Doc seemed like a true gentleman, a humble spirit with a God-given talent.
Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs and Vassar Clements (to name three that come to mind) had class, integrity and longevity, which enabled them to share their talents with multiple generations.
Video: Kim Jong Un goes to the zoo
The zookeepers must have cringed in fear that the baboons might fling shit at Pudgy Leader, and thus earn 25 years in the Gulag. For the zookeepers, not the baboons.
The Pyongyang Zoo has one thing in common with the Mangyongdae Fun Fair: an utter lack of normal patrons.
That was one thing that was remarkable about the amusement park story — KJU was picking weeds from between the paving stones. That’s not a problem at, say, Disneyworld or Six Flags. Or Pegleg Pete’s Goofy Golf in Gulf Shores, AL, for that matter.
Rush hour in Pyongyang. From boston.com.
Take the world’s most paranoid/delusional Stalinist regime, add nuclear ambition and stir. Turn the whole mess over to a 29-year old who, by rights, should be playing video games in his parents’ basement; what’s the worst that could happen?
This, for starters:
“Oh, and don’t forget to buckle up!” — AFP/Getty Images
In its annual study, Amnesty International claimed that in addition to the 30 who died in purges last year, a further 200 were rounded up in January this year by the State Security Agency as Pyongyang carried out the transfer of power from Kim Jong-il, who died of an apparent heart attack in December, and his 29-year-old son, Kim Jong-un.
Of those 200, Amnesty said, some were apparently executed and the remainder were sent to political prison camps. The gulag system presently contains an estimated 200,000 people in “horrific conditions,” the group said.
North Korea has a habit of executing bureaucrats who are perceived to have failed the regime, even though they are often merely carrying out the orders of higher-ranking officials or members of the ruling family.
In 2010, Pak Nam-gi, the former head of the finance department of the Workers’ Party, was reportedly executed by firing squad for the catastrophic attempt to reform the impoverished nation’s currency. The result was rampant inflation and food shortages became even more acute.
The 30 men executed for failing to improve Pyongyang’s ties with Seoul are considered scapegoats for the new low point in inter-Korean ties.
I recently blogged about the Pudgy Young Leader’s horrible day at the amusement park. It’s horrifying to think what happened to the workers who failed to run their empty amusement park in a manner consistent with the Juche Idea.
Also: The Un vs. The One
And: Is Kim Jong-Nam the DPRK’s Fredo?
Cross-posted at RedState.com.
I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out what it is that differentiates this Brett Kimberlin character from Ted Kaczynski.
If you follow the blogosphere, you’ll know that bloggers who criticize left-wing activist and convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin have been harassed. While doing some research on Mr. Kimberlin, I discovered he runs a group called Justice Through Music, which has received money from Soros and other rich progressives. Looking on JTMP’s front page, I discovered this interesting little bit of information.
MAY 24, 2012 – JTMP has been a participant in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program for 3 years now, where citizens from around the world involved in the arts get to come to America and visit to learn about the role of arts in the US. This year we had visitors that came from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia to see how Justice Through Music Project uses art to raise awareness on issues, and to bring about social change. This year’s contingent had musicians, playwrights, and people involved in art production. We gave them a presentation and showed them many of our musical art videos that deal with politics and issues, while we spoke about how we operate and produce our art videos. We then showed them how we use this art on our website and YouTube channel to raise awareness on an issue to help bring about positive social change.
Read the rest at http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/10116-why-is-the-state-department-partnering-with-convicted-bomber-brett-kimberlin.
World Oil: Repsol comes up dry for Cuba exploration well
WASHINGTON — Spanish oil firm Repsol has announced that an exploratory well in Cuban waters wasn’t successful and will be capped.
In February, Repsol initiated deep-water exploration drilling about 50 km north of Havana as part of its global exploration operations. Repsol’s drilling efforts represented the beginning of Cuba’s push to develop its offshore oil resources, in part to wean itself off imports from Venezuela.
"The well was dry," said Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix. "Geologists are evaluating how we move forward."
Repsol resumed exploration in the area after it failed to find exploitable oil in 2004. The U.S. Geological Survey has said there could be 5 billion barrels of untapped oil off the Cuban coast.
The Repsol well was much closer to Florida than any other well in the region. U.S. authorities previously inspected Repsol’s Scarabeo 9 drilling rig off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago and said the vessel complied with existing international and U.S. standards.
From OIL AND GAS JOURNAL:
The well went to 4,500 m in 5,600 ft of water. Repsol is operator with 40% interest for a group that also includes Statoil ASA 30% and ONGC Videsh Ltd. 30%. The well is the first of three the group plans to drill on the six contiguous blocks it holds offshore between Havana and Matanzas.
The Scarabeo-9 semisubmersible will move about 100 miles west-southwest to drill an exploratory well for Petronas of Malaysia and Gazprom of Russia. Petronas and Gazprom have 70% and 30% interests, respectively, in the N44, N45, N50, and N51 blocks.
Then the rig is scheduled to move drill a third exploratory well off the western tip of Cuba, where Petroleos de Venezuela SA holds the N54, N54, N59, and N59 blocks (see map, OGJ, Dec. 11, 2000, p. 42).
