Turns out actual scientific inquiry and study of the temperature of the earth have shown that there is no global warming coinciding with increased carbon-dioxide. There were a few years of warming, but apparently that stopped around 1998. But we keep pumping out ever more carbon dioxide. If the models used to project increasing global warming were at all correct or valid we should see increasing warming… and if anything the earth is cooling recently at exactly the same time there are massive increases in our global human output of carbon dioxide. Here’s the stunning report of a radio inteview in The Australian:

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued … This is not what you’d expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you’d expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up … So (it’s) very unexpected, not something that’s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it’s very significant."

…

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Read the whole thing, its absolutely stunning and not a matter of argument but a result of factual current scientific inquiry. All of those "the sky is warming we are all going to be swimming in rising seawater" cries you hear are based on old data and now proven wrong theories of how the global climate works.

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Picked yourself off the floor yet? Still skeptical? Couldn’t blame you as the "fat is bad" message has been universal from all media and health professionals for 50 years. Turns out it was all based on bad original science, followed by a "cascade effect" where other public opinion makers were increasingly influenced by those before until it became conventional wisdom. Here’s a brief quote from the article in the NY Times, Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus:

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

…

Read it all.

Shocking doesn’t begin to describe it. Over 50 years of being told to avoid fat at all costs on the basis of… no solid science. None. Zero.

Every study intended to prove the link between high fat diets and heart problems failing to find any link. What has 50 years of science and research shown? High fat has no relation to causing heart disease. Its not bad for you.

Even worse is that the whole drive to avoid fat may have lead to disastrous health problems like the modern plague of obesity with all its problems, diabetes for one. Apparently the science attempting to link the high carbohydrate diet (which most adopted on advice of the ‘health experts) with obesity is not yet clear. It also isn’t apparently clear that an Adkins type protein diet is good either. We should not leap to unfounded conclusions if we are to learn anything from this whole mess.

What now? Go ahead and eat the fatty foods in good conscience. Eat less pasta and carbs, but maybe not go overboard and eat ALL protein. In other words return to a more balanced and natural traditional diet which includes lots of high fat items, but eat it in moderation. Apparently lots of fat in your food won’t kill you but getting fat will.

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The events in the power struggle over the national nomination system for President continues on its inevitable path this week.  The national Democratic Committee (a free association of independent and politically sovereign State political parties) threatened the Florida State party with excluding its nominees to the National Convention for nominating the selection of Democrats nationwide to the Presidency… and after some consideration and discussion locally in Florida it was decided to tell the national group to stuff it:

From the NY Times:  PEMBROKE PINES, Fla., Sept. 23 — The Florida Democratic Party announced Sunday that it would move ahead with its plan to hold its presidential primary on Jan. 29 despite the national party’s decision to block the state delegation from the 2008 Democratic convention.

State party leaders said that even if none of the state’s delegates were seated at next summer’s Democratic presidential convention, the earlier primary would still help determine the nominee.

As they say, ‘That is that’.  The National Committee can do nothing more to try to enforce its will as it has no legal power to do anything other than threaten (hollowly) to not seat delegates from Florida.  The Florida state Democrats have it figured out correctly: even if the National Committee follows through they will still have vastly more influence on the nominee of their party by going early because voters in other states will see how the candidates actually compete in the type of states they must win in order to take the Presidency in November 2008. And after all the charges of voter intimidation etc. following events in Florida the last two Presidential elections does anyone really think that when it comes down to the Nominating Convention in the Summer that the votes of Florida’s Democrat voters will be disenfranchised by having their votes literally taken away from them?  No Presidential candidate who hoped to win the support of that critical state would dare to follow through with that.  Neither would the rest of the nation’s Democrats in that moment as they look forward determined to beat the Republicans and regain the Presidency.

So which State will be next to move their Primary forward to match or beat Florida? Given the schedule if none move then Florida will set the tone going into the most critical day of voting and will have a solid chance of choosing the nominee for each party. That’s great for Florida but much less so for other states of large stature like California,Texas, or New York. Somehow one doubts this mess has settled just yet.

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Its the end of August 2007 and we are smack dab in the middle of the Presidential election season… for an election that is well over a year away. Further, the Primary system is accelerating into a state of meltdown as the political elites of each state have finally come to the conclusion that it is their duty to maximize the impact of the people that elected them, the citizens of their own state.  Why finally? Because all of this was written and inevitable when the election laws were changed in the various States back in the 1960’s-1970’s in an attempt to ‘clean up politics’ by taking the nomination process for elected politicians out of the ’smoky back rooms’ and giving the choice directly to the voting public. It was the beginning of the misguided and disastrous campaign reform efforts that have now resulted in massive free speech intrusions by Federal bureaucrats which plainly don’t work and never can if we retain the least bit of our Free Speech Rights. There are many unintended and damaging consequences of these attempts at reform, we’ll focus here on the one poking up at the moment.  Betsy Newmark identified the precise symptom that lead to this point, The demise of party power:

National conventions have degenerated into four-day celebrations for each party and an opportunity to get some prime time TV coverage. The one thing they haven’t been is the method for choosing a candidate. Since the rise of the primary system in the 1960s, the conventions have lost their traditional role. And now, even the pretense that conventions choose the nominee is being cast aside. As states ignore the Democratic Party’s rules about when they should hold their convention and schedule primaries earlier and earlier, the DNC has retaliated by saying they’ll take away Florida’s convention votes. Now, Michigan is also planning to leapfrog the DNC’s schedule and will probably face the same penalty.

