Voters Like Republican Policies But Not Republicans. Why?

From Hot Air

Scott Rasmussen polled voters on whom they trust, and found that voters prefer Republicans over Democrats on ten of fifteen numbers. Not only that, the issues where voters trust the GOP more than Democrats are generally the most important ones: the economy (by seven points), national security (15 points), taxes (seven points) and spending (21 points). Here is the complete list:

The answer, of course, is the media, which almost uniformly (with the possible exception of Fox, and I'm not so sure about Shep Smith), holds and pushes the minority position.  Moreover, they never fails to portray Republicans in the worst possible light.  Remember John McCain's transformation from the media favored "maverick" during most of the Bush administration, to the old fuddy duddy extreme conservative during his election run, and back to the media's favorite Republican after he lost, and began picking Republican nits again?

The old media is dying, but not fast enough.

PSA: Time for a Check Up

NSF, well, a lot of things...



Almost NSFW video of British model Rhian putting a spotlight on testicular cancer!

Wombat-socho was on schedule with "Rule 5 Sunday - Stardancer."  

Second California County Threatens to Cut and Run

Modoc County joins Siskiyou in state of Jefferson bid for secession

The Modoc County Board of Supervisors today voted to join neighboring Siskiyou County in its bid to secede from the State of California.

Board Chairman Geri Byrne said a measure to join the push to form a State of Jefferson was approved by a vote of 4-0, with one supervisor absent.

“I put the measure on the agenda because I heard from a number of people in my district that wanted to do such,” Byrne said. “We’re not saying we’re seceding today, we’re saying let’s look into it.”

“California is essentially ungovernable in its present size,” Baird said. “We lack the representation to address the problems that affect the North State.”

“We’re looking for 12 counties, though we can certainly do it with less,” he said.

If all goes according to plan, Baird said the new state’s economy could be 15 percent larger than that of New Mexico.

Still, most of the more populated counties in Northern California have yet to lend their support, though a number are considering it, including Shasta County and Redding, the most populous city north of Sacramento.

It's the old urban/rural split phenomenon. Like most places in the US, the rural population is dominantly conservative people who make their living off the land, while the urban population makes their living either from the government, or in service industries.

Butterflies Still

Butterfly season seems to be fading rapidly. Our Butterfly Bush, which at time hosted 15 or more butterflies, still has blooms, but few sippers; we're lucky to find a single Eastern Swallowtail out there most of the time.  A few late flowers seem to offer some fresh food.  This Little Glassywing Skipper is on one of our large Madagascar Periwinkles.

Cloudless Sulphurs seem to be one of our more reliable visitors.  While they don't seem to favor the Butterfly Bush, they do like other flowers.  This one is on a Lipstick Sage.  I'm still waiting for one to give me a decent spread wing view.

Finally, the occasional Eastern Tiger Swallowtail still visits the waning flowers on the Butterfly Bush.  I was surprised to see it on the invasive species list.

I love this shot, with the blue sky, and the the shadows of the flowers showing through the butterfly wings.

Moon over Long Beach

Another cool, blustery September day at the beach.  It was only 53 when I left the house, but the sun warmed the day up quickly.

The moon was up over the trees and houses over the cliffs.  No pictures, but I did see at least one Osprey today, carrying a fish around, so Joel still has a chance to beat the last stragglers south.

I caught up with Joel as he was giving a lecture on dog training to a horse judge.  The dogs seem to be getting along well.

We ran into this gull who seemed strangely reluctant to get out of our way.  It could fly, but wouldn't until you were right up on it.  Sick or injured?  We were just happy when Red declined to retrieve it.

 Red wants to go further.

A crab boat, the Lucky IV, squirreling around in shallow water.  It wasn't clear to me what he was doing, circling and maneuvering, but neither setting or retrieving any crab pots.

Swallowtail Project Update

I was walking by the fishbowl a little while ago, and I noticed that the caterpillar, which had hung all but motionless for over 36 hours after webbing itself to the glass was starting to twitch.  I called Georgia over and grabbed the camera and started shooting to catch it shedding it's caterpillar skin to become the chrysalis:

1:26 PM A slight green diamond marks the first split in the old skin

Man Saves Girlfriend by Killing Cougar with Spear

Women Need Men Like Fish Need a Bicycle, Right?

In what is perhaps North America’s first recorded case of a spear being used to kill a cougar in self-defense, a British Columbia resident is being hailed as a hero after he used the tool to save his common-law partner from a mountain lion near their home on remote Flores Island on September 8. According to The Globe and Mail, the 60-year-old woman was being mauled in her garden when the unidentified man heard her screams. Officials say that the man took up a spear, likely made for boar hunting, and stabbed the large cat several times. The mountain lion ran off and the man was able to procure help for his injured girlfriend.