Repsol drilled the Yamagua-1 wildcat to 3,410 m in 1,660 m of water on Block N27 in 2004 and said it found “the existence of oil generation in the basin as well as an excellent carbonate complex,” but that well was also a dry hole.
As long as our system rewards an interesting personal narrative over character, achievement or intelligence, we will have a problem with people embellishing their resumes to gain an advantage.
Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren are only the most recent examples.
The yellowed Hawaiian newspaper clipping is good enough for me. Obama is a natural-born American citizen. But to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, the story of a Kenyan birth made a more interesting story than the story of a middle class kid who was raised in Hawaii by his grandparents.
It’s a disease that is especially noticeable in higher education. When my daughter applied to a selective midwestern liberal arts college, we received a copy of a recruiting pamphlet the school published: “Meet the Class of 200X”. It detailed a dozen or so profiles of entering freshmen from the preceding class. It became a running joke in our family.
One kid spent a summer in high school nursing baby wildebeests back to health in the Serengeti.
Another helped his family build a log cabin in Honduras using hand tools only.
Another swam the Amazon while researching tribal music.
At the elite institutions, it’s no longer enough to have high board scores, an impressive high school GPA and a leadership position on the Student Council.
Ya gotta have game. Ya gotta have a narrative. The system knows this, abets it and helps in its manufacture. Nobody audits, nobody checks, because in the end, nobody cares. The school just passes along what it’s been told.
The only people it hurts are the ones that are stupid enough to tell the truth.
We saw it on a small scale with our daughter. While being lauded for her achievements at her graduation from her small private high school, the headmaster told of the hours that Junior had spent volunteering at a retirement home. I wish she had, but it wasn’t really true.
I’m sure there are a lot of kids out there with wonderful stories to tell of overcoming hardship and adversity, or taking on an unusual challenge. But as long as the system rewards stories of an exotic origin, or 1/32 ancestry in an oppressed minority, there will be embellishment.
As I learned in my youth, “The first liar don’t have a chance.”
Vermont is not an oil and gas state. Check that. Vermont is not an oil and gas producing state. According to the state geologist’s website, a total of six wells have been drilled targeting oil and gas since the Green Mountain Boys trod its, uh, green mountains. All of the wells were dry holes, and the last one was drilled in 1984.
But VT is an oil and gas consuming state, to be sure. Just to clarify, Gov. Shumlin is OK with fracking, as long as it’s in OK (or TX, LA, NM, WY, ND, PA, WV, MI, OH, UT, etc.)
I am going to contact my legislator to get a ban on harvesting maple syrup in Louisiana as a kind of retaliation. My Lord, who knows what might happen if you get that sticky, microbe-laden goo in the water supply!
(CNN) Vermont’s governor has signed a bill making it the first U.S. state to ban fracking, the controversial practice to extract natural gas from the ground.
“This is a big deal,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday. “This bill will ensure that we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy.” [Fracking is regulated in every jurisdiction and certainly does not involve injecting “chemicals into groundwater”. — Ed.]
Shumlin said fracking contaminates groundwater and the science behind it is “uncertain at best.” He said he hopes other states will follow Vermont’s lead in banning it.
Gov. Shumlin’s understanding of fracking is the only thing that is “uncertain at best”, but I think even energy advocates like me can live with the fracking ban in Vermont. Next winter, just turn that thermostat up, Governor. Burn, baby, burn!
The good news is that there is someone who is more confused about issues surrounding oil and gas development than Gov. Shumlin: CNN’s own Lizzie O’Leary. As her video accompanying the Vermont article “explains”:
One of the things that oil companies and gas companies and geologists always kind of knew was that there were pockets of oil and natural gas under BIG rock formations, big layers of rock that you couldn’t get at by drilling straight down so this process involves drilling horizontally.
(Cut to image image of a horizontal well. Only it isn’t a horizontal well. It’s a pipeline. Whatever. It’s a big pipe.)
That’s the kind of rock — shale– that you find these oil and gas pockets underneath.
Um, underneath?
The US doesn’t have that much oil or gas if you look at it compared to the rest of the world (sic) and also remember there are a lot of places in the US where you can’t drill for oil and gas; the government only allows it in some places (sic) so they allow fracking in different places than they do, say, traditional oil drilling (sic, sic, sic).
Ay, caramba! You send these people books and they eat them!
Cross-posted at RedState.com.
This week, President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar returned to familiar territory, once again chastising energy companies for maintaining an inventory of undrilled Federal leases.
WASHINGTON – The White House on Tuesday pushed back against the oil and gas industry’s claims that the Obama administration is blocking domestic energy development, releasing a new analysis showing that 46 million acres of federal lands and waters leased for drilling are sitting idle.
According to the Department of Interior report, oil and gas companies are actively drilling or have launched development on less than a third of the 36 million acres they have leased offshore, and on just over half of their onshore leases. …
With gasoline prices and the economy looming large at the ballot box this year, the administration has been emphasizing its commitment to an “all of the above” energy policy and especially touting its support for domestic natural gas production. …
“We continue to make millions of acres … available for safe and responsible domestic energy production on public lands and in federal waters,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a statement. “We also want companies to develop the tens of millions of acres they’ve already leased but have left sitting idle.”
So shut up and drill the leases you already have!
In this post I will try to demonstrate just how disingenuous that position is. Continue reading
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