Apocalypse? What Apocalypse?

Veddy IN-ter-rrest-eeng! Ok, Heidi, what do you have to say about this?

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

Dang. So why do all these apocalyptic pronouncements about catastrophic climate change seem to appear every hour, on the hour, on The Weather Channel? It’s been especially bad the last two days, what with yesterday being the second anniversary of Katrina and all. Inquiring minds most certainly want to know.

Oh, Hell. Let’s not be coy. I already know why the BS is there; I just want to see what sort of tap-dance the “climate expert” is gonna come up with to discredit this latest bit of news. Probably something about revoking their credentials. Frickin' apostates. They never think about the polar bears!

Today’s Pic: No coffee and cigars on the verandah today. It rained for at least four hours straight this morning…a good, steady, soaking sort of rain. And that’s somewhat unusual for this part of the world, in that our rain usually arrives in fast-moving cloudbursts that deposit buckets of rain on semi-parched ground. But not today. Today we get a soaker. And I think that’s good (assuming Jenny’s husband got the hay cut).

More On Cannon AFB

More info and newsy-notes about Cannon AFB from AFA’s Daily Report:

A New Number for Cannon SOF Wing: Air Force Special Operations Command now plans to create the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon AFB, N.M., rather than naming it 16th SOW as originally conceived. Last fall, AFSOC changed the 16th SOW at Hurlburt Field, Fla., back to its original designation, 1st SOW, and expected to use 16th for its new wing at Cannon. However, according to AFSOC officials the 16th lineage transferred to 1st SOW, so apparently they decided instead to preserve the 27th Fighter Wing's considerable heritage in the new 27th SOW. We're still trying to figure out why AFSOC changed the Air Commando history-rich 1st SOW to 16th in 1993.

All in the Details:Officials at Cannon AFB, N.M., have released answers to "frequently asked questions" on the shift of Cannon to Air Force Special Operations Command. As we reported, the first special ops aircraft assigned will be MC-130W Combat Spears-slated to arrive in December. The airmen who operate and maintain those Hercules, members of the 73rd Special Operations Squadron, will begin arriving in November and complete their move to Cannon by February 2008. The squadron expects to add both personnel and aircraft, reaching 12 aircraft in late 2009. Hampering the full move of AFSOC airmen and equipment destined for Cannon is a current lack of suitable hangar space and other necessary facilities. Construction is ongoing, but AFSOC expect the entire process, including beddown of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, AC-130 Gunships, and CV-22 Ospreys, will take about six years.

Lineage is important, and there are very strict rules and regulations concerning USAF unit lineage. Pages and pages of rules, as a matter of fact. It’s good to know that the 27^th Wing’s lineage will live on. I just hate it when history “dies.”

Note: the video below is from the Cannon AFB site, and is an official USAF video. I just posted it because I can.

Somewhat Retiring...

I got off on quite the link-chasing tangent this morning after reading this lil piece of economic news at CNN… “Household incomes rise but ... Census Bureau reports slight rise in 2006 incomes but as a group, households aren't doing as well as before the 2001 recession.” Ah, there always seems to be a Big But(t) in the picture when it comes to economic news. Or at least the picture Our Media like to paint, anyway.

The rise in household income and decline in poverty are positive developments, and they were expected given low unemployment last year. But U.S. households have yet to return to the higher income and lower poverty levels they reached during the last recession.

"In 2006, the poverty rate remained higher, and median income for non-elderly households remained $1,300 lower, than in 2001, when the last recession hit bottom," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a statement. "It is virtually unprecedented for poverty to be higher and the income of working-age households lower in the fifth year of a recovery than in the last year of the previous recession."

Didja notice anything unusual in the last paragraph? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I DO believe it’s quite rare for a news organization to identify a source as “liberal,” as in “…director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities…” Media use the adjective “conservative” all the damned time when describing the political orientation of various and sundry pundits…too often, in my mind… but good on CNN for using, at least once, an appropriate modifier for the economic wet-blanket crowd. Refreshing, that.

