Island Turtle

Angela Merkel, solve the Greek problem! No more loans, just buy Greece

2012-01-24T11:48:00.003-05:00

No, I’m not suggesting she buy more Greek debt, I’m talking about buying the country of Greece. Buy it lock, stock and barrel, just like the Americans bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867. Russia was hurting financially from the Crimean war and Czar Nicolas needed to replenish his coffers. Alaska was a drag. Russian hunters had pretty well wiped out the fur seals and nothing would grow in the far north soils because of smelly black stuff that oozed out of it. So he dumped it for $7.2 million on those gullible Americans.

What would Germany and Greece get out of it? Well, Germany would have its own Riviera where aging Germans could lounge in the sun wearing ill fitting thong bathing suits. There would be an unlimited supply of ouzo to cloud their minds. And German cities would see a ton of new, Greek run restaurants. The Greeks would get Mercedes and Volkswagen assembly plants. They, of course, would be manned by Germans so the Greeks, too, could enjoy the delights of ouzo without wasting time working.

It’s win win for everyone.

If you think our real estate bubble was bad, just wait for China to implode

2012-01-11T15:06:00.001-05:00

Thomas Friedman, please take note.

China

’s lack of political wrangling is not an asset, it’s what will drag it down. Friedman’s and other liberals’ utopian dream of a benevolent dictator has never worked. It fails because unrestrained dictators, with the best of intentions, make mistakes – often grandiose mistakes. And when they are criticized and challenged, they fight to hold on to power. And then they become the Stalins, the Pol Pots and the Kim Jong Ils of the world.

And China’s single party autocracy has made a grandiose mistake. It has embarked on a building spree that according to Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has resulted in 64 million unoccupied housing units. Entire cities, designed to house millions, stand empty or nearly empty. Video here Yet the madness continues with construction continuing unabated, because China’s command economy demands it to sustain GDP growth. Why do they sit empty? Because most Chinese simply can’t afford them.

Unoccupied development in Ordos. Note the lack of cars

Speculators own many but it is unclear how many and how they can afford to sit on empty properties with no income. The value of the unsold property is staggering. Based on 64 million units at an estimated $50,000 each, the total is $3.2 trillion worth of unsold properties. It is likely local and provincial governments, which do the actual building, are taking much of the hit.

Newspapers in China are reporting provincial government borrowers are being squeezed. China Daily is reporting many of them are deferring loan payments and it goes far beyond just the real estate market.

China's biggest provincial borrowers are deferring payment on their loans just two months after the country's regulator said some local government companies would be allowed to do so.

Hunan Provincial Expressway Construction Group is delaying payment on 3.11 billion yuan ($490.5 million) in interest, documents governing the securities show this month. Guangdong Provincial Communications Group Co, the second-largest debtor, is following suit. So are two others among the biggest 11 debtors, for a total of 30.16 billion yuan ($4.757 billion – Ed.), according to bond prospectuses from 55 local authorities that have raised money in capital markets since the beginning of November.

As local governments delay payments for projects commissioned as part of the stimulus to ward off recession in 2009, less money is available for bank lending even as China is taking steps to inject more into the economy. The central bank has held interest rates at 6.56 percent since July to boost the economy, while the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan have kept benchmark rates near zero since 2008.

"When companies start to roll over debt they're not retiring debt, and banks aren't retrieving their capital, so you're crowding out new lending," Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said in a Dec 13 interview. "This is a problem that's going to start to bite next year."

Local governments had 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion – Ed.) in debt at the end of last year, 79 percent due to banks, according to the country's first audit released in June. So-called local financing vehicles that meet collateral requirements can have a one-time extension on their loans, Zhou Mubing, vice-chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said at a conference on Oct 24 organized by the Internet portal Sina.com.cn, according to a transcript of his comments on the website.

Guangdong Provincial Communications Group, Hunan Provincial Expressway Construction Group, Gansu Provincial Highway Aviation Tourism Investment Group Co and Sichuan Railway Investment Group Co owe more than 200 billion yuan ($31.5billion –Ed.)to banks, the data show. They plan to defer 34.4 billion yuan ($5.43 billion –Ed.) in interest payments, according to their bond prospectus.

At the heart of China’s problems is the central government’s emphasis on exports. With the stagnation of Europe’s economy, imports from China are in decline and that is slowing China’s growth threatening the nation’s highly leveraged economy. Robert Samuelson in a recent article in Real Clear Politics addresses the problem:

There are warning signs. Economist Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute cites three. First, Europe's slump has weakened China's trade; Europe buys about a fifth of its exports. Second, housing is showing signs of a bubble and is deflating. Finally, China's government will have a harder time deploying a stimulus than during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Government debt rose from 26 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 to 43 percent of GDP in 2010.

He goes on:

Unfortunately, booms breed busts. Buyers ultimately recognize that rising prices reflect artificial demand. Purchases slow. Prices fall. New building declines. The process feeds on itself. With modest imbalances, the result is a correction. Otherwise, there's a crash.

…A popped real estate bubble could exert a big drag. Housing construction exceeds 10 percent of GDP. That's historically high, says Lardy. At a similar stage of economic development, Taiwan's housing investment was 4.3 percent of GDP. In the recent U.S. real estate boom, housing peaked at 6 percent of GDP. In China, housing stimulates much consumer spending (furniture, appliances) and accounts for 40 percent of steel production, notes Lardy. Land sales are also a big revenue source for local governments. All would suffer from a housing bust.

What does all of this mean for the US? First it will mean a reluctance for China to purchase US debt, to better use its resources for itself. That may be the reason for Treasury Secretary Geithner’s current trip to China. With a reluctant

China

, interest rates to finance our debt will rise harming our efforts to keep rates low.

But it could go beyond that. Just as the US was in denial that its overheated real estate market was in danger just before it collapsed, China’s could do so also. An implosion in China would send shockwaves through all developed countries. While its $3 trillion in foreign debt holdings ($1 trillion US) could be sold and used, any such attempt would ruin its value.

OCCUPY THE WHITE HOUSE

2011-12-31T15:09:00.000-05:00

Has anyone in the conservative spectrum thought about the best campaign slogan for Republicans? And one that will backfire on the protestors and their Democratic allies. How about this:

OCCUPY THE WHITE HOUSE

Vote Republican

Horse meat on the dinner table soon? … Only if you can get past the smell

2011-12-31T12:54:00.000-05:00

As part of the spending bill signed by President Obama last month, the 2007 funding ban for USDA inspections of horse meat processing plants was allowed to lapse. With USDA inspection allowed, the door is now open to reviving the horse meat trade. It hasn’t received much play in the press, but animal rights activists are fuming on the blogs, with derogatory remarks about eating Man-O-War or National Velvet. But they need not be worried. There is a reason it won’t catch on – Smell.

In the late 1940s, after my sister was given a pet cocker spaniel for her birthday, horsemeat became part of his life. The vet had great disdain for canned dog food and suggested hamburger or ground horsemeat. As hamburger was pricey, horsemeat was affordable and available at the local butcher shop. So my mother opted for horsemeat. And I was called on to cook it. All three pounds of it. All I can say is it has a unique odor when cooking and it is not pleasant. And you will never forget it.

That happened when several years later the family took a weekend trip to the Poconos in Pennsylvania and had trouble finding a place to eat. In desperation we stopped at a seedy hamburger joint along the road. And there it was, the same odor.

Much has been made that the French consider horse a delicacy. But for me, there isn’t enough garlic in the world to mask that smell.

Why Government can’t run a business ... The Postal Service vs (gulp) The NY Times

2011-09-22T12:18:00.002-04:00

The United States Postal Service has spread the alarms. It has run through a $12 billion federal loan that has kept itself afloat for the past two years and it is now looking for a bailout. It cites declining revenues because of the internet, the inordinate cost of its pension program and the inability to control labor costs because of no-layoff provisions in its union contracts. It wants to cut service to 5 days a week, possibly more and it is planning to slow the delivery of first class mail. It has talked about reductions in force of 120,000, but that is probably more of a scare tactic to pressure Congress into approving emergency funding and granting relief on pension obligations.

The plight of the Post Office and how it is handling its fate stands in stark contrast to that of another private sector group – the newspaper industry. Both are suffering from the effects of internet competition. Both deliver product daily. Both are unionized. Both prefund their pension plans. And both are declining industries. Yet, by and large, newspapers and newspaper groups have kept their heads above water, the Post Office has not. And newspapers have succeeded with far greater rates of revenue declines.

Part of the reason for newspapers resiliency is they have their backs against the wall. They have to solve their own problems. Going to the government trough for a bailout is not an option. It would forever compromise their integrity and believability.

I picked the New York Times as an example, not because it is my favorite paper, it is not. But it is representative of the newspaper industry. It has no broadcast subsidiaries and virtually all its revenue is from newspaper circulation, advertising and more recently internet ads and fees. But the decline in revenue at the Postal Service is nowhere near that of the Times. In the past 5 years, the loss of revenue at the Times has been triple that of the USPS (almost 27%, as opposed to 8% ). Even looking at the 2008 – 2010 year comparison (peak revenue for USPS was 2008) the Times revenues losses were more than double the Postal Service (22.9% vs. 10.5%).

Despite this adversity, the Times is profitable (by a smidgen) and the USPS is facing an $8.3 billion loss. Interestingly, the Times lost money in 2006 and has actually improved its performance. In the same year USPS was well in the black (by its accounting procedures) and is now threatened with insolvency.

Now, why has the Times shown success and the Postal Service not? The Times as most other newspapers has taken aggressive action to control costs. It has reduced force and renegotiated labor contracts. It has sold its broadcasting operations to bolster its cash position. It has outsourced its newsstand sales and bought out its employees to do so. But most of all it has been facing reality. Contrast that to the USPS which recently negotiated its labor contracts with raises it can’t pay. It has lobbied Congress for relief and in general has simply ignored the problem. And it has dug itself into a hole.

The whole mess is an example of the inability of government run enterprises to adapt rapidly to threats. The meddling of Congress is one reason. They refused to approve a rate increase last year the Rate Commission requested. They prefer wasteful Post Offices where they should be either be replaced with private contract operations or simply shut down. They must get out of the way. The example of what the NY Times has accomplished should be used as a model for mail delivery. Nothing should be sacred, be it privatizing major delivery functions, hiring consultants to eliminate inefficiencies, and most of all getting out of the mode of government workplace comfort. Newspapers are reacting to the threat of extinction and making progress. The Postal Service looks for largesse, our largesse.

New management with backbone is the only answer.

Why LightSquared is more than cronyism … It’s about safety

2011-09-20T14:15:00.003-04:00

The recent revelations by Eli Lake at The Daily Beast that a four-star Air Force general was pressured to alter his testimony to favor Light Squared, revealed a new case of cronyism in the White House. Now a second individual has now come forward to say he too was urged to parrot OMB suggested text in his testimony - that the OMB wants expedited testing for frequency interference. He refused to do so out of safety concerns. From The Daily Beast:

The four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode —confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee —is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.

Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone.

LightSquared hopes to become a satellite based phone operation similar to land based cell phone service providers. It seeks to use additional unused frequencies adjacent to the GPS band that currently provide a buffer to GPS service. Interference from LightSquared satellites could degrade GPS service both for civilian and military users. The majority owner of LightSquared is hedge fund manager Phil Falcone who between himself and his wife have been heavy contributors to the Democratic Party (over $60,000 last year).

But this meddling is far more than crony capitalism it’s about threatening the integrity and safety of the GPS system. GPS has grown from its infancy as navigation system to pilot sailboats or to guide you to Aunt Katie’s house in rural Vermont. With accuracy improvements, it can now position anyone consistently within 3 feet, anywhere in the world. Because of that accuracy it is now being used by aircraft to conduct precision approaches to weathered in airports without ILS. Down the road air traffic control will become GPS based, rather than ground radar based, as will collision avoidance systems. In the future GPS will be used to help drive your car autonomously (hands-off or driverless). Google is currently testing a fleet of autonomously driven Priuses in the Bay area (using backup drivers) and soon will be testing them in Nevada, driverless. The DARPA Grand Challenge conducted in the 2004 to 2007 period proved that driverless cars can operate safely even in an urban environment. And farm tractors will soon be doing the same thing. It is the very accuracy and dependability of this system that will be applied to yet undreamed of applications.

The administration and the FCC should refrain from reducing safety margins for this irreplaceable system. The recent case of the North Koreans jamming a US intelligence plane’s GPS navigation system, forcing it to cut short its mission shows that the system is fragile. We should be working on hardening it, not putting it in jeopardy with risky, self serving actions.

Bloomberg warns of riots … Is he actually encouraging “US Days of Rage” riots in NYC tomorrow?

2011-09-16T17:27:00.003-04:00

Matt Drudge’s red and bold headline screams about Mayor Bloomberg’s prediction of civil insurrection by disaffected youth against the government. But is Bloomberg actually encouraging, rather than predicting, disruptive behavior on the eve of the US Days of Rage protest led by former SEIU official Stephen Lerner? Surely the mayor is aware of Lerner’s plan and background.

The US Days of Rage is scheduled as a “nonviolent” protest outside the JP Morgan Chase headquarters
tomorrow, Saturday, September 17. It has been organized by Lerner, a far leftist, to bring down Wall Street and the banks and ultimately collapse the economic system of the US. Lerner has been an acolyte of Andy Stern who resigned the presidency of the SEIU in March, 2010. Lerner left the union seven months later. Neither the Days of Rage nor Lerner’s incendiary speech at Pace University in March (see below) have been reported by the legacy media. Only The Blaze (Glen Beck) and Fox News have given it coverage.

Lerner’s March 19 speech at Pace University is a call to destroy the capitalist system (audio and text from the Blaze here). The initial plan was to mob the JP Morgan Chase shareholders meeting in May to demand social justice. That failed because the meeting in Columbus Ohio was held at a motel surrounded by a moat. The intended tactics there and presumably Saturday are to encourage mortgagees and student loan recipients to withhold payment to force JP Morgan to renegotiate or eliminate their loans. Cities would follow with the same tactics, forced by the unions under the threat of a strike, to blackjack JP Morgan to write down municipal debt and free up funds for union employee wages. From the Blaze:

And so the question would be, what would happen if we organized homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike. Just say if we get, and, and, if we get half a million people to agree, we’ll all not, we’ll agree we won’t pay our mortgages, it would literally cause a new financial crisis.

There are four things we can do that could really upset Wall Street. One is if city and state and other government entities demanded to renegotiate their debt because they’re paying too much interest. And you might say, well why would the banks ever do it? Because they, the cities and counties could say we won’t do this and this in the future with you if you don’t renegotiate the debt now. Meaning, about a third of bank profits generate from dealing with cities and states. So we could leverage the power we have of government to say we won’t do business with you, JP Morgan Chase, anymore unless you do two things: you reduce the price of our interest, since your interest rate is down; and second, you rewrite the mortgages for everybody in the community so they can stay in their homes. We, we could make them do that.

The second thing is there’s a whole question in New York now about austerity and student’s rates and the question of the debt structure. What would happen if students said we’re not going to pay? It’s a trillion dollars. Think about your …sweeping that debt, a trillion dollars from students debt?

There’s a third thing that we could think about, what about if public employee unions, instead of them being on the defensive, put on the collective bargaining table when they negotiate they said we demand as a condition of negotiation that the government renegotiate, we want, we believe in good financial management. It’s crazy that you’re paying too much interest to your buddy the bankers. It’s a strike issue for us. We will strike unless you force the banks to relieve the debt of the city. I’m not going to go through all the detail except to say there’s extraordinary things we could do and if you add on top of that, if we really thought about moving to the kind of disruption in Madison, but moving that to Wall Street and moving that to other cities around the country where we basically said you stole $17 trillion, you’ve impoverished us and we’re going to make it impossible for, for you to operate.

Lerner continues

The folks that control this country care about one thing: how the stock market does; how the bond market does; and what their bonus is. So I think we weed out a very simple strategy: how do we bring down the stock market, how do we bring down their bonuses, how do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich. And if we don’t do, and that means you have to politically isolate them, economically isolate them and disrupt them. So, it’s not all theory, I’ll do a pitch.

So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase.

Lerner’s use of the term “Days of Rage”, the Weatherman inspired riots in Chicago in1969, does not appear to be a call for a peaceful protest. Lerner, reportedly has been a guest at the White House on 4 occasions, two of them more than ceremonial functions. Keeping company with folks like that throws a bad light its current occupants.

Pulling the R lever in NY-9

2011-09-14T13:29:00.003-04:00

The most important fact that has Democrats in Washington quaking in their boots, is that thousands of Jewish voters discovered last night they could pull the R lever and not be struck by lightning.

“When you’ve lost the New York Times …”

2011-09-12T01:05:00.003-04:00

Sunday’s NY Times opens a subject being whispered in the halls of Democratic power. Will a second run by a severely weakened President Obama destroy the party as it did for the 12 years following Jimmy Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan? Is the war of 2008 now lost? Blame is put on his lack of resolve for liberal ideas, namely killing the EPA’s new ozone dictates, his lack of aggressiveness and of course the economy.

In English spoken west of the Hudson, it’s called panic.

Democrats are expressing growing alarm about President Obama’s re-election prospects and, in interviews, are openly acknowledging anxiety about the White House’s ability to strengthen the president’s standing over the next 14 months.

Elected officials and party leaders at all levels said their worries have intensified as the economy has displayed new signs of weakness. They said the likelihood of a highly competitive 2012 race is increasing as the Republican field, once dismissed by many Democrats as too inexperienced and conservative to pose a serious threat, has started narrowing to two leading candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who have executive experience and messages built around job creation.

Democrats have been deluding themselves in the past nine months that the massive losses they took in 2010 were just a fluke. The race for Weiner’s Brooklyn/Queens seat is proving them wrong. There, the central issue is Obama himself because of his treatment of Israel. Polls are now trending to the Republican candidate, and even if the Democrat manages to hold it, it would be a humbling win. The district is a 2 to 1 Democratic and heavily Jewish, one that would normally go at least 60/40 in their favor. Democrats are very vulnerable especially in the Senate next year, where 23 seats they own or control are up for grabs, versus 10 for Republicans.

While the Times bemoans the threat Obama presents to the party next year, it doesn’t say how to get to there from here. That is, who tells Obama he should step aside? Bill Clinton? No way, with the presumptive candidate his wife. Jimmy Carter? Give me a break! For good or bad, Democrats will have to stick with their man.

Republicans could create a little mischief if they wanted. And that would be to convince either Rasmussen or Gallup to do public polling of Democrats to see who would be the best nominee, Hillary or Obama. And keep doing it each month.

Now that would cause ruckus!

Anthrax lawsuit against the federal government gets a boost from DOJ gross incompetence

2011-09-09T14:15:00.004-04:00

There are times when government agencies exhibit sheer idiocy and ineptness. That happened this summer when Justice filed papers that, if true, undermines the entire FBI case against Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins in order to win a lawsuit brought by the family of Bob Stevens, the first anthrax victim following 9/11. Bob Stevens was the photo editor of The Sun, a subsidiary of American Media (AMI) located in Boca Raton, Florida. He died after inhaling spores from a letter mailed to AMI containing powdered anthrax. The family is suing the government claiming negligence in the way anthrax was handled at Fort Detrick, resulting in Steven’s death. The case is now proceeding after the FBI closed its investigation last year declaring Ivins the sole culprit.

