The NYT describes how the man in charge of fighting AIDs was fired in unknown circumstances and how his replacement is being named in an even less transparent manner.
On Jan. 9, Dr. Dybul circulated a memo saying he had been asked by President Obama’s transition team to stay on the job temporarily. But on Jan. 22, one day after Hillary Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state, her staff announced that Dr. Dybul had resigned.
No reason was given, but he was reported to have packed up his office and said an emotional goodbye to his staff that afternoon. Dr. Dybul did not return phone messages, but he has told friends that he does not even know on whose orders he was dismissed.
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The question of who should run the program seems to be a legacy of that fight. Several names have been discussed as possible candidates, but AIDS activists say they know of no one who has been seriously vetted for the job by the Obama transition team since November. …
A day after Dr. Dybul’s resignation, word began to circulate among AIDS activists that the job had been offered to Dr. Eric Goosby, the director of AIDS policy in Bill Clinton’s administration, who now runs a San Francisco foundation devoted to fighting AIDS.
According to a member of an anti-AIDS group speaking on the condition of anonymity, Senator John Kerry approached Mrs. Clinton, seeking the job for Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard medical school professor and former World Health Organization AIDS chief, and was told that she had offered it to Dr. Goosby. …
Both men had been discussed as possible candidates, along with Dr. Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council; Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at the Columbia School of Public Health; and Warren W. Buckingham III, Pepfar’s director in Kenya, who is openly gay and taking AIDS drugs himself. …
The abruptness of Dr. Dybul’s departure and the secrecy of the process to replace him has upset some AIDS policy specialists.
I have no idea who the best man for the job is, but if the appointments process resembles that described by the New York Times it suggests that the appointments process in certain parts of Washington hinges not on what you know, but who you know, or worse, what politics, lifestyle or symbolism you embrace. And this is a medical job. It’s a helluva way to run a railroad. And if the NYT is exercised about it, then it really must be jaw dropping.
Napoleon said that the English occasionally hang an Admiral to encourage the others. In England a Headmaster would establish his control over an unruly school by summoning the least offensive boy in the room to the front of the class and thrashing him. Hillary may have been clearing her throat, or doing a favor, or paying a debt, or sincerely acting out of a conviction. No scratch that last it is to ridiculous to consider. The only person to suffer for trading a Washington job is Blago, who did not actually do the deed. In that he resembles the unfortunate Jack Ryan who was destroyed by Obama’s henchmen for not having sex with his own wife while those around him were doing things a mink breeder wouldn’t tolerate.
I think we can expect medicine to become ever more politicized because so much research is now funded by the government. And along with politicization comes ever less transparency. To give an example from almost five years ago now, I was appalled to read that the NIH helped to hype the “medical miracles” promised by embryonic stem cell research in 2004.
According to Joseph Bottum and Ryan Anderson, Ron McKay from the National Institutes of Health admitted that he and his fellow scientists had generally failed to correct the media’s false reports about the promise of stem cells—- but that was all right, McKay told the Washington Post, since ordinary people “need a fairy tale.” They require, he said, “a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”
Given the media’s complicity in the stem cell brouhaha, it really is startling that the NYT is calling attention to the strange goings-on with the PEPFAR program.
Further down in the article:
Jodi Jacobson, a former head of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, which wants financing for all aspects of women’s reproductive health, including abortion, wrote a blog post titled “Dybul Out: Thank You Hillary!!!” It argued that he had worked too closely with the far right, and she accused him of lobbying to please the Roman Catholic Church by letting its relief groups opt out of distributing condoms. ….
Mr. Tobias and Dr. Dybul surprised many with two early decisions that activists had expected fights over: Pepfar has paid for millions of condoms, and it buys cheap generic drugs from India, despite the pharmaceutical lobby’s opposition.
It seems that the Obama Administration has a fixation on funding the distribution of condoms.
To follow on PA Cat’s point, it’s probably inevitable that anything heavily subsidized by public funds will be politicized. Public funding for the arts is toxic over the long term for the same reason. Anyone who is astounded by this has probably forgotten the Golden Rule; i.e., that whoever provides the gold gets to make the rules.
