In case you missed it last night, I did a podcast with Marc Marano of Climate Depot on the economics and politics of the "Climate change" movement.

There's some satellite imagery of debris in the Indian Ocean that might be part of the missing Malaysian Air flight.

Obama announced some more sanctions on individual Russians and a bank. He also told Putin that if Russia is willing to totally change its worldview this Ukraine thing can all work out in the end for everyone. I'm sure Putin is thrilled with the offer.

Jennifer Rubin used to think the GOP needed to do outreach to non-traditional voters. Then Rand Paul did it by going to Berkeley and now Rubin thinks it's a terrible idea. The problem is Paul talked about things liberals might agree with him, for example his opposition to domestic surveillance. Rubin would have preferred this outreach consist of Paul talking about things like support for traditional marriage (which Rubin disagrees with) that liberals would have hated.

It's pretty clear that Rubin's "ideological purity" tests for candidates will be the ruin of the GOP.

Say what you will about Paul's stance on a given issue but he's a smart politician. He tries to find ways to allow people to support him. Even if they don't buy everything he's selling, he tries to give them a bridge to vote for him. That seems like smart politics to me.

You know, it's almost as if Rubin is a hack who will say anything and bend herself into a pretzel to protect her beloved liberal Republicans (so long as they agree to BOMB ALL THE PLACES!).

Almost.

Open thread.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:41 AM | Comments (278)
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Happy Thursday.

Democrats' long-stated, but little-evidenced claim that voter fraud at the polls doesn't exist took another blow yesterday.

England and France failed to anticipate and thereby prevent World War II, in part, because the English and French leadership failed to take Hitler at his word. They thought he was irrational and unserious, but he meant exactly what he had said about the Anschluss. Here we are again, refusing to consider that Putin might mean to do exactly what he says he wants to do. Note the "first in line," language.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (253)
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Escape From East Germany

It's been almost 25 years since the Iron Curtain came down and already the memories of Communist oppression are fading from all except those who directly lived under it. Just two decades ago if you wanted freedom and economic opportunity but happened to live in the wrong part of Europe, you often had to risk your life using whatever means you could to escape to a better future.

In 1979 Günter Wetzel and Peter Strelzyk along with their families did just that, managing to escape from East Germany using a home-built hot air balloon. Inspired by a newspaper article on the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Wetzel and Strelzyk decided to build their own balloon and use it to cross over into West Germany even though they knew almost nothing  about balloons.

Since Peter Strelzyk and I, Günter Wetzel worked together at the beginning of 1978, we frequently had the opportunity to speak with each other.  Like many East German citizens we too had the ultimate aim to leave East Germany and that was frequently the topic about which we spoke.

Life in East Germany was far from satisfactory for us.  There was a whole list of things we found objectionable because we had to put up with and factor in so many constraints.  Fundamental reasons were that it was not possible either publicly or in one's private circle to voice one's opinion because one could never be certain whether one or even several persons present were police informers.  In addition, opportunities to travel to countries other than a few others in the Eastern Bloc were either nonexistent or extremely limited.  Even the job one could choose was limited, especially if one was not true to the Party line.  One could make one's life easier by becoming involved with the authorities in the correct manner e.g. by being a member of the Communist Party and helping the state authorities but I did not want that either.  There were of course many other reasons which I cannot list here but economic motives also played a role.

Like so many others, we spoke again and again about leaving East Germany but saw no way of pulling it off because the border seemed impossible to cross.

By sheer chance my wife Petra's sister, who had already left East Germany in 1958, came to visit us and brought with her a newspaper in which the annual International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, USA was reported.  Next to the report were also a few pictures of the hot air balloons.  Seeing this is what gave us the idea that a balloon could be used to get over the border fortifications.  It was clear to us from the outset that if we were to escape, everyone would have to come.  We were also certain that doing so by air was the only possible way since there were eight of us altogether - 4 adults and 4 children.  I remember the day we made this decision very well as it was 7^th March 1978, one day before International Women's Day which was actively celebrated in East Germany.

Over the next year and a half Wetzel and Strelzyk reverse-engineered a balloon, gas heater, and basket from pictures in books while their wives quietly collected fabric from across the country and began sewing it into a balloon. In the end they built three different balloons and numerous burner prototypes before they finally felt they had one reliable enough to get them over the border.

Eventually with the Stasi closing in on them and Wetzel about to be called up for military service they took advantage of a narrow window of good weather and launched their balloon during the night on September 14th, 1979. Despite several potentially fatal things going wrong they eventually touched down in Finkenflug, West Germany an hour later. You can read Wetzel's complete account of the escape here.

