XDA

Here is the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Philip Muller, in the Washington Post whining about the past and begging for money because his nation is having a drought, with a money quote:

This month the world reached a milestone that brings all of us to a new danger zone: an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million. The World Bank predicts that we are on track to a rise of 4 degrees Celsius in temperatures by the end of this century. This would mean a rise in sea levels of three to seven feet. For the world’s lowest-lying countries, including my own, this is a death sentence. The only answer is urgent global action, a Marshall Plan for a new low-carbon global economy. And we Marshallese believe we have a big role to play.

Actually we didn't reach 400 ppmv of CO2. It was reported but revisions in the raw data (down for a change) at Mona Loa means we didn't get there and won't until the Fall at the earliest. But why let facts get in the way when you're talking about global warming climate change? (No sane man believes the climate does not change, so the new name is nearly meaningless, but it is merely shorthand for Danger! Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming! and only the low IQ types are fooled).

I'm not sure what scientists work at the World Bank, but few scientists, even the worst of the Alarmists, predict a 4 degree Celsius rise in average temperature by 2100. Below is a graph of what a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere might theoretically achieve.

.5 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. Actually it will be less, because there are in place in the real world negative feedback systems to buffer any rise in temperature caused by greenhouse gasses and reduce them to insignificance.

And below is the chart for sea level rise over the last 140 years. Since 1870, the sea level has risen just over 9 inches (sea level almost always rises during an interglacial). Even if that rate doubles (and there is no reason to believe it will), the rise in 86 and a half years will be 11 inches, less than a third what Mr.Muller claims is the least bad scenario and 13% of his worst case scenario.


Below is what real climate change (coming out of the last ice age) has done to the sea level. After a near 400 foot rise in 14,000 years, the last 8 millennia have been remarkably stable. As soon as the sea level starts to fall consistently, then we are at the end of the interglacial and horrible times are ahead.

Labels: Global Warming; Wildly Exaggerated Claims

Probably most galaxies are barred spirals and the true spirals usually have two or more arms. But not all of them.


NGC 4725.

Labels: NGC 4725; single arm spiral galaxy

Here is a chart, from leftie Democratic Underground, which shows a marked decline in the American homicide rate since 1994. Indeed, the rate has dropped by more than 50%. We gun nuts argue that the cause of the decline was that a lot of states started legislating "shall issue" concealed carry permits in 1994. Gun haters can't believe that. It must be something else, they think.


OK, let's look at some stats from a gun control state, Massachusetts, which in 1998 passed laws which made it very onerous even to own a gun, much less carry a concealed gun legally in the state. Legal gun ownership declined in Massachusetts from 1.5 million gun licenses to around 200,000 by 2002. What happened then? Certainly murders, assault and gun related robberies declined as in the rest of the United States.

Oops. Homicides went precisely the opposite way of the rest of American and doubled. Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent. If not the disarming of the law abiding in 1998, then what was the cause of the doubling of Massachusetts' homicide rate and the increase in other gun related crimes?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

(h/t  Ace of Spades and Jeff Jacoby)

Labels: Gun Control; Real World Effects

Is not the following a contradiction between the first part of the sentence and the last?

The Earth is now warming faster than at any time in the last 11,000 years, but scientists do not understand clearly* why the atmosphere has warmed less than they expected over the last decade or so – and more slowly than in the 1990s.

If it's warming faster than any period during our current interglacial NOW, how can it be warming slower than 13 years ago? Am I missing something?

*I know why. CO2  is not now and has never been a driver of climate change. The temperature change a doubling of it in the atmosphere would cause is about 1.1 degree C. That is, for the change in atmospheric concentration from 280 ppmv to 560 ppmv (which should occur after 2100) the corresponding change in average global temperature would be about 1.1 degrees C in a laboratory. Out in the atmosphere of Earth, there is a negative feedback with clouds which makes the increase for a doubling much less than 1.1 degrees C. It is the sun which causes all the climate change and the 24th cycle of sun spots was half as strong as the last one before, after some sort of "sea change" (to mix the metaphor) of the AP progression in October 2005. What's worse for the planet is that it very much looks like a Maunder type minimum starting in about 18 years which will mean much much colder global weather. Cold is bad. Warm is good.