But, the point above is neither here nor there. What occupied most of my time this morning were a series of articles about retirement linked in the article referenced above and in subsequent pieces I read. There was this one, for starters: “Retirement at risk: Who's falling short.” And that article led to this one: “Shrinking Social Security; A new report says Social Security will replace less of your income than it did before, thanks to taxes, Medicare and the reality of hitting your 60's.” And there were links within those links that cried out to be followed…and follow I did. What emerged was a rather depressing set of statistics and factoids about the doom facing my cohort and those that follow close on our heels: We’re not prepared, most of us, for retirement and what’s worse is few people are doing much of anything to rectify the situation. A lot of folks can’t save or contribute as much as they need to that ol’ 401(k) because…well, there’s just too much stuff we need right now… an iPhone, a new car (followed by another new car, next year), a bigger house, perhaps a little vacation place on the lake, a boat for the vacation house, college for the kids (if even that…), a cruise or two, a new wardrobe (“everything I own is ‘out!’”), yadda, yadda, yadda. And then all of a sudden you’re 65 and find yourself still working, with few, if any, alternatives.

I had a conversation with a friend the other night who’s in that boat I just described: 65 and still working. And a self-admission that although retirement beckons (“I’m getting tired”), the debt load is such that retirement is absolutely, positively out of the question…both now and for the foreseeable future. And savings? Non-existent. But the cash flow is good, the bills get paid, and the acquisition merry-go-round is still whirling. I fear for my friend. And others, too. Time is short.

Two years on and it ain’t just the rebuilding:

President Bush is visiting New Orleans to mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, as are Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, and Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter. The White House will probably release a fact sheet detailing how many billions of dollars the government has spent on Gulf Coast recovery. The Democrats, no doubt, will call for more money and action. Here's hoping at least one political visitor will be brave enough to say the truth: that while many New Orleans residents are courageously taking the initiative to rebuild their homes, they cannot build an effective police and prosecutorial force on their own.

I’m afraid I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude required to live in N’Awlins these days. Not after reading this piece, anyway. Let’s hope things are going better on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and from all indications I’ve seen/heard, they are. Rebuilding is slow work under the best of circumstances, but it’s damned near impossible in a lawless environment. Pretty sad.

Our weather has changed here on The High Plains, thanks to a cold front that moved in overnight. The forecast is for widely scattered t-storms all day and tomorrow, too. It’s lightly raining as I tap this out, and that’s a good thing. Rain is usually good in this part of the world, unlike other places where just one more drop might cause a psychopathic response in the mass population. This cold front is bringing a ten-degree reduction in temps along with rain. Both are welcome…especially the cooler temperatures.

Today’s Pic: Another in the “SN3 Plays in the Puddles” series of pics from July, 1998. There’s another reason I’m posting this particular pic— it’s one of only three pictures (another, and not a particularly good pic here) of my beloved and much-missed ‘96 Impala SS. And this pic ain’t all that good either, come to think on it. Nice shot of the front wheel and turn signal, in addition to illustrating the quality of the wax job. That car really glistened when it was clean and washed up nice.

I don’t know exactly why I never took decent pictures of this car. Perhaps it just never occurred to me to actually…you know…DO it.

Whatever.

Slow News Day

Well, it’s a slow news day, this being the end of August and all. I don’t give two hoots about today’s “top stories,” according to the NYT, the WaPo, and memeorandum. And the Clovis News-Journal, too. I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but I’ve heard enough about Alberto Gonzales to last me the rest of my natural life and several months into the after-life, as well. And yet another pol got busted in some men’s room somewhere. Spare me. This is news?

On the other hand…this is interesting: “The World’s Most Expensive Hotel Suites.” Not that I’ve bookmarked any of the websites or jotted down the reservation desk’s phone number for my next sojourn amongst the movers and shakers, or anything like that. I exaggerate not a whit when I tell you the price of the first house I bought was substantially less than the rack rate (howza ‘bout $52K per night?) at this flea bag. Your $52K buys you 24 hours in 17,000 square feet, because, after all, some of us just need our space. I’m sure it’s just perfect for you and your close circle of friends the next time you head out to Geneva…

On the other, other hand, if the Presidential Suite at The President Wilson isn’t exactly your cuppa, you might want to try Glamping:

GLAMPING is a heady mix of glamour and the great outdoors, in which the freedom and challenge of going back to nature are tempered by home-making skills and the pleasures of domesticity. Glampers donate their roll mats to the boy scouts. For them, sheepskin rugs, leather pouffes, chilled champagne boxes, silk- and muslin-strewn gazebos, Egyptian-cotton sheets, blow-up sofas, double duvets – even tea-light chandeliers – are all part of the alfresco setup.

