"The team finds that the Arctic has been warming up, but that there are now some signs that it may be starting to cool down."

Nature just won't cooperate with the naturalists' agenda.

H/T: The Corner on National Review Online

"That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them."

This military blog post is well worth reading. It concludes as follows, "Here's one soldier whose morale is not being ground down by the enemy he faces. If it's being eroded, it's by the people who putatively support him."

One of the giants of this or any other age, Milton Friedman, has died.

Godspeed, Milton.

Update: Instapundit posts a link to more praise here.

Schadenfreude at the expense of members of the Democrat party today. First we have former Senator and former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards issuing a lame explanation for an attempt to obtain a Playstation 3 from...Wal-Mart, bane of the left's existence.

Next we have Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi failing in her first effort to place her loyalists in key positions that will be controlled by the Democrat party. "The Democratic caucus voted 149-86 for Hoyer."

Perhaps the other members of her party believed Rep. Pelosi when she promised the "most ethical Congress in history." They knew, apparently better than she, that placing an unindicted co-conspirator from the ABSCAM scandal in the 1980's in the Majority Leader's chair was not consistent with that promise.

An American woman learns that wearing the Abaya is not seen as just wearing a garment, but is an external indicator that the wearer obeys a set of religious laws that as far from feminism as can be imagined.

Multiculturalism, meet the rock and the hard place.

Two interesting posts on energy policy today. Iain Murray in The Examiner asks, "What will we do when America's lights go out?"

Tom Evslin's excellent Fractals of Change blog suggests that France (France?!) may have a workable policy idea to use trade and taxation to ensure that countries that adopt carbon sequestration and similar measures to reduce emissions are not at a disadvantage to countries that do not.

An excerpt from Iain's article: "Soon after the widespread blackouts of 2003, the Electric Reliability Organization was etablished, and it recently issued its first report. That report makes for grim reading because the nation’s electric power infrastructure is on the brink of collapse."

And: "The ERO projects that U.S. demand will increase by 141,000 megawatts (MW) over the next 10 years. Supply, however, will increase by only 57,000 MW, and that assumes that all currently proposed new facilities are approved and built."

If the Democrats are serious about responsible environmental policy, they should encourage investment in practical solutions that reduce emissions while increasing our electrical supply in order to enable the continued growth and prosperity of the economy. More use of safe, modern nuclear power plants and innovative sequestration approaches like the Great Plains Synfuels Plant in North Dakota are available, economically viable solutions today.

Here's more on the Great Plains Synfuels Plant:

"At the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, North Dakota, some 13,000 tonnes per day of carbon dioxide gas is captured and 5000 t of this is piped 320 km into Canada for enhanced oil recovery. This Weyburn oilfield sequesters about 85 cubic metres of carbon dioxide per barrel of oil produced, a total of 19 million tonnes over the project's 20 year life. The first phase of its operation has been judged a success."

Betsy Newmark posts an excerpt from an interview with Mark Steyn during which Mark exposes uncomfortable truths for Europe. Once you read the excerpt at her site, you'll follow her advice and read the rest.

If you believe that democracy isn't compatible with Iraqi society, then how can it make sense for democracies to import incredibly large numbers of Islamic immigrants whose numbers grow to 20-40% of the population of major cities, if not the countries as a whole? What happens to democracies when non-democrats swell to near majority levels? What will happen to countries that were dictatorships not so long ago themselves?

Is anyone in Europe paying attention?

Various people continue to kick the Stern report and scientifically ignorant politicians around. To them I say, good.

I am quite pleased with the results of the two questionnaires that I answered recently. Does this mean that Obi-Wan is a Republican?

My results:
You are Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan Kenobi 74% Qui-Gon Jinn 72% R2-D2 70% Chewbacca 68% Lando Calrissian 66% Mace Windu 66% Han Solo 66% Luke Skywalker 65% Yoda 63% Boba Fett 62%

You are civilized, calm, and have a good sense of humor, even when those around you don't. You can hold your own in a fight, but prefer it when things don't get too exciting.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)


Click here to take the Star Wars Personality Quiz

Was this ever in question?

You scored as Republican. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Republican 92% Anarchism 83% Democrat 33% Socialist 33% Green 17% Communism 17% Nazi 0% Fascism 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

Earlier today, we again marked "The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month." Originally established to honor the veterans of World War I and remind us of a commitment to end war that proved impossible to keep.

Today the day is for the veterans who served in all wars, especially those who gave their lives in the defense of freedom for us all. My thoughts go to my own Father, gone now for a little over 14 years. He was one of the many thousands of infantrymen to land on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He fought through the Battle of the Bulge. He lost some hearing, and was injured when a building he was clearing collapsed after being hit by shellfire. He returned home to Georgia, somehow found his way to Mobile, Alabama, and met my Mother in 1953. I came along in October of 1954 after they had returned to Georgia and started their lives together in Macon.

There are still thousands of such men alive today. They endured incredible danger and hardship to fight an implacable enemy who had swept all before him from the late thirties until mid-1942. They battled an enemy dug in on tiny nameless islands across the Pacific. Those that survived returned home and started us on a great adventure that exhibited the might of America. While scrimping to buy their own homes, to start families, to attend night school, to work one or more jobs, their taxes paid for the restoration of Europe, the occupation and restoration of Germany and Japan, and to hold back the tide of Communism. They were heroes on the battlefield, and loyal Americans on the home front. The enemies of America underestimated them time and again.

