Answer:
Whiskey may not be the easiest drink to get into but that doesn't mean you should give up. There are so many whiskies to choose from that there’s bound to be one out there with your name on it. And it might not be Scotch, it might be Irish whiskey, Kentucky Bourbon or even from Japan.
The Duke of York accused defence chiefs of sitting on their “fat backsides” and stalling on bringing in British-built Rangers, which are said to have three times the blast resistance of current troop carriers.
BMW says its first plug-in hybrid will be an an all-wheel-drive sports car that performs like an M6, and we’ll see it in 2013.
The boys from Bavaria say the “overwhelming response” the Vision Efficient Dynamics concept received at the Frankfurt auto show last year — and the design awards it has won since — prompted the brass to greenlight the project. We suspect the fact that Mercedes-Benz is developing the awesome electric AMG SLS Gullwing and that Porsche will build the amazing Porsche 918 hybrid supercar played a role in BMW’s decision as well.
The car features an all-alloy 1.5-liter three-cylinder turbodiesel-and-electric motor up front and another electric motor at the rear. All told, the system’s good for 328 horsepower. BMW says the car will do zero to 100 kilometers an hour [62 mph] in 4.8 seconds, while returning 75.1 mpg and emitting 99 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Those are mighty impressive numbers for a car of this caliber — assuming it actually gets built, of course. A lithium-polymer battery of undisclosed size would allow you to tool around on electricity for up to 31 miles. Auto Express says we can expect production versions to use a gasoline engine and one electric motor to simplify things.
The one-year anniversary of the Fort Hood Massacre.
Snyder rises from obscurity to lead GOP rout in Michigan. “The election marked not just a power shift but a major facelift at the Capitol in Lansing. The governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and more than three quarters of the Senate and half the House are non-incumbents in the biggest one-day turnover since voters approved term limits in 1992.”
The internet was totally grossed out recently by images that showed a McDonald's hamburger sitting out in the open for six months without decomposing or rotting. But one blogger dug a bit deeper, and it turns out no hamburgers rot.
The burger doesn't rot because it's small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there's no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well.
Negative ads became boring, unpersuasive. Forty years ago they were new, exciting in a sort of prurient way. Now voters take for granted that politicians are no good, and such ads are just more polluted water going over the waterfall. The biggest long-term loser: liberalism. If all pols are sleazoid crooks, then why would people want to give them more governmental power to order our lives? The implicit message of two generations of negative ads: Vote conservative, limit the reach of the thieves.
On Wednesday President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.
Efforts to repeal ObamaCare won’t get past the Senate. That’s okay. Make ‘em vote for it again. . . .
UPDATE: Reader John Miller emails:
Yes, you make the Senate vote on ObamaCare again.
You make them vote on a lot of things.
Were I in Boehner’s shoes, I’d be preparing a long list of very short, very simple bills, each covering a single issue with broad public support.
Race-neutral enforcement of civil-rights laws.
Sanctioning ’sanctuary cities’.
Voter ID.
Forcing the DOJ to implement the voter-roll cleanup provisions of HAVA.
And so on. Single-issue bills that can be read by any voter in five minutes.
India: “When a good history of the George W. Bush years is finally written, his breakthrough with India may turn out to be the most important foreign policy initiative of his administration. The Indian Ocean hosts lanes for the oil from the Persian Gulf and an ever larger share of its trade, and India sits in the middle of it. It is also the geographical center of transnational Islamic terrorism. It is essential that the United States maintain a strong deterrent in the Indian Ocean, and that it preserve and enhance its ability to coerce whatever clown revue happens to be governing Pakistan at the moment. India is the key to both.
That Barack Obama recognizes this is to his credit. It is quite possibly the most deft foreign policy move of his administration and he deserves credit for it.
On "60 Minutes," Obama insists he failed to make “an argument that people can understand.”
Read more: http://thepage.time.com/#ixzz14PqQjuau
Of Gods and Men: the story of a North African monastery, which fell under the shadow of Islamic fundamentalism
One of the big hits in French cinemas this autumn has defied all known box-office rules. Of Gods and Men is an all-male film about religion or, more specifically, religions. It’s set in, of all the uncinematic locations, a Cistercian monastery in North Africa, from which it derives its muted aesthetic tone and careful pace. Its ultimate theme is the price of Christian faith
The Sad Saudi Secret
November 4, 2010: Saudi Arabia has just ordered $60 billion worth of weapons and military equipment. That's in addition to the $50 billion it has spent on that stuff since September 11, 2001. All this is to protect trillions of dollars worth of oil from increasingly likely Iranian aggression. While the thousands of aircraft, helicopters, armored vehicles and other high-tech systems looks impressive, the actual impact of all this lethal hardware depends a lot on the skill of those using it. In this department, the Saudis have some serious problems. And it is generally very difficult to get Saudis to even discuss these difficulties.