Swimming For Your Life From The GDR

Here is a video taken by tourists in the late 80's of four East Germans desperately trying to swim across the Spree to West Germany. Because the entire river belonged to the GDR they could be shot at any time by the armed guards in the approaching speedboat.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:44 PM | Comments (586)
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Need a little time off before the podcast. Here are some quick links.

Author Brad Thor speculates about his own personal Flight 370 nightmare scenario.

CBS's Marketwatch analyst is starting to get a little suspicious about this "economic recovery."

Liberal Richard Cohen rips out-of-control progressives for opposing charter schools at the expense of poor children-- while pretending that by punishing poor children, they're striking a blow against The One Percent.

The Democratic Party, which runs on Mediscare most elections, is firmly behind Obama's serious, deep cuts to home health care providers and hostels for the elderly. When you're paying them so much less, you can expect a lot less in return -- and many will simply go out of business.

This Cracked article by a real-life Top Gun on the Five Things You Don't Know About Piloting a Jet Fighter is pretty awesome.

I know you're going to call me a damned liar, but Tom Friedman has written something stupid about Sustainable Energy Serious You Guys.

Oh, and Former Enron Consultant Paul Krugman asserts that he knows the Tea Party is racist. How does he know this? Simple, really: While the Tea Party opposes wealth transfers to "Those People" (he actually says "Those People"), the Tea Party, he sagely informs you, has never complained about the government's TARP bailouts of banks.

Never! Not once! Never happened!

I've been trying to think of something clever to say about this Christina Hoff Summers article on the increasing tendency to treat masculinity as a disease, but I can't, so I'll just recommend it.

Slate must really need hits, because they've offered up their most controversial #TrollOutrage article yet: College Isn't For Everyone, So Let's Stop Pretending It Is.

Oh, and healthcare premiums will skyrocket under Obamacare. But you knew that.

The Meatball continues his Meatballish ways by appearing on Amy & Gay Patriot's The Wrap show at 9pm tonight.

For something cute/funny/sorta alarming, Dave in Texas sends this video of a kid who may be a Wile E. Coyote type genius when it comes to removing a loose tooth.

Which isn't a good way to be a genius. But still, a sort of genius.

Okay, to enjoy this video, put it outside of your mind, for a moment, that maybe this dad should take more ownership of this situation.

And don't worry: Nothing bad happens. Even Wile E. Coyote gets lucky every once in a while. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (533)
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Charles C.W. Cooke doesn't quite put it like that, but he does see reason for worry.

There is no plan to put the internet under the control of anyone, not per se at least. But the plan is to allow those threatened by free expression to share control over the basic structure of the internet -- which would give them leverage, should they wish to exert it.

Which, of course, they always do.

The “DNS’s authoritative root zone file” is effectively a master directory of website addresses, kept in one place to avoid duplication and to guarantee that when everybody types “nationalreview.com” into their browser, they get the same page; “IP addresses,” to put it oversimply, are the Internet’s “phone numbers,” assigned to each computer (or router) so that they can be contacted by others; “protocol parameters” inform the basic architecture by which the Internet operates — variables such as which characters may be used, and in what form commonly used services such as e-mail and Web pages are to operate. You get the idea.

As you might imagine, it matters a great deal who is in charge of this compendium, for whoever controls it can use the thing essentially as a global on/off switch. As it stands, a tyrant is able to restrict access to certain parts of the Internet in his own country, but he is unable to make a page or a server or a service disappear completely....

Consider how different the story might have been had the system’s guts been controlled by someone else — even by a relatively free country such as Britain or Canada, where the government is benign but speech is curtailed by law. Is it not possible that the temptation to bring the Web into line with “reasonable” limits on expression would have been too much to resist? Can one not imagine a pressure for “common sense” reform building from inside and outside — and leading to censorship of language that gave offense to, say, gays, or Muslims, or police horses? If so, imagine what less amiable nations might seek to impose.

He writes on the topic again today, linking this op-ed by L. Gordon Crovitz published at the WSJ.

This means, effective next year, the U.S. will no longer oversee the "root zone file," which contains all names and addresses for websites world-wide. If authoritarian regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere get their way, domains could be banned and new ones not approved for meddlesome groups such as Ukrainian-independence organizations or Tibetan human-rights activists.

