The Jet Blue Strategy

According to the Borowitz Report, President Bush has a new plan to bring the troops home from Iraq on Jet Blue. “Setting an exact timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq would be playing right into the enemy’s hands,” Mr. Bush said. “By going with JetBlue, our enemy will have no idea when we’re leaving.” To emphasize his point, Mr. Bush added, “And neither will we.”

Using science

Scientists say conclusive data shows there is no question circumcision reduces men's chances of catching HIV by up to 60 percent - a finding experts are hailing as a major breakthrough in the fight against AIDS. Now, the question is how to put that fact to work to combat AIDS across Africa. O.K., guys form a line on the right.

An English Lesson

Here is what Vice-President Cheney said:

"I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy. The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people, try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit."

That is hard to argue with, but Speaker Pelosi thinks those words question her patriotism and is having a case of the vapors. It is typical of liberals to take it personally when someone disagrees with their positions.

Border Security

The New York Times had an article yesterday which provides some evidence that the increased border agents and the security walls seem to be reducing the number of illegals crossing into the U.S. Of course, the dems have pledged to defund the wall construction which wasn't funded all that well in the first place. Now those of us who are paying attention have evidence that the removal of funds is being undertaken not because the wall won't work as they claim but because it will.

Details?

When the rich white guys didn't rape a poor black stripper at a lacrosse party in Durham, North Carolina, the local paper and TV stations didn't have any difficulty identifying the race of those involved. As has been widely reported, the main crime in this case seems to have been committed by the democrat DA pandering to his black constituents. Now we have another rape reported in that fair city. The race of the subjects is known and both are black. Here is the link to the article in the local newspaper. Despite the title, try to discern that from the text of the article. Typical liberal tactics from the media.

Steve Jobs speaks the truth

In a speech on Friday, the chief executive officer of Apple and Disney honcho declared: "I believe that what's wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way."

The problem with unionization, Mr. Jobs argued, is that it has constrained schools from attracting and retaining the best teachers and from dismissing the less effective ones. This, in turn, deters quality people from seeking to become principals and superintendents. "What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, ‘I can't win,'" Mr. Jobs said. He concluded by saying, "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

Unions are really against giving some teachers more pay than others because this suggests some teachers are better than others. This illogical stance is comparable to giving each student the same grade regardless of classroom performance.

The great flood

Before Al Gore, the biggest idiot in the world was Paul Ehrlich. Confirmation is given in this essay with some examples given below:

In May 1989, Ehrlich claimed, global warming was going to melt the polar ice caps, causing a flood in which "we could expect to lose all of Florida, Washington D.C. and the Los Angeles basin. ... We'll be in rising waters with no ark in sight." Ehrlich didn't give a time frame, but his panicked report clearly suggested doom around the corner.

The panic was necessary to sell an extremely harsh "solution" of "enormous, rapid change." Ehrlich commanded that to forestall doom, the world needed to cut its energy use in half over 20 years. Industrialization needed to be dragged to a screeching halt, not only in America, but especially in the Third World. Ehrlich felt the next generation of Americans should be denied the Earth-strangling prosperity of their parents, saying the world's ecosystems "cannot support the spread of the American lifestyle to the Third World or even to the next generation of Americans."

As every 3rd grader knows, if you fill a glass with ice and then water, when the two come to room temperature the table is not flooded and the glass does not overflow. The floating ice at the polar caps could melt and not threaten the land masses of earth with flooding.

Ehrlich was back on NBC in January 1990 to sell his "inconvenient truth" line again. This time, he gave a more concrete timeline. Antarctica's ice sheets were slipping, and then "we'll be facing a sea-level rise not of one to three feet in a century, but of 10 or 20 feet in a much shorter time. The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument. Storm surges would make the Capitol unusable."

It's been almost twenty years, we never cut our energy use in half, and Florida is still above water, not to mention Washington and Los Angeles. We have yet to tie our boats to the Washington Monument. But the media are still handing over their microphones and their accolades to panicky predictions, with no apparent expectation that anyone will ever question their accuracy in a decade or two. How many decades do we wait to question these predictions?

Liberals Explained

This is a very interesting essay on liberals. Here is a snippet.

