The project in California (from San Francisco to Anaheim) is a boondoggle of truly gargantuan proportions. The estimated cost of the whole system is somewhere around 160 Billion. Because of the Tehachapi mountains which run across half the state between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, there is no way to build a high speed rail system without either tunneling under the mountains ( for approximately 35 miles and crossing the San Andreas fault) or going through heavily populated coastal areas. Either way, the cost is going to be really enormous. And people will end up not taking it. We have the metro light rail system in LA which is costing many billions and runs either half empty or close to empty most of the time. The estimate subsidy per ride is over five dollars.

Here's a novel idea to jump start the economy-- Promise the American taxpayer and business owner that There will be no government takeover of health care and no cap and trade. Those two promises alone will improve the economy. Why would anyone want to start a new business with those two business killers hanging over their heads.

These are not the death panels Sarah Palin was talking about. She was talking about the cost effective care panels which are also alive and well in this bill. They are similar to the NICE panels in England which decide which treatments will be paid for and which ones won't. These are true death panels because if you are denied care you will die. In Britain they have also approved something called the Liverpool Care Pathway which is a decision by your doctor that you are close to death so they will deprive you of water and food and give you heavy doses of morphine to speed you on your way. These are not imaginary. They are real in Britain. See this story: http://tinyurl.com/l4ba3m And also see http://tinyurl.com/yf32e4t

These are the real death panels. don't think it can't happen here

So here is my takeaway-- if I had a shadow of a doubt that someone was spoofing my e-mail I would be in semi-panic mode. If she really didn't send it she should be super concerned that someone has hacked into her e-mail and managed to send out e-mails with her address. As to the header information, maybe Alg is keeping it private to protect her privacy and not enable others to hack into the Nbc server. But the real proof of guilt to me is their unwillingness to find out how someone used their server and their reporter's blackberry, which is probably provided by Nbc, to send a phony e-mail. That should be of grave concern to Nbc which probably spends hundreds of thousands if not millions a year to protect the integrity of its Internal communication system. The headline should be Nbc or Ge servers hacked. But it isn't. And that leads a reasonable person to believe that the reason the headline is the denial is that the denial is false. They are acting like they have no reason to believe their server was hacked. Which means she sent the e-mail

Here is a good resource on the law. http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html

This story demonstrates the narcissism of the liberal elites. Narcissism is a standard psychiatric diagnosis. You can see a full explanation here: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/narcissistic-per...
Essentially, narcissists think they are the center of the world. Other people exist only to serve them.

Stephen Farrell wrote a long blog entry about his experience. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/the-rep...

On the surface, it seems a factual account. But the signs of narcissistic personality disorder are there. He defies the warning because he has an important mission to show the world how the Nato Forces are badly behaved. He speaks fondly of his sidekick Munadi, as the Lone Ranger might speak of Tonto (which is, coincidentally, Spanish for fool). But the story is really all about him and his importance. Having defied the advice given him, he nevertheless expects to be rescued, an expectation, unfortunately based in reality. But the real narcissism reveals itself in his behavior during the raid. He is completely unable to imagine the world as his rescuers see it. By that I mean, it is night when he is rescued. He is accompanied by a man who is dressed in a robe. It seems never to have occurred to Farrell how difficult it might be for his rescuers to know which men in robes are shooting at them and which one ( and there was only one) is friendly. Despite having hung out with soldiers and having been captured by terrorists before when he was in Iraq, he seems unable to understand the fog of war. By his own account, the Taliban had left the room where he was being held captive when he decided to leave the room also and run out into the middle of a firefight taking place at night, thinking all he had to do was announce who he was and everything would be all right. That kind of thought moves beyond mere arrogance into narcissistic personality disorder. Unfortunately, it was his loyal sidekick who was killed by his stupidity. He seemed incapable of understanding that his rescuers were being shot at by men in robes. He seemed incapable of understanding that they might not be able to hear him. He seemed incapable of understanding that they might not know him in the dark.

