Saturday, January 31, 2009

Failure

Obama hates red-states. 42 dead from lack of power due to ice storm and where is FEMA? Where is this in the news? Headline: Media Accomplice to Obama FEMA Debacle

Instapundit

Predictable

As stated at Hot Air. Democrats take over. Government spending goes through the roof. Defense budget is cut. Mission Accomplished.

I can't help think that the Democrats just feel like they have to reclaim the title of "big government spending" from the shameful performance for the Bush/Republican spending spree. So they are taking spending to a new level.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Raising the Bar on Ethics

The Hill: (Heard on Fox New, Special Report)

Several lawmakers took a post-election trip to a luxurious Caribbean resort that may have breached House ethics rules because of corporate involvement.

Against a backdrop of corporate logos, two of the lawmakers thanked Citigroup, Pfizer, IBM and AT&T for their roles. The ethics committee approved the trip, but the rules bar lawmakers from taking trips lasting more than two days if corporations are underwriting or organizing any part of them.

[fast forward to the 9th paragraph to learn who was on the trip]

Other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who attended the conference at the sun-swept, 10-acre Sonesta Maho Beach Resort in St. Martin included Reps. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Must be the CO2

Astronomers Observe Planet with Wild Temperature Swings

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed a planet that heats up to red-hot temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling back down.

The "hot-headed" planet is HD 80606b, a gas giant that orbits a star 190 light-years from Earth. It was already known to be quite unusual, with an orbit shuttling it nearly as far out as Earth is from our sun, and much closer in than our planet Mercury. Astronomers used Spitzer, an infrared observatory, to measure heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit).

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Let the Healing Begin

Gateway Pundit:

Supporters of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami protest in Karachi, January 25, 2009. The protest was organised by Jamat-e-Islami party against military operations and drone attacks in tribal areas. U.S. drones fired missiles into Pakistan late on Friday killing 17 people, intelligence officials and residents said, in the first such strike since Barack Obama became U.S. president.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

American Core

Buck-up, Mike. Five days into the start of the Obama administration, the foundation of conservatism is still prominent. 2010... (Instapundit)

---
...WaP/ABC poll...

19. Generally speaking, would you say you favor (smaller government with fewer services), or (larger government with more services)?

The answer, it turns out, is that even in the current environment, post-Katrina and in the midst of the worst economy since the last bad economy (OK, 1982), 53% of the respondents plumped for “smaller government with fewer services”, in contrast with 43% backing expanded government.

Reasonable Doubt

More clear evidence to at least show reasonable doubt of the man-made global warming. Mistakes, lies or malice? (via. Powerline)

----
Edward Wegman, chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee on theoretical and applied statistics

...I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong Answer Correct = Bad Science.

Friday, January 23, 2009

And at the bottom of the List...

... Man-made global warming. I am seeing a pattern. From NYT via. Instapundit

The latest in an annual series of polls from the Pew Research Center on people’s top priorities for their elected leaders shows that America and President Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming.

Another High Profile Non-Believer

Global warming disbelief. via. Powerline:

----
William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton and former head of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Research, unloads on the charlatans who peddle the anthropogenic global warming theory:

"...All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it's not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide."

01.21.13

Those 01/20/09 bumperstickers used to drive me nuts - and even more so, now. So I think I'll start throwing this date around just to bug the lefties. Note that the inauguration will probably be on the 21st rather than the 20th because the 20th falls on a Sunday. (Wikipedia)



01.21.13

Thursday, January 22, 2009

By the Numbers

From Larry Kudlow at the Corner:

Of $355 billion in infrastructure and other cash outlays [Of the $850B stimulous], only $136 billion would be spent by October 2010. And out of the roughly $100 billion in infrastructure spending, only $26 billion would be spent in fiscal 2009. So much for a quick and immediate jolt to the economy. Oh, by the way, even if the entire stimulus package were put into play, various people have calculated that the estimated 3.5 million new jobs would cost $225,000 per job.

Change: Nation of Men

Found at RedState, Chief Justice John Marshall - “The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not men.”

-----------
Witness Obama’s selection to be Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner. Certainly, Geithner is a tax cheat who will run the Internal Revenue Service. He’s the bumbling constructor of TARP. But, you know, Geithner has been described as “possibly the only man for the job of healing the recession.” There will be a great gnashing of teeth, sayeth the prophet, then Geither will lay hands will lay hands and heal the recession. Heck, he might be better than Benny Hinn.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I Love the Smell of Hypocracy in the Morning

Remember that librarian from Massachusetts who stood in the way of the FBI and was praised as a Patriot by the Left? RedState:

Last Thursday, Barack Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, admitted during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing that he supported renewing the part of the Patriot Act that allows for the FBI to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores as the policing agency investigates suspects in this country. For years we’ve seen news agencies and opinionists rail against the expanded power of the FBI to search such records. But, now with Obama’s AG announcing in his confirmation hearing that he agrees that the FBI should have this power, all anti-Bush administration voices are silent on the matter that had them so exercised for 6 years.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Chink in the Armour II

Momentum is in our favor (as well as data). A few weeks ago, I posted about a Huffington post article questioning man-made global warming (Chink in the Armour). Now comes a poll showing people are realizing that maybe, just maybe, the earth's climate is cyclical in nature. (Ace)

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Bad news for Nobel laureate Al Gore and his not-too-merry band of tree huggers. Rasmussen Reports has released the results of its latest opinion poll, and for the first time, a majority (51%) of Americans are not buying into the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) myth:

Disaster

Another kick in the gut from Mark Steyn:

---
...Bush has declared Washington, D.C., a federal disaster area.