I quit reading Scientific America (where the quote came from) about two decades ago when it abandoned the scientific method and became a mouthpiece for the serial predictors of doom.

Labels: Internal contradictions

Obama has droned more Americans than Bush waterboarded terrorists

Labels: Conn Carroll quote

And yet both the acting and the previous IRS commissioners insisted that the singling out of groups according to their politics was in no way politically motivated. More hilarity. It’s definitional: If you discriminate according to politics, your discrimination is political. It’s a tautology, for God’s sake.

Charles Krauthammer

All truth is tautology.

Roger Fraley

Labels: Charles Krauthammer quote

As this one from a few weeks ago makes clear.


Here's how Hillary Clinton really looks:

Or go here: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81264038/

Labels: Benghazi Lies, Hillary Clinton

Here is what Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said today:

“This is climate change,” Boxer said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather: Not just hot weather, but extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago — it’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather.”
“Carbon could cost us the planet,” Boxer added, plugging her own carbon tax bill, co-sponsored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

Here is the truth about big, deadly tornadoes in America over the past 60 years. The trend is down.


And here is the truth about tornado caused deaths in America over the past 88 years:
Downward trend there too. Wish it had stayed as low as 1986 this year.

Only the truly stupid would trot out the "Extreme Weather is Increasing Because of Global Warming" myth. It is easily disproved. Every time it's used.

New Taxes will not save Americans in the Midwest from tornadoes. It's such a disconnect, it makes my head swim.

UPDATE: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is just as stupid.

Labels: Extreme Weather Myth; Tornadoes

The FBI hate crime statistics are out for 2011 and it is not good news for the lefties who think the red states (particularly the South) are a cauldron of barely contained racial hatred.

Here are the stats for the former Confederacy (I left out Tennessee because it defected during the Civil War and because I wanted a list of 10 states to make figuring the average easier):

State               Incidents/Population                                 Hate Crimes per 100,000

Alabama             83/2.28 Million                                          3.64
Arkansas            11/2.9 Million                                              .38
Florida               123/18.9 Million                                          .65
Georgia               17/8.6 Million                                             .19
Louisiana             5/2.45 Million                                            .20
Mississippi           1/.75 Million                                              .14  (Mississippi had one hate crime)
North Carolina   112/9.65 Million                                          1.16
South Carolina   135/4.67 Million                                          2.89
Texas                  152/25.63 Million                                        .58
Virginia               144/8.09 Million                                         1.78

Thus the average number of hate crimes in the former Confederacy is 1.161/100,000 population.

Here are the stats for ten very blue states (and DC):

Washington          213/6.82 Million                                         3.13
Oregon                 128/2.43 Million                                        5.33
California            1,040/37.69 Million                                     2.76
Illinois                   69/9.96 Million                                           .69 (way to go, Illinois!)
Ohio                     228/9.88 Million                                         2.32
Michigan              346/9.56 Million                                         3.62
New York             544/19.29 Million                                       2.82
New Jersey           508/8.82 Million                                         5.77
Massachusetts      367/6.36 Million                                          5.77
DC                          83/.61 Million                                          13.6

Which means the bluest of the blue states (and district) average number of hate crimes is 4.581/100,000 population. That's a rate nearly four times the rate of the red states in the deep South, the former Confederacy.

Perhaps they ought to give up at the Southern Poverty Law Center, with its faux listing of "hate" groups, and open up the Democrat Party Governed Blue State Hate Watch Office instead. More good and less bad that way. I'd be paying special attention to DC, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Oregon, if I were them.

