Trick or Treat!

Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

Wombat's Friday Fodder

A few interesting and amusing things from Wombat's "Live at Five 10.31.14"

Mary Landrieu Plays The Race Card And the sex card. Claims she's losing in Louisiana because they're all racists and sexist and stuff. Never mind the scrawny Indian guy they elected governor.

Ebola nurse goes biking and Talks With Hickox Break Down, Gov. LePage Vows To Use “Full Extent” Of His Authority. I wonder if she's coordinating with the White House.

Ex-Marine banned from daughter's school after he complained about her Islam homework

A former Marine has been banned from his daughter’s school in Maryland after he took issue with her homework assignment on Islam. Kevin Woods was angered after he found his daughter, an 11th grade student at La Plata High School, had been given a three page exercise last Wednesday that examined Islam’s five pillars.

Woods and his wife Melissa asked the school to give their daughter an alternative assignment, but were told that she either do the assignment or receive a zero grade. We’re not teaching religion, we’re teaching world history,’ school spokesperson Katie O’Malley-Simpson told Fox News.

She alleges that Wood was threatening to cause a disruption, which is why he was issued a no-trespass order last Thursday after a telephone call with the school’s vice principal Shannon Morris.

‘I told her straight up “you could take that Muslim-loving piece of paper and shove it up your white a**,’” Kevin Wood told SoMd.

Well, that wasn't very politically correct. But you don't really expect ex-marines to be. Sorry, I gotta go with the school on this one. If she's in 11th grade, it's time for her to learn that bosses often expect you to do stupid things.

Amazon Giving Away Apps Instead Of Candy This Halloween - Check for razor blades malware.

Rihanna, Miley Compete For Best Cleavage At amFAR Event. If the contest is who can show the least taste, Miley wins hands down, IMHO.

Angelina Jolie Goes Bombshell Blonde - I don't care what color her hair is or whether her boobs are real (they're not), she's still one of my favorite actresses:

Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

Irony Overload: Anti-Violence Activists Charged with Assault and

By way of Instapundit: Anti-Violence Activists Charged in Vicious Attack

Nikole Ardeno and Emanuel Velez, both 30, accused their former roommate of stealing their property, and allegedly punched and kicked him in the street until he had seizures. Arrested moments later, Ardeno was still wearing the same "Stop the Violence" T-shirt she had on the night before when she coordinated a march protesting two recent shootings, Washington Police Chief Chris Luppino said.

The victim, Joshua Magraff, also is a community organizer with the anti-violence group, and shared an apartment with the suspects until recently.
. . .
Police believe Ardeno and Velez attacked Magraff on Tuesday because he had gone to the apartment they had shared to collect his belongings. Ardeno and Velez had come to a police station about 20 minutes earlier, accusing Magraff of burglary, but police said he appeared to be taking only items that belonged to him as he moved out, Luppino said.

Magraff was still unconscious and in critical condition Wednesday at UPMC Mercy hospital in Pittsburgh, Luppino said. A hospital spokeswoman declined to provide an update Thursday, citing a policy against releasing information about crime victims.

As noted by Dr. Reynolds " That “all property is theft” stuff? That’s for other people’s property."

Some More Obamacare Schadenfreude

A cool, gray morning here, and a good opportunity to get rid of some Obamacare Schadenfreude that occurred since yesterday morning.

Obamacare Funds to Promote Amnesty for Young Illegals

In a letter to House Appropriations Chair Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) on Tuesday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) called for defunding a provision in Obamacare that has been allowing taxpayer dollars set aside for public health initiatives to fund television ads for President Obama’s illegal alien amnesty programs.

In his letter, Smith cites a $15 million grant from the Prevention and Public Health Fund that the Department of Health and Human Services gave the California Endowment. The Prevention and Public Health Fund was created by the Affordable Care Act to support public health care initiatives. The California Endowment is a statewide, private health foundation that supplies grants for various organizations throughout California, and has served as one of the Obama administration’s loudest promoters of Obamacare.

