Dana Loesch: Poster Girl for the new Sexy and quite "Libertarian" Right

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St. Louis's Sassy Conservative Female in Playboy

Dana Loesch, afternoon talk-show host on 97.1 FM Talk in St. Louis, and top Tea Party icon is featured in a lengthy article on the Tea Party in this month's Playboy Magazine.

Comments Dana via The Other McCain:

I can’t wait to tell my Baptist mother that her daughter is in Playboy.

This month’s issue of Playboy features an interesting article on the tea party movement and in particular, focuses on a particular group of activists, myself included.

Dan Riehl of Riehl World View comments on Dana's guest appearance:

the Tea Party mentality, whether it continues to call itself the Tea Party movement, or not, is new - vibrant. And in many ways, it is as youthful...how successful this new Right is in altering America's course remains unknown.

But it is new - different from the old Right, less conservative and more Libertarian. It will be interesting to watch it play out over, hopefully, many years. It is a long war, more than it is one, or a few political battles. And victory is far from assured. But the battle is, indeed, sexy, or the new chic if you prefer. It must be au currant. After all, it's in Playboy...

Sharron Angle clarifies her position on Beer: Good enough for Libertarian-backing

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From the Editors:

As our regular readers know we editorialized last week that Libertarian Republicans would hold off on enthusiastically backing Sharron Angle until she explained some troubling comments she made on legalized beer, which were made in a now defunct "libertarian" publication a few years ago. When asked about legalized marijuana, she seemingly suggested that beer was just as culpable of societal ills, and might be better off illegal.

Sharron Angle has now apparently heard our call for an explanation.

From an interview with John Gizzi, Human Events just released:

As to reports she opposed legalization of alcohol, Angle shook her head and replied: “Well, the issue came up from an article that they can’t find the original for, so that makes it suspect in the first place. In the context of the conversation—and it was with a libertarian group—we were talking about legalization of these things because they felt we can’t fight the war on drugs—that was their premise. My premise was that we need to be educating rather than legislating. As a ‘less government’ person, I believe that less regulation is always a better policy, and that is what I was referring to—on all levels.”

She added that Nevada is a “a 24-hour state. We deal with the proper use of alcohol all the time. It is an educational issue and we have problems with legislation.”

That satisfactorly answers our questions. Clifford Thies and I now heartily back her candidacy. We are joined by "Right Guy" Jim Lagnese, and Libertarian Politics Live Host Andre Traversa.

Note - our endorsement does not constitute endorsement by the Republican Liberty Caucus. They are still going through the decision process.

Katherine Jenerette endorses Tim Scott for SC run-off

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Katherine Jenerette candidate for congress, from press release:

Tim Scott shares my conservative platform and will carry a plan of legislative agendas forward; therefore I have decided to fully endorse the candidacy of Tim Scott to be the next United States Congressman for the First Congressional District of South Carolina.

Here are some of the many reasons why I have endorsed Tim Scott:

#1) I know that Tim will carry the conservative message from the First District voters to Washington, DC.

#2) I know that Tim will cut wasteful government spending, watching every precious taxpayer dollar.

#3) I know that Tim will fight to win the war on terror, and support our military so that America can continue to lead the free world.

Note - Scott is a first-term state representative. He is the first Black Republican State Rep. in South Carolina in over 100 years. He faces the son of Strom Thurmond in the June 22 run-off. Scott finished first in a field of 9 with 32% to 2nd place finisher Thurmond's 16%. The winner of the run-off will essentially be the next Congressman, as the District is overwhelmingly Republican, and only a nominal Democrat has filed for the Fall.

VoteTimScott.com

BREAKING!! Charleston Post & Courier endorses Tim Scott for run-off

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On Tuesday, Tim Scott may become the first African-American elected to Congress as a Republican in over 8 years, (since J.C. Watts). He is in a run-off election with Paul Thurmond, son of former SC Senator Strom Thurmond. The winner of the run-off faces only nominal Democrat opposition in the Fall in this overwhelmingly Republican district, which makes their election virtually assured.

According to CSM, Scott is clearly the Tea Party favorite, in contrast to the more Centrist establishment Thurmond. Scott is endorsed by the libertarian-leaning Club for Growth, and by RedState.

From the Post & Courrier, June 19:

Many political candidates pledge to hold down government spending. Once elected, few do. But Tim Scott, during a decade and a half of elective service, has earned his reputation as an effective fiscal conservative. And as runaway federal debt threatens our nation's future, that record makes him the right choice to represent South Carolina's 1st District in the U.S. House. The district's Republican voters should move him a giant step closer to that job in Tuesday's primary runoff.