Being middle class is something to be slightly ashamed of. Being working class on the other hand - or better still affecting to be working class - makes you seem more heroic......As long as you are ‘left wing' you are not only a nicer person but you are also ‘radical' and therefore not boring. If on the other hand you are ‘right wing', well that means you are ‘reactionary' and mean......Business enterprise is essentially disreputable whereas getting a living off the public purse or in the arts and media is highly civilised. Being an engineer or a scientist is OK too, up to a point - for boring people anyway.....And of course all the problems of people in the rest of the world are the fault, not of those people themselves but of the prosperous West. More specifically, the blame lies with ‘the capitalist system'; not you personally of course. You show how much you care by going to Live Aid concerts and that makes you feel much better about yourself.

All people in the Third World are shouldering with dignity a burden imposed upon them by the West in general and America in particular....All businesses are probably trying to screw you....You as a consumer have plenty to whinge about....Politicians should do something about each and every one of the problems you encounter in life....And if you are making a mess of your life its because someone else should have given you more information or more help.

Apologize or else

It is somewhat amusing to follow the situation with Hillary and her loony left critics who want her to apologize for her vote to authorize the military action in Iraq. You can read about some of it here.
This is so characteristic of liberals who can be counted on to put so much more value on style vis a vis substance. Eventually, Hillary will cave since that is what liberals do.

Pop Culture

It is difficult for those who have lived in 8 different decades to appreciate all that seems important today, but I really find it hard to understand why we need photographic proof that Britney Spears has absolutely no hair on her entire body.

Quality and tactics over numbers

"The U.S. must use every tactic and technology to fight this war and provide support to the Iraqi military. If a lineup was put together of 10 Iraqi men, most American soldiers would be hard pressed to figure out which one was an innocent civilian and which was an “insurgent.” If that lineup included five American soldiers, it would be easy to pick them out. It is time for the U.S. to use deception and aggression to fight an enemy that has no regard for the sanctity of human life. We must upset the balance of their operations, disrupt the supply lines, and prepare each battlefield with reconnaissance elements that blend in with the local community. We cannot do this alone, but together with the Iraqi Army and local community, this can be done."

This is how Lt. Col. Scott Rutter sees the recent "surge" in Iraq and in as much as BestView has been saying much the same thing for weeks and maybe even months, it is easy to recommend the entire article.

The oil threat

The al-Qaida organization in Saudi Arabia has threatened the oil facilities in Mexico, Canada and Venezuela with an admitted goal of disrupting the economy of the U.S. The Saudis and the U.S. have security at the refineries and petrochemical plants, so the other countries are easier targets. Mexico and Canada say they will beef up security and Venezuela says they are not going to be attacked since they are our enemy. Right now Venezuela supplies about 10% of our oil and an attack there would hurt us, but it would hurt Venezuela more. Advertising that you are the easiest target out there is not really very smart if the al-Qaida is serious in its stated objectives.

What's the difference?

Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said before the 2006 elections:"Americans should vote Democratic,"adding that "it is time the American people support those who want to take them out of the Iraqi mud."
So evidently, the dems and terrorists have an Iraq policy that is indistinguishable one from the other. It is also obvious that the dems now have a vital stake in our Iraq failure. The entire future of the party is invested in Iraq imploding. What if it doesn't? What if the retreat of the Mahdi army at the order of Muqtada al-Sadr who himself seems to have fled to Iran and the closing of the Iran and Syrian borders combined with the other new tactics being advanced by General Petraeus actually bring relative peace to Iraq? Obviously, the dems will be able to brag and say "I told you so" if Iraq goes completely in the crapper, but if our military is allowed to function at full capacity, the dems may have made a bad bet. Pelosi and Reid know this, so we can look for them to do all they can to keep us from succeeding.

Let's hear it for hefty

Now and then we hear of science that makes those of us who tend toward portly feel better. In this case, there is recent evidence that individuals with a Body Mass Index of 18.5-25 (which is considered normal) are less happy than those with an overweight BMI between 25 and 30 which is below the obese level. Not only that, the overweight are more charitable, make more money, and are more likely to donate our time and services to causes and charities. According to the research, the ideal target for fund-raisers is the person with a body mass index of 28.5 which for a 6ft man would be 211 lbs rather than the so-called perfect weight of 184 lbs. That suggests to me that overweight is O.K. and I now need to get down to that 211 lbs.

Good Science

There was a recent article in the paper about a study which is very similar to others criticized by BestView. Usually, these are poorly designed and/or poorly executed and almost always they reach conclusions not supported by the study itself. This latest study suggests that men who take a nap after lunch have fewer cardiovascular problems, such as heart attacks, than men who don't nap. There is nothing particularly novel about this finding since men who are sufficiently stress-free to nap during the day have a decided life-style advantage, but I enjoy my naps so I embrace these results.