Today we honor these men, and veterans of other wars who have made sacrifices in other places and other times just as great. I honor them, but most of all, I honor my Father. I thank him for more things than I can possibly say; mostly for his love, his faith and encouragement, his example. I love you and miss you, Dad, and I hope to be able to say that and more to you one day when we're all together again.

The Democrat party wins, and "Voters gain faith in American elections." Nice to see that in print.

The whole notion of attempting to accuse the other (winning) party of nationwide election fraud is ridiculous, and is dangerous to the republic. We still need to find out what ACORN has done, but this election appears to have been generally fair overall.

I hope that any efforts to circumvent the Electoral College have been put aside forever. Otherwise, we would have large groups of disenfranchised states and wholesale opportunities for voter fraud nationwide.

The post-election and Rumsfeld resignation aftershocks continue.

I am more concerned about the impact of Secretary Rumsfeld's departure on force morale and enlistment/reenlistment rates than on the possible political benefits during the just completed election cycle. Still, it appears that his departure was handled so badly that there is a distinct possibility of negative impact on both aspects of the issue.

I became a huge fan of the Oakland A's when I moved to the Bay Area in 1980. The Giants were just "OK"; the A's had it all.

Now on ESPN: "Athletics have deal with Cisco for Fremont site." What would Billy Martin say?

This will put Fremont on the map, and contribute to the continuing demise of the city of Oakland.

Ann Althouse has one of the best post-election takes I've read yet.

Read the whole thing. I especially like this part:

"What I'm concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I'm upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country -- a country we conquered with overwhelming military power -- merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won."

In The Register: "The myth of the home-bake terror nuke 'cookbooks': Who needs Iraqi A-bomb plans anyway?"

Now they tell us!

Here's an excerpt:

"Astute readers know that news organizations like the Times never have trouble finding experts who will attach the worst possible interpretation to security issues. This is part of the inescapable nature of the war on terror. Sometimes there is unvarnished truth from them. But quite often they are just an appropriate-sounding bleat of concerned noise out of the religious belief and slogan, '9/11 changed everything.'

Now, to further soil your underwear with demonical atomic menaces to America, let's take a trip to a news item in the Los Angeles Times a couple weeks earlier. The security problem: The US government's nuclear materials storage facility at Oak Ridge, TN, wasn't superheroically protected enough against potential terrorist assaults, terrorists who could assemble and detonate an improvised nuclear device in minutes. That's right, minutes. 'It is believed such a device could have a yield equal to that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb,' wrote the newspaper.

The reader should be left wondering why anyone needs plans to put together an atom bomb if terrorists under fire can lash one together in a relative moment.

But this, too, originates specifically from - guess where - the New York Times. Chasing the suicidal nuke bomber threat, Matthew Wald of the paper dug up the expert in 2002. In this instance it was Frank von Hippel of Princeton University, saying, as paraphrased by the paper, 'that a 100-pound mass of uranium dropped on a second 100-pound mass, from a height of about 6 feet, could produce a blast of 5 to 10 kilotons.' Which, you'll note, is less than the Hiroshima bomb although still a pretty big bang.

Von Hippel also seemed to indicate to the Times that any such improvised blast might yield as little as a kiloton and that actually finding the right kind of uranium would be 'a challenge.' Nevertheless, the story has been flogged by news organizations and a public interest group interested in security whoopie cushions and gotchas since then, conjuring the images of an al Qaeda team with atom scientists more expert than US atom men, jerry-rigging chunks of weapons grade uranium onto a hoist while machine gun fire envelops them.

Historically, Manhattan Project scientist Luis Alvarez's 1988 autobiography used to be the primary source for this idea. Alvarez wrote 'With modern weapons grade uranium the background neutron rate is so low that terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high yield explosion by dropping one half of the material on to the other half.' When citing Alvarez, other physicists used to tend to mention there was no guarantee this would work at all.

Mark, for example, claimed, 'What [Alvarez] meant by 'high yield' or 'good chance" are not explained...' You tend not to find such statements, however, in newspapers because they spoil the narrative.

And it would seem if North Korea had known how simple it all is, it could have saved itself the embarrassment over a botched first test shot.'

Democrat party takes the Senate, Senator Joe Lieberman welcomed back like the black sheep of the family during the holidays. The far-left nutroots will call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and endless investigations of the Administration. Are they prepared for the consequences of the former? Another episode like the Vietnamese boat people and the killing fields in Cambodia? Time will tell.

There are many postmortems on the election out now, and there will be many more to come. I like the take of the Best of the Web Today so far.

We now return to the era of divided government. An era where there will be much heat, but less light. Perhaps that is best; as Thomas Paine said, "That government is best which governs least." We will certainly see fewer earthshaking changes at the Federal level.

Over the next two years, it will be interesting to watch the 50 states to see which of them produce the best results. Like 50 distinct laboratories, one of them may produce a leader--or may have already done so--who is worthy to lead the nation.

The House has swung to the Democrat party. The Senate is in the balance. There are three Senate races that are too close to call. There will be a recount in the VA race. MO looks like a Democrat pickup. Not enough returns are in as of 11:05 Pacific time to call, although the Democrat challenger is in the lead.

Click here to see the results for the WA races.

My old associate going back to the late 80s (when I was Apple's Networking and Communications Evangelist), Toby Nixon, appears to be going down to defeat in his race to return to the state senate. Toby is a terrific person, with a wonderful family. He is a legendary figure in the evolution of PC communications--he worked at Hayes Communications back when "Hayes modem" was the standard. I believe that he still works at Microsoft, and does important work there. I'm sure that he'll continue in public service in some capacity. He was a very good senator, and his defeat is a loss for the people of the state of Washington.

