The Marriage Whisperer: 5 Sex Mistakes Women Make !

One of the joys - and the traps - of being in a long-term relationship is that you get very comfortable with each other, whether it's on the couch, in the kitchen or in the bedroom. You know what your partner likes and you don't have to quietly stress about the possibility of getting it all wrong. And that's great when you're choosing a DVD together, or cooking his favourite meal, but when it comes to getting your ''sexy mojo'' on, being able to fact track your communications is not always a good thing. Not only can it make our sex lives something far less than exciting, but we can develop bad habits that are repeated over the years. Instead discover simple ways you can avoid getting in a rut with your partner. Here's how:

Sex Mistake #1:   NOT INITIATING SEX WITH YOUR PARTNER

For most women, initiating sex is just not something you do - it falls into the Man's Job category, along with checking the oil in the car and mowing the grass. Whether it's because you don't want to come across too pushy or unladylike, or you are accustomed to being tapped on the shoulder or other body part by your ever-keen partner, initiating sex is not something many women do often. But give it a try - men like to be pursued just as much as women do, so he'll appreciate that you're interested an your advances will make him feel prized.

Sex Mistake #2:   OVER-THINKING WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE - BECAUSE HE ISN'T !

A body that had borne children is a beautiful thing (yes, stretch marks and all) - sure, it isn't the body you probably flaunted when you first met, but neither is his! Being naked is a habit we fall out of as we age - between our need for sleep and young children who wake early, intimate acts tend to take place under the covers in the dark of night.

Even if you can't bring yourself to be completely naked, try to relax about the bits your partner will see (and they will only be bits!). Flesh is flesh and if you truly do want to get out of bad habits in the bedroom, you need to be able to relax enough to enjoy it and not worry about any of the wobbly bits. And remember this....men are notoriously unobservant! Remember the haircut you spent a fortune on that he didn't notice for days?  How likely is it that he's going to notice that your skin is not quite as tight as it was ten years ago?


Sex Mistake #3:   BELIEVING HE'S ALWAYS UP FOR SEX

Despite what we are led to believe, men's libidos aren't permanently set on GO (unless he's regularly visiting a Chinese restaurant specializing in animal's genitals - See Previous Posting). Sure, teenage boys are mostly ready and willing anytime, anywhere, anyhow, but grown men are a different story. The daily pressures of everyday life - work, finances, family obligations - can have a big impact on your man's libido, so there will inevitably be times when he just wants to go to bed to sleep and noting more.

His lack of desire should not be read less as a personal rejection (yes, he still love you) and more as a normal fluctuation of libido - after all, how much do you feel like having sex after a big day of kid-wrangling? And that you sill love your partner goes without saying.

Sex Mistake #4:   NOT GIVING HIM GUIDANCE - HE'S NOT A MIND-READER !

Many women don't like to talk directly about sex - but you're unlikely to have a satisfying sexual relationship unless you communicate clearly with your partner. You are not a passive vessel so take responsibility for your own pleasure by telling him what you like (or don't like) and you will go a long way to having a sex life that works for you both.

Men usually like to please...so a little tactful direction will pay off big dividends in the bedroom next time. Just be tactful about delivering your message - try not to hurt his feelings, particularly if you are asking him to stop doing something that he's been doing for years, under the assumption that you liked it.

Sex Mistake  #5:   STICKING WITH THE FAMILIAR

Familiar is comforting - but it's not very exciting. After years of doing the same things the same way, sex can become more of a ritual than most of us like to admit. Try spicing things up occasionally by doing things slightly off-beat, change the routine, play a sex game ( book on right ) or create a fantasy scenario. And don't wait for your partner to suggest it - you can take the lead here!

And remember, if he suggests doing things differently, don't take it personally. Trying new things in the bedroom or, for that matter, any room in the house doesn't mean he's unhappy with your sex life. it merely means that variety is the spice of life. So start cooking up an erotic feast!

The Way I See It.....the actual ''spice of life'' means that some foods can actually play a part prior to foreplay.  Of course, oysters come to mind with a drop of champers, but if that's not your fancy the super-sensuous chili-chocolate is right up there for starters. Bananas and Avocados can assist in sexual stamina, while Asparagus offers lots of folic acid that increases histamine production which makes reaching orgasm easier for both sexes, while Figs and Nutmeg are powerful stimulants to sexual appetite. Ginger gets some love in the Kama Sutra for its ability to stimulate blood flow which makes the erogenous zones much more sensitive. Celery is a super-food when it come to getting you in the mood. It contains a male hormone androsterone, which acts as a pheromone, it arouses females sexually. They can very well be your recipe for loving-making success.

One Man's Meat is Another Man's Viagara !

Editor's Note:  I have looked forward to doing a few posts in a lighter vein, here's my chance. Excuse the Yuk-Factor!


Holding aloft a half-metre long horse penis, chief Xiao Shan confidently declares ''it is the most delicious'' of the ingredients in a Chinese hotpot of male animal genitalia, one of the many Asian remedies to boost the libido. ''The (horse) texture and the flavour are both very good. It is also good for one's health,'' says Xiao, who has been preparing male organs since he was 13, using skills handed down in his family for several generations.

Penises and testicles from donkey, goat, bull, deer and dog, the other contributors to this $US200 feast, are laid out on a kitchen table, like a sorry row of odd-sized sausages, and mixed vegetables, all waiting to be sliced up by his looming intimidating cleaver. It's enough to make a grown man wince! Sourced from some of Asia's wildest and most rugged terrains, the organs are chopped before being arranged on a bed of lettuce around an elaborate glass stand, more akin to something that might display fairy cakes or scones in a high-class cake shop.

Li Yanzhi, manager of the Chaoyang branch proudly says that the unique dishes at Guolizhuang, China's only penis speciality restaurant chain, are popular among business parties and government officials who are used to regularly bragging, ''Mine is bigger than yours.'' (whether it be their bank balances or their employment force). ''The vast majority of customers are male,'' she added, with many of them searching for increased potency and sexual prowess at the restaurant, which also serves organs from ram, yak, seal and snake -- which have two penises each.''

