XDA

Not worth a dollar, soon to stop printing, Newsweek Magazine has a cover photo of candidate Romney and the headline: The Wimp Factor...

This is just after a few months ago they were calling him a bully.

Here is a photo comparison of two people throwing out the first pitch. One clearly throws like a girl.

And the other one looks like a homecoming queen or something.

(h/t Ace of Spades for a link to the photos)

Labels: President Obama; Mitt Romney; First Pitch; Wimp Factor

German soldiers in force near Aachen in late '44. Notice the STG 44s and Panzerfausts. We didn't have as good as those.

Labels: WWII; European Theater

Labels: Predictive Graphs; United States GDP

The one sure thing the trials (and subsequent incarceration) of Oscar Wilde over a century ago can show us is this: If someone calls you a homosexual and you are a homosexual, then you should not sue for slander. Particularly when being a homosexual was a crime where you lived.

Anthropogenic global warming true believer Michael Mann, lead author of the fraudulent hockey stick graph, sued Dr. Tim Ball in British Columbia for defamation for writing that Mann belonged in the State Pen. more than he belonged at Penn. State. The suit is not going so well for Mann. Here is a short, but full of information, article from the blog the Hockey Schtick.

Mann has apparently still not learned his Oscar Wilde lesson (or the Streisand Lesson) and has recently threatened to sue another Canadian, Mark Steyn, for writing:

Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

Knowing the power of the discovery process in a defamation suit, many of the Denier blogosphere are saying, sue him! Sue him, ya' pussy! Sue me, too!

Mann, I fear, not only does not know the Wilde rule, but he is also in danger of having to learn the Riddick epigram: "Did not know who he was fuckin' with."

Labels: Michael Mann; Mark Steyn; Tim Ball; Oscar Wilde

I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals; that they belong on the battlefield of war.

Barack Hussein Obama

I think 100% of gun owners would agree that AK-47s don't belong in the hands of criminals, but 100% (or nearly so) would not agree they belong in the hands of soldiers on the battfield because AK-47s are the enemy's weapon, not ours. We use the M-4, moron.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama quote; Gun Ignorance

In the modern box magazine, in nearly every semi-automatic pistol, it is spring tension that lifts the row or rows of cartridges (or rounds) up to the bolt for automatic reloading as the action opens, ejects the spent cartridge and cocks the hammer on the out slide (powered by the force of the expanding gas from the powder's explosion or rather very rapid burning). It is the return trip of the slide or bolt which catches a bit of the top round in the stack and rams it into the chamber ready to fire. The return trip is also spring powered. The very first successful semi-auto pistols (the Borchardt C 93, Browning M1900, C-96 Mauser and the P-08 Luger) all used springs to push up the cartridges. Except for the Webley-Fosbery I can't think of a single successful pistol design that doesn't rely on a spring or springs to help feed the rounds. [I'm an idiot--even the Webley Fosbery uses a spring to make it work; it just doesn't have a magaziine because it's an automatic revolver].

Springs are ancient technology. They have limitations. They can't push up, say, a stack of a thousand rounds. You could never load that many because the spring tension necessary to push up that weight would prevent you from pushing down the spring even to get started. 7 to 20 is the general range of rounds in a pistol box magazine; 30 is the reliable top end of rifle magazines. You can go higher than that, but the magazines become ever more unreliable with more rounds to push up, and the length of any longer magazine itself make the pistol and even a rifle unwieldy.

In drum magazines, they solve the spring problem by opening up the drum, putting the rounds in as a cluster, then closing it up and winding up the spring like a clock to push the rounds towards the loading port at the top. We've seen these round drums in the Thompson, Suomi and PPsh 41. I've not heard of any inherent unreliability in the drums, but pushing the weight of up to 100 rounds taxes the mechanical stability of any spring powered feed. I'm declaring that they tend to jam too often (as if I had ever fired one). I will note that Americans went to WWII with the Thompson only using thin stick magazines and not drums. Was that a matter of reliability? The Russians do not use round drum magazines in any of their modern weapons.

There's no real need for a drum magazine that holds 50 to 100 rounds when you can carry four 30 round, very reliable box magazines and reload in a matter of seconds (like 3 to 5 seconds). Still it's fun sometimes to just keep firing and firing. There is a modern 100 round drum magazine for our  M-4 carbine and other rifles, called the Beta C-Mag, which is really two 50 round drums with a common feed port. Even when the 100 round is reduced to twin 50 round drums, it's still not popular with our soldiers who have apparently declared it unreliable.

