Cochrane Unfiltered August 4, 2010

• Homosexual Federal Judge Rules Against Cal Voters Ban on Homosexual Marriage
• Mitch Miller Dead at 99.
• Blakeslee vs. Laird Cal Senate Race Toss-Up
• WikiLeak Soldier Disgunrtled Homosexual.
• Palin Says Obama Lacks Cojones
• Greenspan Flip-Flops On “Bush” Tax Cuts
• Turkey Planning A-bomb?
• Oldest Mail Carrier Retires at 91.
• What’s In A Name
• Charles Drew’s Story In Obama’s “Post Racial” America
• Under 99-days to Midterms Then Big Tax Increases
• Purdue’s Advance On Fusion Reactor
• Million Pounds of Mustard Gas Dumped Off Hawaii
• Taxpayer in 140 Cities Hooked For Bell Pensions
• Ten Most Liberal / Conservative States.
• China’s Anti-aircraft Carrier Missile “Ready”
• EDITORIAL: 8-8-1940 Battle of Britain Begins

An openly homosexual federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that homosexual men and women have a constitutional right to marry, striking down Proposition 8, the voter approved ballot measure that banned same-sex unions.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker said Proposition 8, passed by voters in November 2008, violated the federal constitutional rights of homosexual to marry the partners of their choice. His ruling is expected to be appealed to the liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Officials said the Russian Navy has overseen a project to expand its facilities in Syria. They said the effort was meant to allow aircraft carriers and missile cruisers to anchor in the Syrian port of Tartous by 2013.

This changes the dynamic in the entire region.

Mitch Miller 99, famous for his TV Show “Sing Along With Mitch” in the 1950s and 1960s died July 31 his family announced Tuesday.

He had all America following the bouncing ball in televisions early days. Miller is created with launching the careers of such luminaries as: Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day and others.

His wife of 65 years, Frances, predeceased him in 2000. He is survived by two daughters and a son.

Researchers have found that fragments of a dog’s skull and teeth discovered in a cave in Switzerland date back more than 14,000 years in what could be the oldest known remains of man’s best friend. That doesn’t solve the debate of whether humans adopted dogs or visa versa.

California’s Special Election to replace Lt. Governor Abel Maldonado (R) Santa Maria in the Senate has turned nastier and closer than expected. Local Assemblymembers Sam Blakeslee (R) SLO and John Laird (D) Santa Cruz are in a dust-up in a classic north versus south, liberal versus conservative  battle royale. Each man is popular in their respective Assembly Districts. Blakeslee’s is much more conservative and Laird’s includes some of the most liberal turf in California. Laird brags about winning and being reelected with 70% of the vote, and Blakeslee has had similar success. Neither man has been seriously challenged before.

The pair will debate on August 5, 6 and 12. The Special election is August 17. Blakeslee claims the advantage  - Laird says otherwise. The runoff resulted when no one got more than half the votes cast. Laird  finished second to Blakeslee in the primary, 49-42 percent there are two others on the ballot, Handicappers rate it a toss-up. A lot will depend on turnout. My nickel goes to Blakeslee.

A gallup poll just found Obama has a 41% job approval rating and a 53% disapproval rating.  His worst yet for any major poll.

The American soldier at the center of the scandal involving the theft and release of classified military information to WikiLeaks was “openly homosexual” and apparently held a grudge against the U.S. military’s anti-gay policy, the British Telegraph newspaper is reporting.

In another bizarre twist, reliable reports suggest that Private First Class Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army Intelligence analyst accused of leaking the classified information was also considering a sex change. Manning was arrested at the end of May and is being detained by U.S. authorities.

The Telegraph features photographs of Manning, who could face more than 50 years in prison for treasonous conduct, holding up a sign with rainbow colors demanding “equality on the battlefield” and participating in a gay pride parade.

A Dutch brewer with a penchant for competition has laid claim to creating the world’s strongest brew: a beer that is some 60 percent alcohol by volume or 30 proof. Most beer is 4% to 10% alcohol; wine is 9% to 16%, and spirits is at least 20% to be called “booze.” So is this “beer” or “booze?”

Sarah Palin assesses President Barack Obama’s approach to immigration bluntly: declaring that he doesn’t have the “cojones” to enforce the nation’s laws.

The former Alaska governor used the term - the Spanish word for “testicles” that often is used to mean courage - during a Fox News interview last Sunday as she praised Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer for standing up against the Obama administration’s lawsuit to block enforcement of the state’s immigration law.

