Friday, March 30, 2012

Baby eaglet acomin'

Thanks to the foresight of my parents who started buying abutting pieces of land on the Maine coast more than 40 years ago.  I am blessed with having a piece of heaven on earth where I can retreat to so I can escape these southerners that I work with in Boston (it is southern New England, after all).  I am sure Borepatch will back me up on this that it is beautiful beyond words in so many ways.  One of the high lights, though, is watching the bald eagles that nest across the way.  They will circle high above the bay, effortlessly and for hours, until they flap hard and drive with incredible velocity, seemingly going to crash into the icy Maine waters, only to splash, beat hard on their seven foot wingspan and rise up with a two foot salmon clutched in the deathgrip of their powerful talons.  It is a sight to see.  So I am pleased to announce the impending arrival of a little eaglet to our Hhumble little corner of paradise.  They have laid one egg and are acting like another may be in the offing.  The Biodiversity Research Institute has had a webcam on the nest for a number of years, so you can watch along with the expectant parents who are patiently incubating for the next month or so.




Live video from your iPhone using Ustream

There may be some empirical evidence that the SCOTUS will toss Obamacare

Michael Evans has looked at past oral arguments in front of the Court.  It turns out that the number of questions asked/statements made by the various Justices is a reasonably predictive of how they will vote on a case before them.  In essence, if a Justice asks more questions of a counsel, he opposes the propositions made by that counsel.  The counsel at bar in the Obamacare case were Verrelli for Obama on the side of upholding the law and Clement for the 26 States with Cavin for the private business groups that opposed the law on the other hand.  Below is a chart of the number of words in questions for the various counsel by each of the Justices.  Thomas rarely says anything, ever, but we know he will vote with Alito and Scalia to throw the law out.  If form holds true then, the SCOTUS will dump Obamacare by a 5-4 vote.  And that is directly in line with the observations of most of the pundits and legal observers that I have read.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Too much to hope for?

The LA Times is reporting that the Court seems ready to strike down the entire Obamacare law:
The court’s conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional.

"One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an "extreme proposition" to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.
***
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they shared the view of Scalia and Kennedy that the law should stand or fall in total. Along with Justice Clarence Thomas, they would have a majority to strike down the entire statute as unconstitutional.
As I have already said, I think that, once you declare the individual mandate invalid, the correct Constitutional law answer is that the entire statute must be invalidated.  I just thought non-legal constraints might force a compromise.

[Update: CNN's legal analyst has downgraded the SCOTUS review from a trainwreck for Obama to a Plane wreck.  "Hard to imagine how things could be going much worse for the Obama Administration."]

Notwithstanding the beatdown the Supremes are giving Obama over healthcare, he received a very impressive newspaper endorsement for the upcoming election


From Pravda.  No kidding.  You can't make this stuff up.  Maybe this is a result of the sweet nothings he whispered to Medvedev to pass on to Putin.  And the paper really ripped Romney.  If I were Romney, I would run their quotes as great reasons why Americans should vote for him.

Obamacare Appeal Day 3

This morning the SCOTUS heard arguments on whether, if the individual mandate were to be struck down, the rest of the law should be declared invalid.  This afternoon the focus will turn to whether the unfunded mandates on State spending for Medicaid are permissible.  I haven't paid too much attention to the arguments yet, but have thought about both issues.  My (admittedly simple) thoughts are as follows: The whole law should be thrown out, but that may not happen.  The "savings" or "severability" clause was taken out of the House Bill when the Senate passed it, and the law eventually had no such provision.  Congress will typically put that language in a law when it is enacting legislation that has several parts, any one of which can stand on its own.  Absent such language, the Courts will generally take it as a sign that Congress intended the whole law to rise or fall as one piece because the parts were inseparably intertwined.  In this case, certain of the provisions clearly cannot go forward on their own.  Absent the individual mandate, how can you require an insurance company to insure everyone irrespective of existing medical condition?  They just couldn't pay for it.  However, other sections, such as requiring insurance companies to continue to ensure children past the age of majority could pass muster and be enacted on their own.  The reason I think they ought to be thrown out as a package is three fold.  First, Congress had severability language in the Bill, but took it out.  I take that as a clear indication that the lawmakers thought the legislation was a package deal.  Second, the Court does not have the expertise to parse the fine policy points of the legislation which is a function that is Constitutionally left to Congress.  Finally, most of the remaining provisions were bargained for compromises that never would have passed if they were not linked to the individual mandate.  The reason I think it will likely not be thrown out as a package is because it is in the genetic fabric of the Supreme Court to compromise--because it is important to avoid the appearance of being a political body and because a Justice must work with the other Justices on the country's most important issues in close quarters and for the rest of the their lives.  As to the Medicaid portion, apart from the precedent and policy reasons for the SCOTUS to strike down entire laws as opposed to parts of laws, I think it probably should not be struck down.  A State may always opt out of Medicaid and fund its own programs.  That may be expensive and therefore impractical, but I have a hard time siding with the States who claim that the Fed's coercive program is not Constitutional.  They do it all the time.  For example, a State can change the drinking age to whatever it wants, but if it does so, it will lose a LOT of money from the federal highway programs.

