A couple of postings on TCS both relate to this message:

Global Warming and Hurricanes: Still No Connection

A scientific team led by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology today published findings in Science magazine. The team claimed to have found evidence in the historical record of both more tropical cyclones, such as Hurricane Katrina, but also a higher percentage of more intense ones….The conclusion many draw from papers such as these is that anthropogenic global warming from the burning of fossil fuels by humans is causing more lethal storms. A closer look, though, reveals not human action but rather natural cycles are the primary cause.

The piece goes on with the analysis of the findings that demonstrates that they CANNOT prove what is claimed.

Coalition of the Seething

The organization of a broad coalition of envirowacko groups is used here to focus on the lack of substantive scientific evidence in support of a human caused global warming catastrophe.

Claims that Katrina is due to global warming are not supported by scientific or historical evidence, but that doesn’t stop the hysteria. Beliefs that hurricanes have increased in frequency and severity are simply false. The only measurable increase is in the cost of repairing the damage. This is mostly explained by natural cost increases, exploitation of demand for materials and more people living in regions of climate hazards.

Claims of severe weather increasing in the future are also scientifically and historically wrong. More severe weather is associated with cooling not warming. Storms and tornadoes occur along the boundary between the warm subtropical air and the cold polar air known as the Polar Front. The power of the storms is a function of the temperature contrast across the Front known as the Zonal Index. Global warming theory says the polar air will warm more than the subtropical air thus reducing the temperature contrast and the potential for severe weather.

OK. If the science is really weak here, then what’s the agenda? Some other driving force?

Kyoto was an attempt to control, limit or even weaken industrialized nations built on capitalism, trade and democracy. Maurice Strong, principle architect of the Rio conference and it’s offspring Kyoto, reportedly said. “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Now Kyoto is unmasked as unworkable because it pays very high economic cost for absolutely no gain. Even attempts to suggest it was about pollution failed. Charles Dumont of Lombard Street Research says it “would in no way prevent global warming” and puts the cost at 16 trillion dollars.

Of COURSE! It global warming, Kyoto et al makes a great Trojan Horse for the warmed over vomit of socialism. Shocking! Simply shocking!

Tony Blair Pulls the Plug on Kyoto at Clinton Summit

Virtually unreported from the Clinton Global Iniative meeting in New York, was Tony Blair virtually driving the final nails into the coffin of the (at best) ill-advised Kyoto Accord. Jim Pinkerton at Tech Central Station steps in where the MSM fears to tread.

Onstage with former president Bill Clinton at a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was going to speak with “brutal honesty” about Kyoto and global warming, and he did. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had some blunt talk, too. Blair, a longtime supporter of the Kyoto treaty, further prefaced his remarks by noting, “My thinking has changed in the past three or four years.” So what does he think now? “No country,” he declared, “is going to cut its growth.” That is, no country is going to allow the Kyoto treaty, or any other such global-warming treaty, to crimp — some say cripple — its economy.

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Theres more in this article worth taking a look at.

Daley scorns cabbie dress code idea

Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Daley has reached a point where he has decided that enough is enough – when it comes to the far-reaching hand of a would-be nanny approach to public policy.

A dress code for cabdrivers. A ban on the sale of foie gras in Chicago restaurants. To Mayor Daley, it’s all part of the same slippery slope: a Big Brother intrusion into the lives of Chicagoans that he wants no part of. “We’re trying to tell people they can’t eat certain foods. They can’t buy certain foods. They can’t ship certain foods in. Pretty soon, you can’t drink. Do you really want government to keep telling you every day what to do?” Daley said.

The Chief finds it encouraging that even a died-in-the-wool Democrat like the mayor still has enough reason to say STOP! Maybe there’s some hope for the Donks yet.

Architect offers to alter Flight 93 memorial to appease critics

The Flight 93 memorial design as a crescent (like the symbol of Islam, in memorial to victims of Islamofascism) was earlier noted by the Chief here. Agreeing with thos who declared that this design would be in the same spirit as planting flowers in a swastika pattern as a memorial at Auschwitz, the Chief strongly disliked this design.

It took approx. two and a half days for the National Park Service and the architects to recognize that they were spitting into the wind on this one, and announce that the design would be changed.