Newsbusters (which like CNSNews.com is part of the Media Research Center), reported earlier this month that the California Endowment last year signed a $20 million deal with the Spanish-language TV outlet “Univision” to help promote Obamacare. Using federal tax dollars from the health fund, the foundation then sponsored ads on Univision reminding qualifying illegal aliens to renew their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) permits before they expire.

“U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent for Univision morning show weatherwoman Ximena Córdoba to exhort beneficiaries of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to renew the permits exempting them from deportation proceedings for another two years,” Newsbusters reported.

The DACA program was an executive action by President Obama that allows some illegal aliens who were brought to the United States as minors to receive relief from deportation proceedings.

In other words, Obamacare is being used as a voter turnout program for illegal voters.

The Revolting Truth about Obamacare (Hat tip to Theo's)

Halloween Wakeup - "I Put a Spell on You"

Lena Dunham is a Toad

Ugly and poisonous:

Kevin Williamson (@KevinNR) is a masterful journalist who knows a thing or two about effective storytelling. Sometimes, as a writer, you don’t want to be the one to connect the dots. Just say, “Oh, look, here’s a dot and there is another dot,” and let your readers form their own conclusions. And so, having undertaken to read Lena Dunham’s latest autobiographical opus — taking a bullet for the team there, Kev —Williamson describes Dunham’s depraved childhood habits:

Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries. And they were, in their daughter’s telling, enablers of some very disturbing behavior that would be considered child abuse in many jurisdictions — Lena Dunham’s sexual abuse, specifically, of her younger sister, Grace, the sort of thing that gets children taken away from non-millionaire families without Andover pedigrees and Manhattanite social connections. Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds . . . anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — “my curiosity got the best of me,” she offers, as though that were an explanation. “This was within the spectrum of things I did.”

That occurs in part one of the story, and then you read through part two of the story, until you get to part three of the story:

She sneers at “girls with boyfriends who looked like lesbians,” at a man guilty of “dressing vaguely like a middle-aged lesbian,” etc. “Lesbian” is Dunham’s shorthand for “awful.” On Girls, one of the characters scoffs that “dates are for lesbians,” and Dunham describes a childhood fear that she would become “the militant lesbian leader of a motorcycle gang,” but she also describes herself as “being in possession of a gay sister,” which fact she wields like a get-out-of-women’s-prison-free card against accusations of homophobia . . .

Notice the artfulness that Kevin Williamson has employed here: Early in the story, we learn that the degenerate young Dunham molested her sister as a child. Then, after reading several hundred more words, we are reminded, “Oh, by the way, that little girl Lena molested? She grew up to be a homosexual.” There is no need for Williamson even to suggest a correlation between these two facts. Anyone who has studied developmental psychology understands it.

Lena Dunham: Voice of a Perverted Generation!

And she is an Obama voter.

TSA Looks to the Future

While the federal government insists it's perfectly safe to let ebola victims live among us until we are sure their symptoms have begun to manifest themselves, the TSA is doing it's usual job of overreacting to nonexistent threats, in this case, confiscating a belt buckle because it had a tiny replica of an early 50 SciFi style ray gun.

What kind of gun, exactly? From my sometime video producer Sean Malone and owner of the belt buckle: “A 1950s Flash Gordon-style RAYGUN!! A fictional weapon. A child’s toy.”

Malone was able to leave Washington, D.C. with his buckle after protesting long enough to get a supervisor involved who let him keep his little toy ray gun, despite the obvious threat it posed.
She said, “Listen, you can either go back out of security and put this in your check luggage (which I don’t have), or we’ll confiscate it.”
But this is honestly my favorite belt buckle, and I’m me, so – realizing I was speaking with a woman with the brainpower of a block of Parmesan cheese – I looked at her and said, “You understand that this is a belt buckle, right? It is not a danger to the safety of anyone nor is it against the law to carry. I have also traveled with this belt buckle all over the country and it’s never been a problem. So please explain to me how exactly you would justify taking it.”
Her response was to suggest a hypothetical scenario. “What if”, she postulated, “you take this object out of your bag and point it – like a gun – at a police officer? He would have no choice to assume that it was a gun, and take action against you.”

