OK, I am not sure what to make of this, but given the source I would not dismiss it outright:

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

…

“I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,” Dr Mitchell said. 

“It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it. 

“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes - we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit.” 

Here is a shot of Edgar Mitchell on the Moon during his Apollo 14 mission with the legendary Alan Shepard.

Update:  I should address the NASA statement I guess:

In a statement, a spokesman said: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. 

The first comment is a non sequitur: Mitchell is not claiming NASA tracked any UFOs (Roswell was well before NASA even existed). The Military are the ones who sweep the skies today looking for unidentified objects - NASA tracks it’s satellites, it doesn’t sweep the skies looking for unknown objects using tracking resources (they are busy dealing with all of NASA’s missions). Mitchell also specifically quoted military and intelligence groups - NASA is neither. Finally, if this is classified no one is going to admit it openly of course. I have no clue what to make of this, but the NASA comment is interestingly irrelevant to the claims.

If I was really suspicious I would wonder why NASA denied “tracking” UFO’s? What about tracking known off world space vehicles???

Update:  Seems Mitchell has some interesting views on life, universe and everything.

Obama was supposed to get a bit of a bounce from the fawning media coverage surrounding his whirlwind gaffe tour (is everybody’s legs tingling?). But he is not getting anything at all (just check out Gallup and Rasmussen). The fact is the man is bringing tons of money and getting all the positive press he can and he just barely hanging on. Think where he would be if he was getting the normal press scrutiny and donations? Karl over at Protein Wisdom penned a good post today on the phenomena, as people are starting to realize The Messiah is more media fiction than reality.

Throw in the angry democrats from the Clinton side and I am guessing President McCain is going to be taking the oath of office come next January. Of course it is way too early to tell for sure, but as of now things are not looking good for the wonder kid. And if he keeps making stuff up in these pressers things will only get worse for him.

Update:  A WSJ Poll highlights Obama’s fading star as America realizes they need a seasoned leader and not some rock star with swooning groupies:

This is not an American Idol contest, and Obama and the media have forgotten that. Look at those Commander-in-chief numbers! And in a time of war no less.

The liberal SurrenderMedia was so focused on helping the Surrendercrats try and stop the war in Iraq that they ignored all the debate about The Surge and how it really is shorthand (for those simple minds that think in shallow sound bites) for counter-insurgency tactics. All through the first 6 months of the debacle that is the current Democrat Congress’ reign the SurrenderMedia just tuned out what was going on - and now they and the Surrendercrats are shocked that The Surge was more than increasing the troop levels in Iraq.  Here is CNN demonstrating their ignorance as they claim McCain is trying to change the meaning of The Surge:

McCain broadens definition of surge

The Arizona senator told reporters Wednesday afternoon that when he refers to the surge, it encompasses not just the January 2007 increase in troop levels but also the counter-insurgency that started in Iraq’s Al Anbar province months prior.

“A surge is really a counter-insurgency strategy, and it’s made up of a number of components,” McCain said. “This counter-insurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province, relatively on his own.”

For the liberals who have trouble grasping this very important distinction let me point out we could have increased the troop levels, yet had them sitting in bases and not going out into the community to identify willing allies and help them secure areas of Iraq and defeat al-Qaeda. And it is a fact that the effort began in the fall of 2006 in Anbar and created the climate for the Sunni Awakening with was born in Anbar because of the local counter-insurgency “surge” in that province.

I mean really, how thick do you have to be to be liberal?? The SurrenderMedia needs to bone up on terms used in the military so they can understand at least some of what they are trying to report. Otherwise they aren’t reporting, they are showing off how clueless they are - and we see way too much of that already.

Little time for an in depth discussion on the material I found recently, but I do want to get it out for folks to review.

First, there is a conflict brewing between the militant Taliban and the local government and pro-government tribes. The stage is set for a major crackdown by the government as the militant Taliban have grown tired of being controlled and are anxious to begin full Jihad against Afghanistan, NATO, America and now possibly the new Pakistan government.

This article describes a coordinated effort with Saudi Arabia to establish moderate groups in the Pak Tribal Areas. It is quite enlightening.

This article talks about how foreign fighters are entering the region via Iran.

This article discusses how the local government of the North West Frontier Province is standing up and promising to (a) negotiate a peace but (b) meet violence with military action.

This article covers a major US actions in successfully taking out a large number of militants, and capturing a good number too (which will generate intel on future targets no doubt).

