Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia will build new weapons to offset the planned U.S. missile defense and urged Washington to share detailed data about its missile shield under a new arms control deal.
Thus, from a macro perspective, only Whites as [a] group can be labeled as racist in society, for the socioeconomic system is structured in their favor.Just for the record, here's what the dictionary says about the word:
rac⋅ism [rey-siz-uhm]I guess in broad terms, the second definition meets the power prerequisite, but it's really referring to institutional racism and not individual racism, so the argument that one must wield power in order to be a racist still doesn't hold water.
–noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Well, now, uh, I don't have all the facts, but clearly Elin acted stupidly. She let that young billionaire just run around all over the place. I mean...what the heck was she thinking?Asked if he would intervene personally to resolve the situation, the president said:
Uh, sure, why not? Maybe a round of golf at Andrews AFB between the three of us...sort of a golf summit. Or, hey, Elin's Swedish, right? Maybe a lutefisk summit in the Rose Garden?
Osama bin Laden’s demise would not have erased the worldwide threat from extremists. But the failure to kill or capture him has allowed bin Laden to exert a malign influence over events in the region and nearly 60 countries where his followers have established extremist groups. History shows that terrorist groups are invariably much stronger with their charismatic leaders than without them, and the ability of bin Laden and his terrorist organization to recover from the loss of their Afghan sanctuary reinforces the lesson.This is complete and utter hogwash. Islamist extremists of the Al Qaeda ilk don't need bin Laden to be alive in order to propagate their violent ideology within and outside their region. In fact, as much as I'd have liked to see bin Laden's head on a pike (and still would), I'll go so far as to say that bin Laden's current disposition is preferable to having him dead or in US custody.
Eight years after its expulsion from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself and bin Laden has survived to inspire a new generation of extremists who have adopted and adapted the Al Qaeda doctrine and are now capable of attacking from any number of places. The impact of this threat is greatest in Pakistan, where Al Qaeda’s continued presence and resources have emboldened domestic extremists waging an increasingly bloody insurrection that threatens the stability of the government and the region. Its training camps also have spawned new attacks outside the region—militants trained in Pakistan were tied to the July 2005 transit system bombings in London and several aborted plots elsewhere in Europe.
> >From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]Dammit...curse this global cooling! I want to wipe some "smug grins" off people's faces! Oh, and never mind the fact that 1998 was NOT the hottest year on record. That was 1934, but that hardly fits the anthropogenic global warming narrative. This reveals an emotional investment in a desired conclusion which is incompatible with objective, honest scientific inquiry.
> >Sent: 05 January 2009 16:18
> >To: Johns, Tim; Folland, Chris
> >Cc: Smith, Doug; Johns, Tim
> >Subject: Re: FW: Temperatures in 2009
> >
> >
> > Tim, Chris,
> > I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting
> > till about 2020. I'd rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office
> > press release with Doug's paper that said something like -
> > half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on
> > record, 1998!
> > Still a way to go before 2014.
> >
> > I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying
> > where's the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal
> > scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.
7. Removed 4-line header from a couple of .glo files and loaded them into Matlab. Reshaped to 360r x 720c and plotted; looks OK for global temp (anomalies) data. Deduce that .glo files, after the header, contain data taken row-by-row starting with the Northernmost, and presented as '8E12.4'. The grid is from -180 to +180 rather than 0 to 360. This should allow us to deduce the meaning of the co-ordinate pairs used toIt doesn't take a programmer to read this and realize that the guy writing the code was faced with a bunch of climate data files, the structure of which was unknown. Picture opening up an Excel spreadsheet with column after column of numbers, and no column headers telling you what each column contains.
describe each cell in a .grim file (we know the first number is the lon or column, the second the lat or row - but which way up are the latitudes? And where do the longitudes break? There is another problem: the values are anomalies, wheras the 'public' .grim files are actual values. So Tim's explanations (in _READ_ME.txt) are incorrect..
8. Had a hunt and found an identically-named temperature database file which did include normals lines at the start of every station. How handy - naming two different files with exactly the same name and relying on their location to differentiate! Aaarrgghh!! Re-ran anomdtb:
Ms. Browner initially shrugged when asked about the e-mails, saying she didn't have a reaction. But when a reporter followed up, she said she will stick with the consensus of the 2,500 climate scientists on the International Panel on Climate Change who concluded global warming is happening and is most likely being pushed by human actions.Wow. I'm sure glad that science is being returned to its rightful place in this administration.
Later in the evening, Michaele and Joe got cozy.The America's Polo Cup & the United States Polo Team is looking forward to welcoming India in 2010 in the world championship polo matches on the DC National MallThe Salahis are active in polo events and their Facebook page lists the Americas Polo Club as one of their employers. Wouldn't hurt to schmooze with some official representatives of India in advance of this event.
...is unfortunately quite knowable, and so we can check their "predictions" against actual records.I'll just quote from the link the same part Ace quoted, because I'm lazy like that:
They all fail. They all fail.