(h/t Ace of Spades)

Labels: Democrats Hatin', Hate Crime Statistics, SPLC

As Yogi Berra once perceptively said, "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." Here is a 2007 prediction about Arctic Sea Ice in 2013. It pretty much said all the sea ice would disappear this Summer. Or if not then certainly by 2030. Here is my shorter term prediction and the reasons supporting it:

On September 20, 2013, Arctic Sea Ice Area will be 4.6 Million square kilometers (about the size of India plus Peru plus Macedonia).

Below are two charts I'm relying on to make that prediction.

Sea Ice Area (as of two days ago)


and Mean Temperature north of 80 degrees North (which is way below normal right now).



Of course a bad storm which breaks up the ice (as happened last year) could change everything (See Yogi quote). But I think it will be safe to say at the end of Summer that the AGW True Believer predictors 6 years ago were full of it (as climate alarmists often are, more's the pity).

Oh, here's an interrupted in mid transmission shot from the robot camera we have at the North Pole. The Sun is out, but it's freakin' cold. The ice stretches over the horizon and is about 8 feet thick there.


I guess it could all melt away this Summer, but the odds are against it.

Labels: Arctic Sea Ice; Prediction

“I am the Sayer of the Law,” said the grey figure. “Here come all that be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say the Law.”	33
“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the doorway.	34
“Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape.”	35
“None escape,” said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.	36
“None, none,” said the Ape-man,—“none escape. See! I did a little thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is good!”	37
“None escape,” said the grey creature in the corner.	38
“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.	39
“For every one the want that is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law. “What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some want to follow things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill and bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’”

H.G. Wells

Labels: H.G. Wells quote; Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

Here's an iconic photo of the Battle of the Bulge, a German soldier with a bayonet carried just below his throat, 8mm machine gun belt (with disintegrating links, just like we use now) over his shoulder and a machine gun just out of view.



It's not the only war photo with him in it.


Here he is with his Nazi pals smoking a cigarette. He has a Browning 9mm pistol in his right hand (John Browning's last design, manufactured in captured Belgium). That's an American 6 wheel M8 armored car called a Greyhound in the background.



And here he is yet again in a group photo. This time his hands are full of the Browning and an MG 42 with a bipod. Don't these guys know that cigarettes will kill you?



He's not in this photo, but a smoking Bengal Tiger tank is with two GIs walking past admiring it. The lead American soldier appears to have picked up an STG 44. Lots of soldiers pick up enemy weapons if they are better than the ones they carry. At one time it was believed that Ferdinand Porsche designed the turret on the tank, but that is a myth.

Labels: Battle of the Bulge photos

From normally well named Reason on line magazine comes this well thought out piece by Shikha Dalmia. But as good as it is, the essay contains these paragraph with one sour sentence within:

For two decades, progressives have castigated those questioning global warming as "deniers."

But the Economist, once firmly in the alarmist camp, recently acknowledged that global temperatures have remained stagnant for 15 years even as greenhouse-gas emissions have soared.

This may be because existing models have overestimated the planet's sensitivity. Or because the heat generated is sinking to the ocean bottom. Or because of something else completely.

Did you see it? The heat is sinking to the bottom of the ocean? What?

Warm ocean water is "lighter" than cold ocean water because it has thermally expanded and it has less salt in it. So the light floats on the dense and, like a piece of wood on any water, does not sink to the bottom unless it gets heavier than the water it displaces or has some outside force make it sink. εὑρίσκω!

So water warmed by the sun (that is, the first 100 feet or so from the surface down that visible light penetrates) does not sink unless it is forced down by subducting currents (downwelling) usually because of wind or the Ekman transport (whatever that is).

Warm water doesn't just sink into cold any more than ice held against your warm skin will warm you up.