It seems Chinese people believe they can replenish different parts of their bodies by using the same ingredients, which, Li continues, ''means whatever you eat is nutritious for that part of the body. Eating penises and testicles can make a man stronger and enjoy a wonderful sex life. Potent in bed''  Of course, there is no orthodox scientific evidence for such claims, but across Asia there are various versions that come with similar boasts. (As long as your not looking for a cure for haemorrhoids!)

In Pakistan's business capital Lahore, Takatak -- a dish whose name is derived from the sound of the clanging of knives used to make it -- consists of chopped goat and sheep hearts, brains, kidneys and testes. ''Usually, men eat it so that they stay strong and virile,'' said Faher Hayat, a chef whose roadside restaurant serves the offal with onions, tomatoes, ginger, peppers and coriander.

On the side of traffic-clogged roads in Jakarta's old town, men looking to improve their sexual performance flock to stalls to drink snake blood. Customers pick out a snake, which go for 70,000 rupiah ($6) each, before a vendor carefully hauls out the selected serpent, hacks off the head with a meat cleaver and grips the snake's headless body vertically to allow the blood to drip in a teacup or glass. A spoonful of honey is added to sweeten the bitter mixture, seen not so much as a virility booster but also as a remedy for diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments.

At a Beijing penis restaurant, customer Wei Jungsheng, 47, is a devoted believer. ''It does work very well,'' says the construction businessman. ''After I took it, my hair stopped falling out, and now I feel very energetic the whole day. Before I needed to sleep at noon to not get tired, now I don't need to anymore. Every aspect of my life has become fantastic!'' (Except now he has an urge to eat mice!) The restaurant's nutritionist says that its most popular dish is deer, seen as particularly effective due to each breeding male having scores of sexual partners. ''One deer penis has the same potency as three bull penises,'' says Du Yuemei, who goes to each table to enlighten guests on the supposed health benefits of the dishes and regale them with tales of the animal's vigour in the wild.

A Stag with his Harem

With a hint of a smile, she admits to being asked embarrassing questions by some customers, but is immune to attempts to make her feel uncomfortable. ''I know my job is kind of unusual, but it makes me feel good though, that I am involved in dietary therapy for men. It's very unique,'' she adds, before curtseying and leaving the room, a signal for the waitress to begin placing the ingredients into the boiling soup, made up of deer heart, duck stock, assorted penises and Chinese medicine. The first to emerge -- steaming hot and slightly shrivelled compared to their earlier appearance - are the goat and bull penises. The goat's was rubbery and slightly stringy while the bull's curled into a squid-like ring, but with  a firm texture not easy to swallow (gulp!).

The male members were elevated slowly, ritual-like, out of the pot. Both the donkey and horse penises were presented in bacon-like strips, but the flavour of the donkey was mild, while the intense, meaty horse was easily the most distinctive ingredient of the meal. In contrast, the testicles had a lighter texture, varying from somewhere between tofu and pate. When the deer penises appeared, it was slightly frayed and another rubbery offering, while the wild Russian dog has a spicy, almost zesty flavour, despite looking like slices of undercooked pig-skin. It was the only imported dish on the menu and the only animal to have a penis bone which was ceremonially presented in a red gift box to the host at the end of the meal for good fortune.

The Way I See It.....the oriental part of the world has developed some strange and often repugnant eating habits, especially in the male of the species, that continue to be based on the unproven idea that eating an animal's innards relates to the healing that person's ailing organ or glandular function.
Aside from a practical approach of eating insects, from spiders to scorpions, for their protein content, the killing of larger species for a ''libido hit'' is downright pathetic.

And now I've come across evidence that Chinese people are known to be eating babies and this news has been circulating through the internet and is shocking the world. An email report received by the Seoul Times confirmed that information with several vivid and appalling pictures of embryos and foetuses made into a soup for human consumption that I have seen.  The report went on. A town in the southern province of Canton (Guangdong) is now the focus. It is revealed that the inhabitants are enjoying baby herbal soup to increase overall health and stamina and, of course, the power of sexual performance in particular. It seems the Chinese ''one-child'' policy is producing a lucrative market in aborted children. Sick Bastards !!!

State-Of-Emergency ! Australia Burns !

A State-of-Emergency was called yesterday by the Premier of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell as 65 Bush (forest) fires were still out of control across the state. There is a 300 km long front from Lithgow into the Blue Mountains threatening more hilltop towns. Already 210 homes have been destroyed with only 50% of the fire devastated areas assessed. The Australian Fire and Emergency Service says it is the worst Bush fire season since the 1960's. It seems  above-average rainfall of the preceding three years, which contradicted the diehard warmists predictions of permanent drought, caused a heavy grass fuel load throughout the grassland areas of the state, in conjunction with gale force winds, has allowed the scene to be set for a conflagration.

Flap, flap, flap. See the global warming vultures over the NSW fires, searching for a feed. The biggest is ratbag deputy Greens leader, Adam Bandt, who at the height of the fires on Friday urged us to read his latest green sermon. Showing a picture of the smoke haze over Sydney and linking to his article in the far-Left Guardian, he tweeted: ''Why Tony Abbott's plan means more bushfires for Australia and more pictures like this of Sydney.'' Click his link and you find Bandt claiming that ''by repealing the carbon tax, Tony Abbott is failing to protect his people.'' Worse, even, Bandt claims Abbott, the volunteer firefighter, is actually starting fires: ''Donning a volunteer firefighter uniform for the media is a con if you're also helping start fires that put people's lives in danger.'' says Bandt, who never fought a fire in his life.