What DOJ is claiming is the now deceased Dr. Ivins did not have access to the specialized equipment used to dry the cultured spores in order to weaponize it (make into a fine powder), this to absolve the Fort Detrick command that employed Ivins. Nice trick! The problem is access to this specialized equipment was the linchpin in the case to prove Ivins was the sole perpetrator. The government simply can’t have it both ways. That was the reaction of the Stevens’ family lawyers and congressional critics. Mercifully the federal judge handling the Stephens case has allowed it to be amended by Justice lawyers, though it totally undermines its case. What is ironic is the unamended filing is probably accurate, but Justice is hoist in its own petard and doesn’t want anything to throw doubt on the FBI’s case against Ivins.

Bruce Ivins, a scientist at Fort Detrick, became the prime suspect after almost 7 years of massive FBI efforts to nail Dr. Stephen Hatfill, another scientist at the facility. The FBI threw the kitchen sink at Hatfill, having him fired from his job, lifting his security clearance, blackballing him from other employment, releasing confidential information to the press and exerting relentless pressure on him. Throughout his investigation, Hatfill was both cooperative (he voluntarily allowed the FBI to search his home and computers) and resilient (he consistently proclaimed his innocence, volunteered for polygraph tests and took his case to the public). Eventually the FBI tired, and in late June 2008 settled a lawsuit that gave Hatfill a $5.8 million settlement. In the meantime the FBI had begun pursuing Bruce Ivins with the same vicious treatment. However Ivins did not have the fortitude of Hatfill to stand up to it. He was emotionally fragile and ultimately committed suicide in late July, 2008 shortly after being told he would be indicted. Now the FBI had their man and unlike Hatfill, he couldn’t fight back. He was dead.

The FBI’s case against Ivins was weak. It was based solely on circumstantial evidence. It based its case on the similarity of the anthrax strain he was working with to the strain found in the letters mailed shortly after 9/11, a fact disputed by an independent National Academy of Sciences study. The FBI claimed drying equipment used to weaponize anthrax was available to him, others said it wasn’t. Ivins was a vaccine specialist seeking methods to immunize populations against anthrax, not weaponize it. His experience and expertise wasn’t there. But the FBI was desperate to close out the case. It was an embarrassment. It had cost over $100 million, the most expensive case in the Bureau’s history. The lifeless Ivins was convenient fall guy.

In reality it is unlikely either Ivins or Hatfill were involved in the plot. Far more likely it was the work of Islamist terrorists. The text of the letters was anti Israel and anti US, consistent with the rhetoric of extreme Islamists. Except for the letter to Boca Raton, all letters were addressed to the same two power centers that were the targets of the hijacked jets, New York and Washington. The postmark dates on the letters suggests a preplanned, coordinated effort to extend the terror campaign. They were mailed precisely one week after 9/11 (first batch to ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Post and AMI/Boca Raton postmarked 9/18) and the second batch precisely 4 weeks after (Senators Daschle and Leahy to Washington postmarked 10/ 9).

The Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale area was the final staging area for the hijackers in the two months prior to 9/11. There was contact between two of the hijackers and the wife an AMI editor (not the anthrax victim Stevens). She rented an apartment to them. The targeting of AMI may have been more about bad blood than an ideological target.

Both the Justice Department and FBI have not covered themselves in glory. They have tried to manufacture facts to fit its preconceived notions. They have been intellectually dishonest. They have wasted money when the answer should have been, “we don’t know.” The FBI has ruined the life of Steven Hatfill and was probably the major factor in the suicide of Bruce Ivins, both individuals likely innocent. It is still living down the major scandal of its crime lab. And it lives with the legacy of fingering and harassing an innocent man in the high profile Atlanta Olympics bombing case. It is a shadow of the organization J. Edgar Hoover founded. It should hang its head in shame.

Will Obama admit his policies are failing as Lenin once did? Will he declare a New Economic Policy?

2011-09-06T20:28:00.001-04:00

After Lenin seized power in the USSR in 1917, he instituted a repressive policy of seizing industry, farms, banks and almost all productive enterprises (without compensation), a policy called “War Communism” (essentially communism as we know it today). It was an unmitigated disaster. There were famines, diseases and a general breakdown in production. Because of these failures, in 1921 he ordered a major change called the New Economic Policy (NEP) which allowed significant private ownership for small business and gave peasants a share of their output. This rapidly improved the economy that had been devastated by WWI and his earlier policies. I am definitely not a fan of Lenin, but he had the wisdom to realize his original policies were unworkable.

With the miserable failure of President Obama’s jobs program in the past two and a half years, will he have the courage of Lenin to admit his policies are a mistake? Will he see the wisdom of capitalism and its ability to generate jobs? Or will he wallow in his ideology and watch the country tank, while blaming his opposition?

I’m not optimistic.

Russia gets the offshore drilling jobs … US sits on its duff.

2011-08-30T15:48:00.003-04:00

Today, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced Exxon Mobil has been awarded exploration rights in the Russian Arctic superseding efforts by BP and Rosneft the Russian state owned oil company. This amazing coup gives the US based company the rights to the highly lucrative offshore fields. Russia gets Exxon Mobil’s offshore drilling expertise and a massive investment. From the NY Times:

The agreement seemed to supersede a similar but now-defunct partnership that Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, reached with BP earlier this year. The deal announced Tuesday replaces BP, the British oil giant, with its American counterpart and introduces some differences in the geopolitical bargain.

Where BP had swapped stock, Exxon agrees to hand over to Rosneft unspecified assets elsewhere in the world, including some that the Texas-based company owns in the deepwater zones of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in Texas.

In the announcement of the arrangement, coming after a surprise signing in the Russian resort town of Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin described a sweeping global alliance — and a potentially vast investment by Exxon in the Russian Arctic.

Mr. Putin said the total investments envisioned under the agreement could reach $500 billion, including a direct investment of $200 billion to $300 billion. It was unclear what the timeline would be or whether this included the value of asset swaps.

Contrast Exxon Mobil’s fate to Shell Oil which has Alaskan offshore exploration and drilling rights. It has already invested nearly $4 billion in exploration, including $2.2 billion for the federal lease and was turned down for production by a fly specking EPA. Contrast it to Conoco which is being held up by the Corps of Engineers that won’t allow it to build a bridge and road to its lease in the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve to get machinery in and a pipeline to get oil out. And there is the granddaddy of all regulatory foot dragging, the deep water oil fields in the US Gulf of Mexico.

Tens of thousands of high priced American oil field jobs sit idle because of this administration. They will remain so until it comes to its senses. Putin will create jobs in Russia and get reelected to the Russian presidency in 2012.

Obama will not.

Peggy Noonan and whether Obama should run for a second term

2011-08-20T21:30:00.012-04:00

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan takes a look at President Obama’s Martha's Vineyard vacation and speculates on his thoughts in view of declining poll numbers, and disillusionment among his supporters.

How could he not be depressed? He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He's got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust. He thought they'd love him for health care, that it was a down payment on greatness. But the left sees it as a sellout, the center as a vaguely threatening mess, the right as a rallying cry. He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn't. He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with "Recovery Summer." There wasn't. He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation. The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach. That didn't happen either.

Nothing worked! And nothing's going to work. He's the smartest guy in the room, but he's got the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to—well, unsatisfying outcomes.

In a stinging rebuke of the president, Noonan points out his policies and initiatives have turned into abject failures. And she chides him for tone deafness for choosing Martha’s Vineyard for his vacation getaway, a summer hangout for the well heeled establishment elite, at a time of the nation's suffering.

But the article is more than failures and vacations. It questions whether Obama should continue to seek a second term. Indeed the subhead of the op-ed is, “Is his visit to Martha's Vineyard a sign that he's giving up?” She concludes her article with an ominous series of statements which are in reality questions for Obama to answer:

In early 2010 this space made much of the president's pre-State of the Union interview with Diane Sawyer, in which she pressed the president about his political predicaments. He said: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." I thought at the time: He means it, he can accept being a one-termer.

Maybe he's feeling it now more than ever.

Maybe it means not much will change in terms of his leadership between now and the election.

Maybe he'll be as wilted next year as he was this week.

The question of whether Obama will or should run is the great unspoken among influential Democrats. It goes beyond whether Obama can win. It goes to whether Democrats might lose the Senate on top of the White House. Jimmy Carter’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980 cost Democrats the senate. Already senate Democrats are fearful that Obama is sucking the oxygen from big hitter contributors by maxing them out, leaving nothing available for their war chests. Nothing is worse than finding yourself short on funding and having the President's coat tails dragging you down at the same time. It's lose/lose however you look at it.

No Democrat would dare to challenge Obama for the nomination. Democrats almost never take on an incumbent president of their own party, and it would be political suicide to challenge the first ever African American president. For Obama not to run for a second term, the decision would have to come from him, as it did with Lyndon Johnson in the spring of 1968. Still, it could come at the urging of highly trusted confidantes as happened with Nixon.

Whatever the outcome, Peggy Noonan, in her excellent article, has opened the door on a previously taboo subject.

Is Rick Perry really the Marlboro Man?

2011-08-15T21:48:00.002-04:00

Do looks help in Presidential elections? Many women would say yes about Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy and the opposite for John Kerry and Michael Dukakis. Certainly Richard Nixon was no looker, but he managed to beat Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern neither of whom were movie star figures.

Now comes Rick Perry who has the rugged western good looks of the Marlboro Man. Will he make ladies’ hearts go pitter patter? My wife thinks so. No matter what, good looks don’t hurt.

BATF Acting Director Melson resisting efforts to step down…Eager to testify

2011-06-24T00:23:00.002-04:00

The LA Times is reporting this incredible story in this morning’s edition. Melson's resignation was rumored a week ago, last Friday and expected to take place Monday, then Tuesday then in the immediate future. The delay seemed to some to indicate his handlers at Justice might be having trouble convincing him he should fall on his sword to protect Attorney General Holder. Rep. Issa has publicly stated Justice had to know about the Fast and Furious program, since they had to approve the funding for it. .

Here is some of what the LA Times is reporting.

The acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is strongly resisting pressure to step down because of growing controversy over the agency's surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns to flow unchecked into Mexico, according to several federal sources in Washington.

The story continues with this quote from one of the Times’ sources:

"He is saying he won't go," said one source close to the situation, who asked for anonymity because high-level discussions with Melson remained fluid. "He has told them, 'I'm not going to be the fall guy on this.' "

This story appeared to be dying down, but it will be front and center in the national news media. It will be interesting to hear Holder's reaction. Remember he testified under oath he had no knowledge of the gun running program until it was reported in the media.

Jon Huntsman the new Ronald Reagan? Hardly

2011-06-22T13:36:00.001-04:00

Am I the only one who thinks Jon Huntsman is a plant?

Huntsman chose Liberty Park to announce his candidacy, the same place Ronald Reagan chose to launch his campaign as the nominee of the Republican party in September 1980. His Casper Milquetoast announcemant speech at Liberty Park simply can't compare Reagan's and is the same recipe for defeat John McCain gave us. And it's no coincidence, John Weaver Huntsman's top political advisor is a former McCain campaign team member.

Soon you will see the NY Times declaring Huntsman the second coming. A drumbeat from the rest of the legacy media will follow. The horribly skewed NY Times/CBS poll will declare Huntsman a front runner. But even worse, his campaign has the earmarks of recent congressional campaigns of Democrats running as "Tea Party" candidates.

Fortunately he doesn’t have the time or organization to make a dent in the Iowa caucuses. But in New Hampshire, an open primary state, Democrats will cross over and vote for him in the Republican primary in an attempt to torpedo viable conservative contenders.

Huntsman probably never listened to Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Liberty Park. If he had, he never would have given the speech he gave. The Statue of Liberty was simply a nostalgic backdrop. Mistakes like that are more indicative of Democrat research, not of conservative Republicans who bathe in the glories of Reagan’s speeches.

Huntsman has no organization to speak of, nor a fundraising operation. He evidently feels he can rely on the support of the press to develop a following. No Republican in his right mind would ever conceive of doing that. My personal opinion is Huntsman’s support comes not from the right, but from the left.

What we don't need to do is listen to the editorial voices of the NY Times to select a Republican candidate. They don't have the best interests of the Republican party at heart nor will any ever vote for one.

Is Todd Palin trying to look like John Kerry?

2011-05-31T12:21:00.001-04:00

I was struck by the similarity of Todd Palin's new look to John Kerry. Gone is the prominent beard, replaced by a two day stubble. But it's the hair. The hair has all the appearances of a younger John Kerry.

This picture from AP was taken at the Rolling Thunder event in Washington DC, where Sarah Palin was an instant draw. It is part of her bus tour of the Northeast (Blue state country) that began in Washington and will end in New Hampshire.

And she is driving the media nuts. There are no press releases. No one to tip the press where she is planning to be. When they ask, she tells them to check her website. To add confusion, she is being intentionally deceptive. This from CNN today:

Sarah Palin pulled a clever bait and switch on reporters in Gettysburg on Tuesday, as her "One Nation" bus tour rolls into its third day.

The Palin family and a few members of her staff snuck out of their hotel early, leaving their flashy bus behind in the hotel parking lot to give reporters chasing her the impression that she was still readying for the day.

As members of Palin's advance staff began to roll out luggage to the bus on Tuesday morning, a crush of media and tourists gathered to meet the potential presidential candidate on her way out of the hotel.

But CNN was soon tipped off that Palin was long gone, off to visit the Civil War battlefields and onward toward Philadelphia.

So the media assumes the role of the paparazzi, following her every step and trying to anticipate her every move and giving her far more publicity than she would ordinarily get. And they wonder if they are being duped. Of course they are.

Attention media: She is playing mind games with you.

At the NY Times, the left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

2011-05-05T19:40:00.007-04:00

Media Post News reports today that the target figure for Times “pay to play” for online content (300,000 subscribers) is inaccurate according to the Times digital head Martin Nizenholtz. According MPN, he stated, “I don’t know where that number comes from.”

Well it came from the NY Times. Again from Media Post News:

Actually, the figure first appeared in a highly reputable source that often serves as the basis for news that shows up all over the place -- the pages of The New York Times. Staci Kramer, reporting in PaidContent, takes care to point out that Niesenholtz knew that fact, and that his comment referred to the "company executives" who "privately" gave the 300,000 figure to reporter Jeremy Peters.

At the NY Times shareholder meeting two weeks ago, CFO Janet Robinson touted the fact that in three weeks time they had signed up 100,000 paywall subscribers, which gave the appearance they were well on their way to hitting the announced 300,000 target. What she neglected to say was the Lincoln Division of Ford, a regular advertiser, had contacted about 200,000 of the Times’ heaviest digital users to offer them free unlimited access to the Times for the balance of the year. Nor did she say what the arrangement was between Lincoln and the Times. Felix Salmon at Reuters wonders too.

Seems the Times wants to move the goal posts a bit.

See also my Island Turtle article: Is the Washington Post about to spoil the NY Times big payday?

Sleeping Air Traffic Controllers and the Battle for the Shop Floor

2011-04-20T13:50:00.003-04:00

At Washington Reagan National Airport in late March, a sleeping controller failed to respond to two airliners seeking to land shortly after midnight. The resulting publicity broke the silence on a long festering problem between the FAA and the air controllers’ union NATCA. That there is a culture of sleeping on the job. It is banned by long existent regulations, but ignored by the controllers especially on the midnight shift. This is now the battle for control of the “shop floor.” From an AP report dated April 18:

It has been an open secret in the FAA dating to at least the early 1990s that controllers sometimes sleep on the job….

Much more common is taking a nap on purpose, they said. On midnight shifts, one controller will work two positions while the other one sleeps and then they switch off, controllers said. The unsanctioned arrangements sometimes allow controllers to sleep as much as three hours or four hours out of an eight-hour shift, they said.

The FAA does not allow controllers to sleep at work, even during breaks. Controllers who are caught can be suspended or fired. But at many air traffic facilities the sleeping swaps are tolerated as long as they don't affect safety, controllers said.

"It has always been a problem," said former controller Rick Perl, who retired last year.

In 1991, a Denver television station caught controllers leaving a regional radar center during midnight shifts to sleep in their cars, sometimes for as long as five hours. A former internal watchdog at the Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo, recalled her office investigating a similar incident in Texas during the early 1990s.

The problem of tired controllers was raised by the National Transportation Safety Board after a 2006 crash of a regional airliner in Lexington, Kentucky, that killed 49 of the 50 people aboard.

The lone controller in the airport tower was wrapping up a schedule that compressed five eight-hour shifts into four days. He cleared a regional jet for takeoff and failed to notice the plane make a wrong turn onto a runway that was too short.

The board cited pilot error as the cause of the accident, but noted the controller had slept only two of the previous 24 hours. (emphasis added)

Part of the fatigue problem is the way controllers schedule themselves, often trying to cram 5 shifts into 4 days to enjoy a 3 day weekend. But in doing so, they schedule the night shift, the one most susceptible to drowsiness, only 8 hours after prior shift and at the end of the string of 5 shifts. From the Washington Post:

One of the most popular schedules is known as the 2-2-1. Under it, a controller begins the workweek with two evening shifts, does a quick turnaround to a pair of day shifts and then does another quick turn before an overnight shift.

Those quick turnarounds — usually just eight hours — have been blamed for controller fatigue, but the 2-2-1 is favored by many controllers because it compacts their workweek and creates a weekend of at least three days.

Under the new guidelines, which took effect over the weekend, air traffic controllers are guaranteed (sic) a minimum of nine hours off between shifts, an increase of an hour over the previous policy.

The changes also include a ban on trading shifts with other controllers unless the minimum between shifts is met; prohibited swapping of regular days off in some circumstances; and an extension of the hours a manager is on duty until 1 a.m.

“We expect controllers to come to work rested and ready to work and take personal responsibility for safety in the control towers,” LaHood said Sunday. “We have zero tolerance for sleeping on the job.”

LaHood’s final remarks hit the point. It is the responsibility of the individual controller to get enough sleep. If the schedule he chooses precludes enough sleep or he simply fails to get enough sack time and reports to work fatigued, he should take himself off duty. That’s what airline pilots do.

But the union philosophy differs. Don Brown, retired controller from the Atlanta Center in his blog Get the Flick critiques the FAA’s decision to add a second controller to 27 towers on the slow mid shift. It goes to the heart of the union’s sense of entitlement to set the rules. It goes to the heart of who controls the shop floor.

Assigning two people to one control position will revert to one person on position when they decide to split the shift in half. (One works the first half while the other sleeps and then they swap.) Even if you try to manage it, history suggests that at some point in time, the situation will revert to splitting the shift. It’s human nature. Besides, you would need to assign a manager to the shift if you wanted to “manage” the situation. In other words, another body that you don’t have…. The “best” way to manage the problem is to have three controllers assigned the shift. Two to man the position while the other rests. And yes, rest does mean sleeping. (emphasis added)

Military controllers don’t sleep on watch. There, it is more than a firing offense. It is a court martial offense. Perhaps it is the mental discipline of the military controllers at Andrews AFB that caught the incorrect spacing of Michelle Obama’s aircraft when it was handed off from the Warrenton FAA (NATCA represented) center yesterday and ordered it to abort the landing.

The FCC is up to No Good

2011-04-06T00:05:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial entitled “The FCC Muzzle” which spelled out the shenanigans the FCC intends to pull prior to next year’s presidential elections. They seek to do an end run around the Citizen’s United decision and accomplish by regulatory fiat what Democrats in congress couldn’t do. And that is to place requirements that top donors to organizations running ads be identified. Current law requires only the organizations paying for the commercials to be identified.