The primary system originally worked and was crafted in the schedule it was because the national political parties had the power to make it work.  Some history and civics is necessary here.

Legally speaking there is no such thing as a ‘national party’ with any sort of power over anything.  The ‘DNC’ and ‘RNC’ are voluntary associations of elected officials in the House of Representatives to help each other get re-elected and to help elect more like minded people to that particular chamber.  There’s another set for the Senate that does the same thing for each party’s officials in the Senate.  That’s it, finito.  There is no such thing, anywhere, as any sort of organization that actually exists as a central parent organization that can tell the State parties what to do.

Political parties came about from our right of freedom of ‘association and assembly’ as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.  As technically fully sovereign political entities, each State makes its own election laws and enforces them.  All politics truly is local.  In each State like minded people get together and register a political affiliation by the local laws of that State in order to coordinate and do the things that political party’s do.  Technically speaking political party’s don’t have to submit to the will of ANYONE other than themselves in terms of arranging meetings or activities, not their local State and most certainly not the Federal Government, because of our right of Assembly and Association.  Of course if a political party wants to have its nomination procedure whenever it dang well pleases without consideration for the State government’s desires in running elections then it would have to pay for its own activities…. which is just way too expensive so they just don’t.  But they could.  There’s lots of things they could do, and that’s where we arrive at the current developing mess.  Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, can tell a State political party when to vote, or nominate, whenever or however they wish to do so.  They can schedule their elections whenever they please to choose.

And now we are seeing that.  Back in the days when the State party’s officials selected people to run for office and go to nominating conventions the national cooperative conglomerations that are what people think of as the National party’s had a lot of power.  The parties raised the money, picked the candidates, and ran the campaigns.  Politics was (and still is at higher levels) the business of personal relationships.  It was a club of people who knew each other or at least of each other.  Nobody wanted to get kicked out of the club, a career ending event.  The national party, as such, had influence because of the vast sums of cash floating around among the players on the national political stage.  State politicians did some serious politicking and maneuvering in the negotiations setting the election schedule but abided by the result of the final agreement because if they didn’t their word wasn’t worth anything and nobody would deal with them anymore.  Everyone in the club would know.

In many ways politics is still like this.  Politics is a team sport and loyalty is the most prized virtue in it.  Very few politicians want to be seen among their colleagues as not being a team player.  So even though the primary political forces that crafted the political compromises which created the National Primary schedule vanished 30-40 years ago the system limped along because nobody wanted to upset the cart too much.  There wasn’t a clear payoff to politicians for doing so, while at the same time there was a clear personal political cost to be paid by politicians advocating ‘reckless’ changes.  Reckless because those in the know are aware that there is no longer any way to effectively coordinate and set agreements for the timing of the national primary system.  Each State’s political parties are too selfish and have too little centralizing counterbalancing pressure because of campaign finance reforms to create the conditions for compromise.  So if the system broke everyone knew there wasn’t any real way to fix it in the current system.  Which is why they just let it ride as the system got more and more out of alignment with changing demographics and political realities.  And while parties aren’t the bosses of candidates any more it is the rare politician who doesn’t want the help of his fellow party members to get and stay elected.  So a combination of fear and uncertainty kept the system more or less the same through 40 years of neglect and stasis.

That is until the voters in various states woke up and started pressuring their State politicians to do something about the growing imbalances in the progressively dysfunctional nomination system.  After decades of experiencing their votes effectively having zero influence on the nomination process the problems with the system became common knowledge and voters demanded that something be done about it.  Loudly.  Repeatedly.  It became a campaign issue.  People got upset.  These forces changed the political equation for politicians.  The strong desires of their voters are much more important than vague worries about the abstract system of elections or pressure from their political party.  So now they are doing what their voters want, not what the political elite wants, as was the intention of the campaign and elections reforms all those years ago.

That is what is happening now.  It was a long time coming, but given the change in interests created by the reforms it was only a matter of time.  There’s no legal way to stop them from outside the States making the changes.  The Federal government has no right to regulate voluntary political party gatherings and activities, and any attempts to do so will go straight to the Supreme Court and almost certainly get immediately struck down given recent rulings by the Court on such matters.  The results of moving so far forward in the election cycle are likely to reward the states that do it, by giving more impact to the choice of the voters of that State on the nomination process, and thus the politicians in those States that made the change will be rewarded by their voters.  Threats by the national organizing committees are not likely to have much impact for the reasons stated in Betsy’s excellent post on the issue that was quoted above.  So there’s no reason to think they will change voluntarily.