Unfortunately AIDs is more of a political disease than it is a medical challenge. It receives funds out of all proportation to its number of victims. Controlling the spread was a political nightmare from the start because it meant restricting the gay lifestyle. And after years of effort and millions of dollars spent on awareness education those in charge finally admitted they had screwed up big time by pretending it was a disease that was lifestyle independant rather than focusing on the people most likely to contract the disease – they had been doing the equivalent of shipping mass quantities of snake bite kits to Antarctica.
In this hyper-PC environment, logic in personnel selection is a bit much to hope for.
RWE: Exactly. As steak loving, red blooded americans we should DEMAND the the government appoint a heart attack czar. Man I love steak.
Lifeofthemind:
Turns out “Obama’s henchmen” were none other than the local ABC TV News Team.
…the same team that recently REFUSED to cover…
(forgot, help out the old geezer here, …in the next post)
“…but he has told friends that he does not even know on whose orders he was dismissed.”
We never found out on whose orders Craig Livingstone was hired. He was the guy who ordered the FBI files sent to the White House. We could not even find out who hired him and who ordered him to collect the files. So it is quite possible that we will never know who ordered Dr. Dybul to be canned.
The culture wars never seem to end. My impression is that Dr.Dybul is a fine dedicated physician who has made significant contributions to the fight against the AIDS virus. I wish him well. I hope he does not get discouraged for we need physicians such as him. I also wish the new appointee well. This is a problem that should be non political.
If President Obama wants to overcome partisan politics this is the kind of problem that brings caring people together. Let them make their appointments. Then hold them to the high standards of the accomplishments achieved by such as Dr. Dybul.
Its possible that with time and the pain of maturity that President Obama may call him back.
He was dismissed because he dared to work with grassroots organizations in Africa that stressed refraining from promiscuity (abstinence, delaying the onset of sex, limiting partners).
Many of these organizations are church related, a second sin.
Finally, they didn’t allow pushing condoms to high school kids…or pushing the US version of “safe(promiscuous) sex”…
The irony is that Dybul is a well known gay physician who worked originally in SF…but like most of us who work in public health, we recognize HIV prevention is different among ordinary folks than with “sex workers” or drug addicts…you start pushing the same comic books in bath houses and church schools, and you get a backlash…..
RWE #5
“[AIDS] receives funds out of all proportation to its number of victims.”
As a physician, I too believed that many years ago–that my own patients were being short-changed. However, with time I came to realize that the benefits of AIDS research extend far beyond that one disease. It has greatly increased our understanding of cancer, of immune diseases in general, of organ transplant, of other infectious diseases, and of development of vaccines. Unintended consequences, perhaps, but I think it turned out not to be a bad investment.
Best wishes,
Jim
Shades of the Travel Office scandal?
Who can say
Since we’re not gay
Just who’s the best physician
Who is the one
The best to run
The place is Hill’s position
Perish the thought
She can be bought
Concern is for the victims
To my relief
Her core belief
Is found in all her dictums
So if she fired
A man once hired
To care for man his brother
I’m sure that Hill
In conscience will
Just hire up another
We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em
We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.
Remember that song? And the children who sang it?
People get the kind of government they vote for. So, given a certain vindictive streak that animates so many of President Obama’s followers, Dr. Dybul’s treatment should not be a surprise. The question is why the New York Times should be surprised.
Billy Dale was the fall guy at the travel office. Charged with some sort of financial mismanagement felony and tried. jury found him not guilty after a 20 minute deliberation. pretty much ruined his gov’t career. Hill’s arkansas pals i believe name of Bloodworth-thomas iirc ended up with the lucrative travel office concession. pretty damn bald, pretty damn crass. pretty damn dangerous as hell.
Buddy, Billy Dale and rest of the White House
Travel Office served at the pleasure of the President. All anybody had to do was to tell them that their services were no longer required and that (fill in the blank) would take their place because that is whom the new Prez wanted.