In today’s politicized atmosphere, thuggish intimidation of Republican and conservative corporate support by leftists has become endemic. It has reached absurd levels in Wisconsin where unions have threatened small businesses with boycotts if they don’t display signs supporting them. The Journal’s editorial starts:

Congress tried and failed last year to limit corporate political speech in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, but the threat hasn't gone away. The new liberal hope is that the Federal Communications Commission will do the deed.

Liberal activists at the Media Access Project filed a petition last week asking the FCC to re-interpret decades of law to require that groups that run political ads disclose the names of their top donors. The 1934 Communications Act already requires any group paying for an ad—whether commercial or political—to disclose its identity as part of the ad. But liberals want President Obama's FCC to stretch this reading to require the on-air disclosure of any donor providing 25% or more of funding.

It continues with what the Journal considers the intent:

The goal here is to use "transparency" to intimidate businesses out of making political donations. Disclosure sounds good, but liberals have begun to wield it as a weapon to vilify business donors. Exhibit A was last year's smearing of Target Corp., after it donated to an independent group that ran ads supporting Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. MoveOn.org twisted the contribution into a claim that Target was "anti-gay" and organized a boycott of Target stores. The company stopped donations.

When the Citizens United decision was handed down, Senator Schumer went berserk and promised legislation (Disclose Act) to reveal contributors. It failed. So now the FCC has been given the task to carry Schumer’s water.

This is not the first time the ruse of “transparency” was attempted to intimidate and pressure political supporters. It happened before in the Deep South in the 1950s. There are parallels to what happened then and what is being happening now. Fortunately the Supreme Court then put a halt to it in NAACP v. Alabama which recognized that confidentiality was needed to prevent intimidation.

I used that case to write a Letter to the Editor of the Journal. It ran Monday (4/4/11):

Sometimes Disclosure Begets Intimidation

The threat of intimidation against contributors that would come from mandatory FCC disclosure rules would have a chilling effect on the political process ("The FCC Muzzle," Review & Outlook, March 31).

Such was the case in the racially charged atmosphere of the mid-1950s, when the state of Alabama refused to allow the NAACP to do business in the state. The central issue was a requirement to force the NAACP to turn over its financial records and a list of its members and agents to the state, which the NAACP refused to do. In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (NAACP v. Alabama, 1958) for the NAACP, citing the need for privacy and the ability to freely associate to advance its beliefs and ideals.

Other organizations have modeled themselves after the NAACP to protect their members and contributors, most notably the National Right to Work Committee and its legal arm, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. This is done to shield its members and contributors from union intimidation.

Crosby Boyd
Sanibel, Fla.

Will this deter the FCC? Probably not. Recently they simply ignored the ruling of the 10^th Circuit that Congress had not granted them authority over the Internet (Comcast v. FCC) and simply went ahead and issued regulations anyway. Fortunately we have a Supreme Court that recognizes the importance of the First Amendment and its fragility.

Will a Stalemate in Libya lead to the Nationalization of Western Oil Companies?

2011-04-04T21:21:00.005-04:00

The papers today were vey light on news from Libya so my guess is the polling numbers are not going Obama’s way. A week ago the rebels were marching west toward Tripoli. Gaddafi’s troops were in retreat and under attack from US fighter bombers. Cruise missiles were destroying Libyan air defenses. But the tide turned last Monday when Gaddafi’s forces repulsed the rebels at Sirte and retook the oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Brega. Note: Brega currently is being contested by rebels but is still considered in government hands.

NATO has since taken operational command of combat operations and the US has announced it has withdrawn its attack aircraft and will restrict itself to only tanker, jamming and reconnaissance mission. NATO has said it will not arm the rebels and the President and Defense Secretary have publicly ruled out the use of ground forces.

So where does that leave the coalition? Not in very good shape. We backed a ragtag undisciplined group of rebels with no fighting experience and expected them to defeat a trained military. We expected a no fly zone to halt Gaddafi’s troops then stopped flying support missions ourselves. Neither battles nor wars are won by timid actions and this will unfortunately prove it.

It will probably end up a stalemate, but with Gaddafi’s troops chipping away at the rebels in Benghazi. Likely they will simply drift away with Gaddafi and his family still in power. What the coalition never contemplated was the downside of not achieving victory.

Dictators, even benevolent ones, don’t take kindly to JDAMs landing in their sleeping quarters. It is likely Gaddafi is more than a little bit ticked at having his sleep disturbed followed by announcements from Washington, Paris and London that he must go. Will he retaliate? Of course he will. This is the Middle East.

The most vulnerable assets coalition countries have in Libya are its oil companies. They include -- US: ConocoPhillips, Marathon, Hess, Occidental and ExxonMobil, UK: BP and Anglo Dutch Shell and France: government owned TOTAL. Oil likely will continue to flow, but not under the ownership of the western oil companies. Likely substitutes to operate nationalized facilities are Chinese and Russians operators who are ever willing to take advantage of western missteps.

Lesson for the future: There is no substitute for victory.

Florida High-Speed Rail … The Monster that just won’t die

2011-02-26T16:13:00.029-05:00

Just as in the horror movies, where the best efforts of pitchfork armed citizenry and repeated mortal blows fail to subdue the local monster, Florida high speed rail still continues to haunt us. It just can't be killed. Governor Jeb Bush killed it in 1999. But the zombie came to life again in 2000 in the form of a constitutional amendment. In 2004 the voters again killed it.

But the monster still lives, courtesy of the Obama administration. The administration wants to make Florida a gift of $2.4 billion to begin the first leg of the system. This project is wrong because Florida will have to assume any cost overruns and operating losses of at least a billion dollars annually; it won’t save the traveler significant time; and energy savings will be miniscule at best. If Transportation Secretary LaHood thinks it is such a good idea, he should turn the program over to Amtrak and let it shoulder the long term burden. But he doesn’t. Like so many other federal programs, he pushes off these unfunded mandates onto the states.

Our new governor Rick Scott, like his counterparts in Ohio and Wisconsin, rejected the government's offer. Governor Scott is wrestling with a projected state deficit of $3.6 billion and adding a billion or so more each year just doesn’t compute. Still, a group of legislators from Tampa and South Florida are attempting to form an authority to keep the project alive but doubts remain that they can put a viable plan together. LaHood set a deadline for this past Friday (Feb. 25) but has extended it until March 4, a sign there may be problems getting parties in agreement.

Costs of High-Speed Rail

Back in 2000, a study was made on the costs of the full system (Tampa to Miami). It projected losses for the full system at $617 million to $1.6 billion (in year 2000 dollars). From the Business Wire:

[I]nternationally renowned public policy consultant and transportation expert Wendell Cox has released eye-opening costs and data regarding Amendment Initiative No.1, which Florida voters will decide on Nov. 7,[2000]. According to the report, the estimated cost to construct a high-speed rail system connecting the state's five largest metropolitan areas would be between $8.2 billion and $21.9 billion; take 20 years to complete; and cost Florida between $617 million and $1.6 billion in annual deficits once in operation.

It’s safe to assume we are talking a billion or more per year in current dollars.

Time of Travel

Existing airline travel scheduled times between Tampa and Miami/Lauderdale are in the in the 1 to 1:05 hour time frame, compared to an estimated 2:30 to 2:45 hour/324 mile train ride. The route is covered by American Airlines and “two bags free” Southwest Airlines. Interestingly, all five metro areas have made plans to co-locate their train stations with their airports to save on parking facilities, putting the time comparisons on an even footing.

Prices are unknown, but using Amtrak's Acela service between Washington and New York (225 miles) as an example, the fares vary between $139 to over $200 depending on time of day and demand. This is in line with American Airlines($118-163 economy saver, super saver fares) but higher than Southwest ($69-123 wanna get away fare) to nearby Lauderdale.

In the case of the private automobile, which has the advantage of portal to portal service, the time difference is insignificant. Using a hypothetical traveler going from downtown Clearwater (near Tampa) to the Fontainebleu Hotel in Miami Beach and allowing for travel time to and from the airports, the time by train is 4:15 hours vs. 4:35 (MapQuest estimate) by car. And using your car saves renting one or using taxis at the destination. Conclusion: Air travel beats rail significantly in speed and cars, because they offer portal to portal service, are almost equal to high-speed rail.

Energy

On the energy side intercity trains have an advantage over cars. The most recent Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 29—2010 (Table 2.12, page 63 in the pdf version - for the wonks) shows Amtrak’s energy use at 2,398 Btu per passenger mile vs. 3,437 for cars, a significant advantage. But when the 324 miles of train mileage and the 275 road mileage are factored in for Tampa to Miami, the car passenger uses just 22% more energy for the trip. It must be noted that the Amtrak figures are primarily for trains limited to 79 mph. Trains, like cars and aircraft are bound by the same laws of physics and when you double the speed to 160 mph+, air drag and energy use increase exponentially. It is doubtful high-speed rail energy efficiency comes anywhere near standard (slow) speed passenger rail.

So, Governor, seize the wooden stake and drive it into the heart of this monster. And do it before dawn’s light.

Will the Great Lakes freeze over this year? How to keep track

2011-01-01T15:15:00.023-05:00

Update: Information here is the latest published data as of January 23, 2011.

With the recent blasts of frigid air into the mid parts of the US, there is renewed interest in tracking ice conditions in the Great Lakes.

Here are some maps and links to make it easy to follow. Two years ago, three of the lakes froze over: Superior, Huron and Erie. Normally the maximum freeze extent comes at the end of February or the first week in March. The first two charts come from this web site and are updated twice a week. The web address has changed from last year, as well as the method of accessing them. After opening the site, under Category click on Charts and then select East Composite or West Composite. In the right hand box, click on the bottom listing to get the most recent data.

Another chart can be found here. It covers all the lakes in a single view and contains temperature information of unfrozen areas.

Merry Christmas Nina Totenberg

2010-12-25T00:14:00.008-05:00

NPR’s Nina Totenberg’s recent offensive remark about Christmas (“forgive the expression”) would have had her fired had the network followed the same rules that saw Juan Williams’ contract revoked. But that is liberalism. Juan committed the unpardonable sin of appearing on Fox News, Totenberg did not. So she gets a pass.

The vicious attacks on Christianity by liberals usually peak at Christmas, one of the two most important celebrations for Christianity. Christmas is an easy target because it has devolved from a primarily a religious holiday, to a more commercial one. But even in its current form, it is a time of cheer, forgiveness and joy. It is when we enjoy happiness even in a time of war. It is when we wish peace to our enemies. It is when we sing carols and share our happiness.

I am not a particularly religious person. Only recently did I start regularly attending services, after a 50 year gap. I did it as much to please my wife as anything – but I also feel better for having done so. Last evening I attended a Catholic service, the religion of one of my daughters and her husband and their children. I felt as comfortable there as I do in my Episcopal church and as I do when I attend services at Congregational and Lutheran churches. As I sat through the service I thought about the recent attacks on Christianity and how trivial they are compared to past history. In Roman times, Christians defied lions in the Coliseum. They lived and practiced their religion in the catacombs out of fear of Roman reprisals.

Despite all of this, Christianity thrived and spread. It also survived in Soviet Russia, where the government refused the ordination of new priests and it survives in Communist China where it was banned and practiced underground until recently. Still it operates under restraints of the government. So a silly remark by Ms. Totenberg, or a suit to remove a crèche scene from a place used for dozens of years is insignificant. It reflects more on the perpetrator than on its target, Christianity.

In the spirit of the times, we all should turn the other cheek and wish these folks too can find the joy of the Christmas season. And with that in mind and in all sincerity, I wish Nina Totenberg a Merry Christmas.

Is the Washington Post about to spoil the NY Times’ big payday?

2010-12-13T08:50:00.015-05:00

Last week Washington Post CEO Donald Graham, addressing a financial analysts conference in New York, said the Post has no current intentions of erecting a paywall to charge for his newspaper’s online content, making it one of the few papers not planning to do so. This comment was only lightly reported in the media, but it is earth shattering in the newspaper industry and especially for the NY Times which had announced it would begin charging for content in 2011.

For the past three years, newspapers have struggled with declining advertising and circulation with ad sales down on the order of 10 to 25% each year. Losses like this render their business model unsustainable. They have rued the day they decided to give away their internet content for free, and yearned to put Humpty Dumpty back together with a fee based system. But it’s not that easy. Should any direct competitor continue to provide free content, the one charging is committing suicide.

In December 2008, shortly after the election, Stanford journalism professor Joel Brinkley got the ball rolling by penning this gem:

Now, here's my idea: The newspaper industry should ask the Justice Department for an antitrust exemption that would allow publishers to collaborate on a decision to begin charging for their Web sites. No paper would have to charge, and each paper could determine its own price. But if most papers in a region - San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, for example - began charging for Web access at more or less the same time, many readers would likely subscribe.

An unsympathetic Tim Burden on his journalism blog Printed Matters comments on Brinkley’s proposal and puts it more succinctly (emphasis added):

Brinkley implicitly understands that unless all news sources start charging at the same time, everyone will just go to the free sources, killing the paid ones quick-fast. So he proposes a government-sanctioned cartel.

It didn’t take the administration long embrace the concept. In mid-March 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder told Reuters he was willing to consider loosening antitrust enforcement of the newspaper industry. While couched in terms of production and distribution cooperation between newspapers, those familiar with the industry know these are back burner items. The only issue that counts is getting unanimity on the online paid content issue. But coordinating between competitors is an anti-trust violation that can land publishers in jail. Did newspaper publishers take Holder up on his pass? It appears so.

In late May 2009, Atlantic.com’s James Warren broke the story that the NY Times and major newspaper chains were attending a secretive and unannounced meeting, entitled: Shhhh. Newspaper Publishers Are Quietly Holding a Very, Very Important Conclave Today. Will You Soon Be Paying for Online Content?

He goes on: Here's a story the newspaper industry's upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future."Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves.There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises and Freedom Communication Inc., among more than two dozen in all. A longtime industry chum, consultant Barbara Cohen, "will facilitate the meeting."One hopes it displays the same sense of purpose as, say, troubled world leaders did at Yalta in 1945 or, in a rather less respectable sector of the economy, beleaguered mob bosses did at a legendary Apalachin, New York, confab in 1957. Read it all. It will curl your hair.

Enter the Washington Post, which, it appears, was not a participant in the Chicago meeting. It has pretty much avoided the paywall issue in the past other than to say it has no plans for paid online content, similar to last week’s statement. It has become the spoiler, especially for the Times. Both have significant national and international coverage and following. If the Times goes the pay route and the Post doesn’t, online Times readers will gravitate to the Post, jeopardizing the Times’ reputation as the “newspaper of record.”

With the Post a holdout, something concerns me. It is the possiblity the administration is pressuring the Post to conform. The Post owns a substantial interest in Kaplan, a for-profit college operation. It is a highly profitable enterprise that contributes heavily to the Washington Post Co’s bottom line. Since this summer Kaplan and other for-profit colleges have been viciously attacked the in same way as the health insurance companies and bankers. And in at least one case it has led to a downgrading of Post stock. Coincidence? Maybe.

My guess is the Post is not being an opportunist. I think it has more to do with the legal aspects. While Holder may signal an easing of anti-trust enforcement, the law is the law. Another administration might not be so tolerant, and two years is not that far away. And there still remains the potential for civil suits that Justice can’t control.

Note: The last two paragraphs have been edited (12/15/2010 3:00pm).

Why is Lady Gaga’s music better protected than our state secrets?

2010-12-06T15:51:00.011-05:00

Good question. Unauthorized publishing of Lady Gaga’s copyrighted music on the internet would most likely result in a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If that failed, then the offending website could be taken down. No such protection applies to classified material from our military or government agencies, except for the original leaker who will, no doubt, pay the price. Republishing leaked classified material carries no penalty.

Solution: Hillary, don’t stamp your cables SECRET. Stamp them COPYRIGHT.

Why the $250,000 tax threshold is so dangerous … It’s not indexed for inflation

2010-12-03T11:54:00.005-05:00

Prior to 1981’s Kemp Roth Tax Act, which indexed tax brackets for inflation for the first time, Democrats were happy to watch inflation force taxpayers into higher and higher tax brackets. Bracket creep was the easy way to raise tax rates without putting themselves on record.

The experience of the Carter years, with inflation (CPI) rates rising to over 13.5% made indexing a high priority for the incoming Reagan administration. And indexing has worked well. But there are reminders of disastrous consequences of unindexed tax legislation, most notably the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT was intended to rectify the problem where several hundred millionaires were able to avoid all Federal income taxes through legal deductions. Now it ensnares millions and, because of its complexity, is becoming known as the tax accountants’ welfare act.

Lest you think Obama’s $250,000 threshold could not affect you, think again. During the Carter years, inflation rates rose from 6.50% in 1977 to 13.58% in his last year in office, 1980. It took Fed Chairman Paul Volker over three years, 20% interest rates and a recession to get inflation under control. It was bitter medicine, but necessary to stabilize the dollar. Yet the Fed now is throwing the 2-3% inflation rate limits to the winds with QE2, preferring to inflate our way out of the recession.

Nothing could be worse. Should Carter’s 13.5% inflation become the norm, $100,000 today will become the equivalent of $250,000 in about 7 years. A tax on the rich, as Obama describes it, will have the same result as the AMT, reaching deep into the middle class.

But this is the intent of Democrats. They are happy with inflation. They want stealth tax increases.

Mysterious missile launch most likely US Air Flight 808

2010-11-10T02:17:00.017-05:00

Updated Network news and the internet were abuzz with the report and video by Los Angeles CBS affiliate KCBS of a reported missile launch late Monday afternoon -- around 5 PM. Both the Air Force and the Navy denied they had any missiles launches at the time. According to CBS News the Defense Department remains baffled.

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation." And they go on: The FAA told CBS News that they ran radar replays of a large area west of Los Angeles based on media reports of the location of a possible missile launch, but they did not reveal any fast moving unidentified targets in that area. The FAA also did not receive any reports of any unusual sightings from pilots in the area. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details.

A search for flights that could have left a contrail led me to US Air’s flight 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. The flight took off from Honolulu at 10:06 AM HST, passed over Catalina Island at 5:03 PM PST and landed in Phoenix at 6:42 MST (5:42 PST). The flight entered the US just north of Camp Pendleton. It was at 37,000 ft and traveling at 582 mph.

The flight track is shown above (From FlightAware). Tracking data here (also from FlightAware) covers the time around 5:00 PM as the plane approached the California coast.

Time PST Lat. Long. -------Direction -KTS MPH -ALT

04:56PM- 33.04-119.1863° Northeast 487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center
04:57PM- 33.10-119.0362° Northeast 487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center

04:59PM- 33.17-118.8962° Northeast 487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center

04:59PM- 33.23-118.7463° Northeast 487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:01PM- 33.30-118.5963° Northeast 487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:01PM- 33.36-118.4479° East ------487 560 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:02PM- 33.39-118.2680° East ----- 500 575 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:03PM- 33.41-118.0882° East ----- 506 582 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:04PM- 33.43-117.9181° East ------511 588 37,000 Los Angeles Center

05:06PM- 33.45-117.7482° East ------516 594 37,000 Los Angeles Center

It is extremely doubtful either NASA or the services would launch without a NOTAM closing the airspace. They didn't. If a missile were launched, NORAD would have satellite tracking of the boost phase. They don’t. It is highly doubtful a foreign country would be able to position itself and launch without detection. The only reasonable conclusion it was an aircraft contrail, most likely from Flight 808.

Death Panels for Democrats … The DNC’s new tactic to hold the House

2010-09-05T14:21:00.003-04:00

The story that has the political establishment all abuzz today is the plan for Democrats to concentrate party resources on those with the best chances of winning so Nancy Pelosi can still wield the gavel. The sacrificial lambs and potential survivors will be chosen by party leaders in the next week or so. Not a great consolation for those from highly contested districts who were told they were better off voting for Obamacare than not.

