Mid-Week Post

In the bleak mid-week....


Romney wins in Iowa.



Unfortunately, this will be fodder for total scumbags. Bad form, guys.



Same deal in North Korea... if not worse:

"Three North Koreans who attempted to cross the border were shot to death over the weekend, a North Korean human rights group said Monday. 


Do Hee-yoon, head of the Citizens’ Coalition for the Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees in South Korea, said, “Three North Korean men crossing the Yalu River to China were shot dead by North Korean border guards at 5 p.m. Saturday,” adding he heard the news from a source in Changbai, China. 


The killings occurred a day after North Korea`s new leader Kim Jong Un was appointed supreme commander of the armed forces Friday. Pyongyang has reportedly tightened border controls and increased surveillance over those trying to escape since Kim Jong Il’s death. 


Saturday`s deaths were the first killings of border-crossing defectors under the Kim Jong Un government."

"...It’s quite another to use your first post-coronation statement of national policy to go out of your way to burn bridges:

On this occasion, we solemnly declare with confidence that foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet forces in South Korea, should not expect any changes from us,” a broadcaster on state television said on Friday.  [….]
“We will never engage with the Lee Myung-bak administration,” said the announcer.  “The sea of bloody tears from our military and people will follow the puppet regime until the end. The tears will turn into a sea of revengeful fire that burns everything.”  [Reuters]

A new leadership that was open to evolving toward a less hostile, less isolated, more productive posture would not have seen the need to say this. And given the tendency of South Koreans and Americans to pay vast sums based on the most vaporous hopes of potential reform, one wonders why North Korea doesn’t do that small service for the Selig Harrisons of the world.

In fact, the evidence we have in front of us now suggests that the only recent dramatic change in North Korea’s posture occurred in 2010, with North Korea’s direct attacks against South Korea on a scale unprecedented since 1968, if not 1953. Both were foreshadowed by North Korea’s 2009 declination of the olive branch President Obama probably intended to extend, and with its missile and nuclear tests.  One of several possibilities this suggests is that the people in charge of North Korea now may well have been in charge of North Korea by 2009, following the power vacuum created by Kim Jong Il’s stroke.  Kim Jong Il’s several visits to China and his meeting with Bill Clinton suggest that he eventually recovered to a certain degree, but the turn of North Korea’s policy in a radically aggressive direction coincides with reports that Jang Song Thaek, Kim Kyong Hui, and their dauphin Kim Jong Eun postured themselves to take over North Korea in 2009.  This suggests that Jang is at least a supporter (if not an architect) of North Korea’s more aggressive posture."

Kim Jong- Eun (or whoever is pulling his strings) may wish to warn the world that now would not be a good time to exploit the brief power vacuum. He (or they) may also wish to make a mark they could not make when Kim Jong-Il was alive.



Who the hell do these guys think they are? Theresa Spence?

Local Chinese governments that have borrowed heavily from banks to pay for public works construction and other expenses mishandled $83 billion in debt, according to an audit released Wednesday.

The report by the National Audit Office comes amid concern about the ability of Chinese city, county and other local governments to repay borrowing. But it gave no indication the money it cited was lost or stolen.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

Those who said there was a pro-homosexuality agenda were treated with scorn as alarmists before the propagandists for that agenda became as bold as they are now. But we have it directly from the managing editor of Xtra Vancouver: as clear an enunciation of the homosexual activist agenda for the schools as we may have seen anywhere. 


In the October 20th, 2011, edition of the Vancouver edition of the homosexual magazine Xtra, the managing editor of that magazine wrote in the online edition:

”. . . the gay rights movement is shifting norms in Canada. And with that comes a message to those who won’t evolve: your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norm.”

Now, let's tell these perverts to get the hell away from the kids.



Oh, and we don't want to fund their pervy parades anymore.



(with some thanks)



This is pretty neat:

Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic have uncovered a  world unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents, one populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs.

It was "almost like a sight from another planet," said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. 

Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. "To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing," Rogers told LiveScience.

In the dayless world of deep-sea vents, energy comes not from the sun but from the hydrothermal energy generated in the oceanic crust.

The yeti crabs seem to cultivate "gardens" of bacteria on their chests, which are covered with hairy tendrils. These bacterial mats almost certainly provides the crabs with sustenance, Rogers said. In turn, predatory seven-armed sea stars stalk the periphery of the vents, snacking on unfortunate crabs. (here)

Mark Ruffalo wants to tank The Avengers movie before it even comes out:

Mark Ruffalo says the coming film, “The Avengers,” is an allegory for Americans.

“You have all these disparate egos, superheroes in this and that, and they refuse to give up some of their positions in order to make a more perfect union and to join the team,” Ruffalo says.

“That’s really what the whole movie is about: subjugating your own best interest momentarily to further that of the whole,” he says.

As Ruffalo sees it, the film’s message speaks to the times. “I didn’t know it a year ago that it was going to speak to so many of the issues we’re having here in the United States and throughout the world, the same kind of theme,” he says. The actor has been an activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement and the campaign against hydraulic fracturing.

Shut up, Mark Ruffalo! You are the reason why we can't have nice things!



And now, Beowulf as it should be heard.