. . .
On his return flight he was not so lucky, nor so early to the airport, and couldn’t afford to fight several levels of TSA authority to maintain ownership of his favorite novelty belt buckle, which again, is obviously a dangerous weapon.

Next they'll be confiscating pop tarts because they can be chewed into the shape of a gun, and used to threaten police officers.

Delenda est TSA.

Beach Report for 10/29 and 10/30/14

A couple days worth of beach pictures. Yesterday was calm and bright, today also, but much colder, down around 55, and windier, 10 from the NE.  Our leaves are about half turned, everything but the oaks, and the oaks are just starting.








One of the local eagles posed very close to the beach.

 Pretty in pink?  Visible anyway.

The last of the beach babes, enjoying some fried chicken.

A pair of yearlings hanging around the parking lot, eating acorns. It's a really good year for acorns, which means a bad year for walking barefoot to get the paper, and a good year for deer.

Foreigners Doing Jobs Americans Can't

By way of Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 10.30.14": Russian deliver space station cargo after US flop

The company behind the dramatic launch explosion of a space station supply mission promises to find the cause of the failure and is warning residents to avoid any potentially hazardous wreckage.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Antares rocket blew up just moments after liftoff Tuesday evening from the Virginia coast.

Meanwhile, early Wednesday, the Russian Space Agency launched its own cargo vessel from Kazakhstan and the spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station six hours later with 3 tons of food. The smooth flight was in stark contrast to the Orbital Sciences' failed launch, and had been planned well in advance of the accident.

The Orbital Sciences rocket was carrying a Cygnus capsule loaded with 2½ tons of space station experiments and equipment for NASA. No one was injured when the rocket exploded moments after liftoff, shooting flaming debris down onto the launch area and into the ocean.

The growth of entitlements in the budget have basically killed the US space program, and the Obama administrations antipathy to it put the stake in its heart.

Other items from today's "Live at Five":

Harvard Poll Shows Declining Support For Obama Among Millennials - Even the slackers are starting to notice that things are going badly.

Speaking of the poor leadership: White House Tries To Ease Flareup Over Netanyahu Insults

Someone "unkown" in the administration called Bebi Netanyahu "chickenshit".  Netanyahu was rescuing hostages in Uganda while the Choomster was smoking dope in Hawaii. Someday Jewish voters will wake up, and see that the democratic party left them.

More on Ebola and the "Ebola nurse" who won's submit to quarantine: 

Maine Seeking Legal Authority To Keep Hickox Quarantined

Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Your “civil rights” argument is invalid.
WHO head slams US, Australian Ebola travel curbs
Obama on Ebola fight: US can’t seal itself off

I don't buy the administration argument that the thought of a 21 day quarantine upon return is going to deter people willing to go to Africa and risk their lives to fight Ebola. However, in the spirit of all the liberals who expected Bush and Cheney to send their kids to war, perhaps Sasha and Malia could be persuaded to go to Africa to help nurse Ebola victims?

Ebola slowing in Liberia? Good news?

Sandra Bullock Saves The Day – In Real Life: Helps extra stricken by heatstroke on set

Not a big deal, but I'm sure she could have walked away and left the job to someone else less important.

Like an episode of "The Bridge." Bodies Found In Mexico Where Three Texas Teens Went Missing

Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

A Little More Obamacare Schadenfreude

A few accumulated Obamacare Schadenfreude articles.

Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of thetotal number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. "For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California's Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent."
2. Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that's not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. "Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the PCPs time at lower pay," says the study.
3. The study also points to two reasons that doctors might not get paid at all:  An MGMA study indicates that 75% of ACA patients that had seen doctors had chosen plans with high deductibles. Given that most of the patients are low-income, doctors are concerned that the patients cannot meet the deductibles and they will get stuck with the bill.
4. HHS requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is thenumber one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Currently, about a million people have failed to pay their premiums and had their plans canceled.

How long before the democrats try to force doctors to participate?

Death spiral? Short-term health plans grow as cheap alternative to ObamaCare

A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral.