Eureka! Stem cell breakthrough to aid heart attack victims! Oh, it is based on the original adult stem cell breakthrough, bone marrow injections into the heart.

Nevermind, Michael Fox, nothing to see here...

I'm taking a different approach to "watching" the election results this year--at least at this point. I have two machines up. My laptop running Windows Vista RC2 is streaming Hugh Hewitt's program over on KKOL AM. By the way, Firefox 2 plus the common add-ins runs fine on Vista.

My main machine has Firefox up with 8 tabs. I am in love with Google Reader; I have all of the best bloggers in a category called "opinion" open in a tab that I refresh frequently. I have tabs dedicated to The Truth Laid Bear's wonderful election tracker, Fox News election page, and to CNN's Blog Party--at least for now.

Many pundits predicted a loss of both houses to the Democrat party. A smaller number predicted that the Republicans would retain both houses. I agree with Captain Ed that the Democrat party is likely to take the House--the only question is by how much--but the Republicans are going to hold the Senate--narrowly.

Hugh Hewitt's post reminds me that there is a corollary to the old saw, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This year, "insults are in the ear of the listener".

Here's an excerpt that includes Hugh's response to Jonathan Chait of the LA Times:
"Everybody in professional politics, conservative or liberal," Chait wrote, understands that Kerry was trying to make a joke about Bush. And yet the GOP has succeeded in convincing the country that he was denigrating American soldiers." Which means that those who disagree with Chait must be stupid or lying. That group includes a vast number of men and women in the military, as has been pointed out repeatedly across the web. MSMers like Chait refuse to acknowledge their opinions and judgments. They don't want those opinions and judgments to be counted, just like the military's votes in Florida in 2000.

Meanwhile, in geek news, George Ou paints Robert Cringely as a fool or worse for his lack of knowledge of the issues addressed by IPv6 in "Robert Cringely shows blatant ignorance of networking". The link contains the article that sparked George to smack down Robert. Here's a sample:

"As for your comments on NAC, you're sounding like a crackpot conspiracy theorist lunatic. NAC has absolutely nothing to do with charging for every PC in your house, it is an optional technology for corporate LANs. There is no secret plan to put an 802.1x NAC capable switch on to your home network. If anything, moving away from NAT and on to IPv6 would allow ISPs to see how many devices you have in the home and potentially charge you for every device on your home. As it stands now, the ISP can only see the single IPv4 address on your personal router."

While George is scathingly correct in his fisking of Robert, after reading Robert's original article and George's response, I'm reminded of this.

So do I, young war heroes, so do I.













H/T: Michelle Malkin.

James Q. Wilson pens a must-read indictment of "The Press at War". It is well worth your time to read, especially less than 48 hours prior to the closing of the polls in America.

Hang him high.

Austin Bay applies a coup de grace to John Kerry's pathetic and revolting vitriol and non-apology apologies.

H/T: Instapundit.

Fox News' Steve "Danger" Harrigan experiences waterboarding firsthand.

Interesting to hear his reactions during all three phases. It has a much happier ending than other videos that have been published from Iraq.

John Kerry, no one is laughing at your joke, no matter how many times your water-carriers try to explain it or edit it after the fact. This father's tale is worth your time to read.


Sadly, I expect to see stories about issues with military voting. I didn't have to wait long.

The Democrat party--they support the troops, you know. That is, until it comes time for those who preserve and defend the Constitution are about to take the opportunity to exercise their rights under it.

According to Wikipedia, schadenfreude is a German word meaning "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune." Once the editors at the New York Times and their Democrat allies let this soak in--and after Rush and company trumpet it throughout the new media tomorrow--the schadenfreude is all going to be on the other foot.

Essentially, the New York Times story validates the pre-war worries about WMD. The Times and IAEA attempt to blame the Bush Administration for somehow leaking the information to help Iran.

As though A. Q. Khan, North Korea and China hadn't already gotten there first.

Here's Captain Ed with an especially large helping.

Update: Jim Geraghty's take is even better.

Arnold Kling posits "Operation Sunscreen" at TCS Daily as an alternative to Kyoto-like approaches to global warming. Photo accompanies the article.

Christopher Hitchens latest, "The indecent haste to exit Iraq," is another sterling defense of our mission in Iraq.

Excerpt:

"But the many disappointments and crimes and blunders (the saddest of which is the utter failure to influence Iran, and the corresponding advantage taken by Tehran-backed militias) do not relieve us of a responsibility that is either insufficiently stressed or else passed over entirely: What is to become, in the event of a withdrawal, of the many Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who do want to live in a secular and democratic and federal country? We have acquired this responsibility not since 2003, or in the sideshow debate over prewar propaganda, but over decades of intervention in Iraq's affairs, starting with the 1968 Baathist coup endorsed by the CIA, stretching through Jimmy Carter's unforgivable permission for Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, continuing through the decades of genocide in Kurdistan and the uneasy compromise that ended the Kuwait war, and extending through 12 years of sanctions and half-measures, including the "no-fly" zones and the Iraq Liberation Act, which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote. It is not a responsibility from which we can walk away when, or if, it seems to suit us."

The anti-war left that glories in what they call America's defeat in Vietnam ignores the consequences of our withdrawal of US troops and of support for anti-Communist governments in the region--the Vietnamese boat people, the Cambodian killing fields, to name two. I don't want our nation to go through years of guilt and self-doubt over a mission and a people that believed in America, only to see both abandoned to a terrible fate. This expansionist enemy wants to force America back as it expands, just as the Communists did. We cannot fail to show resolve now in a self deceiving hope to return to the "What me worry? 1990s.