From today’s NY Times:

[Democratic] party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority. In the next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new polls and other data that show whether vulnerable incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.

This is a disaster of their own making. Instead of governing from the center and including Republicans in the writing of highly controversial legislation, they sought to use their supermajority in the Senate and 40 odd majority in the House to cram through bill after bill drafted in secret and not made known until the last moment. The tone deafness of Democrats reached a peak this summer when many refused to even appear at townhalls after experiencing voter outrage during earlier recesses. While many freshmen House Democrats expressed their uneasiness, they were reassured by Speaker Pelosi the mood of the country would change once voters knew the content of the bills. This despite polling data for Democrats in general and Obama in particular showed impending disaster.

Those who went along with Pelosi’s charade are now being given the ultimate insult. They are being rewarded with the proverbial pain killer, or more likely Kool-Aid for their loyalty, especially on Obamacare. It is fitting medicine for a bill that will do the same thing to patients who in the view of bureaucrats are not worth saving.

When the dust settles after the November elections, the finger pointing will begin. Ultimately the responsibility for the impending disaster must point to the White House, where a truly clueless President has risked the political health of his party for a highly unpopular medical bill. At least Bill Clinton knew the health of the party was important.

This President does not.

Unusually good video of Restore Honor rally … from the Washington Post

2010-08-29T18:06:00.004-04:00

I was pleasantly surprised by one aspect of yesterday’s Restore Honor rally on the Mall. It came from a surprising source, the Washington Post. It is Anna Uhls superb video coverage of the event. She covers it from the perspective of David Meister, a 40 something father and his 12 year old son Adam who took a ten hour “red eye” bus from New Richmond, Ohio to participate.

David expresses his concern that President Obama is taking us down the wrong path and to turn things around he would have to change his policies 180 degrees. He adds that as America’s first African American President, he has the opportunity to become one of the greatest. But thinks he won’t and will be a one term president.

The video is interspersed with clips of the rally and speeches of the event’s organizer, Glen Beck, and from Sarah Palin. It finishes with bagpipe strains of Amazing Grace which will bring tears to your eyes. The Post’s treatment here is in stark contrast to the scant coverage of last September’s Tea Party rally in Washington. There is no snarkiness and no mention of Al Sharpton’s counter rally. It simply treats the sincerity of David Meister and his son with the dignity it deserves.

Two thumbs up for Anna Uhls.

Pelosi wants investigation of mosque opponents. Time for the House Un-American Activities Committee?

2010-08-18T23:32:00.003-04:00

Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a KCBS interview has called for an investigation of who is funding the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque. From the Washington Times:

"There is no question that there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how ... this opposition to the mosque is being funded,"

Now I’m not sure which House committee would handle this. Perhaps she can resurrect the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The name has an interesting ring to it. Comments like this show the utter disarray Democrats find themselves in. First Obama, in front of a Muslim dinner audience at the White House last Friday, praised the concept of the mosque and then waffled in less than 24 hours when the reaction set in.

Then Harry Reid broke ranks with the President and now Pelosi in an attempt to support the President begins to sound a bit like Joe McCarthy. The hallmark party discipline of Democrats is coming unraveled as panic over elections sets in. It’s not only Pelosi, Reid and Obama. Barney Frank has called for the elimination of Freddy Mac and Fannie May. Now that sounds almost Republican.

But you have to understand Republican Scott Brown nearly carried Frank’s district when he won in January. We will see more of this. Democrats rationalized their gubernatorial losses in the blue states of New Jersey and Virginia as flukes. Now they are reading the poll numbers and they are not reassuring.

Would Harry Truman have been impeached if he hadn’t used the Bomb?

2010-08-05T13:40:00.007-04:00

As we approach the anniversary (August 6) of the employment of an atomic weapon against a wartime enemy, many will want to apologize for our first use without the knowledge of the bloodiness of the war or the consequences of not using it.

There was entirely a different mindset by Americans in that war than there has been since. Every family was involved in some way with the war, either having a relative in the service or in some way working or volunteering in the war effort. Food (especially meat and sugar), gasoline, tires were strictly rationed.

The news media covered the incredible brutality of the Japanese who had attacked us at Pearl Harbor without warning. The Bataan death march, a photo in Life Magazine of an Australian prisoner about to be beheaded and press reports and newsreels of the enormous casualties at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, did not leave Americans with a warm and fuzzy feeling about the Japanese.

Wars are won by swift, decisive action. The comparison of WWI with its drawn out trench warfare and the German blitzkrieg in 1940 is an example. Despite millions of deaths in WWI, Germans never got within 70 miles of Paris. In 1940 with surprise and overwhelming force, France fell in 38 days with minimal casualties on both sides.

President Truman in 1945 was faced with the same realities. He could use a dramatic new weapon that could end the war quickly, or he could order the invasion of Japan. With the experience of Iwo Jima (6,822 KIA, 19,217 WIA in 33 days) and Okinawa (12,513 KIA, 38,916 WIA in 82 days), projections of US casualties varied from about 100,000 to 250,000 killed depending on the duration of the campaign.

So he did what was necessary, and the Japanese announced their surrender 9 days after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. What would have happened had we not used the bomb? Would there have been a political reaction from the hundreds thousands of families whose children or brothers had been killed or wounded? You betcha!

The secret of the bomb would not have remained secret. And the wanton waste of life would have become a major political issue. At best Truman would not have survived the election in 1948. But there is a distinct possibility he would have faced far worse, impeachment.

Obama Disapproval hits 50.0%

2010-08-05T02:17:00.003-04:00

Real Clear Politics’ Presidential Job Approval polling data shows Obama’s disapproval at 50.0% and the spread at minus 5.3%, both records.

Insult by non invitation

2010-07-30T00:34:00.012-04:00

It seems Democrats these days are expressing their anger by not inviting those one would normally expect to attend. What caught my attention was a piece on Jamie Dimon, the highly competent CEO and Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, and a former supporter of Obama. But he has become a major critic starting with the after-the-fact pay and dividend restrictions for accepting TARP funds, calling them a Scarlet Letter. For this and objecting to provisions of the financial reform bill, he was rewarded with a non invitation to Obama’s bill signing ceremony.

To show insults can work both ways, Obama was not invited to Chelsea’s wedding. It’s not about having too many Presidents present as Obama implied. It is simply that Bill Clinton hates Obama’s guts. It goes back to Obama’s campaign aides accusing Hillary of racism more than once, an unpardonable sin in blue on blue confrontations. But the insult doesn’t stop there. The invitation list is loaded with Clinton supporters who can be more than helpful should Hillary decide to challenge Obama for the nomination in 2012.

While rumors of the list are rife they are quite unreliable, most sources mention Barbara Streisand, Ted Turner, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe, close friend Denise Rich, former British PM John Major and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Clinton loyalists all. Notably absent is Al Gore, Bill’s VP.

Over on Big Government Paul Rahe pens a somewhat tongue in cheek article comparing the upcoming Clinton wedding to the opening scene of the Godfather, where Don Corleone holds a private audience with wedding guests who seek his help. For those who remember the Godfather, Corleone after helping his loyalists, expects and gets their help. The implication is Bill will be asking them to side with him (and Hillary) when he goes “to the mattresses” in a Democratic civil war, the 2012 presidential election cycle.

It’s interesting to see the battle lines forming. My advice: In a mud slinging contest, never bet against the Clintons.

Was the “Russian Spy Scandal” roll up just another White House screw up?

2010-07-09T14:15:00.004-04:00

The whole escapade makes no sense. With the exception of the “money man” Christopher Metzos who escaped, none represented a threat. It would have been far better to keep the remaining 10 under observation, as they had been for years. So the question is why did the FBI roll the operation up at this time?

We tend to think operations like this are well thought out and run according to plan. But it is more likely this was an enormous screw up between the FBI and the White House. First, no FBI director in his right mind would conduct such an operation without first notifying the White House. It just doesn’t happen.

There was a sense of urgency however. Metzos was planning to leave the country and he was the one person who had some value. He knew the purpose of this group and he probably had contact or knowledge of other groups in the US. My guess is the FBI’s request for action languished on somebody’s desk at the WH or even made it to the President’s reading folder without action. When it became apparent Metzos was actually leaving the country, likely there was a flurry of activity but with a decision that came too late capture him before he boarded his flight.

The rest is history. At our request he was detained in Cyprus, granted bail and slipped away. The whole spy swap charade appears to be an afterthought. None of the four swapees are US operatives. It’s just an after the fact cover to give some rationality to all of this.

Al Sharpton surprised at the support from the black community for the Supreme Court gun case

2010-06-30T11:57:00.005-04:00

On his radio show yesterday, Al Sharpton surprisingly reveals an overwhelming support for Supreme Court Second Amendment decision in the black community.

Sharpton: I would say 90% of the calls I received yesterday were in support of the Supreme Court and people say they want to bear guns. They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.

Political correctness has masked the true intent of big city Democrat mayors for their support of gun control. Quite frankly it is and has been an effort to disarm blacks. And Justice Clarence Thomas’s remarkable revelation that after the Civil War, freed blacks only achieved freedom by protecting themselves with their own arms.

This apparently has resonated in the black community. In Detroit in the early 1980s, a group of black ministers organized a bus tour to Windsor, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. The bus driver warned the group of the very strict laws in Canada, especially for side arms, and told them to leave any behind. None did. When they reached Customs and Immigration, Canadian officials inspected them and found many were carrying weapons. The bus was forced to return to the US and the incident made headlines in Detroit. It made headlines because it revealed decent law abiding blacks felt it necessary to arm themselves for self protection.

Whites by that time had largely fled Detroit. But blacks either for economic necessity, the desire for affinity or in the case of the ministers, worked in the community. And were afraid. At some point we can hope the black community will see the duplicity of the big city Democrat politicians. That they are being used, not valued.

Obama under water in RCP’s Presidential approval ratings

2010-06-18T14:49:00.004-04:00

The latest Real Clear Politics Presidential Job Approval data shows President Obama with greater disapproval numbers than approval. The numbers are 47.7% approve of his performance, 48.0 % disapprove, for a net minus of 0.3%.

Only media affiliated polling groups (with the exception of Fox) continue to show Obama with significant positives: CNN/Opinion Research 50 – 48; Ipsos/McClatchy 50 – 45; AP/GFK 50 – 49; and ABC/Wash Post 52 – 45.

With the exception of a single day on April 11, this is the first time Obama has been under water in the polling.

What’s behind the secrecy of the X-37B? Probably cover for another satellite launched with it

2010-06-01T16:25:00.018-04:00

On April 22 the Air Force launched the X-37B, an unmanned miniature space shuttle look-alike that was cloaked in secrecy and described in official gobbledygook that still defies the best decryption efforts of NSA. Here’s a sample: Gary E. Payton, under secretary of the Air Force for space programs [said], “The program supports technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development.”

Nothing about this mission makes sense. What aroused my curiosity was an article in the NY Times that Harvard astronomer Jonathan Mc Dowell had reported the upper stage was sent into an unknown orbit around the sun. Now the upper stage of any launch vehicle shoves the main payload into its final orbit and stays there having expended its fuel, in this case 255 miles high.

Why did the upper stage continue into a sun orbit after positioning the X-37B in low earth orbit? The second oddity is the launch vehicle is an Atlas V with a Centaur upper stage. The version used (501) is designed and optimized for launching geosynchronous satellites to an altitude of about 22,000 miles high, not low earth orbit. The similar 502 version can lift 22,700 pounds into low earth orbit, more than double the 11,000 pounds of the space plane. Normally a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle would be used in such circumstances.

With half of the Atlas V’s capacity unused, one wonders what else went into orbit. Likely it was some sort of covert satellite, either to inspect what other nations might have put up there, but our own as well. Geosynchronous satellites are all in a very narrow band in both altitude and inclination. They are very hard to detect from earth if they are designed with stealth characteristics. But positioning an imaging satellite in an orbit slightly higher, it can detect their silhouettes against the bright earth. Also, we can inspect our own satellites to make sure nothing potentially destructive has been placed on or near them.

Our assets in space, both civilian and military, are essential. Aircraft and shipping are dependent on GPS. Our worldwide communications systems are heavily reliant on satellites and our intelligence collection efforts rely on them. While we have treaties on weaponizing space, satellites remain vulnerable, as we found out when the Chinese used lasers against one of our satellites in an apparent effort to blind it.

My best guess is the X-37B is simply a cover for another satellite (covert) launched with it.

Follow the BP oil leak progress live

2010-05-26T14:15:00.009-04:00

The US Coast Guard has approved the use of the top kill method of capping BP’s well. There has been no time set to begin the procedure, but you can follow the video feed live from the ROV camera here. Note the moving wormlike object close to the pipe. No idea what it is, could be debris. Hopefully this try will be successful. Update: It appears BP's link is getting overloaded at times, with the screen going black. Be patient, you will be able to see it. Update 2: Coverage now includes positioning of eqiupment to prepare the top kill procedure. Update 3 (5:45pm edt): Evidently BP doesn't want the public to see the results of the top kill procedure. The video feed is of a static piece of equipment, probably the blowout preventer. The view does not show the work being performed, nor the plume. I guess they don't want anyone looking over their shoulder. Update 4 (6:45pm edt): BP is now showing a video feed of multiple plumes. The video quality of the feed makes it difficult to read the description of what is being shown.

The BP oil spill is not our worst offshore environmental disaster

2010-05-04T03:30:00.011-04:00

I don’t want to diminish the problems with the oil spill, but we have lived through far worse and our waters and shoreline recovered. During World War II, Nazi U-boats sank scores of oil tankers off the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico campaign began precisely 68 years ago today, May 4, 1942. In a little over a month they had sunk oil cargoes of over 600,000 barrels (one barrel equals 42 gallons), and by December 1943 when they sank their last ship in the Gulf, nearly 900,000 barrels of oil and oil products had been left in Gulf waters. For comparison, if it takes BP 3 months to get the well under control, at the current estimated leakage rate of 5,000 barrels a day, 450,000 will have seeped into the Gulf. While a lot, it is just half of what was spilled during the war.

The difference between then and now is we were focused not on the environment, but on fighting a war that had reached our shores. For those of us who lived on the coast, we did step in “tar” on the beach. But it was more of a nuisance and nothing compared to the agony of those with silver or gold star flags on the front of their homes.

The tar releases continued after the war, no doubt from seepage from the sunken ships and from the collapse of tank walls that had rusted out. Yet as we look back on the late 1940s and early 50s, we consider them the pristine years. They really weren’t. We recovered without a lot of fuss, as we will from the BP mess.

Wildlife photos from Sanibel’s Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve

2010-02-06T11:38:00.018-05:00

These photos were taken about two weeks ago shortly after the cold spell that took temperatures to near freezing. The bird count was down because of it, but it's now improving.

The last two photos are of two egrets in a courtship ritual. Thought you folks who are now snowbound in the northeast might enjoy them. Ding Darling National Wildlife Preserve is one of the treasures of Sanibel, representing a third of the acreage of Sanibel Island. It is a must stop for folks visiting our truly unique Florida Gulf Coast barrier island. Winter is the peak season for bird watching as birds, like humans, fly here for the warm weather and abundant good food.

What’s going on in the Middle East? Is all hell about to break loose?

2010-02-02T16:29:00.010-05:00

Two major clues came to light over this past weekend. The first was the unusual secret meeting of CIA Director Leon Panetta last Thursday (Jan. 28) with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and later Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The second was an administration leak to the press that we are beefing up missile defenses in the Gulf.

After months of Iran’s stalling, nuclear negotiations have gone nowhere. It was obvious from the start they would go nowhere. The self imposed deadline we made to keep Israel from unilaterally striking Iran came and went at the end of the year.

Someone now has to step to the plate, either the US or Israel. Likely it will be us. And the next move along with our allies (UK, the Gulf States and possibly France) will probably be to declare an embargo/blockade on gasoline and refined products into Iran. This job is made simpler because virtually all gasoline imported from outside the Gulf, funnels through a single port/pipeline terminal, Bandar Abbas, located just outside of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, despite having gobs of oil, has very little refining capacity – a critical mistake by the ruling mullahs. Most of the imported gasoline comes from a transshipment port in the Emirates, Fujairah, a short 120 mile run to Bandar Abbas. This source will of course dry up, as the Emirates will be on board with us.

To handle the inevitable blockade runners, we must either intercept them or take the lower risk approach and mine the port. Mining is relatively simple to accomplish and most likely would be done with carrier aircraft operating from the Gulf of Oman. Mining has the advantage that you don’t have to actively sink a blockade runner. With mines, nothing goes bang unless the offending ship decides to challenge the minefield. The onus is on the ship owner and its captain. Unless a country has an effective mine sweeping capability, and the Iranians don’t, the port stays closed as happened to Haiphong in 1972.

Most air delivered mines are inexpensive “dumb” bombs with pressure, acoustic or magnetic “triggers.” They can be easily and quickly replenished as needed. There are even more sophisticated mines that are battery powered torpedoes that lay in wait and become active when it hears a ship approaching several miles away. The stand-off distance makes sweeping very difficult. What happens after we declare the embargo/blockade? Well, that’s when all hell breaks loose.

For starters Iran must make a choice whether or not to close the Straits of Hormuz. For them, the positive is they will cut off the 17 million barrels a day that keeps industry in the West humming. The negative is they will cut off all of their own oil exports. Likely they will mine the Straits anyway. The Middle East just works that way.

In Israel you will probably see Iran’s surrogates Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as Hamas in Gaza try and make as much trouble as they can. The meeting of Panetta and Mubarak was to coordinate the isolation of Gaza and to share intelligence on smuggling efforts to resupply Hamas. Egypt recently built a fence on its side of the Gaza border which now means longer tunnels and more digging for the smugglers. In the North expect the same rocket attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon you saw in 2006.

This time Israel will have a plan in place and retaliation will be in seconds rather than in minutes. In the US we will see oil shortages and likely some form of rationing, probably similar to what we saw in 1973-4. Maybe worse. And you wondered why Obama reversed course and called for more drilling in the State of the Union address. Now you know.

Was the White House planning to use McCain-Feingold to silence Fox News?

2010-01-24T15:20:00.004-05:00

The White House war on Fox News heated up in early October. It culminated, after almost 3 weeks of harassment, in an unsuccessful effort to exclude Fox, a member of the White House press pool, from an interview with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. In a successful pushback, members of the press pool unanimously refused to conduct any interview, unless Fox was included. The White House backed down.

The language used to marginalize Fox was primarily “Fox is not a legitimate news organization” used by Gibbs on many occasions, and then Communications Director Anita Dunn’s “[T]he way we view it is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party” followed by “But let's not pretend they're a news network….” It was Dunn’s comments on CNN’s Reliable Sources that started the drumbeat that ostensibly ended in late October. But it hasn’t. Last Monday (Jan. 18), just two days prior to the to the Citizens United decision that wisely gutted the censorship provisions of McCain-Feingold, current Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer (and Anita Dunn’s husband) picked up the drumbeat again. We don't feel an obligation to treat [Fox News] like we would treat a CNN or an ABC or an NBC or a traditional news organization. But there are times when it would make sense to communicate with them and appear on the network.

The cause for worry is the precise language used by the White House to demean Fox. It has been: “not a legitimate/traditional news organization/network,” and “a wing of the Republican Party.” McCain-Feingold bans electioneering communications by corporations and unions that mention federal candidates by name 30 days prior to primaries and 60 days prior to the general election. It carves out an exemption for the “institutional press” but disallows the exemption when a broadcast station is “owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate.”