The climate alarmists are desperate to account for the epic failure of their models vis a vis the recent 17 year halt in warming and (more recently) the last 11 years of actual cooling. It was one of the more famous, whistle-blower-leaked emails where climate alarmist Kevin Trenberth wrote: The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

Travesty is the right word for climate alarmism, 

So the warming has to be at the bottom of the ocean where it slipped to past the 3000 Argo buoys undetected and in violation of the physical rules of Nature. It just has to be.

And this demented wish leaks out into otherwise normal thinking of people like Ms. Dalmia.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax; cross contamination of thought

But no matter how much money I make, I always seem to spend just a little bit more. Am I chasing happiness?

Labels: Happiness, Money

Many gun control advocates are saying we need background checks for internet sales. I have a question. If you buy a gun on line, who's going to deliver it to you?

The USPS, UPS, Fedex and DHL will only deliver a gun purchased from a non FFL holder to a licensed gun dealer (or manufacturers or collectors, etc., all with federal licenses).
They will ship from an FFL holder to an individual with no such license.

So where is the loophole here? The FFL holder has to run a background check when he or she sells a gun or when he or she receives one to pass on to a non licensed purchaser. Either way, the background check is performed.

Right?

If the gun control advocates are merely complaining that the internet merely helps buyers find sellers find each other for a face to face buy on the black market, welcome to the 21st Century party, pal.

Labels: Gun Control; Internet sales non-problem

Labels: Devo Dogs

Given the hysterics about recent minor melting of the Greenland icecap, one might think that the climate there is getting warmer. One would be wrong.

This paper in Nature says that rapid outflow of the glaciers at the sea termini comes in waves and will likely soon start adding just about .01 mm per year to the sea level. That's not an alarming amount.

A paper in Science says that the melting in Greenland can come to a near complete stop on a dime, or so reports Mother Jones.

And this sad story tells the result of people believing the hype to their permanent disadvantage. Money quotes:

Phil Goodeve-Docker, 30, had been attempting a 370-mile unsupported charity walk across Greenland with friends Andy Norman and Roan Hackney when they were hit by a “Piteraq” storm two days into the 30 to 35-day expedition.

[...]

Mr Goodeve-Docker, who ran the Purple Cactus comedy agency in Hammersmith and lived in Ealing, had been attempting what he called a “frankly nutty adventure” in memory of his grandfather Patrick Pirie-Gordon, who died two years ago.

[...]

The expedition was being led by Mr Hackney, who lives in London, while Mr Norman, who works for the Army and lives in Ascot, was like Mr Goodeve-Docker a “rookie” explorer. The trip had been delayed by by a week by “white out” storms. Two years ago another expedition led by Mr Hackney was defeated half-way when a freak storm destroyed tents and equipment.

Guys! It's freakin' cold in Greenland, even in late Spring. Wait 'til full Summer if you have to go there at all. Deadly cold.

Labels: Global Warming Propaganda; Greenland; Freezing to Death

Here is a report about falling violent crime with guns here in America. It contains a little factoid I am loath to repeat lest I be branded a racist. Oh hell, no one reads me anyway. Here it is.

Although the rate of firearms homicides for African Americans declined by 51 percent over the past two decades, that rate was still 14.6 per 100,000 people in 2010 — compared to 1.9 for whites.

So the rate of gun homicide for African Americans is more than seven and a half times greater than white American gun homicide. What's up with that?

Labels: Gun homicide rates in America

Here is snarky Jim Treacher noticing how poorly the new Redford vehicle The Company You Keep is doing at the box office. Really poorly. A bomb, actually, no pun intended.

It was a stupid movie to begin with-- a horrible whitewash of just how blood thirsty the weather underground terrorist became AFTER the Viet Nam War ended.

Then reality pierced the liberal bubble, containing the buttery warm nostalgia for the good times the Weathermen had, like a ball bearing at 3200ft/sec shredding a calf muscle.