But no. Criminal charges had to be concocted out of whole cloth. No charges (yet) against Dr Dybul but the night (mare???) is still young.
BTW I read quite a bit and then composed my own history of the Angel of Ploesti. Have been sending it to different people just so
those not into WWII history know about her.
She also resided in Baltimore and Kansas City. But only the Texas Handbook makes not of her residence and accomplishments. She will be part of Lone Star lore from now until
“Gabriel Blows His Horn”.
The NYT may be upset, but it might also be that the NYT is being used or that their reporter’s friend has a score to settle in all this.
OT: for perspective
The Universe’s brightest explosion ever seen was observed on 19 March this year.
Early in the morning of 19 March, the Swift satellite, a joint NASA/UK/Italian mission, pinpointed an extremely bright GRB towards the constellation of Boetes, and immediately sent out an alert to observatories around the world. Two robotic wide-field optical cameras in Chile also observed the brief flash: ‘Pi of the Sky,’ which is operated by the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Warsaw, Poland, and TORTORA camera mounted on the 0.6-m REM telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. Within minutes many more telescopes (including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope) were observing, allowing for the most detailed study of a bright GRB ever undertaken using data from gamma-ray to radio wavelengths.
Another example of political medical “science.”
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=five-years-after-being-fired-sun-ex-2009-01-30
Obama Smiles
Andrew C. McCarthy
…”But Obama had no problem standing with 20 percent of lawmakers in opposing Roberts—just as he was content to be in a hard-Left fringe that opposed surveillance reform and, in Illinois, a ban on partial-birth abortion. Obama is a smart guy. He knew he couldn’t defeat Roberts, and he wasn’t trying to. He was trying to lead. He saw himself, quite perceptively, as the vanguard of an ideological movement, and he was doing what a vanguard does: showing the way.
For Obama, Roberts represented the adversary in countless ways: He embodied judicial restraint, hostility to Roe v. Wade, rejection of Obama’s theory that “positive rights” (i.e., welfare rights) may be discovered in the Constitution, deafness to claims that the Constitution may be read to ban that which it explicitly permits (e.g., the death penalty) and to permit that which it explicitly bans (e.g., race-conscious unequal protection), and so on. For what little it’s worth, I don’t agree with any of the now-president’s views on these matters. One needn’t agree, however, in order to admire his skill.
Opposing the Roberts nomination was not about beating a nominee. It was about making a point—or, rather, several points. It was about fighting, which is what vibrant movements do when high-stakes moments arise. It was about defining Obama by defining what he was against. It was about setting a bar to lead the opposition against future nominees. It was about putting down a marker for future elections: This is who we are, and this is who they are. It was about proving that Obama had the self-confidence to fight and the brains to know that fighting and losing often makes the team stronger in the fights to come.
The fight, the principled stand, is what stirs and catalyzes an ideological movement’s supporters. President Obama insists he is a pragmatist, not an ideologue, but that is a feint. Governing is an unavoidably pragmatic exercise, a choice between concrete, available possibilities. But those possibilities are not arrived at by pragmatism. They are driven by ideologies, by how elections define competing points of view and apparently resolve them.
The president has a winning political formula. Show up for all the big fights and get the rhetoric right, because the base needs the big fights and the rhetoric, even when pragmatism limits action’s ability to achieve rhetoric’s ambitions. Vote “present” if you have to, but resist voting for what you’re against because the precedent will kill you down the road; and, at all times, keep pushing the ball up the field—with the occasional long pass when the other side falls asleep, but otherwise with three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, a strategy tailor-made for the Leviathan of a field we’re playing on.
—
So what are Republicans doing? Why, they’re rallying behind Holder, of course. The Judiciary Committee overwhelming approved his nomination, 17–2, with six of the eight Republicans joining Democrats who’ve never seen a Republican nominee they couldn’t bruise, block, or bury. The nominee now moves on to the full Senate, where confirmation, with solid Republican backing, is assured.
