Day 33 – August 11th 1940
Are the American people obsolete?
US State Dept Sends Mosque Imam to Mideast
The village where it takes £8,000 (and three years) to change a lightbulb
USNA Commandant silently claims the Jolly Rogers as his own
White House unloads anger over criticism from 'professional left’
SA journalists fight proposed media laws
Joint forces become chief components in military victories
New superbug could make antibiotics 'redundant'
Al-Qaeda attempts to reassert itself in Iraq
Iran's Revolutionary Guard 'digging mass graves for US soldiers'
Should we really risk ignoring an asteroid?
Giant Mecca clock seeks to call time on GMT
and finally........
7 advancements in technology that may be holding men back
10 Funny Unintentional Sexual Signs
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
News............
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Senior personal ads
LONG-TERM COMMITMENT:
Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband, and am looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot.
Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.
WINNING SMILE:
Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flosser to share rare steaks, corn on the cob and caramel candy.
MEMORIES:
I can usually remember Monday through Thursday.
If you can remember Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let's put our two heads together.
MINT CONDITION:
Male, 1932, high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves.
Isn't in running condition, but walks well.
H/T Rico
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Post-Anti-Americanism?
I'm sure Howard Fineman is a good guy (hardly a netroots freak), but seriously, he should read some of the scholarly literature on hegemony and U.S. power. Signs in Europe of a post-post-9/11 anti-Americanism simply signal that continent's ever increasing irrelevance in great power international politics. See, "Europe can’t even be bothered to hate America any more":
Oh God ... tha's all I can read.I got on a recently completed three-week trip to Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea. America is no longer admired, imitated, or feared. We remain—for now—a safe haven for dollars (of which there are too many in the world). But we increasingly are seen less as a model or as an empire than as a cautionary tale of national neglect and decline.
Some Europeans can’t quite hide their schadenfruede. The British—whose publications and personalities are increasingly (and annoyingly) influential in the colony they lost 227 years ago—are global leaders in condescension (think Simon Cowell). But for America they add a special twist of bitter lemon to their analyses. It’s the triumph of the doddering older brother who no longer has to be grateful to his junior. Memories fade, and the Brits no longer feel they have to be kind out of homage to our having saved them from Hitler.
A couple of examples from the genre. Writing in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash sees a Third World shabbiness when he visits the United States. “Every time I come back to the United States,” the Oxford don writes, “the airports, the roads, the public spaces look more tattered, battered, old-fashioned. Modernity is no longer self-evidently here.”
Edward Luce, a brilliant and diligent reporter for the Financial Times, surveyed the American landscape and came up with a mournful portrait that echoes, in equal measure, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, and Robert Altman. Citing incontrovertibly bleak statistics about the struggles of middle-class Americans, and the growing disparity between the really rich and everyone else, he concludes that the U.S. is losing its essential character: it is no longer the land of opportunity and upward mobility; no longer the place where the future will surely be better, and more prosperous, than the past ...
Folks are better off reading Michael Mandelbaum, "The Downsizing of American Foreign Policy." And Mandelbaum's no declinist, by the way. Let's get this economy pumping (ahem, President Obama), and we'll get America back on top in world public opinion (hope and change ain't doin' the trick).
RELATED: "Do States Ally Against the Leading Global Power?"
Cross-posted from American Power.
Article: Five reasons to rethink wind power
Wind power is high on the priority list for governments looking for ways to meet commitments to reduce CO2 emissions. As a renewable source of power, wind appears to fit the bill as a natural source of energy that can both provide power and be kind to the environment, but there is a down side to wind energy that may make the option less green than you might suspect.
Here are five reasons to rethink wind power as a green option:
HOW TO SPOT A FAKE VETERAN
You can tell he never spent a day in uniform because he didn't know that officers wear their rank on their beret not the unit crest . . . wait till you see the size of the gut on this wannabe walrus . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . STORMBRINGER
Movie Review: 'Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief'
Short Review: It's Harry Potter for the stupid kids.
Full Review Here
News........
Day 32 – August 10th 1940
Michelle Obama isn't like Marie Antoinette, she's another Paris Hilton!
Eva Mendes Sex Tape!
Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?
Time to admit Obamanomics has failed
Pat Tillman's mother on Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal: I told you so
Bounty hunters to cut benefit fraud by £1bn
Air steward storms off plane on emergency slide
Tanks dumped in Gulf of Thailand
US bomber engineer convicted of passing secrets to China
European Union pushes for right to levy taxes directly on British
Russia declares state of emergency in nuclear town as wildfires blaze
Turkey was 'bent on provoking Israel' in the Gaza flotilla incident
America cuts funding to Lebanese army after Israeli clash
The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime: extravagant and out of touch with the American people
Love Parade Documents Reveal a Series of Errors
and finally.......
The ultimate bucket list for men: 50 things to do before you die
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The Nukes We Need
Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, previously at Foreign Affairs, "Preserving the American Deterrent":
The success of nuclear deterrence may turn out to be its own undoing. Nuclear weapons helped keep the peace in Europe throughout the Cold War, preventing the bitter dispute from engulfing the continent in another catastrophic conflict. But after nearly 65 years without a major war or a nuclear attack, many prominent statesmen, scholars, and analysts have begun to take deterrence for granted. They are now calling for a major drawdown of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and a new commitment to pursue a world without these weapons.More at the link.