Adam Bandt is not just an alarmist but a hypocrite, having three years ago preached that ''trying to turn a tragedy so quickly into some kind of perceived political advantage was outrageous.'' He is also deceptive, given that the cause of the fires ferocity, as I mentioned, is not global warming, but the heavy rains promoting a huge growth of grasses. The must bear the distinct burden of culpability in this ongoing tragedy with their constant refusal to allow state governments to carry on with yearly back-burning the undergrowth in state forests.

Another warmist vulture flaps around the terrible NSW fires. It's tragic that the global warmists clinging to their shredded beliefs have now become the ''deniers''. John Conner, the CEO of the Climate Institute, who should know better by now, writes,  It's time to up to real and growing climate change risks and impacts, such as the growing severity and frequency of our bushfires. Our national, state and individual interests depend on better preparation for growing climate change risks which threaten personal health and safety as well as economic stability and our fragile environment.''  (sic!)

Peter  FitzSimons

And here's an unexpected warmist that's come out of the closet; Sydney Morning Herald columnist, historian and general wiseass Peter FitzSimons (photo right) putting his inappropriate comments on Twitter. ''All strength to the firefighters. And who should be ''repenting''? The Prime Minister!  Broadly, the increase in cyclones, bushfires, droughts, floods, the lot, is entirely consistent with the model of Climate Change.''  Oh Peter, you are so delusional! The obvious points are that global temperatures have been flat for 15+ years, that Australian policies would make no difference to them, that the NSW fires are just like the ones we've had so often. The claims that FitzSimons makes turn out to be false. More Cyclones?  NO.  More bushfires? In fact the deadliest bushfires in NSW all occurred decades ago. More Droughts? NO (says latest IPCC report). More Floods? Little evidence (IPCC says again), ''The lot''? Again, the IPCC can't find it.

The Way I See It.....fossil evidence suggests that fire was a part of the Australian landscape long before the existence of human beings. It appears that, with the arrival of humans over 50,000 years ago the frequency of fire may have increased. Aboriginal people used fire skilfully....to encourage grassland development in some areas and also increase the abundance of plant foods and animals. With the arrival of Europeans the fire regimes changed. Fires are now less frequent, but when they do occur the are more intense and often cause a lot of damage as more people love to live in heavily wooded neighbourhoods.

Today, Australia's emissions are 1.5% of the global total. If we reduced that to zero overnight, it would make no difference at all to the climate. As it is, we are only planning to reduce by 5% by 2020, or in other words, 0.075% of global emissions, when the major emitters are doing close to nothing by comparison. And ''Watermelon'' Bandt thinks that will make a difference to bushfire frequency or intensity? Idiotic statements like this will ensure the Greens are consigned to the sewer of Australian political history.

Why is Nobody Talking About America's $123 Trillion in Unfunded Liabilities ?

Most Americans know that their nation is spending more than it is taking in (the deficit). Though many on the Left do not seem to understand (or care about) the consequences of out-of-control spending, most Americans do know that the nation has more than $16.5 trillion in debt -- or nearly $53,000 of debt for every man, woman and child. A shocking update to that amount happened three days ago when U.S. debt jumped a $328 BILLION, the first day the federal government was able to borrow money under the deal President Obama and Congress sealed last week. The debt now equals $17.075 TRILLION, according to figures the Treasury Department posted online on Friday. The giant jump came because the government was replenishing its stock of ''extraordinary measures'' -- the federal funds it borrowed from over the pat five months as it tried to avoid bumping into the debt ceiling. Even Valdimir Putin has come out expressing dismay at how Obama is handling the American financial debt situation.

While $17 Trillion of debt is clearly unsustainable, what is even more alarming is what the media is not talking about: The fact that, in addition to the $17 Trillion of debt, every man, woman and child in America also is on the hook for $400,000 in unfunded liabilities --or, over $1 million for every household!! Though their numbers appear to vary slightly (not including the unfunded liabilities of ObamaCare, for example), Wall Street Journal writers Chris Cox and Bill Archer explain the lack of knowledge about the unfunded liabilities as: ''The actual liabilities of the federal government -- including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employee's future retirement benefits -- already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP.''

The expense of Medicare and Social Security are alone $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. They continue; Why haven't Americans heard about the titanic $86.8 Trillion liability from these programs? One reason: The actual figures do not appear in black and white on any balance sheet.''  To be sure, the nation's fiscal problems are a bi-partisan issue, caused by years of buying votes through ''entitlements'' (which really are handouts) among specific constituencies. As a result, those constituencies are now entitled to the benefits that have yet to be paid for.

Usually Congress sets a borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, that caps the total amount the government can be in the red. But under the terms the Republicans foolishly set, Congress set a deadline instead of a dollar cap. That means debt will rise by as much as the ''drunken-sailor'' in the White House spends between now and the Feb. 7 deadline. Judging by the rate of increase over the past five months, that could end up meaning Congress just granted Mr Obama a debt increase of $700 billion more! Republicans initially sought to attach strings to the debt increase, but surrendered not realizing they had the strength of the 14h Amendment behind them, instead settling on a bill that reopened the government and included some special earmark projects, but didn't include any spending cuts.

The Way I See It.....journalist Mark Steyn is right in rebuking Congress as horribly dysfunctional, and adds that, ''President Obama is even worse: incompetent and wilfully ignoring the constitution.'' So today, while those politicians ignore the huge elephant in the room and try to get a diehard socialist to do more than nibble at the fat that has become the shameful national budget, no one wants to deal with the real issue at hand.  So America, your politicians in Washington are giving you no Hope and little Change in the direction that will enslave future generations with the costs of various entitlement programs. Perhaps it's time you raise it to their attention -- seriously.  Maybe it's time for a Tea Party V.2 ?

UPDATE:  As of 31/10,  each U.S. taxpayer has a federal debt-liability of 1.1 million....and rising.

 

A Warming Planet is Helping Humans !