Until late last week, other countries knew that Washington would use its control over Icann to block any such censorship. The U.S. has protected engineers and other nongovernment stakeholders so that they can operate an open Internet. Authoritarian regimes from Moscow to Damascus have cut off their own citizens' Internet access, but the regimes have been unable to undermine general access to the Internet, where no one needs any government's permission to launch a website. The Obama administration has now endangered that hallmark of Internet freedom.

...

The Obama administration was caught flat-footed at an ITU conference in 2012 stage-managed by authoritarian governments.

...

In the past few years, Russia and China have used a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union to challenge the open Internet. They have lobbied for the ITU to replace Washington as the Icann overseer. They want the ITU to outlaw anonymity on the Web (to make identifying dissidents easier) and to add a fee charged to providers when people gain access to the Web "internationally"—in effect, a tax on U.S.-based sites such as Google and Facebook. The unspoken aim is to discourage global Internet companies from giving everyone equal access.

And now the ITU stands as the likely successor to ICANN. This will be the "death of the internet," warns one critic.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

I have to admit, up until an hour ago, I thought this was a minor bookkeeping-level sort of thing.

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (291)
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The problem with people ain't so much ignorance as it is knowin' thing that just ain't so.

[N]ew research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil.

...

But Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings should not be taken as “a green light” to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat. He said that looking at individual fats and other nutrient groups in isolation could be misleading, because when people cut down on fats they tend to eat more bread, cold cereal and other refined carbohydrates that can also be bad for cardiovascular health.

...

He said people should try to eat foods that are typical of the Mediterranean diet, like nuts, fish, avocado, high-fiber grains and olive oil. A large clinical trial last year, which was not included in the current analysis, found that a Mediterranean diet with more nuts and extra virgin olive oil reduced heart attacks and strokes when compared with a lower fat diet with more starches.

Alice H. Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University, agreed that “it would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon,” citing evidence that replacing saturated fat with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats – instead of simply eating more carbohydrates – reduces cardiovascular risk.

Their study has concluded there is no link between fat intake and heart disease, but they say they don't want you to think that eating fat's okay, because, you know, the risk of heart disease and all.

Meanwhile, a doctor claims that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) simply doesn't exist.

He believes that a large group of symptoms is just being labeled as "ADHD" because no one has any real idea what causes vague symptoms like a lack of focus. He also says that some real problems are being misdiagnosed as ADHD just because it's such an easy (false) diagnosis to make:

ADHD makes a great excuse,” Saul notes. “The diagnosis can be an easy-to-reach-for crutch. Moreover, there’s an attractive element to an ADHD diagnosis, especially in adults — it can be exciting to think of oneself as involved in many things at once, rather than stuck in a boring rut.”

In private practice, Saul found himself wondering, what other problems do these patients have besides being easily distracted? One girl he treated, it turned out, was being disruptive in class because she couldnÂ’t see the blackboard. Correct diagnois: myopia. She needed glasses, not drugs.

A 36-year-old man who complained about his addiction to online games and guessed he had ADHD, it turned out, was drinking too much coffee and sleeping only four to five hours a night. Correct diagnosis: sleep deprivation. He needed blackout shades, a white-noise machine and a program that shut all his devices off at midnight.

..

One by one, nearly all of SaulÂ’s patients turned out to have some disease other than ADHD, such as TouretteÂ’s, OCD, fragile X syndrome (a genetic mutation linked to mental retardation), autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities or such familiar conditions as substance abuse, poor hearing or even giftedness. A boy who was disruptive and inattentive in math class (but no other) was, simply, bored by the material and needed to be advanced a grade to regain his concentration.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (325)
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• Obamacare Premiums To Skyrocket, Some To Triple In Cost
  
• Obama Pivots To Women's Issues
  
• Rand Paul Gets Standing Ovation At Berkeley
  
• Democrats Have Lost Two US House Candidates This Week
  
• The Hangover
  
• Not Your Father's Cold War
  
• Virginia: The 'Third Way' On Medicaid Expansion Is Still A Disaster
  
• Russia Annexes Crimea, Obama Makes His Final Four Picks
  
• EPA Goes All In For The Dems
  
• To The Obama Administration, Everybody Is A Child
  
• This Is How The Tea Party Ends
  
• Apparently Staring In Degrading Porn Is Feminism
  
• Fox News Babe Passes Out Flying With Blue Angels
  
• Six States That Can't Decide On Medicaide Expansion
  
• Harry Reid Superpac Makes Anti-Cotton Ad
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:00 AM | Comments (596)
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Actually, they even went further than the headline suggests.

Previously, they had completely banned guns in public housing. But this was challenged by lawsuit in 2010, and the housing commission rewrote its complete ban, making it instead a ban on carrying a gun in hallways, laundry rooms, and other common areas.

