Landmines

President Obummer promised Trump a smooth transition to his inauguration on January 20th. Well, once again, he lied. Surprise, surprise! He and his band of desperadoes are doing everything their puny pea brains can conger up to sabotage Trump's upcoming administration. Here is a list of seven of these landmines they have planted ... see: Breitbart Article. I would also add the last-minute packing in of immigrants, the pardoning of large numbers of drug dealers (just what we need with the current epidemic of drug overdoses), a barrage of new regulations and the continued mass releasing of criminal alien felons. And I'm sure that there is more mischief to come. Charles Krauthammer calls these actions  adolescent ... which of course they are. I think I would add spiteful, mean-spirited, un-American and petty. Go to Words for the President to find some more gems that apply.

Of late, our current president (I've already suppressed his name) has gone out of his way to burnish his legacy. I suspect that these current actions will tarnish what little luster is left. So, not only will he be regarded by history as a failed president, but will be remembered as having left a turd in the transition punch bowl.

Afterthought: And like Al Capone, who arranged to be in Florida when the St. Valentine's massacre took place in Chicago, our nudnik president is doing many of these dastardly deeds from far away in sunny Hawaii.

Handful

Why does Obummer say that only a handful of detainees released from Gitmo have returned to the battle ... see: The Gateway Pundit? What is a handful? 9? 10? 11? Does he not care that we can check the number? So it turns out to be close to 200 ... quite a difference! Our fearless leader is so driven by ideology and his pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison that he tells bald face lie after bald face lie to the American people. I guess he is so used to the media covering up his verbal diarrhea that he doesn't even think to wipe himself.

In this same interview with Yahoo News Obummer would not refer to Jahadi John by his nickname ... he had to call him by his given name, Mohammed Emwazi. Again, Obummer is reverting to his obsessive fear of admitting that there are radicalized Muslims roaming the world. He somehow believes that if he said the word "jihadi," this would betray his longing for this connection not to be made. The columnist, Charles Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist, frequently calls Obummer "delusional." To me, a mere layman, it seems that our fearless leader's psychological malady is much more serious than that.  How about "just plain nuts?"

Sapient Window

I have previously coined the term "sapient window" when discussing the possibility of communicating with life elsewhere in our universe ... see: Cosmic Silence. This term is meant to define the period when life on a planet has progressed far enough scientifically to understand its uniqueness in the continuum of space and time. In other words, without superstition, being able to define enough of the essential realities of the universe to fathom that there is other life elsewhere out there ... is the essence of a sapient window.

It is difficult to say when the sapient window opened here on Earth, but a good guess would be with the publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1916. Thus our sapient window seems at most to be about 100 years old. This is a vanishing small percentage of our Earth's 1.3 billion years of age which is about 10% of the age of our universe. The more difficult task is estimating how long our sapient window will remain open ... may I be optimistic and propose another 10,000 years? (I think Charles Krauthammer is more pessimistic in the article above-referenced.) What will cause this window to close is anyone's guess ... a pandemic, a natural disaster, another Dark Age, self-annulation, etc.

Even with this, the Earth's sapient window would still be but a snap of the fingers compared to the age of our planet ... and just a blink of the eye relative to the age of the universe ... as, I assume, it would be for other exo-planets.Therefore, assuming a meaningful concurrence of the sapient windows between any of the billions of possible life-supporting exo-planets is a bit of a stretch ... even ignoring the unfathomable distances involved.

Delusions

President Obama's press secretary, Josh Earnest called the the latest Iraqi city to fall to ISIS, Ramadi, a "village" yesterday ... and downplayed its loss. This exemplifies just how delusional this White House is regarding what ISIS is achieving militarily in Iraq and Syria This plum is now added to Fallujah and Mosul as key Iraqi cities which the United States had spent many lives and treasure to capture from previous Islamic extremists ... but which now have been handed back to ISIS  (along with numerous tanks, Humvees and heavy weapons) by our fumbling, bumbling administration and the inept Iraqi army, Now we can also add to this the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra ... also seized by ISIS this week ... see: New York Times Article.