There’s no sign that this trend of moving primaries forward will stop or slow down now, and to the contrary now that change has begun the moves are happing with increasing speed and aggressiveness.  There is simply no incentive for any one State to allow itself to be late in the process and thus in practical terms have no voice in choosing the nominees of each party.

The current system is broken, well and truly broken, and it will remain so until there is wide recognition of the fact.  It took 40 years for public recognition of the changed reality to get this far.  We can only hope recognition of the problems and a will to do something about it is a bit faster.

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I know, I know… they're all melting right? To hear Al Gore talk one would think all the glaciers of the world are melting like a Popsicle dropped on Phoenix asphalt in the summer. The world isn't static though, never has been and never will be, and while some glaciers are shrinking others are growing. Specifically scientists report that glaciers are growing in the Himalayas high above Pakistan says the BBC:

Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.

They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.

The debate about climate change should be based on science, not carefully chosen anecdotes showing selective evidence of melting ice here or there. The article by the BBC linked above is an anecdote taken by itself, and is shown here to counter some of the propaganda of global warming demagogues. The proper questions are those relating to the overall situation of the planet based on an analysis of all relevant evidence. And beyond that, from the science and research into past climate history to provide a useful frame of reference to evaluate what is or is not happening now and what if anything we can or are doing to effect it.

While Al Gore and his cohorts in the global panic squad present misleading evidence chosen to support claimed global warming, real environmental scientists are working around the globe to gather and analyze their way towards a working understanding of the forces at work. Rational debate should proceed based on the hard science when it is ready. We aren't there yet.

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Many commentators thought that the recently voted ceasefire to the fighting is Lebanon would fail, but for perhaps different reasons than it is looking right now to actually be happening.  Pundits far and wide assumed that the Lebanese government would at least go along with the perception of deploying troops according to the agreement to occupy the territory currently under Israeli control.  But Hizbollah won't let them get even that far:

Lebanon's cabinet indefinitely postponed its meeting.

After five hours of discussions on Saturday, it had agreed to accept a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution with reservations.

The second gathering was meant to consider the details of implementation.

However, the issue of Hezbollah's disarmament and its military presence in southern Lebanon continues to cause major tensions within the fragile government, our correspondent reports.

He says that without a meeting and an agreed plan, it seems that the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese army troops to the south is unlikely to go ahead.

Even if the planned ceasefire happens, the prospects of continuing skirmishes on the ground will remain high, he adds.

Hezbollah, a member of the government, says it will abide by the resolution but retains the right to continue attacks until the last Israeli soldier has left Lebanese soil.

A cease fire isn't a cease fire if one party to the fighting just keeps firing.  That's an oxymoron isn't it, the total opposite of the stated goal?  And a contract is no longer binding if one party refuses to comply with specified portions of the contract… such as moving troops into the area of fighting to enforce the peace and disarm Hizbollah.  Lebanese refusal to even pretend to comply with such major elements of the agreement end the paper agreement before it has really even begun.  Which means the whole "cease fire deal" is dead.  Or it should be.  Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters thinks so:

As expected, Nasrallah and Siniora have let Israel off the hook — and provided the political cover for further military action against both. If Lebanon refuses to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, expect the UN Security Council to wash its hands of the issue.

I suspect he is right about the first part but I'm quite skeptical of the second.  Will the U.N. Security Council, for perhaps the first time in its existence, act rationally and reasonably in recognizing the plain fact of the failure of this effort?

I don't see why.  Why would they start now?  Blatant failure and results exactly the opposite of those supposedly desired are common with the U.N. but its never really phased them before.  Somalia, Rawanda, or Sudan come to anyone's minds?

The U.N. is most feckless when it comes to dealing with the Middle East and Israel.  Do you think the member nations of the U.N. Security Council are really interested in giving Israel fair treatment?  Decades of one sided "resolutions" that scold Israel and make every attempt to protect and assist its enemies make plain the international prejudice against Israel.

If the Lebanse utterly fail to even attempt to keep up their side of the bargain I would expect the U.N. to do exactly what it has always done to Israel:  hold it to a unique double standard and demand that Israel comply to the letter with the agreement even though other parties are not even making a pretense about complying with their portion of the deal.  Just like the Oslo "Peace Accords", which were a sick joke since the exact opposite happened in an ongoing way with higher death totals than ever before from terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.  Israel was expected to keep complying with every element of its part of the various negotiated bargains while the Palestinians were expected to violate every agreement and keep killing Israelis.

The current global reaction in placing blame on Israel for the current conflict only reinforces the same prejudices.  I find it hard to see how Israel gets better treatment now from the "International Community" than it was when it wasn't invading a neighbor to world condemnation.