You wouldn't believe that title statement if you went by a leaked draft report by the infamous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change peddling this monstrous scare. It's amazing that here we are in third week in October and the disgraceful alarmism continues. Last month the IPCC begrudgingly admitted that there was no warming over the past 15+ years and predicted a mild warming over the next 100 years. Well, yes you may argue, but what about all the weather disasters caused by climate change? Entirely mythical so far! The IPCC report has been admirably frank about this, reporting ''no significant observed trends in tropical cyclone frequency over the past century and lack of evidence in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms. They said their additional warnings of rising seas, melting ice, devastating droughts  were far too extreme. (See October 4th posting IPCC Now Cooling on Warming!)

Yet in conjunction with Australia's new-fired Climate Commissioner and warmist fanatic, Tim Flannery, they forecast that thousands of people expected to die in Sydney from heat that will triple (!) by the end of the century. Another 800,000 people will fall ill from contaminated food and water -- while more than 270,000 homes will be a risk of collapsing into the ocean from rising sea levels. The unreleased draft report also warns that $226 billion worth of coastal assets including homes, rail and road infrastructure are a risk with just a 1.1 meter rise in sea levels. This conflicts with the latest IPCC report projecting sea level rise this century of between 26 and 80 centimetres. And yet the respected National Geographic has on the front cover of their September issue showing a half-submerged Statue of Liberty and touting an article on the devastating world-wide rise in sea level.

Let's get the facts:  Sydney residents 87 years from now will be much richer and more technologically advanced, and therefore more able to afford life-saving air-conditioning if even this preposterous prediction eventuates. Suggestions that another 800,000 a year of Sydney's residents will be sickened by bad food and water s also preposterous. No democracy will our wealth would tolerate that kind of sickness, that's similar to Third World problems. And no country with the technology we have by 2100, would allow 270,000 homes to collapse into the sea. Low-lying Holland doesn't; we won't. Over decades, many assets at risk will inevitably need replacing, and adaptations to meet expected changes in sea level will be made to avoid losses.

Let's get a reality check:  Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. Sure, there is a slow warming trend (the accent on slow) as the earth is coming out a the Little Ice Age of the 1550-1850s. Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends and calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2 C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote the paper). The latest estimates of climate sensitivity he suggests that such temperatures may no be reached till the end of the century....if at all.

Now Prof Tol has a new paper which concludes that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century. By how much?  He calculates by 1.4% of global economic output, rising to 1.5% by 2025. The chief benefits of moderate warming include: saving at least four times more lives than it costs, given that cold weather is deadlier than hot; lower energy costs, better agricultural yields; fewer droughts, a richer biodiversity. The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants made carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats. As it is an extremely rare trace gas in the atmosphere -- less than 0.04% of the air on average -- plants struggle to absorb enough of it.

The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03% to now, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31% of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener (See July 8 posting: Deserts are Greening from the Rising in CO2!). It's showing that Old Mother Earth is returning to her more likeable self. This was just revealed in some retreating glaciers in Alaska that unveiled a frozen forest - remnants of a time when the climate was warmer and more-human friendly. The Mendenhall Glacier's recession (above) is revealing the remains of an ancient forest that have remained frozen beneath the ice for up to 1200 years ago called the Medieval Warming. That coincides with what I've mentioned in previous posting in the past 3 years, that at the time of the VIKINGS in 900AD the temperature was 3 degrees warmer than it is today and they managed very well in their exploring, raping and pillaging activities. Greenland was green then too.



Alaska's Frozen Lost Forest

The Way I See It.....our Earth has taken the human race on a rollercoaster ride of climate change that has shown how resilient we all are to adapt to her whims, but now climate policy is already doing harm. Building wind turbines, growing biofuels and substituting wood for coal in some power stations -- all policies designed explicitly to ''fight'' climate change -- have had negligible effects on carbon dioxide emissions. But they have driven people into fuel poverty, made many industries uncompetitive, driven up food prices, accelerated the destruction of forests, while wind turbines have killed rare birds of prey and divided communities.

To name just name some of the worst effects, how's this? It is estimated that globally nearly 200,000 people are dying every year, because the idiot Greens have us turning 5% of the world's grain crop into motor fuel instead of food (remember the Mexican Taco Riots?) and that pushes people into malnutrition and death. Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster, states that 65 people a day are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly, yet the British government, following David Cameron's wishes to make his government ''the Greenist ever'', is planning to double the cost of electricity by 2030 ! 

Why Britain has Sent an Armada to Spain ???



Britain and Spain have been in a daily war of words for the past few months now over the outpost of Gibraltar, with the European Commission called in to investigate Spain's recent border crackdown that is punishing British tourists with excessive fees. What looked like a minor fishing dispute now has Spain questioning Britain's territorial control over Gibraltar -- and Britain dispatching a fleet of ships to defend it.

The unusual tensions could escalate beyond heated rhetoric. The European Commission can adjudicate the legal issues and ignore political posturing, but Argentina is hatching plans to partner with Spain to question British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar and bring a joint case for sovereignty before the UN International Court of Justice. It is likely more of an attempt at political theatre to distract their citizens from domestic problems than a serious scheme to wrest control of British territories. A red flag went up in February, 2012 when Spain's new conservative government, led by Mariano Rajoy, called on the British authorities to agree to talks on Gibraltar's sovereignty.

Then in May, 2012 there was a clash between police boats from the two sides over fishing rights in the waters around Gibraltar. In August, Spain warned that it will defend its fishermen in the contested waters. By November, Britain summoned the Spanish ambassador to London to complain about ''serious incursions'' in the waters off Gibraltar. Then in July of this year simmering tensions were quickly reignited when Gibraltar dropped 70 ''reef-building'' concrete blocks off the western end of its airport runway citing the belief that the Spanish have overfished the waters, causing damage to the marine ecosystem. Yet Spain believes that the law of the sea gives its fishermen the right to fish in Mediterranean waters with no restrictions.

