9 Military Technologies That Will Change Warfare

Kiplinger;  Google Glass-like Eyegear for Soldiers

 

"Troops one day will receive vital, real-time cues about their location, surrounding terrain, danger zones and much more with “augmented reality” holographic glasses. Called ULTRA-Vis, the transparent eye screen covers one eye and provides visual pop-ups keyed to a wearer’s exact location, plus directional signs and alerts to enemy locations. Yes, it’s like Google Glass, but featuring a mini war room map with sensors and live data. Applied Research Associates in Arlington, Virginia, and Britain’s BAE Systems are developing the eyewear with DARPA. As the technology is refined, future applications could easily be found for police, firefighters and even commercial pilots."   Full article...

 

Emphasis in the original

How wolves change rivers.



The fascinating story of how wolves changed Yellowstone's geography    "You must watch this fascinating four-minute video on the effects of the re-introduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Not only they affected the entire live of the park—increasing the number of species in it!—but actually changed the geography of the park itself, affecting the rivers in a way that positively affected everything."

  

Hat tip to Jack Hamner; Santa Maria, CA

Wolf Reintroduction Changes Ecosystem   "On a quiet spring morning, a resounding “Slap!” reverberates through the air above a remote stream leading to Lake Yellowstone. Over much of the past century, it has been a rarely heard noise in the soundscape that is Yellowstone National Park, but today is growing more common-the sound of a beaver slapping its tail on the water as a warning to other beavers.

 

"Ten years ago, when the grey wolf was reintroduced into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, there was only one beaver colony in the park, said Doug Smith, a wildlife biologist in charge of the Yellowstone Wolf Project.

"Today, the park is home to nine beaver colonies, with the promise of more to come, as the reintroduction of wolves continues to astonish biologists with a ripple of direct and indirect consequences throughout the ecosystem.

"A flourishing beaver population is just one of those consequences, said Smith." ...Read more...

Alan Caruba: An Economist's Bad Climate Advice (Updated)

Warning Signs

 

"If I need my car repaired, I do not take it to a dentist. If I am seeking advice about the climate I check out what climatologists and meteorologists are saying, at least those who have not sold their souls to the global warming/climate change hoax.

"On September 3 The Wall Street Journal published a commentary by Edward P. Lazear titled “The Climate Change Agenda Needs to Adapt to Reality: Limiting carbon emissions won’t work. Better to begin adjusting to a warming world.”

 "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!  It’s cooling, not warming." ...  Full article...

More inconvenient truths

http://americanenergyalliance.org/2014/09/05/more-inconvenient-truths/

 UPDATE: Perfect: College Will Teach A Climate Change Fiction Class   "At the University of Oregon, a climate change fiction class will be offered this winter.

"No, we don’t mean that it’s a class that teaches that climate change is fiction. We mean that it’s a class that teaches about movies and novels that feature climate change as a central theme."

Coming up: a hard look at the Fast Food workers pay raises

Prediction: Here’s How the Price of Your Favorite Fast Food Would Change With a $15 Minimum Wage

The Daily Signal    "Thousands of fast-food workers across 150 cities nationwide gathered today to call for a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

"However, a report released today by James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, found that fast-food restaurants would have to boost their prices 38 percent to make up for the increased labor costs.

"Higher Fast-Food Wages: Higher Fast-Food Prices"

"Such an increase, Sherk said, would drive away about one-third of these restaurants’ customers.
If fast food’s biggest restaurants decide to raise their wages to $15 an hour, here’s how some of your favorite meals would fare."

 

Debbie B***********-Schultz Foams at the Mouth

DWS: Scott Walker's Record is Equivalent to Physically Abusing Women   ... " Kleefisch said she was "shocked" that Wasserman Schultz used domestic violence language to discuss political disagreements. "I think the remarks were absolutely hideous and the motive behind them was despicable," Kleefisch said. Kleefisch called on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke to "denounce these outrageous statements" made by the DNC leader."