I'm led to believe the movie had all the intellectual heft Redford was able to infuse, that is, it was lighter than helium. Redford flunked out of CU after 1 and 1/2 years. It still shows in his film-making

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Please, make another liberal lovefest movie. Your box office track record is so good.

All is Lost might be good, though.

Labels: Robert Redford; Terrible Movies; Jim Treacher

The claim that Bush lied was false. Bush could not have lied to Kerry or the congressional Democrats about WMDs in Iraq, because Kerry and other Democrats sat on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and had access to the same intelligence data that Bush relied on to make his case for the war. When the Democrats authorized and supported the war, they knew everything that Bush knew. The claim that he lied to get their support was itself the biggest lie of the war. Its only purpose was to hide the Democrats’ own perfidy in abandoning the nation’s mission for partisan gain, and to discredit the president and turn the country against him, at whatever cost, in the hope of winning the 2004 election.

David Horowitz

Labels: David Horowitz quote

Bleeding heart civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander argues that the criminal justice system in America is blighted with racial animus to the degree that it is the functional equivalent of the Democrat created Jim Crow system. She says it here.

Alexander has gained national recognition for her scholarly work of the criminal justice system. It’s what happens to felons after they serve their time and return to their communities that re-create a Jim Crow system.

These young people come home “saddled” with criminal records that follow them for the rest of their lives and “authorize legal discrimination” against them, Alexander points out

.

In her book, Alexander describes a system that so closely resembles the conditions blacks faced during Jim Crow, it’s hard to ignore the similarities.

I hated the Jim Crow bigotry in the south, and I only saw the diluted rump end of it in the early 60s. It was an evil system based wholly on prejudice, but it is nothing like the justice system in America. Here's one big difference.

For you to be a victim of Jim Crow bigotry, you had no choice, that is, if you were black the discriminatory laws applied to you.

For you to be a "victim" of the justice system, you have to make a choice and commit an act which makes a victim actually or figuratively of the society as a whole.

Ms. Alexander isn't arguing that blacks have no choice but to commit crimes, is she? I find a statement like that bigoted against blacks. That couldn't happen, could it? I mean she's black...

Nah, I'm probably being bigoted even to ask the questions above.

Never mind.

Labels: Liberal Bigotry; Jim Crow

In an opinion piece in the National Journal, veteran reporter Jill Lawrence tries to argue that some of the opposition to useless knee jerk gun control legislation is logically flawed--she uses the word bogus. Tu quoque, baby! She makes two arguments.

As both sides in the gun-control debate mobilize for a possible second act on Capitol Hill, could we please retire the argument that taking step X on guns wouldn’t have prevented tragedy Y?

[...]

Yet arguments like that ignore the fact that step X—whether it’s expanded background checks or other proposals before Congress—might well have helped prevent or mitigate some horrendous past incident, and could spare us future tragedies.

For instance, expanded background checks might have saved the life of Ricky Byrdsong, the former Northwestern University basketball coach killed by white supremacist Benjamin Nathan Smith in 1999. Smith tried to buy a gun from a licensed dealer in June 1999 but was blocked because of a domestic-violence restraining order against him. The next month he bought one from an unlicensed dealer and used it to target blacks, Asians, and Orthodox Jews in a three-day, multicity rampage. Nine were wounded and two died, among them Byrdsong, who was shot multiple times while walking with two of his children.

And, yes, expanded background checks might have kept Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from killing 13 people and themselves in the 1999 Columbine massacre. Three of the four guns the two 17-year-olds used in the shootings were purchased for them at a gun show by Robyn Anderson, then 18. “I would not have bought a gun for Eric and Dylan if I had had to give any personal information or submit to any kind of check at all,” Anderson said in a statement in 2000. “I wish a law requiring background checks had been in effect at the time.”