On August 4, Spain made a defiant move that incensed Britain. The Spanish conceived of new border controls that included more checks and a $67 fee for each vehicle that entered or left Spain. Since numerous British citizens are on August holiday and love to visit Spanish beaches, the border controls were seen as unfair. Spain claimed it imposed the measures to counter high rates of smuggling and money-laundering in Gibraltar. Britain said the border regulations violated European Union law regarding ''right of free movement.'' Gibraltar chief minister, Fabian Picardo, told British reporters on August 17 that ''hell will freeze over before the government of Gibraltar moves any of those blocks.''  The next day, hell really broke loose!

The Spanish Armada  #2

Between 40 and 50 vessels, mostly fishing boats, sailed near Gibraltar's artificial reef to protest the crackdown on fishing. This demonstration occurred the same day that a handful of British warships, led by the HMS Westminister ( below ), arrived. The warships quickly set up a cordon and corralled the Spanish ''armada'' and pushed them away from the reef area and maintained the ships were here for a planned exercise. Spain viewed the action as a provocative show of force. The next day (Aug 19th), the European Commission inserted itself into the dispute, promising to send a team to investigate the border measures and ordering Spain not to charge people fees to cross its borders.

By the end of August, British Prime Minister, David Cameron met Fabian Picardo in Downing Street to declare to defend Gibraltar in the ongoing dispute, saying Britain ''would always stand up for the territory and its people.'' That afternoon, Spanish police unions organised a demonstration at the border in protest at the verbal abuse and physical abuse inflicted on Guardia Civil officers by angry commuters held in long queues, up to 8 hours, to cross into Spain. Police unions called on the Spanish government to ''defend their interests and support them in their work. Staff from the police and the Guardia Civil were only acting in accordance with the law.''  Cameron countered with calling the checks ''disproportionate and politically motivated.''  Mr Picardo thanked the Prime Minister and the Foreign Sceretary, Willian Hague, for their support.

HMS  Westminster off of Gibraltar

UPDATE: Yesterday, Tory MP David Morris, called for a new law on British waters around the territory that would impose a formal three-mile boundary of the territorial waters around Gibraltar. He said that international law dictated claims for territorial waters could extend for up to 12 miles. His proposal for a new Gibraltar Maritime Protection Bill came after Spain had warned that it is ready to impose a new border tax, close its airspace to planes using the territory's airport and investigate the affairs of Gibraltarians with Spanish economic interests.

The Way I See It.....what started as a manageable mini-crisis over fishing rights has ballooned into a multinational dispute over customs and border policy, territorial rights, sovereignty, law of the sea, environmentalism and international security. For now, Britain, Spain and Gibraltar must sort through the issues and determine whether the disagreements are of a legal or political nature. Legal issues can be mediated by intergovernmental organizations. Political issues can be mitigated by simply abandoning nationalistic rhetoric. In the meantime, the English Armada stays put.

Sovereignty regarding Gibraltar is pretty much no-negotiable. Britain is unlikely to change its interpretation of the original Treaty of Utrecht signed in 1713. Spain has limited claims on what goes on inside Gibraltar, and as the language of the treaty clearly states, it ceded the territory to Britain ''in perpetuity.'' The Strait of Gibraltar is a key strategic shipping lane and obvious maritime chock point. It is paramount for these staunch allies to ensure that this diplomatic row does not evolve into something that could endanger maritime commerce in the Mediterranean Sea. As long as cooler heads prevail in the coming weeks, these disputes can be navigated sufficiently to deescalate tensions.

When Does Barack Obama Ever Intend to Cut Debt ?

When Mr Barack Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion. This week it hit $16.7 trillion -- an increase of 57% !  In the same time frame under President George Bush, total federal debt rose 38%. Under President Bill Clinton it rose 32% . But the debt is still sure to go up, not down, for now as the Republicans offer an olive branch to the recalcitrant Obama.

House Republicans leaders said on Friday they will offer a temporary increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with the President on longer-term ''pressing problems,'' but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 12th day. In a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit for six weeks, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, ''What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.'' He described the offer as a ''good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he's demanding in order to have these conversations begin and a step toward a fiscal truce.''

Of course, the mainstream media has decided who its villain is. Media Research Center, a conservative media-watchdog group, found that in 19 stories in the two weeks leading to the shutdown, CBS, ABC, and NBC blamed Republicans 21 times for failing to reach a budget agreement, both parties four times, and didn't once blame the spend-thrift Democrats. In the 14 other instances, the reports blamed nobody. So it's not surprising that the overwhelming tendency of the leftist media to blame the Republicans alone.

In fact, I remind you that there are two sides to this dispute as any rational person would expect. You see, the reality is that both parties are responsible for getting to this political impasse. Remember, Americans chose a divided government in 2010 and again in 2012, electing House Republicans as a check on the Democrats whose undiluted liberalism (read...socialism) alarmed millions of voters when they ran the entire government in 2009-2010 and spent like ''drunken sailors.'' GOP Senator Ted Cruz was criticized for his strategy to make defunding ObamaCare a requirement of funding the rest of the government. He and his allies know that Mr Obama can never agree to that, and even millions of Americans who oppose ObamaCare don't agree with his shutdown ultimatum.

Senator Ted Cruz  ----  & --- Rep John Boehner

Yet it takes two to tangle, and Mr Obama is as much to blame for the partisan pileup as Mr Cruz. He refuses to negotiate at all over an increase in the federal debt limit, claiming this has never happened. Like so much that comes out of his mouth.....he knows this is false. Clinton had a similar problem with the Republicans in 1995-96 with a threat of a shutdown and being the diplomat that he is, he massaged the congressmen's egos and resolved the crisis. Not so with this self-centered, aloof president who has never had a urge to get into backslapping and genuinely meeting with the opposition.