Brewer “has the cojones that our president does not have,” Palin told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. “If our own president will not enforce a federal law, more power to Jan Brewer and 44 other states who are in line to support Jan Brewer in state laws, state efforts to do what our president won’t do.”

There’s little doubt that Palin certainly would have a solid brass pair of her own.

Charlie Rangel has reportedly struck a deal with the ethics panel. You know what that means. It’s time to start investigating the ethics panel.- Leno

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan: “You don’t agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?”

“They do not,” Greenspan responded.

But that was not the tune Greenspan was singing in 2001 when he testified before Congress about the proposed Bush tax cuts.

Greenspan’s flip-flop appears to be more convenience politics and pandering than fiscal judgment.

Medicaid unnecessarily spent $271 million on 20-brand-name drugs when much cheaper generic versions were readily available, according to a report from the American Enterprise Institute called that “wasteful spending.”

Nuclear weapons research has long been underway, under conditions of extreme secrecy, in Turkey, and the AKP leadership was aware that it would probably become public knowledge as the effort becomes more intense.

It is not totally dependent on, but benefits from, the acquisition by Turkey of uranium-based nuclear power reactors, which will ultimately provide a base of fissionable materials to sustain an indigenous nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, however, nuclear weapons research - which requires only a minimal amount of fissionable material, obtainable on the world market - can continue separately. There is no doubt that Turkey’s growing relationships with Iran, Brazil, and Pakistan have been - as far as the Turkish leadership is concerned - with the military nuclear program partially in mind.

As far back as 1998, Turkish media reports indicated that then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had offered Turkey cooperation in the development of nuclear weapons. The pair bookend Iran which is certainly engaged in nuclear weapon development. Carnegie reports that they have produced 585-800 kg of HEU, enough for 30-55 weapons. Pakistan’s nuclear warheads are based on an implosion design that uses a solid core of highly enriched uranium and requires an estimated 15-20 kg of material per warhead. According to Carnegie, Pakistan has also produced a small but unknown quantity of weapons grade plutonium, which is sufficient for an estimated 3-5 nuclear weapons. It is believed to have 15-25 nuclear warheads.

There is a quiet but intense internal debate among Turkish leaders about moving ahead with its own nuclear weapons. It would be the ninth nuclear armed nation.

Turkey had been the Muslim power closest to Israel, a friendship largely based on military cooperation and intelligence sharing. But, that alliance has splintered, and Israel is concerned Turkey will betray its intelligence secrets to Iran. The Turkish affinity for Hamas has many manifestations including the head of Gaza’s Hamas government has named his newest grandson after the Turkish prime minister.

Greece appears to be stepping up to ally with Israel.

Cigarette smuggling is big business in Iran. And the most popular brand is Marlboro, which an Iranian official said is “tainted with nuclear materials” as part of a sinister plot by producer Phillip Morris, “which is led by Zionists.” Nitwit.

At 91 years old, the country’s oldest mail carrier is finally hanging up his keys after driving more than 1.1 million miles delivering mail in Tennessee. According to the U.S. Postal Service, rural carrier Mancel Prince took one more lap of his nearly 100-mile route before he retired last Friday.

Prince was born in Tennessee and served in World War II, the Korean War and in Vietnam before retiring as a command sergeant major after 34 years. He returned home after his military career and began working as a rural mail carrier.

Mr. Prince earned a Million-Mile Safe Driving award for 35 years of accident-free driving.

Republican Pat Toomey continues to hold a small lead over Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race. Sestak has been at the center of a controversy that Obama deputized Bill Clinton to bribe him not to run against Democrat Senator Specter whom he defeated in the primary

Oxnard, California the largest city in Ventura County. CA. is stuffed between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean adjacent to Point Magu Naval Air Station and for a long time has suffered from low community identity and self esteem. Now it is paying six figures to a rebranding consultant who suggests renaming it Oxnard Shores as an initial step.

Its reputation is one of high crime and gang violence. It has been a laughing stock for years even benefiting from bumper sticker slogans including; “Oxnard More Than Just a Beautiful Name” and “Oxnard: Where the Sewer Meets the Sea.”

The renaming idea has created something of a local furor shining the spotlight on rebranding in general and Oxnard in particular.

Columnist Dan Walters writes that the High-Speed Rail Authority’s assertion that three quarters of Californians support the proposed bullet train is baloney.