Independent Sentinel  "Debbie Blabbermouth-Schultz compared Governor Scott Walker to a violent woman abuser on Wednesday.

"Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) decided the way to rally women against Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), who is running for reelection, was to use outrageous hyperbole making him into a Neanderthal.

“ 'Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand,” the dipsy Dem said in Milwaukee. “I know that is stark. I know that is direct. I know that is reality.”

"It’s also not true.

"The Journal-Sentinel quoted her as also saying that “what Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”

"When I heard it I personally had visions in my head of the French underworld’s Apache dance where the man mock slaps, punches, drags the woman around by the hair."

 

"Press secretary for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke, Stephanie Wilson, hinted that Schultz might have gone too far.

“ 'That’s not the type of language that Mary Burke would use, or has used, to point out the clear differences in this contest,” Wilson said.

"Wilson added, “There is plenty that she and Governor Walker disagree on — but those disagreements can and should be pointed out respectfully.' ”  Full article...

Fits the Democrat pattern.  And Exhibit B

By the way, you know the man dancing in the video is Ray Bolger, who played the scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz", didn't you?

Two Obamas: the one adoring crowds smile and clap for and the one our enemies.... well, smile and clap for.

From the UK: Without American leadership, freedom is in peril   ... "Contrary to Leftist caricature, America is a very reluctant colonialist. It does not like to superintend the situations its military leaves behind. And this president is particularly averse to accepting global responsibilities. So we find ourselves in a world so many people said they wanted: without American leadership or Western moral boundaries. What are the odds on the survival of freedom and the protection of innocent civilians? "

 Via Lucianne/

 

Power Line; On the third try, Obama still flubs it on ISIS    "You can’t defeat an army or a would-be state by taking out its leaders. Why does Obama profess otherwise? Because he’s unwilling to commit to the forms of action everyone understands are required to defeat a well-trained, well-financed army that possesses all manner of sophisticated weapons, usually in large quantities."

 

Investors.com; Obama's IS Strategy, Decoded   "So IS is, in fact, no big deal after all.

"Sure, this isn't as pithy as "pay any price, bear any burden," or "tear down this wall."
But to say Obama hasn't thought his plan through to handle IS is a disservice to someone who historian Michael Beschloss has declared to be "probably the smartest guy ever to become president.' "   It depends on what the meaning of ISIS is.

Blackfive; Obama unveils ISIS Strategy sponsored by Letter D

Columnist: ISIS Is Bush's Fault, But GOP Trying to 'Yoke Obama With' It   "On August 31, The New York Times ran a op-ed in which columnist Charles M. Blow contended that Republicans are trying to use the 9/11 attacks to make Americans fear ISIS and "yoke Obama with the ill effects of a war started by [George W. Bush]."

"One immediate problem with this theory is that ISIS--now IS--is not an ill effect of the Iraqi War but of the power vacuum created by President Obama's precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. Troops in 2011." ...

Don't Worry Joe Biden, We'll Remember You!

donkeyhotey

Ken Blackwell  ..."As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden learned that you had to look beyond moral turpitude to judicial philosophy. That was the starting gun for the bull- and bear-beating contests that Senate judicial confirmations have become. If you’re disgusted by such ugly sessions, called “grilling” by the media, you can thank Joe Biden. No, we won’t forget his unique contribution to trashing American public life.

"Of course, Joe Biden himself has never been subjected to a grilling.
When he ran for President the first time, in 1987, he was discovered in that pre-Google era to have plagiarized word-for-word the powerful stump speech of Britain’s Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. (See the video below) No one who had done such a thing would ever get through the front door of the Judiciary Committee, so let’s not forget about Joe Biden.

"One other thing we should all remember. Joe Biden sat in the Senate from 1973 to 2009. In those thirty-six years, not one of his fellow Democrats ever suggested making him their Majority Leader. They didn’t forget Joe Biden, either!"

 Only a liberal could fail to be shamed out of office after this.