In a radio appearance last week, Michael Steele, a Holder supporter who is a candidate to become head of the Republican National Committee, explained this, er, strategy. We have to be smart about picking our battles, he told a disgruntled conservative caller. Steele asked, is there any real chance of beating Holder? When she conceded there was not, he replied, with evident self-satisfaction: Why would I want to get into a fight we can’t win? He then spoke vapidly about how it was more important to get Holder in power: that, you see, is when we really get to confront him on issues.
Somewhere, President Obama was smiling.”
Politics Made Simple
Since one of Bush’s supposed successes was his increase in America’s donations to fighting AIDS in Africa, and since this success flies in the face of the “Bush Hates Black People” meme pushed by the media after Katrina…
…look for the Democrat’s new AIDS “czar” to denigrate Dr. Dybul’s methods and results.
BTW: unfettered access to retroviral drugs causes new resistant strains of HIV to appear and proliferate. But, the celebritization of Africa’s AIDS epidemic has dumbed down the debate to the point that a Bono’s calls for “more cheap drugs” is crowding out the more more reasoned advocates’ attempts at real societal reform (ie. Christian-ization), abstinence and smarter pill-taking.
Twisted, that.
“abstinence and smarter pill-taking.”
Tested, that
anything john kerry is involved in stinks.
I find it of some small interest that the NY Times is reporting this story with a distinctly disapproving tut-tut. Disappoving of both Hillary and Obama, evidently. I must confess to being a little shocked. If the Times won’t behave itself, they can kiss that government bail-out goodbye.
Obamas vicious assault on Jack Ryan, Jeri Ryan ( 7/Star Trek) and her children tells us who Obama is. Jack may have had a stupid “Animal House” fraternity party idea, but Obamas vicious attack totally makes hypocracy of Michelle Obamas “what does this do to my children” BS.
Barry, there’s a bunch of Kerrys involved in Africa AIDS programs. It does make one wonder, since clearly Sen Kerry would not bother to pee on you if you were on fire, what else is afoot. Maurice Strong, i won’t even to begin to point to his daisy chain, is one of them. Of course Bill Clinton’s initiative. maybe they’re up to some good, we can hope.
NYTimes, maybe Carlos Slim’s buy-in is moving the thing a degree or two back from slap up against the hard left margin? Today in Davos the Mexican delegation –dunno who led –in a big speech went after USA debt build-up as a world problem. If Slim is thinking alike his gov’t, well, expect him to try to bring the Cosmic Boomer Press back toward earth a little.
“… if the appointments process resembles that described by the New York Times it suggests that the appointments process in certain parts of Washington hinges not on what you know, but who you know, or worse, what politics, lifestyle or symbolism you embrace. And this is a medical job. It’s a helluva way to run a railroad. And if the NYT is exercised about it, then it really must be jaw dropping.”
Nothing to add to that, excepting that it is worth some emphasis and it does appear to be telling of broader goings-on in this admin, none of it propitious for sound policy decisions, all of it propitious for ideological/partisan/power grabbing interests.
Byzantium. Bingo!
The key to serious corruption is anonymity. I had never heard of Maurice Strong so I googled. This guy makes John Kerry look like a rank amateur. Remember the U.S. funds 25% of the UN general budget.
Maurice Strong
Meanwhile, on the southern front:
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
Updated 15h 20m ago
Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials….
“A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships” with U.S. and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to “gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs,” the report concludes.
[h/t Elephant Bar]
Byzantium lost to jihad, costing western civ Jerusalem most of the time, Constantinople all the time, and the world fuel supply, as it turns out. Shirley the Byzantines were weakened by their accepted form of communication being webbing & layering half truths to form patterns from which emerge interpretations of messages. this practice was the opening for Constantinople’s worst sacking, before the final loss to jihad, by western christian crusaders, led by knights templar, those warrior/bankers who, after actually pissing off the pope got murdered in Paris, survivors congregating in defensible Alps, where they continue as bankers under the knights templar flag (the one emblazoned on your swiss army knife), and hold world economic conferences at Davos.