Two years ago America was to have been following Obama into a “post racial era” but in the months since he has lead a reemergence of race as a core issue even burying race quotas in major bills ranging from Health care to Wall Street.

Enter the story of Charles Drew (1904-1950) who was an honor student at McGill University Medical School in Montreal, he made discoveries relating to the preservation of blood. By separating the liquid red blood cells from the near solid plasma and freezing the two separately, he found that blood could be preserved and reconstituted at a later date.

Charles Drew’s system for the storing of blood plasma (blood bank) revolutionized the medical profession, and saved countless lives. Dr. Drew established the American Red Cross blood bank, of which he was the first director, and he organized the world’s first blood bank drive, nicknamed “Blood for Britain” in World War II. His research ended the bizarre belief and practice that blood could not be mixed between races.

After World War II Charles Drew took up the Chair of Surgery at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Charles Drew died at the early age of 46 from injuries suffered in a car accident in North Carolina.

Drew, a black man, struggled to end the segregation of blood transfusion supplies by race as was common practice then costing many lives. In a bitter irony his own death resulted from his exclusion from a whites only hospital.  He bled to death enroute to a black hospital.

In this time of renewed racial tensions the story of Charles Drew is particularly poignant.

New York City’s public schools are failing. Standard test scores in reading have dropped to 42% passing and 52% in math falls of nearly half.

Purdue University and other researchers have discovered mechanisms critical to interactions between hot plasma and surfaces facing the plasma inside a thermonuclear fusion reactor, part of work aimed at developing coatings capable of withstanding the grueling conditions inside the reactors.

Fusion powers the stars and could lead to a limitless supply of clean energy. A fusion power plant would produce 10 times more energy than a conventional nuclear fission reactor, and because the deuterium fuel is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor’s fuel supply would be virtually inexhaustible.

The reactors will be costly to build but produce unlimited amounts of lower cost energy.

Research at Purdue University focuses on the “plasma-material interface,” a crucial region where the inner lining of a fusion reactor comes into contact with the extreme heat of the plasma. Nuclear and materials engineers are harnessing nanotechnology to define tiny features in the coating in work aimed at creating new “plasma-facing” materials tolerant to radiation damage.

One lining being considered uses lithium, which is applied to the inner graphite wall of the reactor and diffuses into the graphite, creating an entirely new material called lithiated graphite. The lithiated graphite binds to deuterium atoms in fuel inside fusion reactors known as tokamaks. The machines house a magnetic field to confine a donut-shaped plasma of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.

During a fusion reaction, some of the deuterium (heavy water) atoms strike the inner walls of the reactor and are either “pumped,” causing them to bind with the lithiated graphite, or returned to the core and recycled back to the plasma. This process can be “tuned” by these liners to control how much deuterium fuel is retained.

Findings have been detailed in two research papers presented during the 19th International Conference on Plasma-Surface Interactions, and another paper will be presented during the Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology/Plasma Facing Components meeting on Aug. 2-6 at UCLA.

President Obama said he had a good time on “The View,” and that the ladies on the show talk a lot less than Joe Biden. — Leno

With less than 100 days to go before the midterm elections the Bush tax cuts are being scapegoated in the hope Republican candidates will suffer. Former GOP presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson warns that not extending the Bush tax cuts could have “devastating” and “catastrophic” consequences for the American economy, and he’s saying so in a national ad campaign. Federal Reserve Cjhairman Bernanke is making similar warning while Treasury Secretary Geithner has  an opposed view.

“We must urge Congress and the president to renew the Bush tax cuts early, before they expire and before investors lose confidence in the U.S. economy,” Thompson stated in a letter he signed on behalf of the League of American Voters, a nonpartisan organization that advocates conservative principles.

The Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003 after the Clinton dot-com recession and 9/11 attacks, The cuts slashed income tax rates at every level, and later reduced capital gains and dividend taxes. Most think cutting taxes quickly ended the Clinton recession caused by the collapsing dot.com bubble

The Bush cuts will expire en masse on Dec. 31, unless Congress renews them. Democrats, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, are expected to play political ping pong with the issue acting just before November in a way to embarrass Republican candidates and save the election.

Billed as soaking the rich if the cuts expire, for instance: the child credit will drop for $1,000 to $500; farmers will see death taxes on family farms rise from zero to 55% forcing many to sell their family farm to pay the feds,

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned Congress that the economic recovery is too fragile to sustain any tax increase. Last week, he urged Congress to renew the Bush tax cuts.