The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

Moreover, even the Obamacare policies, and indeed, the "long-term" policies available through employees change terms yearly.

“Applications rose 30 percent compared to last year,” eHealthInsurance.com Enrollment Specialist Carrie McLean told FoxNews.com.

Other providers said they also see rapid growth in the plans, which have a typical monthly premium of just over $100, compared to traditional plans that cost an average of $271.

“It’s because the product is typically half the cost of ACA plans, and you can chose any doctor or hospital,” Health Insurance Innovations CEO Mike Kosloske told FoxNews.com.

Obamacare, the perfect, expensive, governmental mandated solution for a problem that didn't exist.

And in a sign of their continued support of transparency, the Obama administration is encouraging Obamacare insurers to hide their enrollment statistics: Insurers’ Consumer Data Isn’t Ready for Enrollees

With health insurance marketplaces about to open for 2015 enrollment, the Obama administration has told insurance companies that it will delay requirements for them to disclose data on the number of people enrolled, the number of claims denied and the costs to consumers for specific services.

For months, insurers have been asking the administration if they had to comply with two sections of the Affordable Care Act that require “transparency in coverage.”

In a bulletin sent to insurers last week, the administration said, “We do not intend to enforce the transparency requirements until we provide further guidance.” Administration officials said the government and insurers needed more time to collect and analyze the data.

“We expect this will begin after a full year of claims data is available,” said Aaron Albright, a spokesman at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, when asked about the government’s eventual plan to enforce the transparency requirements.

Consumer advocates said they were disappointed because the information would be helpful to millions of consumers shopping for insurance in the open enrollment period that starts on Nov. 15. The data will not be available before the enrollment period closes on Feb. 15.

When the government goes out of its way to hide the data, it's a pretty good bet that it's not favorable.

Obamacare’s drip-fed success: The longer the health system stays in existence, the harder it will be to repeal

Mr Obama must be sorely tempted to declare “mission accomplished”. Only a year ago Republicans shut down the federal government – and flirted with a default on US sovereign debt – in a bid to stop Obamacare’s launch. Default was averted. But the shutdown coincided with the federal website’s collapse under a plague of glitches. Given his administration’s incompetence, Mr Obama has kept silent. The exchange was eventually fixed. Almost 8m Americans enrolled on it in 2014. That is expected to rise to 13m next year. If you include the impact of Medicaid expansion, there are roughly 10m fewer uninsured Americans than there were a year ago. That number will only grow.

Plenty of Americans still hate the law. US healthcare is complex and expensive. It is also unfair. Mr Obama has made it less unfair but added to its complexity and it will not be clear for years whether he has made it less expensive. The White House trumpets the fact that US healthcare inflation has dropped from its average of between 5 and 8 per cent a year, to between 2 and 3 per cent annually since 2010 when the ACA was passed. If this lower rate were sustained, most of America’s long-term deficit problems would vanish. Medicare and Social Security would stay solvent for decades longer.

Yet much of the disinflation is a result of the Great Recession, which has forced Americans to tighten belts. Some of it is also demographic. Only a portion comes from the impact of Obamacare. It is far too early to claim America has overcome its healthcare exceptionalism. It still spends more than twice as much on healthcare per head as the UK with worse outcomes. US life expectancy is lower than Britain’s while its under-five mortality rate is higher. It will take more than the ACA to turn that around.

Mr Obama’s signature law is also riddled with loopholes. For example, it requires businesses to offer insurance only to full-time employees. Last week Walmart dropped 30,000 from its coverage because they work for less than 30 hours a week. It also exempts small businesses – those with fewer than 50 employees – from the mandate. Many Americans have been forced to drop plans that they liked. And so on.

But there is the rub. Obamacare offers great room for improvement and it remains unloved by most of the US electorate. Yet a majority also increasingly values big chunks of it. “Repeal Obamacare” still has great punch with the Republican base. But “reform” is more in tune with the drift of public sentiment. In time, that is where reality is likely to go.

You don't "reform" Ebola. You starve it to death by denying it fresh victims, either by isolating the sick, or with a vaccine.