This article notes how Pak government forces are massing in the Swat region of the NWFP, portending a coming clash with the militants in that area.

If I get a chance I will try and update this later with any breaking news out today.

Update: More news coming out of the region today.

This article notes recent Pak military actions in the NWFP near the Afghan border, which pushed out the Taliban.

This article reports on the capture of a very senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan’s Helmund Province (more intelligence forthcoming no doubt).

This article outlines how the Taliban have increased their suicide bombing activities in Pakistan using young men and boys as their weapon delivery system.  This is not sitting well on the Pakistan public.

It is now established that al Qaeda introduced suicide bombing in Pakistan. Such desperate acts of violence were previously unknown in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even Taliban did not use human bodies as weapons against their rivals - the Northern Alliance. It is also claimed by the militants that their targets are the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their objective is only to expel what they call foreign occupation forces from Afghanistan and prevent any government in Pakistan from pursuing a pro-US policy. However, this is not their real agenda. Their real agenda is to prevent the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan from exercising their democratic right of electing a government of their free choice. The militants have openly declared that their ultimate aim is to establish in Pakistan and Afghanistan a system of government based on shariat as defined by them. The most deplorable aspect of the militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the use of our young generation in this bloody war. This generation is our most precious asset and we should condemn, discourage and oppose all such activities that are promoting such evil things.

Echos of an Awakening it would seem to me.

I have been watching the Cult of The COLB for weeks now as they flounder about, doing more to prove the Obama COLB image is probably a scan of a legitimate COLB than not (my posts are here). The latest gasp from the Cult of The COLB was an apparent mismatch in the format layovers between sample COLBs and the BHO COLB.

Now someone has gone out and attempted to verify the findings and has discovered the baseline image used to conclude a forgery is itself messed up - in alignment of course. You can see the results for yourself, but it seems Pam’s ‘expert’ messed up his control image and created a false result. So what’s up with that?

Reader Sally Vie pointed me to this Washington Post editorial which is noting the obvious - Obama is as oblivious to the opinions of world leaders and American leaders as he has been oblivious to the reality on the ground in Iraq:

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama’s own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq’s principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the dramatic turnaround in U.S. fortunes, “does not want a timetable,” Mr. Obama reported with welcome candor during a news conference yesterday. In an interview with ABC, he explained that “there are deep concerns about . . . a timetable that doesn’t take into account what [American commanders] anticipate might be some sort of change in conditions.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama’s. More significant, it would be “a timetable which Iraqis set” — not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki “wants some flexibility in terms of how that’s carried out.”

Is the junior senator from Illinois listening? Of course not, his ego has inflated so far his ears have been clogged and his mind has switched off. Obama is the epitome of the stubborn, bull-headed politician who will say anything without an ounce of candor or sincerity. He just wants all these nuisances (aka experts) to just shut up and follow his orders. America is noticing, and I expect Obama will actually see a drop in his support after his dismal road trip to the Middle East.

The Messiah is getting board with the masses.

I know we have to bail out the mortgage giants who couldn’t operate on government subsidized money, but I have one condition to it all: The top managers are booted and THEIR retirement plans annulled. No Golden Parachutes - only the Led Zeppelin. If the US Taxpayer has to come in and fix the mismanagement then there should be some punishment. What do you folks think?

Seems the rock solid evidence of a forgery is not so rock solid all of a sudden - with new data coming to light supporting the information on the Obama COLB. TexasDarling is the one eating the crow on this one, but at least she/he has the integrity to post the data and admit the whole COLB thing was a waste of time (H/T Reader Kathie):

Based on all the research and analysis to date, here is what I believe today, not to be accepted as fact by anyone who wants to believe something else:

1. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, the hospital still unknown for some reason, on Aug. 4, 1961. A birth announcement in the newspaper has been found by one of our researchers …

…

Hi, I’ve talked to the Department of Vital Records and the Honolulu Advertiser.In 1961, the hospitals would take their new birth certificates to Vital Records. At the end of the week, Vital Records would post a sheet that for the news paper to pick up that contained births, deaths, marriages and divorces. The Advertiser routinely printed this information in their Sunday edition. This is not a paid announcement that his grandmother could arrange. This is information that comes from Vital Records - we know this because this particular section reflects those records.

Wonder how Techdud (yep, that is a deliberate typo) and Pam Geller are doing? Are they preparing some crow or building a wall of denial? Whatever, I did find this comment on the irrefutable evidence report quite telling:

OK, I considered it.

a) No matter how someone presents themselves an “expert in forgeries” - to suggest you can determine something a forgery by comparing (1) different documents (2) printed on different printers and then (3) scanned in on different scanners (4) at different resolutions before being (5) saved at different resolutions

…is RIDICULOUS.