“Our nation faces a massive automatic tax increase at the end of this year when the Bush tax cuts expire,” Thompson warns in the ad, which can be viewed at RenewTheTaxCuts.com.

National concern over increased taxed itself increased by 10 percentage points but it still ranks below jobs, and the economy.

Some are talking about a “lameduck payback” that after the November election assuming a big shift that could provoke a vindictive campaign to punish voters for kicking them out.

A famous southern fishing story is of a fisherman who was alarmed when a cottonmouth snake swam up with a frog in its mouth. Realizing the snake couldn’t bite him with a frog in its mouth he grabbed it behind the head  then wondered what to do next. Looking around he deciding to pour an ample swig of Jack Daniels down its throat. Soon it relaxed, dropped the frog and slithered away. A little while later it was back with two frogs in its mouth.

That, with many variations, was one of my great grandfathers favorite stories. I can still hear him laughing at his own story.

Just after the end of World War II, the US Army dumped 16,000 mustard gas bombs into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii. Each of the bombs has a 73-pound payload of sulfur mustard, and are resting at 2,000 feet below the surface, five miles south of Pearl Harbor.

That doesn’t sound good having over 1.1 million pounds of the stuff there. J. C. King, the Army’s assistant for munitions and chemical matters said the military’s Explosives Safety Board believes the safest approach to underwater munitions is to leave them in place and to educate the public about what they should do when they find a shell.

A recent study by the University of Hawaii says that the weapons pose no danger, but the shell casings are deteriorating and the Army should continue to monitor them. So perhaps that means the Army will check up on them every few years and wait for something bad to happen. Good thinking.

The stuff was likely stored there as a counter measure should the have Japanese deployed poison gas. Poison gas and biologic weapons were used against the Chinese by Japanese forced in World War II and there was fear Japan would use any means to defend its homeland.

Mustard gas was used heavily during World War I, and is seldom fatal, but it is nasty. The CDC says sulfur mustard (mustard gas) can damage DNA, and sulfur mustard liquid “is more likely to produce second- and third- degree burns and later scarring than is exposure to sulfur mustard vapor. Extensive skin burning can be fatal.” Oh, and it can make you blind.

My late uncle Charlie Conners was gassed at Verdun and suffered his whole life including becoming fastidiously obsessed with being neat and clean.

57% of Likely U.S. Voters say the recently passed health care law will be bad for the country.  That’s the highest level of pessimism measured since regular tracking began following Congress’ passage of the law in late March.  Thirty-two percent (32%) say the health care plan will be good for the United States.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all voters now favor repeal of the health care bill.  Thirty-eight percent (38%) oppose repeal.  These findings include 45% who Strongly Favor repeal and 28% who Strongly Oppose repeal.

Opinions break down along party lines.

Fuming taxpayers in Goleta, Simi Valley, Ventura and 137 other California cities are waiting to see if they will have to pay a share of the $600,000 per year pension of the City of Bell’s City Manager and more for other public officials who were forced to resign their grossly overpaid positions last week. The “sharing” is a part of CALPERS agreement to spread risks.

CALPERS says it is putting a hold on those pensions until investigations into the inflated salaries. So far,  the $100,000 per year its City Council members collected for 4-hours work per week are not on the radar. California’s AG and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is making political capital of the scandal of stupidity saying he will investigate.

Continental Airlines is testing a new self-boarding program that lets passengers swipe their boarding passes at the gate. It’s all part of Continental’s plan to fix the one thing that’s not a problem at the airport.- Fallon

A Gallup poll asked people to rate themselves found the ten most “liberal” states and respective percent indexes of liberals are as follows: District of Columbis - 42%; Rhode Island - 32%; Connecticut - 28%; Vermont - 29%; Massachusetts - 28%; Colorado - 27%; New York - 27%; Oregon - 26%; Washington - 25% and New Jersey - 25%.

Conversely the ten most “conservative” states are: Wyoming - 53%; Mississippi - 53%; Utan - 51%; South Dakota - 40%; Alabama - 49%; North Dakota - 49%; Idaho - 48%; South Carolina -46%; Oklahoma - 46%; Nebraska - 46% and Louisiana - 46%.

The poll did not consider party registrations only asking for self-identification.

