reddit Gallery LIX

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Golden Tortoise Beetle

Wooden Watch

Any Leaf in a Storm

Black Leopard

Titanic vs. Modern Cruise Ship

Stiletto

I realize that the New York Post is a right-leaning newspaper (one of the few).  But Michael Goodwin has a devastating column there today pillorying President Obama for his mendacity and deceitfulness.  Rather than just reference his Page Six column as I usually do, I think today I will quote it in its entirety here:

When I first saw the headline saying Bill Clinton was advising President Obama to “honor his commitment,” I had to laugh. The idea of Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend as moral referee always cracks me up.  

Then I got to wondering. Which commitment was Clinton talking about?  

Is it the one Obama made to the Israeli people, that he had their backs and would never let Iran get a nuclear weapon? 

 Or was it his promise to enforce a “red line” in Syria?  

Or maybe it was Obama’s promise to “never rest” until we caught the terrorists who killed our ambassador and three other Americans in Libya? 

Or was Clinton talking about the many times the president said he would “never rest” until every American who wanted a job had one?  

Or maybe he was talking about the pledge to change the tone in Washington? 

Or to go through the budget “line by line” and cross out the waste driving up the deficit?  

You get the picture — any of those whoppers would qualify. But, of course, Clinton was talking about the broken promise of the moment, the one where Obama vowed that “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.”  

It ranks as one of the biggest presidential lies of modern times, all the more so because Obama repeated it 30 times. The fallout of millions being forced from their policies, an experience exacerbated by the hapless Web site, has created a crisis of confidence so vast, it threatens to swallow the second term.  

So Clinton, who falsely swore he never had sex with that woman, spoke from experience when he told an interviewer, “The president should honor his commitment to those people and let them keep what they got.”  

He knows the Big Lie is shredding Obama’s ace in the hole — his personal credibility. The key to Obama’s political success is that his job-approval ratings generally have been higher than the public’s view of his policies. From the economy to health care to foreign policy, voters were mostly negative on the policies. 

But when it came to Obama himself, more Americans, often a majority, said they liked him, trusted him and believed he had their interests at heart.  

ObamaCare is breaking that bond — and creating a domino effect. The public is turning ever harder against his policies, with only 31 percent now supporting him on the economy and 32 percent on immigration in the latest Pew poll. Most important, they are also giving a thumbs-down on his overall performance. Pew finds that only 41 percent approve of his handling of the presidency, down 14 points since December, while 53 percent disapprove. 

And Quinnipiac late Tuesday found he’s hit a new low with 39 percent approval, while a majority said he’s not honest.  

No president can lead from such a deep, discredited hole. And his ratings are likely to keep sinking because, once the Web site is fixed, millions more “shoppers” will get sticker shocks from the new policies ObamaCare requires. 

And next year comes the employer mandate, which will shake up the policies and prices of millions of others.  

So Clinton’s advice that Obama “let them keep what they got,” is, in a vacuum, a perfectly logical escape route. But even if it were possible, the reversal would be a dagger in the heart of ObamaCare. The whole Rube Goldberg scheme depends on using insurance policies to distribute wealth from healthy young Americans to older, sicker ones. 

Letting people keep the policies they have effectively repeals the president’s signature achievement. Clinton’s advice, then, won’t fly. But if he, or anybody else, has another idea about how Obama can wriggle out of the mess he created, they should speak up very quickly. 

Otherwise, it will be too late to make a difference.

I only wish that I had written this stiletto.

Lipstick on a Pig

Paul Mirengoff of the Powerline blog today asks the musical question: “Will [the Democrats] be united behind Hillary Clinton [in 2016] or will she face a substantial challenge from the left?” (See: Powerline Blog).  I personally find it difficult to imagine that there is anyone further left than Hillary Clinton.  But apparently both Politico and The New Republic have recently found Elizabeth Warren as a credible challenger to Hillary in 2016.  Their arguments, to me, taste like thin gruel.  In fact, my spider senses tell me that these straw-woman arguments may be nothing more than Clinton’s deep operatives trying to position her more as a moderate.