Here's a video of how fast an assault rifle can be re-loaded. These appear to be different sized magazines. I don't think it would be any slower for all 30s. So baning anything that holds more than 10 rounds (something the 10 year assault rifle/ high capacity magazine legislation did not do), would conceivably cause a mass murderer to have to reload more often, but would it realistically cause a time when he could be rushed and overpowered? I couldn't reach the guy in the film clip. Jet Li couldn't either.

There's also the suicide magazine change out. And, last but not least, my favorite scene from Heat.
They keep up a pretty steady stream of fire using 30 round magazines (I know it's just a movie).

So, is there a solution to mass murders in legislating a ban of high capacity magazines (which would no doubt be ignored by someone depraved and lawless enough to want to kill dozens of people)?

Labels: Guns; Magazines

Apparently it's OK to discuss gun control legislation again, so let's talk. The assault weapon round is wimpy compared to the full sized military rifle round or deer hunting round. Here's the history.

Before the Germans during WWII started using the intermediate round (7.92 x 33mm) there were two rounds for use in their infantry weapons, the 8mm Mauser (7.92 x 57mm), used in the Kar 98 for example, and the 9mm pistol round, used in their machine pistols, the MP-38, usw. Just so, the Russians immediately before the Cold War had a slightly different 9mm pistol round (and a better copy of the Mauser 7.63 x 25mm) and the full size rifle round 7.62 x 55R. The intermediate round the Russians used in the AK 47 had, like the Germans' short round, about the same sized bullet in a shorter casing containing much less smokeless powder than the full sized rifle round. We Americans had a full sized rifle round, the 30.06 (and the Brits had a very similar .303) but we had a better pistol round, the much more powerful .45 APC, which made our submachine guns, like the Thompson and the Grease gun, pretty freakin' deadly; so it took us another decade to develop the intermediate round, the Remington .223 (5.56 x 45mm NATO).

We guys, who actually know about guns and ammunition and this history, are always frustratingly amused by the seemingly completely ignorant politicians and gun control activists having cows about assault weapons, all of which use the intermediate round. They are not more deadly, they are less deadly than a hunting rifle. Indeed, it is illegal here in Colorado to hunt deer with the .223. It's just not powerful enough to kill a deer sized animal humanely.

Here are some ballistic comparisons.

German:

Mauser 8mm (7.92 x 57mm) using a 196 grain bullet (a slightly larger than average war sized bullet) has a muzzle velocity of 2591 ft/sec and 2922 ft.lbs of energy in the bullet.

The 8mm Kurz (7.92 x 33mm) using a 125 grain bullet (same diameter but smaller in length and mass than the Kar 98's round) has a muzzle velocity of 2250 ft/sec (which is comparable) but muzzle energy of only 1408 ft.lbs.

You don't want to get hit with either bullet but the damage done to flesh and bone by a legal military bullet, that is, a full metal jacketed bullet, depends on diameter, weight and energy. The diameter is the same here but the weight of the intermediate round's bullet is more than a third less and the energy of the bullet fired from the father of assault weapons is less than half.  If you had to choose, you would rather be hit by the assault weapon round.

It's very similar with the Russians:

The 7.62 x 54R using a 185 grain bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2557 ft.sec. and muzzle energy of 2495 ft.lbs.

The AK 47's original round, the 7.62 x 39mm, has a muzzle velocity of 2445 ft.sec. and muzzle energy of 1659 ft.lbs.

And with the Americans:

The 30.06 Springfield round with a 180 grain bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2739 ft.sec. and muzzle energy of 2978 ft.lbs.

The .223 using a 55 grain bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2925 ft.sec. and muzzle energy of 1045 ft.lbs.

Banning assault weapons merely because they look more deadly (military utilitarian) is demonstrably stupid. Guess who's demanding it?

I'll get to magazine capacity next time.

Labels: Gun Violence; Shallow Solutions; Assault Rifles, Intermediate Round; Deer Hunting Round

Noted climatologist Paul Krugman is a true believer in man caused global warming. He seems to have the belief but not an explanation for his faith, and he seems to support his belief with lies. Here are some.

On the other, even a fairly modest rise in average temperatures translates into a much higher frequency of extreme events — like the devastating drought now gripping America’s heartland — that do vast damage. (emphasis added).