Does Dunn’s contention that Fox is “a wing of the Republican Party” constitute “control” under McCain-Feingold? Would Gibbs’ “not a legitimate news organization” disqualify Fox News from the “institutional press” exemption? Would the FEC go along with these assertions and apply a gag order on Fox deep into the election cycle, making a stay impossible before Election Day? Fortunately the Supreme Court resolved the problem, so we will never know.

But the explosive response by Senator Schumer D-NY to the decision may give a clue to Democrat intentions. We must recognize the Obama administration has an “enemies list.” And unlike the Nixon administration, it makes no secret of who is on it. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are in their crosshairs.

The First Amendment has protected free and vibrant political speech for over 200 years, and will continue to do so if we are vigilant.

The rise of the Lilliputians … the decline of America

2010-01-17T22:37:00.012-05:00

China just completed the world’s fastest high speed rail line, a 664 mile stretch between Wuhan in central China to Guangzhou, north of Hong Kong. The significant fact is not that it is the fastest rail link (217 mph average), but that it was built in less than four years.

If we were to commit the resources to a similar effort, we wouldn’t have completed the environmental impact statement much less resolved the innumerable lawsuits in the same amount of time. The Lilliputians have simply immobilized us. Lest anyone think such an effort was ever beyond our capabilities, in 1869 less than four years after construction began, we completed the 1,775 mile long transcontinental railroad, a great deal of it through mountains and hostile territory. Ironically much of the work done then was by Chinese laborers. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there.

The ability of obstructionists to delay and simply add indefinitely to costs makes large projects in the US like this, almost impossible. Private corporations that must operate at a profit simply cannot afford the delay. Stretching out a project for ten or fifteen years means interest incurred at the beginning just piles up before a revenue stream can hope to pay it off. In many cases it becomes an insurmountable burden.

Such was the case in the granddaddy of all obstructionist targets, the Shoreham nuclear plant on the north shore of Long Island. Twenty-two years after it was ordered, LILCO its owner threw in the towel and admitted defeat. The state of New York and Suffolk County had dragged their feet and saddled it with so many restrictions the debt burden made the project impossible. The final straw was Governor Cuomo’s refusal to allow the emergency evacuation drill, required by the NRC. They couldn’t pass the test because they weren’t allowed to take it.

By 1989, when LILCO gave up, the cost of the plant had balooned to $5.3 billion. By comparison, across Long Island Sound in Connecticut, Millstone II a similar size nuclear plant ordered in the same year as Shoreham (1967) cost $424 million and was producing full commercial power in 1975.

On the railroad side a “high speed” (115 mph) rail link between Washington DC and Charlotte NC has been “under study” since 1992 with little or no movement. It has received some funding under the stimulus program, but no plans to build the link have been proposed.

If we are to be competitive in the world economy, we don’t have the luxury of taking twenty years to complete a four year project. History will pass us by.

Is Maureen Dowd turning conservative?

2010-01-10T15:17:00.013-05:00

In her op-ed piece today, entitled Captain Obvious Learns the Limits of Cool, Maureen Dowd simply eviscerates President Obama for his cluelessness in handling the panty bomber fiasco.

Here’s how it starts: Our president came down from the mountaintop.

He had applied the freshness of his independent thought to the critical matters at hand. He had convened his seminar, reviewed the reviews, analyzed the intelligence every which way, thought anew about everything, and lo and behold, he finally emerged to tell us some stuff we already knew. We are under attack. There is evil in the world. Yemen is a dangerous place that breeds people who want to kill us. Al Qaeda is determined to attack inside the United States. Al Qaeda is casting a wide recruiting net for vulnerable young men. Aspirational terrorists eventually become operational terrorists. Our airports are not safe. Metal detectors can’t detect nonmetal explosives sewn into underwear. Our incomplete no-fly lists are more like “Welcome aboard” lists. We still can’t connect the dots, even when the dots are flying at us like 3-D asteroids. The sun rises in the east. Two plus two equals four.

Is this an epiphany on the order of St. Paul on the road to Damascus? Let’s take a look at the past two weeks. On December 27 she wrote of her Christmas Eve with her conservative brother. His thoughts were the dominant theme of her article. Were they perhaps hers also? Then three days later she let loose on Obama in a piece entitled: As the Nation’s Pulse Races, Obama Can’t Seem to Find His.

Or could it be the she started following the candidacy of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts’ special election? Perhaps she caught a glimpse of his photo in the centerfold of Cosmo magazine. Perhaps she is tired of whiney liberal beta males, and wants a shot at this alpha male.

Whatever the reason Maureen, we welcome your newfound perspective.

Why folks question temperature data … Iced over sea areas running 6 to 7F degrees over freezing

2010-01-01T22:53:00.021-05:00

Starting in early December the sea surface temperatures between Iceland and Greenland were reported significantly higher than normal. This pattern is a repetition of last year. Yet there is significant sea ice (95 to 100% coverage) where the sea surface temperatures are running 3.5 to 4C (6 to 7F) above normal, which means above freezing. And the sea ice extent is at or above norm for the area, implying colder than normal temperatures. Even my rum and Coke with just 50% ice cubes stays within a degree or two of freezing. Makes you scratch your head.

NY Times stoops to new low … lobbied unnamed journalistic prize committee against awards to WSJ

2009-12-17T01:12:00.007-05:00

This incredible revelation came to light in a letter Monday from Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thompson to a number of news organizations. It was a response to a NY Times article by David Carr entitled “Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at the Journal.”

Carr's somewhat snarky article accused the Journal of tainting its reputation as “one of the crown jewels of journalism” into a more mundane conservative newspaper and that it was assuming a pro-business, anti government stance. The Times accusing the Journal of sullying its reputation with biased journalism??? What chutzpah! The Journal’s response was quoted in Editor and Publisher which was a recipient of the letter.

It contained the incendiary allegation that Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times lobbied against the Journal’s “journalists and journalism” with a prize committee. While the the organization was left unnamed, there is no question which one it is. In the field of newspapers, there is only one of significance. It is the Pulitzer Prize Committee.

"The news column by a Mr David Carr today is yet more evidence that The New York Times is uncomfortable about the rise of an increasingly successful rival while its own circulation and credibility are in retreat. The usual practice of quoting ex-employees was supplemented by a succession of anonymous quotes and unsubstantiated assertions. The attack follows the extraordinary actions of Mr Bill Keller, the Executive Editor, who, among other things, last year wrote personally and at length to a prize committee casting aspersions on Journal journalists and journalism. Whether it be in the quest for prizes or in the disparagement of competitors, principle is but a bystander at The New York Times."

What’s behind this? Probably more than the increased competition between the two papers. The Times’ decision whether to run a story or not has very often been followed by the rest of the media, especially when it involves something detrimental to Democrats. Whether this comes from “like mindedness” or persuasion is subject to debate. My feelings are it comes from both and the latter is almost surely present much of the time.

The Times leadership is now being challenged by the Journal. They are publishing “no go” stories the Times and others are holding back on. The recent ClimateGate coverage is an example. The Journal did not follow the Times’ lead. It covered the story and covered it well.

“Social Justice” (Socialism) is what warmists yearn for … not global cooling

2009-12-10T17:07:00.012-05:00

The forebodings the Jews of Europe had as they were herded onto cattle cars to an unknown destination are the same feelings of helplessness I have as the Copenhagen Climate Summit reaches its conclusion. It is the concern that unaccountable, unelected and unresponsive individuals will seal my fate and squander my assets to bring “social justice” to the world.

Make no mistake, global warmists are more interested in achieving an agenda of undoing Westernism than cooling the planet. It is Westernism that has brought unbridled prosperity to most of the world, and where it doesn’t exist (North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar for instance) it leads to abject poverty and suffering. Yet it is our very prosperity they seek to destroy.

I’m not sure what “social justice” is precisely, other than it is preached from the pulpit of the likes of the Reverend Wright when he attacks “rich white people.” And it is being preached from the pulpits of liberal newspapers. I think it is what Joe the plumber objected to. But most of all I don’t understand how transferring the world’s treasure to corrupt regimes will ever alleviate poverty in those countries. It hasn’t before and there is no reason to believe it will in the future.

But read a sample of the misguided logic from the liberal Guardian:

Social justice demands that the industrialized world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them.

When Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, found it couldn’t feed itself because Mugabe’s racist policies forced productive white farmers off their farms, the UN came to the rescue. It provided free maize (corn) to the government to feed its people. But then the government of Zimbabwe sold this gift to acquire foreign exchange. When the UN insisted its personnel oversee the distribution of its largesse to the hungry, Mugabe kicked them out. All efforts to alleviate misery were stymied unless it enriched the corrupt regime.

Haiti’s population has so denuded its countryside to find kindling to cook with, they face destructive mudslides when any tropical storm passes by. Countless foreign aid teams have addressed the problem. And millions of dollars in financial assistance, both private and governmental, have not been able to stop it. The government has been run by a series of corrupt strong men. It is unreasonable to expect money will solve the problem. It will just add to some Swiss bank account’s balance.

The folks who run the UN’s IPCC (located in Switzerland) simply want to establish and maintain control over our lives. Their “social justice” is no more than a form of government imposed on unwilling East Europeans over 60 yeas ago. Global Warming is only a pretext for doing it.

I have always been a believer that the thirst for freedom is universal, that it can never be quenched. Those who have had it stolen from them will forever seek to have it returned. My generation grew up watching Soviet Socialism take over large chunks of the world. The first of the rebellions against it occurred in East Germany in June 1953, a workers protest against the heavy handedness of the newly imposed Communist government. A photo of two men facing off against a tank (above) electrified the world. It appeared on the cover most news and pictorial magazines of the day.

It has lived in my memory. It is a reminder that those who want freedom should never give up.

Amazing! From the NY Times … a positive review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue

2009-12-08T19:34:00.003-05:00

Stanley Fish in his NY Times blog Opinionator reviews Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue. It is a very satisfying analysis for those who admire her, of which I am one. But it is totally out of character for the Times. Read it. It finishes with these words:

But run she does (and falls, but so what?), and when it is all over and she has lost the vice presidency and resigned the governorship, she goes on a long run and rehearses in her mind the eventful year she has chronicled. And as she runs, she achieves equilibrium and hope: “We’ve been through amazing days, and really, there wasn’t one thing to complain about. I feel such freedom, such hope, such thankfulness for our country, a place where nothing is hopeless.” The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.

The comments are in many ways more interesting read than the review itself. They paint a picture of total intolerance from the left for any reasonable discussion of Sarah Palin. They attack the messenger and spout talking points a year’s worth of biased drivel they have read in the Times. It’s a revealing look at the mindset of the Time’s readers. Here are some:

Mr. Fish, you do realize that as an educated and thoughtful person you would not be welcomed in Sarah Palin's Republican party? Scalia, Roberts, Atillo, [sic] Reagan etc would also be unwelcome. When you sleep with the dogs the GOP has the last few decades you are going to pick up the fleas. Mr. Fish is one of the most stupid smart people ever to take a pen to paper. For those that don't know this piece forms part of Fish's new monograph "Surprised by Simpleton," wherein an "authentic" voice leads her unwitting audience's to support blithe ignorance and cheery demagoguery. This column is disgusting for many reasons. Here’s one: We just endured eight disastrous years of an ignorant, unqualified lightweight as president. As a result of The Decider’s abysmal job performance, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives and millions lost their life savings. Now Sarah Palin aspires to become the leader of the free world, and Stanley Fish has written a love note to her in the New York Times. Do you have any sense of responsibility, Dr. Fish? I have absolutely no respect left for you. i'm really surprised to read a deconstructionist former professor of literature opine confidently about what an author actually "believes". isn't it obvious that sarah palin believes most in her own entitlement?

On the other hand there are a few supporters.

What an amazing article to find published in the NYT. An article about Sarah Palin that actually avoids descending into the sexist vile and misogynist hate that one has come to expect as de rigueur in any piece about Sarah Palin in the NYT. As much as Palin has made some decisions and statements that irk and bewilder me, she also has gotten a patently unfair treatment from the media who pounced upon her as soon as they heard a utterly false allegation about her family going on a high-priced clothing shopping spree. As far as I know, no reporter has yet apologized for completely failing to fact check the allegation, and it was only a year or more after the event, as Palin's book was readying for release, that the stylist who had done all of the shopping on the RNC tab without much RNC oversight and with no knowledge of the Palin's fessed up to the real story. A good reporter could have dismissed the rumor with three or four phone calls, but none bothered to do so, and instead launched into maligning Palin every chance they got. And it worked. Palin quickly became laughingstock among all liberals. So it's nice to hear a fair treatment of Palin in the media, even if in a blog, or at least one that openly admits the biases against her and tries to judge her outside of those tired political tropes. This isn't to say that Palin's own political tropes are better, but the bulk of the media judging Palin's every move through the same colored lens is a gross miscarriage of journalistic integrity.

One thing to note, this is a blog and did not appear on the sacrosanct print pages of the Times. But it still has the leftists screaming.

Does Spanx mean the end of the sexual revolution?

2009-12-07T00:24:00.005-05:00

When I was in college in 1958 my dad made a comment that my generation was the worst generation ever, meaning primarily morals and music. It’s a statement most dads have probably made to sons over the millennia. My retort was, “well what about the Roaring Twenties, bathtub gin and petting parties?” After denials of his involvement in any of that, this line of conversation ceased.

Those who came of age in the fifties lived through what is now considered one of the tamest times since the Victorian era. It was the age of Doris Day, hula hoops, and dancing the jitterbug. It was the heyday of the Catholic Legion of Decency, and airbrushed body parts in Playboy center spreads.

But most of all it was the age of the girdle. Young women with great shapes felt they had to improve on Mother Nature’s perfection. The ultimate development of the girdle was the panty girdle, the modern day equivalent of the chastity belt. A gentleman caller knew instantly from a gentle pat on the fanny that the best he could hope for was a gentle kiss goodnight.

All that changed in the sixties and seventies. The boomers burned their bras and shed their girdles. Bras had a revival simply because of gravity and inevitable natural aging but the girdle went the way of the buggy whip. However the lady boomers who thought modern diets and Jane Fonda workouts would keep them forever looking 18, found fat deposits still wanted to migrate from their top parts to their tummies and rear ends.

In 2000 the mother of necessity answered the need and Spanx was invented. Now you can’t call it a girdle, it wouldn’t sell. It is a development of panty hose with a super duty fabric. And it is spreading to a younger generation. But it has its drawbacks as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Before Jessica Kraus put on a tight-fitting frock one recent evening, she wriggled into a $76 piece of flesh-toned underwear that extended from the bottom of her bra to mid-thigh. She felt confident and svelte as she left her apartment to meet friends for cocktails. Then a few hours later, the 25-year-old Boston event planner was faced with what she says was a "horrific situation." As she was embracing a man she had met that night, Ms. Kraus got to thinking about what lurked beneath her sleek exterior. "There's no graceful way of taking the thing off," she says.

The world has come full circle. Will this dampen the sexual revolution? It’s doubtful anything can. And I hope not.

UK Met Office to reexamine temperature data around the world … a victory for truth

2009-12-05T02:19:00.001-05:00

Today’s Times of London reveals the UK Met (Meteorological) Office will go through the painstaking job of reassembling all of the original temperature data that was recently discovered to have been destroyed by the CRU, reportedly in the 1980s. This earth shattering news was discovered by the University of East Anglia shortly after it announced all source data and code used in the CRU’s reports would be made public. Two days after the revelation of the destroyed data, it was announced Phil Jones, CRU’s director would temporarily step down, pending an independent investigation.

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails. The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012. Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.

This is a necessary task for any future climate research to be credible. Not only will this provide verifiable baseline data, but it will also determine to what extent Jones et al fudged the data. Many of us are waiting for that. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the university had its meeting with Jones, to question why all the difficulty in releasing data and source code, only to discover it didn’t even exist. Now for a university to find it’s most highly publicized and respected department continued to publish papers for at least 20 years, papers that had a major influence on all the economies of the world and not have the data to back them up, must have had those in the room dumbstruck.

The real question is why nobody was ever told. And another question is why none of the peer reviewers ever picked it up. Well we do know the answer to that from reading the emails. They could be counted on “without being nudged.” My guess is the question wasn’t whether or not Jones should be sacked, it was a matter of when.

NY Times is finally forced to write a substantive but incomplete and biased story on ClimateGate

2009-12-02T11:41:00.010-05:00

The “temporary” step down of Phil Jones finally forced the NY Times to do some print coverage of the scandal. Missing from the story are any quotes from the incendiary emails and very little about reaction of other scientists over this growing scandal.

Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a “criminal breach” of the school’s computer systems. The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

The Times’ emphasis on the criminal aspect of the email release is more than somewhat laughable in light of some of its rather questionable publication of highly classified comint information. But the important point here is the Times has simply played the same old game of attempting to suppress an unpalatable story that has been burning up the internet. It is a repetition of the Giles/O’Keefe/Breitbart story on ACORN. They tried to make that one look like they were caught napping, but the world knows it was more to keep the story from “getting legs.”

The Times and its Public Editor Clark Hoyt are easy targets because they keep doing the same thing and keep getting caught at it. I wrote Clark twice on ClimateGate, once Saturday evening and the other yesterday shortly after the Phil Jones step down was announced. This from 11/28/2009:

It has been 10 days since the “hacked” … emails made it into the public domain and in that time the NY Times has reported on it only once in print…. And its conclusion was that it was no great shakes…. Since then the internet has been burning up with analyses from highly respected statistical experts whose writings paint a widespread and extremely damaging picture of data manipulation. This is in addition to playing games with the peer review process and suppressing free access to source data as well as violating the FOI acts in both the US and the UK.

So serious is the breach of integrity, green activist writer for the Guardian, George Monbiot, has called for the resignation of Dr Philip Jones (CRU’s director). Dr. Eduardo Zorita (a prominent climate scientist at Hamburg’s GKSS) has called for Drs Mann (of the now discredited hockey stick thesis) and Jones to be barred from any further participation with the UN’s IPCC.

Today the University of East Anglia (home of the CRU) has ordered the release of all climate source data into the public domain. After your paper was admittedly “slow off the mark” in reporting the ACORN scandals in September, your editors promised you would have an editor keep track of the hot stories on the internet. So far he or she is doing a terrible job. …You will not be the newspaper of record on this story, just as you weren’t when you ignored so many others. The UK’s Telegraph is where students of history will go for the CRU story, sadly not the NY Times.

And this from yesterday:

I wrote you earlier that the Times is certainly not the "Newspaper of Record" on the ClimateGate issue. Again you are "slow off the mark" and lacking "tunedinness." What happened to your internet monitoring editor? The above story passed over the AP wire a short time ago. It's the same as if Einstein were stepping down pending an investigation of his work. It is earth shaking, especially on the eve of the Copenhagen conference. Again the Times is well behind the curve on this story. While you tried to marginalize the AGW critics, your editors only succeeded in marginalizing themselves. Good luck explaining this away in next Sunday's column. (Emphasis added)

Clark Hoyt should stop being an apologist for the Times. He should man up and do what a readers’ representative should. Criticize the editors in no uncertain terms for failing to report the news. Don’t ask them for their rationale for not covering the story, go to Jay Rosen or some other impartial media critic for their opinion. But he won’t do that. Hoyt is only there as window dressing.

Phil Jones, CRU director “temporarily” steps down pending an investigation

2009-12-01T15:30:00.003-05:00

The following just passed over the AP wire. CRU director and author of many of the damning “hacked” emails, Phil Jones, has temporarily stepped down pending an independent investigation. This is only the beginning of his problems. East Anglia University holds all the emails and source data (what’s left of it), on its computers. They should be able ascertain the scope of the fraud he perpetrated. If data has been recently destroyed, they should be able to find out who did it. Happy hunting guys!