Omar Fadhil (AKA Iraq the Model) has written a plea to America to remain by the side of Iraq; it's a far better case than I can make.

Once again, the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal section comes through with must read content. This time, there are two articles on global warming, both of which address the recent Stern report from the UK.

Here's an excerpt from the first article:
"Unlike the Stern report and its patrons, those of us who take a skeptical approach to these doomsday climate scenarios aren't trying to end the discussion. The Earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and this may be partly attributable to human behavior. But everything else--from how much warmer, to the extent of mankind's contribution, to the cost of doing something about it--remains very much in dispute.

Some of the Stern review's recommendations, such as carbon trading rights, are also worth debating. But most of its proposals are merely openings for government to expand its role in allocating investment, raising taxes and otherwise controlling economic decisions. Socialism was supposed to have died with the Soviet Union, but it is making a comeback under the guise of coping with global warming.

Meanwhile, there are far more urgent, and far less speculative, problems that we know how to solve with the right policies. That message may not get scary headlines, but it would improve the lives of more human beings around the world."

Here's an excerpt from the second article:
"The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.

Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off."

Please read them both, especially the second article by Mr. Bjorn Lomborg.

That noted walking pantheon of justice, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), breathlessly announces that the inspector generals for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "co- ordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.

"These investigations are critical because the Republicans in Congress have ignored this serious problem," Lautenberg said.

He said the investigations "will uncover internal documents and agency correspondence that may expose widespread misconduct." He added, "Taxpayers do not fund scientific research so the Bush White House can alter it."

Messages left Wednesday at the inspector general's offices, which serve as the agencies' internal watchdogs, and the White House Council for Environmental Quality were not immediately returned.

The forecast for Washington, DC tomorrow: high of 53; low of 34 degrees.

Isn’t it now undeniable that US Soldiers in the field
1) read and watch and listen to the media, and
2) are affected/have opinions about it, and
3) their morale is affected by what the media distributes?

The U.N. wants to take over control of ICANN from the US Government. This is not a promising start.

Contact Music quotes from an interview in Vanity Fair: (Sumner)Redstone concluded that his decision to axe (Tom) Cruise "sent a message to the rest of the world that the time of the big star getting all this money is over. And it is! I would like to think that what I did, or what we did, has had a salutary effect on the rest of the industry."

Hmmm. It would appear that moonbats everywhere are beginning to see that words and actions have consequences...

Captain Ed nails the Kerry flap.

Excerpt:

"I'm still pretty torn on this controversy. Had Kerry simply come out yesterday and said, Whoops, my bad -- I left out a couple of key words from the punchline and left the wrong impression -- my apologies!, I think the entire story would have died immediately. However, in his typically tone-deaf manner, he decided to brand the entire incident a Republican smear, despite the fact that he had been quoted accurately.

Now he's left with the argument that he misquoted himself while trying to show off his supposed intellectual superiority over George Bush, and that it's all Bush's fault despite being Kerry's intellectual inferior. Really, no one could have scripted a more hilarious scenario, and the longer Kerry continues this line of defense/offense, the more ridiculous a figure he becomes. It demonstrates clearly that the 'I was for the $87 billion before I was against it' gaffe was no fluke."

That's it in a nutshell: John Kerry misquotes himself and manages to make himself look even more ridiculous than ever.

Update: Drudge points out that the troops understand what Kerry meant.

Peter F. Schaefer writes "More MacArthur, Less Marshall" in TCS Daily that the approach taken in Japan versus that taken in Germany after WWII was more successful. Part of Schaefer's discussion includes the viability of the nation being rebuilt. He points out that the Sioux Indian nation is more of a nation that Tito's Yugoslavia.

This article is worth reading, and it inspired me to search anew for good books on the Marshall Plan and on MacArthur's plan for Japan.

Excerpt:
"Moreover, MacArthur's occupation plan was developed between 1942 and 1945 and then used during the occupation. It was produced by a large team working on the expectation of a hostile invasion and a process of pacification that would cost a million US casualties and millions of Japanese lives. MacArthur knew that he would not be welcomed as a liberator. His team knew there would be much hard work needed to keep the Japanese islands from descending into chaos and violence."

Update: it occurs to me that the Allies began planning for the post-war world long before 1945. Churchill discusses this in his fantastic six volume history of World War II. It would be interesting to know whether President Clinton or his cabinet directed planners in the government to plan for a post-war Iraq after passing the Iraq Liberation Act in October of 1998. If there were plans, why weren't they used? If there weren't, then why pass the bill other than as political theatre?

John Kerry manages to take center stage during the election's closing days as a bad October surprise for the Democrats. He clearly insulted everyone serving in the military today, reminding everyone how the top tier Democrat party elected officials "support the troops". The audio and video are everywhere; here is a roundup on Instapundit.

His press conference today in Seattle managed to make things worse for him and his party. It seems patently ridiculous to assert that his insult to everyone in the military--past and present--was any sort of failed joke aimed at the President. Kerry is a relic who was created by the old media; his presidential aspirations have been canceled by the new media. He just doesn't know it yet.

As today is Halloween, we're reminded of this "separated at birth" image.

Update: I like the Belmont Club's take.

National Review's Corner points to a bizarre story about the man who leaked the President's DUI days before the 2000 election.

Excerpt:
" South Portland police were notified around 9 a.m. that a man wearing a rubber Osama bin Laden mask was standing on top of a berm along the highway carrying a sign that said 'I Love Tabor,' and waving what appeared to be an assault rifle.

