Smell Test

Prior to leaving on his last summer vacation to Martha's Vineyard, President Obummer held a press conference in which he handled reporters' questions ... some of which focused on America's $400 million cash payment to Iran on the same day this past January in which four American hostages were flown out of Iran. He patiently explained that this was not ransom ... but the reason we gave Iran pallets full of hard foreign currency (rather than dollars) was that the United States had no banking relations with Iran ... see: NTK Video.

Since the White House reporters have no desire to follow up on such presidential obfuscation (taqiyya?), I would like to have  asked the following question, "Mr. President, we must have wire transfer banking relationships with other countries which have wire transfer relationship with Iran. Could we not have transferred this money by wire through one of these countries?"

Also, it has also been disclosed on Fox Business channel on Thursday by one of these four hostages that they were delayed in a plane on a runway in Tehran for over two hours until, as he was told, such time as "another plane landed." Was this other plane the one with the cash? Most likely it was ... which surely suggest that this was a tribute payment.

Furthermore, I would have asked another question, "Mr. President, was this payment the equivalent of $400 million or $1.7 billion?" It seems that there is some purposeful confusion about the actual amount of this ransom ... and pallets full of cash suggests to me that it was more money than $400 million.

It would have been nice to know the real facts in this matter and not get the typical administration runaround ... that doesn't pass the smell test.

Afterward: See also: Powerline Blog.

Fun Facts

-        The Iraqi government of former president, Nouri al-Maliki, which was required to form a more “inclusive” administration before President Obama could formulate a strategy to combat ISIS, now has as its new Vice President ,,,  namely Nouri al-Maliki … see: CNN Story.

-        A young Chinese man died of a heart attack while he was about to make his fourth donation in a week to a sperm bank … see: UK Daily Mail Story  ... shades of Nelson Rockefeller.

-        Six years in the limelight might have turned Sarah Palin’s and her family’s heads. Apparently the Palin clan got into a brawl recently near Anchorage, Alaska at a large party. Some of the reporting may be apocryphal, but read the details for yourself: NY Post Story. A stretch Hummer is a little too pretentious for my taste.

-        Cabbies at the San Diego, California airport now need to pass the “smell test” as well as other safety measures before they are allowed to pick up passengers … see: ABC News Story.

-        “This is a big f-ing deal!” Vice President Joe Biden recently tweeted that the worst abuse of man or woman is the abuse of power. No f-ing kidding? … see: Michelle Malkin Story.

-        Perhaps Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden’s former number-two man) is losing his touch? In the first raid orchestrated by him on the Indian sub-continent, three al Qaeda members were killed and seven captured when they attacked the wrong target. See the details here: UK Telegraph Story.

Poop Science

Here is a “scientific” study that doesn’t pass the smell test.  It seems that twelve researchers at the Czech University of Life Science have determined that dogs generally prefer to defecate and urinate with a North-South orientation … see: CBS Story.  This seemed to me like junk science so, like any good critic I then went to the actual study itself.  If you want to be bored with pages upon pages of arm-waving statistical gobble-de-gook read: Frontiers in Zoology.

As a result of my reading, this seems a perfectly senseless scatological study … particularly since many observations of how dogs did their business were discarded because the earth was not in a “quiet” magnetic field (MF) period. OK, I had never heard of quiet MFs so I Goggled this term and found a study by the British Geological Survey that quantified the magnitude of polar shift that occurs apparently on a daily basis … go to Geomag Article to peruse this study yourself.

From this research I found that clearly these variations are de minimis (a little over 1/10^th of a degree).  Can any animal sense such a tiny variation in our magnetic flux?  I doubt it.  One has to wonder therefore if these rejected Czech study observations were also those in which these tested dogs pooped facing the wrong way … and if these rejected observations, if included, might invalidate this study’s specious conclusions.  (And does this process not begin to resemble how the “climate scientists” at East Anglia University in England dealt with any discrediting data on global warming?)

Therefore, to conclude this matter of dog pooping orientation, let me rightfully quote Hillary Clinton, “After all what difference does it make?”