Curiously, if you read the Globe and Mail article linked above, it appears that the man was aware of the aggressive cougar in the vicinity, and made the spear to keep in arms reach just in case.  It worked out well, in this case, probably better than a firearm would have.  Who would want to shoot into a mass of scrambling cougar and woman?

After the incident conservation officers scoured the surrounding countryside in search of the animal. With the help of a cougar hunter, they found the animal’s carcass a short distance away from the house. It appeared to have died from the spear-inflicted wounds. The man says he had seen the mountain lion prowling near his house and that it was becoming increasingly bold over the last several months. Other residents of island told The Vancouver Sun they had also seen the large cat in the vicinity.

Not to be sexist, but I don't see many women I consider good candidates for hunting or fending off predators with spears, even though it's a fantasy staple...

Great Strides in Zero Tolerance: Student Suspended for Playing With Toy Gun at Home

Suspended Student May Be Expelled for Rest of the Year for Playing With Toy Gun…in His Own Yard

A suspended seventh-grade student in Virginia Beach, Va., could be expelled for the rest of the school year for shooting an airsoft gun with a friend in his yard as they waited for the bus to come.

I rather expect this to become a he said/she said incident where the bus driver (or student on the bus) reports the facts a different way.  But if the gun didn't make it to school, which would certainly have been reported, it didn't get on the bus, so the story seems to suggest that they didn't attempt to bring them to school.

Caraballo answered “no, sir,” when asked if he took the toy gun to the bus stop or to school. “We were in our yard. This had nothing to do with school,” the student said.

Caraballo’s mother, Angel, said being punished for “possession, handling and use of a firearm” was “pretty harsh” for a toy that she bought for $25.

 Combined with the fact that it is not, in fact, a firearm, but a toy. 

Tim Clark, Aidan’s father, told the news station that the school neglected to use common sense in the incident that occurred off school property.

“Has zero tolerance gone too far?” WAVY-TV asks.

Yes. Administrators need to start losing their jobs, or at least a year's pay, when they commit even the tiniest infraction (like random pocket checks to make sure they aren't stealing paper, pens or pencils from the school districts.  At least they can't use their immaturity as an excuse.

This is all part of modern educational establishments attempt to propagandize children with the gun control message, and threaten parents who don't toe the party line. 

The Roots of 'Roar'

If you've been living under a rock, or are even older than I am (or, likely both) you may not be aware that Katy Perry has a new pop video, called, simply, 'Roar.'  If so, here it is.



When I first saw this something seemed familiar.  It sat around in my brain a few days, and then I realized that in this video, Katy Perry was playing the part of Betty Page playing the 'Jungle Girl.'

Bettie Mae Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008) was an American model who pin-up photos. Often referred to as the "Queen of Pinups", her jet black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs have influenced artists for generations became famous in the 1950s for her for her pin-up photos.

Page was "Miss January 1955", (NSFW link) one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine. "I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told the Associated Press.

It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea at the Time

IRS Flinches in Fight Over "Phony Scandal"

IRS Offers True The Vote Tax Exempt Status, Files to Dismiss Lawsuit

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has offered election integrity group True The Vote its tax-exempt status in what appears to be a bid to keep the group from proceeding with discovery on its lawsuit against the agency, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
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In July 2010, True The Vote filed an application with the IRS seeking 501(c)3 tax exempt status. After discovering in May 2013 that its application was part of the bigger IRS scandal targeting Tea Party organizations, True The Vote filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. requesting that its tax-exempt status application be approved.

The IRS granted the tax-exempt status on Friday night and then filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit all in the same document. True The Vote is accepting the tax-exempt status, but will file a counter motion to continue fighting the other counts of the lawsuit against the IRS. Those other counts deal with civil rights and privacy issues and could lead to the IRS being forced to turn over more documents heading into full discovery.

By moving to offer True the Vote their tax exempt status, The IRS has effectively admitted to having put it's fingers on the scale in the last election, by interfering with the ability of conservative groups to raise money to raise the issue of voter fraud and effect changes to minimize it.

The comment that the move  "appears to be a bid to keep the group from proceeding with discovery on its lawsuit against the agency" seems like well founded speculation, given the IRS's extreme reluctance to release information to its direct overseers, Congress.

Speaking of releasing information on the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax exempt office who refused to testify to Congress after swearing her innocence, has stopped sucking salary resigned from the IRS.

Facing a possible firing, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency's tea party scandal retired Monday, ending one chapter in a scandal that has engulfed the tax-collection agency since spring.

Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status when she was placed on paid leave in May. While she was in charge, the agency acknowledged that agents improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
...
A day after the hearing she was placed on paid leave at the age of 62.