Examples are widely available, and seen daily by the thousands of Western technicians, specialists and trainers hired by Saudi Arabia to keep their high-tech gear operational. For example, Saudis, and Arabs in general, don't care for the Western custom of establishing minimum standards for, say, fighter pilots. It's long been known that it is very difficult to wash out a Saudi pilot who is well connected (especially a member of the huge royal family). There are some very good Saudi pilots, but they are a minority. The rest get by. As long as they can take off and land, they can stay in a squadron. During combat exercises, especially with American squadrons, it's understood that the low overall performance of Saudi pilots is not to be discussed with the Saudis, or anyone else. Junior American officers get irked at this, but it's career suicide to disobey orders on this point. The Saudis do spend a lot of money on training and letting the pilots fly. For this reason, they are considered marginally better than other Arab air forces. But against the Iranians, who more enthusiastically accepted Western training methods, they would have problems. Iranian aircraft are older and less well equipped, but pilot quality would make up for a lot of that.
The problem extends to ground crews, who don't take responsibility seriously and have to be constantly hounded by their foreign advisors and specialists hired to make sure the aircraft are flyable. And when something goes wrong, the foreign experts are expected to take the blame. That's what the foreigners are there for.
Many Saudis are aware of the problem, especially those who have studied in the West, or spent some time there. As a result, there some very competent Saudi doctors, scientists and bankers. But this minority knows they are up against an ancient and well entrenched culture that does not seek out innovation and excellence as it is done in the West. The more insightful Saudis seek ways to work around these problems. For example, the royal family established the National Guard in the 1930s, as a private, tribal army, that is now almost as large as the regular army and considered more dependable and effective than the regulars. That's because the National Guard troops follow traditional rules of military leadership, and have a personal relationship with the king. Only men from tribes that are known to be loyal to the Saud family may join, and they are expected to make their family and tribe proud. Saddam Hussein, and other Arab leaders, form similar forces. Saddam has his Republican Guard. Despots the world over tend to have a guard force recruited more for blood ties and loyalty, than for anything else.
The regular forces (army, navy and air force) are just government jobs, run by another government bureaucracy. There are lower standards because there are none of the family or tribal ties that demand better. Only in the West do most people give the same devotion and respect to non-family/tribal institutions.
It comes down to a different cultural attitude towards taking responsibility for your actions. It's human nature to avoid failure, or taking responsibility for a mistake. Thus we have the concept of "saving face." One reason the West has made such economic, cultural, military and social progress in the last five hundred years is because they developed a habit of holding people responsible for their actions and giving out the rewards based on achievement. In the West, this sort of thing is taken for granted, even if it is not always practiced.
But in much of the rest of the world, especially the Arab world, things are different. Most Arab countries are a patchwork of different tribes and groups, and Arab leaders survive by playing one group off against another. Loyalty is to one's group, not the nation. Most countries are dominated by a single group that is usually a minority, as in Bedouins in Jordan, Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq (formerly) and Nejdis in Saudi Arabia. All of which means that officers are assigned not by merit but by loyalty and tribal affiliation.
Then there are the Islamic schools, which are so popular in Moslem countries, which favor rote memorization, especially of scripture. Most Islamic scholars are hostile to the concept of interpreting the Koran (considered the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed). This has resulted in looking down on Western troops that will look something up that they don't know. Arabs prefer to fake it, and pretend it's all in their head. Improvisation and innovation is generally discouraged. Arab armies go by the book, Western armies rewrite the book and thus usually win.
All of this makes it difficult to develop a real NCO corps. Officers and enlisted troops are treated like two different social castes and there is no effort to bridge the gap using career NCOs. Enlisted personnel are treated harshly. Training accidents that would end the careers of US officers are commonplace in Arab armies, and nobody cares.
Arab officers often do not trust each other. While an American infantry officer can be reasonably confident that the artillery officers will conduct their bombardment on time and on target, Arab infantry officers seriously doubt that their artillery will do its job on time or on target. This is a fatal attitude in combat.
Arab military leaders consider it acceptable to lie to subordinates and allies in order to further their personal agenda. This had catastrophic consequences during all of the Arab-Israeli wars and continues to make peace difficult between Israelis and Palestinians. When called out on this behavior, Arabs will assert that they were "misunderstood."
American officers and NCOs are only too happy to impart their wisdom and skill to others (teaching is the ultimate expression of prestige), but Arab officers try to keep any technical information and manuals secret. To Arabs, the value and prestige of an individual is based not on what he can teach, but on what he knows that no one else knows.
While Western officers thrive on competition among themselves, Arab officers avoid this as the loser would be humiliated. Better for everyone to fail together than for competition to be allowed, even if it eventually benefits everyone.
Western troops are taught leadership and technology; Arabs are taught only technology. Leadership is given little attention as officers are assumed to know this by virtue of their social status as officers.