Or not.

Well, that’s the end of a long run (for me)… “Acer buys Gateway to cramp Chinese plans for Lenovo.”

A Taiwanese computer maker has dealt a significant blow to China’s hopes of making Lenovo a flagship global PC brand.

Acer, Lenovo’s arch rival, has agreed to buy Gateway, the American computer maker, for about $710 million (£353 million).

The deal will catapult Acer above Lenovo to make it the world’s third-biggest PC manufacturer, give the Taiwanese company a significant presence in the United States for the first time and strengthen its position in Europe.

I’m pecking this post out on a Gateway computer, the fifth (and last) Gateway computer I’ve owned… the others were two laptops and two desktops, in a relationship that goes back to the early ‘90s. I’m not naïve enough to think my current computer is made out of largely American parts, assembled in America. Nope…more than likely this box and its internal parts originated somewhere in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, or some other Asian Tiger. But the name on the front is American, and the profits generated from the sale of the box stayed at home. I’m running out of options here, what with Dell and HP being just about the only mainstream American PC makers assemblers left. (I’m excluding the boutique builders, obviously.)

More food for the “Buy a Mac next time” thought.

Today’s Pic: “Whaddaya mean ‘go outside and play?’ It’s RAINING!” I’ve posted another pic from this particular series before, specifically a close-up of SN3’s wild hair after a session of puddle-stomping with Mom and Dad during a summer shower. This is just another installment.

July, 1998. Perinton, NY.

With Extreme Prejudice...

I came across the following comment to a post Lex put up yesterday from MaxDamage, quoted here in part:

Second act: fishing for dogs. First procure an electric fencer or something similar that has a nice voltage level (10K volts minimum) and wire it to a garbage can (metal, not plastic). Allow the remaining cats to investigate and learn to avoid. Replace the fencer with the stripped leads on an extention cord, invert the lid, fill with water, and place some old meat on a brick in the middle of it. 10K volts stings. 110vac at 15 amps hurts. 220vac at 40 amps kills. If you elect to do the 110vac routine you will be rewarded with yipping sounds in the middle of the night. You will then be able to roll over and sleep the sleep of the just and rightous.

Despite the wording in Max’s first line, this suggestion is all about “How to Kill a Coyote,” specifically a murderous coyote or coyotes that terminated one of Lex’s household pets with extreme prejudice. And a rather inventive way to dispatch said coyote(s), I might add. Which brought to mind a similar varmint-eradication activity I undertook many, many years ago, albeit with much smaller prey and much higher voltages.

The place: Lompoc Air Force Station.
The place, more specifically: The AN/FPS-67 search radar tower at Lompoc AFS.
The time: c. 1965, or ‘66, or maybe even ‘67.
The time, more specifically: Mid-shift…around 0230 ~ 0400.
The story:

My place of business, the search tower at Lompoc AFS, was over-run with mice at one point in time. Which isn’t much of a problem in an industrial setting, but it is somewhat irritating, none the less, to brown-baggers who, when lunch hour arrives, retrieve their lunches from the bookshelf, work bench, or other such non-secured storage places only to find small holes nibbled in said brown-bags and their contents. To make a long story short, many attempts were made by the occupants of the search tower to eliminate these little furry bio-hazards, consisting mainly of common ordinary mouse traps, which worked only to a limited degree. In other words, although there were casualties aplenty, the mice still managed to occupy the search tower. In force.

So it came to pass that YrHmblScrb, on duty in the wee small hours of the morning, his assigned work for the evening completed and the radar humming along with no difficulties, decided to work on the mouse problem and have a little sport at the same time. Hi-tech sport. High-voltage sport.

