One Way to Fight ISIS is with Mockery and these Iraqi Kurds are SNLing them

I hope the real SNL plays their because it is pretty funny.

“We are bearded, dirty and filthy. … We are brainless with nothing in our heads.”

“We are ISIS. We are ISIS,” the singers declare. “We milk the goat even if it is male.”

“Our music is without rhythm. And our leader is called Qaqa,” they sing. “Our pockets are full of Qatari money. Our language is bullets and cutting.”

Their leader is really named Qaqa? So many jokes and so little time.

Obama Just Wrote a GOP Attack Ad

I wonder of he is sabotaging their campaigns for some nefarious reason?

President Obama delivered a blow to Democratic Senate candidates looking to distance themselves from his flagging approval ratings Monday, saying lawmakers avoiding him on the campaign trail were “strong allies and supporters” who have “supported my agenda in Congress.”

The president said that Democrats faced a “tough map” and noted that many Democrats in crucial races “are in states that I didn’t win” during a radio interview with Rev. Al Sharpton.

He knows that these candidates are running away from him as fast as they can. So he goes ahead and damages their campaign for his own narcissistic reasons. I guess he figures that the Senate will go GOP and he will have 2 years to cruise and start planning his memoirs.

Could ISIS use Ebola to Attack America and Europe? Very Plausable

I recently read a book on the Black Death a while back called The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time.The book talked about how the Black Plague came to Europe through a biological warfare attack by the Mongols toward a city in Asia Minor call Caffa held by the Genoa in 1347. 

What Jani Beg (the Khan of the Golden Horde) did when the city of Caffa was under siege was use his catapults to toss plague corpses into the city in order to break the siege. The plague corpses infected a number of Genoese sailors who attempted to flee the city (and devestated Caffa) and thus inadvertently inflicted the Black Death on much of Europe. The Black Death caused the death of 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia.

An interesting side note was that Jani Beg was a Muslim. So this got me thinking that what if ISIS decided to send a number of their operatives to West Africa to get their hands on Ebola infected blood. Or maybe even worse infect themselves and become living (not for too long) "Jani Beg plague corpses." All they really need is a blood soaked rag from an Ebola patient in Liberia and every operative can potentially become a living "plague missile."

What these "ISIS plague missiles" could potentially do is send packages of Ebola to various victims in the US and Europe. It would only take a few blood or vomit soaked rags in an Amazon box to be sent to various people in the US and it might be worse than a letter bomb. 

What would be terrifying is that this attack would be nearly impossible to detect. You can detect bomb materials in a box sent in the mail but these are just rags and gauze and things. You cannot use a metal detector or some sniffer to catch this kind of biological warfare attack. Hell, they could just send a bunch of bloody rags that that are not even Ebola infected and it will create the same kind of panic.

The job of terrorists is to inflict terror and this would strait up terrify people. I know it would be fairly difficult to catch Ebola from a bloody rag made in Syria all the way in the US because of the nature of the virus. However, the fear it would cause would be devastating. Each one of those boxes would have to be checked out by health care officials and tested to make sure it isn't virulent. Then disease detectives would have to check the person that opened the box and everyone that person came in contact with. I wonder if the CIA and the FBI are checking to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. I really hope they are because this attack would be scary in the extreme.

Study Says Natural Gas is Not the Bridge Fuel to Stop Global Warming: I Disagree

Well its seems that 5 sets of scientists are saying that natural gas might even make global warming worse for some reason or another.

Five teams of experts from around the world, using five different sets of computer model simulations, looked at what would happen if natural gas — also known as methane — remains cheap and plentiful and nothing else changes, such as policy mandates. They all came to the same conclusion.

"It doesn't reduce climate change," said study lead author Haewon McJeon, an economist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Two computer models even found that when considering other factors like methane leaks, cheaper natural gas could lead to more trapping of heat by greenhouse gases, the mechanism that drives global warming. Methane traps even more heat than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

First of all why are these models so different than one another? I guess two have methane leaks in them while the others do not. This is assuming that better pipeline leak-finding technology will never be available for 100 years for some reason. 

You figure that profit motive alone will have companies actively screening their pipelines for leaks. I mean a leak might costs $1000s of dollars if it goes long enough. I guess those studies want us to keep burning coal because a train car full of the stuff will not leak and create "greenhouse gasses."  

What actually invalidates much of these studies conclusions is the term "and nothing else changes" which doesn't make sense to me. Solar and wind energy is taking off like never before because if economic incentives. If you put a solar panel on your roof you need less power from the natural gas fueled power plants and thus they burn less of the fuel.

I cannot fathom the idea that technology will stand still for a 100 years. I mean the changes in the last 50 or even the last 20 are mind boggling to say the least. Hell, Lockheed Martin is looking to build a fusion power plant and might get one done in 10 years. A few neighborhood fusion reactors or even a backyard one the size of a water heater will do more to change global warming than 100 studies by scientists ever could.