UK climate scientist to temporarily step down (AP) – 1 hour ago

LONDON — Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented. The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month. The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.

It is doubtful the media can contain this, though as of this moment (3:20 pm EST) it has not been posted by the NY Times.

Good video on cooking the data on the hockey stick

2009-11-30T15:06:00.001-05:00

This video includes a lengthy series of interviews with Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit. It is an excellent recap of his battles with Mann and the CRU. It was produced by a Finnish group and adds their own tree ring data which support McIntyre. It is in Finnish with English subtitles. The McIntyre interviews are of course in English. It was released recently and appears to have been updated with new information from this past weekend. Click here to open the site.

Nature abhors a vacuum … that’s what we are getting from the media on ClimateGate

2009-11-29T23:26:00.012-05:00

After its miserable failure to cover the O’Keefe/Giles expose of ACORN, the MSM is striving for a repeat performance in ClimateGate with near silence. This is a story of “hacked” emails from the Hadley Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the UK that were made public about 12 days ago. It is a story of the top climate research scientists cooking the data, queering the peer review process and encouraging each other to destroy data covered by two nations’ Freedom of Information Acts.

Coverage by the nation’s two “leading” newspapers has been underwhelming. A total of three print articles have been written in the NY Times and Washington Post. All three ignore or minimize the underlying corruption of the scientific method, find the most significant aspect is that CRU scientists are antagonistic to skeptics, and reach the same conclusion (in strikingly similar wording - note bold text) that it’s no big deal.

From the Times (11/21):

“This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents. Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them. The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

First article from the Post (11/22): While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies. The second Post article (11/25) reaches a similar conclusion as the Times. "This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud," proclaimed one skeptic. Not quite. Assuming the documents are genuine -- the authenticity of all has not been confirmed -- critics are taking them out of context and misinterpreting at least one controversial e-mail exchange. None of it seriously undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change. But a few of the documents are damaging for other reasons.

Fortunately we have the internet, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and several UK newspapers that aren’t part of the journalistic omerta (code of silence) to cover this scandal. In particular the internet has been the conduit to the scientific community for the technical aspects of the emails. The MSM isn’t really needed here. They have dissected the data and the statistical code used in the temperature calculations and many are appalled. And some very prominent names are calling for blood.

Green activist and renowned columnist for the leftist Guardian, George Monbiot, has called for the resignation of Phil Jones, Director of CRU. Eduardo Zorita of Germany’s climate research center, GKSS, has said Michael Mann (of now discredited hockey stick fame) and Phil Jones should be barred from further participation with the UN’s IPCC “because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”

The University of East Anglia (home of the CRU) has announced it will now release all source data into the public domain. And Penn State University has said it will investigate the writings of Michael Mann in light of new information revealed in the recent emails. No doubt there will be new revelations and accusations. Remember all of this has happened without the assistance of the US media, save Murdoch’s group which is not part of omerta.

Fortunately we have Canadian Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit (damned in many of Phil Jones emails) and Anthony Watt of Watts Up With That keeping us informed. So heavy was traffic on Steve’s website after the release of the emails, it melted down. He now has an alternative site (use it) which can handle the load.

Watt’s site has been setting records, doubling its viewership from earlier in the month. Both are good reads. Steve’s are heavy on the statistical side and often Anthony will translate Steve’s Geek into English for less informed (such as me) on his website. Both are good friends of each other and work well together.

Anthony’s cause, outside of reporting on climate change, is attempting to document some of the absurdly biased siting of US weather stations. Some are on blacktopped building rooftops, some subject to jetwash at airports, and some are near hot exhausts of a/c compressors. He is leading a citizens’ effort to photograph and note discrepancies from proper siting standards.

The best wrap up of ClimateGate so far ran in the Telegraph (UK) today. Read it. It will open your eyes. Again the old media has stepped in it. By ignoring the story they hope it won’t “get legs” and damage the warmists’ agenda at the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference, December 7. They will fail in that as they have failed in so many others. They seek to marginalize conservative thought, but they only marginalize themselves. Their circulation numbers are tanking. Climate Audit and Watts Up With That are setting record highs.

Update: The Times of London is now reporting much of the underlying raw data to determine the actual measured temperatures for the past 150 years was destroyed in the 1980s. There is no way to verify this data other than Phil Jones' word. The whole global warming scenario simply can't be verified.

Ahmadinejad gives Obama the bird

2009-11-10T01:46:00.005-05:00

Iran put an exclamation point on its message to the US that it’s not interested in having its reactor fuel reprocessed outside of its territory. Yesterday it announced it was going to try the three hapless Americans who stumbled into Iran, on spy charges. These idiot thrill seekers are now hostages who are being used for leverage against the US. And just like the embassy hotages in the Carter presidency, they are being used to humiliate Obama.

At the end of September, after months of negotiations, Iran agreed in principle to allow its research reactor fuel to be reprocessed outside of its borders. This is important from a non-proliferation standpoint because the country doing the reprocessing has control of the spent fuel byproducts, most importantly the nuclear explosive plutonium. But as the October deadline loomed, Iran first agreed to allow France and Russia to do it, then only Russia and eventually said no one could. That’s where it stands now. The administration is desperately shopping around for another country such as Turkey without much luck so far. Iran is doing a typical stall, buying time while it continues its nuclear enrichment program.

This is the inevitable outcome when one side has talks as its prime goal, and the other just wants time. For Iran the price is cheap, just the expenditure of a lot of hot air. Obama should look back at the endless talks of the Carter years over our embassy hostages that invariably ended in frustration. At a certain point the US must say we have passed the deadlines, we are making no progress and we will take appropriate action. And still we haven’t even addressed Iran’s uranium enrichment program which should be our prime objective.

Surprise, surprise … bloggers to be covered under the Senate version of the federal shield law

2009-10-31T01:23:00.005-04:00

According to Editor & Publisher and other sources, the Senate has worked out the wrinkles of a federal shield law to protect news gatherers from being forced to reveal confidential sources. The issues holding it up were from the White House involving classified leaks and national security issues.

The major surprise however is it apparently covers freelancers and “citizen journalists,” a euphemism used to describe bloggers.

The negotiated compromise creates a fair standard to protect the public interest, journalists, the news media, bloggers, prosecutors and litigants," said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., a cosponsor of the Free Flow of Information Act.The revised bill would also extend protections for freelance or citizen journalists by defining a journalist by the nature of activity engaged in rather than by the organization that employs the reporter.

Earlier this year, the House passed its version of the bill. This is good news for citizen journalists.

Fox News zings the White House with a new sign off --- now “Fair, Balanced and Unafraid”

2009-10-27T19:42:00.001-04:00

If you didn’t notice it, Bret Baier of Fox News added a little zinger when he signed off tonight. Instead of “Fair and Balanced,” it was “Fair, Balanced and Unafraid.” It was an obvious reference to the threats coming from the White House.

The FCC should use its power to cut the legs out from under liberal news

2009-10-27T01:54:00.009-04:00

In the days before deregulation, hordes of economists at the CAB and the ICC set tariffs and determined the “correct” amount of service on city pairs for the airline and trucking industry respectively. One of the few gifts Jimmy Carter gave us was to replace these clunky and inefficient regulatory agencies with a far more rational and efficient system that is market driven. Unfortunately we are about to lurch back into the past, though not necessarily in those industries.

The one agency that is jumping at the opportunity to reregulate the market is the FCC. With all its newfound zeal, it now has a perfect opportunity to redress a true market imbalance. There are five TV/Cable news operations: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News and CNN. 4 of the 5 are certifiably liberal and only one conservative. Yet the latest Gallup Poll shows there are twice as many conservatives as liberals (40% to 20%). Surely the FCC should use its club of license renewal to persuade say NBC and CBS to join the conservative club. Still, that would give only a 3 to 2 conservative preponderance, rather than a deserved 2 to 1, but we could live with that.

Obama’s thuggish tactic to intimidate the media … finally hits a snag

2009-10-23T12:42:00.010-04:00

One shouldn’t underestimate the significance of yesterday's pushback by the members of the White House news pool over the exclusion of Fox News from the interview process with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. The unanimous decision of members of the pool (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN) to refuse any interviews without Fox’s presence had the White House quickly and dramatically reversing course. The announcement of the backdown came late in Bret Baier’s evening news segment on FNC. It was announced without acrimony, and without comment. There was no gloating. But all present with Baier realized its import. That the pliable media, so long in the bag for Obama, saw a bigger issue: the freedom of the press. And they stood firm.

The crisis reached its peak starting two weeks ago after a month of warfare against Fox News. Anita Dunn declared Fox News was “a wing of the Republican Party,” and was “opinion journalism masquerading as journalism.” Finally this past Sunday and Monday, senior White House officials in an unprecedented effort to emasculate a media organization, told the media they should ignore Fox.

From a Fox News report:

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday [October 18] that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization. Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

On Tuesday at a White House press conference, press secretary Gibbs continued the theme started by Emmanuel and Axelrod. But he was challenged by Jake Tapper of ABC News, one of the few willing to directly confront the administration.

It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one …?

Gibbs of course refused to concede Tapper’s point. But then the warfare escalated even further as Obama himself joined the fray in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. From Fox News:

On Wednesday, Obama, speaking publicly for the first time about his administration's portrayal of Fox News as illegitimate, said he's not "losing sleep" over the controversy. "I think that what our advisers simply said is, is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama said when asked about his advisers targeting the network openly. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over."

All of this was not only to marginalize Fox, but to set the stage to ensure the press pool would do the White House’s dirty work to exclude Fox. It didn’t work out that way.

But there is more at play than just Fox. The ACORN story was the first challenge to the media’s blackout strategy that “got legs.” I have written here, here and here about what appears to be a coordinated effort by the major media to deny coverage of stories antithetical to liberal/Democrat interests. Thanks to two young and courageous individuals, Andy Breitbart and Fox News, the media was stung in their attempt to hide the story. And that was in particular Breitbart’s aim.

But an interesting thing is happening. AP did cover the latest O’Keefe/Giles tapes of the Philadelphia ACORN office, as did many metro dailies. AP in particular is now covering stories that were untouchable in the past, as is the Washington Post. Surely the White House is noticing it. And with their thuggish tactics, they are trying intimidate the media back into line.

What happens when utopians fail? … Their best friends turn on them, and that is good.

2009-10-17T12:25:00.009-04:00

I was struck by the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson opinion piece today entitled The Biggest Disappointment of the Obama Presidency. In it he berates Obama for giving short shrift to New Orleans when he visited Thursday. Of all the Post’s writers, Robinson has been the most supportive of Obama, seldom finding fault, but this time he skewers him.

President Obama's brief display of drive-by compassion Thursday in New Orleans was, for me, by far the worst outing of his presidency thus far -- and the biggest disappointment.

I covered Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath -- the flood in New Orleans that drowned a great city, the storm surge in Mississippi that erased whole communities, the devastation, the agony. For weeks afterwards, I had trouble sleeping. I couldn't forget the scenes I'd witnessed or the stories I'd heard.

More than a year later, I covered a Senate subcommittee hearing in New Orleans on the lagging reconstruction effort. I watched as a young senator who was thought to be considering a presidential run -- that would be Barack Obama -- used his Harvard Law skills to eviscerate Bush-era officials for not doing enough to rebuild and revive the Gulf Coast region.

So it was strange and disheartening that Obama would wait nine months to make his first visit to New Orleans as president. It was stunning that he would spend only a few hours on the ground and that he wouldn't set foot in Mississippi or Alabama at all. But worst of all was the way he seemed to dismiss the idea that his administration could and should be doing much more.

The problem with utopian leaders or those carrying utopian messages is, once in power, they can never deliver on their promises. When that happens, they are subject to challenge or even ridicule. Holding on to power becomes more important than delivering utopia. So they attempt to silence critics who threaten them. The next phase is assuming total power and controlling all decisions from the top. With the best of intentions, all utopian states or sects devolve into failed enterprises. It has happened in Cuba with the Castros. It happened in the Soviet Union. It happened with Jim Jones’ People’s Temple (Jonestown) and in the innumerable utopian movements of the Burned-over District of New York in the 1800s.

The most important check to keep this from happening is a free and critical press. It is important that Fox and talk radio not lose their voice. But most important is the compliant old media must assume a more active role in critiquing government. Eugene Robinson’s article is an excellent start.

Fattening Coca Cola vs. Fattening Orange Juice and the winner is …

2009-10-15T16:12:00.016-04:00

Congress will probably pass a tax on sugared drinks as part of the health bill. The rationale is it will reduce caloric intake of “unhealthy” drinks. The real reason is simply to increase taxes, with a believable cover, like all other “sin taxes.”

I decided to do a comparison of Classic Coke to my favorite drink, freshly squeezed Florida orange juice. Well the Coke has 100 calories for an 8 oz. serving and the fresh orange juice a whopping 120. The OJ is probably better for you, but will make you chubbier.

Department of useless information: Lake Lanier is at Full Pool … Global Change is over.

2009-10-14T13:30:00.002-04:00

Symbolic of Global Change in the Southeastern US have been the record low levels of Georgia’s Lake Lanier near Atlanta. They were caused by drought conditions that affected northern Georgia and the western Carolinas for the past several years. Lake Lanier is now at “full pool,” a level not seen since September 2005. It dropped to a record low of over 20 feet down in December 2007. And it took two Global Change events to reach Global Normal. They were downpours that caused major flooding in the area three weeks ago and heavy rains over the past three days.

Don’t believe the NIE … Iran will have a weapon far sooner, by following the South African model.

2009-10-12T00:02:00.018-04:00

Iran most likely will develop a nuclear capability far sooner than the NIE timeline of around 2015 . They will do it because they likely already have the technology and they are in a hurry to close the window of vulnerability from an attack by the West. All they need is sufficient weapons grade uranium.

Iran will probably take the South African approach, where 25 years ago they developed a lightweight gun type weapon for the similar reasons. South Africa needed a weapon soon, not later because of a perceived threat from Soviet backed Cuban forces in nearby Angola. Much of the analysis both classified and from think tanks, mistakenly presupposes Iran will only pursue an implosion device. That’s what most nations would do and are doing. But most nations have different aims; deterrence and massive retaliation if attacked. Numbers of weapons are important. Iran on the other hand is more into terror and nuclear blackmail. For Iran numbers are less important than a credible threat.

There are two roads to nuclear explosives; one, highly enriched uranium (U-235), the other - plutonium. Uranium is the most difficult road, requiring massive centrifuge plants that use large amounts of electricity to concentrate the fissionable isotope U-235 to weapons grade (80-93%). The plants are difficult to hide from prying eyes.

Plutonium on the other hand is naturally produced in power and research reactors and can be extracted easily from spent fuel by simple chemical precipitation. Covert extraction of plutonium is far easier to hide than enriching uranium. Iran is pursuing the more difficult uranium road. North Korea is going for plutonium.

And there are also two roads for weapons design. One is an implosion device (used at Nagasaki) or a gun type (Hiroshima) where two subcritical masses are literally shot into each other to form a critical mass and a nuclear explosion. The former is more efficient and produces a bigger bang. For these reasons, most in the nuclear club have developed only implosion devices. On the other hand, the less efficient gun type device can be developed faster and is easier to design with a very high assurance of success even without testing (the Hiroshima device was never tested before it was used). A limiting factor for gun type weapons is they can not use more easily obtained plutonium, only uranium. But this limitation doesn’t affect Iran, which has begun enriching uranium on a massive scale.

The South African Experience

In the mid 1970’s feeling threatened by Soviet/Cuban intervention in Africa, the South African government started down the road to becoming a nuclear power. Similar to Iran today, they settled on the production of uranium as the fuel and developed a gun type of weapon. Between 1982 and 1989 they completed 6 lightweight (750 kg/1,650 lb) weapons with an estimated yield of 10-18 kt. (Hiroshima was 15 kt.). A seventh was partially completed when the South African government voluntarily made the decision to give up its nuclear aspirations. The weapons were deliverable by either their Buccaneer jet fighter-bombers or locally produced ballistic missiles.

There are serious parallels between Iranian and South African programs. Both use(d) uranium, giving the ability to make either implosion or gun devices. Iran sees time as the enemy, prolonging its window of vulnerability. The question is not whether they will develop the simpler gun type weapon, but why wouldn’t they? They can have their cake and eat it too. While it takes about three times as much uranium for a gun weapon, around 5 years down the road when they have an operational implosion system, they can use the fissile fuel from the earlier weapons for three of the new. It’s win, win.

In addition you can’t ignore the knowledge sharing going on between Iran and North Korea in both nuclear and missile technology. Iranian scientists were present at both N. Korean nuclear tests and most of their missile technology is N. Korean. The Koreans are doing the heavy lifting on implosion devices, but they are stumbling. Their first test was essentially a fizzle (less than 1 kt) and the second most likely only around 4 kt. That shouldn’t give the Iranians a lot of confidence.

No, they will pursue the low tech gun approach for an interim weapon and surprise us.

Fox News Special … Awesome Megyn Kelly takedown of Wade Rathke and Acorn

2009-10-03T11:22:00.008-04:00

Out of habit I left the family room TV on after last night’s O’Reilly (hosted by Juan Williams) and moved to my den to catch up on happenings from the internet. I could hear but not see the next show which should have been Hannity. But it wasn’t. It was a Megyn Kelly interviewing Wade Rathke, founder and former and chief organizer of ACORN.

My initial impression was this was a very fair and objective interview by Kelly. She took him through his formative years of the radical 60s to the present. As the show went on Kelly, with the help of Stanley Kurtz and others, proceeded to eviscerate Rathke to the point he boiled over. It was devastating to ACORN because it exposed and documented visually their extortion techniques and the hard left political leanings of its founder. But the revelations were only half the story. The special was powerful because it relied heavily, very heavily, on the subtle audio and visual effects pioneered by CBS’s “60 Minutes.” So much so I thought I was listening to Leslie Stahl, not Megyn Kelly, on the voice-over of the historical video clips. Her voice-over had exactly the same cadence and remoteness, while the interview itself carried normal voice animation. The documenting clips started even handedly, but became more pointed as the special went on.

Someone at Fox did his/her homework analyzing the techniques that have made “60 Minutes” so powerful and authoritative. It isn’t just the subtle movement from even-handedness to pointed probing. It’s making the subject react. But the audio is the killer. Watch and listen to the whole show here. Congratulations Fox!

Did Obama bribe Brazil with $2 billion to help put Honduras’s Zelaya back into power?

2009-09-30T20:17:00.011-04:00

SEE ADDENDUM BELOW.

Something smells fishy. First the Obama administration announces $2 billion of financial support for Brazil’s offshore drilling efforts. And a month later Brazil spirits legally deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya back into the country, granting him sanctuary in its embassy. Are these two stories related?

First from the Wall Street Journal, August 18, headlined Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling: The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas

And from Reuters yesterday, headlined Lula faces criticism in Brazil over Honduras role: BRASILIA, Sept 29 (Reuters) -

Brazil's government is facing growing criticism at home over its handling of the Honduran crisis as senior lawmakers accuse it of allowing the ousted president to use its embassy as a political platform. Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled as Honduran president by a coup on June 28, has set up camp in the Brazilian embassy with dozens of supporters and has given numerous interviews to foreign and domestic media. His surprise return from exile a week ago triggered violent protests in the capital Tegucigalpa and placed Brazil at the center of the Honduran power struggle and an international diplomatic crisis. Government and opposition legislators in Brazil's Congress have urged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to stop Zelaya from using the embassy as a political theater.