Mr Obama also refuses to bend on any part of that abortion called ObamaCare -- except when he unilaterally announces bending in his own political interest. He decided on his own, and contrary to the plain text of the law, to delay for a year the business mandate to provide insurance for employees. Yet now he'd rather see the government shut down than accept the ObamaCare compromises that  House Republicans have put in their government funding bill. He refuses to delay the law for a year though his own actions reveal it is not ready for prime time. Retired paediatric neurosurgeon Dr Benjamin Carson unleashed his strongest attack yet on ObamaCare yesterday, saying that Obama's Affordable Health Care policy was ''the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. It is slavey, in a way, because it is making us all subservient to the government!''

One remarkable aspect of the shutdown/debt limit battle is the irresponsibility (on the part of the Obama administration) and incompetence (on the part of the news media) concerning the claim that the federal government will default on its debt obligations if Congress fails to raise the debt limit. It's all BullShit! There is no threat of default. Constitutionally, as Obama, with a law degree in Constitutional Law would know, the federal government must pay its debts. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4 -- is universally understood to mean that the federal government must pay its debt obligations, both principal and interest, even if that means prioritizing debt service over the government's spending. So the question is, if Congress does not raise the current debt ceiling, will the federal government run out of money needed to pay its existing debts? The answer is clearly NO!


Over the past week we have witnessed the impressive ''shutdown theater'' engineered by a spiteful Obama administration. By shutdown theatre I am referring to the closing or barricading of such landmarks as the WWII memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Many National Parks were closed and even the Statue of Liberty was off-limits! The stupidity of shutting down Mount Rushmore ( photo right ) had the National Park Service (NPS) barricading off scenic overlooks with witches-hats so people couldn't pull over to view the monument. In Nevada the NPS ordered an elderly couple (aged 77 and 80) out of their owned-home which sits on federal land citing the government shutdown.

The Way I See It....President Obama has made a fool out of himself by going to absurd lengths to dramatize the supposed consequences of the 17% shutdown. Here, as in many other instances, the government has taken measures that save zero dollars, and actually cost money, solely to try to inconvenience the public (half of them being the idiots who voted for him). This is a scandal that the press has tried unsuccessfully, to cover up. The nationwide shutdowns has exposed just how over-mighty the government - Obama's government, that is -- really is. He is utterly confident in the cover that the lamestream media will provide for him.

Tactics are one thing, but substance is another. It's the Democrats who have mocked the very notion of settled law. It's the Democrats who voted down the reopening of substantial parts of the government. It's the Democrats who gave life to a spontaneous, authentic, small-government opposition --a.k.a. the tea party -- with their unilateral imposition of a transformational agenda during the brief interval when they held a monopoly of power. So in actuality, ObamaCare was never about healthcare....it was about control.

Russia is Coming Back into the ''Great Game'' !

Russian President Vladimir Putin scored a diplomatic coup by proposing and shaping a United Nations-endorsed plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (See September 15th posting: Putin Pokes Powerful Presumptions at the President!), but this is only one example of Russia's newly aggressive Middle East policy. Russia, it appears, is pursuing a much broader agenda in the region. Russia's influence in the Middle East had been fading for years, one of many signs of the country's inability to play a major part in shaping world events after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin long has viewed Russia's loss of global status as a major embarrassment, and since his return in 2012 to the Russian presidency he has been looking for ways to enhance Russia's foreign policy presence. So while the American Congress is playing serious domestic political games with President Obama and rightly trying to come to grips with stopping a health policy not fully formed and an increasing a shockingly high debt ceiling, Putin is eagerly seeking to exploit the Obama administration's policy vacuum.

His success is far from assured given the many different alliances that exist in the Middle East. The United States and Russia have competed for influence in the Middle East for decades, dating back to the Soviet era. The tide turned strongly in favour of the U.S. in the early 1970s when Egypt, the Arab world's most important country, turned away from it alliance with the U.S.S.R. after the disastrous war against Israel to pursue a closer friendship with the West. By the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia had become a major supplier of weapons and military assistance to some Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, but wielded limited diplomatic clout. In contrast, the United States enjoyed strong relations with Israel, its long-time ally, Egypt, Turkey and moderate Arab nations in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia.

Major changes are unfolding in some of the region's most important nations, including those in North Africa. The Arab Spring hasn't brought the stability of democracy so far to the many of  the liberated governments as was hoped. The smashing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the new  president of Iran ( photo left ), Hassan Rouhani's ''charm offensive'' have all brought the possibility of shifting alliances. Putin's proposal on Syria caught Obama by surprise, forcing a major shift from his efforts to win congressional backing for the use of force. Experts at the Brookings Institution and media commentators alike concluded Russian prestige in the Middle East has risen sharply, especially since as part of the deal it became apparent that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has long enjoyed support from Russia, would remain in power under the agreement.

Russia is now pressing that diplomatic gain across the region at the same time U.S. influence is on the wane in the aftermath of its military withdrawal from Iraq, policy disagreements with Egypt and a general perception that Obama's foreign policy lacks focus and drive. In his September 24 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama tried to take the high road, stating that, ''we are no longer in a Cold War. There is no Great Game  to be won.''  However, Putin sees the region in a much different light with Russia seeking to strengthen ties with Egypt new foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy. Putin sent a tourism delegation to Cairo, which has been trying to invigorate Russian tourism in Egypt, a mainstay of the Egyptian economy. While Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has made two trips to Moscow and none to Washington since coming to power where he finalized a $4 billion arms sales deal.

Putin's world view may be old school as Obama sees it, but Russia is making substantial gains as its president plays a 21st century version of a Great Game that Obama does not even acknowledge. The Russian president embraces a power politics view of international relations in which nations compete to advance their political, security and economic interests. This often results in a zero-sum view of international politics and one in which Russia often seeks to be the spoiler rather than a leader, at least on issues of direct competition with the United States. Putin also understands that as a practical matter the expansion of Russia's influence in the Middle East serves to protect Russia's southern flank and has a sizable Navy harboured in Syrian ports.

