Wednesday - July 11, 2007

Taking Tehran by September

A friend sent me an email this morning that I found very interesting.  He has put together some various news stories that lead him to believe we will attack Iran before the end of the summer.

Here Bush asks Congress to wait till September before debating an Iraqi pullback.

WASHINGTON: Fearful of a Republican rebellion over Iraq that his own aides believe could force him to change course, President George W. Bush said Tuesday that the United States would be able to pull back troops “in a while,” but called on Congress to wait until September to debate the future military presence there.

And here we have a possible 3rd carrier headed to the gulf (best time to attack is when “swapping” carriers as all three are on station).

MANAMA (Reuters) - A U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet area of operations, which includes the Gulf, but the Pentagon said on Tuesday there had been no decision to increase naval power in the region.

U.S. defence officials said the deployment of the USS Enterprise was a routine measure to replace one of two U.S. Navy carriers now in the Fifth Fleet area.

And here we have Israeli intelligence stating that time is just about out for a strike on Iran.

Predicting that sanctions will ultimately fail to stop Teheran’s nuclear program, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of Military Intelligence’s Research Division, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that time to launch an effective military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was running out.

And perhaps (just perhaps) we’ll use a summer terrorist attack as the justification to attack Iran.

WASHINGTON - U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida’s apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a “gut feeling” about a new period of increased risk.

What say you?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/11/2007 at 07:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Iran • Middle-East • Terrorists •  
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   Tuesday - July 10, 2007

You Have a Story

You are an interesting person.  Do you believe that?  As boring and mundane you think your life is, it is interesting.  Maybe not to you, but to your grandkids, and great grandkids, who may never have the chance to speak to you in person, the story of how they got to be where they are is directly tied to who you are now.

Kim DuToit, who most of you know as a great writer already, has launched a new business dedicated to applying those skills to your life’s story.

www.mybiographer.com

If you, like me, have found details of your ancestor’s lives sketchy, or totally missing, then do your heirs a great service and have Kim document what is important and interesting about you and your life.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2007 at 10:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Literature • Personal •  
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Mad Wrecking Ball is Finally Stopped

I always get angry when I see stories that blame a gun for a crime. “Gun Kills Man” is the headline. No, a person used a gun to kill a man, but the gun was just a tool.  So when I saw this headline, I figured it was the same thing...I was wrong.

Wrecking Ball Runs Amok In Pa. Town

MEADVILLE, Pa.—A wrecking ball wreaked havoc on a small college town in northwest Pennsylvania on Monday.

The 1,500-pound, 3-foot-wide ball broke loose from a crane cable and rolled nearly a mile downhill.

It smashed more than a dozen vehicles and injured three people as it bounced from curb to curb.

The ball slammed into the back of a car stopped at an intersection. The force caused a chain reaction with two other cars at the traffic light.

The driver, an Allegheny College junior, said he thought a car had hit him when his back windshield exploded.

The ball came to rest in the trunk of a car and pushed it nearly 20 feet.

Workers had been using the wrecking ball to demolish part of a library at Allegheny College when the cable snapped.

I bet it looked like that cannonball in “The Patriot”.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2007 at 05:45 AM   
Filed Under: • Odd-Strange •  
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Goose Egg

The USA Today/Gallup poll was released yesterday.  You Paulites better get organized man.

Republicans

Giuliani has the support of 30% of “Republicans and Republican leaners,” vs. 28% a month ago; Thompson comes in with 20%, vs. 19% in June; McCain has 16%, vs. 18% a month earlier.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney remains in fourth, at 9% vs. 7% in June.

The current numbers for the rest of the Republicans included in the survey: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, 6%; former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 2%; Rep. Duncan Hunter, 2%; Rep. Tom Tancredo, 2%; Sen. Sam Brownback, 1%; Sen. Chuck Hagel, 1%; former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, 1%. Neither former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore nor Rep. Ron Paul registered any support.

A guy who’s not even running scores 20% and Ron Paul doesn’t even register.  Man, that has to sting.

Before you get your panties in a knot, remember, I’m just the humble messenger.  Maybe you guys ought to actually answer the pollsters questions when they call and your guy would show up in the numbers. 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2007 at 05:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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   Monday - July 09, 2007

Measuring Glowball Warming

I told you before about the work of one Anthony Watts.  He is a former weather dude who is on a mission to make sure the government is measuring tempurature properly.  You see, they have monitoring stations all over the country, with very specific criteria for placement so as to minimize the impact of machines, blacktop and other man-made things on the measurements.

He has been documenting poorly placed monitoring stations for months now, but today’s takes the cake.

In traveling around California and Nevada to look at NOAA USHCN climate monitoring weather stations I’ve seen some odd things. I’ve seen temperature sensors near asphalt and concrete, sensors placed within feet of buildings and cars, sensors placed near air conditioner exhausts, and sensors that had barbeque grills in the vicinity.