I'll make my own prediction.  I predict the U.N. will ignore the "delays" in compliance of the Lebanese, Hizbollah, and U.N. forces while demanding immediate and full compliance from Israel regardless.  The question to me is, what will Israel do about it?

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Watch this video clip for clear examples of how the news out of the middle east is blatantly manipulated and then accepted by a willing Western Press.

Click just below on the continue reading>> link to see the video clip.

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After the testimony by key generals to congress yesterday there is more talk than ever about civil war in Iraq. Certainly something seems to be happening, but Strategy Page I think is correct that it is not a civil war because that would imply the Sunnis are able to fight back effectively, but rather is likely the opening stages of a what I would call a purge:

Now you understand. In 2003, the apparatus of Sunni domination, was taken apart. Sunni Arabs no longer held nearly all the senior military, police and government jobs. The Sunni Arab secret police force(s) were disbanded, as was the army. For the first time in over three centuries, the Sunni Arabs of Baghdad were not in charge, and they did not like it. They have been resisting this change in status ever since. But in the last three years, things have only gotten worse for the Sunni Arabs. The new government (dominated by Kurds and Shia Arabs, who are 80 percent of the population) has created an army and police force. So not only are the Sunni Arabs outnumbered, but they are confronted with an army and police force controlled by their enemies.

And it gets worse, because the Sunni Arab dictatorship got worse as time went on. The last 10-15 years of Saddam's rule were particularly horrible for the Kurds and Shia Arabs. There were massacres and constant terror from Saddam's secret police. So not only are the Sunni Arabs now outnumbered, and facing over a quarter million soldiers and police they do not control, they are also on the receiving end of revenge attacks by millions of enraged Kurds and Shia Arabs.

This is not the recipe for civil war, it's the prelude to massacre and mass expulsion. Of the Sunni Arabs. In Iraq, everyone is aware of this, but too many foreigners, including many who should know better, just don't get it.

Genocide you think? No, not hardly. For that the Sunnis would have to be stupid enough to stick around to be killed. 25% of them have already skipped out of Iraq because of the growing violence and it is likely the vast majority would follow if things move in that direction.

On the other hand the gathering violence could just be the final spasms of payback before civil law gathers enough force to effectively prevent it. The increasing violence and murder could be a sign that those holding grudges are acting on them while they can because they see the changes coming, the growing power of the law. After the Sunnis ruthlessly murdered, raped, and tortured their way through many decades of ruthless oppression is it hard to imagine that there was going to be a price paid by the Sunnis for their loss of power? A price exacted in the currency it was earned, in blood.

And we have been expecting something like that since the beginning. Most just thought it was going to be a few years ago. But the Sunnis have been so busy scaring everyone with suicide bombings and general mayhem that they seem to have averted that result for a time. The Sunni attempt to terrorize their way back into power failed though. Worse, it likely enraged the Shias and Kurds even more than they were before. Now the formerly oppressed have the tools to take revenge, and ironically they have those tools precisely because of the Sunni wave of terrorism.

Maybe there is Karma.

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I'm off for a summer vacation so there will be no posting here until I'm back in a week or so.  Hope everyone is having a great summer!

Deep Keel

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Lord Vader, Supermarket Day Shift Manager…

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They admire and promote Jihadism in the tradition of Al Jazira, which is to say they support terrorists and their ideology.  Watch this Vent with Michelle Malkin from HotAir .

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Its all going according to The Plan, Ariel Sharon's Plan.  Or at least, that's what I think so far.  If you pay attention to the news at all you know that Israel is at war right now in Gaza and Lebanon.  You've no need to look here for coverage of who is planning what or even less who is doing what, because I really have no specific knowledge other than reading the same news reports everyone else is.  What you are reading here is speculation about what might be and why.  

So here I go speculating away about how it got to this point for Israel.  I've no sources per se, and certainly no insider information.  This is an analysis of what was publicly done and said in the past, and perhaps how that lead to now.  Disclaimers made, lets head back to The Plan.

Its all Ariel Sharon's plan.  Or at the least, the conditions that invited various other parties to attack Israel and begin the current war were intentionally put into place by Sharon.  The Plan has worked, so far.

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Hat Tip to NeverYetMelted for the image. 

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Those wacky North Koreans are in the news again today because off all the missile tests they've been launching, 7 so far. Perhaps its meant as a salute to the USA on its birthday, the 4th of July? Sort of really large fireworks… no I don't think so either. The Strategy Page has other news of the wacky North Koreans to add to the show:

Meanwhile, North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem.

Quite literally biting the hand that feeds them. Maybe they just thought China would tolerate it because they just don't want to deal with a failed North Korea and all the refugees it would create. That is true to a point and is the reason China hasn't put the screws on North Korea to stop their nuclear weapons program so far.

