Not To Mention China...

K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD | Mercatus: "This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.
 
That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing."

Union State

We have gone far beyond even FDR's dreams:

FDR's warning: Public employee unions a no-no: "President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of the American labor movement, was a man of strong character. One has to look no further than the heroic way he coped with his crippling polio. This dreadful disease undoubtedly made him the consummate realist.

For example, although he had a lock on labor's vote, he expressed caution about public sector unions. In a little-known letter he wrote to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees in 1937, Roosevelt reasoned:

'... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

Featherweight Translations

RTWT:

Simple Physics – In reality my feather blew up into a tree | Watts Up With That?: "The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).

IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)

Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”"

priOrities

Obama calls Pakistani Prez to appeal for clemency for Asia Bibi -- no, wait... - Jihad Watch: "Actually, Obama has done nothing whatsoever about Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who faces judicial murder for blasphemy in Pakistan. But he did find the time to call the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles to congratulate him for giving Michael Vick a second chance."

We have a whack job for a President. But he is tall, nice looking and has a soothing voice. In short, our stupefied "voters" have elected an American Idol.

A Tiny Place

Belmont Club » On A Darkling Plain: "“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
– Albert Einstein"

Welcome To Graphene Supercapacitors

Curves are the key:

audiobytz - biweekly e-newsletter: "Building a test capacitor out of curved graphene sheets produced a device with an “specific energy density” of 85.6 Wh/kg (watt-hours per kilogram) at room temperature. A practical graphene battery would have a capacity of around 28 Wh/kg. Nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries have an energy density of 40-100 Wh/kg, while lithium-ion batteries (used famously in PCs, cellphones, and MP3 players) top them both at 120 Wh/kg. But since NiMH or lithium batteries are often operated in the middle range of their discharge cycle, only 20 to 50% of their capacity is actually used. So a graphene capacitor “battery,” with the potential of being charged in seconds or minutes and which do not suffer from degradation upon recharging over possibly millions of cycles– they store energy electrostatically (by the accumulation of electrons) and not chemically – might become competitive for many applications. The illustration shows how the capacitance of the lab prototype (in farads/gram) varies – or, rather, hardly varies, over as many as 500 charge-discharge cycles. A typical chemical battery would have a detectable downward slope in as few as 100 cycles (hence the interest in iPod battery replacement)."

How's That French Lit Degree Working Out?

Answering My Critics On The Subject Of The College Bubble Page 3 of 3 - Forbes.com: "At some price point, things will shift, and the following answer will become a common and respectable one: Nowhere. 'We took a fraction of the money that we would have spent on college and set them up in businesses of their own, and they're doing quite nicely, thank you. By the way, how's that French Lit degree from Vassar working out for your daughter? Is she still working at Nordstrom's?'"

Heh.

Allow Me To Restate That Number

Federalist Paupers » Blog Archive » Why the Terrorists Can Never Win: "The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters.

Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world – more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined – deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world."

Did I forget to mention that the tranzis -- and now apparently the TSA -- are completely untethered from reality?

It Couldn't Happen To A Nicer Bunch Of Goons

Faster, Please! » Iranian Chaos: Spontaneous Revolt Against the Regime: "The port of Bandar Abbas is one of Iran’s major shipping hubs, as well as a big naval base in the Straits of Hormuz, and the site of a big refinery.  It is now in chaos.  Thousands of trucks, many of them loaded with imported foodstuffs, commercial goods of all description, and even oil products, have blocked the city’s roads, effectively ending all movement in and around the port.  The drivers simply shut down their rigs, took the coils out of the engines, and walked away.  On the water, there’s a similar shutdown of the hundreds of small boats and ferries that usually carry thousands of people each day to the nearby islands as well as to Dubai.  They have clogged the harbor, and nothing is moving."

A Hell

I'm guessing you'll see a report on this from the Obamedia when you know where does you know what. Which come to think of it seems to be happening as we speak...

Ace of Spades HQ: "The Military's Real 'Don't Ask - Don't Tell' Problem
Is that the Afghan Pashtun men won't stop fucking each other and little boys:

The report described unease by U.S. Marines and British soldiers who felt they were being propositioned, or who were outraged by apparent acts of pedophilia by Afghan soldiers and police. It documented one case in which 12 of 20 Pashtun interpreters working with one U.S. Army unit had contracted gonorrhea from homosexual encounters.