Smith bypassed a background check by going to an "unlicensed dealer" whatever that is. We are to believe, according to the logic of Ms. Lawrence, that had the unlicensed dealer refused the sale, that an actual criminal with a gun to sell would have done the same. The "might" she uses is therefore stretched to unbelievability because a person intent on getting a weapon can get one from criminals who won't follow the law or by another crime, namely theft or burglary, with or without accompanying murder (as the Connecticut evil psychopath did to obtain his weapons).

Robyn Anderson surely is contrite for her arming the Columbine evil psychopaths not the least because she could have been charged and jailed for her actions, which were and are today illegal (although she copped a deal to avoid prosecution). The illegality of her actions didn't stop her, but another law would have? Who's kidding whom? Two others who supplied the weapons to the Columbine killers were prosecuted, so the then extant law they violated failed to stop the purchase, but of course another law clearly will in the future. The so-called gunshow loophole that existed here in Colorado in 1999 has supposedly been closed by legislation which makes every purchase at a gunshow, or a purchase later from a person the buyer met at a gunshow, subject to a background check. I say supposedly because before they closed the gunshow loophole with legislation, I underwent the normal background check, required for all sales from federally licensed dealers, for the few guns I bought at gunshows. Since it became mandatory I have not undergone any checks for the three purchases I've made (because the weapons I bought were Curios & Relics-- the purchase of which never needs a background check according to federal and state law). No doubt Ms. Lawrence would advocate background checks for C & Rs, because her belief in the efficacy of laws to prevent bad acts is apparently absolute.

She then tackles normal sized box magazines.

Some pundits, lawmakers, and advocates, topped by the NRA, have argued it would be pointless to limit the size of ammunition magazines. Yet past incidents suggest such limits could make a difference. In 1998, Kip Kinkel emptied a 50-round clip at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., killing two students and injuring 25. When he stopped to reload, several students wrestled him to the ground.

Adam Lanza brought 10 magazines of 30 rounds each into Sandy Hook Elementary School last December. Parents there say 11 children may have escaped when he had to stop to reload. In Tucson in 2011, shooter Jared Loughner was tackled and his gun wrested from him as he tried to reload after firing 31 bullets in a matter of seconds. If his clip had been limited to 10 rounds, Christina Taylor Green might be alive today. She was killed at age 9 by Loughner's 13th bullet.

Kinkel used a Ruger 10/22 with an extended magazine. I cannot get details of the subduing except that it involved 7 people and one was wounded by a pistol he was carrying. Brave people there. No one knows what Lanza was doing when some children ran away, least of all the children themselves. Was it a jam, was it merely reloading? Unknown. We do know that Loughner dropped his replacement magazine, someone grabbed it off the ground and he was rushed when his empty weapon could not be reloaded. So based on the end of these three shootings, does the government have a compelling state interest in making shooters change out empty magazines more often? There are an awful lot of 'mights' and 'mays' in Lawrence's paragraphs. She proposes infringing on an enumerated right because not very often people may avoid being shot by evil psychopaths? How about not infringing on the rights of millions of law abiding gun owners and concentrating on the shooters? How about involuntarily committing evil psychopaths? Wouldn't that be far more likely to prevent gun violence by them than making them reload more often the gun they bought on the black market? Who is pushing a bogus argument about the real world efficacy of gun control laws here?

She ends the piece mentioning the parents of the murdered children at Newtown and quotes a Brady Campaign mouthpiece about their desires:

“They don’t want what happened to them to happen to somebody else,” says Malte. “That’s the overriding factor.”

OK, then do something that would actually help prevent evil psychopaths shooting up students at schools, as Lanza and Kinkel did. Maybe an armed guard at the gun free zone would be more effective than laws the evil psychopaths, about to murder children (and having just murdered a parent or parents), most likely would not obey. If you want to prevent the tragedy of school shootings, do something effective. Prohibition laws have never been effective, they just punish the law abiding.

And in a broader sense, do we want to curtail freedom here in America on the slight possibility that it might curtail a slaughter of innocents? The price of freedom is that some people are free to disobey the law. I'd still rather have the freedom.