Apparently, Issa is down to hypothesis #2, the scarier of the two hypotheses on how the IRS came to target conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status:

1. Direct orders from the White House.
2. Widespread public calls for crackdowns on conservatives by the White House, Congressional Democrats and the press, combined with a strongly democratic and pro-government workforce.

The first is easy to fix; impeach the President.  The second is more difficult, because the bias is built in, and activated without specific directions.  I stand by my "Modest Proposal."

Swallowtail Project Update

The last Swallowtail project update was Thursday.  Since then the caterpillar started to grow at a tremendous rate, forcing us to go get more parsley to feed it.  Then abruptly, yesterday morning it's behavior changed.  It stopped eating, and started running all over the fish bowl.  Apparently, prior to the metamorphosis to a chrysalis, the caterpillar develops a strong "urge" to seek out a better, maybe safer place to spend its time changing to a butterfly.

We had put some dill stalks in, hoping it would select those to settle on, but instead, it picked a spot on the outside of the fishbowl last night:

You can see the web of silk from the head and tail where the caterpillar attached itself to the glass.  Hopefully sometime in the next day or so it will moult once more to become the chrysalis. Someone else caught this neat video of the process:

The First Day of Fall at the Beach

Fall (at least astronomical fall) started yesterday at 4:44 PM, making today the first full day of fall.  The weather at the beach was definitely autumnal, heavily clouded, blustery, but not too cold, only 58 F or so.  Enough that a long sleeve shirt was welcome, but not life saving.

The mysterious jetty fisherwoman was there today.  While it looks like she has a big fish from the bent pole, I'm pretty sure the only rock she had was the geologic variety.  Been there, done that, many times.

Look, butterflies!  The only ones I saw today.

Not a very photogenic day.

As of a couple of days ago, the Ospreys still hadn't left town (unless the ones I saw were migrants from the north, which is possible, I suppose).

And the young eagle still haven't been forced out to fend for themselves entirely.

But the closeup is a Turkey Vulture, clearly a young one, from the dark head.  There are bunch of the them hanging around the beach, trying oto beat Red to some dead fish.

A New Sport for the Winter Olympics

Makes about as much sense as Curling...

Midnite Music - Volume Up

Haven't had any Japanese Korean weirdness in a while.



Wombat-socho was on schedule with "Rule 5 Sunday - Stardancer." 

Venetians Take to the Canals to Protest Cruise Ships

Grand Canal in Venice

Protesters dive into Venice's canal to block cruise ships

Around 50 protesters dressed in wetsuits, backed by 1,000 supporters, managed to hold up the cruise ships by over an hour as they paddled in the canal – some armed with inflatable rings.

The protest was timed to coincide with a busy day on the canal, as a scheduling quirk meant 12 cruise ships were due to head past St Mark's Square – well above the daily average of two ships
...
Cruise ship operators claim the ships create little damage to Venice's fragile palazzi and no pollution, while local fears over safety have been spurred by the grounding of the Costa Concordia cruise ship on the island of Giglio last year and the more recent ramming of an observation tower at the port of Genoa by a cargo ship, killing seven.

Defenders of the ships say 5,000 local families are supported by the jobs guaranteed by the traffic, while protesters counter that the city's character is being crushed by the daily wave of tourists who disembark, buy a souvenir and then leave. On Saturday an estimated 35,000 cruise ship tourists arrived, equal to over half the city's population.

Venice was certainly one of the highlights of our visit to Italy, a little over a year ago now.  Yep, the place was packed with tourists, and tourism seemed to be the main industry.

Bridge of Sighs, Venice

Venice itself is the descendant of a fiercely competitive Medieval and Renaissance nation state, one of the main sea powers of the day, and a great trading center.  It's hard to imagine it's founders sneering at rich people who would want to travel to Venice, see it great art and buildings and enjoy it's culture, dropping heaps of money along the way.

Everyone should also visit the Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs to understand the role of checks and balances in governments.

Earth Settles Into Middle Age

Life on Earth has another good 1.75 billion years to go, study says

Earth could continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years, as long as nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn't intervene, a new study calculates.

But even without such dramatic doomsday scenarios, astronomical forces will eventually render the planet uninhabitable. Somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now, Earth will travel out of the solar system's habitable zone and into the "hot zone," new research indicates.
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Simple cells first appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. "We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago," lead researcher Andrew Rushby of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom said in a statement." Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop."
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They calculated that Earth's habitable-zone lifetime is as long as 7.79 billion years. (Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old.) Meanwhile, the other planets had habitable-zone lifetimes ranging from 1 billion years to 54.72 billion years.

"If we ever needed to move to another planet, Mars is probably our best bet," Rushby said in a statement. "It's very close and will remain in the habitable zone until the end of the sun's lifetime — 6 billion years from now."