It’s like diagnosing illness from TV with the sound off. I don’t know how to get more clear about it - you, Techdude, nor anyone else aren’t even in direct contact with the evidence.

And further - you don’t even have any evidence that any “crime” has even occurred! You just want to believe there is a crime, because you don’t like him - for reasons we all know you decided long before there was any thought that his birth certificate might not be accurate.

b) The differences that are being suggested as “proof of forgery” are *exactly the kind of differences* you can expect from, you guessed it,

(1) different documents (2) printed on different printers and then (3) scanned in on different scanners (4) at different resolutions before being (5) saved at different resolutions.

See?

But you want to believe you have found something. Well alright then! Have at it.

I believe that was the point I was making - this person just did it quite succinctly.

As a follow up to my post this morning, where I can tell Obama has just lost the election with his loose lips comments in the ME on Iraq, folks have been pushing the servers at YouTube with vignettes catching Obama is out and out lies. One of the better ones came from Hannity & Colmes. Let’s ‘read Obama’s lips’ and see how easily he just makes up lies to America about what he said and stood for:

Well, well. Congress learned something shattering today, which will have the Church of Al Gore/IPCC running in fear of their lost credibility. It has been scientifically demonstrated that 70% of the Global Warming in the last century (and cooling in the last decade) is due to the Pacific Ocean Oscillations, not CO2:

One necessary result of low climate sensitivity is that the radiative forcing from greenhouse gas emissions in the last century is not nearly enough to explain the upward trend of 0.7 deg. C in the last 100 years. This raises the question of whether there are natural processes at work which have caused most of that warming.

On this issue, it can be shown with a simple climate model that small cloud fluctuations assumed to occur with two modes of natural climate variability — the El Nino/La Nina phenomenon (Southern Oscillation), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — can explain 70% of the warming trend since 1900, as well as the nature of that trend: warming until the 1940s, no warming until the 1970s, and resumed warming since then.

The gentlemen making this claim is the lead investigator one of NASA’s flagship Earth Observing Observatories (H/T Ice Cap). I have the honor of working on this mission on the periphery (Aqua), it is operated out of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

I posted on some of these effects yesterday. What this means is no matter how much you change your CO2 footprint, how much you try to be CO2 green, no matter how much liberal governments tax you - you cannot save the planet from its natural cycles. Remember, the draconian actions being proposed by the Church of Al Gore/IPCC, which will run into the tens of trillions of dollars and cripple the world economies, is only meant to reduce today’s CO2 levels by a fraction.

Say they reduced the CO2 25%. Say the CO2 is the driver for the remaining 30% of Global Warming (which it cannot be, but let’s just be only half as ridiculous as the IPCC), then all that effort would only impact 7.5% of the forces driving the global climate. The other 92.5% would roll on, impervious to the effort. And since CO2 is not 100% of the remaining 30% of the equation (more like 10%), a more realistic expectation is that all the suffering that would go into dropping CO2 levels by 25% would result in a less than 1% change in the forces driving our climate.

In other words, you might as well light a match to all that money because it would have no effect, you would be throwing it away on a fool’s errand.

Must be the week to bust myths, because this means all those efforts to drive down CO2 emissions are a scientifically proven waste of time. I see a lot of Green turning to Red here soon (from the embarrassment of being so wrong).

Update: I like this part of the testimony where the Priests from the Church of Al Gore/IPCC did not even bother to look at this results:

While other researchers need to further explore and validate my claims, I am heartened by the fact that my recent presentation of these results to an audience of approximately 40 weather and climate researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder last week (on July 17, 2008) led to no substantial objections to either the data I presented, nor to my interpretation of those data.

And, curiously, despite its importance to climate modeling activities, no one from Dr. Kevin Trenberth’s facility, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), bothered to drive four miles down the road to attend my seminar, even though it was advertised at NCAR.

Now isn’t that a piece of work?

Update: And for those still thinking the world is melting here are some interesting pictures comparing the Arctic Snow-Ice levels from this week, last year and the year before. Clearly we see that there is significantly more snow and ice at the North Pole than in 2007 (click to go to larger original).