Why Does Alison Lundergan Grimes Keep Ducking the Did You Vote for Obama Question?

She should just admit she probably voted for him twice and put the issue behind her.

It might seem an odd question for a Democrat to keep ducking: Did you vote for President Barack Obama or not?

Can that be so hard?

In her Kentucky Senate debate Monday night with Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, Alison Lundergan Grimes said she won't answer that question "as a matter of principle" because doing so would compromise constitutional rights.

It just makes her look like she is hiding something for pretty much no reason. She is a Democrat and probably voted Democrat for much of her life. I would be shocked if she voted for Romney in the last election. It is sad that people cannot even admit to voting for Obama. I bet she was just besides herself happy to have voted for the first black President back in 2008. Then she doubled down on him in 2010 like many Americans. I voted for the other guy but was proud that our nation elected a black person for the first time in 2008. Too bad he turned out to be such a disaster.

Climate Models off By 17%: Turns out its Plants

It seems that the terrible Climate Change Apocalypse coming in 20 years will be great for plants.

In this new effort, the researchers took a new look at the photosynthesis process and how it might be altered in the presence of increasingly higher concentrations of CO₂. They found that as CO₂ levels rose, plants altered the way they processed the gas, saving more of it to use as a fertilizer, which allowed the plants to grow bigger or to become more robust, which in the end meant more CO₂ was taken out of the atmosphere. Not coincidently, the researchers note, their research showed that when plants were exposed to the same higher levels of CO₂ as actually occurred over the past century, they were able to absorb on average 16 percent more CO₂, which very nearly coincides with the 17 percent error difference earth scientists have found with their climate models.

Sounds like the forests and fields of the Climate Change future will be quite verdant and thus take more of the CO2 out of the atmosphere then the models predict. In any case it seems that models that are wrong so much of the time need to be fixed in order for us to get the complete picture.

Holy Crap! 1.4 Million People Might Have Ebola by January! 70% Mortality Means 980,000 DEAD!

It isn't the Black Death (17 to 200 million dead) or the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic (25 million in the first 2 years) but these numbers are pretty sobering.

Meltzer helped produce a report in late September that said that at current rates of infection, as many as 1.4 million people would become infected by January. That number, officials stressed, was a straight extrapolation of the explosive spread of Ebola at a time when the world had managed to mount only a feeble response. The more vigorous response underway is designed to bend that curve.

At least people are moving quickly on it and can get this thing under control before it gets worse.

Antikythera shipwreck Yields New Treasures: No Ancient Computer This Time Though

Too bad they couldn't have moved more of the sediment to see what other wonders this shipwreck held.

The vessel, which dates from 70-60BC, was famously first identified by Greek sponge divers more than 100 years ago.

Its greatest treasure is the remains of a geared "computer" that was used to calculate the positions of astronomical objects.

The new archaeological investigations have retrieved tableware, ship components, and a giant bronze spear.
This weapon was probably attached to a warrior statue, the dive team believes.

Previous expeditions have found several such statues made of bronze and marble.

This article also says that the ship carried a bride and her dowry. It just seems strange to me that a bunch of statues and a geared computer were found in that dowry. You would think it was the contents of a temple being moved from one place to another. Maybe to flee warfare and pillaging in some part of Asia Minor where the ship was from. 

A Ton of Eyes on Comet Flyby of Mars

I'm kind of hoping the comet hits Mars but it is still cool how close a shave it will give the Red Planet.

The space agency has already trained a number of its science assets on Comet Siding Spring, which will zoom within 87,000 miles (139,500 kilometers) of Mars on Oct. 19 — about one-third the distance between Earth and the moon. And NASA's fleet of Red Planet orbiters and rovers will be watching on the big day, studying the comet and its influence on Mars' atmosphere.

It seems we have a ton of eyes on Siding Spring as well.

But the real show will begin Oct. 19. NASA's three Mars orbiters — Mars Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the newly arrived MAVEN spacecraft — will observe Siding Spring's flyby from space, while the agency's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers will watch from the Red Planet's surface.

It's pretty cool that Opportunity and Curiosity are getting in on the act as well. That will be the first time a comet will be photographed from the surface of a planet that is not the Earth.

North Carolina College Republican Chairwoman Leigh Thomas Needs to Resign After Trying to Stopping Voter Registration

What is funny is that she seems to have tried to stop a conservative voter registration drive. In fact this group has much of the same values as I have regarding fiscal responsibility, free markets and a brighter future for America. I would probably be a member if they had them around when I was in college. In any case this is what Leigh Thomas said.

North Carolina College Republican Chairwoman was caught on camera allegedly suppressing the voter registration efforts of a non-profit, conservative student group Wednesday afternoon.

