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In a series of tests announced yesterday, the Aegis destroyer USS John Paul Jones fired three of the latest variants of Raytheon’s Standard Missile, the SM-6 Dual I. The SM-6 is an agile, long-range weapon that uses the same seeker as the AMRAAM air-to-air missile to engage enemy cruise missiles and aircraft. But the Dual I upgrade adds a new, more powerful processor that runs more sophisticated targeting software. That software lets the SM-6 identify, track, and kill something descending from the upper atmosphere at extreme speed — specifically, a ballistic missile warhead.

So on July 28th, the Missile Defense Agency launched “a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) target” over the Pacific. The John Paul Jones launched an SM-6 Dual I and destroyed the target. Then, in two subsequent tests on July 31st and August 1st, SM-6 Dual Is also shot down two different kinds of cruise missile.

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If you’ve ever seen written Finnish, I suspect you’ll agree with me that this comes as no surprise.

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As more and more New York politicians find themselves in handcuffs, some lawmakers have questioned whether the criminal justice system is giving them a fair shake.

But one advantage that the elected officials have over a lot of other criminal defendants is a pool of money they can tap to hire seasoned pros to represent them in court.

Whether lawmakers are facing charges of drunken driving or political corruption, they’ve been aided by campaign war chests that have doubled as criminal defense funds, reports the New York Times, which tallied up the scandal-related legal fees.

Sometimes it is good to be the Crust.

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Because that’s what sells. People could buy stronger-tasting beer if they wanted to, but the obviously don’t want to.

All the articles by all the Eurolingus beer snobs on the Other Left Coast aren’t going to change that.

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When Congress passes laws concerning health care, intentions and results do not always match up. Two cases in point are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH). Understanding what happened to these two statutes as they passed from Congress to the reg writers and administrators might give us better insight into how we should expect the Affordable Care Act to play out.

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Hint: No.

Aside from the basic numbers of budgetary imbalances and continuing fiscal pressures, Medicare’s institutionalization as the dominant payer in US health care also has locked in the worst features of a costly and inefficient fee-for-service delivery system that still rewards providing more volume, instead of better value, in most health care decisions. The mismatch between Medicare’s claims on the economy and our political willingness to pay for them in turn has produced an ever-more complex web of reimbursement rules and health care regulations in response that are far more successful in hiding or transferring costs than in reducing them. Moreover, although elderly Americans achieved substantial gains in insurance coverage and financial security through Medicare, younger ones fared far less well.

Imagine the worst insurance company you can think of. Then imagine it run by the government. That’s Medicare.

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Frankly, I’m surprised that it’s only that small a sum.

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Newly released tax returns from Hillary Clinton, disclosed in a Friday evening news dump last week, suggest she has been using a Death Tax avoidance strategy. Through the creation of an “Article 4 trust,” the Clintons appear to be engaging in legal but hypocritical measures to avoid paying the Death Tax Hillary Clinton has spent a career defending.

Clinton has consistently voted for the Death Tax throughout her time in public office and forcefully condemned attempts to lower it. But when it comes to her own finances, it is a different story. The newly released tax returns buttress earlier reports outlining the ways Clinton uses financial planning strategies that shield her Death Tax liability.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Food? We don’t need no stinkin’ food!

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The Post shows that as a military reservist, Graham was promoted despite doing almost nothing and that he misrepresented his military service.

Come to think of it, that sort of sums up his political career as well.

For his part, Graham tells the Post that while he doesn’t mean to “pat myself on the back, Colonel Graham will put my entire record up against anyone who has ever served.”

Against Colin Powell? Against Tommy Franks? Against David Petreus? Against fellow RINO John McCain?

This sort of smug narcissism demonstrates for the world to see why Lindsey Graham doesn’t even belong in the Capitol, much less the White House.

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Another 1,800 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean by the Italian coast guard over the weekend, bringing the number of migrants received by Italy to some 90,000 so far this year (it handled 170,000 for the whole of last year). As Italy still hasn’t been able to get Europe to implement fully a redistribution plan, both the situation there for migrants and the financial strain on Italians continue to worsen.