The architect of the memorial to a plane downed in western Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, said Wednesday he would work to satisfy critics who complained that it honors terrorists with its crescent-shaped design.

At least they weren’t as oblivious to the concerns about the design as those pushing the WTC memorial have been. Progress of a sort.

Bush signs BRAC plan

WIth Presidential approval of the BRAC report, it’s all over but the shouting & Ellsworth survived the process.

President Bush on Thursday endorsed a plan for closing 22 major military bases and reconfiguring 33 others, leaving their fate to Congress.

Bush had until Sept. 23 to either accept the entire report from an independent commission and send it to Congress, or return it to the commission for further work. The report will become final in 45 days unless Congress acts to reject it in full. In previous rounds, lawmakers never have rejected reports, meaning communities probably have little hope of a reprieve for their bases.

Likewise, bases left off the BRAC closure list, have little to fear at this point. Aside from the economics of the situation, the Chief believes that the strategic and military factors were the only ones that should have been significant in the final decisions. In the cases of Ellsworth, and the Naval bases in Maine and Connecticut at least, the Chief had NO doubt that this was the case, as did the commissioners, resulting in the positive outcome for South Dakota.

Two sides prepare for abortion fight

As was expected, the recently passed SD law regulating abortion has generated legal challenges and may well end up before the SCOTUS. From the sound of this, it sounds like both sides are pulling out all the stops.

Professionals with impressive credentials and experience in medicine and ethics are being lined up on both sides of a court case that will decide if doctors in South Dakota must tell women that abortions end lives.

In spite of having a sort of neo-libertarian orientation, the Chief, as a biologist, cannot see the logic in legalized pre-natal infanticide, absent a threat to the life of the mother – oh, yeah – also in cases of rape and incest. In THOSE cases, the scum who committed the crimes should not have the right to have their genes passed on as the result of these brutally coercive acts. (To quote SciFi writer Larry Niven: “Just think of it as evolution in action.”)

Another aspect of the abortion debate sometimes results in rather indiscriminate use of the concept of “pro-life” as being the touchstone for determining ultimate morality. This citation takes the commandment which in English reads “Thou shalt not kill” as a moral absolute.

The Chief notes the original Hebrew would be closer to “Thou shalt not murder” – or take INNOCENT life. What could be more innocent than an unborn infant. Likewise, what innocence is left in an individual who HAS shed innocent blood by murder, or committed that ultimate social betrayal known as treason. In those cases, hang ’em high…but save the babies!

Fighting Terrorism in the U.S.

Gov. Mit Romney (R-MA) has deGov. finitely poked the hornets’ nest of political correctness with a big stick in a speech before the Heritage Foundation. He reiterated in an interview with Gibson on Fox News:

And, in some cases, I’m sure the FBI infiltrates organizations they’re concerned about. If they have probable cause, they’re able to do wiretapping. And those are the tools that, of course, we use in protecting the homeland. What we need to do is more of that and have more resources devoted to the FBI in their effort to do intelligence work and counterintelligence work.

We don’t need different tools. We need to use the tools we have got under the Patriot Act (search) and under our current laws to assure that we really are following groups that are preaching terror, that we really are following people who come here from terror-sponsored states, where that’s appropriate, where we have concerns, that we have the resources necessary to prevent the bombs from going off, rather than just the resources to clean up afterwards.

In a later apppearance on O’Reilly Factor this evening, when asked what he thought of the ACLY complaining that his remarks and the policy advocated in them would have a “chilling effect” on foriegn students coming to the US. Romney’s reply? Words to the effect that he would hope that students from terrorist-supporting countries like Saudi Arabia and others WOULD stay away – that it would make our security problem that much better if they were not here!

HEAR, HEAR! Right on, Gov’nor!

Universities urged to root out extremism

Universities must root out extremism on campus as part of the war on terror, Ruth Kelly, Education Secretary will say in a speech.

Here’s a radical new idea from across the pond: universities to actively monitor and crack down on extreme radicalism in order to help in the terror war.

Ms Kelly is expected to tell the organisation’s annual conference: “Higher education institutions need to identify and confront unacceptable behaviour on their premises and within their community. “They should be alert and be unafraid to set their own boundaries – within the law and with the law in support – in consultation with their own community and the wider community. “That means informing the police where criminal offences are being perpetrated or where there may be concerns about possible criminal acts.