So what happens now? The crazy North Korean "Great Leader" has let his people starve in the millions just recently so it isn't clear that he will mind so much to do it again. Some trains might actually be worth more to him than a few million people he's having trouble feeding and supporting. Maybe he did this on purpose so he has an excuse to eliminate a whole bunch more people he finds undesirable. Maybe he just doesn't care, or doesn't know how bad it is because his sycophants don't tell him. His ruling clique appears to be quite happy to do whatever he wants as long as they are taken care of so it isn't clear to me at least that there is any real hope of change anytime soon. So called "People Power" only works against governments who won't ruthlessly mow down the mobs protesting.

China clearly thinks that this move will get their trains back and teach the nutty welfare state client a lesson. We'll see.

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Not that I took it, or was there recently, or really had anything at all to do with it.  I've watched some World Cup Soccer from Germany recently though so… that counts right?  Yeah, that's the ticket!  Looking at this photo I fondly remember one of the reasons I enjoyed my visit there several years ago.  This photo is actually from Oktoberfest back in September-October of 2005, but hey everyone's drinking it up in Germany right now so why quibble?

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There's a report out today that some Republicans in Congress are talking about cutting our donation to the U.N. in response to their continued corruption and refusal to reform. Its a nice idea but the proposed cuts are really laughable:

At least $17 million has been sliced this week from the Bush administration's appropriations request for the U.N. regular budget, as frustration with the United Nations continues to fester among conservative lawmakers.

Rep. Scott Garrett, New Jersey Republican, yesterday won approval in a House subcommittee to cut $2 million from the U.S. contribution to the U.N. budget, saying that taxpayer money should not be used to lobby the U.S. government.

He was referring to a recent speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who told two left-leaning think tanks, the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, that Washington should do more to defend the international organization in public.

Another $15 million was diverted from the $1.28 billion request for contributions to international organizations to fund domestic law-enforcement programs. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, successfully demanded that the United States should not pay anything toward the new Human Rights Council as long as countries on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism such as Cuba serve on the 47-member body.

A few million here and there out of billions being given to the U.N., hardly enough to send a serious signal.  Its election year posturing pure and simple.

If they were serious they'd threaten most or all of the funding and they might get a response.  Short of that there is just too much money to be stolen and power to be abused to make it worth changing for just a few million dollars.  Much less that the corrupt scum in the U.N. can probably get the EU to make up to counterbalance the US.

So everyone is posturing all around while the U.N. corruption, theft, abandonment of principles, and child sex slavery continues unabated.  Nice.

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The word has been rumbling around for a few years that soon technology would be able to grow teeth. Generally it was assumed or discussed as coming from biotechnology, and that's on the way too at some point. But there is something coming out sooner than that, in fact a device that can grow teeth has already been approved. Some Canadian researchers have developed a device that uses ultrasound to grow teeth and bones :

Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones.

The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.

"Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor and nano-circuit design expert, told AFP.

…

With the help of Chen and Ying Tsui, another engineering professor, the initial massive handheld device was shrunk to fit inside a person's mouth.

It is still at the prototype stage, but the trio expects to commercialize it within two years, Chen said.

The bigger version has already received approvals from American and Canadian regulatory bodies, he noted.

So the future is here now, if in a limited sense for now.  In a few short years we should see widely availabe treatments that can for the first time ever actually reverse tooth damage and grow deformed or damaged bone to fix a range of problems.  Amazing stuff.

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Yesterday the AP put out such a stunningly biased article in an attempt to sway the public on such a critical subject that the U.S. Senate Committee with jurisdiction over the matter was moved to correct the AP. The AP implied yesterday that U.S. experts in climatology unanimously agreed that Al Gore's movie making the case for Global Warming is correct in all important respects. Such a claim would be critically important to the public debate about Global Warming… if it were true.

One would expect a major media organization like the AP to report at least partially truthful news, or at least true in the limited and carefully chosen items of truth that they choose to report, but they didn't rise to even that standard this time. This time they published an article that is a blatant whopping lie. Here's the statement directly from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (emphasis added):

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Heh.  Couldn't help myself with that title.  For a bit of fun you might try watching today's Vent from Hot Air about Global Warming.

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So the news is out, again, that the elected Iraqi government is offering insurgents amnesty for killing American and Iraqi troops. The deal offered is supposedly this, from The Times in London:

The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal. The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; a halt to US operations against insurgent strongholds; an end to human rights violations, including those by coalition troops; and compensation for victims of attacks by terrorists or Iraqi and coalition forces. It will pledge to take action against Shia militias and death squads. It will also offer to review the process of “de-Baathification” and financial compensation for the thousands of Sunnis who were purged from senior jobs in the Armed Forces and Civil Service after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

…

The Government intends to form a committee to distinguish between groups that can be considered legitimate resistance and those that are beyond the pale. “For those that defended their country against foreign troops, we need to open a new page . . . They did not mean to destabilise Iraq. They were defending Iraqi soil,” said Adnan Ali, a senior member of the Dawa party of Nouri alMaliki, the Prime Minister.

Reading directly from the draft package, Mahmoud al-Mashaadani, the Parliament’s Sunni Speaker, told The Times: “There will be a general amnesty to release all the prisoners who were not involved in the shedding of innocent Iraqis’ blood.”