Meanwhile, with or without permission, many of the migrants keep making their own way to the more economically vibrant north. This in turn creates the kind of dysfunctional political dynamic on display between France and England in recent days, where the migrant crisis festering in Calais has seen as many as 5,000 migrants each day for the last six days try to force their way across the Eurotunnel by hiding in trucks and boarding trains. Eurotunnel authorities warned over the weekend that increased security at Calais, promised by both French and British ministers, would only displace the problem to other, less well-guarded ports. “There are smaller ports in Belgium such as Ostend and in France such as Dieppe, Le Havre and Cherbourg, which are not as secure as Calais. The migrants are desperate. They are likely to look elsewhere.”

The would-be migrants risking their lives to sneak from France to Britain show many uncomfortable truths. First, they are indeed migrants and not, as European rhetoric often has it, refugees. The movement is driven not by acute dangers of a war or natural disaster, but by global inequality; people born in some countries are willing to chance everything to get to a place where, even as illegals suffering every kind of discrimination, they can enjoy much better lives than would be possible at home.

One of the classic tropes of science fiction is the nuclear war alert where the people who thought ahead and built/stocked a bomb shelter are besieged by neighbors who now demand entrance and safety — whereas of course there is neither room nor supplies for all those people.

This is the situation that Europe — and soon America — will face. I don’t have any faith that the governments involved will be able to face the pressure of their own bleeding-heart ideology; so it will come down to where the trigger point is for the populace involved. And that point will come, as predicted by Enoch Powell his famous Rivers of Blood speech in 1968.

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

— George Orwell

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Betcha he votes Democrat.

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When coal was king, it fuelled the generation of more than half of America’s electricity. And US presidential hopefuls paid homage to coal, courting mine owners and miners.

Barack Obama was no exception. As a state legislator in 2004 and again as a US senator, he supported proposals for huge federal subsidies to turn coal into motor fuel and ease America’s reliance on oil imports.

All of that has changed. Today, the Obama administration takes on the coal industry with the final version of rules it has dubbed the Clean Power Plan, a complex scheme designed to reduce, on a state-by-state basis, the amount of greenhouse gases the nation’s electric power sector emits. The main target? Coal.

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Ilford is the culturally enriched suburb of London where the firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary once had a crash pad. It is also the latest British municipality to feature a local media report in which members of parliament call for the director of public prosecutions to investigate and shut down Gates of Vienna.

For those who haven’t been glued to their sets, Gates of Vienna is located in Virginia. Not sure what a British ‘director of public prosecutions’ (what a great IngSoc name!) is going to do about that. Maybe phone Barack Hussein Obama and bitch him out? If so, he’ll have to stand it line.

The trickle-down effect from the Hate Not Hope “report” is interesting. It starts at The Independent — which, as far as I can tell, never published anything, despite their threatened “deadline” — then moves to The Guardian. From there it travels down the journalistic food chain to the locals, first Bradford, and now Ilford. Where next? There are three remaining MPs who want to bung us in chokey, so maybe their local papers will be next.

Britain is a year or two further down the road to dystopia than we are, so watching what goes on there is a good preview of what Democrites will be pushing over on this side of Mother Nature’s Immigration Fence.

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Poor women more likely to have abortion than rich women.

Black women more likely to have abortion than other races.

There’s a myth among comments in conservative blogs that abortion is something that rich white women are doing, when in reality poor black women have a twelve-times higher abortion rate than middle-class white women in 2008. If the link included statistics for wealthier white women, I suspect their rate would be even lower. Wealthy white women are very good at avoiding unplanned pregnancies so they rarely need abortion.

It’s not surprising that abortion leads to less crime. The demographic with the highest crime rate (poor blacks) also has the highest abortion rate.

Margaret Sanger, take a bow.