What a concept. Sound to me like she gets it.

NASA to Unveil Plans to Send 4 Astronauts to Moon in 2018

NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018. The U.S. space agency now expects to roll out its lunar exploration plan to key Congressional committees on Friday and to the broader public through a news conference on Monday.

Phew! It’s about time. The only concern the Chief has about this is why take so long to get back there, when we did it for the first time in less than a decade – well, I guess it is NASA, after all.

Hey, Maybe the Singularity Really Is Near

A very interesting article from Glenn Reynolds stepping outside of his “evil” incarnation as the Instapundit, in which he points out some very strange sounding science and technology at the bleeding edge of the art.

Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology comes out next week. And I suspect that a lot of people wonder if things will really happen as fast as Kurzweil suggests.

But as I look at the news reports, I see quite a few signs that we’re living in a future that not long ago would have looked science fictional. Take, for example, this report: Miracle Mouse Can Grow Back Limbs.

It’s so far out, that the Chief read it in new sci-fi just a few years ago. In spite of the cautious optimism implicit in all of this stuff, there’s also a sobering warning:

Meanwhile, here’s an interview with Ray Kurzweil that I published elsewhere. Kurzweil is an optimist, but even he worries that the Singularity may come as a result of Chinese, not American, efforts, and he’s got some disturbing numbers. The future is almost here, but we’ve still got some choices about how things will turn out. Let’s try to choose wisely.

Indeed!

North Korea Application for membership.

This is a pretty good gag, stumbled across in the New Yorker, online.
It’s worth a look for a laugh.

A couple of items out today that illustrate once again the fundamental importance of the appointments to the bench in determining whether or not we live subject to the whim of judicial dictators arbitrarily wreaking their will, or as Lincoln phrased it, “whether government of the people, by the people, and for the people should not perish from the earth”.

Pledge of Allegiance again ruled unconstitutional

A federal judge declared the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools unconstitutional Wednesday, a decision that could put the divisive issue on track for another round of Supreme Court arguments. The case was brought by the same atheist whose previous battle against the words “under God” was rejected last year by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.

This comes out of the moonbat-grade US 9th Circuit

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge’s reference to one nation “under God” violates school children’s right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.” Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Jerk-it Court of Appeals Schlemiels, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

Instead of “One man, one vote” with Judicial dictatorship we get “One man, I vote”….and as far as the current quality of SCOTUS that the LibDonks are so vociferously defending against conservatives, try this:

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Justice Ginsberg OK’d Child Sex

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg once argued that girls as young as twelve should be able to have sex with adult males, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday – while pledging to make an issue out of Ginsberg’s radical philosophy during John Roberts’ confirmation hearings.

“She argued that the age of consent for a woman should be twelve,” Graham told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity. “She wasn’t representing clients,” Graham noted about Ginsberg’s endorsement of child sex. “She was writing an article about her own views.”

It goes on from there – yes, there is more where that came from…and the hits just keep on comin':

Justice Kennedy’s New Rule of Law

In the Sept. 12 New Yorker, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin pens a profile of Kennedy, who vigorously defends his use of foreign laws and constitutions to interpret U.S. laws and our Constitution. Some in Congress believe Kennedy’s position – and those of several other Court Justices – is a clear violation of both U.S. law and the justices’ own solemn oath to uphold solely the U.S. Constitution.

I tried to find this at the site for The New Yorker, but it wasn’t there – I suppose it’s in the print edition only, at least so far.

What does the collective set of all this stuff mean? Mark Levin in his book Men in Black is right!

At war with an enemy of an unspoken name

Here’s the third installment from Tony Blankley. Check it out, it’s as good as the first two excerpts.

The Chief HAS to get this book!

Al-Qaeda group says chemical arms fired in Baghdad

An Al-Qaeda linked Sunni group in Iraq said it used chemical weapons to attack targets in Baghdad, in a statement on an Islamist website. Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura (Army of the Victorious Community) said its fighters fired shells filled with chemical agents at the interior ministry, foreign ministry, the “green zone” and Baghdad’s security academy.