Four South Portland officers and two state troopers converged on the man. They drew their guns when he did not respond to their demand that he drop his weapon.

Police said instead he walked toward them dropping plastic hand grenades. His costume included fake dynamite and bandoliers, police said.

He eventually did drop the rifle, which turned out to be a toy and was arrested,..."

The Miami Herald reports on the latest call to entertainers to "just shut up and sing" in "Concertgoer pelts Babs with beverage".

Another milestone in the incredible rise and fall of AOL/Time/Warner/CNN: will Time be the next to go?

Roger Pielke fisks the Stern Report in Stern’s Cherry Picking on Disasters and Climate Change.

Excerpt:

"Why does this matter? The Stern Report uses the cherry-picked information as the basis for one of its important conclusions about the projected costs of climate change(on p. 138),

The costs of climate change for developed countries could reach several percent of GDP as higher temperatures lead to a sharp increase in extreme weather events and large-scale changes.

To support its argument the Stern Report further relies on a significantly flawed report from the Association of British Insurers, which we critiqued here. It’s (sic) presentation of the future costs of disasters and climate change is highly selective to put it mildly."

Update: A Second Hand Conjecture piles on with another thorough fisking. Stern must feel fairly meek by now.

The introduction of an advice column for uptight Seattle residents sparks two questions. First, why did it take so long for a newspaper to start one? Second, how will they have room in the paper for anything else without doubling the number of pages?

H/T: Sound Politics

Plenty of new climate change stories hit the web tonight, including "Tempest erupts over hurricanes: Global warming debate at conference spawns name calling", "Appalachians Triggered Ancient Ice Age", and--you knew there had to be a motive for all these politicians clamoring over global warming--"Pay up--or the planet gets it".

Not to be outdone, Al Gore makes an appearance in another story from the UK.

H/T: Free Republic and the ever vigilant Matt Drudge.

Euro-Humanity on the Wane is a scathing indictment of what has happened to public education in the UK, and how it has underperformed private and "black market" private schools in India.

Quoting from Christopher Chantrill's excellent article: "Contrary to the received notion, it appears that the urban poor are not too poor, or too ignorant, or too feckless to send their children to school—or to pay for it.

And we are idly tossing into the air another very small idea, as inadvertently suggested by the documentary Up Series. What if children suckled at the teat of government schools generally grow up to be adult adolescents, don’t bother to marry, and don’t bother to have children?

They would be well on the way to the status of H.G. Wells’ Eloi in The Time Machine, 'humanity upon the wane,' shortly to fall into the clutches of the Muslim Morlocks. For when society sets itself 'steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword,' it has no need to develop 'intellectual versatility… the compensation for change, danger, and trouble,' until it is too late."

Read the whole thing.

Ronald Bailey's article in Reason, "Climate Change Lemmings Jump Off The Cliff: California signs onto Kyoto Protocol just as it falls apart", contains this prediction by the author: "In any case, based on Europe's current difficulties, I predict that there will be no follow-on Kyoto Protocol-style global treaty and that California will never establish a market in greenhouse gas emissions."

I agree.

The American Thinker summarizes a story in Investor's Business Daily: Brazil points the way to independence from foreign sources of oil: drill domestically!

In "Swans deliver a climate change warning", we see a classic example of burying the lede. You have to read through four paragraphs and most of a fifth in this slanted opinion piece to finally see the following, "Experts said that the slow arrival was due to warmer than usual conditions on the continent, in particular the birds' other main wintering grounds in the Netherlands, and an absence of the north-east winds that aid their migration from the Arctic tundra of northern Russia."

Apparently remaining in the Netherlands over the winter isn't unusual for the swans. As for myself, I'd much prefer Florida.

Like uncountable thousands of Windows users, I have been testing Windows Vista on a backup machine and using that platform to test IE 7. Sparked by a nasty virus/trojan/bho infection that I acquired by recovering files for a friend from his seemingly lost hard drive, I decided to test Firefox 2 on my production machine.

The scales have been lifted; I see clearly now. Download Firefox 2, make it your default browser, and put your browser troubles behind you. Click on the Firefox download button conveniently located in the left column of this blog to protect yourself from all too many nasty exploits and vulnerabilities in IE 6.

BTW, it took the better part of three full days to regain full confidence that my machine was clean again, despite the measures that I had taken prior to the infection. In a later post, I will explain the tools that I used to clean my machine and the new measures that I have taken to protect my production environment in addition to switching to Firefox 2.

"Bad climate science yields worse economics"

An excellent example of truth, succinctly expressed, by Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com's Junk Science columnist.

Mark Cuban does a great service for NBA fans and advances the understanding of the effect of the new synthetic basketball on play this season in his post, "NBA balls...".

The most powerful blog post/podcast combination of the year, if not the decade: President Bush speaks with eight reporters in the Oval Office. The blog post is here; the "podcast" is here.

I hope that the President and his associates, and the RNC at large, take note of the simple power of this format, and repeat it often.

One of the weaknesses that some leaders in the Democrat Party see in their party's infrastructure is the lack of a set of think tanks to help the party develop new policy ideas. One of the Republican party's think tanks, and thinkers, helps the democrats by examining the mishmash of environmentalist/anti-business/Gaia worship/neo-Luddite thinking that Al Gore and his fellow travelers are espousing, especially in "An Inconvenient Truth".

I recommend Steven F. Hayward's article, "The Fate of the Earth in the Balance: The Metaphysics of Climate Change" in AEI Online without reservation.

The Commons Blog links to a post at Dissident Voice that recounts the history of America's lack of support for the Kyoto protocol under the Clinton-Gore administration.