Actually "delusional" is a favored word of the columnist Charles Krauthammer when describing the Obama administration's dismissal of these ISIS advances ... see: Brietbart Story. And Krauthammer chooses this word with authority ... he started his professional life as a psychiatrist.

Do our fools in the White House believe that they can say anything that flies in the face of the facts and the American people will buy it? I suppose so ... since they have be doing it successfully for years now.

With Friends ...

like the United States, who needs enemies. Last year Israel revealed to the Obama administration, through Secretary of State John Kerry, it's plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in order to slow down that country's rabid race to the atomic bomb. Rather than then coordinating plans with Jerusalem, the U.S. threatened to shoot down any attacking Israeli planes ... see: Israel National News Revelation. Shoot them down! Let me repeat ... the United States would shoot down Israeli planes if they tried to destroy Iran's atomic weaponry facilities! Wow!

The Obama misadministration is so invested in trying to woo Iran ... now not even to the point of making it renounce and destroy its path to becoming an atomic power ... see: Charles Krauthammer's Analysis, that it is willing to attack just about our only "ally" in the Middle East.

This clearly is not a happy circumstance ... as I hope we all find out in detail when Bibi Netanyahu speaks to a joint session of Congress this Tuesday. I realize that, if the Israeli Prime Minister lays it all out then and there, that his speech might be a wake-up call to any Americans who still have an open mind. Yes, Netanyahu may well be burning his last bridge to the Obama administration, but, at this point, I don't see that his country has much more to lose ... given what we threatened to do to them last year.

See also: a more reflective Powerline Take.

Lefty Lemmings

I can't possibly out wordsmith Charles Krauthammer ... so I won't. I will just ask you to read his recent OpEd on that MIT professor, Jonathan Gruber's Obamacare confessions ... see: Washington Post Column. If after you have digested this bit of enlightenment, you are still a fan of the current administration health-care solutions, then I'll count you as an unrepentant lefty lemming. If you chose not to read it, then ditto. Sorry for being so blunt ...

Delusional

Republicans should not get too excited about their near-sweep in the mid-term elections on Tuesday for, as President Obama pointed out in his news conference today, two-thirds of the nation didn't bother to go to the polls. The implication here is that, if everyone had voted, then Obama and his policies would again be vindicated.

Let me see ... when our dear leader prevails in elections, he is the hero (remember his "I won" taunt to the Republicans in one of his early-on show confabs)? But when Democrats are shellacked in an election where his policies are front and center, he still is not defeated because those who didn't vote would obviously have supported him.

Unlike Charles Krauthammer, I am not a trained psychiatrist, but I still get the eerie feeling that our leader of the free world might be slipping into a state of mind that can be best described as delusional. N'est pas?

Bad Swaps

The Obama administration’s swapping of five vicious Taliban Gitmo prisoners for a possible Army deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, has evoked a series of bad-swap bromides.  I think it was Charles Krauthammer who suggested one … that this recent prisoner exchange was like trading a Rolls Royce for a Slinky. Greg Gutfeld said that it was like trading five hand grenades for a water pistol. These bon mots got me to thinking up some bad-swap similes on my own … such as:

-        Swapping Sir Lawrence Olivier for Adam Sandler

-        Swapping a wagyu steak for a Happy Meal

-        Swapping Pope John Paul II for Cardinal Law

-        Swapping Paris for Detroit

-        Swapping an orchid for poison ivy

-        Swapping a Boeing 787 for a box kite

-        Swapping Citation for Mr. Ed

-        Swapping Dom Perignon for Flexinet

-        Swapping Frank Sinatra for MC Hammer

 and finally

      -        Swapping Ronald Reagan for Barack Obama

But I think I like Greg Gutfeld’s the best.

Wouldn’t it be Funny …

... if Obamacare caused the United States to return to a free-market economy in health care?  Already many more people have lost their health-care insurance than have gained it as a result of this Harry Reid-Nancy Pelosi bit of screwed-up social engineering … see: Powerline Analysis.  And later this year, when the employer mandate kicks in and many millions more Americans find themselves with the unhappy option of either paying more for less health insurance … they might then chose to go uninsured and suffering the consequence.  And the way “Obamacare is being hollowed-out by government fiat” (a Charles Krauthammer near quote), it is increasingly unlikely that there will actually be any consequences suffered by the uninsured.