LR linked by Human Events for Kristin Davis article

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From Eric Dondero:

Kristin Davis, Independent Libertarian for New York Governor was featured in Human Events yesterday. The article by Emily Miller was titled "Former Madam Protests CNN’s Hiring Elliot Spitzer." Libertarian Republican was linked in the first paragraph (Libertarian). From HE:

Kristin Davis, the former madam who is running for governor of New York as a Libertarian, is leading a protest against CNN for giving Eliot Spitzer his own talk show.

Spitzer resigned as New York’s governor when he was caught soliciting prostitute Ashley Dupré and violating interstate trafficking laws when meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. CNN has not yet confirmed the new Spitzer 8 p.m. talk show, which was originally reported by the Washington Examiner in mid-May.

In an interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Davis says she started the CNN protest “to remind New Yorkers that Spitzer is a criminal who has not accepted responsibility nor been punished for his crimes.” The protest is not about Spitzer “frequenting a prostitute, that’s probably the most honest thing the man has done,” she emphatically states. Rather, the protest is about CNN giving Spitzer “a forum to influence the lives of others.”

Our gratitude to Ms. Miller and HE for the link.

Muslim Cleric rapes boy at Tampa Mosque – to be Deported

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MAINSTREAM MEDIA BLACKOUT

From Eric Dondero:

This story has received no national media coverage. In contrast, Catholic Preists who bugger young boys, and Baptist preachers who get caught with male prostitutes get splattered all over the mainstream media.

From the Tampa Bay Herald-Tribune June 17:

TAMPA, Fla. - An imam pleaded guilty to molesting a teenage boy at a Gulf coast mosque.

A judge put Yasser Mohamed Shahade on probation for 10 years and designated him a sexual offender Thursday. He will be deported to Egypt.

He faced 15 years in prison if convicted of the initial charge, sexual battery on a minor. His attorney confirmed that he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of lewd and lascivious molestation.

He was arrested in May 2009 after a boy who stayed overnight at the Masjid Omar Al Mukhtar mosque said he had been assaulted.

Blogger and Private Detective Bill Warner has more:

Imam, Yasser Mohamed Shahade, Charged With Sexual Battery (Rape) On 13 Year Old Teenage Boy at Masjid Omar Al Mokhtar Mosque 1307 W. North B St. Tampa Fl . Yasser Mohamed Shahade, 35, a prayer leader, holy man, who had been in the country for about two months is from Egypt and had been staying at the mosque, he sexually battered the victim about 6 a.m. Sunday morning, police say.

Utah Executions Unsafe… for the Executioners

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LIBERTARIAN RIGHT VIEW

by Michael W. Dean, Libertarian Punk

I have a HUGE problem with Utah’s executions! They are unsafe for the executioners!

Last night The State of Utah killed scumbag Ronnie Lee Gardner (he murdered a bartender for not serving beer quick enough).

Utah executed Gardner by having four guys with .30-30 rifles shoot the scumbag in the heart. (Five guys shot, but one had a blank…as is common with execution by firing squad….some sort of pussy-ass “Plausible deniability” for the shooters. He’ll I’d ONLY be a shooter in a firing squad if I could know for SURE I had a live round.)

The execution took place in a 20 x 25 foot room, with the five shooters firing through six-inch high slots in the wall (below.)

My problem with this is that at 25 feet in a concrete room, there is ABSOLUTELY the chance for a .30 caliber bullet to go through the scumbag, hit the back wall, ricochet off another wall and come back and kill one of the executioners through the slot. BAD GUN SAFETY PRACTICES, UTAH!

Libertarian Party: Federal Government to blame for BP mess; not the Free Market

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Excerpt from Press Release, Wes Benedict, LP National Director, June 18:

"The president could have taken the opportunity to talk about getting government out of the energy industry, and allowing the free market to guide the future of energy production. Unfortunately, he instead blamed the free market for government failures, and discussed his hopes of increasing government interference in the energy industry.

"For decades, Libertarians have warned against putting trust in government regulatory bureaucracies like the Minerals Management Service (MMS). While costing the taxpayers a lot of money, these agencies generally fail to deliver the kind of protections they promise, they tend to become corrupt, and they discourage vigilance on the part of citizens by lulling them into a false sense of security.

"When large companies and the government start working together, the results can be disastrous. Congressional liability caps, the MMS bureaucracy, and BP have all cooperated to create a costly disaster that should never have happened."

http://www.lp.org

Thies on Election 2010: Republicans still in very strong position

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by Clifford F. Thies

With the release of a Battleground Poll of 70 “competitive” Congressional Districts (60 Democrat and 10 Republican), and three “generic Congressional” polls, it is a good time to update our tracking of the 2010 elections.