No, seriously. ...what was it? An ice storm? A hurricane?

No, it's the inauguration of his successor. ...

...
"I don't know if anybody's ever done that," said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary.

Indeed. One reason why nobody's ever done that before is because a presidential inauguration is not (to be boringly technical about it) an "emergency." ...

...
I'm not worried about "change" so much as creep. The Obama administration doesn't have to do anything terribly transformative – overnight socialization of health care, etc. In fact, it doesn't have to do anything at all. It could just sit there, and America would still drift remorselessly, incrementally left, inch by inch. Eventually, you reach a tipping point: At some point in the next four years, we will reach a situation where the majority of Americans pay no federal income tax but are able to vote themselves more goodies from those who do. The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions and to individual voters.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Hudson River Plane Crash Analsys

What did it feel like to land in the river? I estimate that they felt 4-5 g's. A normal landing is less rhan 1 g. According to Wikipedia, roller coasters are about 3 g's. So this must have felt pretty abrupt.

----------------------
stall speed 113 knots 130 mph 190.7 feet per second

plane length 37.57m 123.3 feet

stop (from video)
length 5 planes lengths, 616.5 feet
time 4 sec

ave to stop, g's
4 sec 47.675 fps^2 = 1.48 g
1 sec 190.7 fps^2 = 5.92 g

The Federal Aviation Regulations Part 23 lays down some crashworthiness requirements for normal category light aeroplanes to give each occupant every reasonable chance of escaping serious injury when the occupant experiences forward loads up to 9 g

If the body is properly restrained human organs, and their attached blood vessels, have coped with transverse deceleration loads very much greater than 20 g – applied for short periods.

Should Have Seen This Coming

Politico:

In a video message to supporters, Obama gives his campaign organization a name -- "Organizing for America" -- and a mission: running a permanent campaign for his legislative and governing agenda.
---------------

So the propaganda machine will continue. The media will continue to be spoon fed talking points to support his positions and his successes (and hide his failures). But I don't blame him. This is the exact area the destroyed President Bush - PR, communication, propaganda. Call it what you want. But if you leave it up to others to tell your story, you are unlikely to succeed.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Enter into Evidence, Exhibit Q

News Busters:

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In other words, it's a wonderful thing to spend $150 million if you're Barack Obama, but you need to be condemned if you spend $43 [million] and you're George Bush

Beware of the Crisis

"Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant." - James Madison

(according to Wikiquote, it is an unsourced)

Telegraphing Your Pass

This is how to bury a controversial story.

Politico
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Paterson will choose 'right after inauguration'
----------------

Of coarse, if you are trying to bury a story, publicize it?

There is nothing to see, here, II

Just another campaign promise shattered. And the media lets it slide.

The Corner via. Hot Air
-----------------------
Today’s lead story in the Washington Post reports that President-elect Obama “will consider it a failure if he has not closed the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first term in office.”
------------------

Thankfully, many of his broken campaign promises are the correct decision in my mind, and they were in President Bush's mind as well. I'm feeling slightly better today than I did back on Nov. 5th. Of coarse, this is the honeymoon where the press is letting him slide. A year or two of following Bush policies, and they may have a different take. Of coarse, juxtapose these concessions with bail-out money to the private industry including the newspaper industry, and they may continue to let these sleep dogs lie.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

God Bless

God bless Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, the pilot who saved the plane load of people, today. And God bless the rescuers who quickly came to the passengers aide.

But the unsung heroes to be blessed are the engineers at Airbus who designed the plain to withstand this crash. As an engineer, I always look at the goofy cartoon drawing in the safety card in the seat back in from of me and think, "Yeah, right. A flying tube made so light so that it can fly would never withstand the forces of a 'water landing'." But the skeptic in my was proven wrong today as a plane made a picture (cartoon) perfect water landing. Great job ME's!

Get Some

This headline from Harvard Business Review sums up my frustration with the "bail-out". It's more aptly name "hand-out". Sweet! Free money! I gotta get me some of that!

Obama's Stimulus Plan: How the IT Sector Could Turn it Green

"How to turn it green" can also be read, "how can I take someone else's hand-out". My response is "No one should get it. Get off your butt and make your own money, cuz the hand-out you're getting comes outa MY pocket!"

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

This is what I'm talking about

What media bias?

Ace
---------
Press Oddly Quiet About Would-Be IRS Head's Forgetful Posture on Taxes; But Oh, By the Way, It Was Huge News That Joe the Plumber Had a Tax Lien

Instapundit, quoting Treacher:

A plumber owed $1,000 in taxes that he didn’t even know about… …and it was headline news!