If I were arguing against the individual mandate in front of the SCOTUS, I would cite one good authority--Obama



Yup.  Good ol' Barack.  Back when he was running for the Democratic nomination and running against Hillary and Edwards, he seemed to be singing a different tune about the individual mandate.  I kind of like his analogy: you cannot cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home.

My read on the SCOTUS justices

I have read the transcripts.  If you have an interest in Constitutional law or the healthcare debate I recommend that you do so, as well.  I definitely think the individual mandate is toast.  Too many pointed questions that are too good, not too esoteric or academic, and for which the Solicitor General had no good answer.  I also thought the "swing votes", and specifically Kennedy, seemed far to skeptical to turn around and issue and opinion upholding Obamacare as a legitimate exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause.  I also got the impression that, if any of the Justices cross over to join the "other" side, it may be Sotomayor.  Read the transcript pages starting at p. 21.  The colloquy between Justice Sotomayor and Solicitor General Verrilli is quite interesting.  It culminates on p. 23 where the Justice flat out asks Verrelli if Congress was forcing individuals into commerce and then asks if there are any limits to that power.  Those are the two themes that the conservative wing of the court has really hammered.  And she seems legitimately troubled by them.

I also recommend reading the Kennedy questioning beginning at p. 104.  His early and often hammering of Verrelli got a lot of play yesterday, and deservedly so.  However, this latter exchange with Michael Carvin representing a private business group opposing the law may be more instructive as to how Kennedy will vote. He seems so incensed by the counter arguments that he comes very close to breaking convention and telling counsel how he will rule.  When Carvin questions Congress's method of "regulating" by forcing people to buy health insurance, Justice Kennedy actually says, "I agree--I agree that is what is happening here."  He then goes on to point out that if the "uniqueness" of the healthcare market is grounds for allowing Congress to force people into that market, they could go on and say the same thing about any market in the world of commerce.  I would be very surprised if Kennedy supports upholding the individual mandate.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

SCOTUS tea leaves


The only important caveat to assigning predictive value to the  Justices' questions at oral argument is that you do so at your own peril.  Particularly on fun and important novel questions of law, appellate justices often give all counsel, including those they agree with, a rigorous and sometimes brutal working over.  It is the law school professor in them.  They like to ask impossible to answer questions to see what kind of intellectual spark they light when the poor attorney tries to be responsive.  However, it is more common than not that one can catch the flavor, if not the conclusions, of individual justices' thinking.  If so, then the first arguments today in front of the Supreme Court is a foreboding sign for Obamacare's individual mandate.  The individual mandate would purport to require each of us to either buy insurance or pay the government so they can insure us.  In essence, the Democrats justified the law under Congresses power to regulate interstate commerce, but there is no real precedent for a law the requires citizens to engage in commerce as opposed to regulating that commerce once we have become so engaged.  The Solicitor General, who serves as the administration's top lawyer, did not get three minutes into his defense of the law when he started to get ripped.  As importantly as the fact that certain justices were leveling broadsides at him, is who they are.  Alito and Thomas are certain votes to throw at least the mandate, if not the whole law, out.  That means that three other justices are needed to get a majority.  There has been some discussion that Scalia could be turned because of a couple of cases that he had joined in which he recognized an expanded congressional commerce clause power.  Others postulated that Chief Justice Roberts would be leery of tarnishing his legacy by giving the appearance of partisanship by trashing Obama and Pelosi's signature policy legislation.  Most SCOTUS observers, however, placed the highest likelihood of the law being upheld with Justice Kennedy, the most common swing vote, siding with the four liberal judges as he has many times in the past.  Well, guess who started the argument by flattening the Solicitor General?  That's right, Scalia, Roberts and maybe harshest of all, Kennedy.  This post from the LA Times has a good summary:
Even before the administration's top lawyer could get three minutes into his defense of the mandate, some justices accused the government of pushing for excessive authority to require Americans to buy anything.
"Are there any limits," asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of three conservative justices whose votes are seen as crucial to the fate of the unprecedented insurance mandate.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the government might require Americans to buy cellphones to be ready for emergencies. And Justice Antonin Scalia asked if the government might require Americans to buy broccoli or automobiles.
"If the government can do this, what else can it ... do?” Scalia asked.
It that the sound of liberal wailing and gnashing of teeth I hear in the distance?  Growing louder?