There is no evidence that increased mean temperature does anything to the incidence of extreme weather. Unlike Mr. Krugman, I like to back up my statements with some scientific study or two, like this one. Here's a set of graphs which show no such trend.

Climate change denial is a major industry, lavishly financed by Exxon, the Koch brothers and others with a financial stake in the continued burning of fossil fuels.

There is no one who denies that the climate can change. The denialists, like myself, don't believe the tiny bit of added heat from the CO2 we produce burning fossil fuels will lead to catastrophe. The amount of money given to the few think tanks who try to debunk the new Chicken Littles is less than the interest earned on the government funding of those who tell us the world is ending because of our sins, mainly involving energy use, not to mention the huge amount of money to "green" private organizations. Denial of catastrophic man made global warming is an absurdly tiny industry, the support of the mythical evil Koch brothers notwithstanding.

Another.

As documented in a new paper by Dr. Hansen and others, cold summers by historical standards still happen, but rarely, while hot summers have in fact become roughly twice as prevalent. And 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. 

Hansen couldn't predict his way out of a wet paper bag. His '88 predictions had three scenarios;  A) Exponentially more CO2 released than was then happening; B) After an increase, a return to the same amount released in the future as was then being produced; and, C) A reduced amount of CO2 produced than was then being produced. In reality 24 years later, the world is in Scenario A with China's increasing industrialization but the temperatures are well below Hanson's Scenario C. And the recorded temperatures, both from the substandard weather stations and as adjusted, are suspect. Hansn is responsible for corrupting the temperature record (that is, always adjusting the temperature up from the raw data for the last 30 years and down for the period 50 to 100 years ago). It makes the temperature record look more threatening. The 30s had the most high temperature here on North America. World wide, there has been a precipitous drop off of the number of reporting stations in the colder north. Fewer cold temperatures raise the average temperature, but it's not any hotter outside anywhere. It is simply not true to say the last 12 years have almost all of the hottest years on record. (They do only on graphs with an added .5 degrees C to the already somewhat suspect raw data).

There's more.

Joseph Romm, the influential climate blogger, has coined the term “Dust-Bowlification” for the prospect of extended periods of extreme drought in formerly productive agricultural areas. He has been arguing for some time that this phenomenon, with its disastrous effects on food security, is likely to be the leading edge of damage from climate change, taking place over the next few decades; the drowning of Florida by rising sea levels and all that will come later.

 The dust bowl took place in the 30s when it was really hot here in America as I mentioned above. The drought then was an order of magnitude worse than the little one now. So why wasn't climate change happening in the 30s? Or in the 1880s when the hurricanes were really bad? Even though the enexorable sea level rise appears to have taken a break recently, at worst it is 3 mm per year. The sea level is always rising during an interglacial like we're in now (and a rather cool one compared to the last 3 or 4 interglacials before recorded history). That's part of how you tell it's an interglacial. In any event, 3 mm/yr in a hundred years is 300 mm which is just short of a foot. Florida seems safe from inundation for the next several generations, long after my grandchildren (theoretical, alas) have perished from old age. (And it's not rising at 3 mm per year, more likely half that).

Rather than "trash" science as Mr. Krugman accuses us of, we deniers uphold the rigorous requirements of science, which is at its most basic form a regulated skepticism. We deniers look at all the evidence and we just can't see a hockey stick pattern, which apparently is all the new Chicken Littles can see.
The history of weather is a series of sine curves. It gets worse, colder, drier, hotter and then it gets better, warmer, wetter, colder. That is precisely what it is doing now. And nothing more.

Labels: Global Warming; Paul Krugman; Lies about Catastrophe

San Francisco does not have a gun store within its city limits. We don't have to spend much time wondering why. Liberals hate guns. Conservatives cling to them, bitterly, according to the President.

So here, right on time, is an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle today. Money quote:

A reasonable country would have taken steps to curb these tragedies years ago. Strong federal gun-control laws wouldn't stop every murder in the United States, but they surely would make it far more difficult to have a world in which a 24-year-old easily can purchase assault-style rifles and shotguns and walk into a dark, crowded theater. (And no, arming more people wouldn't have saved the victims in this massacre - imagine how many more deaths there would have been with multiple people shooting in dark, crowded theater.) But such is the strength of the gun lobby in Washington that members of Congress won't discuss, much less pass, any gun-control legislation.