Mythologies and Pathologies of the California Drought

Victor Davis Hanson

http://comicallyincorrect.com/2014/02/18/thirsty-in-california/

... "Take the Bay Area, Ground Zero of water environmentalism. From Mill Valley to San Jose is where most of the green activists are based who have demanded, even as the snowfalls and rains ceased, that reservoir storage waters be diverted to the sea to encourage the resurgence of the delta smelt and river salmon. The Bay Area’s various earlier lobbying groups long ago helped to cancel the final phases of the California State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, and now talk about reducing world carbon emissions rather than building more storage capacity to solve California’s water crisis.

"How odd that is — given that the San Francisco greater community has almost no aquifer to supply its millions. Environmentalists count instead solely on vast water transfers from the far distant Hetch Hetchy reservoir to supply the nearly three million water users of the Bay Area with their daily showers and lawn irrigations. " ...

...

..."the California coastal strip is an environmentally unwise place to locate millions of Californians; its swarms exist largely by water transfers from either Northern California or the Sierra Nevada mountains. And yet far too many of its inhabitants have a bad habit of pontificating about water usage for others."

We’re All Safer Now That The Government Has Rolled Out Recommendations For Making S’mores

Downtrend

 

" ... The US Forrest(sp) Service has addressed one of the most pressing safety issues facing our country: the proper way to make s’mores.

 

"As an arm of the US Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service has an annual budget of $5.5 billion and is charged with protecting our forests and grasslands. As such, they’ve come up with fool-proof way of keeping our outdoor spaces safe by setting new guidelines for roasting marshmallows and making s’mores.

 

"First, the basics:

Use a roasting stick of at least 30 inches in length. The degree a marshmallow is roasted runs the gamut, from the barely cooked, light caramel-colored outer layer to the flaming marshmallow that contains a gooey interior wrapped by a crispy, blackened shell.

"Then we get some help with making s’mores. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Michelle Obama had a hand in this part:" ...

Fox News, Enemy of State; The Obama administration’s curious cable jihad.

NRO

... "Mr. O’Reilly became an enemy of State when he conducted an interview with Fox News reporter James Rosen, who had some mildly unflattering things to say about Ms. Harf’s superior, Jen Psaki, the witless off-brand Pippi Longstocking who is the current media face of the American diplomatic project. The Obama administration is, to be charitable, currently unsure of how to go about dealing with the Islamic State, and Ms. Psaki was something less than convincing in trying to explain what exactly the administration has been up to between that group’s beheadings. Ms. Harf proclaimed (here I’ll translate from the Twitterese): “Jen Psaki explains foreign policy with intelligence and class. Too bad we can’t say the same about Bill O’Reilly.' ” ...  Kevin D. Williamson

 

 

 

Benghazi Bombshell: Security Team Told to 'Stand Down' By CIA Officer    "It's a must-see Fox News Reporting special, tonight at 10p ET as Bret Baier reveals the inside accounts of the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack from the men who were there to protect the CIA annex. We're already getting a preview of some of the new information coming to light, including that the men believe they could have gotten to the U.S. consulate in time to save Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith."

Krauthammer; Ukraine abandoned

Republican Security Council

Charles Krauthammer

U.S. President Barack Obama is seated with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko as they meet with
other  countries regarding Ukraine at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales,
Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. At rear center is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

... "We’ll see whether Obama comes up with an ISIS strategy. But he already has one for Ukraine: Write it off. Hence the more shocking statement in that Aug. 28 briefing: Obama declaring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — columns of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and a thousand troops brazenly crossing the border — to be nothing new, just “a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.”

 

"And just to reaffirm his indifference and inaction, Obama mindlessly repeated his refrain that the Ukraine problem has no military solution. Yes, but does he not understand that diplomatic solutions are largely dictated by the military balance on the ground?

"Vladimir Putin’s invasion may be nothing new to Obama. For Ukraine, it changed everything. Russia was on the verge of defeat. Now Ukraine is. That’s why Ukraine is welcoming a cease-fire that amounts to capitulation."  Emphasis mine, TD