Free kibbles

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

I originally thought AG Holder was responsible for Fast and Furious, now it sounds like Obama was behind it.

""He's either part of it or he's not," Rep. Trey Gowdy, a feisty Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, challenged during Wednesday's committee meeting on Holder. "If (Obama's) part of it, then we've had a series of witnesses that have misled this committee. And if he's not part of it, then he's got no business asserting executive privilege.""

Exactly. He can't have it both ways.

"Justice Department officials noted that the assertion does not have to pertain to communications involving the president or White House staff. Any "deliberative communications" among officials in the Executive Branch, they said, could be covered."

So Obama is claiming he can use executive privilege to shield any information in the executive branch from Congress. That's a fantastic claim and would be an awesome power grab if true. But he's lying. He was involved, and he's covering it up.

ECONOMY:

Moody's downgrades 15 major banks.

"The stock market has also priced in any negative impact from the ratings downgrades, according to Bert Ely, a banking consultant in the Washington, D.C. area. "They've been telegraphing this thing for months," Ely said."

Really? Maybe he's talking about the Dow losing 200 points today with banks getting hammered. But this guys blew right past that to try and convince people things are OK.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian fighter pilot granted asylum in Jordan.

LOCAL:

Why is White Castle opening a plant in Vandalia?

"The facility would employ about 120 workers at an average salary of $35,155 by 2017, according to Vandalia’s application for Montgomery County ED/GE (Economic Development/Government Equity) funds earlier this year. The city sought $300,000 county ED/GE funds to go toward the project, code-named Project Foursquare."

Corporate welfare. The government is giving White Castle money it stole from others.

MISC:

If you change the scientific focus of this article from cosmology to climate, it could have been posted at wattsupwiththat.com.

"Just as much of modern science has become self-serving in striving for status and funding, the theory of how science should be done is similarly afflicted. An assessment of a theory based on ‘degrees of belief’ might be useful if scientists didn’t routinely ignore, minimize or dismiss falsifying evidence and twiddle the countless knobs on their models to fit new data. The most glaring modern example of such behavior is the rejection of stark evidence of intrinsic redshift of quasars. Big bang cosmology is already lifeless by this assessment but ‘belief’ keeps the corpse warm. While we allow the few scientists who judge the data according to their beliefs to control publication, funding and press releases, real science is dead."

This is a good reminder that all science is corrupted by the intersection of government-academic-establishment money and self interest. Another sad aspect of this is it seems scientists are using computers to retard the advance of science, not to enhance it. I wonder if proponents of the Ptolemaic model of the universe had had computers, would that model still be preeminent today?

A nice indictment of our cult of non-expert worship.