Near-miss asteroid will return next year

ESA Portal   h/t behindtheblack

quote:

The 50 m space rock is expected to come closer than many satellites, highlighting the growing need to keep watch on hazards from above.

Comment:

This looks like a possible business opportunity for anybody who can get low cost access to space.  Just intercept these space rocks and mine them for whatever they've got.  It seems to me that they may have something valuable inside them.  If nothing else, they can be stopped from reentry and that would be worth something.

Is it over yet? His Newtness and His 176,000 Donors

theothermccain.com

quote:

He’s already desperate, and when the February financial reports are made public, showing a campaign that is essentially bankrupt, whatever little puddles of hope Gingrich has been able to sell to those “500 to 1,000 new donors a day” (a dubious claim) will evaporate almost instantly. If Newt then loses March 24 in Louisiana, it’s over.

Comment:

The quote answers the question posed in the title above.  Sigh.

Zero Growth v Economic growth

This was the first entry in my previous post. Actually, the topic has already been covered here. If there was anything else to add, I notice that the talk these days is about "job growth", not economic growth.

But there can be no "job growth" without economic growth. The economic growth pays for the "job growth", if there's no economic growth- there can be no jobs.  Someone in poverty can't hire anyone.  Capiche?

Even Limbaugh used the term "job growth".  You have to be slipping to start using the language of the subversives, who want to trash our system and replace it with another one that reduce us all to misery and despair.

I know all that sounds rather extreme, but what else could this anti-growth phenomenon be?  The thing that we are dealing with is itself extreme.  There's no other way to deal with it except on its own terms.

Recent polls show that the people at large have not given up on economic growth.  The term "job growth" is being used to confuse the public, however.  That's the whole point.  Confuse and lead astray.  Better to use the appropriate terminology, not some bastardization of the language in order to confuse the public long enough to win an election and implement a policy the majority would not want if it were properly understood.

Miscellaneous notes (updated)

This is a general outline of a set of ideas to note for future posts

1. Zero Growth v Economic growth
2. Water and energy are the basis for economic prosperity
3. The Emperor Tiberius of the old Roman Empire and how we can repeat his mistake if we really try
4. Diamandis and the X Prizes
5. Why the Soviet Union fell:  "US President Reagan also actively hindered the Soviet Union's ability to sell natural gas to Europe whilst simultaneously actively working to keep gas prices low, which kept the price of Soviet oil low and further starved the Soviet Union of foreign capital."
6. How Romney is like Tiberius and how Gingrich is like Diamandis
7. "Job Growth" v Economic growth
8. Why higher taxes are not the answer:  Economic growth means that the economy is not a zero sum game.
9. Why "spreading the wealth" will insure poverty-- In short, if you destroy incentive, you also destroy wealth creation.
10. Why the rich have too much influence and why that is bad--- Quote from Roger Ebert follows.  I'm using it because I am of the opinion that Michael Moore said it himself.  The article that the quote comes from is about Michael Moore.

Ebert: Yeah, they all think they're going to leave a big estate, and they love Bush's theories because they all think they're going to get rich someday. But the fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday.   

Comment upon this quote:  According to Diamandis, even the poor are richer than the very rich of ancient times.  Progress is not automatic.  It must come from incentives.  If you take that away, progress will end.  Bread and circuses didn't work for Rome, they won't work now. 

I'll stop here for now. Don't know when I'll get back to these ideas, but at least they are out there. Food for thought for those who think.

Why I am leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader

thedailymash.co.uk



I like the music, but don't get the lyrics.

How The Race Stacks Up From Here

By Dick Morris on March 14, 2012

If Morris is right, Romney will be the nominee.  My God.

Ok, ok, ok.  Some may ask, if anyone is bothering to think about this, "what's the problem with Romney?"

Simply put, he's nothing.  We need something, not nothing.

I'm not changing my mind just because I'm in the minority.

The blog is at a crossroad

It's getting harder and harder to write stuff anymore.  Sure, there are plenty things happening out there, but nothing new.  It's like saying the same stuff over and over again.  After awhile, it becomes boring and pointless.

I want to go in a new direction, sort of, but don't know where yet.