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DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the main component of our genetic material. It is formed by combining four parts: A, C, G and T (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine), called bases of DNA combine in thousands of possible sequences to provide the genetic variability that enables the wealth of aspects and functions of living beings.

In the early 80s, to these four “classic” bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine. And it was in the late 90’s when mC was recognized as the main cause of epigenetic mechanisms: it is able to switch genes on or off depending on the physiological needs of each tissue.

In recent years, interest in this fifth DNA base has increased by showing that alterations in the methyl-cytosine contribute to the development of many human diseases, including cancer.

Today, an article published in Cell by Manel Esteller, director of the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), ICREA researcher and Professor of Genetics at the University of Barcelona, describes the possible existence of a sixth DNA base, the methyl-adenine (mA), which also help determine the epigenome and would therefore be key in the life of the cells.

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Ever since some alarmist came up with the economically nonsensical term peak oil, we’ve been inundated with peak this, that, and the other thing. There’s peak helium. How about peak phosphorus?

More recently, the term has been twisted from a supply issue to a demand issue, such as peak smart phone. And now, peak car. Yet, reading about peak car, the Antiplanner can’t help but feeling that this is neither a supply nor a demand issue but more wishful thinking on the part of city officials who are doing their best to create auto-hostile environments.

Millennials don’t drive? It turns out that’s not true, just as it isn’t true that Millennials avoid the suburbs.

…

Never forget that mobility is an economic activity that generates economic benefits, so reducing mobility reduces those benefits. Despite what the urban planners claim, accessibility is no substitute for mobility, as mobility gives people access to more economic opportunities and competitive markets. We will reach peak car only when someone could invent a form of transportation that is faster, cheaper, and more convenient than driving, and the only likely such invention is the self-driving car.

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The most common tower crane used in construction today has a lifting capacity of some 12 to 20 tonnes. For quite a few construction projects in ancient history, this type of crane would be completely inadequate.

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An estimated 200 migrants broke down several security fences and were forced to retreat by riot police as they tried to break through the final fence near the entrance of the 30 mile English Channel.

The group clashed with security forces for nearly an hour, reportedly chanting slogans such as “Open the border” and “We are not animals”.

Gee, they sound like Jeb Bush.

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Turkey says that it, together with the U.S., wants an IS-free zone in northern Syria. That is fine. But who will fill the vacuum in areas cleared of IS? That is an extremely important question Turkey’s American allies should think about with extreme care. Turkey simply finds joining the international campaign against IS an opportunity to install pro-Sunni Islamist rule in areas now controlled by IS.

Islamic radicals say they want to recover Spain, which Muslims once ruled. Well, Turkey once ruled Syria, and not that long ago, either.

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BLUF: No.

With the traditional definition of money income, the CBO found that real median household income rose by just 15% from 1980 to 2010, similar to the Census Bureau’s estimate. But when they expanded the definition of income to include benefits and subtracted taxes, they found that the median household’s real income rose by 45%. Adjusting for household size boosted this gain to 53%.

And, again, even this more substantial rise probably represents a substantial underestimate of the increase in the real standard of living. The authorities arrive at their estimates by converting dollar incomes into a measure of real income by using a price index that reflects the changes in the prices of existing goods and services. But that price index does not reflect new products or improvements to existing goods and services.

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A new study looks specifically at how formal attire changes people’s thought processes. “Putting on formal clothes makes us feel powerful, and that changes the basic way we see the world,” says Abraham Rutchick, an author of the study and a professor of psychology at California State University, Northridge. Rutchick and his co-authors found that wearing clothing that’s more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details. In psychological parlance, wearing a suit encourages people to use abstract processing more readily than concrete processing.

Another reason why coders shouldn’t wear suits.

