Thursday, November 5, 2009

VP Biden = Old Dog Can't Learn New Tricks

That's not what I said.  That's what Obama's campaign manager said.

Obama Continues to Undermine Coalition Mission in Afghanistan

Both the British and French governments are increasingly frustrated about Obama's refusal to make a decision about Gen. McChrystal's troop request.

Iran Tested Nuclear Warhead Design

The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.

The Global Warming Cult

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-1 to advance their cap and tax plan.  All Republicans boycotted the vote.  Interestingly enough, Al Gore stands to profit substantially from his fear-mongering about global warming.  Finally, a British judge ruled that belief in climate change is the same as religious faith.  I made the same point several times already.

Nanoparticle Cancer Therapy

It delivers drugs directly to cancer cells while evading detection by the body's immune system.

Smiling Shark

Rather creepy, actually.  Probably thinking about a nice human snack.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Party of Corruption, Part 84

The House Ethics Committee is investigating Rep. Heath Shuler (Democrat, Tennessee) for influencing the Tennessee Valley Authority in favor of a company that he invested in.

Obama Lost the 2009 Elections

Any Democratic spin about how yesterday's elections do not reflect a repudiation of Obama must contend with the Democratic Party's own propaganda, Obama's historic decline, and the Gallup poll's conclusion that if current trends continue, Republicans will retake the House of Representatives next year.  These facts must weigh heavily on those Democrats who entertain dreams of another term.  That in turn will further hamper Obama's radical agenda.

There is no chance for the GOP to retake the Senate next year.  To do so, they must win 11 seats.  My guess is that they will win 4-7.  Even the minimum number should be sufficient for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to filibuster anything that moves.

In related news, the conservative group FreedomWorks is working to purge the GOP of its moderates and liberals.

Federal Government Wastes More Money

The Obama Administration spent $2.3 billion to bailout CIT Group.  The corporation collapsed anywayThe Senate voted unanimously to extend unemployment benefits for another 20 weeks and to extend more home buyers credits.  The former measure will simply encourage people to stay unemployed and the latter was one of the causes for the housing market collapse.  It represented the naive belief that the government can manipulate the housing market any way it wants.  There are more errors detected regarding the number of jobs supposedly created by Obama's $787 billion pork-barrel spending bill in Colorado and Illinois.  Apparently, some of the fraudulent reporting involved counting jobs that received increases in salary as jobs saved.

Obama is With the Iranian Theocracy

Iranian regime protesters launched their largest public protest against their theocracy in 2 months, chanting: "Obama, Obama, you are either with them, or with us."  Of course, Obama is with the mullahs.  He never demonstrated much sympathy toward the regime protesters when they were brutally crushed 2 months ago.  There is no reason to expect change now.

A Meaningful Verdict

An Italian court sentenced 23 CIA agents for extraordinary rendition.  There is no possibility of the US extraditing the agents for their sentence.  This sentence is meaningful because every time a court verdict goes contemptuously ignored, it undermines that court's standing.  The Italian legal system successfully undermined itself in this case.

Free Speech Clause Triumphs Over the Pro-Abortion Agenda

I am pleased to report that the 3rd Circuit Court struck down a Pittsburgh ordinance that restricted the free speech rights of pro-lifers near abortion clinics.  The Supreme Court precedent mentioned in the article is Hill v. Colorado.  The Court's membership changed since the case was decided and I'm very confident that if the city appeals to the Supreme Court, the precedent will be overturned.  Justice Kennedy is not much of a wordsmith and I have numerous disagreements with his jurisprudence.  But I will always remember his very moving dissent in that case:

There runs through our First Amendment theory a concept of immediacy, the idea that thoughts and pleas and petitions must not be lost with the passage of time. In a fleeting existence we have but little time to find truth through discourse. No better illustration of the immediacy of speech, of the urgency of persuasion, of the preciousness of time, is presented than in this case. Here the citizens who claim First Amendment protection seek it for speech which, if it is to be effective, must take place at the very time and place a grievous moral wrong, in their view, is about to occur. The Court tears away from the protesters the guarantees of the First Amendment when they most need it. So committed is the Court to its course that it denies these protesters, in the face of what they consider to be one of life's gravest moral crises, even the opportunity to try to offer a fellow citizen a little pamphlet, a handheld paper seeking to reach a higher law.

EU Imposes Its Anti-Christian Agenda on Italy

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian government must pay damages to someone who dislikes crucifixes in Italian schools.

More Iranian Arms for the Hezbollah Seized

The Israelis seized the Iranian armaments ship.

Tocqueville's Letters

Letters from that great French observer of the United States.

