3 Interesting Links

1. Will Obama throw the Armendians under the bus? I’m pretty sure I would and I’d state it in a straightforward manner. Sorry – we need the Turks. We’re going to ignore genocide.

2. Al Jazeera suggests the next step in Iran vs the world is Obama doing what he said he would do and talking directly to Ahmadinajad. Bets??

3. What do you do with an airforce made up of drone operators sitting outside the battlefield?

4. Hmmmmm. UFO reports to be destroyed by the government (Great Britain) because they’d rather destroy the reports than disseminate them. I don’t believe them.

Greece and the US

Mark Steyn has a great column out on Greece’s situation and how it relates here.

When seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, President Ford liked to say: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Which is true enough. But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the point Greece is at. Its socialist government has been forced into supporting a package of austerity measures. The Greek people’s response is: Nuts to that.

He suggests we’re at a stage where we can chart off this course. I hope that’s true.

Do we ever learn anything?

One of the problems with the “torture” situation is that “torture” is never defined specifically. It’s been suggested that Congress come up with a list. What counts, what doesn’t?

Yesterday instead of a specific list, those in charge of interrogations have received more fuzzy orders.

While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today. It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

I find it very degrading to be in handcuffs and put into a cell? You?

Health Care – The Big Day

Today is the day of the big summit and Karl Rove has some good suggestions for standing ground and calling the President on any untruths that might be spoken.

He notes:

Having won the battle for public opinion on this issue, Republicans are on the rise. They should act like it. Mr. Obama may have a home court advantage, but Republicans have facts, ideas, and most of the American people on their side.

Any interesting tangent here. I was just on a road trip and listened to a ton of talk radio. While the right will make fun of the left’s ideas, the left makes fun of the right’s looks. It’s bizarro world and I don’t understand how these people live with themselves.

On another side bar, yesterday Rep. Weiner got a lot of press concerning all the people he knows in the GOP. (each of them are in the pocket of health insurance).

Here’s the quote that struck me.

WEINER: Look, the point is very simple, there are inequities in the present way we distribute insurance.

Since when is it the government’s job to distribute??

And finally, yesterday the NYTimes had this story about salt. As a person who eats in order to ingest salt, I can easily see this possible result noted there. If the food industry cuts back on salt, people eat more to get more salt. In the end, the salt intake is the same only we’re fatter.

The results were so similar in so many places that Dr. McCarron hypothesized that networks in the brain regulate sodium appetite so that people consume a set daily level of salt. If so, that might help explain one apparent paradox related to reports that Americans are consuming more daily calories than they used to. Extra food would be expected to come with additional salt, yet there has not been a clear upward trend in daily salt consumption evident over the years in urinalysis studies, which are considered the best gauge because they directly measure salt levels instead of relying on estimates based on people’s recollections of what they ate. Why no extra salt? One prominent advocate of salt reduction, Dr. Lawrence Appel of Johns Hopkins University, said that inconsistent techniques in conducting the urinalysis surveys may be masking a real upward trend in salt consumption.

John Kranz of ThreeSources said to read this by Michael Barone too concerning the Obama nannystate. I haven’t read it yet, but put it here for later.

War

Hell hath frozen over……
Here you have a quite reasonable post from……drum roll please…..Daily Kos….on collateral damage during a war.

But I have another bone to pick with these leaders that are unable to control their own citizens, provide security within their own countries, and demand US backing and support with both troops and huge amounts of money and materials. Our troops. Troops that die, daily. And, money. Money out of my pocket, and yours.

What fantasy allows anyone to posture that civilian deaths during a shooting war are “unjustifiable”? Civilians get caught in the cross fire. Civilians are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Civilians die. Yes, women and children, too. And pets, and farm animals, and rare and endangered species. Anything on a battle ground is in immediate danger of a bloody death.

If you are squeamish, Sir, about this simple fact, stop the damned war.

I’m not going to bother looking for a quote from Bush’s years. I’m sure you can imagine.
(ht Instapundit)

Affects of Climate Change

The NYTimes editorial board apparently finds just “trivial” errors in all the retractions going around lately. (sea levels rising being just the latest)

Concerning Mr. de Boer’s resignation:

His resignation comes at a fragile moment in the campaign to combat climate change. The Senate is stalemated over a climate change bill. The disclosure of apparently trivial errors in the U.N.’s 2007 climate report has given Senate critics fresh ammunition. And without Mr. de Boer, the slim chances of forging a binding agreement at the next round of talks in December in Cancún, Mexico, seem slimmer still.

The Concept of Wilderness

Apparently the concept of wilderness includes helicopters and wolves with collars around their necks.

Fish and Game just won the right to land helicopters in the Frank Church Wilderness Area in order to collar wolves for research.
Remember that next time you decide to spend a little ‘quiet time’ in the wilderness.

The Wilderness Act is well known for its succinct and poetic definition of wilderness:

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Waterboarding Memos

No discipline for the authors of the waterboarding memos, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, though officially they “exercised poor judgement”. That sucks….they should have full vindication, but at least their current ordeal is over and they can continue to make their case to the public.
Here’s the interesting part (in bold):

But Margolis [Attorney General David Margolis, a senior career attorney] concluded that despite significant flaws in the documents, the memo authors did not intentionally violate ethics rules. Instead, he said, they were struggling to prevent another terrorist strike on U.S. soil. Margolis also pointed out that the legal issues were far from a close call: OPR investigators repeatedly shifted their own views and analysis in the course of multiple drafts.

Shifting views eh? hmmmmmm Further down in the story you get this.

Maureen E. Mahoney, an attorney for Bybee, called the Justice Department action a “vindication.”

“No public servant should have to endure the type of relentless, misinformed attacks that have been directed at Judge Bybee,” Mahoney said. “We can only hope that the department’s decision will establish once and for all that dedicated public officials may have honest disagreements on difficult matters of legal judgment without violating ethical standards.”

Miguel Estrada, an attorney for Yoo, said shifting versions of the ethics report by OPR investigators “reflected shockingly substandard legal work and a deep partisan bias.”

Shifting ethics? Almost makes this case sound fuzzy vs black and white.

Friday Fluff: Starlings

I do love starlings. I know they’re known as flying rodents, but check out this photo of starlings as a rabbit.

That’s just cool.

More Links

(UPDATE: Not sure why this didn’t post yesterday, but here it is)
Running late today:

1. This whole story is a hoot and a half based on what’s not in it, vs what’s in it.
The title:
“U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer to step down in July”
The lede:

The U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer has resigned to join a consultancy group as an adviser, the U.N. climate secretariat said on Thursday, two months after a disappointing Copenhagen summit.

3 more paragraphs in the entire story. Not ONE, word, not one on the errors in climate research. ROFLMAO

2. From the Jordan Times:
Hit and run accidents cause 40% of deaths from traffic accidents.

40%!!!! That is an entire people with zero sense of responsibility……I looked, you don’t get flogged for an accident over there. What the hell is it? 40%??

3. Hidden away in Al Jazeera we hear that the Dalai Lama is coming to visit President Obama. In the map room, not the oval office. LOL