I am tempted to use the analogy of putting lipstick on a pig … but I think that that shibboleth was overused in 2008 when the media-left took their snarky shots at Sarah Palin.

reddit Gallery LVIII

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Ent?

Mantis Shrimp

Rainbow Parrots

Sulfur Mining

Opaizedl-Tree Fossil

Veterans Day

Thank you!

reddit Gallery LVII

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Narwals

Pyrite

Holland Tulip Fields

Bird Caterpillar

1968 Dodge Charger

Cat and Mouse

The recent negotiations in Geneva between the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran over a nuclear deal have broken down … see: Breitbart Story.  This is not really a surprise considering that the United States has already given Iran much of what it was seeking – a pullback from the severe sanction that we had been imposing ... see: The Daily Beast Story.  Let me see … we know that Iran is the archetype of duplicity … yet we are surprised when they are duplicitous. Wouldn't it be wonderful if President Obama were as tough on Iran as he is on the on the American people?

And finally who is the cat and who is the mouse in this game?

Afterward: For another surprising take on why these talks broke down see; Powerline Blog.

After-afterward: There are always three sides to every story ... now Kerry says that Iran walked away from a deal (surprise! surprise!) ... see: UK .Telegraph Story

Sign of the Times

The President and his wife have sway over much of the American psyche.  They can and do influence things for the better or worse.  This time I believe it was for the worse.  Michelle Obama recently invited a gaggle of Hollywood glitterati to the White House to instruct east-coast teenagers on how to make it in Tinseltown … see: US News Story. 

I guess we have enough doctors, engineers, nurses and accountants.

Three Ideas

Here are a few ideas I have that I would love to have adopted ... or have the time, money and energy to implement:

How to eradicate the Asian jumping carp – It would seem that the fact that these junk fish leap out of the water when disturbed by the vibrations from an outboard motor is their vulnerability.  They are mostly located in Midwest rivers but are feared to be moving into the Great Lakes (see: CBS News Story).  Before they do in mass, I would think that flotillas of outboard-motor boats with large expanses of above-water outrigger nets could traverse back and forth through their habitats … catching them therein … to be dispatched and converted in a nearby fish fertilizer plant. I don’t believe that it would take more than a few months of such harvesting to totally cleanse a given area … and the resulting fish fertilizer can be sold to offset part of the cost of this cleanup.

How to discover who wrote President Obama’s two books – Bill Ayers has just released a book titled, Public Enemy, Confessions of an American Dissident.  It is widely suspected that Ayers was the ghost writer of Barack Obama’s two books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.  One need then just get an electronic copy of Bill Ayers’ book and the same for Obama’s two books.  Then one can apply a sophisticated authorship analysis program (see: SSRN Paper) to test the text of these books for similarities.  This can provide a measure of confidence as to whether any of these books have a common author.  This could be very revealing.

How better to calibrate salt in recipes – Cookbooks very often call for a pinch of salt (or other spices). This is a very imprecise measure.  I propose that this instruction be modified by the terms: two-finger pinch ..., three-finger pinch ..., etc.  A five-finger pinch might approximate a half a teaspoon whereas a two-finger pinch is just a smidgen.

reddit Gallery LVI

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Strahov Library

Dutch Flower Garden

Mahout & Friend

Rough Diamonds

Hell's Gate

Angst Redux

Change produces anxiety.  Radical change produces angst.  Not that change necessarily is bad.  It’s just that its results are not necessarily predictable.  Take Obamacare for instance.  This is a radical remake of the United States’s health-care system … not just the way the insurance process works within it.  Therefore the American people (at least those who are paying attention) are suffering a bout of dyspepsia over this transformation … particularly since much of its consequences clearly have not been well thought through.  

It’s always been a puzzle to me that the Obama-ites are so good at the political processes … planning, polling, message construction, computer systems building, funding, communications, etc. … yet so inept at the policy processes.