Terminal Illness Cured

A baby who was born with molybdenum cofactor deficiency which involved a sulfite poisoning that was dissolving her brain was cured with an experimental cPMP (cyclic pyranopterin monophosphate) treatment.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Party of Corruption, Part 83

The [House] ethics committee announced Thursday it would examine whether [Rep. Laura] Richardson [Democrat, California] should have included the foreclosure information regarding her Sacramento home in her financial disclosure forms and whether her lender offered preferential treatment in how the home was eventually returned to Richardson's ownership.

"Empire of Lies"

The Business Roundtable whose members employ 12 million people are condemning the Democratic government health care plan for potentially increasing the cost for both employers and employeesAnother study suggests that the House Democrats' health care plan will cost $1.2 trillionThe plan represents the liberal ideology of hating the rich.  It imposes an extra 5.4% tax on individuals who make $500,000/year.  Furthermore, as this tax is not indexed to inflation, it will gradually ensnare more peopleDemocrats are now conceding that there will be no completed health care bill this year, a week after Obama claimed that he intends to sign one this year.

Though many American doctors complain about the FDA's slow process of approving drugs, it is actually, on average, a year faster than the European Medicines Agency.  The tremendous American advantage in drug innovation is attributed to lack of price controlsThe highest cancer survival rate in Europe is 57.9% for French woman.  For Americans, it is 62% for men and 63.5% for women.  While Democrats want to degrade American health care to the level in Europe, Britain is developing more appreciation for private health care.  The British government plans to move patients who are on waiting lists for 18 weeks to private health care.  It is only government deception that convinces Europeans that somehow they enjoy better health care.  Britain's National Health Service is spending millions of pounds trying to buy off whistleblowers who may expose the NHS's problems.  Just like the Soviet Union, government health care can be considered an "empire of lies."

Marine Corps' Opposition to Homosexuals Serving in the Military

It says much about how seriously Clinton bungled the affair that it now takes a Congressional statute to repeal the ban.  It used to be simply a bureaucratic rule.  By raising public awareness of the issue, Clinton only succeeded in leading Congress to pass the rule as a Congressional statute.  As a bureaucratic rule, Clinton could have repealed it using his authority as commander-in-chief just as President Truman imposed racial integration in the military with his pen.  Thanks to Clinton's bungling, repealing the rule is now harder than it was.  Nobody says that the Law of Unintended Consequences always yields negative results.

Another Frivolous Law Suit Dismissed

I am delighted to report that the 2nd Circuit Court ruled by 7-4 to dismiss a law suit filed by a Canadian who was subject to extraordinary rendition in 2002.

Another Example of Obama's Ineptitude

The Palestinians are now complaining that the Obama Administration is responsible for killing off the peace process.  This is amusing because the Obama Administration started off by demanding total Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank, thus raising unrealistic Palestinian hopes.  It also helped unite the Israeli people behind PM Netanyahu who rejected this absurd demand.  After a few months of dawdling, the Obama Administration had to back down and pretend that they endorse natural settlement growth all along.  While the Palestinians are guilty of naivete and opportunism, they are not entirely wrong in suggesting that the Obama Administration completely bungled this affair.

In related news, the Israelis found out about the Syrian nuclear site they destroyed in 2007 by planting a Trojan horse virus in the computer of a Syrian officialThe terrorist group Hamas tested a missiel that can reach Tel Aviv, the largest Israeli city.

The Importance of a Confession

Iranian dissidents will apologize for the seizure of the US embassy in 1979.  This demonstrates the maturity of the Iranian opposition.  The high hopes of the 1979 revolution ended in a disastrous war with Iraq and a cruel theocracy.  By repudiating what the theocracy considers to be a high point of their reign, the opposition is making a decisive break with the 1979 revolution.  It's a pity that this mature act comes during the Obama Administration which is determined to kowtow to Tehran, no matter the cost.  A much more realistic administration would take advantage of this opportunity.

Murderous Compassion

The unintended and cruel consequences of kindness.

The Scramble for Africa

Chinese, South Korean, and Persian Gulf states' businesses have bought enough land in Africa as large as Italy.

No Vicious Dictatorship Left Behind

The Obama Administration is reaching out to the government of Burma.  This comes months after the revelation that the Burmese government is working on a nuclear program and is consistent with Obama's naive effort of reaching out to Iran.

Making Criminals Pay

The sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts want criminals to pay rent, haircuts, health care, and education.  This is only fair.  It was not the state that encouraged these thugs to commit the crimes that caused them to be imprisoned in the first place.  There is no reason why the taxpayers should foot the bill.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Obama Sells Access to White House

The 2008 Obama campaign's slogan ought to have been "Hope for No Change."