Radars, by definition, are high-power, high-voltage systems. The transmitter sub-system uses literally thousands of volts to produce pulses of energy which are measured in megawatts of power. The heart of the transmitter is a klystron tube, which sits atop a pulse-transformer, which is filled with insulating oil to prevent thousands of applied volts from arcing within and between contacts, which electricity is prone to do. The insulating oil, like all oils, has a finite life and breaks down over time, losing its insulating properties and, if left to deteriorate, will result in arcing within the pulse transformer and the loss of rather expensive radar parts. Not to mention downtime for the entire radar which was highly frowned upon, being said radar was the first line of defense against air attack, and all. One tests this oil and drains and refills the pulse transformer (a very nasty, dirty job) when the oil is no longer “within specs.”

Checking the oil to ensure it’s within specifications is a standard preventive-maintenance routine and there is a specific item of test equipment used to test said oil. This item of test equipment (a much earlier version of this) was basically a ten-inch cube with a large transformer in its base to generate high voltage, a removable bakelite cup (with large brass electrical contacts on the inside) that sits in between two spring-loaded contacts at the top of the box, and a manual rheostat that varied the voltage applied to the cup. One takes a sample of the oil from the pulse transformer, puts it in the small removable cup, switches on the box, and increases voltage until the oil breaks down and arcing occurs through the oil in the cup. You can either vary the voltage continuously until arcing occurs, or set the box to a given voltage and press a button to see if arcing occurs at that particular voltage. The minimum insulation spec for the oil is 35 thousand volts, the tester could generate up to 50 KV, if memory serves. Are you beginning to see where this is going, Gentle Reader?

So. I get the oil checker out of the test equipment locker and set it up on the work bench. Then I got a 20 foot (or so) length of RG-59 cable…coaxial cable, with inner and outer conductors…and stripped both ends of the cable, separating the inner and outer conductors by a wide margin. I connected the center conductor to one contact on the oil checker and the braided wire outer conductor, which has been “combed out,” to the other contact. I then ran the RG-59 across the floor and over to the desk, a distance of about 15 feet or so, looping the cable across an overhead cable rack so that the end dangled just above said desk. Once again, I “combed-out” the braided outer conductor and arranged its wires under two or three damp paper towels on the surface of the desk, leaving remainder of the wire (the center conductor) hanging about an inch or two above the paper towels. I baited the center conductor with a small piece of lunch meat (from my lunch, obviously), turned out the lights, and retreated to the work bench to await my first victim. Which wasn’t all that long of a wait…

It took several attempts before I got it right. I had to make minor adjustments to the distance between the RG-59’s inner and outer conductors on the desk, and figured out that I couldn’t twist the oil checker’s rheostat fast enough to get the mouse before he realized he was being had—I had to set the oil checker's voltage at “max” and press that little red button for an instantaneous jolt o’ juice. And there were more false starts, but… you get the picture: trial and error works. And those mice did the most amazing double-back-flips and other sorts of gyrations when I zapped ‘em, not to mention the bright arc of discharging high-voltage through their little scum bodies. Very satisfying, to say the least.

I think I got four or five mice that evening, all told. Not a very effective way to kill mice, but a highly entertaining method…at the very least. I managed to reduce the mouse population that evening, but failed to eliminate it. We remained plagued with mice for as long as I was there.

The Brief Sunday Post

This is pretty cool…if you’re a hockey fan: The NHL Tournament of Logos. And you can vote for your favorite! Do NOT, repeat, DO NOT come back here and tell me you voted for a team other than the Red Wings. Some things are simply unacceptable in life… and this is but one. No ifs, ands or buts.

Apropos of nothing…Detroit is the proud possessor of the NHL’s oldest logo, worn proudly on red/white jerseys since 1948. Second oldest? The Habs — 1952. Both, coincidentally, are Original Six teams, and both logos are classics. Cue up Tevye, if you please…

Gerard posted one of his better essays yesterday (“Back to School”), which is both funny and ALL too true. The essay is difficult to excerpt, building as it does from one point to the next. But I’ll try:

YESTERDAY I HEARD OF A YOUNG MOTHER who came downstairs early in the morning to find her fifth-grade son dressed for school but flat on his back in the middle of the living room staring in despair at the ceiling.