Last Friday June 6th, I traveled to Santa Rosa, CA to the Press Democrat Newspaper, a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York Times, which according to NOAA, has the climate station of record for Santa Rosa.

I figured it would be a fairly straightforward survey, and that I’d probably find the temperature sensor near the back of the building by the parking lot, as I’ve found many others placed. I figured it would look a lot like our local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record, weather station. It is in the rear, in a bit of disrepair, missing some slats and part of its roof assembly, but otherwise ok.

But nothing prepared me for what I was about to find at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

This is why the whackos can claim “irrefutable evidence” of climbing tempuratures.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2007 at 02:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Insanity •  
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Katrina is like a Lynching

Indeed, that’s what NAALCP (National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People) chairman, Julian Bond, thinks.  You see, nothing can happen to people of color without it being a concerted effort by the man to put them down.

Bond called present-day inequality and racial disparities cumulative and the result of racial advantages compounded over time.

“Many Americans maintain ... that racial discrimination has become an ancient artifact,” he said. “At the NAACP, we know none of this is true, and that’s why we are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination.”

He noted that the Supreme Court, which includes two justices nominated by Bush, upheld rulings saying school systems could not voluntarily use race in assigning students to schools.

That’s right kids, the eeeeevvviiiiilll bushhitler supreme court (including that uncle tom Clarence Thomas) ruled that racial disparity cannot be fixed with more racial disparity.  Damn them.

“The Bush court removed black children from the law’s protection,” Bond said.

Do you mean to say, Mr. Bond, that children of color cannot compete on equal footing with other children?

And the possibility that New Orleans’ heavily black Lower Ninth Ward, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will never be rebuilt is comparable to a “lynching” because the work of generations was wiped out in a single day and black landholders are being dispossessed, Bond said.

It still amazes me how Bush can be both the stupidest chimp president in history and the evil mastermind, able to control the weather so that poor black folk can be put out.

You don’t think this Bond fellow has an anti-white agenda, do you?

Here’s another interesting thing I learned while researching this story.  I looked for other references to it in other papers and found the same quote above in most of them.  It was verbatim, which makes sense since this was an AP news feed.  Then I came upon this one:

Bond said the possibility that New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will never be rebuilt is comparable to a “lynching.”

“It can be said that Katrina, like lynching, not only destroyed the work of generations in a single day, but is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders.”

It looks like this paper (Michigan Live) decided to re-write it a little, for impact don’t you know.  No agenda here. Move along.  We’re completely bias-free.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2007 at 07:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Racism and race relations •  
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Dead Earth Flop

The BBC was predicting massive viewership.  Two years ago, when LIVE8 ran, 10 million tuned in.  Not so with the Tour de Gore.

Live Earth branded a foul-mouthed flop

Organisers of the global music concert - punctuated by swearing from presenters and performers - had predicted massive viewing figures.

But BBC’s live afternoon television coverage attracted an average British audience of just 900,000.

In the evening, when coverage switched from BBC2 to BBC1, the figure rose to just 2.7million.

And the peak audience, which came when Madonna sang at Wembley, was a dismal 4.5million. Three times as many viewers saw the Princess Diana tribute on the same channel six days before.

The BBC blamed the poor figures on Saturday’s good weather and said its Wimbledon tennis coverage had drawn away afternoon viewers.

Critics said however that the public had simply snubbed what they saw as a hypocritical event.

Emphasis mine.  They figured the sheeple are stupid enough to not realize the hypocracy of these do-gooders flying all over the globe, consuming truck loads of carbon offsets, jsut to tell them they need to conserve.  Guess that plan is backfiring.  Ijits.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2007 at 06:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Celebrities • Music • Politics •  
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   Friday - July 06, 2007

Fat People Are Killing The Polar Bears

Indeed.

Two recent gems from New Scientist magazine…

First up, Climate Change Sceptics Criticise Polar Bear Science, a story about some bad scientists, funded by bad money, who have apparently published some bad science in what is presumably a bad science journal, for bad reasons.

As the poster child for the climate change generation polar bears have come to symbolise the need to tackle climate change. But their popularity has attracted the attention of global warming sceptics funded by the oil industry, who have started to attack polar bear science.

Willie Soon’s paper, which appears in the journal Ecological Complexity, questions ‘whether polar bear populations really are declining and if sea ice, on which the animals hunt, will actually disappear as quickly as climate models predict.’ But that’s all New Scientist has to say about the science.

No need to really put science in a science journal when there are so many good feelings and opinions out there, is there?

Even more absurd is Say No to Global Guzzling - How the Obesity Epidemic is Aggravating Global Warming by Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who appears to be offering an epidemiological perspective on global warming.