Buddy Larsen @30
The loss of Constantinople to the Turks was one of the great turning points in western world history. Few people know that it was Constantine who nursed the Christian religion into life, and in the process put the x in xmas.
IN HOC SIGNE VINCIT
Back in the day of Roman clout
When Legions reigned supreme
A couple emperors duked it out
To see who owned the dream
Old Connie told his soldiers he
Had seen in the night sky
A sign proclaiming victory
And gave the reason why
He said the sign did light the night
The sign of the Chi-Ro
That promised he would win the fight
If allegiance he would show
The sign proclaimed the Christian King
Whom they would recognize
To rule the earth and everything
From seas to shining skies
Thus Constantine did give the word
“The sign upon each shield!”
The morning saw his army gird
For battle they’d not yield
The Christian god now on their side
The troops were confident
That no defeat would God abide
And into battle went
You know the rest, they passed the test
And Constantine emerged
A Christian king, one of the best
The pagans they were scourged
What was that fiery sign you ask
That flared in bold relief
That gave to Constantine the task
Of changing men’s belief
From many gods to the one True
I’ll tell you so you know
The sign that flared up in the blue
Was the old Greek Chi-Ro
The letter X, that sounds the same
As Ch, then with Ro,
The letter R, becomes the name
Of Christ, to those who know
And still today the letter X
Stands for the risen one
And not a slight designed to vex
Adherents of the Son
Had Constantine not climbed the ridge
And to the sign did bow
He’d have lost that day at Milvian Bridge
And we’d all be muslims now
Byzantium lasted for more than 1100 years expanding and shrinking as opportunity and adversity came their way. Although not an expert I would question how much of their variation in fortune can be attributed to webbing and layering versus more traditional explanations like disease, agricultural conditions, strength of unfriendly neighbors, and from time to time egregiously bad management.
The Byzantine period is not well understood because it has been largely ignored in Western curricula. That’s too bad because the history is as full of conquest, splendor, setbacks, and surprises and as that of the Western Empire.
Such was the splendor of Constantinople, perhaps the repository of 1/4 of the world’s wealth at the time, that it was a magnet for plunderers of every variety. The sacking during the Crusades was led by the Normans who had been repulsed from a similar adventure some years earlier.
Had Western Christendom been more “Christian” to their brothers in the East it is likely that the Mohammedans would today be but an ancient memory.
walt, you are definitely on fire.
Slade, Maurice Strong is a good way to get to the far left mindset re Africa. link and link
I had thought, when Obama referring to McCain before the election, said “He has no idea what he’s up against” that he meant the Chicago Machine.
Now i’m thinking maybe he meant this –the unpropertied young & angry and over-propertied old & foolish combined across the globe in existential attack against the surprised remnant who thought raising a family was good not evil.
Slade @ 29,
Sickening…the fench on the southern border remains umfinished. So, if one needs a 3 to 1 advantage to take the offensive (the cop-reality TV is 6-10 per raid, then we need >3 million SWAT members attending to this problem. How do we fund that? At $45K per SWAT member (we wish) = $135,000,000,000 per year. And if they do actually finish the job, would they become brownshirts?
And, how are our gangs different than jihadis in Anbar, Hamas in Gaza, Hez in Lebanon, Talibanis in Afganland, the no-go zones in France, all embedded amongst the citizenry? How can we possibly avoid collateral damage, if we intend to clean this up?
And here at home, we must have solid evidence before we move against the threat; it’s generational police work.
And, if we’re only half effective, capturing 50% with no KIAs, that would mean 500,000 criminal trials. At $250,000 per trial (we wish) = $12,500,000,000,000 with the other half still at large.
Add in the aggregate cost of their criminal activities and we get some very large numbers.