Our current administration is fumbling so many fundamental policy issues that those who are watching things justifiably have great concerns.  Viz:

-        Our current handling of the nuclear threat from Iran is gone squishy.  Six months ago we seem to be putting the squeeze on Iran.  Now we are pulling a u-turn much to Israel’s consternation … see: Weekly Standard Story.

-        The United States military is undergoing a radical transmogrification under Obama.  In the last five years 197 top military officers have been summarily removed from their posts … including General Petraeus and General Ham.  For the disturbing details see:  Investors Business Daily Item.

-        President Obama has dramatically expanded the U.S. welfare state … despite his timid talk of entitlement reform.  Obamaphones, EBT cards, Medicaid expansion, etc. are costing tens of billions of dollars more than when he took office … see: National Review Article.

-        The many scandals that the Obama administration is playing Whack-a-Mole to keep off the front pages – Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS suppression of the Tea Party, NSA snooping, his extra-Constitutional executive orders involving immigration, global warming, gun control, etc.

-        [Add three or four more here of your own choosing.]

Barack Obama promised “hope and change” in his first Presidential campaign.  In fact he often added the word “fundamental” before the word “change” ... read this rather as "radical"… and he is surely living up to this pledge … a simple recipe for our current national angst.

reddit Gallery LV

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Bluebells

Driftwood Horse

Sailor's Delight

Indian Ivory Chess Set

Bismuth Geode

Rinos

The unfortunate election results of yesterday … the Rino (Republican in Name Only), Chris Christie, wining in New Jersey while the Tea Party Republican, Ken Cuccinelli, losing in Virginia … will now be interpreted by political pundits mostly bass ackwardly.  Establishment Republicans such as John McCain, Reince Priebus, Eric Cantor, and John Boehner will take this as meaning that the right wing of the Republican Party are losers and moderate policies must prevail to allow them to recapture the American electorate in 2014 and 2016.

Bullhockey!  Had they stepped in to help Cuccinelli, things could have been easily reversed.  Even Chris Christie would not take the time to travel to Virginia to lend his support to Cuccinelli in his up-hill battle ... and little Republican national money was funneled in to help offset the massive fundraising for Terry McAuliffe. Apparently the establishment Republicans would rather the Democrats win than see the Tea Party strengthened.

These Rinos obviously have forgotten the lessons of 2008 and 2012 when establishment Republicans, John McCain and Mitt Romney, lost to a radical-left-wing Democrat, Barack Obama, despite Obama getting 8 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008.  Yes, in years past, moving to the middle has been a successful strategy to win large elections … a perfect example being Bill Clinton in both of his runs.

But things have changed in the Obama era.  The moderate Democrats (Dinos?) have switched gears and embraced their more radical left wing … to their great benefit … whereas the main stream media’s castigating of the Tea Party has caused the establishment Republicans to not only distance themselves from these country-firsters, but actually openly side with the lefties.  How utterly stupid!

If Mitt Romney could have found a way to appeal to the Tea Party last year, he would be President today … and we would not be up to our necks in the liberal swill that Obama’s Chicago mob has been shoveling our way.  And if the Republicans expect to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, I sincerely doubt it will be with the likes of that hard-charging Rino, Chris Christie.  Oh yes, and if the Republicans are lucky enough to find someone further to the right whom they can embrace, he/she should not forget to still speak well of the Rinos.

The Big [Road] Apple

Road Apples

New York City has just overwhelmingly elected Bill de Blasio as its new mayor … see: Washington Post Story.  Please pray for them.

And while you’re at it, say a few words to the Almighty for the Old Dominion State, Virginia, and how its narrowly-elected new governor, Terry McAuliffe, is going to screw them up (and down) too … see: Fox News Story.

reddit Gallery LIV

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Norway Aurora

Lightning Ridge Black Opal

Cold Front

Road to Nowhere

Wonders of Man

Read My Lips ...