But the Delaware Supreme Court has now struck that as unconstitutional, given the new (old) understanding of the Second Amendment post-McDonald. So you can now carry your weapon to the laundry room. Which, frankly, seems like a good idea, because attacks outside your actual apartment are likely to occur in such isolated areas.

And they did so unanimously.

Actually, they merely mentioned the McDonald decision, while chiefly justifying the decision on... Delaware's own constitution, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.

Check out Cooke's post for more and links.

Cooke has another important gun story: A review has found the Navy Yard shooting was indeed preventable. But not by gun control.

The report notes that the shooter had been observed acting erratically, but that no one reported this to anyone in a position of authority. Had people been more alert to Lunatic Control, the shooter's permissions would have been revoked, and he couldn't have gotten into the Naval Yards.

This suggests something to me -- I keep seeing the gun-liberals (gun liberalizers, I mean; I use the term for its shock value) saying things that turn out to be right, and the gun-reactionaries keep saying things that turn out to be wrong.

One begins to notice.

I myself have the subconscious coding of a gun reactionary. If you've detected I'm quick to buy into various tropes promoted by the gun reactionaries, you're right. I don't come from a gun-liberal culture, but more from a gun-reactionary one (or, gun-neutral, leaning gun-reactionary). So my instincts do indeed lead, at first, to the gun-reactionary side.

It's actually reason that pushes me over to the gun-liberal side, while fear and primitive programming and tribal mores make me a bit of a gun-reactionary.

When I first read about the Delaware case, my gun-reactionary instinct flared up, and I worried that the liberalization of gun rules within public housing would lead to more crime. You know, the "Wild West" scenario that the gun-reactionaries are always nattering about, but which never seems to actually manifest.

But my gun-reactionary instinct has subsided a bit now, and my learned gun-liberal response is now urging a wait-and-see attitude. After all, anyone who wants a gun for criminal purposes -- anyone whose economic survival relies upon carrying an illegal gun -- already has one. It's just the non-criminals who are disarmed in this circumstances.

And they are forced by circumstance to live in close proximity to those illegally armed.

As I said, while my gut is gun-reactionary, my head has been persuaded by evidence that the gun-liberals are usually right. So I'll just watch on this one, and see if that pattern continues to hold.

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (533)
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There's another way to say this, of course: that members of a particular religion, Christianity, should be affirmatively disfavored and discriminated against.

Does this run afoul of the Constitution? Of course.

Gabe Malor gave Ed Morrissey his legal opinion at the link.

We seem to be having an outbreak of MLBS (Meatball-Like Behavior Syndrome) at this site.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (332)
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Via @DraftRyan2016 we have another "Christie confronts voter at town hall" video that made him so famous in his first term.

The wrinkle in this one is that while he's debating a lefty he defends himself not by making the conservative case against government healthcare but praising how much he's expanded it already.

Sure he says he hates ObamaCare but he's pretty proud that he's taken the ObamaCare money to expand Medicaid (you know the system that is a total waste of money) and boasts that NJ's Medicaid system is the 2nd most generous in the country. So you know...Conservative! Maybe even severely.

Of course being so generous with Medicaid comes at a cost in taxes and the resulting flight from New Jersey to lower tax states (via NJ refugee @johnekdahl). Now, Chrisite has done some good on taxes in NJ but to brag that their welfare benefits are so generous and he's happily expanding them is a slap to the people who have to pay for them.

Republicans want to make some made up distinction between ObamaCare Medicaid expansion and the exchanges but conservatives shouldn't let them get away with it.

What I said in 2010 about Romney's inability to take on ObamaCare because of his entanglement with MittCare applies to Chrisite or any other GOP governor who has taken ObamaCare Medicaid money.

Even if Romney does say he opposes the individual mandate, he still has said he'd take credit for Obama's health care "accomplishment". Given his background with the issue and weird statements about the law since its passage, Romney is simply damaged goods when it comes to health care.

He might still be able to come up with a convincing narrative to explain the differences between MassCare and ObamaCare as well as his role in the former. But then the debate will be about Mitt and what he thought then vs. now and whether he can be reliable going forward. Meanwhile the focus will be off Obama and the damage done by this health care scheme.

Republicans need the issue to be a clean and clear choice...we have to nominate someone who was opposed to ObamaCare from the start. Only then will the focus stay on Obama and what he has wrought.

If ObamaCare is going to be a lead GOP issue in 2016 you can't have someone on the ticket who is compromised by it.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:39 AM | Comments (424)
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