27. buddy larsen:
Barry, there’s a bunch of Kerrys involved in Africa AIDS programs. It does make one wonder, since clearly Sen Kerry would not bother to pee on you if you were on fire,
///////
When I lived on in New York City back in the 1970′s & 80′s Russian Jews were streaming out of Russia. They did not come out of Russia as a lot of American Jews ancestors did 100 years ago–refugees from pogroms. Rather the Russian Jews came as a foreign ruling elite who had been ousted. They did not evince even the slightest imperial cringe to western european Jews at Columbia. Rather their hunger unnerved the American Jews I knew.
It was from this recent group of Russian Jews that I learned the fuller text of the insult. The insult is so… I can’t find the word…baroque ….that’s not it. When I was a boy living on army bases in Europe, boys would insult each other by saying “ah your mother wears combat boots.” This makes no sense now. Neither does the Russian insult.
Anyhow here is the Russian insult.
“I would not piss on your a**hole if your guts were on fire”
By way of comparison consider Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?
This is the way the french Quebecois speak of Intergenerational Decline –Mes-Aeux-Dgnration
Why would we care? Do we actually think this is about fighting or solving AIDS because its initials say so? Where is the evidence? This is just another government agency.
Keep it out of your ass and the problem is solved. Don’t keep it out, and it never will be, and perhaps never should.
Ah, Maurice Strong …
I remember when he breezed into Colorado’s San Luis Valley in the 80′s. He purchased the 10,000 acre Blanca ranch where his wife set up a New Age spiritual center. The entrepreneurial Mr. Strong fired up the dirt poor potato growing region with a plan to tap the high desert valley’s deep aquifer to set up a brewery promising to create hundreds of jobs.
At the last minute on Dec. 31, 1990 he changed his application for water use, increasing it by two orders of magnitude with the intention of selling it to the city of Colorado Springs, 150 miles distant. The brewery proposal was conveniently cast aside.
Mr. Strong next appeared as the Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Development and the Environment in Rio de Janeiro, 1992. The birth of the global warming juggernaut. In his quiet way, he choreographed the mau mau against the Bush administration for being “selfish” in placing the economic interests of the American people above the planet’s health.
He is a very bad man.
A multi-billionaire, self-proclaimed socialist (ok, something wrong right there!) and proud father of the massively destructive militant green movement, he has some mysterious connection with the North Korean science academy (see #29, slade’s link to excellent Claudia Rossett (she the burning bright light of investigative journalism who has given the world to understand “Oil-for-Food”) piece, from which i paste snip below)
“…(he) has receded, as he often does, into the shadows. He is currently spending most of his time in China. His name flickered recently through the speaker lineup for a gala dinner for clean technologies in San Francisco, but the organizers say he then canceled because “he has so much going on” in China.
China is a special place for Strong, a self-declared, life-long socialist. It is the burial place of a woman said to be one of his relatives, the famous pro-communist American journalist Anna Louise Strong, a vociferous supporter of Lenin and Stalin until the mid-‘30s, and a strong booster of Mao Zedong’s China. Maurice Strong’s presence in Beijing, however, raises awkward questions: For one thing, China, while one of the world’s biggest producers of industrial pollution, has been profiting from the trading of carbon emissions credits – thanks to heavily politicized U.N.-backed environmental deals engineered by Strong in the 1990s.
yes, a very bad man. Here he is in 1990:
“Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead.
What if a small group of these word leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?
The group’s conclusion is ‘no.’ The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about a world collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists – they’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock exchanges, and computers, and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent the markets from closing. They jam the gears. They have mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davros as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich countries…?”
(the interviewer says)
“…and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out of the window.
I sat there spellbound. This is not any story-teller talking. This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.
Readers who pay attention to economics might be thinking “say, that’s exactly what’s been going on for the past decade”….and the scary thing is, they might be correct. Adding further fuel to an already weird fire, Maurice has a very clear deadline in mind. If you guessed 2012, you’re right.”
You know… were thinking…
Since there seems to be no issue with electing a president that is a foreigner, why not try electing Vaclav Klaus next time?
He would be a perfect American as his mindset is concerned.
Oh well, back to living in “interesting times”…
{BTW, for language files of those so inclined, the “c” in Vaclav is pronounced as “ts”, like in jetski, and “au” in Klaus as “ou” in mouse]
Votz-lahv Klowz is how i’d do a phonetic.