Let's do an example of what I mean by nothing new.  There's this story about how the exodus from California due to their anti business climate there.  What's new about that?  But things don't change there, despite the fact that it should be obvious that what they are doing isn't working.  Will California ever change back into something more sensible?  Not likely, no matter what the argument is.   No matter how well founded and obviously true, California will keep doing the same things they are doing now.  Nothing new there.

People compare what California is now with what the country will be like with a second term under Obama.  Yet, despite all the arguments for not doing that, it may happen anyway.

Why does this happen?  Is this what the people of this country really want?

I don't see anything changing.  You may have polls saying that things are on the wrong track, but they keep putting the same people back into charge who are causing all this trouble.

What can you do if people keep insisting upon doing things that don't work?  Nor considering taking a different course?  I wish I had an answer for that.

The three-way races in Alabama and Mississippi

campaign2012.washingtonexaminer barone

quote:

The bottom line is that despite his third place finishes, Romney has been doing just fine in delegates this week.

Comment:

Well, I had to write something about this, but words are hard to come by.  Just one word can describe this outcome:  disastrous.

Someone, who might be a little curious about my reaction, could ask "why?"

Ok, according to some polls, Obama has taken a hit recently.  If you believe polls, that is.  Anyway, what could explain his drop in the polls?  The price of gas?  That could be the explanation, but look who is making the case for that- none other than Gingrich.

Now that Gingrich failed to win where he needed to, this entire argument has been brushed aside.  I guess people must not be thinking about how this argument got out there. Gingrich put it out there.  Sure, some people may be unhappy about gas prices, but that may not translate into much of a change in the polls.  This means Obama skates on this issue, which is the big disaster.  If you can't vote for Gingrich, who has given you a bump in the polls, you cannot vote for what could win in November.

Who will make this argument about drilling more?  Will Santorum or Romney?  Yes, but not with the same vigor and conviction.  Without that, they may as well be whistling Dixie.

Barone likes to say that Romney can get back upscale white voters.  Big deal.  These same voters helped put Obama in the White House.  How does Romney improve things?  The only difference with Romney is that he's white.  Sorry if this sounds like a Democrat talking point, but if the Dems say it, for once they will probably be right.  Romney offers nothing new, but a change in skin complexion.

This may sound like a bit of a sore loser.  Hey, I'm not the only one who is losing here.  We all are.  That's why this is a disaster.  Everybody is going to regret this.  Mark my words.

GOP Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich ‘On the Record’

gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com

Comment:

Here's the guy who led the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" campaign in 2008 that almost saved the Republicans in 2008. Then you get the insiders mentioned in the previous post, who destroyed Palin, and opened the door for Barak Obama, who is in the process of destroying the oil industry. All of this while the country is dangerously dependent on oil imports.

Why hasn't Newt gotten more credit for moving the debate to where it needs to be?

Mark Levin: Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt are Evil

Uploaded by sarahnettoo on Mar 12, 2012

Comment:

This caught my attention because of what has happened in this present campaign. It is the way that a small number of people can have a rather large impact on the perceptions of the people of an entire nation.

Why hasn't Newt done better? It may be useful to consider that question within the context of what happened with Palin.

I haven't researched it very far, but so far, I'd say that the main problem seems to be within the Republican Party. Insiders will trash somebody, and the media will aid and abet it.

Levin goes ballistic on these two. They may have been as responsible as anybody for the bad image that Palin got.

As for Newt, I think it could be related to his failure to support President George H.W. Bush when he broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. They won't forgive him for that, and so they trashed him. The media picked up on it and amplified it, and the public believes it.

I can segue into a theory I thought up yesterday. That is this: there's a faction within the Republican party that believes the people are the problem. They have an adversarial attitude towards the public. Taking that a bit further, I think it could be possible that these people may think the public is an enemy.

Could this also be present in the Democrat party? Well, that's a different question, so I'll leave that for another discussion.

Update:

Here's a couple Wikipedia links on Wallace and Schmidt.  It could well be that the fate of a nation turns on small details like this- just a couple a weak links in a presidential campaign could break the entire campaign and change history.

Obama's War On Oil

nationalreview

Obama will soon be personally responsible for preventing some 2 million barrels per day of possible North American crude oil production from reaching the American economy. The U.S. currently produces only about 6 million barrels of domestic crude oil, so that would be more than a 30 percent increase in domestic production. 