[Update: The Washington Post reads the tea leaves the same way the LA Times did]


The Washington Post is a fairly liberal Newspaper that often carries the Obama administration's water.  Which means this article must be causing more that a little discomfort in the White House:
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared deeply skeptical that the Constitution gives Congress the power to compel Americans to either purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, as the court completed two hours of debate Tuesday on the key component of the nation’s health-care overhaul law.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, traditionally the justice most likely to side with the court’s liberals, suggested that the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act invoked a power “beyond what our cases allow” the Congress to wield in regulating interstate commerce.
 “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” he asked.

[Further Update: As did the Clinton News Network]

CNN, another liberal bastion of the MSM had a similar read:
 Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, said questions asked at oral arguments often show how justices are thinking, and based on what he heard Tuesday, the health care reform law could be in "grave danger."

A cure for most cancers?

It has been known for a while that cancer cells produce a higher level of a protein called CD47.  That same protein is found in healthy cells, though not in as high levels.  CD47 is a marker that tells our bodies' immune system not to destroy them.  The cancer cells use this marker to avoid being destroyed by the immune system.  In fact, how much of a higher level one has of CD47 is a fairly good predictor of mortality: since cancer cells have CD47 at higher levels than healthy cells, the higher the level of that protein, the more likely the patient will die.  So this bright biologist at Stanford developed an antibody that blocked CD47.  He first gave it to mice with  blood cancers.  Lo and behold, their immune system recognized the cancer cells as invaders and a number of the mice were cured when their own immune systems killed the cancer cells.  But the story gets better.  A number of human cancer tissues from many types of cancers were transplanted into mice.  The control rodents largely died. Those given the CD47 blocking antibody had startling results.  Tumors almost universally shrank in weeks.  And 5 out of five mice with implanted human breast cancer ended up being cancer free.  On to human trials where anything could happen.  However, one has to look at research like this and wonder if the illusive cure for cancer is near.

It just isn't as fun to kick the global warming nuts because of how long they have been down

But I still can't resist it...  So first we had the Medieval warm period.  You remember, the hockey stick would've looked like it had been broken over the cross bar if they had actually shown what happened 1,000 years ago--long before our coal power plants and SUVs.  Then, when the GW proponents were called on it with too much irrefutable evidence, the warmistas change course and admitted to the warm period but said it was localized to just Europe.  Must have been a flukey current that caused a temporary and geographically limited effect.  In fact, the present position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as much as admits that they need the effect to have been local and not world wide for their theories about anthroprogenic global warming to hold water.  Only one problem.  It is not all that hard to go get the data to determine if the Medieval warm period was localized or global.  And Professor of Geochemistry Zunli Lu of Syracuse University has done just that.  Dr. Lu went down to Antarctica and did a whole bunch of coring samples.  He looked for several things.  One of which is ikaite, an icy, crystaline version of limestone.  Ikaite is not terribly stable.  Water, when frozen, holds it together.  It comes apart when the water melts.  Dr. Lu's corings showed lots of ikaite from 2,000 year old sediments.  And more from 3-500 years ago during the "little ice age".  The only problem is that he could not find much from about 1,000 years ago.  So I guess it got a little balmy down on the bottom of the Earth back then, at the same time as it got a little balmy in Europe.  Maybe my ancestors were lighting a WHOLE lot more campfires.  Can't wait to see how IPCC shifts to ignore this bit of data.