You may remember the leftist Zelaya was removed from power in late June after he ordered a referendum to extend his term beyond its mandated limits. This violated the country’s constitution according to Congress and the Supreme Court which ordered the referendum stopped and Zelaya’s removed from office. It appeared Zelaya was planning a move similar to his mentor, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, to lay the groundwork to be President for life.

President Obama refused to recognize the newly appointed President, urged the UN and OAS members to do the same, refused visas to Hondurans, cut off all foreign aid and would not allow Honduras to be represented at the UN’s opening session this month. It seems curious that just over a month after the $2 billion support for Petrobras offshore venture (Obama supporting offshore drilling???), Brazil spirited Zelaya back into the country (September 21) and its embassy.

Would Obama use $2 billion in bribes to destabilize Honduras and put this thug back in power? You figure.

Addendum:
I am attaching this response to this post from an individual who has been following the Honduran situation closely. The person is not a Honduran, but feels strongly an injustice has occurred at the instigation of the Obama White House and with the complicity of Brazil.

I read your excellent blog and I think there is a very good case to be made that the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department may well have conspired with Brazil to bring about the current crisis situation in Honduras, and they began their efforts before Zelaya was overthrown. I believe this supports your conclusions. The following is a note I wrote to myself on September 23: This article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124619401378065339.html indicates to me that the State Department took Zelaya's side, when Thomas Shannon was still heading up the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department, because the Honduran Congress refused to obey US orders to disregard their own Constitution. Shannon moved on to be Ambassador to Brazil.

"The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. "Washington's ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president's office, the Honduran parliament and the military. "The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. "The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message," said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn't recognize any other leader.

"The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn't understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro posed." Then, shortly after Zelaya was overthrown, you have a the usual suspects at work: Thomas Shannon, who had been nominated to be the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, and Arturo Valenzuela, nominated to be the new head of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department, and late of Georgetown University, a native Chilean (who I believe holds dual citizenship) who has made it clear that he agrees with Hugo Chavez on many issues and has defended him and his policies publicly on many occasions.

Shannon's nomination was held up because Senator Jim DeMint was unhappy with the way he had handled the Honduras situation. I think when he got to Brazil, he laid the groundwork for what is happening now, working hand in hand with Valenzuela. "DeMint also said that Shannon, in his State Department post, “has still failed to show a clear understanding of Honduras’s fight to defend democracy. "...When pressed by DeMint about whether Honduras’s military acted to defend the constitution against abuses by Zelaya, Valenzuela said “I don’t want to get into some of the details of this. I’m not familiar myself with all of the details.”

"DeMint said Valenzuela’s responses were unsatisfactory. “Mr. Valenzuela told me he didn’t even know the facts in Honduras,” DeMint said in the statement today. “Yet, everyday Zelaya’s own statements reveal his true desire to be a Chavez- style dictator advocating violence in order to return to power.” http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=admFvdOL9YY4 See also: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/59515-obama-and-demint-locked-in-proxy-fight-over-chavez

Now this is from Bloomberg news today, Tuesday: "Honduras’s deposed President Manuel Zelaya probably received help from a South American country to sneak back into Tegucigalpa yesterday, said Carlos Lopez Contreras, Honduras’s interim foreign minister. Zelaya, who appeared unexpectedly at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday after he was overthrown and expelled in June, probably got into the country in a car that had diplomatic license plates, Contreras said today in a telephone interview. He declined to say which country provided assistance. “He couldn’t have gotten in without logistical and financial support, possibly from a South American country or various South American countries, and without a doubt the cooperation of a Central American country,” Contreras said.

Honduras’s acting President Roberto Micheletti had vowed that Zelaya would be arrested if he set foot in the country, and yesterday decided to no longer recognize the Brazilian mission in Honduras, stripping the building and its occupants of diplomatic protection. Even so, the order to enter the embassy building hasn’t been given, and the interim government is requesting that Brazil hand over Zelaya, Contreras said. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aa_wgg.Bl_LY

Finally, tonight, during the September 23 local news program "Hoy Mismo" on Honduras Channel 3, a letter was read from the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa to the Brazilians asking the Brazilian Embassy to hand over Zelaya to them so he would have "more protection." Lula is in this up to his ears, but wouldn't have been without U.S. encouragement.

Name withheld by request.

Clark Hoyt, NY Times Public Editor plays toady again … Times just “slow off the mark”

2009-09-27T21:01:00.006-04:00

Clark Hoyt, the NY Times Public Editor, covers its lack of reporting of the O’Keefe/Giles Acorn exposé and blames it on being “slow off the mark.” Hoyt was kept on for a year after his two year term expired earlier this year, no doubt by endearing himself to editorial management with soft criticism. He didn't fail them today.

I wrote about Hoyt last year and called him a joke. In the column I pointed out the new bias of the Times is that of burying stories that don’t support the Democrat’s game plan. Read it, it covers some points others haven’t covered. I am sure Hoyt will have a very full inbox tomorrow, especially after saying part of the blame was “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.”

But still I sent him a short e-mail. Here it is:

Not convincing.

You failed to mention your paper being "slow off the mark" on the NEA/Sargent story. That's three in this month alone. Well that's not totally true, that broke in early August, but you didn't cover it until mid September. According to Andrew Breitbart, there will be more stories to be "slow off the mark" on. More apologies for you to make. Does the Times still consider itself the Newspaper of Record?

Sad!

Crosby Boyd

With the Times using the phrase “slow off the mark,” the Washington Post (Howard Kurtz) used “lamentably late” to describe the media’s response. Makes you wonder if both papers compared notes before writing their stories.

Smoking out the media --- Breitbart’s real aim is to expose coordinated media blackouts

2009-09-26T12:29:00.009-04:00

When the Swiftboat story first surfaced in early August 2004, John Kerry ignored it on the advice of his staff. For that he blames his loss.

Why did his advisors take this tack? Most likely because they had confidence the story would be “ignored” by the old media. And it was. That is until talk radio and Fox news made it an issue. The rest is history.

The new bias of the established media is not the phony story or the coordinated regurgitation of DNC talking points. It is the blackout of major news stories that reflect badly on Democrats. But the curtain of obscurity is being peeled back by Andrew Breitbart. The NEA scandal was exposed by Breitbart’s Big Hollywood website and the more recent ACORN exposé was the blockbuster to launch his Big Government site. But he doesn’t stop there. Breitbart is challenging the old media. He challenged them on September 7, two days before the O’Keefe and Giles tapes were made public. He knew the media would jointly ignore the story. He was setting them up. And they took the bait.

Here is his challenge from the Sept 21 Washington Times (emphasis added), read it all:

Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, "Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror."

ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah. They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What's more, it ain't over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet. Stay tuned.

He continues:

Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post. Videos of five different ACORN offices in five separate cities would be released on five consecutive weekdays over a full week - Baltimore, Washington, New York, San Bernadino and San Diego. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople.

If the media, as expected, pretended that the story didn't exist, they'd have another debacle on their hands comparable to the failure to report the shocking views of the White House's "green jobs czar," Van Jones. If they invested in the story, I told Mr. O'Keefe, they would do ACORN's defense work. I told him the focus needed to be on the message, not the messenger. Otherwise, the mainstream media would attempt to direct attention away from the damaging video evidence.

The best example of this came from ABC's anchor, Charlie Gibson. "I don't even know about it. So you've got me at a loss," he told WLS radio when asked about it. "But my goodness, if it's got everything, including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it in the morning." But he also said that what was seen on these videos was best left for the "cables."

Is this not malevolent arrogance?

In his September 25 column at wsj.com ever delightful James Taranto takes direct aim at the New York Times for burying news that doesn’t suit its taste. It’s a humorous but stinging rebuke of the Times for its failure to report, entitled ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Journalism. Again, emphasis added.

If you're young enough to have read those "Where's Waldo?" books as a kid, you are well-prepared to read the New York Times. On Wednesday the Times finally took note of the NEA scandal, in a story of slightly over 350 words that appeared on page 21: “The White House on Tuesday instructed government agencies to keep politics away from the awarding of federal grants, a step taken as the administration sought to minimize the fallout after an official at the National Endowment for the Arts urged artists to advance President Obama's agenda.”

“The new guidelines were issued at a meeting between White House officials and chiefs of staff across the executive branch, following the disclosure of a conference call last month in which artists were asked to work with the Corporation for Public Service to promote Mr. Obama's health care, education and environmental proposals.”

This is the first time the paper has mentioned the scandal, first reported 29 days earlier on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood and 22 days earlier by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck. This follows the same pattern as the Times's coverage of the Van Jones and Acorn scandals, both of which the paper did not mention at all until the Obama administration had taken some remedial action, and then reported only in brief stories on inside pages (though in fairness, a full-length front-page story about Jones's hypovehiculation appeared on the second day). Trying to find information about the Obama scandals in the Times can be a fun challenge, just like the "Where's Waldo?" books. But if your taste in puzzles runs more to crosswords or sudoku and you want the news delivered straight, there are plenty of better sources.

Howard Kurtz, media critic at the Washington Post attempts to marginalize the O’Keefe/Giles ACORN story by questioning whether it is journalism. In a column called Guerrilla Journalism he demeans the piece, calling it unbalanced. What he misses is the fact it was news and the Post failed to report it for over a week. Sorry Howard, that won’t work. I responded with a comment which I will share here (minor corrections made):

Whether the O'Keefe/Giles ACORN story was journalism or not, it was valid news. And most of the media ignored it. The Post ignored it, the NY Times ignored it, the LA Times ignored it, the Chicago Tribune ignored it. And Breitbart knew all of you would ignore it. That was the setup. In a Washington Times column he said the media was also the target and that’s why the tapes ran on 5 consecutive weekdays. He knew the story would be red hot before the media (other than Fox) would touch it. The first tape ran Wednesday, 9/9, and the last Tuesday 9/15. By Saturday 9/12, the Senate had defunded ACORN in one appropriations bill. Now that was in your backyard and it WAS news. The Post didn’t touch the story until it was 9 days old. Now that’s not good journalism.

Why did he think you wouldn’t cover it? Well, you didn’t cover the NEA/Sargent story which was and still is valid news. You didn’t cover the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story last year. Not even a mention of it until the National Enquirer blew it wide open and he dropped out of the race. He was a legitimate contender for the VP slot according to the pundits and the Vegas odds at the time. Non-liberals question why stories embarrassing to Democrats seem to be blacked out in the old media. I wonder too. Breitbart wondered but structured a blockbuster story to smoke the media out. He succeeded. That’s the real story.

It’s time for the old media to mend their ways. They have alienated half their audience, yet they wonder why Fox News ratings are skyrocketing and network news is tanking. They wonder why they can’t sell papers.

Integrity sells papers.

White House Counsel Greg Craig to get the axe --- for his ineptness on Guantanamo

2009-09-25T10:40:00.006-04:00

The Washington Post reports today that Greg Craig has been replaced as the point man on Guantanamo and will likely leave the White House. The story places the blame for crafting the Guantanamo strategy for a date certain shutdown, of convincing The One of its wisdom and the failure to follow through, squarely on Craig’s shoulders. It hinted that Obama may now, not be able to meet his January 22 deadline.

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress. Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

After blaming the Bush administration in March for not having detainee files in one place (a normal procedure so codeword intelligence files at CIA or NSA are not comingled with unclassified files at Justice and accessible to uncleared personnel), the White House added more cooks to stir the pot.

In May, one of the senior officials said, Obama tapped Pete Rouse -- a top adviser and former congressional aide who is not an expert on national security but is often called in to fix significant problems -- to oversee the process. Senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer were brought in to craft a more effective message around detainee policy, the official said.

After publicly playing the blame game on the files six months ago, it appears the dysfunctional White House is just getting around to reviewing them. The Post drops this little gem at the end of the story

In coming weeks, officials say, they expect to complete the initial review of all the files of those held at Guantanamo Bay.

Buh-bye Greg.

A damaging poll confirms the obvious … 8 out of 10 don’t want taxpayers bailing out newspapers

2009-09-24T12:57:00.006-04:00

Editor and Publisher reported on a study conducted by Sacred Heart University that came to that conclusion.

Nearly 8 out of 10 Americans would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to aid failing newspapers, according to a poll on news media trustworthiness released Wednesday. That reluctance might have something to do with the fact that 38.1% of respondents to the poll by Sacred Heart University said they are reading newspapers less often than five years ago. Or the fact that nearly half, 45%, said they think the Internet is "adequately covering for failing newspapers." Just 35.6% disagreed with that statement.

It continues:

[T]he poll found Americans do not believe they are getting "good journalism." Just under 68% of respondents agreement with this statement: "Old-style, traditionally objective and fair journalism is dead." Just 26.5% disagreed, while 5.6% were unsure. Much of Sacred Heart poll concerns mainstream television news, which respondents clearly view with jaundiced eyes. Fully 83.6% said national news media organizations were very or somewhat biased while just 14.1% viewed them as somewhat unbiased or not at all biased.

President Obama in a recent statement said he might support efforts to help bailout newspapers. While the comment to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette may be more about relaxing anti-trust enforcement of newspapers in their attempts to come up with a common policy to charge for internet access, it raises the specter of direct government support for failing newspapers. A new buzz word is developing in Washington and it is “Public Media.”

It is being promoted by the liberal Free Press organization and mentioned also by Michael Copps, a long term Democrat FCC Commissioner. The thought of the NY Times converting itself into a non-profit National Public Newspaper, living off the public dole with Pinch Sulzberger in control, is enough to send chills down my spine.

Addendum: The Sacred Heart poll story was one of three featured stories on E&P’s home page as I began writing this post. Normally as new stories replace the old ones on the E&P site, the linked headline drops into box entitled “More Headlines.”

All references to this story have now been scrubbed from the homepage. If you read the entire story you will see why. It is extremely damaging. The story is still available through a search of E&P’s site, but in case it is scrubbed or altered, I have saved a copy.

Gates fails to mention one little fact … by killing the Missile Shield, he makes the US vulnerable

2009-09-24T01:51:00.007-04:00

Last Sunday SecDef Robert Gates wrote an Op-Ed in the NY Times that was not only deceptive, but avoided the main point. What he missed telling us is the European Missile Shield (Ground-based Mid-course Defense - GMD) is primarily a system to defend the US from ICBMs, with a secondary capability to defend the northern and central portions of Europe. By killing it he has killed our ability to stop US bound missiles from Iran.

Early in his article Gates makes a statement that is totally misleading. In it he claims the original system would not be ready until 2015. That’s simply not true.

In December 2006, just days after becoming secretary of defense, I recommended to President George W. Bush that the United States place 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an advanced radar in the Czech Republic....

That plan would have put the radar and interceptors in Central Europe by 2015 at the earliest. Delays in the Polish and Czech ratification process extended that schedule by at least two years. Which is to say, under the previous program, there would have been no missile-defense system able to protect against Iranian missiles until at least 2017 — and likely much later. ( emphasis added)

This is deceptively parsed wording. While true in 2006, shortly after, the original plan was superseded by a well funded accelerated one that moved the date up by two years to 2013. This from a recent Congressional Research Study of June 2009: The system would include 10 interceptors in Poland, a radar in the Czech Republic, and another radar deployed in a country closer to Iran, all to be completed by 2013 at a reported cost of at least $4 billion. ( emphasis added)

He goes on to put up a straw man, implying this is only about defending Europe.

Those who say we are scrapping missile defense in Europe are either misinformed or misrepresenting what we are doing.

From a look at the graphic, you can see why the Polish missile base is sited where it is. It is almost on a direct line (white line) between the Iranian missile test site (and likely operational site) near Semnan and prime targets Washington DC or New York. It also demonstrates graphically that the interceptors are more about downing missiles aimed at the US than Europe.

Ground-based Mid-course Defense has always been a strategic system, designed from the start to destroy reentry vehicles of high speed, high altitude intercontinental missiles. But it does have a capability to defend major portions of Europe. The Aegis/SM-3 is a wonderful system and a proven one. But it has a limited footprint. And it can’t defend the US from Europe. What is maddening, is after spending hundreds of billions on R&D for GMD, we are killing it in Europe because we don’t want to spend the final 4 billion. It’s like stopping ten feet short of the finish line. What also bothers me is Gates has always been a straight shooter. But he has learned the Democratic Party’s Doublethink. “Less is more” just doesn’t cut it for the rest of us.

Addendum: My next post will be about is how and why Iran will surprise us by developing a lightweight nuclear missile warhead that the North Koreans can’t. And it won’t be a fizzle.

Deep Question

2009-09-22T09:32:00.003-04:00

Overturning Cuba Travel Ban May Pass House This Year, Farr Says From a Bloomberg News story. If we drop our ban on travel, will the Cubans do the same?

Some thoughts on James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles

2009-09-18T19:38:00.018-04:00

To me there have been three defining moments in the fight against the incredible leftist bias of the old media. They are the Tailwind (Vietnam War, nerve gas) story by Peter Arnett, Rathergate, and the recent ACORN exposé. Looking at the past twenty years, media bias has revealed itself as blatantly one sided coverage and often, outright false stories. It has now morphed into the blackout of stories that challenge their leftist ideals and idols.

It is inconceivable that the ACORN sting could have been totally ignored by the old media without some sort of coordination. It was too hot a story. Likewise it is inconceivable that the Van Jones story could have gone unreported for the same reasons. The old media has egg on its face, but instead of conducting introspection, they minimize the stories and call them smear jobs.

The first defining moment in exposong media corruption was the Tailwind scandal (June 1998) that was perpetrated by CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, a hard anti-war leftist, who gained his reputation in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. His contention was, during an operation into Laos in 1970, sarin nerve gas was used to kill a group of US defectors. The story ran on CNN and in Time magazine and was strongly challenged by the Pentagon which determined the nerve gas claims were false.

CNN conducted its own after the fact investigation and found the story flawed. They publicly retracted it less than a month after it ran. Two producers were fired, one resigned and Peter Arnett stayed on until his contract expired a year and a half later, but never appeared on the air for CNN after the investigation.

Much of the internal pressure for a review came from the Time folks who had felt pressured into carrying the CNN produced story. It was a victory for openness and the few journalists at Time Warner with integrity.

Significance: Tailwind was the first major left wing agenda story that was publicly debunked and had consequences for the participants. Most of the prior journalism scandals were by writers falsifying stories to enhance their own reputations such as Janet Cooke - Washington Post, Stephen Glass - New Republic and Mike Barnicle - Boston Globe.

The second defining moment was Rathergate. Most are familiar with Rathergate, a story designed to damage George W. Bush during his 2004 reelection campaign. It ended as a victory for citizen journalists, an outcome totally unexpected by the media establishment. The old media gave the controversy scant attention. The NY Times covered this, the greatest American media scandal, as if New York based CBS News was in another country. They used primarily wire service copy and an occasional story by art critic Frank Rich.

The Washington Post used media critic Howard Kurtz and of all the networks, only ABC gave reasonable coverage. The rest ignored it. For over two weeks Dan Rather stood by his story, including the demonstrably false claim of an unbroken chain of custody of the Killian documents.

Finally CBS set up an independent review panel which declared the story shouldn’t have run. Dan Rather was pulled out of his anchor chair precisely 26 weeks after his phony report and then put out to pasture as a 60 Minutes correspondent for the remaining year on his contract. His contract wasn’t renewed.

Significance: Rathergate was the first time bloggers, exhibiting far more expertise than the network’s “fact checkers,” were able document the falsehoods of a major story and see the perpetrators suffer the consequences. They did it by giving the story legs in the established media and engendered a need by Viacom/CBS to clear its reputation.