The Way I See It.....Obama has spent much of his five years in office foolishly seeking to reverse or modify his predecessor's policy of engagement in the Middle East. The result has been confusion in U.S. policy and perceived weakness in the administration by friends and foes alike. The emergence of the United States as the ''indispensible'' power in the region did not occur overnight, and U.S. influence will not be lost completely in the near term. Many nations in the region rightfully view Russia with suspicion and recognize that the United States maintains a unique set of capabilities if they are applied competently.

In conclusion, Vladimr Putin is set on making Russia an international security broker, and he is succeeding. It is not clear whether Russian diplomacy can consolidate these gains in the long term: Its penchant for heavy-handed actions is never far from the surface. Nonetheless, there is an apparent strategy behind Russia's Mid-East forays, a stark contrast to the Obama administration's seemingly ad hoc policy approaches. What Americans need is another Ronald Reagan to lead them.

WTF ? It Seems CAIR Couldn't Care Less !

It was a sell-out crowd at the Council of American-Islamic Relations' 19th annual fundraising banquet last weekend at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia. That's right, the same neighbourhood where Arlington Cemetery holds the bodies of military personal who gave up their lives defending the United States' Constitution and the freedoms Americans continue to enjoy today. And one of the featured attractions was a notorious imam who has variously supported stoning or jailing apostates (those people who have had a gutful of Islam), the arming of American Muslims and turning the U.S. into an Islamic state governed by Saudi-style Sharia law. This scumbag's name is Siraj Wahhaj (photo right) who actually lives in Brooklyn, New York, is also one of the unindicted co-conspirators of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

''He has a message of Islam reigning supreme, and mixed with his message is the fact of the U.S. being an evil country and defending terrorism.'' says Steven Emerson, a former CNN newsman who now heads the investigative Project on Terrorism, one of world's largest storehouses of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. He added, ''Wahhaj is infamous for statements like 'in time, this so-called democracy will crumble and there will be nothing. The only thing that will remain will be Islam' and he smiles when he says, 'If Allah says stone them to death, then you stone them to death, because it's the obedience of Allah and his messenger, Muhammad -- nothing personal.'''

Wahhaj has served as board member of CAIR, a Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front group I mentioned in a previous post last month. He was also the first Muslim to deliver the daily prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991. ''On that occasion he recited from the Quran and appealed to the Almighty to guide American leaders,'' wrote Daniel Pipes, another expert on Islam. A little over a year later, Pipes recalls, addressing an audience of New Jersey Muslims, he articulated a rather different vision from his moderate invocation in the House. He mused, ''If only Muslims were more clever politically, they could take over the U.S. and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we'd elect our own emir and give allegiance to him.''

While CAIR continues to tell the public in its media guide however, ''There is a common misperception among Westerns that the Quran teaches violence''  According to another FBI veteran familiar with recent and ongoing cases involving CAIR officials, ''Their offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters.'' He mentions a videotaped sermon (May 8, 1992) where Wahhaj makes it clear that, contrary to CAIR's media guide, ''When Allah demands us to fight, we're not stopping and nobody's stopping us. Believe me, brothers and sisters, Muslims in America are the most strategic Muslims on Earth. He exhorted the faithful to go into ''the hood and the prisons and covert them, and then arm them and train them to carry out Uzi jihad. The American government's worst nightmare is one day that Muslims wake those people up in South Central Los Angeles and other inner-city areas.''

After so many years of official and media ''heat'' the Council on American-Islamic Relations officially no longer exists. The organization that's so closely connected to terrorist networks that the FBI won't let its agents use it as a liaison to the Muslim community, and yet so politically valuable to the Democrat Party that Obama administration won't prosecute it for terrorist activities, is now known as the Washington Trust Foundation -- or ''WTF'' for short. The timing of the name change, quietly filed three months ago with the District of Columbia, is suspicious. CAIR hasn't filed a complete tax return with the IRS in five years, but has filed numerous requests for reincorporation with the District of Columbia.

Congressional investigators worry CAIR is creating shell entities to hide foreign donations in violation of federal law. Since 2008, when the FBI publicly cut off ties to CAIR, the group has struggled to raise money inside the United States and has stepped up its overseas fundraising, manly in the Middle East. That same year, 2008, CAIR also created an entity known as the Muslim Peace Foundation. One of the foundation's principals is a black Muslim convert, Adul Malik, who was a close friend of the late American-born al-Qaida (drone-killed) cleric Anwar Awlaki, who ministered to some of the 9/11 hijackers at the Dar-al-Hijrah Islamic mosque outside Washington before fleeing to Yemen. Malik still works at the mosque.

''I am concerned that CAIR Director Nihad Awad  photo right (who remains on the government's unindicted terrorist co-conspirators list) may be soliciting -- and receiving -- funds from other unsavoury foreign governments and organizations, including some that may be sponsors of terror,'' wrote Republican Rep Frank Wolf, who heads a House judiciary subcommittee, in a letter to the IRS commissioner. The American Freedom Law Center, a public-interest law firm advised by former federal prosecutor, Andrew McCarthy, says, ''CAIR has been running a global criminal money laundering operation out of the nation's capital. CAIR first started this ''scheme'' in 2005, which at that time was an IRS-approved lobbying organization. CAIR's  problem was that as a registered lobbying group it had to report to the IRS the source of funds received over $5000. The specific problem was that CAIR was receiving millions of dollars from oil-rich Gulf Arabs.

The Way I See It.....to avoid reporting these millions of dollars from the dubious Islamic sources and to avoid registering as an agent for foreign sovereigns as required by federal law, CAIR created a separate company called CAIR Foundation (now known as Washington Trust Foundation) to serve as an IRS approved charitable organization. CAIR has now ceased all its operations and simply became a holding company, transferring, at least on accounting books, all of its employees and equipment to WTF.