Obama Discovers Usefulness of State Secrets Privilege

The Obama Administration invoked the state secrets privilege to dismiss a law suit relating to the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap program.  In related news, the 16 US intelligence agencies received $49.8 billion in FY2009.

Colombia's New Agreement With the US

It gives the US access to 7 Colombian military bases and increases US troop presence in their country to 1,400/year for 10 years.

Eurozone Unemployment Rate at 9.7% in September

It's their worst record since 1999.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Obama's Top Fundraisers Received Government Posts

More than 40% of President Obama's top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas....

US GDP Grew by 3.5% in Q3

The depression officially ended.  In related news, the "cash for clunkers" program cost the federal government $24,000/new car sold to administer even though the subsidy to car buyers was only $4,500.  Once again, we have the legendary inefficiency of the federal government at work.  In addition, the $787 billion stimulus package led to plenty of misleading, erroneous, or downright fraudulent reportingThe federal government also subsidized the average Amtrak passenger by $32 in 2008.  All these economic blunders certainly hasn't stopped the Obama Administration from wanting to expand control over more businesses.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Washington State's Labor Union is Good for South Carolina

Boeing chose to locate an assembly plant in South Carolina instead of Washington state after the former voted to oust their union.

UN Making a Pest of Itself Again

UN whines that US use of unmanned drones to carry out targeted attacks on terrorists may violate international law.  Though I regard this as complete nonsense, it does pose a very interesting issue for the Obama Administration.  Apparently, VP Biden has been advocating increased use of such targeted attacks.  Perhaps he should be considered a war criminal?

Britain is Funding Palestinian Atrocities

Britain is giving the Palestinians more than $32 million/year to fund their police forces who are responsible for torture and murders.

North Dakota's Oil Wealth

North Dakota produced 6.38 million barrels of crude in May, edging Louisiana, which had 6.34 million barrels for the month. Oklahoma was ranked fifth, at 5.7 million barrels for that month....
North Dakota averaged 206,000 barrels daily in May, compared with 205,000 barrels for Louisiana.

Ancient Greeks Founded Massalia/Marseilles in 600 B.C.

They introduced wine to ancient Gaul.

Curry can Combat Cancer

The chemical curcumin found in curry spice can kill cancer cells.

Robins can See Magnetic Field

The information, relayed to a specialised light-processing region of the brain called ''cluster N'', helps the robin find its way on migration flights.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Party of Corruption, Part 82

Congressmen John Murtha (Democrat, Pennsylvania) and James Moran (Democrat, Virginia) steered $12 million in federal contracts to a software company that happened to:

a) operate in their district,
b) hire their former staff as well as Murtha's brother, and
c) donated thousands of dollars to their campaigns.

Welfare Fraud is Big Business

Medicare fraud costs $60 billion/year.  That's about 12% of Medicare's total spending.  It's larger than Microsoft's total annual revenue.  If a company regularly loses 12% of its revenue to fraud, it would be out of business a long time ago.  Only the federal government can afford to keep on dumping money down this bottomless pit.  In related news, doctors are continuing to opt out of Medicare.  Apparently, the way foreign government health care plans treat the problem of pay for doctors is to institute price controls which will create shortages in medical personnel and also raise taxes.

Castro's Sister = CIA Spy

Castro's sister was a CIA spy from 1961-4.

Pliosaur Skull Found

The 7.8ft (2.4m) skull of the predator, which lived 150 million years ago, could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found, and could measure up to 52.48ft (16m).

Monday, October 26, 2009

Did Obama Try to Remove Afghan President Karzai?

One can understand Afghan President Hamid Karzai questioning the Obama Administration's reliability by recognizing the possibility that Obama is trying to engineer his own regime change in Afghanistan.  How else to explain Democratic strategist James Carville's decision to travel all the way to Afghanistan to help one of Karzai's opponents?  This certainly would not be the first time that Democrats sent their political consultants abroad to engineer regime change.  In 1999, Carville also went to Israel and successfully unseated PM Netanyahu.  Democrats also went to Russia in 1996 to help President Yeltsin win his election.

There is no reason for Karzai to take this attempt at regime change any better than Saddam Hussein.  That may have prompted him to engage in voter fraud.  I also doubt that it was an accident that the candidate Carville assisted happened to advocate a cease-fire with the Taliban.  This is beginning to look like an attempt by Obama to remove Karzai and install a government that will give Obama an excuse to withdraw US troops.  However, this amateurish attempt at regime change blew up in Obama's face.  What he got instead is a weakened Karzai that he was compelled to support.  This mess of Obama's own creation will only aid the Taliban.