President Obama

no new healthcare insurance [PERIOD]

reddit Gallery LIII -- Birds

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Spatuletail Hummingbird

Formosa Blue Magpie

Lilac-Breasted Roller

Korean Parrot

Purple-Crowned Fairy Wrens

Entropy

I am taking a sidetrack today and dipping into one of my other blogs ... Junkier Science ... to present another take on science.  I hope you enjoy it.

Many scientists predict that the universe will eventually wind down into a permanent state of entropy. That is, all forms of energy (or activity) will have decentralized themselves and all semblance of cosmic (and maybe even atomic) order will have disappeared. A scientific internet website’s definition of entropy is: “Energy spontaneously disperses from being localized to becoming spread out if it is not hindered from doing so.” (Remember, energy doesn’t really disappear. There is still the thermodynamic law that states that all energy is preserved either in its kinetic form, its potential form, or as electromagnetic radiation.)

Therefore entropy is a complete state of chaos where electromagnetic radiation and energy still exist but are so dispersed as to be effectively non-existent at a singular point. Eventually (billions and billions of years hence), all suns will have burned out … all planetary motion will have ceased … and all knowledge will have been lost. Thus, the antonym for entropy could be (and often is) stated as “organized information”. But, I have a somewhat different take on entropy’s antonym -- I think it is “evolution”. If entropy is the ultimate winding down of information … then evolution is the spontaneous winding up of order … encoded into the billions of DNA chemical pairs of millions of species on this earth (and perhaps on millions of other earth-like planets.) This is complimented by the quadrillions of bytes of information that is stored in our printed and electronic libraries – all enabled by the information encoded in the DNA of humans.

This makes evolution even more unique and, yes, precious – it is a guppy swimming upstream against the tsunami of ever-growing entropy. Thus, there is a race to the death, albeit a multi-billion year race, between physical entropy and biological evolution. I have no idea which one will win this race, but I suspect that our eventual fate is not as predetermined as many today predict.

reddit Gallery LII

Another excursion into the world of reddit pictures.  See reddit Pics for sources.  Click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Venice at Night

Portulaca Flower Seed

Halite (Salt) Crystal

Volcanic Lightning

Sunspot up Close

Bad Apples

President Obama just labeled those health insurance companies which are now dropping hundreds of thousands of their clients as “bad apples.”  Quite a tame appellation … no?  Particularly for our pugilistic President.  I kinda think that Mr. Obamacare’s real feelings are quite a bit darker.  Health insurance companies are dropping their clients pell-mell because they can’t afford to insure them under the tenants of Obamacare.  And when the employer mandate kicks in next October (perhaps delayed again until after the mid-term elections?) the total number of Americans who will eventually lose their current policies was secretly estimated by our government at around 93 million!  (See: Forbes Blockbuster Story).

Now, these healthcare insurance companies greedily went along with Obamacare in the first place because they thought that they would tap into a huge 30 million or so block of the then uninsured.  (I almost said uninsured Americans, but I think that might have been misleading.)  In essence, our nanny government was promising to reward them for not objecting to Obama’s takeover of healthcare by making them partners in this crime.  Now comes the cruel light of dawn.

These “bad apples” trusted our fearless leader and will, unfortunately, never recoup anywhere near the number of clients that they will be losing.  And this is not because of a non-functioning HealthCare.gov website (it eventually will be kludged together).  It is because something like 90% of those now getting replacement healthcare insurance coverage are getting it under “expanded Medicaid” (a sotto voce part of the Obamacare law) ... see: Powerline Story … for details about this newest government entitlement (see: Affordable Care Act Tenant).

In a way, these “bad apples” will get their comeuppance for trusting President Obama and his Chicago consiglieres.  The real crime now occurring is not the mendacity of the Obama administration in its false promises about "keeping your insurance and doctor … period."  It is the coming devastation of America's healthcare insurance industry … to be followed by the likely gutting of the healthcare system itself.

How’s that for audacity?