Labels: Jill Lawrence; Bogus arguments for new or renewed gun control laws

 I count 7. And look at the smoke at the top background. Are they shielding him from rotor wash?

I met old college roommate and current friend Gary up in Evergreen at the Little Bear to see a local band I quite like, Waiting on Ray. Gary is obsessed with Nietzsche, high energy physics and the concept of zero, but he's always fun to talk to. We had a spirited debate about a lot of things.

I've decided that I'm not going to date again until I get the final order in the divorce, actually a decree of separation, otherwise it would feel too much like cheating; but I have to admit that the long, drawn out process is wearing on me a bit. So, I was aware of the cute women at the Little Bear last night and there were a few. But I was never on the prowl, if you get my drift. Just aware. Between the second and final set one of the pretty women there came up to me and engaged me in conversation, introduced herself, shook my hand and ultimately indicated that it would be OK with her if I drove her home--all in about 2 minutes time. She didn't even look at Gary, who is much more handsome than I am. I was thinking this is strange when a less attractive girl and a rough looking man she had been with earlier came up to her and, without speaking to me, or even looking at me, drew her abruptly away even though she repeated to them that I could take her home. Suddenly she's gone. Boom.

Gary asked, what was that? We thought for a few minutes and the only thing that made sense was her pimp and fellow sex worker had regained control of her. I mean, I was OK looking in my youth but I'm mere days away from 60 now, no longer the kind young, pretty women make bee lines to meet, more's the pity. Gary and I agreed that even if the "friends" hadn't hustled her out, she would have been trouble.

I'd never been to the Little Bear before. I might go back.

Labels: Personal History: Little Bear, strange new interpersonal relations, Waiting on Ray

I just finished the first season of Justified. During the final shootout, Olyphant screwed up and actually sounded like East Kentucky for a second or two. I'm seeing too many live oaks for it to be actually shot in Kentucky. Must be California. I guess I'll watch another season or two. Olyphant's ex wife sure looks a lot better somehow than she did in the miserable the Following. What's up with that?

The purely evil Bo was played by the same actor who was the most menacing, but not the most evil, thug in Breakdown, a very good movie, and the naked cuckolded husband chasing plucky Giometti in Sideways. He's getting a little long in the tooth for un-comical bad guys though. Still, good to see his menace on screen again even if it's the little screen of my lap-top. On to better things.

I caught up last night to where I finally started watching Breaking Bad, one of the better series on television ever. I had started with the 5th season. I think I've seen all the episodes now. Part of what makes the series so good, besides the writing and acting, is that there is a slightly too coincidental but ultimately satisfying relatedness of the situations. That is, lots of things mean a lot and most of it makes sense. And actions have real world like consequences. Serious ones. Deep ones. This might be a first for television.

The arc Walt figuratively travels from slightly comic tyro to completely evil kingpin is both believable and very intriguing. Jesse is almost as good, complex and believable. I simply can't praise this series enough. And they have decided to go out at the peak rather than overstay their welcome. Class act. Also the people sound like New Mexicans and it's filmed in New Mexico where the landscape is as lovely as it is stark, a perfect foil, or perhaps Greek Chorus, for the human interactions. Still want Skyler dead though--next episode is not soon enough for me.

If you're not watching this show, you are missing a minor milestone in TV.

Labels: Breaking Bad; Justified

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," President Obama said during a speech at Mexico's Anthropology Museum.

Not counting the nearly 2,000 semi-auto rifles we encouraged the criminal element, the drug cartels in Mexico, to obtain in the genius class sting the BATFE and Justice Dept. devised a few years ago, the number of guns used in crime in Mexico that come from Estados Unidos is about 20%. My math is not especially strong but I don't think that's a majority of the weapons used.