And using young boys for sex creates a cycle damaging to boys and young men and also to the women"

GIGO+ Update

Why the plus? Because Garbage In, Garbage Out at least assumes that the code isn't garbage also:

Model Charged with Excessive Use of Forcing | Watts Up With That?: "Yes, as I have written about extensively. The state of GISSE, or any of the other models I have inspected, would not come close to passing muster anywhere I have worked (except Gov.). I have been designing and developing software for something closing in on 30 years now, even in the early days we maintained higher levels of controls and scrutiny. Today it is mandatory, or you don’t eat."

Busted

Moonbattery: Obama Myths Busted: "Mythbusters will never run short of untruths to debunk so long as the Moonbat Messiah has a teleprompter to read:"

Smackdown

Moonbattery: Condi Rice Smackdown of Katie Couric

CrapSA

Scientists: NASA’s alleged discovery of arsenic-based life is crap « Hot Air: "I gave it the front-page treatment when the big announcement was made, so now the big skeptical response gets front-page treatment too. Simply devastating — so much so that I wonder why it fell to an outfit like Slate to put it together. Did the Times or WaPo not have enough of an inkling about NASA’s discovery to survey naysayers before writing up their reports on the “discovery”? This information would have come in a lot handier when everyone was still paying attention to this story."

Frozen Over

Ever notice that big yellow ball up there in the sky?

Author claims we're in the grip of a mini ice age - Sunday Sun: "Particularly hard hit will be Britain and Northern Europe and it is only after the 30-year period that the effects of man-made global warming will kick in. He said: “When I was writing this it was new. To be honest I was kind of winging it, piecing it together. But recently there has been a sea change among some pretty significant figures.”
They include renowned international climatologist Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading. In 2007 he said the cyclical change in the Sun’s energy was not responsible for climate change. In April this year, writing in the New Scientist Magazine, he did a U-turn and said it was. After a study, he and his team concluded that recent cold British winters have coincided neatly with the biggest fall off in the sun’s activity for a century, contradicting the accepted view that carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are likely to warm our climate."

Goodbye Sweden

Moonbattery: Hej Då, Sweden: "Pat Condell waves goodbye to the canary in the coalmine of multiculturalism, Sweden:"

The Savage Truth About TSA

Mythbusters' Savage: I got past TSA with razor blades | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: "Many of you will be flying today. You will be going to see those to whom you feel closest, or, indeed, most indifferent, in order to give thanks for your feelings.
You will also have to enjoy the watchful eyes, hands and smiles of the TSA inspectorate.
You may not find it entirely comfortable. However, like 'Mythbusters' presenter Adam Savage, in the rush to leave the house, you may have forgotten that you have a couple of 12-inch razor blades secreted about your person.
Savage, in the highly entertaining monologue that I have embedded, describes how earlier this year he was flying and happened to forget to remove potentially dangerous objects from his belongings."

The Japanese Also Think The Terrorists Have Won...

Moonbattery: At Least We're Not Alone: "It looks like TSA screening procedures have been adopted by Japan:"

Hemorrhage

Al Qaeda Promises U.S. Death By A Thousand Cuts - ABC News: "Printer bombs planted on two cargo flights last month cost only a few thousand dollars and were intended to affect the American economy, according to a newly published Al Qaeda-affiliated magazine.

The attempt was called 'Operation Hemorrhage,' boasted the magazine, and the entire plot cost al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, only $4,200."

COTD: The Difference

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before: How Do You Know A Liberal Is Lying?: "What's the difference between a liberal and a hooker?

A hooker will stop screwing you when you're dead."

O Gandhi's "Footsteps"

Moonbattery: Kilometer-Long Air-Conditioned Tunnel to Be Constructed for Obama's Drive to the Gandhi Museum: "The tunnel would be a kilometre long and measure 12ft by 12ft — enough to let Obama's cavalcade pass through. The tunnel would be centrally air-conditioned, fitted with close-circuit television cameras, and will be heavily guarded at every point, including, of course, its entry and exit.
The insolent extravagance of America's worst president will be remembered for centuries.

The reason such an outlandish pageant is being made of Comrade Obama paying homage to Gandhi is the role the latter played in bringing down the British Empire. This is a big deal to the anti-neo-colonialist Manchurian Moonbat, who apparently sees himself as following in Gandhi's footsteps by bringing down America."

COTD: Rain Forest Sahara

Twas the SUVs that did it mate:

Atlantic reversal | Watts Up With That?: "Several monthes ago I watched a National Geographic on the Sahara Desert showing fossils of crocs, clams, etc at various locations. It was shown that every 20,000 years the Sahara goes through a complete reversal from desert to a land of lakes and running rivers. It has done so several times and was last green 10000 or so years ago. They used layered sediment of dust off the coast of Africa to separate out desert from green eras. No mention of global warming or reversal of Atlantic currents."