This Is Not the Voter Fraud You Were Looking For

Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland

An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years.

The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

It is a federal crime to cast votes if you are not legally eligible to vote. Non-citizens, whether in the country legally or not, are prohibited from voting in most local and all state and federal elections. Yet the VVA investigation found that hundreds of non-citizens have been voting in Frederick County, Maryland. One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens. . .

Remember, when you go to the polls, a lot of you are just cancelling out illegal democratic votes.

You Can Turn Almost Anything Into a Rule 5 Post

Somehow, I don't think this will help. Found at Jawa's.

I just commented the other day to someone that it was brilliant for the Evil Blogger Lady to do a Rule 5 post on Ebola victim/survivor Nina Pham. Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

Amelia Earhart's Plane Found?

Amelia Earhart Plane Fragment Identified

A fragment of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft has been identified to a high degree of certainty for the first time ever since her plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

New research strongly suggests that a piece of aluminum aircraft debris recovered in 1991 from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, does belong to Earhart’s twin-engined Lockheed Electra.

According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator’s eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

The patch replaced a navigational window: A Miami Herald photo shows the Electra departing for San Juan, Puerto Rico on the morning of Tuesday, June 1, 1937 with a shiny patch of metal where the window had been.

That's not the only piece of evidence tying Earheart's plane to Nikumaroro:

Previous research on a photograph of Nikumaroro's western shoreline taken three months after Earhart's disappearance revealed an unexplained object protruding from the water on the fringing reef.

Forensic imaging analyses of the photo suggested that the shape and dimension of the object are consistent with the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.

Moreover, an “anomaly” that might possibly be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's aircraft emerged from analysis of the sonar imagery captured off Nikumaroro during TIGHAR’s last expedition.

The object rests at a depth of 600 feet at the base of a cliff just offshore where, according to TIGHAR, the Electra was washed into the ocean. An analysis of the anomaly by Ocean Imaging Consultants, Inc. of Honolulu, experts in post-processing sonar data, revealed the anomaly to be the right size and shape to be the fuselage of Earhart’s aircraft.

Nikumaroro has been on the list of possible Earheart crash locations  for some time

And what happened to Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan?

“Earhart sent radio distress calls for at least five nights before the Electra was washed into the ocean by rising tides and surf,” Gillespie said.

And yet, when the atoll was searched three months later, no trace of Earhart was found. So much for the romance of desert isles, a la Gilligan's Island.

In 1997, New Zealand TIGHAR member Peter McQuarrie was doing research in the Kiribati National Archives on Tarawa for his World War II history book Conflict in Kiribati, and came upon a file titled “Skeleton, Human, finding of on Gardner Island.” It contained copies of 1940-41 wireless traffic between Gallagher on Nikumaroro and his superiors, mostly in Fiji, about the discovery of a partial human skeleton near the southeast end of the island. The bones were associated with a woman’s shoe and a sextant box, as well as a Benedictine bottle and the remains of a fire with bird and turtle bones. Gallagher thought they might represent the remains of Earhart.

EPA Proposes to Ban Argon

A new level of stupid is reached: The EPA jumps the shark, banning – ARGON ?

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “noble” cause corruption. Documentation follows. Eric Worrall writes:

h/t IceAgeNow - the American EPA has stunned observers, with a list of inert additives for pesticide formulations they intend to ban, which includes the noble gas Argon.

Its hard to imagine a more inoffensive substance than Argon. As a noble gas, Argon is chemically inert – it participates in no chemical reactions whatsoever, except under exotic conditions – there are no known chemical compounds which can survive at room temperature which include Argon. Argon is not a greenhouse gas.

But Argon is incredibly useful to industry – among other things, is used as a “shield” gas. Anyone who welds Aluminium or Stainless Steel will be familiar with Argon, which is used with MIG and TIG welders, to blow oxygen away from the electric welding arc, to prevent oxidative damage to the weld joint.

Any effort to regulate the use of this harmless substance would do incalculable damage to American industrial competitiveness, for no benefit whatsoever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon
So why on Earth would the EPA plan to ban something as inoffensive as Argon? IceAgeNow has a theory – they think Argon is part of a list supplied by a scientifically illiterate NGO, which the EPA plans to rubber stamp.