Who Better?

Down the memory hole.

WashTimes via. Gateway Pundit
-----------------
Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, ...

Puppets

We always hear that Hamas, etc., are puppets of Iran. Here's a quote supporting that. via The Long War Journal

---------------
"As soon as the Iranians heard about the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, they dispatched the two officials to Damascus on an urgent mission to warn the Palestinians against accepting it," the Egyptian government official said.

"The Iranians threatened to stop weapons supplies and funding to the Palestinian factions if they agreed to a cease-fire with Israel," the official continued.

1000 Words

Saturday, January 10, 2009

"Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims."

I know it isn't fun, but it's time for another unpleasant dose of reality from Mark Steyn.

---------------
... what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just weeks ago, terrorists attacked Mumbai, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:

"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.'

"Mumbai terrorist 2: 'We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China'

"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill them.'

"(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)"

"Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims." Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted "Muslims must die!" or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. ...

Data on Dems and Israel

From David Frum in The Week via. himself at The Corner.

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A Rasmussen poll conducted in the last week of 2008 found that while 62 percent of Republicans backed Israel’s action in Gaza, only 31 percent of Democrats did. Almost three-quarters of Republicans blamed Hamas for starting this war; only a minority of Democrats agreed. Republicans are 20 points more friendly toward Israel than Democrats. And while extreme hostility to Israel does not exist among Republicans, almost one in 10 Democrats describes Israel as an “enemy of the United States.”

This is the political environment in which Barack Obama will be forming policy toward the Jewish state. Friends of Israel should find this worrying to say the least.
-------------------

And at The Corner, more data that Dems would find fault in (if they were so inclined to get informed)

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Generally, high-information voters lean toward Israel in the Middle East, while low-information voters are less favorable. And low-information voters tilt strongly toward the Democrats. [Follow link for source]

Friday, January 09, 2009

Name That Party

I can name the party of this dirty pol in 336 words.

Amateur Hour Continues

Excellent. Let's "talk" to terrorists - starting with Hamas. One campaign promise coming true? James Robbins at The Corner.

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Whether one agrees with the notion of the U.S. opening a direct diplomatic channel to Hamas or not, talking about it right now is very poor timing.

The Chicago Way Comes to Washington

Great column by John Kass at the Chicago Tribune. (HT. Michael Graham) John is giving us a little heads -up on how the government will be run now that we've put a Chicago Pol in the white house. Great metaphoric read.

----------------
So the Chicago Way hauled off and slapped the U.S. Senate in the face—one of those backhands with the knuckles to unsuspecting lips—and guess who blinked?

It wasn't Chicago.

It was the Senate.

...
In political terms, Reid rolled up his sleeves, put on his favorite "Kiss the Chef" apron, got his fingers dusty with flour and baked himself a big humble pie. He scarfed it down in front of reporters Wednesday, without a fork, all but licking his fingers, that pie was so sweet and tasty. Mmm-mmm.

...
"People ask a lot of times why we have to do various things procedurally here in the Senate," Reid told reporters. "It's because we're the Senate: That's how we operate."

Correction. That's how you used to operate. You're from Nevada, but Obama comes from Chicago.

It's sure got to be difficult to eat a big hunk of humble pie when your lips are stinging, but here's some advice, Senators.

Have another slice. There's plenty more.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Chink in the Armor?

Huffington Post publishes an article questioning man-made global warming. Harold Ambler sites several data that allow for the plausibility that maybe there are other sources of climate change. Is the left opening up to the possibility that global warming might just be a natural cycle? If you read the comments, they don't seem to be open to the discussion.

As an engineer, I tend to side with Ambler. The simple argument about the specific heat of CO2 vs. H2O a big. And the many cycles of the climate over the history of earth is also unsubstantiated in the man-made global warming argument. What man-made period reversed the ice age? Also as a scientist, I always keep my mind open to alternative views. Anyone who says the argument is over is not scientific (Thanks, liberal public education).

Here in lies the challenge in loosening the grip of the man-made global warming argument. If you say, "The argument is over." you have crossed the line into faith/religion. Most who have committed themselves to the man-made global warming cause stick to it like a religion. How do you convince a Christian there might not be a God?

Friday, January 02, 2009

Cast Lead

Read this whole article at Haaretz. Maybe this time it's different.
God speed, Israel.

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"I've been talking to friends of mine, former Palestinian Authority intelligence officials (ejected from power by the Hamas coup), and they tell me that not only are they rooting for the Israelis to decimate Hamas, but that Fatah has actually been assisting the Israelis with targeting information," Goldberg writes.

One of those friends, he continues, "told me that one of his comrades was thrown off a high-rise building in Gaza City last year by Hamas, and so he sheds no tears for the Hamas dead. 'Let the Israelis kill them,' he said. 'They've brought only trouble for my people.'"

...
No people on earth have been hurt more by Islamic terrorism than the Palestinians.

Inspiration

from JPost via. Michelle Malkin