Over at Fausta's blog, we read Larwyn's post: Like teenage girls with "secrets" DEM's leak their own, too

What? They're letting us know that they intend to reverse all of those popular policies, plus give us the Iraqi version of the Vietnamese boat people and Pol Pot's killing fields as a bonus?

H/T: Dr. Sanity

I enjoyed reading Cato-at-Liberty on "The Kyoto Charade."

Quote: "One of the things I keep trying to hammer home to the media is the extent to which legislative promises to meet environmental goal X sometime in the future have almost always been, and likely always will be, meaningless blather.

The reason is simple. Voters love promises to accomplish wonderful things, but they don’t love burdensome policies to secure those wonderful things. Because the public’s attention span is quite limited to say the least, loud and vigorous promises to slay environmental dragons will harvest political capital while subsequent failure to actually slay those dragons will go relatively unnoticed and cost politicians little."

That sums up the entire environmental/global warming movement: make promises impossible to keep, but let everyone feel good about having made them, regardless of the consequences.

Hurrah! A victory for common sense, commerce and the Panamanian people (not necessarily in that order)! Publius Pundit: World Watches Panama Amid Big Victory for Trade

H/T: Instapundit.

In the UK Telegraph, John Keegan writes, "Bush is wrong: Iraq is not Vietnam"

Keegan sums up by saying that "The Vietnam war was not lost on the battlefield, but in the American media's treatment of news from the front line." That is exactly right. Our present day enemy is attempting to follow the same template, as is the MSM.

With a hat tip to James Taranto, what would we do without studies? Probably worry less about global warming and more about whether the Cardinals have a chance against the Tigers.

Tom Evslin can make even a discussion of how to choose replacement windows sound interesting.

Lileks does it. Again.

One of the first Americans to lose his life fighting in post-WWII combat in Vietnam is finally coming home.

Rest easy, "Earthquake."

Kim Jong-il, "Korea's Dr. Strangelove."

"The most common question I get is, 'When are we going to run out of oil?' The correct response is, 'Never.'"

Eric Cheney is a University of Washington economic geologist. He's not related to the other Cheney, although I imagine that they agree on the answer to the question that Eric Cheney answered.

I'm sure that both are correct. Science and technology will provide answers if we are willing to apply them to any problem.

Attention gooks, camel jockeys, and future North Korean losers: your ticket is going to be punched--harder Upgrades Give A-10s New Capabilities

The A-10 is one of my favorite aircraft of all time, along with the "Buff". The B-52 is getting an upgrade as well; even worse news for the bad guys.

Tim Blair's post, "Cease All Movement, captures a big issue in the global warming kerfuffle: "environmentalists" say that scientists are all in agreement that global warming is real, and is due to human industrial activity.

However, lack of debate and continuing research isn't scientific. Scientists haven't given in to demands that they stop research--even under penalty of death. Otherwise, the example made of Giordano Bruno would have "settled" the question of whether the earth was the center of the universe.

More on the chilling effects of scientific censorship here.

H/T: Instapundit.

Now they're calling John Murtha a "mouth breather". This article, entitled 'Confessions of a 'Defeatocrat' in the Washington Post today, is credited to Congressman Murtha but reads like it was ghost written by the "democratic underground", appears to make the case for Instapundit's correspondent.

Republican election angst roundup over at Instapundit.

I'm no expert. I agree that the Republicans have done less than their majorities in both houses could have enabled them to do. However, it's hard for the Democrats to establish that they offered anything other than "no" to any new thinking on entitlements and other real problems, and certainly no serious alternative on Iraq other than "redeployment."

It's a dangerous world. We need serious people in government. If all the Democrats were like Senator Liberman, I'd say that the outcome wouldn't matter too much in the sense that national security would be assured in any case. However, the Democrats gloat over kicking Liberman out of their party. That and their other pronouncements on Iraq and the the war on terror gives me no reason to be comfortable with them influencing national policy at any level.

Often, when reading a post on The Belmont Club, the best comment is simply, "Yeah, that's right--what he said."

This post, on the NYT belated awakening to the crisis in North Korea, is no exception.

Jeremy Lovell of Reuters writes, "Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down, a study said on Friday.

But acting now will avoid some of the massive damage and cost relatively little, said the study commissioned by Friends of the Earth from the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University in the United States."

Gee, the Friends of the Earth paid for a study, and it spells disaster unless we do what they say.

Meanwhile, the guys over at Climate Audit continue to poke holes in the "settled science" around global warming.

George Soros goes on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox News, demands that the conversation turn away from tax shelters to "Policy" as described by the Media Blog on National Review Online: Soros Blows Fuse, Rants At Cavuto for Getting "Personal".

I think that the perfect follow up question would have been, "All right, Mr. Soros, what's your policy on tax evasion?"

If Drudge is right, the Foleygate mess is a terrible prank gone awry, and a terrible indictment of the press and the Democrat party.

Again, if Drudge is right, one wonders how the electorate will react, and whether the Democrats will suffer in November.

Now this is funny: "Mexico warns U.S. of referral to UN over border fencing plan."

I mean, how dare the U.S. enforce its border!

Victoria Crater on Mars.

H/T: The Corner on National Review Online.

On Foleygate, I agree with this emailer to the National Review Online.

Update: Hugh Hewitt links to a Drudge Report post that reports a leak from ABC that included the identity and age of the young recipient of the IMs in question.

One of my favorite sites, Betsy's Page, links to a post entitled "CBS 'FreeSpeech' a barn burner" over at The Anchoress.

