Keep the Warthog

We already own the A-10 Warthogs, they're paid for and on-board. Why decommission them? Can it be that Air Force pilots don't like flying the ugly, unsexy beasts? See this Medium article for more on the A-10.

They are a perfect platform for use in an area where air superiority is a given. We can cannibalize existing planes for replacement parts and keep them flying for decades, if necessary, like the B-52s.

Quote of the Day

Demographer Joel Kotkin, writing for New Geography about the push for more density:

Dense places tend to be regarded as poor places for raising families. In simple terms, a dense future is likely to be a largely childless one.

Kotkin writes that "greens, planners, architects, developers, land speculators" are pushing for more urban density. It doesn't seem to be what most buyers want.

A childless future won't keep humans going, as a species. Perhaps high urban density helps explain the very low birth rates in Europe, Singapore and Japan.

Movin' ... Movin' ... Movin'

Though they're disapprovin' ... keep them dogies movin' ... Rawhide. This Wall Street Journal article - about getting adult children to leave home - reminds me of the classic TV theme song.

Author Joe Queenan takes as his subject matter helping the parents of millennials to get adult children to move out of the family home. His methodology: play music from your youth that your children cannot tolerate.

Queenan remembers his parents driving him out of the house by listening to Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers, plus Perry Como and Patty Page. He reasons that the same technique would work for parents of millennials - playing 1960s music: Beatles, Beach Boys, Dylan, and Supremes should do the trick.

The point is to create an environment that the parents find comfortable while their children do not. One problem: since millennials have iPod buds in their ears much of the time, they may not hear the "old" music.

More on Climate "Science"

At COTTonLINE we have maintained that climate changes, and that nobody really knows for sure in which direction or for what reasons. The "received wisdom" is that CO2 is a major factor, and that because CO2 is increasing, climate will warm.

Go see this post at No Tricks Zone concerning an article in a Danish paper - Jyllands Posten - concerning the views of a solar scientist that CO2 is over-emphasized, while level of solar activity is under-emphasized. His understanding is that we've had a dip in solar activity which could presage a cooling period, a "little ice age" or even a full-blown ice age.

Climate data for the past decade give him support for this view. CO2 has risen, the sun has cooled, and the earth has not gotten hotter.

We don't know if he is correct just like we don't know if the CO2-fearing "global warmists" are correct. The bottom line is that, because there is no way to do experiments to test climate outcomes, whatever science says it "knows" about climate is just reasoning from very limited data.

In this way, climate science is like economics: in both cases we live "inside the experiment," we watch what happens and try to reason about why. We cannot do experiments with either situation.

Solar science is the same, we watch and make educated guesses while the sun does what it's going to do and we live with the consequences. Wish us well.

Don't Know Much Geography

Mary Katherine Ham, blogging on the well-known Hot Air site, concerning President Obama's comments to Jay Leno about improving U.S. ports to take advantage of the widening of the Panama Canal. Obama told Leno:

If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else. And we’ll lose jobs. Businesses won’t locate here.

Of course, none of those three ports is located on the Gulf; all are on the Atlantic Ocean. Two of the three mentioned states have no Gulf coast whatsoever. A sampling of Gulf ports, Mr. President, would include Tampa, Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, Galveston/Houston, and Corpus Christi.

Obama is rumored to be a college graduate; I guess he left the teleprompter at home. If you go to the Hot Air site linked above you can watch him say those very (wrong) words for yourself.

Elegy for the WaPo

Mostly reporters and opinion writers write flat let-me-tell-you-what's-going-on prose ... mostly. Every now and then one writes from the heart and may even leave you with a tear in your eye.

One of the latter is David Ignatius' column about the sale of the paper he works for, the Washington Post. He conveys a real love for the place he works, and the people he's worked with and for.

I hope he can continue to feel this way about the new WaPo. I'm certain it is his wish, too.

Quote of the Day

Victor Davis Hanson, writing for PJ Media about our sad President's oratorical style:

“Really,” “I’m not kidding,” “I’m serious,” “in point of fact,” and “I’m not making this up” often prove rhetorical hints that the opposite is true. 

Like any politician, if Obama's lips are moving, he's lying. It must be part of the job description.

Political Humor Alert

Slogan seen on a "gimme" cap at the Lincoln County fair:

PETA

People Eating Tasty Animals

To see a photo of the actual cap, go to cruztalkingtwo.blogspot.com which is the other DrC's blog.

There are dang few vegans in Wyoming. Local wisdom: don't make pets of critters you plan to eat.

Embassy Shutdown Trigger

Many have wondered what piece of intel could cause the closure of so many U.S. embassies. Writing for The Daily Beast, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin have an excellent column about the signals intelligence cause of the closure of our and U.K. embassies across North Africa and the Middle East.

Quite simply, it is thought to have been a conference call among some twenty or more al Qaeda leaders from across the region. A major agenda item was AQ supreme leader Zawahiri identifying Yemen's Wuhayshi as his second in command and what the column calls al Qaeda's "general manager." There was also talk about teams being in place to do major mischief.

It is likely al Qaeda won't use conference calls to hold virtual meetings in the future, now that they know we can eavesdrop.