If anyone with any real scientific training whatsoever had seen this silly list before it was published, or had taken the trouble to do 5 minutes of research on each entry in the list, to discover how ridiculous and ignorant the inclusion of Argon on a list of dangerous chemicals to be banned really is, then the EPA would not be facing their current very public embarrassment.

In my former life, as the director of a trace-element analytical lab, we used two instruments to analyze the majority of our samples, an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, and an inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer.  Both instruments use an argon plasma in the analysis, using about 20 l of the gas (at STP) per minute.  We bought 400 lb dewars of liquid argon, and when operating an instrument daily, used one in about two weeks. Over and over.

Argon constitutes about 1% of ambient air, and as noted above, is really only notable because it does nothing except take up space, and making a nifty hot plasma when stimulated with a varying magnetic field. I can't even imagine a use for it in pesticides except possibly as a propellant, and then, why not use the significantly cheaper nitrogen?

Argon is produced commercially by freezing air into a liquid, and then distilling out the components. It's uses all result in it being released back to the atmosphere.

This strikes me as a stupid cut and paste error, and demonstrates the knowledge and care with which environmental policy is made. Someone need to be laughed at long and hard. And then fired.

More Fear and Loathing on Chesapeake Bay

Maryland Sea Grant's house propaganda organ, the Chesapeake Quarterly has a special issue on sea level rise in the Bay region, featuring several pictures of the lost house on Holland Island that I hadn't seen before.  It has 15 separate articles on various facets of sea level rise, all from the point of view that we desperately need to shut down civilization (or at least curtail it sharply) to avoid the inevitable.

Introduction: How Much Will Sea Level Rise?

The Antarctic Connection

As the Land Sinks

What's Happening to the Gulf Stream?

The Perfect Surge: Blowing Baltimore Away

Snapshots from the Edge

The Future of Blackwater Marsh

A Burden on Communities of Color

Vanished Chesapeake Islands

When Sandy Came to Crisfield

If Katrina Came to Washington

Armor, Adapt, or Avoid?

Early Warnings from Smith and Tangier Islands

Norfolk: Navy on the Leading Edge

Living Shorelines Meet Rising Seas

Nourishing Our Coastal Beaches

Although I couldn't bring myself to wade through the whole soggy mess, I'm fairly confident there's at least one graph they did not present:

Come to think of it, they probably didn't use this one either:

Which, together show a long, slow consistent sea level rise, with no evidence for a sudden acceleration due to CO2 caused global warming.

Wombat's Wednesday Tips

A quick peruse through Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 10.29.14."

Kaci Hickox Won’t Obey Maine Ebola Quarantine: “Does not believe she’s a risk to others”

As I said yesterday, I think she's a heroine for going to Africa to treat Ebola patients. But that doesn't give her the moral authority to put the rest of us at risk. The recent history of medical workers coming back to the states with Ebola, breaking quarantine "guidelines" and going out into the community, and then coming down sick is disturbing at best. As liberals like to say in other contexts, "government is the things we agree to do together."

Internal Memo Pushes Bringing Non-Citizens To US For Ebola Treatment; State Denies Plan

Sounds to me like one of those things they'll keep denying until Nov. 15, and then present it as fait accompli.

Forest Service Warns Of “Grizzly End” For People Taking Selfies With Bears

Great pun; bad idea.

Investigator In Secret Service Whore Scandal Probe Resigns After Being Implicated In Own Incident

It sort of seems like everything the Obama administration touches just naturally turns to shit, but this may just be the Peter Principle in action.

Amanda Bynes still bugshit crazy: Amanda Bynes To Stay In Psych Ward Another 30 Days; Too Sick To Release

It's a shame, but it happens. Movie stars are real people too, and subject to the same random cruelty of nature that the rest of us are.

Heather Graham: “It’s Fun To Be A Little Daring” Goes Without Underwear in a Sheer Skirt.