The Left's schadenfreude over the Foley scandal is, in part, based on the impression that the Republicans claim the mantle of the party of values, and that scandals like the Foley scandal expose at least one elected Republican as a hypocrite. However, as Betsy points out, Republicans have been punished more and have done the honorable thing and resigned, while Democrats who have engaged in worse conduct--actual sex in a sex scandal, for example--have survived and been reelected.

Of course, this brings to mind that old saw that the public gets the government that it deserves. We deserve better--campaigns that deal with issues and a press that reports them honestly. If we allow the politics of personal destruction to succeed in moving the electorate from the issues and the lack of real plans from the Democrat party to do anything other that undo the progress made by the Republicans and to reinstitute the same failed policies that lead to economic and foreign policy malaise, then we will have failed the country as an electorate.

So now we know the difference between a Meteorologist and a Weatherman.

H/T: Climate Audit.

Could anyone want Hillarycare after reading this? Deroy Murdock on Stethoscope Socialism by Amy Ridenour.

Here's a topic that we can all enjoy: The Longneck Tail A revolution in American beer, by Jay R. Brooks.

I'll have to think about this article by Pete Hegseth, a former officer in the 101st Airborne on the need for more troops in Iraq.

According to OpinionJourmal.com, First Lt. Hegseth served as an infantry platoon leader and civil-military operations officer in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division.

There's an interesting article at Yahoo News entitled, "Did Democrats Page Mark Foley?"

Clarice Feldman writes at The American Thinker about the incredibly propitious timing of the Foley affair in "Investigate This". The incredible comparisons with the record of the Democrats that she includes, courtesy of Gateway Pundit, makes this a must read.

More sceptical attention to global warming, on the cost to cap emissions and whether or not emissions should be capped without further study.

Update: while considering the questions raised above, also consider the demographics of carbon emissions by the US population over the coming decades.

More: Greenland may be green, again.

And, Gore-d on his own petard.

Even more here on the scientific consensus on global warming.

Interesting take on the crazy Iranian president's visit to the UN and stay in NYC in Mahmoud and Me: Ahmadinejad’s Wild Week, by His Translator, Hooman Majd.

Alternatively, the article could have been entitled, "How Michael Moore somehow managed to miss a free meal and a chance to take a swipe at America and the President."

The subtitle for the article by Adam Lashinsky, Fortune senior writer, on money.cnn.com, Chaos by design, reads, "The inside story of disorder, disarray, and uncertainty at Google. And why it's all part of the plan. (They hope.)", says it all. I'm not sold on the long term positive prospects for any company run by Eric Schmidt of Novell and Sun fame, unless he's not really running it.

The greatest enemy of miners and mining? The answer, according to Phelim Mcaleer, is misguided left-wing Western environmentalists.

From his column:

"...I have come across a lot of tragedies and hard-luck stories as a journalist, but I had never covered a situation where the solution to poverty is being opposed by educated Westerners who think that people really are "poor but happy."

When a representative of Gabriel Resources asked me to write a brochure about the project I declined, but I did suggest that if they did not interfere editorially I would make a documentary.
I gathered up extra funding and the documentary Mine Your Own Business premieres Tuesday at the Denver Gold Forum at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Denver. The film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world.

For Mine your Own Business I started looking beyond Romania and found a similar pattern in very different villages in Africa and South America.

It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development.

However, it is not sad but tragic that the real losers in this clash of cultures are some of the poorest people on the planet."

As they say, read the whole thing.

Phelim McAleer is an Irish-born journalist and documentary filmmaker. The trailer for his documentary can be seen at the preceeding link; it is not posted on YouTube as the article states as of this posting.

Nope, No Fitzmas this year. MSNBC: Fitzgerald given way out of Libby leak case. My favorite part: the NBC News reporter, Joel Seidman, manages to avoid listing all of the reasons why the prosecutor would want to drop the charges. Namely, that Libby didn't commit the crime he was originally investigated for, and the person who could be charged for committing the non-crime, isn't a current member of the Administration.

"WASHINGTON - The judge in the CIA leak case ruled Thursday that if Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald feels that admitting certain classified documents at the upcoming trial of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby can jeopardize national security, Fitzgerald can then move to dismiss the perjury charges against Libby."

Judge Robert G. James of the United States District Court, Western Division of Louisiana is the Federal judge who declared boating illegal in all US navigable waters. A judge with no judgment, or sense, apparently.

The ReporterHerald reports that a Colorado State professor disputes global warming is human-caused

Go, Bill Gray! Go!

I was flipping channels tonight and happened to stop one tuner of my HD TiVo on Charlie Rose on PBS, and the other tuner on a speech by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. Charlie's guest was a New York Times reporter or columnist (is there a difference?) who was prattling on about the import of tomorrow's speech by President Bush at the UN. Bill was recounting his memories of 9/11, and of a conversation that he had that day with Bill Bennett. Bill Kristol remembers wondering whether 9/11 would be a seminal moment in American history or not; he remembers Bill Bennett saying that he believed that it would be.

It struck me that part of America's success is so obvious as to be easily overlooked. We have a society that has agreed to play by the rules. What does that mean? It means that we drive on the right side of the road, we pay taxes, we send our kids to school. Most of us do the normal everyday things that we all take for granted in life. That is the American dream writ large: if you go to school, get pretty good grades, go to college, get pretty good grades, get married after high school (better still, after college, but not too much after), get a job, stay married, stay out of trouble, stay in the job and do the work--you'll have a pretty good life. You may not have a life like a trust fund baby or a stock options millionaire, but you'll be able to afford a lifestyle that would amaze people of not so many decades ago. If you believe in God, do good works in his name, and pass that along to your children, you will be happier still, and will leave a legacy worth leaving.