Now come James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, “twentysomething” college students whose conservative principles led them to conduct an audacious sting operation against ACORN. This organization has avoided scrutiny for years despite voter fraud allegations, intimidation of financial institutions and participating in race hustling. They are protected by a willing media and the Democrat establishment who want to see no evil.

Last year, during the Presidential campaign, the NY Times dragged its feet when they were handed incriminating evidence of the Obama campaign working with ACORN on a money laundering scheme to funnel contributions of maxed out Democrats back to the campaign. THey never ran the story. That’s how well protected the Democrats' surrogates are.

The result of O'Keefe's and Giles' efforts: 5 video tapes showing ACORN employees aiding and abetting underage prostitution, tax cheating, and attempting to aid in illegal immigration of underage prostitutes. The story burned up the internet, but for a week there was nothing from the old media. Charles Gibson of ABC News claimed to know nothing of the story and the vaunted Times had printed nothing by the time the Census Department severed its ties with ACORN and the Senate had voted to defund them. In 7 days of new media reporting (Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government blog and Fox/Glenn Beck), the world knew more about the corruption of ACORN than from years of old media reporting.

The significance of O’Keefe and Giles was their story and its influence reached the highest levels of government without any old media support. These amateur videographers did what no others had done, expose the corruption of ACORN through investigative journalism. And they revealed the utter corruption of the old media in their attempt to hide the story.

Congratulations James and Hannah.

Jimmy Carter, this is what people think of you.

2009-09-18T16:29:00.005-04:00

It took 12 years for the Democrat party to recover from your 4 years. The map is what people think of you. Race baiting won't improve this picture.

Can we believe Democrats are severing ties with ACORN? … It’s a sham, ACORN isn’t ACORN anymore

2009-09-15T10:43:00.006-04:00

Over the weekend the White House announced the Census Department is severing all ties with ACORN, the discredited organization that is under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states and recently the subject of a media sting by Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government blog and reported by Glenn Beck. Additionally The Senate has voted to drop all funding to ACORN from the Transportation Appropriations bill. All but 6 Democrats and one Republican supported the measure.

It all seems too good to be true. And when it comes to Democrats reaching across the aisle, it probably is. You have to understand ACORN is where President Obama got his start. He represented them in court. He is joined at the hip to them. They have been the recipients of mega dollars of government largesse, courtesy of Democrats. It is simply out of character for them to cave so easily. The dirty little secret is ACORN is changing its name. In a June 21 Washington Examiner interview with Marcel Reid, a dissident ACORN whistle blower, the name is being changed to Community Organizations International.

“We’ve known for many months now that the name ACORN is going to be retired,” [Marcel] Reid said. “The name has been so damaged to the point where the leadership knows it simply can’t go on as it has with the ACORN label out front and center, especially after all of the reporting.” In fact, the process has already begun, she noted. Wade Rathke, who founded the organization, announced on his blog that ACORN International has officially changed its name to “Community Organizations International.”

So all the posturing by the White House and Senate Democrats is a sham. Republicans, make sure you add the term “and successor organizations” to any restrictions against ACORN. You’ve been had!

Impossible Sailboats 2

2009-08-30T23:16:00.010-04:00

Following our visit to Maine, Julie and I visited another Sanibel friend who has a “camp” in the Adirondacks (NY) on St. Regis and Spitfire Lakes. Sailboat racing is the central focus of the St. Regis YC and its premiere class is the Idem. Idems are gaff rigged lightweight 32 foot centerboarders. There are only 12 of them and all, except one, were built between 1900 and 1902. Class rules allow only cotton sails. Idem is the Latin word for same and used to describe this one-design class. They bear a faint resemblance to the later inland scow classes popular primarily in Wisconsin and Minnesota. A dedicated group of owners keeps this class alive despite the exorbitant costs and difficulties of maintaining a hundred year old wood boat in racing condition. Here are some photos of the race last Thursday. Nine of the twelve boats participated.

Impossible Sailboats 1

2009-08-30T21:30:00.012-04:00

During my “vacation” travels Julie and I visited with our Sanibel friends who summer in Maine. They live in a coastal community just north of Camden and and are active sailors. The coastal area of Maine produces some of the finest and most unusual sailboats in the world. These include the 155 foot Scheherazade, and the 124 foot Antonisa.

But what caught my attention was a daysailer tied to a floating dock in Rockport harbor. It evoked the same emotions as my first close up look at a Ferrari when I was 17 years old. Here was a sailboat designed for high performance and built to impeccable yacht standards. It is a boat that would turn heads at any yacht club in the world. It is the Ginger, a 50 footer designed to be handled by as many as 3, but easily sailed singlehanded. Just as the Ferrari of my youth had no heater or roll down windows, Ginger has no lifelines to clutter its sleek lines nor does it have roller furling, just a racing foil on its forestay. Compromises to performance are only to improve its “yachtiness,” such as the teak decks. Ginger is the product of its imaginative owner and the Brooklin Boat Yard, Brooklin Maine.

Dueling GPSs

2009-08-30T14:00:00.006-04:00

I have been on a trip visiting friends my wife Julie and I have wanted to see, but never had the time. Our previous retirement “vacations” have been to see things or do things. Some of the friends are long lost school mates, friends from the Washington, DC area where we lived for many years, relatives and our dispersed children and their families. It will be an 18 day, 4,700 mile trip by the time we finish next Thursday. To ensure we arrived where we wanted to go, when we wanted to be there, we equipped ourselves with two GPSs (one a built-in, another, a portable Magellan), as well as Mapquest printouts for each leg. A bit of overkill, but we have been very, very lost on past trips. The multiple voices guiding us often have given conflicting instructions with one more insistent than the other. Julie named the shrillest Maggie Magellan, but as the trip progressed she became Naggy Maggie. Generally we used Mapquest as the tie breaker, but the calmer sultry voice of the built-in often had me giving preference to her. To counter that, Julie turned the volume down from Naggy Maggie and substituted her own even more sultry voice. Calm, sultry, reassuring female voices always win. In general the Magellan gave the best directions for routes we are familiar with. It, like Mapquest, can be adjusted in advance to follow a preferred route or freeway exits. Possibly there is a way to do it with the built-in (Toyota Prius) but I couldn’t find it. It would give 3 choices (two fastest and the shortest). Estimated Time Enroute also is vastly different for the three systems, with the Prius’s giving the highest time allowance for “pit stops.” The Magellan has been closest to uninterrupted driving time and Mapquest in between, but closer to the Magellan. As our travels went on, we adjusted to the difference. In one case, the Prius system did not have the ten miles of public roads plotted leading to a community on Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. Fortunately both of the others did. But with freeway driving, it has extremely helpful split screen displays to aid in making the correct turn at the right time. So it is upward and onward with three young ladies guiding me. Life can’t get any better.

Mystery Art

2009-08-29T01:03:00.002-04:00

Seen at Niagara Falls, Ontario in front of a Korean restaurant.

The Huey … another time, another war

2009-08-13T11:06:00.007-04:00

Early today Sanibel sounded a bit like Vietnam in the late sixties. It was the nostalgic lub-dup-dup-dup sound of a Huey maneuvering at low altitude. Nothing else makes that noise. The Lee County Mosquito Control District has five Hueys (UH-1E) in its inventory, as well as 5 ancient C-47s to now wage war against mosquitoes, not Charlie. While the LCMCD has a number of quiet, vibration free and air conditioned Jet Rangers, the preferred delivery system remains the Huey. It can carry 300 gallons of liquids, the Jet Ranger only 90. The greatest saving is the time and fuel spent ferrying back and forth to replenish the delivery tanks. The Huey was a breakthrough helicopter with its lightweight gas turbine engine when it entered service in the late ‘50s. It’s great to see it still in operation.

Swine flu vaccine allocations will stiff seniors … Misleading figures from CDC at work.

2009-08-10T02:06:00.027-04:00

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is using misleading figures to rationalize the denial of life saving H1N1 flu vaccine to seniors and other older age groups. In a study in which they give infection rates and hospitalization rates for different age groups, the CDC uses meaningless share data for deaths from the flu in an attempt to give the appearance of lower (non-threatening) death rates for older age groups. Size differences of groups affects results because larger groups such as 5-24 (83 million) and 25-49 (106 million) show higher numbers of almost anything than the smaller 65+ (39 million) group. They simply have a higher share of the population. This gives the impression the younger larger groups have a higher death rate and have a higher need for the vaccine. In reality the over 65 group has a higher death rate than the 5-24 group but they are allocated no vaccine. From the Wall Street Journal: People ages 65 and over, who are normally among the first to get seasonal flu shots, would be last in line for the new H1N1 shot, because their rates of infection have been far lower Seniors get shortchanged because of their low infection rate, but they die at a far higher rate than other groups once infected (see the bottom graph for the explanation). The older you are the worse you are affected. And the difference isn’t miniscule. A 50 to 65 year old has nearly a 15 times the chance of dying once infected than a 5 to 24 year old. And 65 and over 34 times, giving a higher mortality rate.

The use of spurious data this way is particularly disingenuous for an organization that lives by statistics. And it affects peoples’ lives.

President Jimmy Carter planned to provide s ufficient dosages for the entire population of the US in 1976 when face with another influenza epidemic. There was no rationing then! The current administration should do no less.

Mr. President, it’s time for openness on your birth certificate

2009-08-06T21:33:00.004-04:00

I am not a birther. There is ample evidence President Obama was born in the US, and his mother was a US citizen. Either qualifies him as a US citizen. But it is beyond me why he doesn’t authorize the release of a photocopy of the original certificate of live birth, and put this issue to rest. But rather than resolve it, he has his minions attack the birthers as nutcases. That is irresponsible.

But what information on the certificate is so damaging he would allow a goodly portion of the nation challenge his legitimacy as President? The sample shown is from 1964, about 3 years after Obama’s birth and probably similar to, if not identical in format to Obama’s. There is not a lot of information on the form: Name of the father (correctly named in the birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, and presumably on the certificate), name of the mother (not in dispute). The only possible area of concern could be in the race boxes, and in particular for the father. The term used in that era and also used in official census reports for race was Negro. That shouldn’t cause embarrassment, tens of millions of African descent were categorized as that for nearly two hundred years. Even if someone fibbed and called the father Caucasian, it shouldn’t be a major issue. There is no box for religion, another contentious issue, nor anything regarding citizenship.

For President Obama, it’s time to put the country at ease. Release the certificate.

British combat ineffectiveness is more than offset by its chutzpah.

2009-08-03T03:37:00.008-04:00

In a report made public over the weekend, Britain’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chastised the US for “the absence of a unified vision and strategy” in conducting the war in Afghanistan. It warns of “considerable cultural indifference” by coalition partners (translation: Americans). And it blames the US for its use of UAV rocket attacks. It goes on to berate other NATO members for not contributing to the coalition effort. It blames everyone but the British themselves. Yet it is the British who have exhibited the lack of a unified strategy often by defying coalition policies and negotiating its own truces with the Taliban in its area of responsibility. In one case, after the truce had been signed, the Taliban quickly occupied a city that had been in coalition hands and subsequently the Taliban had to be removed by force. But worse than this duplicity is the deep seated defeatism of the senior British military leadership in Afghanistan that is the problem. It became so bad last October, US SecDef Gates found it necessary to give a blistering rebuttal of a newspaper interview given by the senior British commander. From the Telegraph (10/07/2008): “While we face significant challenges in Afghanistan, there certainly is no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate the opportunities to be successful in the long run,” Mr Gates said on board a military aircraft flying to Europe for Nato meetings. He was speaking in reaction to comments from Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who said in a newspaper that the war against the Taliban could not be won, and the ambassador, Sherard Cowper-Coles, who said an "acceptable dictator" would be the best political solution for Afghanistan. Any US commander would be relieved on the spot for such a statement. This not the first time the British have exhibited such a shameful lack of backbone. In Iraq, they negotiated a truce with al Sadr’s Shia militias in Basra, ceding total control of the city to them. They moved their base of operations out of the city to a safer area near the airport. They simply took themselves out of combat. The Telegraph again reports (10/28/2007): Rather than fight on, they have struck a deal – or accommodation, as they describe it – with the Shia militias that dominate the city, promising to stay out in return for assurances that they will not be attacked. Since withdrawing, the British have not set foot in the city and even have to ask for permission if they want to skirt the edges to get to the Iranian border on the other side. When 6 months later, after Prime Minister Maliki had taken control of the Shia areas of Baghdad, he then set his sights on the militias in Basra in the British area of responsibility. Where were the British? They were no place to be found. So using what the press called an ill trained force, the Iraqi army took on the militias and cleaned house in three days. The militia thugs threw down their arms and people, for the first time in years, walked the streets without fear. There is no love lost between Maliki and the British. They had confined themselves to barracks and stayed out of the fray when they were needed most. If they had only the courage to simply pack their bags and leave, he might have respected them. So in December 2008, when it came time to set withdrawal deadlines under the UN mandate, he threw the insult back. Unlike the US forces which were given until the end of July 2010, roughly a year and a half to leave, the British were told to pack and be gone a year earlier, barely enough time to get all the equipment and men out. Yet after completing their humiliating departure last Friday, the British now have the gall to tell Americans we don’t know how to fight and win a war. But the latest pontifications from the Foreign Affairs Committee are no different from those espoused four years earlier by British Brigadier, Nigel Aylwin-Foster when he blasted the US counter insurgency strategy as overly harsh in an article in a British military journal. He even used similar terms such as “cultural ignorance” and “institutional racism.” As it turned out the British model failed in Iraq and the US succeeded. You don’t take a city like Fallujah by giving jelly beans to the kids. It takes going in, and staying, and living there, the Marine model. And, yes a lot of hard and dirty fighting too. Perhaps the British Ministry of Defense should concentrate on bigger and better jelly beans. The liberal politicians would love it, and also apparently the generals. But it won’t win wars. Update: One of the best recaps of the British failure in Iraq was put together by Greyhawk at The Mudville Gazette. From published articles, he traces the British involvement from the early days in April 2003 until the fall of Basra at the hands of the Iraqi Army. It is good read for history buffs and scholars. Read it here. Also, Richard North, publisher of the blog EU Referendum has written a book Ministry of Defeat 2003-2009. I haven’t read it yet, but his writings on his blog have been superlative.

Fortune Magazine critiques Health Care Reform … and it is devastating.

2009-07-26T10:45:00.009-04:00

The MSM has been totally in the tank for anything Obama. They have treated the health care debate as a giant scorecard about who is gaining and who is losing, and demonizing those who disagree with The One. Fortune Magazine breaks that mold. It carefully and thoroughly dissects the two bills being rushed through the House and Senate. It analyzes five critical freedoms Americans would lose under the current health bills. 1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan 2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs 3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage 4. Freedom to keep your existing plan 5. Freedom to choose your doctors The article concludes with this: The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms Read it all here. It is a devastating article. Pass it on to your friends. Also, make sure to make your Congressional Representative and Senators aware of your feelings.

Fighting back against red light cameras

2009-07-26T02:25:00.007-04:00

I always get a chuckle when there is a victory against red light and speed cameras. They have morphed quickly into money machines from their avowed purpose of making our streets safer. However a citizens’ revolt is brewing and some of their tactics are both devious and creative. Some are more crude and direct efforts such as this one from the NY Post:

Two oddballs have been busted for swiping nearly 20 percent of the city's red-light cameras right under Big Brother's nose, The Post has learned. They allegedly drove around town in a pickup truck with a cherry-picker to dismantle 22 of the high-end Nikons from their street poles. The devices are used to identify red-light-running drivers, who then are issued tickets by mail. The suspects peddled an estimated $88,000 worth of goods to a camera resale shop for $300 each to feed their heroin habits….

The next is a report about some creative students at Wooton and Richard Montgomery High Schools in Montgomery County, Maryland who manufacture replicas of license tags on their computers with bogus numbers and temporarily stick them on top of the existing tags for just enough time to make a high speed run past the speed camera. They call it “speed camera pimping.” Then some poor oofus a hundred miles away is mailed a letter declaring him guilty and demanding $40 be sent to Montgomery County. At some point the students will discover the Chief of Police’s tag numbers and put him through the mill.

And finally an ingenious and successful method of neutralizing of red light and speed cameras is going on in Washington DC, home of 290 of them, roughly 10% of the nation’s total. The Washington Examiner reports drivers are using software called Phantom Alert in conjunction with their iPhones and GPSs to alert them to the cameras. Phantom Alert allows users to post camera locations on their system as a “Point of Interest.” Then others are alerted to these POIs when their iPhone’s or GPS tells them they are near. All this has Washington’s police chief hopping mad.

That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge sobriety checkpoints. "I think that's the whole point of this program," she told The Examiner. "It's designed to circumvent law enforcement -- law enforcement that is designed specifically to save lives." The new technology streams to iPhones and global positioning system devices, sounding off an alarm as drivers approach speed or red-light cameras. Lanier said the technology is a "cowardly tactic" and "people who overly rely on those and break the law anyway are going to get caught" in one way or another. Boo-hoo!

Update: In addition to Phantom Alert, there is free software for iPhones and newer model Blackberries available from Trapster.

Health Care Reform --- Say no to separate but unequal treatment for the Political Class

2009-07-25T15:31:00.002-04:00

Congress should first write a Health Care Reform Bill for themselves, and then make it available to the rest of the country. The concept there are two classes of people in the country, a political class and the great unwashed (us) that have separate and distinctly unequal access to health care, is abhorrent. They are the ones who will get treatment at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, and we will have VA quality care. There is a difference! The Senate bill specifically exempts Congress and Federal employees from provisions of health care reform they are cramming down our throats. And this provision will be what survives in the final bill. We should accept nothing less than equal coverage for all.

Coming, health rationing for seniors … alternatives can be found.

2009-07-23T14:06:00.006-04:00

Rest assured heath care rationing for seniors is coming. It is happening in the UK and Canada where certain procedures are simply denied at a certain age or interminable waits face those who need care. Rationing to control costs is just the nature of government run health care. The poster child for excessive costs is hip replacements for the elderly. And they will be on the chopping block. Obama himself suggested pain pills might have been a better alternative for his grandmother than a hip replacement she had been considering. But for those who have suffered hip problems, it is a quality of life procedure no amount of pain killers can substitute for. So what are the alternatives? India now offers a hip replacement for under $5,000 (using an FDA approved prosthesis) compared to $25,000 to $30,000 in the US. That's not much different than out of pocket expenses now. In the global economy, procedures denied those in the US can and will eventually be available closer to our borders than India, perhaps in Mexico, Costa Rica and yes, even Canada. That would be ironic! It is comforting to know there are alternatives. It is discouraging that under the ideological premise, government knows better than its citizens, we end up driving medical jobs overseas. Government simply doesn’t feel the pain. We do.

Interesting camouflage schemes for aircraft.

2009-07-22T22:02:00.008-04:00

Camouflage has been with us for over 150 years. From the days of the British in India giving up their whites for khakis to blend into the dusty countryside, efforts have been made to hinder the enemy from seeing and identifying friendly troops and equipment.

Here are some aircraft photos of the more recent efforts to hide and deceive hostile forces. Some are designed to blend in to the background, some are designed to hide the true shape or give a false aspect. Of interest is the Canadian CF-18 with a black canopy painted on the bottom of the plane to deceive an adversary. Pixelated camo used on US Army uniforms is now being applied to combat aircraft. Even with radar and infrared, eyeballs are still crucial for air to air combat, and a half second of confusion can be enough to allow a plane to escape.