Blog Heap of Links for the day 7 March 2011

During the first twenty-six months of President Bush's first term in office, the price of gasoline increased by 7%. At the end of his second term, the price had decreased by 9% from the time he took office (adjusted for inflation). During the first twenty-six months of Obama's term in office, the price of gasoline has spiked over 67% with no relief in site.

the real numbers are Democrats: $10.5 billion; Republicans: $61.5 billion. So Democrats are meeting them one-sixth of the way... even the $10.5 billion in cuts from Democrats is illusory...

Obama mulls Islam's post-revolt role in Mideast CBS Revolts in N. Africa, Mideast could bring regimes rooted more in Muslim tradition than democracy (Washington Post) The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics. The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region. The Obama administration is not only preparing but is working to make this happen. What kind of statecraft is at play here? Name one Muslim country living under the sharia that is humane or free. The United States is sanctioning a global caliphate. Gd forgive us. U.S. troops are gunned down by a shooter who screams "Allahu akbar!" before opening fire. Official statements are rushed out by Obama's State department -- the jihadi was a "lone wolf " -- not so. He was a member of any number of jihadi groups. "His motive was unclear" -- he was screaming the Islamic war chant right before he fired. "There are no links to terrorism" -- it was jihad. That is terror. And yet the Obama Administration refuses to call the jihad attack in Germany an act of terrorism, and instead compares it to Giffords shooting. Washington Times here: Sound familiar? It should, because when Islam is the cause of American tragedy, President Obama hides his head in the sand. On Wednesday, a young Kosovar named Arif Uka opened fire on a bus load of U.S. Air Force personnel in Frankfurt, Germany, killing two and wounding two more. Witnesses say he repeatedly shouted the jihadist battle cry, "Allahu akbar" as he emptied his weapon and screamed "Jihad! Jihad!" when tackled by German police. Uka's victims had been heading to the fight in Afghanistan but because the jihadists have a global battlespace, the war came to them instead. Mr. Obama made a typical noncommittal statement shortly after the shooting, saying it was a "stark reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making all around the world to keep us safe, and the dangers that they face all around the globe." He made no mention of the nature of the threat or the reason for the sacrifices. In this respect, he was behaving true to form. The Frankfurt shooting is the latest in a troubling series of jihadist terror attacks in which the Obama administration refuses to face reality. Among the first was the June 1, 2009, shooting at a recruiting station in Little Rock. Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who had recently travelled to Yemen, killed one U.S. Army recruiter and wounded another. Muhammad told police if other troops...

ObamaCare continues to unravel, both in the courtroom and in its rollout. The Department of Health and Human Services added another 126 waivers on Friday for health plans that don’t meet the new federal requirements, bringing the total number of waivers to over 1,000….

Army medic Gene Day found himself crossing a bridge deep into the heartland of Germany in early March 1945, unaware which river he was crossing in the nighttime darkness. It was only after he got to the other side that he learned he had just crossed the Rhine River.

...[Survey] discovered that two-thirds are losing sleep to devices like computers, televisions and cell phones... poll shows that the most sleep deprived age group are those ages 13 to 18, who stay up late at night texting before falling asleep....

At first look, the February 14th story posted online for the Columbia Journalism Review titled, 'Premiere Plants' might lead the casual reader to believe that Talk Radio stars like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are stacking their popular programs with staged segments featuring callers who are not listeners, but paid performers reading from prepared scripts. This wild and reckless conjecture is simply not true and a little basic investigation reveals that and the fact these false attacks have been funded by the billionaire and currency manipulator George Soros.

Tulsa police arrested a man after a domestic dispute led officers into the man's house where they allegedly found a meth lab and three children hiding with their mother in a bedroom Sunday, officials said.

America's 50 states are free to decide their own penal codes, which vary widely and change as facts and public values evolve. Europe won't allow such a debate at home but feels the moral afflatus to tax its own citizens to promote one side of the argument in America. Europe can't find the money to pay for its fair share of NATO but it can spare a dime to hector its main defense benefactor on criminal law. This is why fewer and fewer Americans take Europe seriously.

women still earn less, on average, than men and are more likely to live in poverty. They are also at much greater risk of sexual assault and of violence at the hands of an intimate partner than men. To be sure, the report shows that there is still plenty of progress to be made. But it is Women's History Month, and a good time to pause for perspective.... [Yeah, let's not dwell on what the next paragraph calls ASTONISHING IMPROVEMENTS in the headline or lead paragraphs!]

