Thursday, 12 August 2010
News...........
Day 34 – August 12th 1940
Rate Obama for CBS!
Biden and The little Guy
Seaside Heights boardwalk Obama is retired
Possible Names For Greg Gutfeld’s Muslim Gay Bar Near Ground Zero
Why we need to let states go broke
The Obsolescence of Barack Obama
Zeus botnet raid on UK bank accounts under the spotlight
Video:3 Things You Should Know About Islam
Dr. Manny: Dear Senator Reid, I’m Not Stupid!
Comrade Crow's 12% pay increase: As millions suffer wage freezes, RMT's militant leader pockets £10,000
US 'on target' to withdraw troops from Iraq despite military misgivings
Barack Obama 'may be prepared to meet Iranian president’
Mother reports topless sunbather on Italian beach to police for 'troubling' sons
China's deadly landslide 'not an accident'
Zimbabwe auctions 900,000 carats of diamonds
British ambassador to Iran hits back after 'thick' jibe
Iran navy produces armed copy of Bladerunner 51 speedboat
Panic rises in Russia over fires in areas contaminated by Chernobyl disaster
Record four out of five jobs going to foreigners between May and June
and finally......
It's high time the supercar syndicate took off by little Jimmy May.
Irony: $26-Billion Bailout To States Helps Pay For Illegal Immigration
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Having the WRONG argument...........from Rico
Listening to all the 40# brains argue "inflation" or "deflation" it strikes a few of us that we are having the WRONG argument.
No, it won't even be "stagflation."
All of this wasted breath is like debating financial crop circles. Entertaining at times, but pointless and useless...unless the purpose of the exercise is to serve as a distraction from the REAL problem.
- Now WHO would want that comrades? Who benefits?
You never hear depreciation from the teleprompter readers, do you?
Using the terms inflation and deflation implies that prices are going down or up, and that the 'problem' is with the goods or the producers of the goods which shifts the attention of the naive and gullible away from the fact that the problem is the currency. [read: FED]
It is NOT that prices are going UP, but that the value...the purchasing power of the currency, the Dollar...is going DOWN.
- It takes more-and-more Dollars to buy the same things.
DEFLATION will not be the problem, it is only a "ruse" (a strawman argument) to scare us into allowing bailouts, reckless spending, and the massive creation of funny money.
INFLATION (increasing prices) will be a symptom of the real problem, which is DEPRECIATION (a decrease in purchasing power).
The US debt risk is now so high, the debts can never be paid back (and there are no 'intentions' or 'plans' to pay it back, something our Kommissars, Politburo, and Pravda won't tell us) leaving two options:
DEFAULT or DEPRECIATE
Paying back debt with more Dollars that are worth less has to be an appealing concept to somebody. It kicks the can down the road and delays the inevitable, something our political uber-class does with same consistency and regularity as it is useless and worthless.
It's a long list, but think: Russia, Argentina, Zimbabwe...and we're next.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Gaza Humanitarian Crisis Revisited
Two thousand families visited Gaza's Crazy Water Park during the first four days that it was open in May of this year.
The water park features 3 swimming pools, a canal 100 meters long, three water slides, ponds with pedal boats, a restaurant, a cafe, and a quiet area shaded by a tent where adults can sit on carpets and listen to music. The atmosphere is secular, with popular secular tunes playing over the loudspeakers and women in international-style clothing. A recent lifting of the government ban on women smoking in public has made it legal for women to smoke the popular nargilas at the Crazy Water Park's cafe. Construction of the park was completed in six months. Admission is 10 shekels, the equivalent of about $2.60 as of mid-2010, but using the water slide costs another 5 shekels, and going into the pool costs an extra 20 shekels.
The park cost $2 million to build. According to Ayman Barawi, the Crazy Water Park's financial manager.
The Crazy Water Park has 106 employees, not counting about 80 vendors supplying services and goods such as food.
The Crazy Water Park is one of a number of seaside tourist resorts constructed in a $20 million building binge. Egyptian journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl write in Al-Ahram, that Crazy Water Park is one of a rapidly growing group of Gaza pleasure parks, including Zahrat Al-Madain, the Al-Bustan resort and the Bisan City tourist village.
According to Egyptian journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl writing in Al-Ahram, "A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt, although most of it is from the Egyptian market.
The Philosophy of Ambiguity
IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?
WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?
WHY DO THEY LOCK PETROL STATION LOOS? ARE THEY AFRAID SOMEONE WILL CLEAN THEM?
DO THEY PUT BRAILLE ON THE DRIVE-THROUGH BANK MACHINES?
HOW DO THEY GET DEER TO CROSS THE ROAD ONLY AT THOSE YELLOW ROAD SIGNS?
IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?
WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD 'LISP' TO HAVE 'S' IN IT?
WHY IS IT CALLED TOURIST SEASON IF WE CAN'T SHOOT AT THEM?
H/T Old Dude
Gazni Photos...........
Gazni is Polish battle space, so international traffic signs are required
Polish battle targets. If the Taliban ever goes to fedoras, they are in deep sh*t.
H/T T.A
UPDATE: PHONY WANNABE
Law Enforcement authorities are interested in his whereabouts . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . STORMBRINGER
Support 'The Boot Campaign'
The Boot Campaign is a grassroots initiative started by five women from Texas known as the Boot Girls. The Boot Campaign is a new way Americans can show their support for our active duty service members and veterans.
MORE HERE
H/T An Englishman's Castle
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News............
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
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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. 
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