I'm Turning Chi-ya-nese, I'm Turning Chi-ya-nese...

... I really think so...

FT.com / Global Economy - Backlash against Fed’s $600bn easing: "An adviser to the Chinese central bank called unbridled printing of dollars the biggest risk to the global economy and said China should use currency policy and capital controls to cushion itself from external shocks.

“As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar – and this is not easy – then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament,” Xia Bin wrote in a newspaper under the Chinese central bank."

And yes, that's a musical pun. Or lament. Or something...

Squaring The Triangle

Yes. 40 percent, that's the ticket!

This time, triangulation's not an option - NYPOST.com: "Now that President Obama has experi enced the same baptism of fire as President Bill Clinton did in the 1994 midterm elections, the obvious question is: Will he move to the center in a bid to save his presidency and win re-election?

The move worked well for Clinton: He sought to combine the best aspects of each party's program in a third approach that became known as triangulation.

But Obama won't follow suit because he can't, even if he wants to. Today's issues are different from those that separated the parties in 1994 and don't lend themselves to common ground.

Obama's programs have been so far-reaching and fundamental that any compromise would leave the nation far to the left of where it's always been and wants to be. When he took office, government (federal, state and local combined) controlled 35 percent of the US economy -- 15th among the two-dozen advanced countries. Now, it controls 44.7 percent, ranking us 7th, ahead of Germany and Britain. So where's the compromise -- leave government in control of, say, 40 percent?"

Ugghh.

Here Comes Telepresence 1.0

FT.com / Technology / Science - Scientists unveil moving 3D holograms: "More than 30 years after the famous Star Wars movie scene in which a hologram of Princess Leia appealed for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi, US researchers have unveiled holographic technology to transmit and view moving three-dimensional images.

The scientists at the University of Arizona say their prototype “holographic three-dimensional telepresence” is the world’s first practical 3D transmission system that works without requiring viewers to wear special glasses or other devices. The research is published in the journal Nature.

Potential applications range from telemedicine and teleconferencing to mass entertainment."

A Reminder

It IS a victory mosque:

Moonbattery: Proximity of Ground Zero Victory Mosque to 9/11 Human Remains: "The site of the Victory Mosque the Muslim–liberal alliance is planning to erect in triumph is not merely near Ground Zero, it is at Ground Zero. The Burlington Coat Factory building this shrine to evil would replace was damaged when the landing gear from United Airlines Flight 175 fell through its roof 9 years ago today. Via the New York Post, here's how close human remains were found to the planned site of the mosque:"

Boo!

Instapundit - Blog Archive - TWISTED, EXTREME, Halloween pumpkins. But here’s something that will scare a lot of people. …: "But here’s something that will scare a lot of people."

Bail Me Out, Scottie

Banzai7

Simulation

Limits:

Instapundit � Blog Archive � PERSONALLY, I LIKE THE THEORY THAT WE’RE LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION: Fermilab is Building a ‘H…: "PERSONALLY, I LIKE THE THEORY THAT WE’RE LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION: Fermilab is Building a ‘Holometer’ to Determine Once and For All Whether Reality Is Just an Illusion. “The universe-as-hologram theory is predicated on the idea that spacetime is not perfectly smooth, but becomes discrete and pixelated as you zoom in further and further, like a low-res digital image. This idea isn’t novel; recent experiments in black-hole physics have offered evidence that this may be the case, and prominent physicists have proposed similar ideas. Under this theory, the universe actually exists in two dimensions and the third is an illusion produced by the intertwining of time and depth. But the false third dimension can’t be perceived as such, because nothing travels faster than light, so instruments can’t find its limits.”"

The Once And Future Past

Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?! | Psychology Today: "In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen tells Alice that in her land, 'memory works both ways.' Not only can the Queen remember things from the past, but she also remembers 'things that happened the week after next.' Alice attempts to argue with the Queen, stating 'I'm sure mine only works one way...I can't remember things before they happen.' The Queen replies, 'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.'
How much better would our lives be if we could live in the White Queen's kingdom, where ours memory would work backwards and forewords? For instance, in such a world, you could take an exam and then study for it afterwards to make sure you performed well in the past. Well, the good news is that according to a recent series of scientific studies by Daryl Bem, you already live in that world!"

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.