This great "compact with Americans" works, will continue to work, and is worth defending. It is the legacy that we can leave our children. You can write the life plan expressed in the preceding paragraph down and give it to your children. If they follow it, they'll have a great life too.

We are facing groups of people who do not value normalcy, or reason, or who want to play by the rules as we know them. Their society, if it can be called that, takes offense at nonsense. The American observer sees that it has no humor, it appears to take little joy in life, it does not strive to make a better, safer world for families, children and society. It attacks unbelievers who are real, and who are imagined, to restore the world to a state of anarchy. Anarchy by any definition that an American observer would apply.

Arrayed against these forces of anarchy are a relatively small group of men and women from some of the "first world nations" who have suffered many losses in wars over the centuries. In this country, we have fought wars to free ourselves from colonial rule, to put down pirates, to end slavery, to end tyranny, and to free the oppressed. Most Americans hold certain truths to be self evident, and believe that those truths are worth protecting against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I honor those who have taken on the burden of defending America. American society is the greatest promise that has ever been made, and kept, in the history of mankind. Most Americans are religious, not jihadists, but are peaceful in their worship. If an unbelieving, amnesiac American were to fall into the clutches of a group of Southern Baptists (or any traditional denomination in the country) tomorrow, he or she would probably only have to contend with the consequences of an overdose of fried chicken and of gatherings of concerned families and friends who offered help and prayers. No sabers would be brandished.

Christianity has had a reformation. Western civilization endured its dark ages. Parts of Islam wants to return mankind to a kind of dark age, and rejects reformation and reason at the point of a gun, if not a nuclear weapon or other WMD. Those who follow Islam must learn that the comments that the Pope made are words, not weapons. Those words he quoted from centuries past show how far parts of Islam need to come to join the 21st century. The moderate followers of Islam must speak up, and embrace debate and reform, or embrace anarchy. Those who have found a good and just society based on a simple set of rules and a wonderful promise of a vibrant future will not sit still and watch anarchy destroy their hard won society. They will defend it, hard as it will be, terrible as the price may be. America has always done so, and will do so now.

The President of Iran speaks at the UN tomorrow, in a body formed by Roosevelt, Churchill and other great men at the end of WWII in the hope that war could be averted by the concerted action of nations whose societies chose to "live by the rules". He will do well to pay more attention to the thriving metropolis that surrounds the UN, and the vibrant life and hope seen in the faces of its citizens, than the "light that surrounds him" as he speaks to the General Assembly. The people of Iran, and all people not mislead by leaders drunk with power, desire the promise fulfilled of the "compact with America", and wonder why their leaders don't strive to brink it to their lands, peacefully, to join with the rest of the world in the pursuit of happiness. President Bush understands the promise of freedom, of free markets, and how those simple elements not only created America, but restored prosperity to victor and vanquished alike after WWII. We can only hope that every leader will take the same message home after tomorrow's sessions at the General Assembly.

I am proud to be "Blogging for Bolton", and not at all for Lincoln Chaffee. I'm inclined to agree with Hugh on Chaffee.

The Plameout continues to be a source of good fun. In today's episode, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's prosecutorial conduct is examined by one of his peers who is in a very good position to know whereof she speaks.

What a Load of Armitage! What did Patrick Fitzgerald know, and when did he know it? By Victoria Toensing in Opinionjournal.com

Where is Margaret Thatcher when you need her? Iain Murray discusses White House wobbling on global warming in his post at National Review Online

Update: here's a link to a post by Rich Galen that Iain Murray refers to in The Corner at National Review Online.

Pajamas Media collects a series of posts to pay homage to a woman who stood strong in the face of tyranny throughout her life IN MEMORIAM: ORIANA FALLACI, 1930 - 2006

The Miami Herald reports, "Hulk Hogan's car catches fire on Bay Harbor Islands." Another comeback is sure to be in the works after this.

Betsy's Page's post entitled Giving a "political" speech in wartime excerpts a column by Tony Blankley in the Washington Times that is well worth reading.

Betsy's introduction to the column:

"The Democrats have gotten all up on their high horses about Bush giving a speech on Monday, the anniversary of 9/11, in which he defended the war in Iraq and tried to rally support for that war. Horrors! Apparently, to the Democrats, talking about the war is a political speech. In their minds, it is Bush's war and thus it is a political war. And defending his efforts in the war on terrorism - that's political too. And shouldn't be said. Presidents shouldn't try to rally support when the country is at war if the other party opposes the war. The rules keep changing. Remember when they said that the President wasn't explaining to the American people why we were fighting?"

Google Video has a recording of the PBS debate between Loose Change Vs. Popular Mechanics. I'd say that it should be called on account of incredible ignorance, misreporting, omission of evidence and just silliness.

"As a model of directness, the idea of creating enough chaos to collapse the current world system has few peers."

A must read post at The Belmont Club introduces Lawrence Wright's article in the New Yorker.

From post at The Belmont Club, "The view looking out from within al-Qaeda is completely different from the standard narrative provided by the newspapers. We learn about a man who converted Bin Laden to Salafism and who later accused him of leading the Jihad to catastrophe -- a man who is in US custody. Wright describes the pivotal role of Afghanistan in creating a place for Jihad to train and formulate its plans, and why September 11 is regarded by some Islamic radicals as a complete mistake."

Ann Althouse proves that a picture is worth a thousand words.