Monday, March 26, 2012

There is just something about 8,000 tons per square inch of pressure

The bathyscaphe Trieste 

On January 23rd, 1960, the bathysphere Trieste dove to the deepest part of any ocean on the face of the Earth.  The Mariana Trench. near Guam is 35,797 feet deep.  Auguste Picard and USN Lt. Don Walsh dove to the bottom in the Trieste on that day more than 52 years ago.  The only way to see outside of the craft was through a small, but very thick, tapered block of plexiglass--which at the time was the only clear material that could withstand the tremendous pressure of almost seven miles of water pressing down on it.  Only one problem.  It cracked when the Trieste was about 9/10ths of the way down.  The entire vessel shuddered.  They continued but ended up spending a truncated twenty minutes on the bottom--no doubt warily eying the window the whole time.  

 

Well, James Cameron, known more for making blockbusters like the Titanic than for making history, became the third person, and the only solo diver, to reach the bottom of the earth.  And guess what?  The laws of physics have not changed in the past five decades.  His vessel cracked, also.  This time it sprung a leak of hydraulic fluid.  It cut his time on the bottom short, too.

Excuse me!?

Microphones picked up the following exchange between Obama and Medvedev at the nuclear summit in Korea:
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Let's all try to make sure he has LOT'S of time after the next election.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Chemistry is cool



Michigan State Chemistry Professor put together a little demonstration for the High School kids who participated in the Chemistry Olympiad.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

I agree

 

With former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.  He said that Marco Rubio should be Romney's Vice Presidential nominee.  First and most obviously, he would ensure Florida for the Republican ticket.  It is very difficult for a Democrat to win without Florida.  Secondly, unlike Romney, he would fire up the party base.  For that matter, he would fire up a lot of people--a skill Romney lacks.  He also would draw a chunk of the Latino vote.  They are most definitely not locked in the Democrat column to begin with.  Latinos are often observant and conservative Catholics, they place a strong importance on family, hate Cuban communism and are hard working.  That makes them, or at least should make them, a prime voting target for any republican candidate.

I blame all y'all techie types

ht internet infographic thg 120321 wblog Sex, Alcohol and Showers: What Americans Would Give Up for the Internet   

Apparently 21% of Americans would rather give up sex than be disconnected from the internet.  77 percent would chose the internet over chocolate if they had too.  Worse, 69% said they'd give up coffee!!!  Most problematic of all, 73% of the American people said they would rather give up alcohol than be disconnected!!  Seriously, people.  Come on.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The time has come

 

And not because he won Illinois.  Or because Jeb Bush endorsed him.  Or even because Rush is now coming on board.  The time has come because the Tea Party is endorsing him.

Isaac, set me up one more time



Sadly, the cruise ship that starred in that 1976 to 1986 classic TV show "The Love Boat".  Has been sold for scrap.  It is being towed to the Cemsan shipyard in Aliaga, Turkey where it will be broken down.  Bon Voyage Julie McCoy, Gopher, Doc Bricker and Captain Stuebing.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

I wish HE were running for President

 
Above is Rep. Paul Ryan.  The Republican Congressman is the Chair of the House Budget Committee.  He just released a proposal to simplify the tax code, creating only a 10% and a 25% bracket, and to cur Federal spending by $5.3 trillion over the next ten years.  The cuts are made for the simple reason that we do not have the money.  Same reason I makes cuts in my own spending.  Seems pretty straight forward to me.

Spring came early this year

I just walked outside and it is somewhere north of 70 degrees in Boston.  But that is not what I meant.  I meant it really did come early this year.  On March 20th, to be exact, and actually on the 19th for certain time zones.  The equinox happens when the Sun's path across the sky crosses the equator.  The vernal equinox is today, signalling the start of Spring.  In fact, this is the earliest the Sun has crossed the equator since 1896.  If you are like me, you automatically think of March 21st as the day heralding in Spring.  However, in the past hundred years, the vernal equinox has only fallen on March 21st a grand total of 36 times.  So just how long are the seasons this year?  This long:
Winter: 88.994 days
Spring: 92.758 days
Summer: 93.651 days
Autumn: 89.842 days
So for all of us north of the equator keeping track, we are getting 7.573 more days of the warm seasons than we have to endure of the cold seasons.  Happy Spring.