The 90% number is cherry picked and not representative. Most guns used by the cartels come from corrupt military or police who sell their weapons to the drug gangs or bring them along when the join the dark side. The drug gangs prefer the full auto weapons they can get from their military and paramilitary police. They think the semi-autos are generally inferior, as they are to the cartels' needs, but will take them if there's nothing better. But they have a lot of money and a desire to do or meet violence with the best, most effective weapons they can obtain. Do you really think they limit themselves to guns less effective than the guns the army and federales have?

Here's a photo of armed Mexican police. You can tell a semi auto AR 15 from a full auto M 4 but you have to be able to see the selector switch. I can't in any photo I've looked at so far.


Here are some army photos:


These soldiers carry HK G3s (full auto in .308 NATO) and non com on the right carries an HK MP 5 (full auto in 9mm parabellum). Neither is American made.


These soldiers carry the FX 05 Xiacoatl (full auto in 5.56mm NATO). Not American made.


And these fierce looking hombres in the first two rows carry Barrett M82s (semi auto in .50 BMG). American made premier sniper rifles.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who immediately thinks of the Fast and Furious scandal when the president lies about the source of guns used in crime in Mexico.

Labels: President Obama; Gun Lies

The past 17 years of flat global temperatures are creating a big chill for lots of global warming doom-premised industries. Those experiencing cold sweats must certainly include legions of climate scientists who have come to depend upon the many tens of billions of taxpayer bucks for studies that would have little demand without a big crisis for the public to worry about. And that amount pales in comparison with the hundreds of $ billions we spend on generous subsidies, lost tax revenues and inflated consumer costs for otherwise non-competitive “green energy” industries which depend upon those scary climate reports, or the insane economic penalties imposed upon all segments through EPA’s climate-premised regulatory rampage.

Cooler temperatures blow ill-winds for government bureaucrats, crony-capitalist rent- seekers, and other hucksters whose ambitions depend upon hot air.  Even Western Europe, the cradle of carbon-caused climate craziness and cap-and-trade corruption, is feeling a cold draft.

Larry Bell, opening a very good article in Forbes

Labels: Larry Bell quote

Political consultant and early Obama supporter Joe McLean writes a piece today with the headline: GOP, ready to turn your back on the NRA? (and elsewhere the headline is: Will Gun Vote Come Back to Haunt Republicans? but the answer to that is the same as to Joe's question).

Mr. McLean points to a drop in some popularity polls for some Republican Senators, Murkowski, Portman and Heller. Even if the drop is real, do we know what caused it?  Does Mr. McLean?

My little bit of "finger on the pulse" in the political realm in Colorado tells me that the guys opposing "knee jerk" useless gun "safety" legislation are not the worse for their opposition. The public opinion is that new gun legislation just doesn't matter.

But here is a bit of the article I want to highlight. McLean quotes a question to Sen Kelly Ayotte as if it were profound and meaningful.

Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal at Sandy Hook and among the first to be gunned down, asked Ayotte, "You had mentioned that day the burden on owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm. I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn't more important than that."

As tragic and unexplainable as the shooting at Sandy Hook was, expanded background checks would have done nothing to prevent the horrible murder of Ms. Lafferty's mother. The evil psychopath who shot her mother, and 25 others before he self executed, killed his mother to steal her guns (which she passed background checks to obtain) to use for his atrocity. There was nothing in the Senate bill which failed which asked gun buyers: "Do you have an incipient psychopath at home who might murder you to obtain this weapon?" The main reason the gun control bills failed in the Senate was not the fear of the NRA but that the bills were useless, meaningless monuments to our sadness over the murder of so many innocents. Let's just do the physical monument instead and burden the law abiding, the only ones who would follow new laws, not at all. It is an enumerated right in the Constitution to keep and bear arms and the prohibition on the government is not to ban guns but not to infringe (in any way) on that right.

I propound the modest proposal that the gun bills failed in the Senate because enough Senators to block the new legislation didn't want to pass unconstitutional legislation. It makes them look foolish.

Labels: Gun Legislation; Blowback