Our elected officials refuse to stand up to a powerful and dogmatic lobby that fails to distinguish between weapons of war (such as the AR-15 assault rifle the suspect reportedly purchased legally in Colorado) and guns designed for hunting or self-defense.

In the first paragraph, the opinion writer concedes that gun control laws wouldn't work every time, but at least it would make it more difficult for there to be these mass shootings, like Columbine, Virginia Tech and most recently in Aurora. More difficult? The inescapable problem is that someone who wants to shoot a lot of people probably won't be obeying any "strong, federal gun-control laws." As one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite writers, Cesare Beccaria, wrote hundreds of years ago:

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty — so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator — and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Making gun ownership harder to achieve only for those who are law abiding remains a very stupid idea if you really only want to prevent criminals from obtaining weapons.

In the second paragraph, the opinion writer makes a distinction between weapons of war (like an AR-15) and "guns designed for hunting and self-defense." What is this person talking about? A gun fit for war would be great for self-defense. A shotgun, which the shooter yesterday in Aurora actually used, is a perfect self defense gun. Hunting rifles are no less deadly than the more military looking models. Cosmetics is what this guy is talking about at the end. It is impossible to take him or her seriously for the ignorance displayed.

Here's a little history about assault weapons. The Nazis during WWII had weapons that were accurate out to about 1000 yards, the Kar 98 (developed in 1898), but they discovered by 1943 that none of their regular soldiers were firing at the enemy until they closed to about 400 yards. So why have a rifle round that goes accurately out 1000 yards if no one but the snipers are shooting at that distance? It's a waste of smokeless powder and the dwindling supply of brass for the bigger cartridge. So they solved it by using the same size bullet placed in a shorter cartridge (the 7.92 x 33, or 8mm Kurz) and that round, developed before the war, went into a new rifle, the Sturmgewehr 44, (which translates as assault rifle 44). That's it. The Russians copied it (although they deny it) and made the AK 47. We went with a smaller bullet in a smaller cartridge (but the small bullet goes perhaps 800 feet per second faster) and made the AR 15 (and the military version M-16) in the early 60s. So the dreaded, awful, has-to-be-banned assault rifle shoots a shorter or smaller round than the average hunting rifle. Oooh, scary. The only advantage over full powered rifles assault rifles have is less weight for more rounds carried and they shoot primarily to a distance where the soldiers are actually willing to shoot. That's an advantage at war, but the individual weapon is actually less deadly than the apparently non-scary hunting rifle.

Every time a liberal rails about assault weapons being a danger we ought to address, I and the other gun cognoscenti snort in disgust at the ignorance displayed.

Labels: Gun Violence; Shallow Solutions; Assault Rifles

I've never been in the Century 16 Cinema in Aurora Mall in Colorado, although I only live a few miles away (like many Denverites, I treat Aurora like citizens of Los Angeles treat the San Fernando Valley). I've only read a few of the news outlets' coverage of the mass murder last midnight. Nonetheless, I have two predictions.

1) The shooter, James Holmes, is completely apolitical.

2) The shooter is completely nuts--assuredly a sociopath, probably a psychopath and likely paranoid schizophrenic.

Time will tell.

By the way, my prayers and condolences go out to the 71 victims and their families and loved ones.

Apparently he used an AR-15, a 12 gauge of unknown make and one or two Glocks in .40 S&W. Good choices for the last two (to be too much a gun geek in analyzing the situation).

I've been thinking if I were in the theater (a big if as I'm not a Batman fanatic) with a carry permit (which I do not have and do not plan to get) and was actually packing in the theater (another big if) and I saw a guy throw a smoke grenade or two and start shooting, would I have drawn my piece and shot Mr. Holmes? Or would I have thought it was some sort of promotion/performance art and have not shot back until perhaps half of the victims were down and bleeding? Probably. Difficult to stop the completely nuts, I think, if they are clever regarding the circumstances of their mass murder. Cho at Virginia Tech would have been easier to identify as a murderer. Too bad Virginia Tech was a gun free zone so that no one else was armed.

I wonder how many in the audience last night at The Dark Knight Rises were legally packing.

None is hard to believe.

Again, time will tell.

It was in Aurora after all.