Why I have thought for a while it will be President Romney

One of two things tend to happen in Republican primaries.  Either a right of center, party establishment candidate gets enough traction from the center early enough in the primary to crowd out the farther to the right candidates (e.g. Ronald Reagan) or the anti-establishment candidate snaps up enough center right votes and gets momentum (e.g. John McCain) to win.  Romney falls into the second category, he is just not exciting enough to get a post Florida bump, cruise to a big Super Tuesday and bury the opposition like McCain did.  Still, the formula is what holds true far more often than not.  And do not mistake malaise on the part of the Romney supporters for a sign he will not win the general election.  The fact of the matter is that he has been polling pretty much even with Obama while being attacked from the right.  That will not happen in the fall.  Bloomberg has a much better (and more in depth) analysis than I have given, but the bottom line is the same: the middle right Republican candidate who emerged (Romney because he had a campaign organization in place and the ability to raise untold amounts of cash) was going to beat the far right field because no viable farther right of center candidate emerged to pull in the rest of the party.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Damn I hate to agree with Osama bin Laden

 

The Washington Post explains Osama's rationale for ordering a hit on President Obama:
“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. … Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan. 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Why I think Mitt Romney will beat Obama in the fall

 



Back from Hell on earth

 

Orlando.  My father landed on a beach in Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.  But he never took me to Orlando (though in fairness my Mom did right when Disney World opened and then I got too old for them to worry about it).  I have been dozens of times.  I guess I give the edge in bravery to my Dad, but I take the stupidity prize, because he only landed once.  I had a few posts cued up for the last couple of days, but they did not go through.   Since they are a bit dated, I will try to catch up with a few today.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

5,330,000 -- that is Five Million Three Hundred Thirty Three thousand


Jobs lost under the Obama administration.  Over five freaking million who are still trying to find employment that cannot.  The longest "jobs recession" since WWII.  Spin that all you want, but Obama is a one term President.  And the sad thing is that his ridiculous spending on unproductive, ill-conceived, stupid and illegal federal expenditures will curse the people of these United States for years.

How you know you are old


Chuck Norris turns 72 today.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Let me get this straight


First I pay my tax dollars to fund up to 100% of the construction of wind farms.  Then I am forced to buy the electricity they produce at many multiples of the cost of market priced electricity.  And now I hafta pay them NOT to produce electricty due to peiodic oversupply!?  I guess that makes as much sense as the rest of Obama's energy policies.

Sarkozy says France has too many foreigniers


No kidding.  It must be at least half full of Frenchmen.

It is happening



Or at least Obama is trying to make it happen.  You remember when Obama got elected and we were all worried he was trying to make the US subservient to a new world order led by the UN and the Europeans.  Cuz they are soooooo much more civilized than we are?  He's tried it with things like AGW and carbon taxes/credits, but that whole thing was a house of cards so he had to jump off of the Kyoto through Durban fantasy of equalizing our wealth to everyone else for the greater good.  Well, Leon Panetta may have just crossed the line.  He told Congress the legal basis for enforcing a no-fly in Syria was international permission to do so.  Excuse me!?  Hitler and the Axis powers would have given international permission for us to start massacring Jews.  That is exactly why our founders placed the only limits on Executive military action within our Constitution.  Whether it is through a declaration of war, a separate war powers act or even a treaty (which must by ratified by the Senate to be effective), the Constitution prohibits any President from taking military action unless it is "legal" within these fifty states.  And if Panetta violates the Constitution for the benefit of and at the orders of another country, I believe the technical legal term is "treason."

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Spoiler alert for Mayan Doomsdayers!

 Doomsdayers have focused on the supposed Doomsday date of December 21, 2012 as the day of the apocalypse under the Mayan calendar.



Only one problem.  Julius Caesar invented Leap Year in about 45 BC to correct for the extra quarter day each year.


So if my math is right, we have had 514 Leap Years since is was invented.  And the Mayan calendar dates to the fifth century BC--four hundred plus years before the invention of Leap Year.  Which means that according to the Mayan calendar, it is sometime in July 2013 already.  Doomsday came and went yet no apocalypse.  Well, except for Obama being elected . . .

How easy is it to dupe the new TSA strip search scanners?