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You'll see and hear a lot about this in the news over the next few days I would expect, but at a minimum this announcement means one clear thing:  Saddam Hussein was in violation of U.N. mandates and the treaty signed at the end of the first Gulf War that ended hostilities.  It is really irrelevant whether Saddam did or didn't have massive stockpiles.  He certainly had enough to make our most horrific nightmares come true by enabling terrorists to conduct an attack with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) capable of killing many thousands of people.

That fear, that Saddam would give some of his WMD to terrorists to use against us his most hated enemy, was a driving force for our invasion and was taken by many to be the sole reason there was any legitimacy at all to the it.  The President expressed many other reasons for invading, but opponents focused only on the WMD aspect.    Opponents used the failure to find WMD early on to build opposition to the war, building the meme that it was all a lie to cover a desire to steal oil.  Of course it wasn't a lie and far from stealing oil we've spent huge sums trying to help Iraq, but then the core opposition was never about those facts or the truth anyways.  The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam had stockpiles, significant stockpiles, of WMD at his disposal and available to give to terrorists if he had chosen to do so.  If the lack of WMD made the war illegitimate then the reverse ought to be true.  I won't hold my breath.

Here's the link to a Fox News story discussing the news, with a link to the clip in a little box on the right under the Video tab right next to the Photo tab.  The video clip both shows the press conference announcing the 500 WMD found in Iraq since 2004 and a discussion of it.  Here's a bit of the text:

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Head on over and check it out if you are at all interested in the debate over the War in Iraq.  Get ready to hear lots of 'reports' questioning just how dangerous these weapons were or their age or whatever, trying to nitpick the whole core truth until it dies the death of a thousand cuts.  The elephant in the room will remain however, that 500 WMD found on accident by our military in Iraq so far is a significant stockpile of dangerous banned weapons, and the report states they have reason to believe there are many more left unfound in Iraq.

The hardcore militant Lefty types masquerading as 'antiwar peace activists' won't change their minds because of this.  Who really cares right?  They are a small fraction of our citizens anyway.  Reality is perception and perhaps that reality will change with more truths leaking out that are helpful to the War effort.  Citizens in the middle decide the elections anyway and they are more open to changing their minds based on facts.  Its a long way until the election in November, I suspect the ground will shift in a number of ways before then.

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Click on the image to see the original in its full high resolution glory.  About the picture, from Pacific Command (PACOM):

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 18, 2006) — USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) carrier strike groups steam in formation during a joint photo exercise (PHOTOEX) in preparation for Valiant Shield 2006. The PHOTOEX featured 14 ships as well as 17 aircraft from Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corp including a B2 bomber. The Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group is currently participating in Valiant Shield 2006, the largest joint exercise in recent history. Held in the Guam operating area (June 19-23), the exercise involves 28 Naval vessels including three carrier strike groups, more than 300 aircraft and more than 20,000 service members from the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Jarod Hodge)

(HT to Opfor for the this, which is a mere copy of their original idea, which is a good one.  ) 

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CNN has a poll out today that has a number of interesting numbers, of course the most reported being about Sen. Hillary Clinton.  Here are the numbers from CNN (emphasis added):

Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would "definitely not vote for" both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's candidate in 2004. (Poll)

Forty-eight percent said the same of former Vice President Al Gore, who has repeatedly denied he intends to run again for president.

…

Only 30 percent said they would "definitely not vote for" Giuliani; 34 percent said that of McCain.

As for Bush, brother of the current president, 63 percent said there was no way he would get their vote. The younger Bush has denied interest in running for president in 2008.

Among all choices, Clinton had the highest positive number; of those polled, 22 percent said they would "definitely vote for" her.

Giuliani was next with 19 percent, followed by Gore with 17 percent, Kerry with 14 percent, McCain with 12 percent and Bush at 9 percent.

I'm not surprised about any of those numbers, among other things partisans in recent decades aren't known for giving failed Presidential candidates another chance.  And I don't think Hillary has been fooling much of anyone in the last 6 years, she made much too big an impression after 8 years in power with her husband Bill.

To me what is perhaps most useful in the results is the message it should send to the Bush clan:  no more Presidencies for you guys.  Seriously.  Since our Revolution against Monarchist Britain we have as a nation opposed the formation of a "ruling elite".  The Kennedy's are a darling of the Left, but then they prefer authoritarian governments anyway.  But the Left is not a majority of American voters, not by a long shot, and the rest of the nation wasn't really happy about voting for the current Bush initially purely based on suspicion of the clannish royal nature of his nomination so soon after his father's.  We don't need and certainly don't want hereditary rule.  So the numbers showing overwhelming opposition to Bush #3 ought to be clearly understood by the Bush Clan.  This generation of Bushies is done, at least as far as President is concerned.  Senator or Governor or Mayor or Ambassador or Secretary-of-whatever… sure.  But no more Presidents until another generation comes along.  