MOM: "What on Earth do you think you're doing?"

BOY: "I can't do it. I just can't go to school any more."

[…]

Today, after mulling the lie-down strike a little more, it seems to me there's more than a little to be said on the side of the fifth-grader's strike. After twenty years of schooling and more than thirty on the day shift, those early grades seem -- looked at through society's grubby glasses -- to be an idyllic time. After all, weren't they?

[…]

But if we try and shift our point of view a bit, and if we try to remember all those things the haze of our twice-told childhood fairy-tales hides from us, we might see it -- just a bit and just for an instant -- from the point of view of the fifth-grade boy flat on his back in the living room staring at the ceiling in utter despair.

Here he lays. He's been going to this job of his for as long as he can remember. Unlike my experience which didn't start until kindergarten, today's boy has probably been working in the education industry since age 3. They started him out on basic blocks and why he shouldn't nail somebody who took his cookie. Those are hard lessons. How to stack something up so it doesn't collapse in a heap at the first shudder in the earth. How to "share" limited and personal resources. Why you don't just paste someone who irritates you with the nearest blunt object. These are basic lessons, and we forget how hard they are. Some of us don't learn them at all. Those people are either in prison, running Fortune 500 companies, or assembling bombs.

Do go read the whole thing…including the 19 comments, as I write…you won’t be sorry. And have a little pity for your 12 year-old the next time he says “I don’t FEEL like going to school today…” He just might have a point.

Today’s Pic (Gearhead Division): An immaculate Rat Motor from a 1967 Chevelle SS 396, the first new car I ever bought and one of perhaps four or five cars I’ve owned that I wish I still had. Even though I wouldn’t ice down a case of beer in the back seat and go looking for drag races on Highway 90 in and around Biloxi, Mississippi. Not that I ever did anything that stupid, to begin with. Much. One of life’s greatest mysteries is how we (most of us, anyway) manage to survive youth.

Car show in Amarillo, TX. March, 2004.

Surprise? Surprise! No Surprise...

Interesting, but not all that surprising: Move over geeks, women are top web users.

Women aged between 25 and 49 are now spending more time on the internet than men as they become hooked on keeping in touch with friends online, according to figures published yesterday by the communications regulator Ofcom.

The figures are particularly pronounced in the 25 to 34 age group, in which women now account for 55 per cent of time spent online – demon-strating that the medium once thought of as dominated by solitary, glass-wearing male nerds is rapidly being feminised.

James Thickett, director of research with Ofcom, said: “Young women are finally finding content relevant to them on the internet. Social networking is what is driving a lot of usage; websites like Facebook and Bebo have a much higher female profile”.

[…]

Internet usage shows marked gender divides. Forrester Research, the technology specialist, describes the net as “just another channel for women to do what they enjoy: shopping, talking, and caring”. Its data, based on research of young people across Europe, shows that 55 per cent of women aged 18 to 34 – or 4.13 million – use the medium regularly compared with 45 per cent – or 3.49 million – of men. Women are also likely to spend more time on networking sites when they are there.

The article appears to be Euro-centric — no surprise there — considering it was published in Britain. But what did surprise me, though, was the rather patronizing comment about women and what they “enjoy:” “shopping, talking, and caring.” Hunh?

Also from the UK… and I’m not making this up:

A wealthy Russian tried to buy a US B-52 bomber from American pilots at the Maks airshow, a Russian newspaper reported yesterday.

The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the US delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said. A member of the US delegation said the bomber would cost at least $500m (£250m) if it were for sale.

That’s pretty funny, but this isn’t:

And yet defence experts were yesterday dismissive of Russian strength, branding its air force a "Potemkin village". Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has been forced to slash defence spending, leaving an ill-equipped conscript army to fight in Chechnya. The army's tanks are old; Russia's ships and submarines have seen better days; the navy's much-vaunted sea-launched Bulava missile still doesn't seem to work, despite a decade of development.