In Arab bureaucracies, initiative is considered a dangerous trait. So subordinates prefer to fail rather than make an independent decision. Battles are micromanaged by senior generals, who prefer to suffer defeat rather than lose control of their subordinates. Even worse, an Arab officer will not tell an ally why he cannot make the decision (or even that he cannot make it), leaving Western officers angry and frustrated because the Arabs won't make a decision. The Arab officers simply will not admit that they do not have that authority.
This lack of initiative makes it difficult for Arab armies to maintain modern weapons. Complex modern weapons require on the spot maintenance, and that means delegating authority, information, and tools. Arab armies avoid doing this and prefer to use easier to control central repair shops (which makes the timely maintenance of weapons difficult). If you can afford it, as the Saudis can, you hire lots of foreign maintenance experts to keep equipment operational. All this is taken for granted inside Saudi Arabia, but looks quite strange to Westerners who encounter it for the first time.
DEBUNKING: No, Obama’s not taking 34 warships to India with him. And the cost isn’t $200 million a day, as previously reported. On the other hand, “Near as I can tell, the mega-bombshell about Obama introducing a teleprompter to India’s parliament remains tragically, pathetically true.”
UPDATE: Reader John Campbell writes:
I am watching Anderson Cooper and CNN’s criticism of somewho reported that Obama’s upcoming trip to India was using 34 warships and costing $200 million per day.
Hard to believe on the face of it and many people certainly jumped the gun in reporting it and criticizing the President for it.
Sloppy reportage perhaps, but essentially the story had legs because it was believable, given the way the man spends other people’s money and MIchelle Obama’s expensive summer trip.
If someone reported that Charlie Sheen had been found, passed out, in a hotel room with 18 hookers, you may doubt the story, but hey, that darn Charlie, what a wild man.
Obama has a bit of a reputation too, although along different lines.
1. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco
2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
3. Dracula by Bram Stoker
4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
5. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. Emma by Jane Austen
9. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
10. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
STRIP JOE BIDEN OF HIS MOTORCADE? “Since the Obama administration announced a series of measures in October last year to put an end to distracted driving, including an executive order directed at federal employees, Vice-President Joe Biden’s motorcade has been involved in at least five crashes. That’s an unusually high number for such a motorcade. . . . Whether distracted driving or something else is causing the high number of incidents involving Mr. Biden’s motorcade, it’s still dangerous and unacceptable – and it’s setting the wrong example.”
Why does anybody not working on K Street take Trent Lott seriously anymore? Beats me. Plus this: “What Lott really meant is that he would likely have had absolutely zero influence with Tea Party backed senators whereas with the Establishment-types he would have been lining his wallet with cold, hard lobbying contract cash.
KEITH OLBERMANN’S POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS: “MSNBC host Keith Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election — a potential violation of NBC’s ethics policies. . . . Olbermann, who has become of the most prominent liberal commentators on cable television, has been a critic of the political donations made by Fox News’ parent company, News Corp.”
Daniel Hannan reports on life on the dole in the United Kingdom:
Can you guess what they do for a living, the appalling protestors gathered outside the Old Bailey to support Roshonara Choudhry, who was given a life sentence for trying to murder an MP? That's right: they're living on benefits, one claiming to suffer from chronic fatigue disorder. (Although he was evidently not too fatigued to spend his day bellowing "British troops must die!")
I've blogged before, in the context of Gaza, about the way in which unconditional subventions help create an almost ideal terrorist habitat. I wonder whether the same thing might apply to our own country. A surprising number of radical preachers are supported by the state, and most of the second set of Tube bombers were living on handouts.
Perhaps, if that option had been closed, some of these alienated young men might have become successful entrepreneurs instead of working themselves into a rage against the hand that fed them.
House Republican Leader John Boehner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama seems to be in denial about the full meaning of congressional elections in which Republicans made big gains, Republican leader John Boehner said on Thursday.
Boehner is likely to become speaker of the House of Representatives after Republicans routed Democrats in Tuesday's elections and picked up at least 60 seats, the biggest shift in power in decades.
"There seems to be some denial on the part of the president and other Democratic leaders of the message that was sent by the American people," Boehner told ABC News.
"When you have the most historic election in over 60, 70 years, you would think the other party would understand that the American people have clearly repudiated the policies they've put forward in the last few years," he said.
#picoftheday
Vibrant hues have brightened gardens, parks and landscapes in the past two weeks thanks to the particular conditions created by a wet summer followed by the bright sunshine of October. Helen Bostock, of the Royal Horticultural Society, says: ‘It’s always subjective, but when you talk to gardeners they tell you it’s been a really good autumn with some lovely colours. The ornamental cherries have been ¬particularly stunning, while the acers, rowans and ornamental apples have been superb.’ ...read