Rules for Conservative Candidates

Dan McLaughlin, writing in his blog Baseball Crank, lists 73 rules for running for President on the GOP side - they are really good. He has done some serious thinking about what causes Republican candidates to lose, and has written rules to avoid the worst potholes.

When the RNC holds training for candidates, I hope they use these rules as a major part of the structure. They are written for presidential candidates, but mostly would apply to a House or Senate candidate as well.

Douthat on Race and Politics

Ross Douthat writes political columns for The New York Times that, at least sometimes, are not hostile to the GOP. In this column he writes about the extent to which the two major parties are coming to represent voters of different races.

Douthat is uncomfortable writing about this trend, as am I. And yet he makes a good point that Democrats have made a definite pitch to non-white voters; he writes:

Democrats haven’t just been passive players in the recent racial polarization of the parties: Rather, they’ve embraced and furthered the trend, as a necessary part of making their new presidential-level coalition of the ascendant. 

Republicans can hardly be blamed for making a pitch to working-class white voters. These are people left behind by the Democratic party which once claimed their loyalty.

Can you foresee American political parties becoming aligned with our various "tribes," as is so often the case in developing nations?

Japan's Stealth Carrier

Go see what the Japanese Navy has just put to sea, it's a "destroyer" with a flight deck 820 feet long! Eight hundred and twenty feet of flight deck? Right, that's a destroyer like I'm a wee bairn.

The Izumo is a baby flattop from which the Japanese plan to operate copters and, who knows, maybe some F-35 jump jets when those become available. Actually, war copters like the Cobra and Viper are considerable weapon platforms.

See an Associated Press article for details. See also an article in The Diplomat for additional insights.

Japan's "Invisible" Army

See what CNN Money says about the current state of Japan's military forces. Japan has been re-arming without making much fuss about it. Japan needs to do this quietly to keep its neighbors from getting upset.

I imagine the neighbor governments are aware but feel no need to complain as long as their publics remain un-aware. Meanwhile the neighbors' publics seem to be more sensitized to Japan's public posturing than to its actual military strength.

Quote of the Day

Jeannie DeAngelis, writing in American Thinker, about l'affaire de powell, General Colin Powell, that is:

Only in Obama-supporter circles could you have a Huma and an Alma being cheated on by a Weiner and a Colin. 

You may need to say that aloud to yourself, quietly, to get the full implications thereof.

McCain Perhaps No Improvement Over Obama

In 2008, I remember thinking and writing that John McCain would be a much better president than Barack Obama. With the advantage of hindsight, I'm not certain I was right.

We know Obama has been a poor president, but many of McCain's recent public pronouncements suggest he would also have been poor in office. Obama mostly does nothing, whereas McCain leaves the impression that he could have been a loose deck gun, a random actor.

Shoulder-fired "Cannon"

Would you like a sore shoulder? SSK Industries has just the weapon for you, a rifle firing a .905 caliber bullet. The bullets alone cost $40 each. See the article in the Daily Mail (U.K.). The thing looks like a mini-cannon. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

The Brits once made large-caliber rifles for elephant hunting, Holland & Holland was a leading constructor I believe. I also remember the term "nitro express" was associated with big game super rifles.

Come to think of it, someone is now making a rifle which fires the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun cartridge. That one punches holes in trucks and buildings, from far away.

Whose War on Women?

This U.S. News & World Report article suggests Democrats are at least as ugly towards women as the GOP. Certainly that would appear to be the recent story line, with Weiner, Spitzer, and Filner all in sexual difficulty, not to mention Obama-endorsing Colin Powell's extramarital relationship with a Romanian lady diplomat.

Perhaps we ought to conclude that neither party has a monopoly on sexual misadventures. Likewise, we ought similarly to conclude that determining the point at which a fetus becomes a small, unborn person is something upon which we humans can never agree.

The Benghazi Story Isn't Dead

If you've believed, as I have, there was more going on in Benghazi than was ever reported, I have three further columns you may want to read. The first is in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf and the second is in CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, and is written by Drew Griffin. The third is in a U.K. paper's website, The Telegraph.

These three articles reveal Benghazi may not have been truly a consulate or branch State Department operation. It was instead a CIA operation of some size, possibly dealing with weapons left over from the downfall of Libya's Gaddafi regime; shipping said weapons to rebels in Syria.

Background whispers suggest a number of CIA personnel were wounded at the time the ambassador was killed. I wonder what the heck an ambassador was doing at a black ops site?

Charlie Cook on the 2014 Senate Races

Political analyst Charlie Cook, writing for National Journal, concludes the following about the 2014 Senate races:

While Republicans have a narrow path to the majority, the seats they must win are in friendly states, and turnout will work in their favor because this is a midterm election.

The title of his article is: "Here's How Republicans Can Take Over the Senate." If you're a politics wonk, you'll like reading the analytic steps Cook takes to reach his conclusion. Enjoy.

McManus on Cruz

The Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus is no conservative in his frequent appearances on the PBS Washington Week show. Political analyst McManus nevertheless writes a positive evaluation of the career trajectory of freshman Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

McManus says Ted Cruz has made very few missteps in his thinly concealed drive toward the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. If you find Cruz interesting, as I do, see what McManus opines.