I hope and pray that Stephen Farrell is suffering from grief, remorse and depression and guilt right now. Those feelings are not always bad. Narcissists suffer grief only when they don't get what they want. But even that self centered grief may lead, eventually, to some personal growth, some realization that they are not the center of the world, that they are not on some higher plane than all the lowly plebes. The truth is, that it may very well be that Stephen Farrell lead Munadi to his death.

And perhaps someday Farrell will seek out the family of John Harrison, the British paratrooper who died In the rescue, and apologize to his family and thank them for having produced a son who was a strong, moral and honorable man with a whole lot more mettle than Stephen Farrell could ever hope to have.

One avenue is to read what is written on the science by some of the skeptics. For example, if you go to the Web site, WattsUpWithThat, by Anthony Watts you will find a plethora of research, performed by qualified people concerning the accuracy of the surface temperature record. You should also go to his Web site, surfacestations.org. This is real science. Anthony has recruited hundreds of volunteers to survey the surface station measuring sites in the United States and Canada to see if they are subject to Urban Heat Island effects. The answer is that the majority of them are. This is not speculation. This is not a computer model. Hundreds of volunteers have photographed the surface temperature measuring stations. Those photographs show that many of them are located next to air conditioning vents (which add heat and distort the measurements), large amounts of concrete in parking lots, buildings and driveways, ( which add heat) and are otherwise suspect in terms of their accuracy. That is real science. Going and looking at the source of your data and evaluating on a case by case basis whether the source of it is accurate. You will find that the discussions on such websites are about the facts. That is what scientific discussion should be about. If you read the post on Watt's Web site called the Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero, you will see why so many skeptics have cause for concern. It is not just that the Hadley CRU people said they were fudging the data. It is that they actually were fudging the data -- that is, they "adjusted" at least one record from one site to show temperature increases when there had been, in fact, a decline.

AS I once said to my struggling to learn music son, I don't have to know how to play the violin to know if you are playing in tune and on time. I do not have to be a scientist to know if you are dealing accurately and fairly with the basic data. When so called scientists lie to the public about the data, there is serious cause for concern.

In defense of parents who overparent and underdiscipline, they are, unfortunately, listening way too much to a mainstream media that says over and over that children are fragile little flowers who will be destroyed if parents ever say no. So, first, three cheers for swimming against the tide. I say, if you see a parent give a misbehaving kid a butt swat, go up to him or her and say "Thank you. Not enough parents discipline their children these days and I'm glad to see you are being a good parent". They need to hear it. We really need to act individually to change this social consensus .

At the same time we need to talk about what is reasonable risk. If you want to know really why so many children are obese, go look at any elementary, middle or high school ten minutes before school starts. There is a traffic jam of parents who won't let their children ride the school bus or walk to school (which I, like the author, started doing when I was about 7). It seems to me that the technology we have today can substantially reduce the worry without turning the child into a prisoner of his parents paranoia. If you are really, really worried, put a GPS locator in his backpack. The number of child kidnappings is no higher than it ever was, we just hear about them more. I would be much more worried about traffic accidents than kidnapping, if I had a school age child these days.

For those of us ancient ones who remember Oh God! With George Burns, John Denver and Terri Garr-- that was truly a delightful film Back in the days when Hollywood did not need to dis the Judeo Christian tradtion. What we need is more Oh God's and less of this type of nihilistic insults. I still love the scene where John Denver and Terri Garr are talking and She asks him something like, so you think you talked to God? And Denver responds, somewhat frenetically, Well he says he's God. I suggest that the best revenge is for everyone to rent Oh God! And the sequel and stay home with microwave popcorn (which is the best.)

And just to clarify-- Any governor of any state that shares a border with another country has some international experience. They have to. Here in California, Arnold meets with the Mexican president to work out problems. See for example http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrel... where Vicente Fox talks about Mexico and California cooperating to stop the drug trade. I am sure that Russian Fishing boats and Alaskan fishing boats don't just see each other. Here is a video of Palin giving a speech at an International Whaling Conference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IXXcByKpNk&fe... Way more experience than Obama. I would far rather have Palin speaking at the Un than Obama