UPDATE: The theater where the shooting took place was a gun free zone as well because you cannot carry concealed into a private business that tells you you can't. I'm told the theater chain did tell concealed carry license holders they could not carry into the theater, but I have no personal knowledge there. Hmmm. How come there are no mass shootings at gun shows? They're filled with people and guns and ammo--everything you need for a mass shooting. I just can't figure it out.

Labels: Aurora Mall Cinema Shootings

This is mind blowing.

The new Obama "Truth Team" ad starts with the accusation: "Mitt Romney is launching a false attack." Then the ad plays a clip where Romney accurately quotes the President speaking in Roanoke, VA last Friday: "If you've got [sic] a business --you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Then the ad says: "The only problem? That's not what he said."

But it is. It's in the White House's transcript of the President's remarks. It's recorded and and transcribed and everything. That's exactly what he said (well, there might be an extra "that" before "you didn't build that" but why quibble about the President's stuttering).

Oh, and then after playing a clip from elsewhere during the Roanoke gaffe*, and Romney's parallel words later, the ad then plays the part where Obama says: "If you've got [sic] a business--that--you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." These ad makers actually play the clip where the President said just exactly what Romney quoted--what the ad calls a false attack because Obama didn't say it. Words fail me here accurately to portray how stultifyingly stupid I think these ad makers are.

Oh and then the ad ends with: "Mitt Romney will say anything." (You mean like an accurate quote of Obama? The nerve!)

A better ending would have been: "We're freakin' idiots who have structured this ad to belie everything we say and to confirm that Romney is accurately quoting Obama."

That would have been actually, well, truthful.

*A Kinsleyian gaffe where the speaker accidentally reveals exactly what he is thinking, a truth he should not reveal..

And to the mental midgets who say the "that" which you didn't build refers to the "roads and bridges" in the sentence preceding the quoted portion, allow me to revive my inner grammar teacher and respond. No, that's not possible for two reasons--first "business" is the immediate antecedent to the demonstrative pronoun, singular, "that" not "roads and bridges" and, second, "roads and bridges" is of course plural (each word is plural) so the correct demonstrative pronoun to use for those two things would be "those", not "that." QED.

Labels: Obama Re-election Ad; Idiocy

Well, we do, actually with the recession and lost decade like recovery, but the main problem we have with our Federal Government is with spending.

Here is what changing the current tax rate structure (letting the Bush tax rate cuts expire), that is, raising tax rates on upper and upper-middle class taxpayers will do to increase our tax revenue on the same scale as what our proposed spending will be for the same time period. One kinda dwarfs the other, doesn't it?

Labels: Tax Revenue if Bush Tax Rates Expire; Federal Spending

Here is long past his use-by date Rev. Jesse Jackson, getting a pound of lie out of an ounce of truth regarding the Voting Rights Act of '65 and Senator Strom Thurmond (Varied-SC). Rev. Jackson:

In the end, only one Republican senator voted no: Strom Thurmond of my birth state of South Carolina, founder of the Dixiecrats Party.

Think of that: In 1965, only one Republican senator voted against this great expansion of voting rights for the disenfranchised and dispossessed.

It is true that Sen. Thurmond did vote against the act and was a Republican at the time, but he'd been a Republican for a whole year, in protest largely of the Civil Rights Act of '64. Before that he was a Democrat; he also ran for President, as Rev. Jackson writes, as a Dixiecrat (still with Democrat in the title). He was a segregationist first, foremost and forever; the letters R or D after his name are inadequate to describe his beliefs. His views about Negroes (to use the polite parlance of the time) was indistinguishable from other segregationists, all of whom had a D behind their name.

Now, is there a detail about the final vote for the bill in the Senate which Rev. Jackson leaves out? Like how many Democrats voted against the bill, perhaps? Well the number was 17, all Southerners, more than a quarter of the Democrats serving in the Senate. So, as with the Civil Rights Act of '64, the Republicans voted overwhelmingly for it, and a substantial number of Democrats, the segregationists, the racists, voted against it. That's the real history.

Now, why does he say 'think of that' in talking about Republicans being for full civil rights for black Americans? It certainly was no surprise that the solidly Democratic south was racist. The Democrats were the party of slavery and Jim Crow. The Republicans were the anti-slavery, pro-full civil rights for all Americans party. The vote was not contrary to that history. It's unremarkable in its full consistency with the history of the Democratic Party in the South.