TSA

Apparently very easy.  Jon Corbett sewed a pocket inside of his loose shirt so it hung away from and beside his body.  He then walked through billion dollar, cancer causing boondoggle.  And continued right through to the other side without incident.  Turns out that metal objects show up great if they are outlined against your body, but do not show up at all if they are beside your body where they blend into the dark background.  Oh, and there is no way he could have gotten the object through with the old fashioned screening. Good job, TSA.  Maybe we should be thankful.  The way they are operating, law abiding citizens can also smuggle weapons on board so they can return fire.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Romney


Is going to be the nominee.  The party is starting to unite around him.  Mike Huckabee on Fox News:
But if the trend continues over the weekend that we've started to see with Romney, sort of, bringing people together as people are saying "Okay, look, if he's going to win, let's go ahead and get behind him."
That's what I think is starting to happen.
Former (conservative) Governor and Senator from Missouri and United States Attorney General Ashcroft endorsed him.  So did noted conservative Congressman and Majority Leader Cantor from Virginia and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has his own conservative bona fides.

And I love how the Main Stream Media is reporting left and right (but mainly left) that the active Republican Primary has irreparably bruised whoever emerges as the nominee.  Quite the contrary.  Romney's name recognition is now higher than Obama's.  By being beat up by the conservative wing of his party, the undecided center probably thinks he is more moderate than he really is--which is a good thing in the general election.  Plus in today's world the electorate as the attention span of  gnat.  Talk to me two days before the election day about polls, maybe.  Most of all: damn near persistent double digit employment, real inflation, gas at five bucks a gallon and a few more Obama buddies who fattened at the green energy trough with your money.  That is why he won't get re-elected.

Who invented WiFi? GPS?

Hedy Lamarr: Inventor of WiFi

It is arguable, but I am going with Hedy Lamarr.  That's right, the classic screen beauty was definitely not just another pretty face.  She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in 1913.  She was discovered by Loius B. Mayer and worked with the like of Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Bob Hope and Cecille B. DeMille.  But did you know she came up with the frequency-hopping shared-spectrum idea.  Initially she thought she could make radio controlled torpedos harder to jam if the guidance system erratically changed between 88 frequencies.  You can look up the patent if you want (US Patent 2,292,387)  And that alone would be notable for the Hollywood beauty.  However, in true silver screen fashion, the story gets better.  Lamarr's frequency hopping idea serves as the basis for modern spread spectrum communication technologies like blue tooth, WiFi and CDMA.  So next time you are walking down the street, listening to your smart phone give you directions through your ear bud, thank Hedy.

Friday, March 2, 2012

The Pope is Catholic, Bear go poop in the woods . . .


And another "green" energy firm that got a boatload of cash from the Obama administration is doing a massive layoff on its way down the drain.  But don't worry.  Abound isn't at all like Solyndra that got a half a billion in DOE loans.  It only got $400 Million of your money.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The TSA is useless

Don't take my word for it.  Ask Steve Moore, a former head of the FBI's Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force Al Queda squad, a 35 year pilot, and too many more credentials to list:
Frankly, the professional experience I have had with TSA has frightened me. Once, when approaching screening for a flight on official FBI business, I showed my badge as I had done for decades in order to bypass screening. (You can be envious, but remember, I was one less person in line.) I was asked for my form which showed that I was armed. I was unarmed on this flight because my ultimate destination was a foreign country. I was told, "Then you have to be screened." This logic startled me, so I asked, "If I tell you I have a high-powered weapon, you will let me bypass screening, but if I tell you I'm unarmed, then I have to be screened?" The answer? "Yes. Exactly." Another time, I was bypassing screening (again on official FBI business) with my .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and a TSA officer noticed the clip of my pocket knife. "You can't bring a knife on board," he said. I looked at him incredulously and asked, "The semi-automatic pistol is okay, but you don't trust me with a knife?" His response was equal parts predictable and frightening, "But knives are not allowed on the planes."...

Obama has admitted he is OK with the high gas prices

Really.  He may not be interested in bringing the price of oil down, but I think most Americans are:
The Heritage Foundation points out that hammering the American consumer with high gas prices to make electric and hybrid cars more appealing is consistent with Obama administration policy and Chu's philosophy. That explains the refusal to allow the building of the Keystone XL pipeline and to allow drilling in wide areas of the U.S. and offshore areas.
Let me put this another way.  Obama is imposing (another) de facto tax that is crushing our economy and takes money directly out of your wallet to benefit a connected few and to please the left wing intelligentsia, but of course they are smarter than us.  So shut up, sit down and pay up. For your own good.

Photo ID for voter registration wouldn't work

Buddy

Cuz, as is eveidenced above, Buddy takes a fine photo.  And he has already registered to vote in Albuquerque.