The health-care insurance companies allowed the current administration to have its way with them because they thought that they would be able to feast on an additional 45 million customers … and that they could also gouge the many millions more currently-insured who would have to pay more for less as a result of the insurance rewrites caused by Obamacare.  Perceptive people, such as Krauthammer, realize that these two windfalls for the insurance companies are now unlikely to occur … and that a government bailout of their partners-in-sin is quite likely.  So now the Republicans are pushing a bill that would make such a bailout of health-care insurers illegal … see: Fox News Story.  Wouldn’t this be poetic justice?

And wouldn’t it be even sweeter if Obamacare caused the whole health-care industry to once again return to a free market?  Then individuals would be making economic trade-off decisions about their health care without the interference of health-care insurers and the government.  Then the spiraling cost-inflation havoc that this industry-government complex has foisted on our economy might finally be reined-in.  Wouldn't it be funny?

Banana Republic

Charles Krauthammer has a sobering column in a recent Washington Post about how the standing rules are being ignored or brazenly broken in both the Executive and Legislative branches of our government.  It is a compelling read ... see: Washington Post Opinion Piece.  If you skip this hyperlink, one of its many important quotes is:

We’ve now reached a point where a flailing president, desperate to deflect the opprobrium heaped upon him for the false promise that you could keep your health plan if you wanted to, calls a hasty news conference urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions of such plans.

Except that he is asking them to break the law. His own law. Under Obamacare, no insurer may issue a policy after 2013 that does not meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. These plans were canceled because they do not.

The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room.  

That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.

It saddens me that so few people of real influence see our government's unraveling and take to the barricades to denounce it. We used to have such people of stature ... they were called statesmen. Instead we are today served by Woody-Allen-style puppets who prance and pose trying to capture American's attention one step ahead of Mylie Cyrus's twerking.

We are in a sorry state of disrepair ... and as Charles Krauthammer closes his column with:

A Senate with no rules. A president without boundaries. One day, when a few bottled-up judicial nominees and a malfunctioning health-care Web site are barely a memory, we will still be dealing with the toxic residue of this outbreak of authoritative lawlessness.

Checkmate

Russia has enjoyed numerous international chess champions: Boris Spassky, Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Botvinnik, Anatoly Karpov, and so forth. Suffice it to say Russians know their way around a chessboard.  I believe that this kind of strategic thinking has served them well in the current back and forth over Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people.  In this bellicose context, America’s Secretary of State Kerry (“Puffy John”) has exhibited a series of verbal blunders upon which the Russians have pounced … and backed the U.S. President, Barack Obama, into a corner.  

Kerry said that any American missile attack on Syria would be “unbelievably small” and then ad-libbed a possible detente … turning over to international inspectors Syria’s chemical weapons “by the end of the week.”  This was a verbal monkey wrench which Russia immediately picked up and is now pummeling President Obama with … checkmate.

And so Obama gave a speech from the White House tonight (interestingly, not from the Oval office) in which he ducked for cover … see: Full Text of the Speech.  He tried to sound forceful, but just sounded forced.  He has claimed that the substance of Kerry’s gaff had already been discussed with Putin at the G-20 summit … clearly a lie … which he must hope that Putin won’t reveal.  Now he has backed away from his threat of an immediate Syrian missile attack … an attack that Congress would not have approved anyway.  

The President has given Russia and Syria the prerogative to remove these chemical weapons under international supervision … an impossible task.  Charles Krauthammer pointed this out tonight on Fox News saying it took Libya eight years to perform its surrender of WMDs under much calmer circumstances. For two other reactions to Obama’s retreat on Syria see: Peggy Noonan's Comments and Wall Street Journal Comments. Both are worth a read.

Do you get the impression that, in international diplomacy, Russia is playing chess and America is playing checkers?