The video, obtained by Campus Reform, captures the interaction between Turning Point USA representative Bree Binder and the Chairwoman of the High Point University College Republicans, Leigh Thomas.

Binder asks Thomas for permission to enter the private liberal arts campus in North Carolina, to conduct a routine voter registration drive.

“We’re just registering people to vote,” Binder says. “I can show you all the forms and everything.”
"I understand the registration process,” the College Republican Chairwoman responded, “I'm just not sure if this is something I would want to have on this High Point University campus, the registration of voting [sic]."

When asked why, Thomas clarified that she does not approve of registering students to vote on campus.
“I don’t want to have any voting registration happening on this campus with students,” Thomas says.

“[T]he registering students, it’s just...if it’s not done the way that we did it back in 2012, I’m not—I’m not good with it,” Thomas says.

“I understand the forms, I’ve seen the forms before, it’s not about that. I just do not want to have people being registered to vote whatsoever,” Thomas tells Binder.

Now that last part that I put in bold is something that should get her canned. She might have misspoke here but registering people to vote is the lifesblood of Democracy. In fact I believe that all Americans should be allowed to vote simply by filing a tax return. If you give your hard-earned money to this country you should be able to vote automatically. You paid the bill so you should be allowed to vote on who divvies up the money. 

ODB err OGD in Charge of North Korea? And Kim Jong-un out?

Wouldn't be something of the ghost of Ol' Dirty Bastard was in charge of North Korea. However it seems that Kim Jong-Un is Out.

According to what Vice are reporting, Jang Jin-sung, a former senior North Korean official who worked as part of the the previous leader's propaganda machine, has said that the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD) have stopped taking orders from Kim Jong-un. 

The OGD answered only to Kim Jong-il and are extremely powerful and have "effectively taken control of the country", with factions within them arguing over keeping a strict reign over the economy, or opening up slightly to get more money through foreign trade. 

In other words the OGD members got tired of answering to a megalomaniac that might literately throw them to the dogs. I think looking right next door at the fact that nearly everyone at the highest level of government are billionaires might have tipped their hands. Maybe there was a little help (probably a lot) from the Red Chinese and let the scramble for wealth begin. The upside is the North Korean people can stop eating bark and join the rest of the world.

Good Job Obama: You Just Tied Candidates that Are Running Away from You at Full Speed Directly to You

I think part of him wants the GOP to win the Senate. Then he can just blame the last two years on the GOP legislature and start decorating his house and getting his post Presidency speaking engagements ready.

"Now, I am not on the ballot this fall," Obama said in remarks intended to motivate Democrats to vote. "But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot — every single one of them."

Republicans strongly agree and have been expressing the same thought for months. Their candidates have spent the better part of a year trying to plaster Democratic opponents with the unpopular Obama and his agenda in an effort to gain the six seats required to take the Senate majority.

So Obama just made it a referendum election when it really isn't one. Talk about an own goal.

Obama and the Blame Game: He said there was 10% unemployment when He Started. It was 7.8%

Obama just cannot say he was wrong not matter what happens.

A few minutes later, “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft asked the president about the economy…
The president said that he was fixing a problem he inherited from President George W. Bush 43.

Again, he said, “it’s not my fault, folks” … I inherited a lousy economy from Bush. But this time.. The president crossed the line: "when I took over unemployment was up at 10%..."

My head almost exploded. I know what the unemployment rate was in January, 2009 because that’s what I do -- I follow the money.

Fact check! In Jan 2009, the unemployment rate was 7.8%.

I can't believe that he is still talking about the Bush economy after 6 years in office. Many people don't even remember the Bush years anymore. The unemployment rate actually rose for the first 6 months of the Pax Obama(yeah that was a real thing.) In any case I think more people would actually back Obama if he once said "the buck stops here" instead of constantly blaming others.

Oh Great the Aussies are Fudging their Temperature Readings: I Wonder Which Other Countries Have Done the Same?

You can't trust these people as far as you can throw them.

Burnett reports that the Australian Board of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit that it routinely alters the temperatures recorded at all of its official weather stations in Australia. The reason the organization gave for its tampering with the numbers is that anomalies arising from outside the realm of climate beset the official data.

But as The Australian and The Weekend Australian reported in a scathing series of news articles that exposed the scam, it so happened that when the Board of Meteorology massaged the numbers to account for the anomalies, it just so happened that nearly all of the official temperatures turned out much higher than they would have been otherwise. 

My question is what other organizations like the ABM are routinely rounding up their numbers? How long has this been happening? Can you trust any of the numbers that Climate Change gurus throw at you?  This "settled science" is supposed to lead to billions of dollars/Euros/Reminbi in spending and altering everyone's lives. Climate Scientists need to make sure their numbers are 100% correct or what little credibility they have left is going away permanently.