Of the 3 years 2006 had the most snow/ice cover, 2007 the least. 2008 looks to be closer to 2006 given how little ocean in the clear north of Russia. But 2006 had thinner coverage in these areas (thin shown by red) than 2008 (thick shown by purple). So it would seem the sky is not falling - yet.

It’s still way too early to watch polls, so take this with a grain of salt. But two state polls recently out show movement away from Obama, and they may be signaling seriously bad news for the Waffler-in-Chief with his convention just around the corner. First some news out of the bell-weather state of OH:

ohn McCain has opened a modest lead over Barack Obama in the key swing state of Ohio. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Buckeye State shows McCain attracting 46% of the vote while Obama earns 40%. Last month and the month before McCain held a insignificant one-point lead over Obama.

Seven percent (7%) of voters say they’d prefer a third party candidate over either McCain or Obama and another 7% remain undecided.

When “leaners” are included in the totals, McCain leads Obama 52% to 42%.

Modest lead? Yeah, right. Another poll shows a tight race in MI, which rarely goes for the GOP. Is Obama going to see a bump out of his international travels, or will he hit a ditch?

A must see over at Confederate Yankee!

Pamela is getting it from all sides by real professional document investigators (check out the comments by Furious T).  Some examples:

Folks: I’m in techdude’s industry as well, and you simply cannot do this kind of “forensic” examination on a COPY of a document without having access to the original. In other words, nothing techdude wrote matters at all because he didn’t work with the original document. Period. It is absolutely laughable that we can draw any conclusions from an electronic COPY of a document posted on a third-party website. And I know of no credentialed investigator who would assert otherwise.

Which is why techdude should be vetted, in my opinion. As a matter of professional responsibility, a bold accusation such as this (particularly one based on a COPY of the document in question) should be accompanied by the actual name of the investigator, his license number and the state in which he’s licensed, and the name of his investigative company. Even better would be a list of the cases he’s worked on and/or testifed at trial.

…

My whole point is that I cannot comment on techdude’s “analysis” because he’s not working with an original document. None of what he found matters. It is not, as Pamela claims, “suitable for the courtroom,” again precisely because he did not use an original document. Once again, and I cannot stress this enough, there is no way to determine that Obama’s birth certificate as posted by Kos or the LA Times is a forgery without having access to the original document. And I am personally surprised that any self-professed forensic investigator would say otherwise.

With all due respect, Pamela, you haven’t even begun to investigate this issue. What’s particularly troubling is that there are numerous avenues by which you could attempt to acquire your own copy of the birth certificate. You would require knowledge about Hawaii public records, their storage and delivery, how the Hawaii Department of Health handles requests for certified copies of birth certificates, and the location of archival documents from the town and facility in which Obama was born. There are literally dozens of ways I could determine whether or not Obama was actually born in Oahu, none of which would require document forensics. Again, it’s astounding to me that a self-professed “legal investigator” and “private investigator” would not have exhausted the brick-and-mortar route (a sadly fading enterprise among today’s PIs) before undertaking this highly specious analysis.

Ouch, that pretty much nails the quality level of this supposed report. Just an FYI. BTW - still looking for a COLB circa 2006-2008 with the same green border as seen in the Obama COLB.

I meant to post this a few days ago, but a Rassmussen tracking poll question on who is winning in Iraq has seen huge reversals since last year, when the SurrderMedia and Surrendercrats in Congress were promising certain defeat:

Nearly half of Americans (48%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror, as opposed to 20% who give the nod to the terrorists, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey. These figures reflect a dramatic improvement from a year ago—in July 2007, only 36% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning. An equal number thought the terrorists held the advantage.

The 28-point difference is the most favorable margin recorded by Rasmussen Reports since tracking began in January 2004 and seems to reflect a growing confidence among adults that the tide is turning in Iraq and in the war on terror in general.

But of course, Obama would still prefer we not have succeeded since he still prefers we did not execute The Surge - idjut

For those who wanted to actually compare Obama’s lame views on Iraq to John McCain’s the New York Post has publicized McCain’s opinion piece that the NY Times censored. For the life of me, I can only see one reason the NY Times would try and hide this - it makes Obama look so damn bad:

AS he took command in Iraq in January 2007, Gen. David Petraeus called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation is full of hope - but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent.

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on Jan. 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Sen. Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted. Perhaps he’s unaware that the US embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.”

…

Sen. Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. Indeed, he’s emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I’m dismayed that he never talks about winning the war - only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will - and a triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us.

Obama ‘unaware’ - seems to be today’s theme (see my previous post on The Clueless One).