Happy Islamic Halloween!

Please, remind me why - 12 years on - we're still involved in this nightmare hellhole of a country?

Afghanistan has the well deserved reputation of being a Graveyard of Empires.

It brought down the Macedonian Empire, the British Empire and the Soviet Empire. Now we're letting it kill us. Why? Let's just leave the Afghanis to do what they love to do most when they're not shooting at an invader: killing each other. The guy we originally went there to kill is supposedly dead, we've tried to stabilize it for 12 years, and as it's long history clearly demonstrates, it will not be stabilized because it's people don't want us there. Time to go.

Afghan special forces commander defects with guns to insurgents

An Afghan army special forces commander has defected to an insurgent group allied with the Taliban in a Humvee truck packed with his team's guns and high-tech equipment, officials in the eastern Kunar province said on Sunday.

Monsif Khan, who raided the supplies of his 20-man team in Kunar's capital Asadabad over the Eid al-Adha religious holiday, is the first special forces commander to switch sides, joining the Hezb-e-Islami organisation.

Read the rest HERE.

Question: What is Doing The Same Thing Over and Over, Always Expecting a Different Result? Answer: A Definition of Stupidity.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, always expecting a different result. I'm loathe to argue with the great man on very much, so I'll merely say that doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result is also indicative of simple stupidity.

What's my point in bringing this up? Well, France is facing a cataclysmic future if sharp changes aren't made soon. All of it due to what France's socialists (stateside, they call themselves "Progressives") have done to the country's economy over the last 50 years and have recently accelerated alarmingly in just the last year under failed president Francois Hollande.

Missing Village Idiots aren't

 just from Texas and Hawaii

From the Daily Telegraph comes the story about how young wealthy French people are fleeing the onerous taxation burden imposed by the economically oblivious Hollande administration. 

My conclusion: Socialists aren't crazy, they're simply stupid.

Down and out: the French flee a nation in despair

The failing economy and harsh taxes of François Hollande's beleaguered nation are sending thousands packing - to Britain's friendlier shores

A poll on the front page of last Tuesday’s Le Monde, that bible of the French Left-leaning Establishment (think a simultaneously boring and hectoring Guardian), translated into stark figures the winter of François Hollande’s discontent.

More than 70 per cent of the French feel taxes are “excessive”, and 80 per cent believe the president’s economic policy is “misguided” and “inefficient”. This goes far beyond the tax exiles such as Gérard Depardieu, members of the Peugeot family or Chanel’s owners. Worse, after decades of living in one of the most redistributive systems in western Europe, 54 per cent of the French believe that taxes – of which there have been 84 new ones in the past two years, rising from 42 per cent of GDP in 2009 to 46.3 per cent this year – now widen social inequalities instead of reducing them.

This is a noteworthy departure, in a country where the much-vaunted value of “equality” has historically been tinged with envy and resentment of the more fortunate. Less than two years ago, the most toxic accusation levied at Nicolas Sarkozy was of being “le président des riches”, favouring his yacht-sailing CEO buddies with tax breaks and sweet deals. By contrast, Hollande, the bling-free candidate, was elected on a platform of increasing state spending by promising to create 60,000 teachers’ jobs, as well as 150,000 subsidised entry-level public-service jobs for the long-time unemployed and the young – without providing for significant savings elsewhere.

By 2014, France’s public expenditure will overtake Denmark’s to become the world’s highest: 57 per cent of GDP. In effect, just to keep in the same place, like a hamster on a wheel, and ensure that the European Central Bank in Frankfurt isn’t too unhappy with us, Hollande now needs cash.

Technocrats, MPs and ministers have been instructed to find every euro they can rake in – in deferred benefits, cancelled tax credits, extra levies. As they ignore the notion of making some serious cuts (mooted at regular intervals by the IMF, the OECD and even France’s own Cour des Comptes), the result can be messy.

On the one hand, the lacklustre economy and finance minister Pierre Moscovici recently admitted that he “understood” the French’s “exasperation” with their heavy tax burden. This earned him a sharp rap on the fingers from the president and his beleaguered PM, Jean-Marc Ayrault. On the other, new taxes keep being announced, in chaotic fashion, nearly every week. “Announced” doesn’t mean “implemented”: the Hollande crowd have developed a unique Wile E Coyote-style of leaks, technical glitches, last-minute tweaks and horse-market bargaining whereby almost nobody knows, at any given time, who will be targeted by the taxman, and how. Unsurprisingly, this is liked by no one except us reptiles of the press, eager to report on the longest series of own goals in the history of government communications.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest of the story here at the Telegraph's website.

ObamaCare Website, OFA's New Fundraising Vehicle????

News that the ObamaCare website is a catastrophic clusterfook of coding is now spreading fast.

Chief among the concerns raised are it's vulnerability to hacking due to shoddy coding and architecture. From the Christian Science Monitor comes the following alarming story of the inevitable and possibly imminent potential for a massive rash of identity theft. There really is a lot to be very concerned about. The real lesson of ObamaCare's grossly negligent roll-out is CAVEAT EMPTOR!!! Don't be a victim of identity theft... It's a BITCH!