[Robbers 1993, 1 dead, 2 caught. Robbers 2005 sentenced to 25 years and 10 years. Robber 2011 caught within hours.]

32-year-old Missouri man who had been living at a Bartlesville homeless shelter... lost money at the casino Thursday night... commented at breakfast "he was going to have to rob a bank...." called the witness Friday afternoon to say he "did it" and he "can't believe it was so easy...." Police Chief Holland: "From the moment the suspect entered Arvest Bank with the intent to commit a robbery until he was in a set of Bartlesville Police handcuffs some 60 miles from the scene was less than four hours."

The Münchhausen Trilemma (after Baron Münchhausen, who allegedly pulled himself (and the horse he was sitting on) out of a swamp by his own hair), also called Agrippa's Trilemma (after Agrippa the Skeptic), is a philosophical term coined to stress the purported impossibility to prove any truth even in the fields of logic and mathematics. It is the name of an argument in the theory of knowledge going back to the German philosopher Hans Albert, and more traditionally, in the name of Agrippa.

"Turtles all the way down" is a jocular expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology posed by the Unmoved mover paradox. The phrase was popularized by Stephen Hawking in 1988. The "turtle" metaphor in the anecdote represents a popular notion of a "primitive cosmological myth", viz. the flat earth supported on the back of a World Turtle. A comparable metaphor describing the circular cause and consequence for the same problem is the "chicken and egg problem". Another metaphor addressing the problem of infinite regression, albeit not in a cosmological context, is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The same problem in epistemology is known as the Münchhausen Trilemma.

Discovery's astronauts got a special greeting in advance of their space station departure. Actor William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" television series and movies, paid tribute to Discovery's voyages over the decades. "Space, the final frontier," Shatner said in a prerecorded message. "These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before." Shatner's words were followed by Monday morning's wake-up music, "Theme from Star Trek."

foot and a half of animal feces... took officials more than two hours to wade through the muck in the living room and upstairs before they could say they'd found all the living animals --- more than 18 mixed-breed dogs... freezer full of about 15 carcasses... Neighbors have watched for years as the homeowner lived out of her car instead of her home.... [How do YEARS go by with "smell is unbearable in the summer"??]

Inhofe viewed the move as over-reaching by a federal government.

responsible for the importation of large amounts of marijuana from sources in Phoenix into the Detroit area between November 2008 and December 2009, the release states. Drug couriers, often called "mules," reportedly transported marijuana and large amounts of cash in rental vehicles, commercial buses and airlines...

Speeding, driving erratically, smelled of booze, open container, and possibly getting BJ while driving. YOU BE THE JUDGE! [Thx2 News of the Weird and Weird Universe]

I swear, that's the ultimate goal, for teachers to get paid without having to teach kids at school. Teaching is a great profession, it's just that it's really hard to do when there are kids around. [With all due respect to the many frustrated teachers trying to actually teach, despite system and society's children both.]

For more than half-a-century, the race for the Republican presidential nomination has always featured a clear front runner at this point in the campaign, according to a Gallup analysis out Monday. Not this time. Continue Reading Those early Republican front-runners in past contests have had good odds, and have gone on to win the nomination in 8 out of 10 competitive Republican races since 1952.

Interesting how the death threats agaisnt the Palins are not plastered all over the American media, how there is no outrage, and how the threats are not imputed to the entire Democratic Party and left-wing blogosphere, as was done with the ridiculous claims that Sarah Palin's electoral map had some connection to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.

Sarah Palin's father says that Palin and her family have been threatened:

Bachmann, weighing a 2012 presidential run, also did not back off previous statements that the president holds "anti-American views" and the administration is a "gangster government." "I do believe that actions that have been taken by this White House -- I don't take back my statements on gangster government," she said. "I think that there have been actions taken by the government that are corrupt."