Far Fetched

There is a shocking account circulating among the conservative media that Varerie Jarrett gave the stand-down order during the September 11^th last Benghazi attack by radical Muslims … and not the only person who had the real authority to do so, President Obama … see the original story in: The Conservative Report.  This effectively stopped any military rescue efforts to protect our diplomatic staff there … with the sad result that Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were consequently slaughtered. No one as yet has testified that Obama gave this order ... yet we know that it was given.  

If this seems a little far fetched to you, it does to me too … except for one thing.  And that is the plethora of smoke and mirrors that have been constructed by this administration as extraordinary cover-up over the fallout from this attack.  They obviously have something (or things) to hide.  Despite our then Secretary of State’s screeching, “What difference does it make?” …. Madam (former) Secretary Clinton, it indeed does make a difference … particularly if Varerie Jarrett had been acting as our make-believe President.

If you wish to read other accounts of this shocking supposition … each presenting interesting viewpoints and supporting facts read: The Examiner Story and Charles Krauthammer's Comments and Rush Limbaugh's Comments.

Cosmic Silence

One of my favorite columnists, Charles Krauthammer, has written a thoughtful lament concerning the apparent lack of other sapient civilizations in the universe (see: National Review Article) or at least, if there are such extraterrestials (E.T.s), why we don't hear from them?   Basically, he states that, as we continue to find exo-planets within the habitable zone of "nearby" stars but are yet to see or hear any evidence of any life thereon, this suggests that "advanced civilizations destroy themselves."

I have a slightly different take.  Yes, I do believe, like many renowned scientists, that the laws of probability suggest that there are perhaps many billions (maybe even trillions) of other stars with planets that could and should support life.  However, when one unwinds the spans of time and distances involved in our universe, to me it is not surprising that we have not heard sapient coded message from afar.

Let me explain my logic:

- The universe is approximately 13 billion years old and our earth is about 1/10 of that age ... all back-end loaded.  I would imagine that many of these other theorized exo-planets are either yet to be ... or have been burnt to a crisp when their suns became red giants. Let's estimate that this culling percentage is 50%.  So automatically these billions of stars with habitable exo-planets is cut in half. 

- Now, sapient life on our earth has existed for perhaps only a million years ... or 1/13,000 of this earth's existence and scientific advancement sufficient to understand our time and place in the universe has existed for, at most, 100 years ... or 1/130,000,000 of this planets existence.  Let us (optimistically) imagine that this enlightenment age on earth will last for another 13,000 years.  This would result in a sapient window for our planet to be about 1/1,000,000 (one-millionth) of its total existence ... which fraction I suggest should then apply to other exo-planets.  Now these potential billions of habitable exo-planets with enlightened intelligent life is now reduced by 1/2,000,000 (1/2 x 1/1,000,000).

- As for distance spans, our universe is estimated to be 46 billion light years wide.  Now, no communication can travel faster than the speed of light, so assuming that sapient communications was or will be sent out from another exo-planet during our current and predicted future enlightenment age, it must originate within a bubble of 13,000 light years from Earth.  This reduces the number of habitable exo-planets from which we might ever receive a message by another factor of 3.5 million (13 thousand/46 billion).  Or such potential messages from habitable exo-planets with enlightened intelligent life are reduced by a factor of seven trillion (1/2,000,000 x 1/3,500,000)..  Now, assuming we want to get this message within the next 100 years, we then must multiply this fraction by 1/130 (100/13,000) ... resulting in a reduction of the number of eligible communicating exo-planets contacting us within the next 100 years by 910 trillion ... quite a bit larger than even the number of the estimated exo-planets.

-  So, my conclusion is that, even if my calculations are off by one or two orders of magnitude, it is very unlikely that there is an exo-planet from which we might receive an intelligent coded message sometime within the next hundred years.  That is assuming (and this is a huge assumption) that such an exo-planet has a power source large enough to radiate this coded message out over the vast distances of intergalactic space.  This required power source has been estimated to be as large as the energy coming from our sun.  Soooo ... I highly doubt that E.T. will be calling home anytime soon ... and that Charles Krauthammer should find solace in the assumption that our "civilization" could well last for at least another few thousand years without his doom-and-gloom conclusion being justified.