This Battleground Poll is not a poll of the entire country, nor a set of 70 Congressional District polls. Rather, it is one poll of 1,200 people selected from 70 districts thought to be competitive. While it can't tell us anything about particular races, it can tell us about tendencies in races thought to be competitive. And, what it tells us is this: That Republicans are, on average, 5 points ahead in these districts.

GOP has well-over the necessary 40 to win back the House

Given the normal variation across competitive districts (due, e.g., to the individual candidates involved), we can suppose that Republicans will win a net of something like 45 or 50 seats from these competitive districts. If this were to happen, Republicans will also pick up a few more seats in contests thought not to be competitive as well. So, with the standard caveat that things could change, we're looking at a net pick-up of 50 to 60 seats for the Republicans.

This analysis is supported by the three "generic Congressional" polls that have just been released: Ipsos (which might lean Democrat) +1 for Republicans, Gallup +5 for Republicans, and Rasmussen (which has been very kind to Republicans this year) +10 for Republicans. These are very strong numbers for Republicans. We are looking at a 1994-type tsunami.

Over in the Senate, based on a variety of state polls, it looks like Republicans will make major gains: SD, DE, IN, AR, NV and CO look like probable pick-ups. IL and PA also look do-able. CA and WA are competitive. Our most vulnerable seat is OH, which is a toss-up, and several other of our seats are in play. So, I'm thinking there is a possibility of gaining eight to ten seats.

These numbers are available to everybody. Democrat incumbents will be very focused on their own races. You can bet, for example, that Barbara Boxer will be raising and spending all the money she can to hold on to her seat. As a result of this "circle the wagons" mentality, I don't think there will be much money for Democratic non-incumbents or even for vulnerable first-term Democratic House members.

Economic numbers offer no relief for Dems

Let me comment on the economy. The leading indicators are weak. I'm not saying we're going into a double-dip (or, triple-dip) recession (depending on how the course of the U.S. will eventually be adjudicated by the NBER). But, the economy will be weak through the next several months. Plus, there are gathering signs of inflation. (Plus, with all the new taxes and regulations piled onto the economy, the next couple years don't look too good either.)

Consumer confidence is abysmally low. Small business confidence is likewise. There has, on the other hand, been some recovery of confidence in the corporate sector; but, I think this refers to their sense that the survivors among them can operate in these troubled times. The stock market and the real estate market have been moving down or sideways. Continuing to blame it all on Bush is not resonating any longer.

The bottom line is that I don't see any reason for Democrats to feel that their fortunes will turn around any time soon.

Dr. Thies is a professor of econo-metrics and statistics at Shenandoah Univ. in Virginia. He is also a former Libertarian National Committee member, and former National Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Riddles… Riddles… Riddles…

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UPDATE:  SOLVED by Jerry

Good morning!  Don’t forget that Tom has the site down for “chores” tomorrow, so don’t be alarmed if it takes longer than usual.  I doubt that it will, since Tom is really, really good at doing this.

I’m going to jump straight into today’s riddle; clues are as follows:

This is a thing.

We think of this as a single thing, but it is actually composed of incalculable parts.

Although it’s a “thing”, its very nature implies motion.

What we see is NOT what we’re getting.

We’ve always been aware of this.

Something about today’s subject sets the “standard” for everything else.

Only a tiny part of this is visible to the unaided eye; but that part is extremely important.

Sounds mysterious, doesn’t it?   Okay, you know where to find me.  Hurry and get your guesses in, I imagine this “particular” riddle won’t be a mystery for long!

A spider with a plan - Copywrite The Far Side, All rights reserved

Small Microcosm [Science Tattoo] | The Loom

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ecoliLuke writes, “I’m about to start postgrad studies in biochemistry but currently work in a bacteriology diagnostics lab. Working with the nasty side of E. coli all day long makes it easy to forget how important the little guy is to science – I definitely have a soft spot for it now though! I was recently in Amsterdam and wanted to get a tattoo done while I was there. I happened to be reading your book Microcosm at the time and decided to get an E. coli tattoo on my foot. I only found the Science Tattoo Emporium today and was quite surprised to discover that it’s curated by the same person who inspired the tattoo!”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


How (and Why) to Chuck a Quantum Physics Experiment Down a Drop Shaft | 80beats

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towerIt’s a physics cliche: quantum mechanics looks at the really small, and general relativity looks at the really big, and never the twain shall meet.