At least five rockets were fired toward the southern Israeli port city of Eilat on Aug. 2. Officials said the Grad BM-21 rockets were believed to have been fired from neighboring Egypt. The BM-21 Grad (Russian: БМ-21 “Град”) is a Soviet truck-mounted 122 mm (4.8″) multiple rocket launcher, developed in the early 1960s. The things have a 20 mile range.

Three of the rockets landed in Eilat and caused no injury. Another two Katyushas slammed into the neighboring Jordanian city of Aqaba and four people were reported to have been injured. A Jordanian official said the rockets were believed to have been launched from Egypt, something denied by Cairo.

It is difficult to explain how Egypt could miss a six-by-six truck chassis fitted with a bank of 40 (4.8″ by 9′6″) launch tubes arranged in a rectangular shape that can be turned away from the unprotected cab wandering around.

China’s new high-technology aircraft carrier killer missile is nearly operational. The new medium-range anti-ship ballistic missile, a variant of China’s less precise DF-21 missile is believed to be the world’s first mobile, land-based ballistic missile with precise enough guidance and targeting to hit a moving ship at sea.

China’s anti-ship ballistic missile has prompted widespread alarm in U.S. military circles and that has led to new efforts to counter what are termed anti-access weapons, like the (Anti Ship Ballistic Missile) ASBM.

Officials said the current U.S. Navy has only theoretical countermeasures for the DF-21D ASBM, which has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles). A typical warhead will sizzle along at 15,000 mph or so at peak speed, and when it re-enters the atmosphere it can encounter 19,000 degrees Fahrenheit of friction heat. That’s not exactly a hospitable environment for delicate sensors and guidance stuff. So, if this thing can track, lock onto and hit a moving carrier it is damned impressive. Of course guidance could be remote from a nearby submarine or overhead by aircraft or satellite.

U.S. officials have said the strategic implications of the new missile are that it will limit the ability of the Navy to operate in the Western Pacific, where U.S. allies are very dependent on the warships for their security, mainly against the growing threat from China. Of course those allies and areas include: Japan, South Korea. Phillipines, Taiwan and Straits of Malacca.

The DF-21D will severely undermine U.S. defense plans for defending Taiwan from a mainland attack. Current plans call for deploying more than five aircraft carrier battle groups to the region.

Obama was scheduled to speak to the Boy Scouts of America on the same day that he taped “The View.” Obama is the honorary chairman of the organization, but he stiffed the scouts to go on the daytime TV talk show for the third time, and followed that up with fundraising events in hopes of fattening coffers for upcoming midterm elections.

—EDITORIAL—

Seventy years ago on August 8,1940 the ferocious air battle over England between the RAF and the Nazi Luftwaffe began. It was clear it would be a major turning point in World War II. Had the Nazis wiped out the British air force or its airfields, an invasion likely would have followed.

Churchill realized Great Britain did not have the ground forces to resist such an invasion. A successful German invasion would have meant not only the end of Britain as a sovereign nation, but the complete domination of Europe by the Nazis.

In the summer of 1940, Britain - indeed Western civilization - was saved for several reasons. Among them: Churchill, little more than a thousand heroic RAF pilots, and the British air force’s Spitfire fighters and more numerous Hurricanes.

But such pilots and weaponry did not come out of thin air. The Spitfire was a 1931 design and after many improvements entered service in August 1938 only 23 months before the decisive battle would begin.

Chris Ruddy points out that Lawrence Kadish wrote in the New York Post: “Those assets did not suddenly appear. Men such as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who have either been forgotten or scorned by history, made strategic decisions years earlier that allowed these weapons to be created and then forged into an integrated defense system. Churchill was prepared to use their sword and shield to counter the Nazis.”

Perhaps there are other lessons we are forgetting.

The first half of David Halberstam’s book THE COLDEST WINTER America and the Korean War describes the catastrophic consequences of America’s unilateral disarmament after World War II when the Soviet backed North Koreans invaded South Korea and the Soviet armed Chinese swarmed in. We are still suffering the consequences of those and contemporary disarmament decisions today.

As what would have been President Ronald Reagan’s 100^th birthday is celebrated his “Peace Through Strength” mantra is ever more prescient as America’s turgid (as in pompous and bombastic ) foreign policy is as crumbly as blue cheese.

Obama’s hopes for rapid, bipartisan approval of its new arms-control treaty with Russia have dimmed, with Republican senators are making clear that they will not support ratification without iron-clad assurances of future spending to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal. R