The result is that CAIR (Inc), the holding company, now receives millions of dollars from foreign Islamic sources every year, acting in effect as a foreign agent for these foreign governments but only has to report the amounts of it income and not its sources. CAIR (Inc) then transfers these monies to WTF as ''loans'' or ''grants'', and WTF only has to report its source as CAIR, and not the actual Mideast sources. The result is a more sophisticated criminal money laundering operation that allows CAIR to funnel millions of dollars into a lobbying group fronting as a charity without the legally required disclosure of sources. The obvious question to be asked now is whether the IRS and President Obama is politically motivated to finally prosecute CAIR and its founders for their direct and indirect involvement in the material support of terrorism and the undermining of America's democracy.

IPCC Now Cooling on Warming !

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's ''fifth assessment report'' that came out in the past week has, for the first time these reports started coming out in 1990, dialled back the alarmist rhetoric. It states, ''that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than we thought in 2007.''  It is a significant retreat because it points to the very real possibility that over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be POSITIVE for humankind and the planet. With the IPCC unable to convincingly explain the stall in warming, the fact that they are forced to actually recognize reality and make changes in their predictions, like lowering the range of climate sensitivity -- is quite momentous.

It's important to recall the context for this latest report -- how global warming alarmists, calling them scaremongers is more accurate, have for two decades whipped up fear of all kinds of extreme weather events that would smash our cities, kill our citizens with cyclones/hurricanes, drown us in melting ice caps and suffer mega droughts. Indeed, the iconic image of global warming was this poster (right), from warmism's Svengali, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, exploiting the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe to whip up world-wide angst.

For the last 10 years or more, a few of us ''deniers'' have been saying that the IPCC has been ignoring the elephant in the room....that the real climate system is simply not as sensitive to CO2 emissions as they were claiming. This elephant has had to be ignored at all costs. What, the globe isn't warming from manmade CO2 as fast as we predicted? Then it must be manmade aerosols cooling things off. Or the warming is causing the deep ocean to heat up by hundredths or thousandths of a degree. Any reason except reduced climate sensitivity, because low climate sensitivity might mean we really don't have to worry about global warming after all. Unable to convincingly explain the recent stall in warming IPCC fudges the figures to save face and avoid saying ''We're sorry we were so dogmatic!''

Professor Bjorn Lomborg says, ''the evidence now shows global warming theorists have vastly exaggerated the problem. Take sea-level rise, the IPCC has grudgingly had to lower the exaggerated and scary figure of 1-2 meters of rise that many environmental activists, and even some media outlets have bandied about down to 3-20 by century's end. A new Nature Climate Change study shows that the prevailing climate models produced estimates that overshot the temperature rise over the past 15 years by more than a whooping 300%!''  Back in 2007 the IPCC firmly stated that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade -- a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models. Now the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade -- a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction. Gore is going to have to swallow one hell of a Chill Pill to keep from fainting with these latest facts.

The IPCC admits, which Mr Gore easily ignored, that large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD -- centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower. The temperature in that period was actually 3 degrees warmer when the Vikings were running around raping and pillaging. They discovered GREENLAND, when it really was green and built settlements there -- eighty sites in all. By 1300 AD a cooling shortened their growing season and by 1350 AD they left as Greenland slowly froze over. It's in their historical tales. This suggests many lies have been told for a very long time by some warmists.

IPCC's Draft Version

The IPCC warmists insist they're right despite all their mistakes. How convenient that the Intergovernmental Panel decided it was even more certain we're heating the world to hell. Supposedly their ''certainty'' went up from 90% to 95% certain that we are the culprits. These U.N. scaremongers distracted the media from inconvenient truths with their ''certainty'' pronouncement.  Fact is, the IPCC showed it's got a lot less to be confident about. Global warming is turning from imminent catastrophe to merely a problem -- or less. Not that you'd guess that from the media reports. One paper wailed, ''It is more certain than ever that human civilisation is the main cause of global warming, putting the world on track for dangerous temperature rises.'' 

IPCC's Misleading Published Graph

Sure there is warming if only they could find it. Here's how desperate warmists are to believe their theory, even when there's no real evidence for it.  ''According to the new IPCC report, temperatures rose by about 0.15C a decade for the latter half of the last century. Since 1998, however, thart rise has reduced to only 0.05C. The heat is still coming in, but it appears to have gone into the deep ocean nd, frustratingly, we do not have the instruments to measure there,'' said Professor Ted Shepherd of Reading University trying to keep the government grants trough from drying up. But the worst deceit was revealed yesterday when Steve McIntyre, of the Climate Audit website, explained how the IPCC had a damning graph that showed how global warming models failed to predict the 15 year hiatus appeared in the draft of the IPCC's latest report. (above right) In the released Report it showed the IPCC ditched that embarrassing graph, replacing it with a misleading one ( above left ) which, to the untrained eye, suggested the models had not been contradicted at all. Shameful!! So how did the observations move from outside the coloured envelope to inside the envelope?  McIntyre says, ''I do not believe that IPCC's decision to use a more obscure scale was accidental.''

The Way I See It.....the IPCC report calls into question the alarmist claim that sea levels will rise 1-2 meters. Its estimates are in the range of 40 to 63cm by the end of the century. The climate change scenario has been dominated by fear and end-of-the-world thinking. Less than a decade ago, that idiot Al Gore's film portrayed a sea level rise of 6 meters! The present day predicted rise of poses a more manageable challenge. For purposes of comparison, sea levels have risen about 30 cm in the past 150 years. Even with few resources and technologies at their disposal, our forefathers handled this challenge quite deftly.

With the IPCC giving us good reasons to stop panicking with a moderate forecast of 3.5C (the Viking's climate), not the 5C-plus scenario touted by the eco-alarmists, we find that economic models are finding that moderate global warming is a net global benefit. Firstly, by mid-century, researchers estimate 4000,000 more heat deaths but 1.8 million fewer cold deaths. Likewise crop production will increase, as I said in a previous posting, because CO2 fertilises crops. The agriculture satellites are already picking up a world-wide greening of the planet. According to a new study in the forthcoming book, ''A Scorecard from 1900 to 2050'', global warming has been an increasing net benefit for humanity since 1900.