Oh, yeah, I remember now--after this the parties switched beliefs, the Democrats stopped being racist and the racists all swarmed to the anti-slavery, pro-civil rights for blacks party. How could I have forgotten that? It's one of the Democrats' chief Big Lies.

Rev. Jackson:

But today a different GOP wages war on our right to vote. The modern Republican Party is largely a creation of that same Strom Thurmond, who helped Richard Nixon defeat Hubert Humphrey in 1968 with his famous “Southern Strategy,” which helped turn southern Democratic Wallace voters into Republican Nixon voters, and later into Reagan voters and Bush voters.

The foundation of the modern Republican Party is no longer rooted in Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation; its roots lie in the racism of Thurmond, who did everything he could to block African Americans from gaining expanded voting rights.

How about this for an alternate history? Some of the Southern Democrats migrated to the Republican party as the incidence of actual, institutional racism diminished with time and the Southern Democrats, always socially conservative, felt more at home with Republicans as the Democrats lurched ever more radically leftward.

Strom Thurmond no more "warped" the Republicans than Wallace voters backed Republicans. It's a complete lie. The Southern Strategy was not race driven; it was easy to portray Democrats as associated with the radical left, especially after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. The Southern Democrats didn't leave the Democrats so much as the Democrats left them, emphasis on 'left.'

Only the Democrats think race is the motivator of the Republicans. We Republicans know better. That the Democrats are constantly calling us racists is projection of the most basic sort. They think only in terms of race, so we must too. Too bad for the Democrats that, along with many of their beliefs, it's just not so.

Thus, the new charge, that the horrible Republicans' interest (admittedly a self interest) in preventing voter fraud is the new poll tax or the new literacy test, is as accurate as the Democrats' open distortion of history.

Rev. Jackson:

Instead of automatic voter registration, Republican legislators in states such as Florida are making it harder for even groups like the League of Women Voters to register voters. Instead of emulating the successes of same-day voting and early voting, GOP legislators in states such as Maine and Ohio have fought to roll back these successful reforms.

Instead of making it easier for working people to vote by instituting voting holidays, conservative legislators in states such as Pennsylvania and Texas have enacted voter ID laws to depress and restrict turnout of poor people, students and minority voters.

The situation has grown so bad that in his speech to the NAACP national convention, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently compared the Texas restrictions to the reviled “poll taxes” of the Jim Crow era.

Well, who could imagine that AG Eric "my people" Holder could be anything other than completely unbiased about sane, non-racial, laws to prevent voter fraud?

Automatic voter registration, same-day voting and early voting are conduits for voter fraud. Requiring a photo ID is the least intrusive way to begin to ensure the person voting is who he or she says and is the person registered to vote. There's nothing racial about it. Nothing.

When Democrats require a photo ID to attend a Democratic political rally, they are clearly seeking to suppress attendance by their base. Clearly.

The generation that fought successfully against Democrat racism is a victim of its success. There's little more battle to wage. Institutional racism only exists now for the 'advantage' of black Americans, and to a lesser degree for those with Spanish surnames. It is to the disadvantage of whites and more acutely to Asians. So the people who make a living fighting a battle already won are forced to invent previously unknown forms of racism, just as they are required to rewrite history falsely, in order to justify their continued existence.

Witness Rev. Jackson.

Oh, and the title is my favorite aphorism because it contains, like a fly trapped in amber, a word whose meaning has changed through the time the saying has been accurately repeated. 'Proves' in the saying means 'put to the test' not 'shows it's true.'

Resorting to modern usage, however, saying Strom Thurmond was a Republican bellwether (rather than an outlier, an exception) and an architect of modern Republican principles proves that Rev. Jackson is deluded.

Labels: Jesse Jackson; Big Lie; Voting Rights; Preventing Voter Fraud; Democrat Racism; Democrat Projection

It seems the gist of the Democrat complaint about Mitt Romney and Bain Capitol approximately 12 years ago is that the SEC form he signed did not have a place to tell them if you were on a leave of absence or not.

The whole kerfuffle, as Diomedes pointed out today, is from Union dogma that every job in an American company must be located in America.

What?

If the Union prices its members' labor above the market clearing price (even including transportation costs for products made overseas or in Canada or Mexico), then when the factory goes to where the labor costs makes economic sense, it's the Union's fault, not the fault of the company's management.

Everyone repeating the charge that it was wrong for Bain to send overseas some jobs which had formerly been in American factories better have no foreign products in their home (or garage) or they are guilty of hypocrisy (a charge that only applies to Republicans apparently).