Comment:

While Obama runs his phony claims of a war on women, he diverts attention from his real war against America.  The lack of a secure energy supply could be catastrophic for America's interests.  But never mind, that's not important.  What's more important is that everybody pays for everybody else's stuff, including everybody else's sex life- except maybe your own.

Liberal seeds of doubt on Limbaugh boycott likelihood of success

legalinsurrection.com

More of the "shut up" variety of news.  This time from the "Nags", as Rush calls them.  Oops!  Hate speech!  Sorry.  ( not)

This is the bitter fruit of leftism

It may not be fair to blame this all on the left.  We conservatives share some of the blame for this.  But let's consider just the current president, and what he did to the space program in his most recent budget.   This quote says it well:

What's also embarrassing is that the U.S. is falling behind its rivals in scientific research. The Large Hadron Collider is in Switzerland because Congress canceled the construction of our much larger atom smasher, the Superconducting Super Collider, in 1993. In addition, many of our laboratories studying nuclear fusion are closing, while France plans to open a nuclear-fusion reactor in 2019. Finally, the U.S. is ceding the manned space program to China. "In 2025, don't be surprised if a Chinese flag is placed on the moon," Mr. Kaku warns.

The space program isn't considered science, according to this administration.  So, it doesn't get fully funded.  Never mind that the entire NASA budget is less than 1% of spending, so that the abolition of NASA wouldn't make much of a difference in the budget.  But look what is being trashed- the space program.  Sure, certain programs are being kept, but their meaning pales in comparison because of the lack of commitment to human space flight.  So, it just withers away, like so much of the rest of our society.

The sorry state of affairs is not the sole province of the left- there are those who call themselves conservative, or libertarian, who also would rather these programs be cut.  This gives cover for Obama.  If there was a commitment to human space flight, this wouldn't be happening.

My point is that left is happy to do this.  It is too bad that "conservatives" are enabling them to do it.  Guys like Romney, for example.

Hanoi Jane: Limbaugh, shut up!

This isn't political. While we disagree with Limbaugh's politics, what's at stake is the fallout of a society tolerating toxic, hate-inciting speech. For 20 years, Limbaugh has hidden behind the First Amendment, or else claimed he's really "doing humor" or "entertainment." He is indeed constitutionally entitled to his opinions, but he is not constitutionally entitled to the people's airways.

[ emphasis mine]

At the risk of being accused of "hate speech" too, I deliberately added "Hanoi" to Jane Fonda's name. If you look at the emphasis that I've added, you can see clearly that this is indeed political, that the left is hiding behind a veil of morality, and are claiming control of the airways in the public interest, which they alone will define. Communism is a correct word. The problem with the left is that the truth is inconvenient, and their only recourse to the truth that communism is a failure- is to tell people to shut up.

If they were so very, very interested in curtailing hate speech, where have they been when one of their violates this vital interest that they claim that they have? Where? Where were they when Clinton was committing perjury to protect himself from charges of the very serious crime of rape, for heaven's sake? The inconvenient truth is that they aren't really interested in that, and they are pretending to be. Where are they when it comes to the way the Salafists treat women in Islamic countries? Their "concern" is always so convenient to them when it comes to politics.

The greatest truth of all is that the left sees the truth as hateful. Anybody who speaks it or writes it is hateful to them because the truth isn't in these people. They hate Limbaugh and anybody else who tells the truth about them and everything they say they stand for.

A country that falls for lies is not long for this world. This statement by Hanoi Jane would not have passed muster in my generation. It shows how far this country has sunk into the cesspit of the leftist's lies that such a phony statement as this could have any credibility at all. But that is where we are as a country now. The truth doesn't matter anymore. It is all about power, nothing else. The laws of the jungle will prevail, not the rule of law. The left's work is almost finished and they know it.

Update:

There's another point here. I think you can hate something, but not hate the person who believes it. For example, you can hate communism, but not hate the communist. That's because people can have a change of heart. You don't have to hate somebody because that person does have the capacity to change. And people do change sometimes. But you do hate the sin, because it is always a sin and it can never change.

It is interesting to note that the communists, including Jane Fonda, don't make this distinction. The implications should be obvious.

Update:

Good to see that somebody out there sees the supreme irony of Hanoi Jane telling Rush to shut up.