“I don’t think that there is any global warming,” said the 67-year-old liberal, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. “I don’t see the statistical data for that.”
Referring to the former US vice president, who attended Davos this year, he added: “I’m very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.
“Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, he said that he was more worried about the reaction to the perceived dangers than the consequences.
“I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world,” he said.
“I’m more afraid of the consequences of the crisis than the crisis itself.”
(ahhhh…a shot of refreshing straight talk. The real stuff, not that fake straight talk everyone claims they’re doing so they can run out some more crooked talk.)
Obama has promised to double renewables in three years or by 2011. Currently renewables account for 10 % of US energy production. split fairly evenly between biofuels and hydro with less than 1% coming from solar and wind. Hydro won’t experience any growth. Even with great growth–solar and wind won’t account for more than 3% or so of energy output. Most of the growth will come from biofuels. Biofuel production has been growing at about 1.5% annually for the last two years on average. So Obama is talking about doubling growth rates. Shouldn’t be too hard considering the amount of money they’re throwing at the problem and the amount of growth already built into the system.
That growth in domestic fuel production may be enough to keep oil prices low. That’s actually key. I blog about this stuff here at RDWaterPower
@ 41. buddy larsen:
Votz-lahv Klowz is how i’d do a phonetic.
No. Vaatz-laf Klouse or Vahtz-laf Klouse.
[the "aa"/"ah" as in "master";"ouse" as in "mouse"; the "b","d","g","v","z" when ending consonant are pronounced as "p","t","k","f","s" - from that follows that "s" would be pronounced as "s" and not as "z"]
Apropos of nothing:
The world may be a giant hologram
Information as a form of entropy:
Bekenstein received his undergraduate education in the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1972, supervised by John Wheeler.
In 1972, Bekenstein was the first to suggest that black holes should have a well-defined entropy. Bekenstein also formulated the generalized second law of thermodynamics, black hole thermodynamics, for systems including black holes. Both contributions were affirmed when Stephen Hawking proposed the existence of Hawking radiation two years later.
“Apropos of nothing” Very zen of you ::))
“Apropos of nothing” Very zen of you
LoL –some nihilist –
nah, not nihilist, just a small case of niall nyquist fever.
Well that’s just special – my mind made a mental disconnnect between Niall Ferguson and JR Nyquist. I’m done for awhile. Too many dudes for me.
Don’t quit now, not while you have a scrap of accursed sanity left!
::)) I comfort myself by knowing that The Dismal Tide is just a Social Construct protected by a false sense of sanity.
HIV-AIDS? Try finding a cure only after you’ve isolated and EMed the virus, dumbasses.
I contend that there’s no HIV at all. AIDS is a lifestyle disease brought about by excessive sex, exposure to pathogens due to sex, and drug usage. African AIDS figures are high due to malnutrition and disease, not virus. Throwing money at the problem when it’s not fully understood is just like throwing it into a black hole.
And oh yeah, I am a global warming skeptic too.
(thanks twoby –i’m a gettin’ it, slowly)
Guys, all that’s old is new again!
After getting an eyeful of Pajamas Media’s meltdown over at Protein Wisdom, I’m beginning to feel like it’s gonna be the seventies all over again. We’ve got the Cold War (different uniforms, but same players) on the front burner on a slow boil, mutually-assured Terrorism is crisping in the oven, revolutionary “dudes” with big collars from the city (the style is Sydney-Poitier-meets-Starsky-meets-John Travolta) are tending “environmentally” to the stove. The Jefferson’s have just moved “on up,” to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and The Wheel of Fortune is on every weekday at three.
We’ve made some social progress on the racial front: with Raine’s receipt of his 20th million, we’ve all moved past Raisin in the Sun, happily. But Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is said to still patrol the streets of major cities.