Don't you just love it?

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”

DC WEATHER REPORT:

Wednesday: Freezing rain in the morning. Total ice accumulation between one half to three quarters of an inch. Brisk with highs in the mid 30s. North winds 10 to 15 mph...increasing to northwest 20 to 25 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation near 100 percent.

The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later.

New York Times Weather

The following are headlines from the NYTimes as cited in another excellent essay by Mark Steyn.

"MacMillan Reports Signs Of New Ice Age" (Sept. 18, 1924)

"America In Longest Warm Spell Since 1776: Temperature Line Records A 25-Year Rise" (March 27, 1933)

"Major Cooling Widely Considered To Be Inevitable (May 21, 1975)

"Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons To Relax About Global Warming" (Dec. 27, 2005)

Climate Change and Scientific Fraud?

It is especially scary to read the papers right now. All are full of articles relating to the just released IPCC which is shorthand for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. Actually, they just released a 12 page summary of a 1,600 page report which won't be released until May. Why so long you maight ask. Well, the official reason is that the summary is a political document negotiated by the governments of 150 countries. Before the official document can be released, it has to be made politically correct. So while we wait for what will be scientific bulls@@t, we can look at what the summary says. For one thing, they have given up on the Hockeystick graph which was released in 2001 and has be shown to be a hopelessly flawed depiction of the "fact" that the 20th Century was "unusually warm". The IPCC's estimates for how much the sea-level will rise are about 1/2 the previous estimate and the catastrophic rise being advanced by Al Gore is now about 20-times that of the IPCC. It makes little difference since none of this is based on any real science, but instead it is all based on computer models which make numerous assumptions for input and none of the computer models can be used to duplicate what actually happened in the last century. For example, there are some 20 greenhouse computer models which all predict warming from 11.5 to 1.4 C and for a doubling in carbon dioxide. Yet, nobody can tell us which of these models is correct and nobody can use one of these models to account for the fact that there was climate cooling between 1945 and 1975 when greenhouse gases were increasing rapidly. If you think logically as a scientist must, this does not give you much confidence in computer models of climates extending into this century when they can't even tell you what the weather will be next week.

Al Gore and his ignorant sycophants in the liberal media will use two arguments to support their case and both are faulty, but our populace is too poorly educated to discern how illogical they really are. The first thing they will try to use is the fact that there is a scientific consensus that all is lost if we don't cut carbon dioxide emissions. This is not how science works. Almost every scientific advance has come from a minority of scientists and often a minority of one---think Galileo or Einstein. Next, they will recite the fact that the climate is warming and carbon dioxide emissions are increasing. Correlation is never proof of causation. For example, as Fred Singer, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia points out, the birth rate in England is decreasing and so is the number of storks. Does this prove storks bring babies?

Professor Singer has a good essay on all this here.

More talk

It is fine for Democrats to talk of “redeployment” out of Iraq, “engagement” with Syria and Iran, more soft power, Europeans and the United Nations, organizing “regional interests,” etc. — until one realizes that we did mostly just that for most of the 1990s.

And? We got Syrian absorption of Lebanon, Afghanistan as an al Qaeda base, a Libyan WMD program, worldwide serial terrorist attacks, Oslo, a Pakistani bomb, a full-bore Iranian nuclear program, Oil-for-Food — and 9/11. If one doubts any of this, just reflect on why the Democrats have not offered any specific alternative plans. And when pressed, they usually talk only of “talking” and thereby bring embarrassment to even their liberal questioners.

This is part of a fine essay by Victor Davis Hanson. Read it here.

The new paradigm

One of the "funnest" things I am doing as the new Congress gets underway is watch the dems propose new and wonderful changes long overdue since the Republicans have been in charge. My favorite is the pledge by Steny Hoyer to make the congressmen put in a five day work week like everyone else in America. This was applauded by all of us out here, regardless of party. Well, not so fast. In the first place, this new policy had a delicious side-effect. Hoyer represents a district in Northern Virginia and has never had to travel more than a few miles back to his own bed. The rest of his colleagues are not so geographically blessed. Hence, he is catching hell from everyone who has relied on the extended weekends to go home on Thursday, do some political fence tending, see the family, rest up, and then get back to Washington in time for business late Tuesday. I will continue to watch to see how this plays out, but it should be noted that Hoyer has not followed through on the new schedule as of yet and next week they will get Friday off again. This is all the more enjoyable since the cost of living wage increase for Congress has been lost for the year as well because of political infighting. Delicious, indeed.