Obamacare website security called 'outrageous': How safe is it?

Cybersecurity professionals are voicing questions about potential red flags in the new federal health care website system that could open the door to theft of personal information.

In the two weeks since the Affordable Healthcare Act site, www.healthcare.gov, went live, most complaints have centered on long wait times with sites initially overloaded by interested visitors. In response, government officials are scrambling to get more capacity for the main site and its satellites.
But potentially far more serious questions are emerging about cybersecurity. Experts have said that hackers could “spoof” the website with a look-alike website to collect personal information, or criminals could use an automated program to try repeatedly to enter the site even if it didn’t get a login correct.

Experts have stopped short of calling these concerns “vulnerabilities” – a term that means a proven weak spot to hackers. But they say these red flags need attention.

“I’ll ask you your Social Security, your date of birth, [so] an hour later I can empty your bank account,” John McAfee, who founded the cybersecurity company of the same name but is no longer associated with it, complained on Fox News. The Obamacare websites, he said, have “no safeguards,” and the main site's architecture is "outrageous."

Read the rest of the story at the CSM site, HERE

News for the Obamaphate: France May Be Shifting Hard to the Right

In what is apparently a stunning surprise to France's two major statist parties - Parti Socialiste of now failed president Francois Hollande and the UMP which is the "right of center" party of former president Nicholas Sarkozy - native French are turning away from the former and re-aligning with the so called "ultra right" Front National (FN) of Marine LePen. France's long hobbled economy and anger about ever rising crime appear to be the major factors in the shift toward the FN.

Mainstream baffled as French turn to far right

By blade

Created 14/10/2013 - 14:30

France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.
The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.
A poll published last week suggested the FN could emerge as the best-supported party in the European elections with 24 percent of those asked declaring themselves ready to back the party led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
That shock survey was followed on Sunday by a spectacular victory for the FN in a local by-election in Brignoles, where FN candidate Laurent Lopez claimed 53.9 percent of the vote in a run-off against the UMP candidate.
"The left and the mainstream right are blaming each other for what is happening, but the reality is they've both been knocked sideways," said Nonna Mayer, the Research Director at the National Research Centre CNRS. "Neither of them know what to do."
There were particular, local factors in Brignoles which influenced the outcome of a vote being held for the third time, the result having been judged too close to stand on two previous occasions, when the run-off was between the FN and the Communist Party.
The southeastern town has struggled with high unemployment since the closure of local aluminium mines in the 1990s and the gloomy economic backdrop has exacerbated tensions between established residents and a large community of North African immigrants, creating fertile ground for the FN in a region where it traditionally does better than elsewhere in France.
But the scale of the victory for Lopez was nevertheless widely interpreted as an indicator of how the FN is capitalising on current voter concerns to appeal to a broader slice of the electorate than ever before.
A smartly-dressed former businessman, Lopez, 48, is the perfect embodiment of the more voter-friendly image that the FN has projected since Marine Le Pen took over from her controversial father at the head of the party in 2011.

Harder to treat as a pariah party

The pledges to end net immigration, most controversially by ripping up family reunion rules, and to begin moves to pull France out of the European Union, remain in place.
But the FN is now far from being a one-issue party, notably making its voice heard on education to the extent that it has recently been able to announce the creation of a network of supporters amongst teachers - an unthinkable development a decade ago.
Marine Le Pen, has worked hard to dispel the image of the party as fundamentally racist.
She has expelled activists who make bigoted public statements and the FN lists in next year's municipal elections will include a handful of ethnic minority candidates.
All of which is making it harder for the mainstream parties to prevent the FN from winning more than a handful of elected posts by treating it as a pariah party and urging their voters to cast their ballots tactically to keep them out of power, an approach referred to as the "Republican Front".
"I think we can safely say the Republican Front is now dead," Marine Le Pen declared after Sunday's triumph in Brignoles, and her opponents acknowledged that she was probably right.
"It just doesn't work, voters don't like being told who to vote for," said Thierry Mandon, the spokesman for the Socialists' parliamentary party.
Despite the current disarray of the mainstream parties, the CNRS's Mayer still believes the recent upturn in the fortunes of the FN remains primarily a protest phenomenon.
"The change of leadership has given the party a slightly slicker image, but for most French people, it remains an extreme right party founded on racist ideas which is incapable of governing," Mayer told AFP.
"Marine Le Pen does have a better image than her father. Unlike him she is not associated with the legacy of the second world war and anti-semitism.
"Local factors played heavily in their favour in Brignoles. On a national level there is enormous disappointment after a year of the Socialists back in power, and the issues of crime and insecurity are beginning to weigh heavily in the national debate, which plays in the FN's favour.
"But don't forget that, in the municipals, the FN will have candidates in one town in six at most. It is not as strong as it pretends to be."

And more here at the Financial Times: French far-right victory stirs fear among mainstream parties

News from the Obamaphate: Tourist Tales of Woe from "Flyover Country"....

From The Daily News of Newburyport comes a story of the real world effects of President Stompy Feet's government shutdown depravity:

'Gestapo' tactics meet senior citizens at Yellowstone

John Macone

NEWBURYPORT — Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures.
Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.
Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.
The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

For the rest of the story, click the linked story title above.