In a study published yesterday in Science, physicists describe their attempts to study the overlap between these two theories–by dropping really cold rubidium (only billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero) from a great height (480 feet). The cold rubidium behaves as an observable, quantum mechanical system and since gravity is a main driver in general relativity, watching gravity’s pull on that system might give researchers glimpses into how to tie the two theories together.

“Both theories cannot be combined,” said researcher [and coauthor of the paper] Ernst Rasel of the University of Hannover in Germany. “In that sense we are looking for a new theory to bring both together.” [Live Science]

Here’s what they did:

Step 1 — Cool it

Physicists first made super-cold Bose-Einstein condensates of rubidium. Since heat is really the random jostling of molecules, to cool things down, experimenters had to make those molecules sit still. They used an elaborate system of lasers to hold the molecules steady.

When rubidium atoms get that cold, they exhibit quantum mechanical behaviors that researchers can observe, acting like one giant particle-wave.

The idea is to chill a cluster of atoms to a temperature that is within a fraction of absolute zero. At that extreme, the atoms all assume the same quantum-mechanical state and begin to behave collectively as a sort of super-atom, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). [Nature News]

In this study, researchers contained that complicated system in a two-foot diameter and seven-foot tall cylinder.

Step 2 — Drop it

To test the effects of gravity on that cold glob of atoms, researchers wanted to watch them as they experienced free fall. That’s why they dropped the experiment in a tower at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity in Bremen, Germany.

The drop shaft, located at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity in Bremen, is pictured . . . in all its phallic glory. The sample area is magnetically shielded and can have the air evacuated. Samples dropped from the top will experience nearly five seconds at 10-6g before experiencing a cushy landing in an eight meter deep pool of loose polystyrene packing foam. [Ars Technica]

Because the fall time is fairly short, researchers repeated the drop 180 times. During the tests they systematically eliminated other effects on the cold atoms, like magnetic fields in the laboratory, to make sure the atoms only felt gravity’s sway.

The idea was to see whether quantum objects break the rule that says that gravity works on all objects in the same way:

It explains why a pebble and a piano fall at the same speed if dropped from the same roof, despite their different masses. It’s also a necessary first step toward describing the effects of gravity as curvature in spacetime. “It’s a very important cornerstone,” said physicist Ernst Rasel of the Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany. But, he added, the equivalence principle “is just a postulate — it’s not coming out of a law.” So of course, physicists have spent the past century trying to break it. [Wired]

Step 3 — Send it into Space?

The experiment didn’t find evidence that gravity acted differently on a quantum scale–but Rasel and his colleagues are justly proud of creating the experimental conditions that can test such a thing. Because this research created a robust little setup of these very special quantum mechanically behaving atoms, one possible next step would be to watch the atoms during an even longer amount of time in free fall, for example, in orbit around the Earth on the International Space Station.

Rasel is just happy that the experiment survived the first drop:

“I was very worried,” Rasel says of the moments before his team first dropped their experiment. “It was coming towards the end of a PhD thesis of a student,” he adds, explaining that it would have caused serious problems if anything went wrong. [Nature News]

Wired has a video of the experiment, here.

Related content:
DISCOVER: A Slippery New State of Matter
80beats: Entangled Particles Seem to Communicate Instantly—and Befuddle Scientists
Cosmic Variance: Celebrity Throwdown? Einstein versus Newton
Cosmic Variance: Fun With Bose-Einstein Applets

Image: flickr / sludgegulper


Another perspective on Facebook | Gene Expression

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From Ruchira Paul, who analyzes her own friend network. One issue which I think is relevant is that many people have several Facebook accounts for several different purposes. It’s an interesting window into the psychology of different individuals, as some seem happy to go along with Facebook’s preference of a unitary identity, while others resist it and suborn the intent with Facebook itself.

America in 2050 may still be majority white | Gene Expression

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I have expressed some skepticism at the idea that in the year 2050 the United States of America will perceive itself as a majority-minority nation; that is, non-Hispanic whites will be be a minority. This projection is repeated and asserted so often that it’s a plausible background assumption when you’re making a model of the American future. But there are other factors which make this a shakier inference from current trends. A new article in The New York Times which has nothing to do with racial identity as such is a good tell as to the other factor at work, Plea to Obama Led to an Immigrant’s Arrest:

he letter appealing to President Obama was written in frustration in January, by a woman who saw her family reflected in his. She was a white United States citizen married to an African man, and the couple — college-educated professionals in Manhattan — were stymied in their long legal battle to keep him in the country.