Unfortunately, deterrence in the twenty-first century may be far more difficult for the United States than it was in the past, and having the right mix of nuclear capabilities to deal with the new challenges will be crucial. The United States leads a global network of alliances, a position that commits Washington to protecting countries all over the world. Many of its potential adversaries have acquired, or appear to be seeking, nuclear weapons. Unless the world's major disputes are resolved -- for example, on the Korean Peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, and around the Persian Gulf -- or the U.S. military pulls back from these regions, the United States will sooner or later find itself embroiled in conventional wars with nuclear-armed adversaries.
Preventing escalation in those circumstances will be far more difficult than peacetime deterrence during the Cold War. In a conventional war, U.S. adversaries would have powerful incentives to brandish or use nuclear weapons because their lives, their families, and the survival of their regimes would be at stake. Therefore, as the United States considers the future of its nuclear arsenal, it should judge its force not against the relatively easy mission of peacetime deterrence but against the demanding mission of deterring escalation during a conventional conflict, when U.S. enemies are fighting for their lives.
Debating the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is critical now because the Obama administration has pledged to pursue steep cuts in the force and has launched a major review of U.S. nuclear policy. (The results will be reported to Congress in February 2010.) The administration's desire to shrink the U.S. arsenal is understandable. Although the force is only one-fourth the size it was when the Cold War ended, it still includes roughly 2,200 operational strategic warheads -- more than enough to retaliate against any conceivable nuclear attack. Furthermore, as we previously argued in these pages ("The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," March/April 2006 [1]), the current U.S. arsenal is vastly more capable than its Cold War predecessor, particularly in the area of "counterforce" -- the ability to destroy an adversary's nuclear weapons before they can be used.
Simply counting U.S. warheads or measuring Washington's counterforce capabilities will not, however, reveal what type of arsenal is needed for deterrence in the twenty-first century. The only way to determine that is to work through the grim logic of deterrence: to consider what actions will need to be deterred, what threats will need to be issued, and what capabilities will be needed to back up those threats.
The Obama administration is right that the United States can safely cut its nuclear arsenal, but it must pay careful attention to the capabilities it retains. During a war, if a desperate adversary were to use its nuclear force to try to coerce the United States -- for example, by threatening a U.S. ally or even by launching nuclear strikes against U.S. overseas bases -- an arsenal comprised solely of high-yield weapons would leave U.S. leaders with terrible retaliatory options. Destroying Pyongyang or Tehran in response to a limited strike would be vastly disproportionate, and doing so might trigger further nuclear attacks in return. A deterrent posture based on such a dubious threat would lack credibility.
Instead, a credible deterrent should give U.S. leaders a range of retaliatory options, including the ability to respond to nuclear attacks with either conventional or nuclear strikes, to retaliate with strikes against an enemy's nuclear forces rather than its cities, and to minimize casualties. The foundation for this flexible deterrent exists. The current U.S. arsenal includes a mix of accurate high- and low-yield warheads, offering a wide range of retaliatory options -- including the ability to launch precise, very low-casualty nuclear counterforce strikes. The United States must preserve that mix of capabilities -- especially the low-yield weapons -- as it cuts the size of its nuclear force.
VIDEO HAT TIP: William Jacobson.
RELATED: "Hiroshima - Nagasaki, August 1945," and "Do States Ally Against the Leading Global Power?"
CROSS-POSTED FROM AMERICAN POWER.
DSM-IV "doofus" Proposition 8.........from Rico
I could NOT find the clinical definition of "doofus" in the Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV, but this cartoon comes pretty damned close. One gay judge telling millions of voters to go pack fudge by overturning Proposition 8 actually illustrates the point quite well. 
Monday, 9 August 2010
Trailer: 'I Want Your Money' (2010)
Set against the backdrop of today's headline - 67% of Americans don't approve of Obama's economic policies, the film takes a provocative look at our deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama and shows the marked contrast between Reaganomics and Obamanomics. The film contrasts two views of the role that the federal government should play in our daily lives using the words and actions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you; the other believes that the elite in Washington know how to best allocate your wealth. One champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one's lot in life and even daring to dream and build big. The other holds that there is no end to the "good" the government can do by taking and spending other peoples' money in an ever-burgeoning list of programs. The documentary film I Want Your Money exposes the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state.
H/T Nebraska Bob
Complaints to Councils in Britain
1. It's the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.
2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.
3. I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.
4. Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.
5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.
6. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?
7. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.
8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.
9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.
11. I am still having problems with smoke in my new drawers.
12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.
13. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.
14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.
15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it's now getting too much for me.
16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.
17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it..
18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.
19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.
20. I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.
21. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2.
22. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.
23. He's got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.
H/T DML
Rare event this morning
At 6mins and 7secs after 5 o'clock on Aug 9th 2010, was 05:06:07 08/09/10. This won't happen again until 3010.
H/T DML
News.......
Day 31 – August 9th 1940
America Is at Risk of Boiling Over
Obama Choppers Six Miles For Economy Comments
The Mexicans In The Living Room: Why Won't Greenies Admit Immigration's Global Warming Impact?
Roseanne Barr is Fat and Ugly (on the inside)
BBC's £800m licence to spend: 23% rise in budget as public sector faces savage cuts
Finalist Dies at World Sauna Championships
Radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir arrested in Indonesia
BBC laptops and mobiles worth £240,000 lost or stolen
Briton to walk the entire span of the Amazon
Groom accidentally kills three relatives at wedding
Hugo Chavez wants new US ambassador
and finally...
A bias against beauty
Brazilian World War II workers fight for recognition
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