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A primal connection exists between our brain and our gut. We often talk about a “gut feeling” when we meet someone for the first time. We’re told to “trust our gut instinct” when making a difficult decision or that it’s “gut check time” when faced with a situation that tests our nerve and determination. This mind-gut connection is not just metaphorical. Our brain and gut are connected by an extensive network of neurons and a highway of chemicals and hormones that constantly provide feedback about how hungry we are, whether or not we’re experiencing stress, or if we’ve ingested a disease-causing microbe. This information superhighway is called the brain-gut axis and it provides constant updates on the state of affairs at your two ends. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach after looking at your postholiday credit card bill is a vivid example of the brain-gut connection at work. You’re stressed and your gut knows it—immediately.

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Any employer wishing to discriminate against black people need only see the name ‘Ta-Nehisi’ or ‘LaTrina’ on a resume to throw it in the trash can. Why do black people do this to themselves?

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In the hunt for potential RNAi candidate targets, one of the most coveted goals has been the prevention of virus packaging. In the cell, virus particles are made as individual entities and roam around at random until a signal is sent out for the parts to self-assemble into its infectious whole. For 30 years that signal has been known to be contained within the viral RNA. It was first found in herpes and cytomegalovirus, called the alpha sequence. Since then, other genetic elements – known as packaging signals – have been found in other viral families including coronaviruses, hepatitis viruses, and HIV.

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The cornerstone of treatment, anti-retroviral therapy, kills the virus in the bloodstream but leaves “HIV reservoirs” untouched.

The study, published in PLoS Pathogens, showed the drug was “highly potent” at reactivating hidden HIV.

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The efforts of the Red-Green Alliance to make people think that jihad means an “inner spiritual struggle” have been a signal failure. When an ordinary Westerner hears the word jihad, he knows it means bloodthirsty Muslims screaming for unbelievers to be killed. It means cutting throats, beheading people, suicide bombings on crowded trains, and all those other lovely activities that keep Islam in the daily headlines. Most people aren’t fooled by the apologists’ attempt to cleanse the word of its traditional Islamic meaning.

Mark Steyn on Bugs Bunny.

Chuck Jones liked to tell the story of a young man who came to work with him in the Warner Brothers animation department and sent a letter home to his grandmother proudly telling her that he was writing scripts for Bugs Bunny. “I can’t understand why you’re writing scripts for Bugs Bunny,” she wrote back. “He’s funny enough just as he is.”

Two of my favorite people.

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Thirteen of the 20 cities with largest black populations (including nine of the 10 largest) registered declines in their black populations from 2000 to 2010. Among central cities of the 100 largest metropolitan areas 33 experienced declines in their black populations, and 68 showed either first-time losses, larger losses, or smaller gains among blacks than in the 1990s. Clearly, the black urban presence, which has been the mainstay of many large cities, is diminishing.

Three cities with the largest black declines—Detroit, Chicago, and New York—were among the primary destinations for blacks during the Great Migration out of the South in the first part of the 20th century. However, black losses were not confined to northern cities. Southern and Western cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles were also among those losing blacks in 2000-2010.

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I have long had a personal interest in this question. When Jensen’s original article appeared in 2002 I was active on the Urban Legends Message Board (snopes) where it was an object of much discussion. Even with the more limited data bases of the time I came up with two ads that said Irish would not be accepted for employment. However, in later years Jensen’s Thesis became part of the wallpaper of discussion, with a lot of academics just accepting that the signs had never existed.

And once again the Narrative is undermined by reality.

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ACROSS the highway from the lawns of Nairobi’s Muthaiga Country Club is Mathare, a slum that stretches as far as the eye can see. Although Mathare has virtually no services like paved streets or sanitation, it has a sizeable and growing number of classrooms. Not because of the state—the slum’s half-million people have just four public schools—but because the private sector has moved in. Mathare boasts 120 private schools.

This pattern is repeated across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The failure of the state to provide children with a decent education is leading to a burgeoning of private places, which can cost as little as $1 a week.

The parents who send their children to these schools in their millions welcome this. But governments, teachers’ unions and NGOs tend to take the view that private education should be discouraged or heavily regulated. That must change.

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Let that be a lesson to us all. (Don’t mess with Texas armadillos….)

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A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts.

If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.

Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.

From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank.

The best government money can buy.