Did anyone else notice all the MSM coverage of this? No? you didn;t either? Hmmmm. How about our own government’s response? No? Me neither. Like the old Sherlock Holmes story – what’s interesting was the dog that didn’t bark.

Since the Chief, and many otherc commented on the design for the monument in Pennsylvania to Flight 93 that was hijacked on 9-11, and which crashed as the passengers fought to regain control of the aircraft which was apparently on the way to attack D.C. There have been a couple of interesting follow-up items of interest.

Tancredo Questions Shape of 9/11 Memorial

Firstly, Colorado GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo, who is one of the few in COngress that is openly and consistantly opposing our de-facto open border policies, has expressed his own sense of concern over the approved crescent design.

A congressman is asking the U.S. government to reconsider the crescent-shaped design of the memorial to those aboard a plane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, because some may think it honors the terrorists.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican, says the design, called “Crescent of Embrace,” could invite “controversy and criticism.” In a letter sent Tuesday to National Park Service Director Fran Mainella, Tancredo said many have questioned the shape “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam _ and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists.”

…and, in response, CAIR sounded off with some unhappiness. (Time for the waaambulance again: waa-waa, waa-waa, waa-waa.)

CAIR: CO Rep’s ‘Crescent’ Comments a Ploy to Gain Publicity
GOP Leaders Urged to Repudiate Tancredo’s Islamophobic Views

The Council on American-Islamic Relations Council of Angry Islamofascist Radicals (CAIR) today dismissed Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-CO) comments on the design of a memorial to those aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 as a cynical political ploy designed to gain national attention.

(Emphasis added.)

“…those aboard a plane that crashed…”??????? Hello? The plane just happened to crash, or something? Even knowing the Islamofascist nature of these traitorous weasels, this leaves the Cheif breathless in amazement. They truly have no shame at all, and the diversity crowd says we need to respect this? As we used to say when I was on active duty before the mast on a guided missile destroyer: “I might, but I f——g doubt it!”

Start-up Firm Building New Space Capsule System

No links to this YET – but the October issue of Popular Science reports on a firm called T/Space which is developing, with NASA backing, and some project collaboration with Rutan’s Scaled Composites, a capsule system called the CXV or Crew Transfer Vehicle capable of carrying three or four astronauts to low Earth orbit, and returning for a wet landing, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo had.

The launcher is an aircraft launched propane & liquid oxygen rocket. The whole emphasis has been on economy and simplicity of design – and seems to be making some real progress – possibly having things ready to go b\y ’08 or ’09 – an unheard of timeline for NASA projects.

Best of all, this will be privately owned/operated, flying as contractors to NASA, or whoever else wants/needs to get to orbit. Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with its plans for vehicles to replace the shuttles also apparently based on a larger, more advanced capsule design for personnel, and a heavy lift cargo launcher, for well, cargo. NASA doesn;t plan to be ready to fly before 2012 at best, so the T/Space CVX could fill a gap to help keep the International Space Station in business until then.

The folks at T/Space emphasize that they are NOT building a shuttle replacement – but perhaps a modern replacement for the truly antiquated Soyuz technology.

This is truly good news – the US must maintain an effective capability for space, if for no other reason, to prevent a default ceding of the ultimate high ground to China, Russia, or whoever else goes after it.

Virgin plans oil refinery

The highly successful independent entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has apparently once again decided that there is a need that is not being met, so he has resolved to go into the refining business. If he does this with his usual competance and panache, he’ll pull it off and introduce an outside bit of competition to the established oil companies and cartel.

Think you are upset about high gas prices? Maverick British entrepreneur Richard Branson is so furious he wants to build his own oil refinery….”If we don’t start now to get more refineries built then fuel prices could literally rocket to $US100-$US200 (per barrel of oil) and the world economy would come to a grinding halt,” Branson said in an interview on financial news network CNBC overnight.

He should know about rocketing a bit, from being involved in the private spaceflight venture Virgin Galactic. The Chief has of course heard of virgin pressed olive oil, so why not Virgin Oil?

Roberts Rebuffs Democrats’ Questions

THe Chief heard some of the hearings with Judge Roberts – one thing that was readily evident was that one good, sound judge was able to run circles around a whole klatsch of LibDonk senators out to try to Bork him. How sweet it is!

Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts repeatedly refused to answer questions about abortion and other contentious issues at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, telling frustrated Democrats he would not discuss matters that could come before the Supreme Court.

This has become known as the Ginsburg Standard, after the absolute refusal of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to answer ANYTHING specific about any case that might POSSIBLY come before the court.

Roberts struck sparks when he indicated his refusal to answer certain questions was based in part on a precedent of “no hints, no forecasts, no previews” that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set at her hearings a dozen years ago.

What drives the Donks crazy, is that the sauce for the goose has turned out to be sauce for the gander – plus the fact that it is apparent that Judge Roberts is far and away the intellectual master of the law, and that senators like Kennedy, Biden, and Leahy don’t have enough background to do more than run through obviously canned questions prepped by their staff flunkies.

The Cheif remains cautiously optimistic on Roberts’ overall legal orientation, but in spite of the Donks’ fulminations in the hearings, it looks more and more like there will be a decisive and positive vote on the confirmation.

‘An Islamist threat like the Nazis’

Except for radio talker Michael Savage, the Chief has seen no one else in the media with as much situational awareness as Tony Blankley does with this article, and apparently this book.

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

We cannot afford to lose Europe. We cannot afford to see Europe transformed into a launching pad for Islamist jihad.

While we in the United States and Europe have vast resources for protecting ourselves, we have thought ourselves into a position of near impotence.

This is the first of a three-part series in the Washington Times – it looks to be well worth following. Blankley also has a new book out on the same topic. Looks to be a “must-read” for the Chief…and if you can’t figure it out, I concur entirely with the premise and significance of this view.

UPDATE: Here’s part 2 of the series just posted:
Needed: Old war spirit in a new war

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you’ll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he’s in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

The rest of the article goes on to demonstrate the case for this proposition. It has reason! Take a look.

Jews and Freemasons controlled war on Iraq, says No 10 adviser

What can one say about THIS stuff, except to seriously question Tony Blairs choice of an advisor. The Chief hesitates to call this Nazi apologist a moonbat – a far stronger appelation is in order!

One would hope after this that Ahmad Thomson, the Islamofascist in question, might lose standing with the Blair government, but since he’s been spouting his brand of venom since publication of a book in 1994, this hope would be in vain, especially with government mouthpieces admitting no wrong:

A Government spokesman confirmed last night that ministers and officials consulted Mr Thomson on issues concerning Muslims but refused to be drawn on his views. “We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with,” she said.

What insight can the Blair government be gaining from this Islamofascist?

Mr Thomson said: “Pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events.” Mr Thomson wrote a book in 1994 in which he said Freemasons and Jews controlled the governments of Europe and America and described the claim that six million Jews died in the Holocaust as a “big lie”.

This has got to be the ultimate example of politically correct diversity run amok. What POSSIBLY could be credible from an openly published holocaust denier? It boggles the mind.

The Chief thought Blair had more on the ball than this, but then again, at heart he IS a socialist – and so it goes.

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

Now HERE’s a big shocker! The MSM not reporting the reality of events, but rather tailoring their report to match their agenda! Say it ain’t so…but is is, unfortunately.

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow….But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Once again, “ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS, WE PRINT”.

From a man who has some REAL experience with such matters:

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that: “The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

The same style of journalism that reports on events in Baghdad from the hotel bar, is active in the hurricane areas, as well:

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out. So they libel as a “national disgrace” the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

Indeed!

Defeating Al Qaeda, the Strategic Information Power

A good strategic-minded post on Austin Bay – it occurs to the chief that the blogosphere is one way to counteract the fluttered MSM rolling over for the Islamofascists.

H/T to Glenn the Instapundit on this one.

“Crescent of Embrace” Selected Design

Few would protest the appropriateness of a memorial at the site of the crash of United Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA on 9-11. More than a few are apparently appalled, as is the Chief, by the design that was selected:

What in the world possesses some of these people when they do something like this. Here’s the group of people featured on this evening’s TV special (Discovery ch.) THE FLIGHT THAT FOUGHT BACK, being supposedly honored by a design that effectively creates a large Islamic crescent on the landscape using red-leaved trees.