One of the principals is introduced as white, but later on, you learn:

“I’ve been feeling very confused and ashamed as an American citizen,” she said, evoking her family’s eclectic immigrant origins.

Her father, an emeritus professor of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Berkeley, is the son of Scottish immigrants; her mother’s family were refugees from North Korea; her stepmother is Chinese; and her sister’s husband is Egyptian.

Vanessa HugdensIf her mother is one of the tiny minority of white European-descended Koreans, she happens to be one of those who also has a Korean first name (it isn’t too hard to find these data on the internet). In other words, The New York Times felt that it was permissible for the purposes of this article to frame one of the individuals profiled as white despite the fact that more precisely she’s Eurasian as is clear within the text of the article itself (she may also have identified herself as white to the reporter). I am not sure that she would have been defined as white if her husband was not an African immigrant, as for narrative purposes that is probably a better contrast effect. But imagine if her mother’s family were black immigrants from Jamaica: The New York Times would not define her as white I would hazard in that case.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Zoom in on a HUGE lunar bullseye | Bad Astronomy

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If you’ve ever wanted to download a ginormous image of the Moon and explore it, now’s your chance: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera folks have released a monster 185 megapixel image of one of the biggest smackdowns on the Moon: Orientale Basin.

lro_orientale

Yowza! Click to get the 1400 x 1400 pixel PNG, or you can try to swallow the 122 Mb TIF at the full resolution of 13,590 x 13,590 pixels!

Orientale is a vast impact basin, the hole left by an asteroid that hit the Moon about three billion years ago. Looking like a humongous bulls-eye, it’s a multi-ring crater, and the outer ramparts are a full 950 km (590 miles) across. That’s half again bigger than my home state of Colorado.

To give you an idea of just how big this is — and also, to be honest, to scare myself a little — I superimposed the picture of Orientale on a map of the United States. This is to scale, folks:

us_orientale

Holy. Frakking. Crap.

Whatever hit the Moon to create this basin must have been about 100 kilometers (60 miles) across. That would have made it 1000 times the mass of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. If something like that hit the Earth today, there would be no life left on our planet. At all. Happily, nothing that big is headed our way.

Oh, but what a sight that must have been. An impact that size would release the energy of 100 billion one-megaton hydrogen bombs. It would have been visible across the solar system! Amazingly, though, such events were a little more common back then; the solar system used to be filled with monster asteroids itching for a fight. That period of bombardment ended billions of years ago, though. Yay.

The image from LROC is pretty amazing. It’s actually a mosaic of quite a few individual images from the Wide Angle Camera. The resolution is about 100 meters per pixel in the full image. If you don’t want to download that big picture, you can interactively zoom in on the basin on the LROC website. The black areas are where data are missing (or where the Moon is modest, perhaps).

You can see that Orientale is not like other craters. The event was so huge that it punched right into the Moon, like a fist through a styrofoam sheet, and the crater left behind got partially filled up with lava. That’s why there’s no obvious rim and bowl shape you usually see in smaller craters. The multiple rings are not fully understood — it’s rather hard to model an impact that releases the energy of a few billion nuclear bombs — though they are common in giant impacts. It may be that waves of energy blasting out from the impact event ripple through the ground like earthquakes, and where they rebound and interact you get those rings.

Since the original event, other, smaller impacts have dotted it, but again I refer you to the map of the US above to see what "smaller" means in this case! Some are bigger than cities and counties. Surrounding the inner part of the basin is terrain loaded with scarps (steep cliffs), gullies cut by flowing lava, and cracks caused by the shifting landscape. It’s really worth your time to simply scroll around the interactive map and see what’s there. And remember, at highest zoom each pixel is about the size of a football stadium.

Friday, June 18, 2010 was the first anniversary of the launch of LRO. Consider this image a fantastic present to us!

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University


Moon Water Update

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A Wetter Moon Impacts Understanding of Lunar Origin, Paul Spdis, Air & Space

"A paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes lunar samples containing the calcium-phosphate mineral apatite. Using a sensitive technique, they detected water (in the form of its ion hydroxyl, -OH) within the crystal structure of this mineral. Moreover, these hydroxyl-bearing apatite grains are found in several different rocks from a variety of geological settings. This indicates that the presence of water in the lunar interior is not some fluke, but a general property of the Moon. So the story of water on the Moon advances."

Where Humans Can't Go

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Attempts to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico have involved robots working 5,000 ft below the surface of the ocean. At U.C. Berkeley, researchers are working on a cockroach-like robot that can locate victims in the midst of unstable, tightly-packed rubble. As a society, are we ready to re