None of the multiple computer simulations used by a UN climate-change agency for assessments of global warming appears good enough to predict how India’s monsoon will behave, two Indian scientists have said.CRU is just too jive to be believed, too jive to get further grant money, too jive to continue operating.
The researchers examined 10 simulations of future climate scenarios used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and found none could reproduce correctly the behaviour of even 20th-century rainfall.
Not a single model could simulate realistically key features of the Indian monsoon...
In attempts to assess impacts of global warming, the IPCC considered 17 models of how climate would evolve as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose. Some models predict more rainfall over India, but with great uncertainty.
“The models have very serious problems in simulating even 20th century monsoon patterns,” said Madhavan Rajeevan, a senior scientist at the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Tirupati, and a co-author of the paper.
“When a model (computer simulation) cannot even show with reasonable accuracy monsoon behaviour in the past, there’s a big question mark over its ability to predict future patterns,” Rajeevan told The Telegraph.
Here's the scandal:
The guys writing the software to produce the climate prediction models don't know the structure of the data sets they're dealing with.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:Of course, the idea that Obama the bartender would lower the cost of our beer is laughable, but the point about the "tenth man" remains. And as I've previously pointed out, when the tenth man gets sick of getting his ass kicked and quits the game, or there aren't enough tenth men to go around, the tax bill will start trickling down.
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
The Spade
The Day Tripper
His And Hers
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeThe only way the right wins a majority is if the left screws things up so egregiously that even staunch conservatives are apt to beat centrist Democrats head to head. It’s a passive strategy, but it’s a strategy, I guess.Like I said, it's a fair point. But what good is a Congress ruled by a Republican majority if that Congress is still passing craptastic legislation? Who cares if Republicans have an overwhelming majority if Congress is still pursuing cap & trade, government-run health care and excessive spending?
Believing in things is stupid and you should stop it right away: http://bit.ly/G3tJz @allahpunditTo which Allah responded via re-tweet:
Lose with honor, conservatives RT @CalebHowe: Believing in things is stupid and you should stop it right away: http://bit.ly/G3tJzThat set Caleb off on this mini rant:
Principles. Petty pride. What's the difference. As long as there are more people with an R than a D, who cares how they vote? @allahpunditMy own ideology is closer to Allahpundit's (I think), but I have to agree with Howe on this. It does the "conservatarian" cause - and the country - no good if Republicans hold a majority but push legislation only a Democrat could love.
The most important part of a ruling majority is the little letter in parentheses. Consensus on issues is a passé concern. Right, Dede?
Honestly, why do parties go to all this trouble of "planks" and "issues"? It's silly. Obviously the little parenthetical ID is what matters.
Cap and trade? Sure! Obamacare? Fine! Caucus with Dems? No problemo. Could you just use this little R logo? Sweet. We're solid. @allahpundit
November 11:How many more, Joe? How many more?
Two Secret Service vehicles used by Vice President Joe Biden allegedly struck and killed a pedestrian at an intersection on Washington, DC's Suitland Parkway in the early morning hours of Wednesday, news reports say.
November 16:
A sheriff's deputy was taken to an Albuquerque hospital after being involved in an accident while working the motorcade for Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke at a campaign fundraiser to benefit two New Mexico Democrats.
November 17:
A car responsible for clearing a path for Vice President Biden’s motorcade was involved in a West Side collision that sent three people to the hospital today, sources said.
"We're not saying women shouldn't get screened. Screening does saves lives," said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine. "But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully."Not everybody is so excited about the new guidelines. Such as people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about:
Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.And just in case you don't think that this is the Democrats' idea of the future of health care:
"Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it," said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. "It's crazy -- unethical, really."
The new recommendations took on added significance because under health-care reform legislation pending in Congress, the conclusions of the 16-member task force would set standards for what preventive services insurance plans would be required to cover at little or no cost.A favorite cry of the Left in the abortion debate is "Hands off my body!", but I guess that doesn't apply here.
Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.It's been pointed out elsewhere by legal experts all around the blogosphere that this is a manifestly bad idea.
The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.
The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama's plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.
It is also a major legal and political test of Obama's overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama's agenda.
A man shot by police as he was sought in connection with the Halloween killing of a Seattle police officer has been identified as 41-year-old Christopher Monfort.So while everyone responsible for protecting US citizens from terrorist attack, from the President on down, ties themselves into knots not to call Hasan a terrorist, Monfort gets the label pretty easily.*
At a news conference Saturday, Seattle assistant police chief Jim Pugel called Monfort "a lone domestic terrorist."
Frank, a Massachusetts liberal, told an audience: "Some of the people (at the rally) that wanted to engage me in conversation appeared to have been the losers in the 'Are you smarter than Michele Bachmann contest?'."One thing I've learned about liberals is that they invariably believe themselves the intellectual superior of everybody else. That's fine if you're a coffee house poet or even a lefty columnist, but for a senior member of Congress to be smearing the intelligence of the 50% or so of Americans who disagree with him politically is outrageous. C'mon, Massachusetts...it's time to vote this cretin out of office.