Note to John Marcone: Under the law, they were in fact under arrest if they were not free to leave.

 

For Being a Smartest Guy in the Room Type, Craig Venter Sure Does Sound Like a Moron...

One of my passions as a youngster was biology, not just human reproductive biology (a passion of most young males of any mammalian species), but real "Biology" biology, meaning the study of Life itself. Biology remains an area of great interest for me.

When it comes to professional Academics, I generally credit hard scientists, especially biologists and physicists and engineers with the respect they deserve as opposed to the social scientists who seem, to me at least, to be little more than lucky hangers-on paid to foment pointless and unproductive strife.

But it sometimes seems as if what I call the "REAL" scientists are so completely immersed in the amazing discoveries and advances in their fields of endeavor that they become effectively severed away from the real world, and so it seems to be with Craig Venter, an otherwise biologist extraordinaire:

Alien DNA could be 'recreated' on earth

Humans will be able to recreate alien life forms and 'print out' organisms using the biological equivalent of a 3D printer in the future, a DNA pioneer has predicted.

Dr Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, created the world’s first synthetic lifeform, using chemicals and inserting DNA into the cell of a bacteria.

He believes scientists will soon be to do the same, designing basic organisms to include features useful in farming or medicine, as well as sending robots into space to read the sequence of alien life forms and replicate them back on Earth.

Writing in his latest book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, he says: “In years to come it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of [synthetic] cells from computer-designed software.

The creation of cells from scratch will open up extraordinary possibilities.”

The scientist also predicts in the future machines will be able to analyse the make up of genomes and transmit this through the internet or even space, creating more possibilities in the search for alien life, the Sunday Times reported.

He wrote: “The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome sequencing unit to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there. If we can . . . beam them back to Earth we should be able to reconstruct their genomes. “The synthetic version of a Martian genome could then be used to recreate Martian life on Earth.”
In 2010 Dr Venter and his team made a new chromosome from artificial DNA in a test tube, transferring it to an empty cell where it multiplied – the definition of being alive.
The multi-millionaire pioneer in genetics compared his work with making a computer at the time, referring to the artificial DNA as the software.

Venter, and men and women like him, often become incredibly productive scientists because they are able to concentrate so intensely on their work and they also seem to possess a unique ability to create a sort of virtual emotional Chinese wall between their scientific work and the real world of human existence. That such a wall helps scientists focus their energies and intelligence, by screening out "noise" is nearly certain, but that benefit too often seems negatively counter-balanced by the crippling of the emotional and ethical cores of those same men and women. Based on Venter's remarks, it seems he is bereft of the ability to imagine why it might be a terrible idea to "recreate Martian life on Earth."

I hope I'm wrong about Venter and his colleagues, but the lessons of history suggest otherwise.

Oh, this settles it, AGW MUST be real..... Human Race, We've Got 17 Years Left ...

The Secularist Church of AGW has finally found a credible new prophet in Sir Bob Geldorf following the dismal performance of serial grad school dropout Albert Gore Jr. in the same role. Aging wrinkled rockers are the new priests of Mother Gaia's cult of narcissism.

I'll be taking the PUT on this trade.

News from the Obamaphate: REDSKINS SHOULD CHANGE NAME!!!

So says His High Impetuousness. Yet another indicator that the dope is wildly unfit for the office he holds. No time to work out the budget impasse with Congress, but ruminating on the name of a Football team, HE'S ON IT!!!!!

Apparently, he's not yet enough of a laughingstock....

H/T Drudge. Click the image for the story.

News for the Obamaphate: Gallup Now Reporting Obama has slipped to 41% Approval, 52% Disapproval

Bad news for Barack and Valerie. Their demonization campaign is getting angry blow-back from "fly-over country" and he's coming, finally, to be seen for the petulant narcissist he's always been.

                                 Click the image for the Gallup page

H/T Matt Drudge

News From The Obamaphate: Can You Smell the Fear????

From Don Pesci's excellent blog Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Connecticut’s Charitable Millionaire Politicians

The three Connecticut Democratic millionaires in the state’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation have decided to forgo their salaries for the duration of the shutdown.

Millionaires Senator Dick Blumenthal and U.S. House members Rosa DeLauro and Jim Himes, will be devoting their salaries to charity, according to a report in the left of center CTMirror.

The three Democratic millionaires – Mr. Blumenthal is the 4^th richest senator in congress – probably would have done belter to tie their charity giving to the national debt, which is not likely to dissipate any times soon.

...

Nor did the publication make mention of the usual charitable donations of the millionaires or attempt a comparison with Republicans who once held their seats, all of which just might lead savvy political watchers to conclude that the donations of their salaries to charities is –gasp! – a political stunt on the part of big spending millionaires to advertise their adamantine bonds with Connecticut proletarians.

Does anyone think that just maybe these three jerks might be getting very nervous that all their Party's efforts to demonize and vilify Republicans isn't going quite as scheduled and they now need some cover???

News from the Obamaphate: Early Indicators of Progressive Brain Death

This is would be hysterically funny were it not so damned tragic....