No rush...

Great Moments in Democracy: Egyptian Farmer Arrested for Naming Donkey After General

A farmer in southern Egypt was arrested Saturday after putting the military chief's name and an army-style cap on his donkey, and eight people were detained elsewhere in the country for spraying anti-military graffiti.

The arrests point to a long-standing taboo in Egypt against criticizing the country's powerful military, an offense magnified amid the ongoing crackdown on supporters of the country's ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.

The farmer, Omar Abul-Magd, was arrested late Friday in Qena province for allegedly insulting Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi when he rode the donkey through town, reported the state MENA news agency.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Government refrains from calling the military coup in Egypt a coup so they can continue to send billions in military aid. When the military takes over from a popularly elected government, it is a coup, regardless of whatever the apologists in the administration think.

Now, honestly, I prefer the military government in Egypt over the Muslim Brotherhood directed "democracy", but we have a law.  Using the expedient of "it's not a coup until we say it's a coup" is not the way the leader of the worlds greatest republic should act.  If they don't like the law that restricts them from supporting a coup, they should work openly to repeal it.

D.C. Swat Team Waved Off Navy Yard Shooting

Navy Yard shooting: Swat team awaits answers

Members of a Washington DC Swat team who the BBC has learned were ordered not to respond to Monday's Navy Yard shootings have yet to be contacted by the authorities. The Capitol Police tactical response team was told by a supervisor to leave the scene instead of aiding municipal officers, sources told the BBC.
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Four Cert team members wearing full tactical gear and armed with HK-416 assault weapons arrived on scene at Navy Yard at 08:36 (12:36 GMT) on Monday, after reports surfaced of an active gunman at the complex at 08:20.

According to sources, an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Washington DC's main municipal force, told the Capitol Cert officers they were the only police on site equipped with long guns, and requested their help stopping the gunman.

When the Capitol Police team radioed their superiors, they were told by a watch commander to leave the scene, the BBC was told.

On Thursday, FBI Director James B Comey Jr told ABC News it took roughly half an hour for armed police to arrive and engage Alexis. All 12 victims were killed within that time.

Capitol Police sources suggest "lives may have been saved" if the Cert team had been allowed to intervene.

I'm not alleging any crazy conspiracy theory here; I rather suspect it's a bureaucratic issue, and possibly a turf fight within the D.C. police.

However it happened, it was a stupid move.  These are precisely the situations that SWAT teams were originally designed to handle, their secondary function as a group to break down doors at drug raids etc. for the purpose of shock and awe evolved later, because it seemed a shame to have such training get so little use.

Gingers - Designed for the Dark

Scientists confirm redhead gene evolved due to lack of sunlight

Scientists believe that the “ginger gene,” or “V6OL allele,” showed up 50,000 years ago after humans left Africa for colder climates. This gene made human’s skin lighter, as they were exposed to less vitamin D from the sun.

That's just a ass backwards explanation. Say rather that humans got red hair (and very fair skin pigmentation) as a way of producing more vitamin D with less available sunlight.  A typical case of journalists not understanding the science

The scientists made this discovery having studied the gene evolution of 1,000 people from Spain.

Why Spain, the homeland of ebony haired beauties? Wouldn't Ireland, Scotland, or one of the Scandahoovian countries where gingers abound be better locales?

Ten percent of Irish people have red hair. In total there are 20 million people in the United Kingdom and Ireland with the gene that can cause red hair and this new study shows that this remains a dominant gene in southern Europeans today.

However, this paler skin also brought health risks, such as melanoma, the deadliest form of cancer, but the study’s author Doctor Saioa Lopez says this is not necessarily due to the redhead gene itself.

Melanoma, of course, is commonly blamed on sunlight, but there appears to be a sunlight independent added risk of melanoma associated with being red headed.  But then, if you lived in a region where the sunlight was low, and you had to cover up to stay warm, that would offset some of the added risk.

He told the Daily Mail, “As a consequence of depigmentation there has been a collateral damage consequence to health.

“This can be reconciled if we assume that melanoma is typically a post-reproductive disease, and consequently should have little effect on the individual’s genetic contribution to the next generation.”

And the added benefit of being a ginger? I mean, other than the obvious...

The recent study follows on the results of a ScotlandsDNA project in 2012 which found that the Celts flaming red hair can be put down to the weather. The experts believe that the gloomy climate in Scotland has seen a deliberate genetic adaptation. Essentially this means that red hair helps to take advantage of sunny days and allows the body to absorb more vitamin D.

Linked by The Classic Liberal in "Going the [Rule 5] Distance." Wombat-socho was on schedule with "Rule 5 Sunday - Stardancer."