Rep. Bachmann, R-Minn., had organized Thursday's rally attended by thousands of conservatives critical of the Democrats' health care plan. Her spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. Frank, who recently compared arguing with an angry voter to conversing with a dining room table, said this week's protest was like being trapped inside a furniture warehouse.
While the economy and jobs were the chief concern for voters in both states, 26 percent of New Jersey residents said property taxes was also a major issue, while another 20 percent mentioned corruption, according to CNN exit polling. In a similar CNN survey taken in Virginia, health care was the most important issue for 24 percent of the voters, while 15 percent named taxes and transportation was mentioned by 7 percent.But who does Preston quote when it comes time to lay out a winning 2010 strategy for Democrats?
Further proof that this election was not solely focused on Obama, 56 percent of Virginians said that the president was not a factor when it came down to their vote. In New Jersey, that number increased to 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday.
"I would suggest that appealing to Republican interests is not the best way to turn out Democrats," Hamsher said. "It is just a fact of life. They have to turn out Democrats."Wow, thanks for the keen insight, Jane.
On Tuesday, the Obama magic did not rub off on Corzine or Deeds.The black vote might be lost in perpetuity to the GOP, but young voters can often swing either way. In New Jersey, they simply failed to show up in enough numbers to change the outcome. In Virginia, they also failed to show up in significant numbers, but those that did voted heavily for McDonnell. That does not bode well for Virginia Democrats in 2010.
In New Jersey, while Corzine overwhelmingly won among African-Americans, only 14 percent of the vote was black; young people, age 18 to 29, made up 9 percent of the vote and 36 percent of them backed Republican Chris Christie. Meanwhile, 60 percent of independents supported Christie as well.
The numbers were worse for Deeds in Virginia. Ten percent of the electorate was age 18 to 29 and Republican Bob McDonnell captured 54 percent of this voting bloc. Deeds overwhelmingly carried the African-American vote that made up16 percent of people who turned out on Tuesday, while 66 percent of voters who identified themselves as independents backed McDonnell.
Ms. Beckham, Joan Collins called...she wants her clothes back.They are regarded as one of the more unfortunate style trends of the Eighties.The complacent will say "But that's Britain. It can't happen here." I hate to break it to you...Yes. It. Can.
But it seems that shoulder pads are not only making a comeback - they are actually selling out.
John Lewis said it has had to reorder its stock of £1.35 pads after fashion-conscious shoppers ransacked its haberdashery shelves.
Call it combat as shift work, a new paradigm of commuter warfare that is blurring the historical understanding of what it means to go off to battle. And the strain of the daily whiplash transition between bombs and bedtime stories, coupled with the fast-increasing workload to meet relentlessly expanding demand, is leading to fatigue and burnout for the ground-based controllers who drive the drones.The Air Force is working on programs now to help families deal with this odd new kind of combat stress, but this isn't as new as it sounds.
“We have 5,000 years of one type of warfare and only a couple of years of this new kind,” said P.W. Singer, author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” “These guys are simultaneously at home and at war. It may be that human psychology isn’t designed for that. We don’t know yet.”
Image taken at 12:10pm
Image taken at 12:11pm
Second image taken at 12:11pm
Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."This is similar to the demagoguery the Democrats indulged in last year to smear Exxon-Mobil as another "rapacious profiteer" by tossing around the amount of their "obscene" quarterly profit, which was only around 8% of their revenue at the time.
Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.
Obama on My Mind takes a humorous look at the whirlwind and wonderful world behind the scenes of an Obama campaign office in small town America. A passionate group of larger than life oddball characters start to panic when Sarah Palin enters the race and Obama falls 20 points in the polls. Pop, gospel, jazz, and soft rock come together in a politically inspired comedic romp featuring a motley crew of loyal, obsessive and downright peculiar personalities, striving to get their candidate into the White House.Those bolded parts suggest they can go ahead and put "Based on actual events" on the advertisements. I wonder if anyone would miss me if I went into hibernation until 2012.
USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party.There's more there. Much more. You go read...now.
The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government.
From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it easy for the government to stir ethnic and class tension and in this way distract from economic failure.
[ ... ]
USA, 2009: "Progressives" control the government. Children in some public schools sing songs about the president and study his directives.
Progressives view people not as unique individuals, but as groups. They play on class envy, or divide people by ethnicity (African-American, white, Hispanic, etc.). From early childhood they remind children of their ethnic identity. The idea of a color-blind society united under the American flag is not politically correct.
A group of prominent musicians are joining a campaign to close Guantanamo Bay and demanding the release of records about what music was used during the potential torture of detainees there and at other facilities.Seriously...if you were a musician would you really want to know that your music was used as an instrument of torture?