From the predictability of our dear leaders’ debates over the “stimulus plan” it appears we’re going to have to sleepwalk steadily through the entire 70′s nightmare all over again: the oil embargos, various “Noriega’s,” the political infighting over defense budgets, the false claims of “allies,” the holding-hostage of our cities to “gangs’,” “youths’,” and politicians’ demands. And the B-grade television series’ featuring suave Miami crime-fighters in racey boats: the whole nine-yards. Lumbering half-awake through the reruns. Us.
Might be a good time to get back to basics! Axle-grease, crude oil, ball bearings, Levi’s, a good dog and a safe bank: there’s the basics. Keeping your own chickens, too.
If you’re an individual investor, you might want to drop the luxury retailers. Prada‘s goin’ out of style.
lowly citizens! play “flip a dictum”!
“we who repeat history are condemned to remember it”
The Jeffersons have just moved “on up”….
Every time I see Michelle, she makes me think of Weezie.
Peter Boston writes:
“The Byzantine period is not well understood because it has been largely ignored in Western curricula.”
For a great historical novel about Byzantine history, at least its early history, you can’t do better than Robert Graves “Count Belisarius.” The narrative features Justinian’s general who waged war incessantly for decades, reasserting some authority over the western Roman empire and fighting off the Bulgars in the Balkans. (I think it was in “Star Trek” that one of the star cruisers was named the “Bellisarius.”)
Such a fine writer was Graves, and such a great exemplar of a twisted, talented generation of intellectuals. “I, Claudius,” most people know. “King Jesus” is another great, strange book. And if you read “Wife to Mr. Milton,” you’ll get a great overview of the English Civil War and some proto-feminist insight into the great poet.
Maurice Strong. He be old now. One does take some delight in watching the very old, new age codgers wrinkle and decay into oblivion. May his fate be a just one.
re “70s redux” here come de kidnappers, here come de kidnappers (remembering ‘here come de judge’ great Sammy Davis Jr shtik, and the hundreds of terror-kidnappings, of the era)
re Maurice Strong, yes, he be old, and probably thus in a hurry to see that “loving reduction” of the numbers of humans upon Earth-First, before he passes on to that great inner circle of inferno in the bye and bye, and not probably but for a fact hanging out where the worlds’s highest danger-to-restraint ratio & lowest barrier to generou$ p$ycho billionaire$ with UN credential$, both come together in the North Korean Science Academy.
All of these stories that indicate the utter arbitrariness of Democrat rule are non-stories in that the MSM gives them scant attention and then quickly move on.
Buddy,
Your link, and shot of espresso, reminds me that…
Wasn’t that nice British gentleman held hostage by Hezbullahfatahhamastalibaniran (“HBiran” for short) for all those years in Gaza, the famous Terry Waite, both an Anglican Bishop and a UN employee? Watching his ordeal from an oil-field camp in Saudi Arabia, I recall thinking, “too bad” at the time. He was just the sort me Mum’d have over for tea.
That was in the early eighties, as I recall. With the Anglican Church now tactically on their side, it appears the grabbers are a bit more choosy.
Back in the early eighties, we didn’t cotton to talk about “root causes.” The nervous, self-deprecatory reflex all too common today was still nascent and mostly un-exercised. When, say, Argentina invaded the Faulklands, the London School of Economics’ various Juan Cole’s got little to no airtime at the BBC for their “post-territorial,” anti-war talk.
Which got me wondering. What has happened that Anglo-guilt is now over-exercised? Is it that Britain’s and America’s detractors, tired of losing real territory against a playing field of bounded, Capitalistic republics through the eighties, has focused instead on colonizing the democracies’ psychological frontiers, imposing inside our citizens’ minds the same zero-sum, territorial conquest game that they lost so clearly when they played it on a real, physical field?
If a BBC announcer has broadcast the claim that a suicide bomber “is” the Gazans’ F-16 fighter (and she has), then, for sure, to the same announcer, Westerners’ minds could just as easily be cast as our own field of surrender. With just a little concerted pushing, and huge helpings of regular self-despite, a fortified, territorial entity might succumb to its own debilitating virtual Dunkirk.