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North Korea is acting up again, having fueled a new missile with dramatically longer range for a test.  The reports of the range of this new missile are conflicting and range from "possibly reaching Alaska" to "possibly reaching any place in the continental US".  Most reports agree it will be able to hit some targets in the Lower 48 States.  Not good.

So the US has announced it is reacting in a new and potentially interesting way:

The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the Pentagon has activated the system, which has been in the developmental stage for years.

I suspect this is a real surprise for many American citizens that "Star Wars" is not a myth but is now a small but operational defense system.  After so much ridicule from the Left for so many years National Missile Defense is now a real system, not some myth.

If the North Koreans do go forward with the test of their new missile intended to threaten the US, then we should likewise "test" our missile defense system to shoot down their missile.  This would be illuminating all the way around.  For our international enemies who would have to factor that into their ability to threaten us.  Especially for North Korea as it blusters and chisels for more bribes.  And finally for those of us here at home it would settle the debate about whether the program is real or not.

The risks of a launch against the North Korean's test would be high.  If we failed then we would lose significant global prestige, and domestic opponents in Congress might gain in power.  But the potential gains to showing the system works would be significant as well, even more significant than a little egg on the face if we fail.  We would have a known, tested, and functional missile defense system to face down the wild threats of thugs like the kook with the crazy hair in North Korea.  That's why we're building the thing anyway, time to show the thugs we mean it.

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There is the longstanding and ongoing debate between those who primarily favor "stability" in the world, and those who favor change.  It used to be that it was Conservatives that made the case for Realpolitik and continued "stability" while the Leftward side of the political spectrum argued constantly for "progressive change" if not outright sweeping revolution.  How times change.

Of course that was back when the Liberals/Left were on the advance globally, fomenting revolutions, subverting capitalist systems, and the dream of a communist/socialist paradise seemed in reach and desirable.  Back then Conservatives were in the position of just trying to stop the ceaseless destruction of older values and ways of life, thus preaching the merits of "stability".  We don't live in that kind of world anymore, in fact the fall of the Wall dividing Germany and ending the Cold War ended that whole time period.  Communism/Socialism was finally seen for the corrupt and autocratic failure that it was, producing not social justice but poverty and brutal oppression covered over by a thin layer of state propaganda and lies.  China, still officially a communist state, began promoting a capitalist economy as quickly as it could.  The former nations of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR broke up and turned capitalist and to varying degrees at least theoretically democratic.  History swung the other way, away from the linear inevitable "progress" that so called Progressives (really Liberals/Leftist/Socialists) saw as their inevitable expectation and birthright.

That's when things switched.  All of a sudden it was Leftist ideals and ways of life that were being ended.  "Progress" was being "reversed".  The Status Quo, the way things were then as close to the peak of the high water mark of worldwide socialism as possible, suddenly became the most important thing to preserve from change.  Now Liberals/Leftists/Socialists suddenly and strenuously demand "Stability" in world affairs.  And now of course Conservatives are much more in favor of "change" and "revolution", at least where it is seen as being either in the national interest or the interest of Democratic Capitalism.  That's why Europe, oh so socialist Europe, sees that the U.S. is the greatest threat to "Stability":

In a Harris opinion poll, published on the eve of Mr Bush's latest visit to Europe this week, 36 per cent of respondents identify the US as the greatest threat to global stability.

The poll, conducted in association with the FT, questioned a representative sample of 5,000 people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on a range of issues. Thirty per cent of respondents named Iran as the greatest threat to global stability, with 18 per cent selecting China.

In a strictly factual assessment of who is more likely in the near future to cause change, meaning break the precious "stability", this is probably a pretty fair assessment.  I think the US is the most likely to 'upset the apple cart', because after 9/11 it is our national reaction that the current "stable" situation of the world is a dangerous mess.  There are people out there using that "stability" to hide and gather to plan our destruction as a nation and a people.  So are we in favor of breaking the "stability"?  You bet.  We intend on making things better, and we'll see in time if our effort is working or not.  Europe doesn't like that?  Neither does our domestic Leftist contingent, so they have company.

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I know it isn’t exactly the hot sport in the U.S., but back when we hosted the Fifa World Cup I have to admit I picked up a liking for the event.  Any sport taken to its highest level is exciting and this highest level of international soccer, or football as the rest of the planet calls it, really is the concentration of the most supreme athletic talent you can imagine.  I think the contest at this point is better than most of the Olympics, and certainly the final playoff games are high intensity drama.  The tension and level of play will only increase as the tournament goes on for the next 3 weeks, so if you’ve ever wondered what it is about you might try tuning in to a few of the games.  I’m catching as many as I can and having a great time!

If you do miss any games I recommend The Sportist to quickly find game video highlights and scores.  It takes a while for the clips to get posted sometimes it seems, often several hours, but so far there are video highlight clips for all of the games played so far in the Fifa World Cup 2006 in Germany in one easy place.  Its very convenient.

