Interesting Items 4/13 by Alex Gimarc [email protected]
Monday, April 13, 2009 Interesting Items 4/13 - Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. Pirates 2. Aerosols 3. CPSIA 4. DoD Cuts 1. Pirates. The Teleprompter administration may have its Mogadishu , its Desert One, or its Pueblo , as for the first time in two centuries, pirates dared seize an American-flagged ship. This one was a container ship delivering food around the Horn of Africa to Kenya , off the coast of Somalia . Pirates seized the ship, took the Captain hostage, were fought off by the crew, with an unknown number of pirates in the water afterwards and spent the remainder of the week in a standoff / negotiation with a Navy destroyer. As of Sunday, negotiations broke down to the point that Navy SEALs took out three of the four pirates, freed the Captain and took the fourth pirate hostage. At this point, the WH is attempting to take credit for ordering the assault, but it appears that the On Scene Commander, the Captain of the destroyer took positive action to resolve the situation when negotiations broke down for the final time. Pirates in the area made tens of millions of dollars in cash last year, trading seized vessels for cash money. A couple pirate vessels have been sunk. With the Navy on the scene, case closed with a quick resolution, right? Not hardly. With the leftist view of military force as something to only threaten to use, the Teleprompter administration has supplied the Navy with an FBI hostage negotiator and designated the container ship as a crime scene. Anyone else notice a problem with this? Anyone hear an echo of the Clinton administration, where terrorist action was a crime rather than an Act of War? There is an old adage that when the only thing you have to work with is a hammer, the rest of the world starts looking like nails. And so it is with lawyers that infest the higher ranks of government in such large numbers today, everything starts looking like a legal action of some sort. What to do with the pirates? In this particular case, wait until nightfall and send in a SEAL team to kill them all and rescue the hostage. In a more general case, give them whatever they want and then blow them out of the water as they sail away. Sink them when you find them and chum the waters for the sharks with their bodies. Cleanse them from the seas wherever you find them and keep doing it until they no longer believe this is a money-making enterprise. Otherwise, like them, we return the age of barbarism that we so thankfully left 200 years ago. Interesting loop closed on this one, as the first two presidents Washington and Adams paid tribute to the Barbary Coast pirates. And the third, the first democrat, Thomas Jefferson, sent in the Marines. Would be interesting to contemplate Barack Hussein Obama as the final democrat president as he looks as out of his element as Jimmy Carter did in 1979 when the Iranians seized the American Embassy in Tehran . With the help of the Navy, he has dodged that particular bullet this time around. But there will be more opportunities to excel, many, many more. Overwhelming military force does nothing unless you are willing to occasionally use it. 2. Aerosols. Paul Erlich acolyte, partner in crime, and newly confirmed Director of the Office of Science and Technology spoke on global warming last week. In his talk, he discussed a number of mythical tipping points which rampant manmade global warming must be stopped by any means possible. In the talk, he suggested that as a last resort, the feds might be forced to inject pollution into the upper atmosphere, like the sulfuric aerosols injected by massive volcanic eruptions that periodically cool the planet by a few degrees. The concept falls under the overall heading of geoengineering, and would be really interesting to implement, especially given what little we know about the response of the global climate system to any number of variable changes. What we do know is this: if a volcanic eruption or large impact injects cubic miles, megaton quantities of stuff into the upper atmosphere, it cools down a few degrees for a few years. The larger the injection, the longer the cool spell. We also know that a quiet sun – interestingly enough, like we have been seeing the last couple years – also correlates very nicely with globally cooling temperatures. Holdren’s geoengineering will likely amount to little more than a demonstration, after which, they will begin funding research into the coming of the next ice age, where they can declare victory over manmade global warming and move on to the next excuse to meddle in our lives. Interestingly enough, if Holdren and his green minions are really interested in injecting lots of particulate matter into the upper atmosphere, the single best way to do this would be to adopt dirty coal as the primary energy producer, as the cooling effects of the particulate matter will trump the so-called warming effects of the carbon dioxide. Somehow I don’t think they are going to be doing this. Finally, as a space geek who thinks that getting the most people permanently off this planet is the best thing we can do to ensure the survival of the race, a launch infrastructure capable of injecting megatons of stuff into the upper atmosphere can also inject millions of people permanently into space, which is the only positive outcome of this foolishness. Doable? Not today. And we really shouldn’t even consider it, as trying to cool down an already cooling planet will only serve to accelerate the beginning of the next great ice age, which is now a bit overdue. Hot Air, Thurs. 3. CPSIA. A year or so ago, with a carefully orchestrated public outrage over high levels of lead and other unpleasant substances in ChiCom imports, primarily children’s toys, Nancy Pelosi’s House wrote and passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act that was aimed directly at the ChiCom imports. The vehicle in the legislation to shut down their imports was a new requirement for extensive testing for a wide range of substances in imports including lead and formaldehyde. Unfortunately, the language in the new law was so sloppy that it also has been extended to ANY product used by children. For example, there are ATVs specially designed for kids. They have small amounts of lead in things like the inflation valves on the vehicle tires. As a result of this legislation, it is no longer legal to sell children’s ATVs here in the US with the manufacturers and the vendors left holding the bag. Kids don’t normally eat tires, and when they do, they have a lot larger problems than lead content in vehicle wheels. The legislation also has hurt thrift shops, charities and churches, which can no longer sell or donate second hand children’s toys or clothing, as there is a requirement for every vendor to test and ensure that none of the banned substances exist in their products. Resellers, especially thrift shops and charities don’t have the resources to do this. To bad, so sad, and it’s all about the safety of The Children, is the answer they hear from the fascist congress. If I were a really cynical kind of guy, I would think this legislation was a vehicle used to shut down as much private charity work as humanly possible, and force more and more of the poor and disadvantaged out of the very capable hands of the churches, charities and private welfare agencies, and into government programs. But congress wouldn’t do that on purpose. Would they? 4. DoD Cuts. SECDEF Gates released his first Pentagon budget under the Teleprompter administration. At the top level, it appears that the overall budget is increased, but this is little more than boob bait for bozos. The overall number is larger because they rolled in operational expenses for ongoing actions in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than funding these wars in a series of defense supplementals. More troubling are the cuts particularly in ballistic missile defense (BMD) and the F-22 Raptor program; buying no more than 147 of the jets. Here in Alaska BMD is a very, very popular thing, as we sit under the flight path of both ChiCom and NORK ICBMs intended to the left coast of the US . We also have a few significant military targets in the state what would be of interest to an attacker. BMD is a layered system, with things like the airborne laser platform intended for boost-phase intercepts; ship and land based systems intended for higher altitude targets; and terminal systems intended for incoming weapons. Cutting back on these systems just at the point where the Iranians and NORKs are both launching missiles all over the place is a dangerous, dangerous thing indeed. The other troublesome cutback is freezing the number of F-22s at 147 jets, which is not enough to support worldwide deployments or large scale, theater-level operations. They are tremendously expensive at about $336 million apiece. It is also the best air superiority jet in the world, able to completely dominate the airspace. The only thing more expensive than building too many jets are building too few, as it is extremely expensive to stop and restart a production line. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com District 28 http://www.dist28.com/ subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ * * ------------------------------ I'M MAD, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are welcome to join the [email protected] * Rich Martin * ** *.* <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4298137966377572665> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "APFN" group. 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