Are they REALLY so dense as to be oblivious to the reactions to this, or is there some other agenda of uber-political correctness? One has to wonder.

Michelle Malkin has about as complete a presentation on this as anywhere, with links to other explanatory sites.

Rick Rescorla Was a Soldier

If you were to tread one post for 9-11, the Chief suggests strongly that this would be the one! Rick Resorla was security head for Morgan Stanley in the WTC. He predicted an attack on the building through the parking garage before it happened. After security on that was beefed up, he actually predicted air attack via crashing airliners as the next method to be used.

As if that isn’t enough, there is an exceptional record of service and heroism in the life of this Cornwall born naturalized American that is well worth remembering as exemplifying the best. He served with distinction in the Royal Army, and then in the US Army 7th Cav in Viet-nam.

Check Greyhawk’s post in the Mudville Gazette out – it’s well worth it. Check out the links there, and don’t forget to sign the petition for Rick to get the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

UPDATE: History Channel tonight running an excellent program “THE MAN WHO PREDICTED 9-11″ – about Rick Rescorla. By the way, you can see Rick Rescorla’s picture on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young.

A Soldier, indeed.

Fuel protests ‘will bring Britain to a standstill’

This is in the category of “I complained because I had no shoes…then I met a man who had no feet.”

Fuel protesters vow to bring Britain to a standstill this week as the cost of petrol sits at a record £5 a gallon.

Let’s see – £1 = $1.50 more or less. So $7.50 per gallon! Yowch! And it isn’t just the market forces at play over there either:

The fuel tax duty of 47.1p a litre collected by the Government accounts for about half the cost of petrol sold at today’s prices. British drivers pay far more than those in France and the United States, where prices per litre average 85.22p and 37.9p respectively.

(Emphasis added)

And we think WE have it rough!

Mystery Bulge in Oregon Still Growing

This type of bulging is one of the key indicators of some form of volcanic activity. Most of the Cascades volcanic mountains are candidates for eruption. St. Helens continues to percolate, and this recent finding indicates activity in the vicinity of the Three Sisters volcanic formation(s).

Bulge as viewed using radar interferometry.

A recent survey of a bulge that covers about 100 square miles near the South Sister indicates the area is still growing, suggesting it could be another volcano in the making or a major shift of molten rock under the center of the Cascade Range.

This site is remote enough to probably not be a disaster, even if it erupts, but it’s still something neat enough to keep some track of.

Base-closure panel finds overestimation of savings

The final Base Re-alignment and Closing Commission report has been sent to the President. The final version notably maintains Ellsworth AFB of South Dakota as a going concern. Hopefully, the report is accepted.

The Pentagon overestimated savings from base closings by $30 billion and some of its plans for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient, a federal commission that reviewed the process said yesterday.

With its five months of work complete, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voiced its concerns even as it approved roughly 86 percent of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommended as he sought to save money by getting rid of extra space in the domestic military network. That’s on par with previous years, when commissions changed only about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed.

California’s New Orleans

Quick, name an American city of 450,000 where the majority of the population is non-white, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty, and where some of the city streets are, even on a dry day, below sea level. New Orleans, of course. But also Long Beach, California.

What happened in NOLA could apparently also happen in California’s Long Beach, complete with large minority populations left at the mercy of the elements. The biggest difference is that they are being kept that way by envirowackos who feel that a “natural” beachfront is better than bothering to protect people & their homes, etc.

Parts of the city in southern Los Angeles county stand an average three feet below sea level, compared to eight feet for New Orleans. Yet despite all the talk from the political left that the Bush administration has effectively drowned New Orleans residents, that same political left is working assiduously to leave Long Beach residents exposed.

Typical moonbat logic – or lack therof – never to be bothered by a mere bugaboo of being consistant.

Read the rest to gain a bit more insight into the mind of the elitist envirowacko cult of nature uber alles.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially in the city of New Orleans.

The Donks’ old lock-step loyalty is getting frayed in the face of some unpleasant doses of reality ignoring party affiliation.

“Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself,” said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. “The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people of New Orleans. … The truth is, black people died not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco,” he said….”If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities,” he said.

A light in the forest! But speaking of other cities, note the post next to this one, about Long Beach: the hits just keep on coming!