UPDATE: Carl Rove points out the non-felony SEC filing of Steve Jobs, who remained CEO but took a leave of absence from Apple for health reasons. Does the President's re-election team think Steve Jobs was a felon too? Aren't there more important issues than the internal inadequacy of mandatory bureaucratic filings from more than a dozen years ago? This was this week's distraction from the President's dismal record in office. Just 16 more weeks to paper over that record with other distractions.

Labels: 2012 Election Contest

Even though former 9th planet Pluto in our solar system was demoted recently to a category just short of being a planet, we've been learning more and more about its local system. We once thought Pluto had but a solitary, giant (relatively) moon, Charon. Now we know that it has 5 moons, two still unnamed. That's more that the four inner planets combined (as Mercury and Venus have none). Small consolation there. If it's such a measly little planetoid, how come it has so many moons?

We'll learn a lot more when our robot explorer shows up in just about three years. Can't wait.

Labels: Pluto; Upgrading the number of moons

Here is a live volcano in Iceland with the Aurora Borealis in the sky above. I've been to Iceland, January 1972. The sun came up at 10:00 am and went down at 3:00 pm. It never even got close to freezing.  And I could never find a bar, although the Icelanders, in spite of the so-called history of the Sagas, have the alcoholism rate of Irish (high) rather than that of Scandanavians (low).

I'd actually love to get back there in high Summer. One day, perhaps

Here is a robot photo of Mars. Better. We've gone from photographing the Nebraska of Mars to photographing the southern Idaho of Mars. We'll actually make some progress in getting people more interested in traveling to Mars when we beginning photographing the Utah of Mars*

*Which I believe exists based on what some experts say but, unfortunately, I have never seen it.

Labels: Mars; Robot Photographs

Although it was much warmer in America during the 30s than now, those who believe in anthropogenic global warming are touting high temperatures (no doubt due to blocking high pressure) in the eastern United States (and, to be fair, a few other places as well) to say: So there, denier; this is proof of climate change. To which I reply: No, looks like merely hot summer weather to me.

You can decide for yourself from this chart of weather around the globe. It isn't exactly sweltering most places.

Reagan wins.

Any way you look at it.

Story here.

Labels: Recovery After Recession; Reagan; Obama

(h/t This Isn't Happiness)

New words from dead languages appear to be tricky. Whoever thought up any of the following was a linguistic moron:

Homophobia is misconceived from ancient Greek, literally means 'same' (όμοιος) and 'fear' (φόβος). This is supposed to mean hatred of homosexuals but it doesn't even come close. Hatred in ancient Greek is μίσος, as in misogynist or misanthrope. And the Greek word for 'same' does not convey that the sameness is only about sexual preference. A better Greek word for homosexual would be ἀρσενοκοίτης (See 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10). But I admit misarsenokoites is pretty long and difficult to pronounce. Perhaps we could coin a Latin neologism except that there doesn't appear to be a Latin word for homosexual. Hmm. So all I have is criticism and no real solution. Best I can do is misomalalos (sticking with the New Testament), but that's not very satisfying either. There definitely is a problem with forming a Latin or Greek neologism regarding the love that dare not say its name.

Islamophobia has the same problem because fear does not equal hatred. They are separate concepts and accordingly separate words. Islam is neither Greek nor Latin so this is the worst sort of neologism, one which mixes modern and ancient in inaccurate ways (Likewise homosexual is Greek for 'same' followed by Latin for 'gender' and I won't even mention the misapprehension that the 'homo' in the word is derived from the Latin for 'man').

Feminazi is funny but it too mixes modern 'nazi' (20th Century slang for the National Socialist and German Worker's Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ) which the Germans shortened to NSDAP--
Nazi emphasized the first two words 'national' and 'socialist' and appears to have been used before the party actually formed) with the Latin 'femina' (woman). Although strident feminists indeed bring to mind at least the intolerance of the murderous German fascists, we should only call actual nazis 'nazis' and not make fun of the feminists who, after all, are merely a casualty of their success.

Labels: Neologisms: Homophobia; Islamophobia; Feminazi

The better to eat you with, my dear. A spider that looks like a lady bug (what the Brits call a Ladybird for some strange reason). *

(h/t This Isn't Happiness)

Labels: Aggressive Mimicry; Lady Bug Spider