Now I need to get some sleep, the games start early Saturday morning on the West Coast!  No way I’m getting up for the first one though. 

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Hugh Hewitt interviewed columnist to the world Mark Stein today on his radio program, where Stein had this observation to share about the Democrats’ collapse of support for national security:

HH: And even as that unfolds, however, like runaway trucks, the left in the United States cannot seem to cope with news, especially news for which they’re not programmed. And so Yearly Kos unfolds into a long, anti-Bush rant, and today in the Senate and the House, the resolution to cut and run out of Iraq lost by a vote of 93-6 in the Senate, with only Boxer and Feingold and Kerry and Kennedy and a couple of other…you know, Bryd and one other person. But the net roots, as they call them, can’t seem to cope with this, Mark Steyn.

MS: Well, no. I mean, you say only six, but we’re talking about the great lion of the Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy. We’re talking about their last presidential candidate…

HH: Yup.

MS: John Kerry. We’re talking about the so-called father of the Senate, Robert C. Byrd. I mean, we are talking about very eminent figures here. And what I think people should understand is that whatever the argument for going into Iraq, once you’re in it, you’ve got to have even better arguments for getting out of a was without victory. And I think for America to actually announce an exit strategy, to say you’re right, this is a disaster, we’re getting out of here, we’re going home, it would end the American moment. If America cannot even withstand in fact what is a relatively successful operation in Iraq, if even that is too traumatizing for a society of 300 million, then that’s the end of the American moment. There’s no reason for Russia and China to pay any attention to America ever again. Not only that, there’s no reason for Belgium or Luxembourg to take America seriously ever again. It’s over. You go the John Kerry route, it’s over. And if Americans really want to be the kind of defeatist loser nation that Kerry-Kennedy & Co. paint them as, so be it. I don’t think they are, and in fact, I would say you know, despite the best efforts of the Republican Party to shoot themselves in the foot and in the hand and in the kneecap and everywhere else, that the Democrats will not do well this November, and the Republican Party will hold Congress.

He’s spot on, as usual.  Historically speaking our casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are miniscule in relation to any previous significant military conflict.  The truth is we used to lose more people per year in training accidents during the Cold War than our military is now fighting a hot conflict against the terrorists and insurgents.  And yet a significant portion of our nation can’t stand it, aren’t willing to support a fight against any enemy not literally on our own shores already.  Is that portion a majority?  It hasn’t been in the past two elections, nor was it during the entire run of the Cold War.  History would suggest it won’t be in November either. 

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The fact that Al Gore is the guy promoting a movie intended to have political impact really ought to tell you something about the nature of the cause.  Like, that it is political in nature.  Not scientific.  Nothing has changed really, only this time he’s trying to use the "global warming" boogyman to force his way back into contention to make another run for office in 2008.  Scaring the heck out of the ignorant yokel voters it a tried and trued political tactic.  In this case using scary but fake "environmental" fears is one of the old hat standard tools used by the international Left to hammer The Market and wrest power from frightened and helpfully ignorant masses of citizens.  Its worked very well since the 1960’s so Al’s trotting it out into service again.  It doesn’t matter to Al that the Kyoto treaty he helped negotiate and wants us to sign won’t do much of anything at all to stop global warming even if he’s right that it is a real problem we are causing.  All that matters to Al is that he gets to use it to bludgeon his political opponents who know this and can be relied on to oppose it and thus give him a powerful political weapon to continue to use against them.

The proof is in the science, or rather is not in the science.  Al Gore’s movie is full of outright lies and distortions that is apparently making the actual true Climatologists in the world’s academic community pretty angry.  Go read the full article linked here for more detail, but here are a few choice quotes from actual scientists who are globally recognized experts on climate change (emphasis added):

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Many people have this lingering perception that everything is going wrong in the U.S., and especially in Iraq, and that consequently our military MUST be having problems recruiting.  There was a spate of stories a bit over a year ago making that case when the military was missing quotas for a few months, but of course no stories when they made up that shortfall and more in months later.  Today we find out why the major media isn’t covering the issue anymore… because its a success story:

The U.S. Army has met its recruiting goals for twelve months in a row. The army continues to see above average (pre-911) re-enlistments by troops, especially those who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan.

…

The military tends to keep the recruits coming largely via word of mouth from existing troops and veterans, who are able to stay in touch via the Internet, and provide a quite different, and more credible, account of that is going on than the mass media. The troops think they are making a difference, that they are winning the war on terror. But that isn’t considered news.

No it isn’t news is it?  Doubtlessly the reporters and editors in the mainstream media in their "news judgment" find that the Army succeeding to be a non-story.  Certainly they don’t want to hear about it, anything that distracts from the "Iraq and the ’so-called War on Terror’ are a disaster" meme rarely gets covered.

So the Army fights on two fronts, with bullets and bombs against terrorists in overseas, and with words against the enemy here at home.  Both work together to try to defeat the U.S. military.  We’ll see who wins. 

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