Democrats seem to have a pattern of trying regime change on the cheap, only to have it backfire.  Though Clinton successfully removed Netanyahu from power, he still failed to achieve lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  What he got instead was the 2nd Intifada.  To go back further, it was President Kennedy who authorized the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his replacement by a military dictatorship.  Let's hope Obama's bumbling in Afghanistan doesn't end as badly.

Republicans seem to prefer much more expensive options for regime change that tend to yield better results.  The surge effort stabilized Iraq.  President Reagan's invasion of Grenada also ensured peace for that island.  In contrast, Kennedy's half-hearted effort at Bay of Pigs guaranteed communist control of Cuba for decades.

Race and IQ

Pregnant Latino women smoke and drink less than pregnant white and African American women, Latino newborns have lower infant mortality rates, and the cognitive skill of infants 9 to 15 months are about equal for white and Latino children.
But by the time they are toddlers, Latino children trail their white counterparts by up to six months in understanding words, speaking in more complex sentences and performing such simple tasks as assembling puzzles.
The best that the researchers can do is to recommend something like the Early Head Start program.  But interestingly enough, the article makes no effort to identify any evidence that Early Head Start works as advertised.  In fact, studies on the effectiveness of early intervention programs tend to show the following:

a) The program is either completely ineffective or shows such marginal improvements (0.1-0.3 standard deviation) that call into question their cost-effectiveness.
b) The improvements tend to fade away unless there is constant reinforcement.  In other words, early intervention like Head Start can never end because as soon as they do, the improvements will gradually disappear.

The history of early intervention programs is a history of false hopes.  Consider the Knowledge is Power Program:
Yet as Tough appreciates, the story isn't quite that simple. He credits KIPP with having devised a genuinely successful formula for many students. But almost alone among mainstream journalists, he also points out just how much the program's success depends on superhuman commitment from its teachers, which is always going to be hard to replicate on a large scale, and on culling the best students from impoverished neighborhoods. Although its schools technically operate by lottery, researcher Richard Rothstein has shown that parents who seek out KIPP academies and other charter schools are invariably more educated and more competent than parents who don't. Indeed, according to Tough, KIPP's own internal data show that its students enter KIPP already outperforming their poor, minority-group peers. KIPP then builds, albeit more successfully than most charter programs, on these gains.
Similarly, the authors of the bestseller Freakonomics concluded that IQ is strongly hereditary.

Talking about these marginal improvements, bought at great cost, only raises another, even thornier question: Why should disadvantaged children be given such assistance in the first place?  After all, it's not as if somehow, such programs only work on disadvantaged children.  So, why not target such programs at more gifted children who, with the help of such programs, may scale even greater heights?

But even these questions avoid the ultimate and most unspeakable question: If IQ is mostly determined by heredity and if various intervention programs are not cost-effective, then what are we supposed to do about those who are destined for a life of mediocrity?  To suggest doing nothing is to suggest that people who are strongly correlated with certain racial minorities are doomed to spend the rest of their lives on the lower end of the social hierarchy, that the concept of upward mobility is a myth, that the ancient feudal idea of descendants inheriting their parents' stations in life was right all along, that the concept of Progress may apply to human civilization as a whole but not to generations of individual families and that there is such a thing as a primary engine behind Progress and that unique designation is almost exclusively confined to a few races.

Perhaps seeking refuge in the illusory hope of "an early intervention program that works" is much easier than having to deal with those issues.  At least psychologically, it is more comforting than facing those unpleasant possibilities.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Obama's Idea of Transparency

The Obama Administration is trying to prevent "release of documents about who lobbied Congress to give immunity to the telephone companies that cooperated with Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program."

Another Reason Why US Should Expel the UN

The UN will be investigating affordable housing in New York City.  Apparently, having affordable housing is a human right and if the city fails to provide it, that will be a human right violation.  No doubt that will then be used as an excuse to increase government spending.

Tensions Between China and India

The Chinese will assist Pakistan in a hydro-electric project in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.  Meanwhile, India will permit Dalai Lama to visit a region that is disputed by China.  New Delhi is also building up its military to counter Chinese military build-up in southern Tibet.

Britain's Thought Police

67-year-old grandmother who complained about a homosexual parade was investigated and her complaint was treated as a "hate incident."

Spanish Unemployment Rate at 17.9% in Q3

This is the highest level in the EU.

"Octo-Fish"

A starfish with 8 legs.

A 2-Pounder

Fruitadens haagarorum was a dinosaur that was 30 in. long and weighed 2 lbs.