Climate Change to Turn Alaska into Florida by 2047

I wonder if the model this guy used was the same one that didn't predict global warming for the past 17 years or so?

"If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited," said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published in Nature last year predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.
"The best place really is Alaska," he added. "Alaska is going to be the next Florida by the end of the century."

This has to be the most scare-mongering thing I have read in a long time. We might as well just buy land in the arctic already because we are "all going to burn up" according to this geography professor.

It Seems the Millennials Want Experiences over Goods

Marketers need to savvy up and start backing events instead of goods.

The Harris/Eventbrite researchers found that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a desirable experience than buy coveted goods. Reinforcing that point, 72% of millennials said they want to increase their spending on experiences during the next year, in lieu of physical things.

The reason why they would rather have the experience rather than the good is thus:

A major reason for dashing off to all these parties, festivals, road races and taco-eating contests: the fear of missing out. With the rise of social media, Eventbrite analysts point out, skipping the big event doesn’t just mean missing an afternoon of good times; it also means being reminded on Facebook, Tumblr and the like of how much fun everyone else had.

You can see a case-in-point with things like the Spartan Race, the Ice Bucket Challenge, and (as this article points out) Burning Man. So what markets need to do is sponsor Love Festivals, and Concerts and things and the Millennials might show up in droves. For no other reason than to take a bunch of selfies for Instagram.

Change ISIS to Daesh? Sounds Like a Good Idea. Especially Because They Hate the Term

Well ISIS hates being called Daesh so lets call them that.

The Associated Press recently reported that the group were threatening to cut cut out the tongues of anyone who used the phrase publicly, and AFP have noted that the term "Daeshi" has been used a derogatory term in some parts of the Middle East. Some analysts have suggested that the dislike of the term comes from its similarity to another Arabic word, دعس, or Das. That word means to trample down or crush.

Trample down and crush sounds like what much of the world would like to do to them.

We Spent $22 Trillion and We haven't budged on the Amount of Poor People in this Country?

I guess we lost the war on poverty because these numbers are staggering.

Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

That is a LOT of money.

But today the Census will almost certainly proclaim that around 14 percent of Americans are still poor. The present poverty rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 1967 a few years after the War on Poverty started. Census data actually shows that poverty has gotten worse over the last 40 years.

I guess people that are categorized as in poverty has changed since 1967.

According to government surveys, the typical family that Census identifies as poor has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer in his home. Forty percent have a wide screen HDTV and another 40 percent have internet access. Three quarters of the poor own a car and roughly a third have two or more cars. (These numbers are not the result of the current bad economy pushing middle class families into poverty; instead, they reflect a steady improvement in living conditions among the poor for many decades.)

Those are some really nice items and I think part of it is because of our tax system. That earned income tax credit allows a poor person to get a big chunk of cash at tax time. Many of these people don't bank that money for a rainy day or buy an Vanguard S&P500 Index Fund or something. Instead they put a down-payment on a new car or truck or simply blow that money on a new LCD TV instead. I wonder how these numbers would look if the government just changed that lump sum tax credit to a monthly salary instead?

This part was interesting:

The intake of protein, vitamins and minerals by poor children is virtually identical with upper middle class kids. According to surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the overwhelming majority of poor people report they were not hungry even for a single day during the prior year.

This is actually a good thing in my eyes. The greatest nation in the world should not have any citizen be hungry for any period of time. We should at least make sure that every American has a full belly day after day no matter what. I guess in this one thing you can say the war on poverty has one at least one battle.

Ancient Crecent of Stone Found in Israel. The Thing is Freaking Big Too

I can't wait for archaeologists to dig up this monster.

Located about 8 miles (13 kilometers) northwest of the Sea of Galilee, the structure is massive — its volume is about 14,000 cubic meters (almost 500,000 cubic feet) and it has a length of about 150 meters (492 feet), making it longer than an American football field. Pottery excavated at the structure indicates the monument dates to between 3050 B.C. and 2650 B.C., meaning it is likely older than the pyramids of Egypt. It was also built before much of Stonehenge was constructed. 

Ancient peoples seem to be really good at moving massive stones all over the place and building huge monuments. My money is on a long-forgotten form on telekinesis but I might be wrong.

Students Protest Against Dress Code that Affects Mostly Women

It seems that the students are rebelling against a dress code that seems to target mostly women.

As if getting dressed for high school wasn’t tough enough already, for some students in Staten Island, N.Y., wearing summer’s hottest trends — crop tops, cutoff shorts, and flip-flops — could mean detention slips. But many are fighting against the policy, and nearly 200 students have already worn their favorite threads in protest and proudly served time for it, according to the New York Post.

I guess this is why some schools are implementing uniforms.You don't have to worry about crop tops when everyone is wearing the same polo shirts to school.