Faulty Towers

Here is an interesting article over at AT, about a critical situation in Iraq over their cellular phone network.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/an_urgent_memo_to_the_secdef.html

What is most interesting is the fact that Meyer has not been able to get anyone's attention, so he is appealing to the internet community.

All of Obama's Men

Good Morning Sunshine

Herald Tribune
Trees block solar panels, and a feud ends in U.S. court
by Felicity Barringer


Update: Here it is (h.t. dirtcrashr)


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Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple take pride in their eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted.

A snotty jet-set couple builds a McMansion next to a small pig farm, because the land is cheap. As the farm grows, they sue the pig farmer because of the noise and the smell.

Trees - redwoods, live oaks or blossoming fruit trees - are usually considered sturdy citizens of the sun-swept peninsula south of San Francisco, not criminal elements. But under a 1978 state law protecting homeowners' investment in rooftop solar panels, trees that impede solar panels' access to the sun can be deemed a nuisance and their owners fined up to $1,000 a day.

Correct me if I am wrong. Don't trees draw in and capture that deadly man-made CO2, that Al Gore has warned us about, storing it safely in their wood fiber? Don't they return valuable O2 to the environment? Don't they do this with the warm and fuzzy power of solar energy? Mr. solar panel's solar panels probably cost more to manufacture, using processes that use petroleum energy and resources, than they will pay back for years. And let's talk about energy. Do you think Mr. Solar panels solar panels are more efficient at converting solar energy than a design that nature has been tweaking and improving for billions of years?

To avoid future problems, Simitian has introduced a bill to ensure that trees planted before solar panels are installed have a right to grow in peace.

Wait a minute. What about these trees. Don't they have rights? This is California. Trees are people too.

The solar-redwoods dispute is unusual largely because it is a solar-panel owner who is mounting the challenge. Typically, solar-panel owners have to play defense.

And why should they not play defense? Look at that thing. It is the biggest eye-sore around. It is probably lowering the whole value of the neighborhood. It is an obnoxious billboard that spews the message: "Look at me! I am so conscious of the environment, I am willing to kill natural things in the environment to bring it to your attention!"

Treanor and Bissett said that after spending $37,000 on legal fees, they had no money left for an appeal. Last month, to comply with the order - even though Kumli said that he found it hard to call the trees a "nuisance" - the couple called the pruners.

Here's what I would do. By-pass the courts, they are useless Marxist tools. Go straight to the PR campaign. The neighbor with the trees should have called the Sierra club, and made a big eco-terrorist case for his floral friends. He could have sent the tree-huggers off to the corner with global warming crowd and let them duke it out, watching them burn off their booty on lawyers. It would be like putting a space heater and an air conditioner in the same small room, and challenging them to hold the temperature constant.

How Zen would that be?

The End of an Era

Go read Charlton Heston's speech about Free Thought and Freedom over at Newsmax.

Yes.

If They Hate US, we win

The BBC is an endless funnel of fun
with their latest: World views US 'more positively'.

The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey. Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.

Wait. This good news gets better...

However, the poll finds that views of US influence in the world are still mainly negative, though they improved in 11 out of the 23 countries also polled a year ago.

Perceptions of the US worsened in three - Canada, Lebanon and Egypt.

What a shock. Canadian liberals and Lebanese and Egyptian terrorists join hands in their hate for the U.S. I would say stop the presses, and print this exclusive, but the newspapers will soon be out of existence, for being solipsistic dinosaurs. Their current print quality would foul the flesh of fresh wrapped fish, impart a rash on your poor puppy's ass and drop your canary to the base of its cage, faster than a gas-filled coal mine.

Of the 17 countries surveyed every year since 2005, positive views of the US have recovered for the first time this year to 32% after showing a steady decline over the previous three years.


Negative views of Iran's influence remained at 54%. But Israel's negative rating went down from 57% to 52%.

Iran is most hated for not completing their promise to kill the Jews. Israel is hated for being filled with Jews. Of course, since we don't hate the Jews as much as the rest of the world does, this opinionated world, filled with liberal apologists and Muslim fanatics, fancies us with a negative score of 47%. It makes perfect sense to me.

Germany, included in the ratings for the first time, is viewed most positively, with a 56% positive score to 18% negative. Japan comes in a close second, with 56% positive to 21% negative. But a majority of those surveyed in neighbouring China and South Korea expressed negative views of Japan. Russia showed the greatest improvement, with positive views rising on average among the countries surveyed from 29% to 37%.

Well this is heartening. The countries who were most responsible for killing millions of innocent civilians and starving their own populations to death over political dissent, a mere sixty years ago, are now viewed most positively. I wonder who was responsible for convincing Germany to change their national pastime, from killing and invading neighbors, to something less caustic, like soccer or football?

I guess I am not surprised why communists like John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Obama, Hillary et al. want for us all to be world citizens. Russia enjoys a two percent lead on us, at 37 vs. 35 pecent; an amazing score, for the country supplying nuclear material to one of the most hated countries, Iran. I can only conclude that astute, university educated liberals were the source material for the poll, since they cannot read, do math or think critically beyond George Bush, about their likes and dislikes.

The survey was carried out by the international polling firm GlobeScan with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.

Well now, there is an unassailable set of credentials. Who the hell is GlobeScan (link)? What the hell is PIPA(link)? And an northeastern university is behind it? Nahhhh. No potential bias there.

PIPA director Steven Kull said the improved rating of the United States could be linked to the forthcoming presidential election.

Sure. We allowed the MSM to create a wave of ignorance around the world. Then the surfing dudes we popped out of the potato launcher of our sixties educated culture, rode the crest right into the shore of our primary process, leaving only liberal medical waste on the beach. Now we get to clean it up in our general election. Party on, world! Free needles, drugs and welfare for all!

"It may be that as the US approaches a new presidential election, views of the US are being mitigated by hope that a new administration will move away from the foreign policies that have been so unpopular in the world," he said.

They hope we will move toward their coveted policies of the fascism, communism, thuggery and dictatorships. After all, misery loves company, for those of us who don't live in the elite classes. In the spirit of liberal fairness and Muslim sixth century retrograde paranoia, let us all level the playing field, even if it takes a couple of terrorist nukes.

Peace and XXXX-s and OOOO-s from the loving 'world' to U.S.