"In terms of military threat they are a joke," Robert Hewson, the editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons, said, assessing the array of Sukhoi and MiG fighters on display at the airshow, held at the former Soviet Zhukovsky air base. "Everything is a relic from the Soviet era. The level of technology you see in the UK, Sweden and the US is much higher.

Dismiss or underestimate the Russians at your peril. (Which The Guardian has a long history of doing, apropos of nothing.) All the Russians need to upgrade their forces is money, and given Russia’s vast oil reserves and the current price of oil, that money wouldn’t be too hard to come by in the near term. Or as long as the oil and natural gas hold out, anyway.

Fisking Fisk: Isn't Robert Fisk A Journalist? I was gonna post a link to Britain’s leading village idiot and his latest (insert vile disparaging adjectives here) “column,” but Mr. Morrisey’s piece is oh-so-much better. The lede grafs, with links intact:

Allahpundit piqued my curiosity with his link to Robert Fisk's latest screed at the Independent, wherein he claims to be unable to find answers to many questions about the 9/11 attacks. Don't call me a conspiracy theorist, he says, and "spare me the plots", but he implores Karl Rove to tell him about how the Bush administration created the reality of 9/11. But spare him the plots, of course.

This puzzles me, because Robert Fisk claims to be a journalist, and one would expect a journalist to understand how to conduct research. Let's see if we can help Mr. Fisk with his questions, which unfortunately get spread throughout a paranoid harangue.

And a systematic dismantling follows.

Eating their own… Michael van der Galien at The Moderate Voice has an interesting and thought-provoking piece about the Progressive Putsch currently in progress. Excerpts, with links intact:

There is something strange going on in the progressive blogosphere these days: instead of uniting against Republicans, progressive bloggers like Matt Stoller have decided to declare war on every Democrat who they consider not to be progressive (read anti-war) enough. Seemingly frustrated that there are actually Democratic Congressmen that do not necessarily always vote along party lines - but make up their own minds - they have decided to ask their readers to make profiles of so-called “Bush Dogs” (Blue Dogs and New Democrats) as to be able to target them in the coming years, and to replace them with progressive, left-wing Republicans.

[…]

Those who dare support non-Democratic candidates for president - like Independents - have to be put away as well well. As a result of all their actions, Chris Bower believes that “progressives are moving closer to Democratic Party control.”

This prospect should - as far as I am concerned - scare the hell out of everybody who thinks that some independence of thought is actually a good thing. We have seen some of this being done by conservative bloggers and activists, but never on the scale as we currently see (it being done by progressives). The intention is clearly to stifle all dissent, and all debate. Whether one is a Democrat or not, and whether one is more progressive than conservative, and left-of-center is irrelevant to these people. Nor do they seem to care that the voters voted these people into office in the first place. They have decided that they are enemies of the Democratic Party (even though they are Democrats themselves) and therefore enemies of the people.

The most important issue according to the progressives? Iraq. it is all that matters. In this instance they decide not to go after someone for not being progressive enough on certain issues, because this person opposes the surge. In other words, one might argue that it is not so much about progressive vs. less progressive, but about anti-war vs. open-minded. Make no mistake about it however: once these people get their way regarding Iraq, they will target politicians who they deem not progressive enough on other issues.

Word. Read the whole thing while nodding your head slowly up and down. I, for one, am not all that afraid of the Progressives. They are SO far to the left, bordering on the radical, that their one-note message will be firmly rejected by the American Mainstream, which is much more conservative than any of the Blue-Enclave Progressives can possibly imagine. And, perhaps more interestingly, I believe most mainstream Democrats will ultimately reject the Progressives, as personified by Kos, Stoller, Move-On, et al, because of their sheer intolerance. Those guys simply cannot stand dissent from their dogma/theology (choose one), from anyone…inside or outside of their little circles. And that will be their undoing.

Today’s Pic: This past Thursday’s sunrise, Take Two. The first photo was better; I’m only posting this one to show the dramatic difference a simple change in shutter speed makes. In this case, the colors are washed out even though one sees much more detail (e.g., the fifth wheels, pickups, wall, etc.) than in the under-exposed shot I originally posted. It’s all about “creative control.”