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POPSCross The River, Burn The Bridge by Mark Steyn
There is no reason on earth why Nebraska should be the only state in this Union to have every dime of its increased Medicare tab picked up by the 49 others. So either that privilege will be extended to all, or to favored others, or its asymmetry will be balanced by other precisely targeted lollipops hither and yon. Whatever happens, it’s a dagger at the heart of American federalism, just as the bill’s magisterial proclamation that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board can only be abolished by a two-thirds vote of the Senate strikes at one of the most basic principles of a free society " that no parliament can bind its successors. These details are obnoxious not merely in and of themselves but because they tell us the truth about where we’re headed: Think of the way almost every Big Government project bursts its bodice and winds up bigger and more bloated than its creators allegedly foresaw. In this instance, the stays come pre-loosened, and studded with loopholes.
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POPSForget Vietnam Analogies - Remember Cambodia and Laos - now Pakistan Pakistan is beginning to look like a combination of the not-so-secret wars in Cambodia and Laos - Those pesky Viet Cong kept slipping into Laos and Cambodia to escape B-52s. Those Taliban - they just won't stay in one place. Didn't the British say the same thing about those pesky Minute Men and Green Mountain boys. Not saying the Taliban are right in any way, it's just that - we are the British to the Afghans. When Afghans unite for their own freedom against the Taliban view of the world, they will win and we can go home. The training up of Afghan army and police also seems a lot like what we did not get right in Vietnam. why? Because, we are simply empowering rule by old tribal war lords. I suspect that the Afghan people want none of the Taliban, us or the tribal war lords. Think about how to help them come to fore might help to bring peace that will last.
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POPSIs Flagship The New Word For Luxury Ski? Luxury tour operator Scott Dunn has proudly created a new term for skiing in luxury. The word they have chosen is Flagship and its four flagship ski chalets, two in Val d’Isère, and one in St Anton and Courchevel 1850 crown the Scott Dunn portfolio.
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POPSCheap Natural Gas and Its Enemies But why would the politically active Sandlers suddenly enter the media world? Perhaps it's because they realize the political and financial benefits that can flow from influencing the news. We may be seeing a sample of this type of handiwork now. Among the first "exposés" Pro Publica undertook was an attack on energy companies for developing the Marcellus Shale, a vast natural gas reservoir stretching across several states. The "exposé" focused on putative environmental effects that might result from tapping these reserves. The technology used to unleash this natural gas from the shale in which it is trapped is called "fracking." Energy companies inject water, sand, and drilling fluids into the rock to "crack" it and release the natural gas. The potential for this technology is huge: America is a vast storehouse of this type of gas. Much of this is located not just in the Marcellus formation, but throughout the Rocky Mountain states. Also, the Barnett Shale region of Texas
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POPSExperience: I fell 6,000 feet and survived
Our plan was to exit at 6,000ft, fly past the steam, open our parachutes at between 150 and 200 metres, and land. But after we jumped out of the helicopter, the plan wasn't followed. I was very focused on my filming and had a viewfinder over my left eye, to help frame the video. To gauge distances, you really need both eyes, and because of the snow covering the volcano it was very difficult to sense height – all we could see was white. Quite suddenly, I realised I could see the texture of the snow and ice, meaning I had two or three seconds before I hit the ground. I can't have been more than 20 metres up. Terror gripped my heart and stomach, the darkest of darkness. Then I had a clear thought of my wife and three-month-old daughter, and was overwhelmed by sadness as I felt the parachute lift from my back. I'd opened it without even thinking, just as you might instinctively hit the brakes in a car, and experienced a brief sense of hope. This is going to hurt a lot, I thought, or
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POPSThe Rich Rule Over The Poor The rich rule over the poor, And the borrower is the slave of the lender. (Proverbs 22:7 ESV) And so it goes. King George and his band of bandits got us into this mess with conservatives cheering him along every step of the way while he created a mountain of new federal debt, the largest contributors to which were Bush's tax breaks for the rich. Their hero of the hour shamelessly exploited 9/11, fear and the "war on terror" as a pretext to take the ax to civil liberties and to shroud their policies and actions in secrecy. So don't cry me a river now and cloak it with a biblical quote. You are the ones who wanted to mythify Bush as a great leader--pull your crap out on someone else who is idiotic enough to believe in it, but don't pretend you can cash in to God's love by supporting benefits that go to the wealthiest of Americans and contradict the message of Jesus of serving the poor. It's disgusting and so are you.
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POPSGuardian 100 best films of the 2000s: 11-100 "Oldboy" is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare. The top 10 will be published daily starting 21 Dec. See 11 - 100 list in full @ clip source. The 2000s: decade of the emergence of Mexican talent - Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy!) and Alfonso Cuaron. Is the Motorcycle Diaries in the top 10? Stay tuned. Note: I can clip images if I hover over an image and select shift+r, but that only works if that option is available: strange.
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POPSTop Tourist destinations in Europe There are several tourist attractions in Europe and the list is endless. Nonetheless, here is a list of ten top widely appreciated tourist destinations which has been made keeping in view the tastes of a wide spectrum of people worldwide.
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POPS Obama's Legacy That far exceeds what's needed to turn on the lights, but it's also beyond what's needed for a basic nuclear weapons program. Consider North Korea, which manufactured two limited yield nuclear weapons using only a plutonium reactor, a plutonium reprocessing facility, and -- presumably -- some sort of weapons laboratory. Why is Iran pumping billions more into building and protecting triple the number of facilities required to build a basic nuclear weapon, akin to the Fat Man or Little Boy bombs detonated in 1945? The answer could be that Tehran is skipping basic weapons construction and moving towards an advanced thermonuclear design. Consider that they've already experimented with advanced weapons designs like two-point implosion, nuclear triggers, and have built their own facility at Arak that could be used to produce both tritium, which is a suspected boosting agent in hydrogen bomb designs, as well as weapons-grade plutonium.
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POPSMajor Groundwater Loss in California's Heartland I've visited this area many times during the past three decades and each and every time have been forced to conclude that the current practices are not sustainable. When (not if, but when) it finally collapses, the "values" we now take for granted will come back to haunt us.
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POPSYellowstone's Plumbing Reveals Plume of Hot and Molten Rock 410 Miles Deep
This thing is still plugged in....DEEP. About 4 miles beneath Yellowstone National Park's beautiful scenery is a forty-mile-wide chamber full of molten rock under incredibly high pressure. This magma is what powers Yellowstone's fantastic geysers and hot springs, It's the crown jewel of the United States national park system. Its mountain vistas, wildlife and geographic features are visited and admired by people from around the world. It erupted approximately 650,000 years ago. The caldera that it left is 53 miles long and 28 miles wide. In the area surrounding Yellowstone, 3000 square miles were subjected to a flow of pyroclastic material composed of 240 cubic miles of hot ash and pumice. Ash was also thrown into the atmosphere and blanketed much of North America. It can still be identified in core samples from as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. Since this occurred more than a half million years ago this is all ancient history, right? Not quite.
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