We tend to think of obesity only as a public-health problem, but many of its causes overlap with those of global warming. Car dependence and labour-saving devices have cut the energy people expend as they go about their lives, at the same time increasing the amount of fossil fuel they burn. It’s no coincidence that obesity is most prevalent in the US, where per capita carbon emissions exceed those of any other major nation, and it is becoming clear that obese people are having a direct impact on the climate.

Roberts speciously reasons that obese people, who (allegedly) consume 40% more calories than non obese people, (allegedly) use their cars more because they are too fat to move properly, and (allegedly) eat the kind of things which are more CO2 intensive, contribute disproportionately to global warming than their thin counterparts.

The one quote in the commnets is precious:

Posted by Drew458     on 07/06/2007 at 03:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Climate-Weather •  
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Happy Fourth from the Land of Fruits and Nuts

Zombietime visits the various anti-American celebrations on Wednesday.

Apparently, there is a lot of Anti-Americanism in the City by the Bay.  Whodathunkit?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/06/2007 at 12:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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   Thursday - July 05, 2007

TED - Hans Rosling

If you are not familiar with the TED conference, it is a gathering of real thinkers (and some loons) to give short, 18 minute talks about what is important in their worlds.  It started as a conference about Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED), but has expanded to cover much more.  To be sure, there is a plethora of liberal thought spread thickly throughout this community, but amongst the chaff, there is some good wheat.

This talk is by Dr. Hans Rosen.  He makes some claims about CO2 emissions and climate change that you will most likely take issue with, but don’t let that keep you from missing some very interesting points he is making.  Also, the software he is using is absolutely amazing in terms of statistical Visualization (my pet project for the past couple of years).  Finally, his conclusions about the means and goals of helping the developing countries is fascinating to me.

What do you think?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/05/2007 at 10:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Africa • Climate-Weather • Colleges-Professors • Health-Medicine • International •  
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Didja Ever Wonder?

Why is your ATM PIN number code four digits?

From the man who invented it:

One by-product of inventing the first cash machine was the concept of the Pin number.

Mr Shepherd-Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

(reader grayjohn rightly points out that “PIN Number” is redundant.  I get all bent when people say VIN Number, so I should have caught that one.  Thanks)

Posted by Drew458     on 07/05/2007 at 09:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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The Goreacle Strikes Again!

Freaking. Unbelievable.  I wish I was this consistant.

Within an hour, its devastating work was done. Hailstones the size of marbles had battered Battersea and flashfloods caused chaos in Clapham. Lightning lit up the blackened sky.

For a brief period this afternoon, parts of South London were deluged by a freak hailstorm.

Of course, Gore was attending the Dead Earth event in London.  Tim Blair notes that crickets seem to be the ones attending.

DEAD EARTH
Turkey: Less than three weeks after Al Gore, the environmental campaigner and former vice president, visited Istanbul to announce its participation in the round-the-world Live Earth concerts on July 7, organizers announced yesterday that the city had been dropped from the roster of nine sites because of a lack of interest ...

South Africa: Organizers seeking to stimulate lagging ticket sales moved the Live Earth concert to the 18,000-seat Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg ...

Germany: Only half of the tickets have been sold. Hamburg tourist officials are giving away the tickets in promotional packages.

Brazil: Brazilian authorities have obtained a court injunction suspending the Rio show of the Live Earth global series of concerts set for Saturday on concerns about security in the crime-hit city.

Mweh.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/05/2007 at 09:10 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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   Wednesday - July 04, 2007

Celebrating the Founding of our Country

On this day in History, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock was the first to sign it.

On this day, in celebration of the founding of the most free nation on earth, I offer a selection of patriotic audio files.

First, The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Second, no celebration of the 4th of July would be complete without the Star Spangled Banner.

Since we are at war, I offer this version of Lt.Col. George Custer’s theme for the 7th Cavalry. Garry Owen.

Also, for you history buffs, on October 31, 1941, the USS Reuben James was sunk west of Iceland. The first U.S. ship sunk during WWII. I offer this song, The Sinking of the Reuben James. Note that this is over one month before Pearl Harbor. I think we were going to war against Nazi Germany anyway. War with Japan was probably a surprise. Probably, but then, we’re talking Democrats here.

This is my first post since the Skipper’s demise. I wanted to do a really nice multimedia tribute to Allan, but the learning curve of the software was too steep. I have the software, I have the content, I don’t have the knowledge to put them together...yet.

Posted by Christopher     on 07/04/2007 at 07:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Politically-Incorrect •  
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Happy Birthday!

_{(Found at http://del.icio.us/jonCates/jpg)}

Posted by Drew458     on 07/04/2007 at 03:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Patriotism •  
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