Because we know how well that worked out for Brittany and Paris. But I guess, once you've done your nude movie (NSFW), there's not a lot of mystery left.

Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

Morning Wake Up: Girls with Big Guns

Looks like a pleasant afternoon; I'll help reload.

Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

Did You See That Rocket Explode?

Uff da!

Now about those government Ebola policies; what could go wrong? It's not rocket science. It's a lot more complicated.

Went Fishing This Afternoon

After walking the beach in 80 F weather, and almost no breeze, it was almost a no-brainer to try fishing later.

By the time we got off, the wind had come up a bit from the south, but not enough to deter. In fact, it proved handy to hold us at the edge of "Location X."

Fishing was pretty good.  We caught a limit of fish, two over 28 inches, and 2 under, and I lost a drag burner when the leader knot failed for some reason.

"Worse than . . . Nixon"

The actual quote is ‘Worse than anything Nixon ever did’ and it comes from a government person investigating how investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computers were bugged, and evidence planted on it, with the presumed intent of using either to prosecute or blackmail her into desisting in her attempts to investigate scandals in the Obama admininstration:

From those right-wingers at the Washington Post: 

The intrusions into former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson’s computers constitute the narrative spine of the reporter’s new book “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.” The book starts with not really a word, but a sound: “Reeeeeeeeeee.”

That’s the noise that Attkisson’s Apple computer was making at 3:14 one morning. A Toshiba laptop computer issued by CBS News did the same thing a day earlier, around 4 a.m. All this goes down in October 2012, right in the midst of the Benghazi story. A person who’s identified as “Jeff” warns Attkisson: “I’ve been reading your reports online about Benghazi. It’s pretty incredible. Keep at it. But you’d better watch out.” “Jeff,” like several of the names in “Stonewalled,” is a pseudonym.
. . .
“[B]y November 2012,” she writes, “there are so many disruptions on my home phone line, I often can’t use it. I call home from my mobile phone and it rings on my end, but not at the house.” More devices on the fritz at Attkisson Central: “My television is misbehaving. It spontaneously jitters, mutes, and freeze-frames,” she writes, noting that the computers, TVs and phone all use Verizon’s FiOS service. At one point, “Jeff” inspects the back of Attkisson’s house and finds a “stray cable” attached to her FiOS box. That cable, he explains, could be used to download data. (Read more: The bizarre tale of Sharyl Attkisson’s spare wire)

Next big moment: Attkisson gets her computer checked out by someone identified as “Number One,” who’s described as a “confidential source inside the government.” A climactic meeting takes place at a McDonald’s outlet at which Attkisson and “Number One” “look around” for possibly suspicious things. Finding nothing, they talk. “First just let me say again I’m shocked. Flabbergasted. All of us are. This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America.” That’s all coming from “Number One.”

The breaches on Attkisson’s computer, says this source, are coming from a “sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency (NSA).” Attkisson learns from “Number One” that one intrusion was launched from the WiFi at a Ritz Carlton Hotel and the “intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool.”

To round out the revelations of “Number One,” he informs Attkisson that he’d found three classified documents deep inside her operating system, such that she’d never know they were even there. “Why? To frame me?” Attkisson asks in the book.

Yes, it is worse than Nixon. Nixon's self directed burglars were only looking for evidence that the Democratic National Committee had broken the law. Obama's spies, self directed or not, appear to have turned the national security apparatus on a woman who continues to investigate things they would rather not see investigated. If, as alleged, they planted illegal material on her hard drive, for whatever purpose, somebody at those agencies needs to sent to jail. And if Obama abetted the cover up after the fact, he should be impeached.

I just bought a copy of her book at another blog site (I can't claim credit at my own, for some odd reason).

This link will order it through my Amazon Associates account.  However you do it, you must read this book.

TMI from Amy Poehler

and other assorted information from Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 10.28.14"

Amy Poehler Admits To Watching Porn Regularly

"I like my porn like my comedy: Done by professionals, women who are at the top of their game. So, I like professional ladies who are enjoying themselves. I'm not an amateur person. I want everybody to look good and be good at their jobs," she said, before realizing: "Oh my god! I just remembered my dad's listening to this! Sorry, dad! I just called him this morning and was like, 'I'm gonna be on Stern this morning!' S--t! Sorry, dad! Love you, pop!"