The Perfect Gravy

Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry put their formidable talents together to resolve this difficult problem that has plagued the human race for centuries.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Obama's Dithering is Costing American Lives



























Note: "Surge complete" means that all the troops earmarked for the surge effort were in place.  Data taken from iCasualties.

The above two charts show the remarkable effects of the Iraq troop surge in cutting down both American and Iraqi casualties.  The following is a timeline relating to Gen. McChrystal's troop request:

8/10: Member of Gen. McChrystal's assessment team suggested that 45,000 troops are needed.

9/2: Gen. McChrystal submitted his strategy plan to Obama.

9/18: Washington Post reveals that someone instructed Gen. McChrystal to delay submitting his troop request.

10/2: Senate Democrats blocked proposal to invite Gen. McChrystal to testify before Congress about his Afghanistan strategy.

10/9: Wall Street Journal reported that someone convinced Gen. McChrystal to minimize his troop request to 40,000.  The maximum option is 60,000.

10/11: The Obama Administration is ignoring warnings by the military, the intelligence community, and the State Department about the problems associated with a limited targeted strike campaign.

Political influence abounds in this sorry saga.  We find Democrats thwarting Gen. McChrystal at every turn.  It is clear that even before he submitted his report in early September that he already knew what the troop request should be.  The separation of the troop request from his strategy plan is bizarre, to say the least.  After all, the extra troops are necessary in order to carry out his strategy.  Why should the troop request be delayed for nearly a month after he submitted his report?  We are now nearly at the 2-month mark since Gen. McChrystal submitted his report and Obama continues to dither.  The 2 charts above clearly suggest that such a delay will only cost extra American and Afghan lives.

I once noted the astonishing contrast between Obama when he was campaigning for president and his position now on the issue of Afghanistan.  These efforts to delay Gen. McChrystal's troop request and now to dither without reaching a decision are consistent with Obama's pattern of using Afghanistan as a political talking point.  Now that he won the election, the talking point has become inconvenient and Obama is now living in denial, hoping that the issue will somehow disappear if he ignores it long enough, grasping for an alternative that the national security community already warned him is unlikely to succeed.  It is politics, not strategic imperatives that drives Obama's Afghanistan policy.

Rethinking the Battle of Agincourt

New historical analyses suggest that the "English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one."

Friday, October 23, 2009

Obama's Enemies List

First they went after Chrysler bondholders.  Then they went after the health care industry.  Then they went after the Chamber of Commerce.  Now they're going after Fox News.  Obama has been far tougher on his domestic adversaries than on Iran and North Korea.  Apparently, he's quite willing to talk to Tehran and Pyongyang but not go for a Fox News interview.

NATO Endorsed Gen. McChrystal's Afghanistan Strategy

Further isolating the Obama Administration in their quixotic quest to consider unrealistic alternatives such as the one proposed by that great military mind, VP Biden of targeted strikes.  Even the limited surge this year has already stabilized a significant part of Helmand province.  The surge strategy has already been tried and succeeded in Iraq and has already met limited success in Afghanistan.  It was endorsed by Gen. Petraeus, architect of the US success in Iraq; and Gen. McChrystal, an expert on counter-insurgency warfare and appointed to his position by Obama.  Obama's current dithering is inexcusable.

GOP Should Block New Arms Control Agreement With Russia

Russian development of the RS-24/SS-27 missile threatens to violate the existing Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Snapshot of Foreign Economies

British GDP declined by 0.4% in the 3rd quarter of this year, marking the 6th consecutive quarterly contraction and the longest period of economic depression for that country since 1955.  But at least they haven't sunk to the level of Venezuela which is suffering from a water shortage.  Meanwhile, China is claiming a GDP growth rate of 8.9% in the 3rd quarter.  Finally, Japan's government debt has reached twice the size of its GDP.

Littoral Combat Ship

Independence, a 418-foot warship built in Alabama, boasts a top speed in excess of 45 knots, or about 52 mph, and sustained 44 knots for four hours during builder trials that wrapped up this month off the Gulf Coast. The 378-foot Freedom, a ship built in Wisconsin by a competing defense contractor, has put up similar numbers.

Blue Rose

It will now be sold publicly in Japan.

Sunken Treasure Near Durham Cathedral

[T]he riverbed below Durham Cathedral has given up a bewildering secret: a hoard of ecclesiastical gold and silver, including medals, goblets, and crucifixes once owned by the Queen, the pope and other state and church leaders.

Magpies Feel Grief and Hold Funerals?

Anthropomorphism or reality, you decide.

JKCS041

The JKCS041 galaxy cluster is 10.2 billion light years away.