Well, that does explain the silly grin.


Other pertinent info from today's Live at Five:

Halle Berry’s Secret To Perky Breasts - She claims binding them in firm bra, in contrast to published science. What a denier! Unfortunately, I think genetics has more to do with it.

Australia Denies Visas From Ebola Zone Nations - Australia has never had much of an open borders policy; they're too close to China.

Megan McArdle: Better Food Labels Won’t Make You Less Fat.

. . . Take, well, food labeling. A while back, people got the idea that putting calorie counts on menus would help fight obesity. So we did, in some areas, and compared what happened there with what happened in places where food labeling wasn’t required. The results ranged between nothing and negative, which is to say, people ate slightly more calories after the new menus went up.

Damn the data: Full speed ahead

88 Things Younger Than Hillary Clinton - Sadly, virtually all this apply to me as well.

“Calibration Issue” Pops Up On Maryland Voting Machines - Something to look for when I step into the polling booth.

And Maine’s Ebola Protocols Mean Quarantine For Nurse - IMHO, she's a heroine for going to Africa to fight Ebola, but a bit of a bitch in her insistence in trying to minimize the risk of her bringing the disease into America again.

Oh heck, just go to the Live at Five and find your own interests. Wombat-socho's Rule 5 Sunday is Absolutely 100% Lena Dunham Free, thank goodness.

And Worth Every Penny I'm Sure

Cindy Crawford and hubby spend $30K on nude portrait.

Hat Tip to Wombat-socho for this tip from "Live at Five: 10.27.14." You should add it to your morning reading list.

Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber spent $30,000 on a fine-art photograph of nude women wearing horses’ heads by Brian Bowen Smith, the protégé of the late, great Herb Ritts.

The couple, just back from George Clooney’s wedding to Amal Alamuddin, attended Smith’s first show at the De Re Gallery in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Well, durn, I though they were just getting a new one of Cindy, one of the most photographed women of the 80s and 90s.

Crawford posed for Ritts, who died in 2002, in some of her most ­famous nude and fashion modeling shots, most notably the famed “Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood, 1989” for Rolling Stone magazine.

Smith’s debut collection, “Wildlife,” features nude women wearing animal masks. The identity of each subject, said to be celebrities, actors and models, is kept secret.

 Maybe it will be her after all.

The event, hosted by gallery owner Steph Sebbag, was attended by celebs including Hilary Swank, Adrien Brody, Tyra Banks, Emmy Rossum, Naya Rivera, Demi Moore, Tallulah Willis, Dianna Agron, Joe Jonas and Michelle Rodriguez, sparking a little speculation that some may have posed for the nude portraits.

A few those NSFW shots here, here, here, here, and here:

There's a Reason They Call Them Sea "Lions"

Watch what happens to the small yappy dog when he finally gets the Sea Lions' attention, right at the end of the video:



Those things are big and strong, and they have big teeth and bad breath.

And It's . . .

Tied at 2 minutes to go the end of regulation. Redskins 17 to Dallas 17

And the winner?

October Butterfly Bonanza

Still another gorgeous Fall day here, clear and sunny with a brilliant blue sky, temperatures hovering in the mid 60s, and a brisk, but tolerable breeze.  I went out after errands and lunch to check out the Butterfly Bush, which is still blooming a little and found seven different species of butterfly:

1) American Lady

 2) Ocala Skipper

 3) Painted Lady

4) Common Buckeye  (sharing a raceme with a Painted Lady)

 OK, I'll give it one of it's own.

5) Monarch.  We've been seeing a steady trickle of them, a few a day, presumably on their way south to the south for winter.

Another shot of a Painted Lady.  Do you see the Ailanthus Webworm Moth that snuck into the photo while I wasn't looking?

 6) Sachem skipper

7) Clouded Sulphur. The white form (we also see the yellow form).

I was kind of impressed to find so many this late in the year.