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Today in History

480 BC		The Persian army defeats Leonidas and his Spartan army at the battle Thermopylae, Persia.
48 BC		Julius Caesar defeats Gnaius Pompey at Pharsalus.
1483		Pope Sixtus IV celebrates the first mass in the Sistine Chapel, which is named in his honor.
1549		England declares war on France.
1645		Settlers in New Amsterdam gain peace with the Indians after conducting talks with the Mohawks.
1805		Austria joins Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the third coalition against France.
1814		Andrew Jackson and the Creek Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23 million acres of Creek territory.
1842		The Webster-Ashburn treaty fixes the border between Maine and Canada's New Brunswick.
1859		The escalator is patented. However, the first working escalator appeared in 1900. Manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the Paris Exposition, it was installed in a Philadelphia office building the following year.
1862		At Cedar Mountain, Virginia, Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson repels an attack by Union forces.
1910		The first complete, self-contained electric washing machine is patented.
1936		Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in track and field events at the Berlin Olympics.
1941		President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The meeting produces the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the two countries on war aims, even though the United States is still a neutral country.
1945		The B-29 bomber Bock's Car drops a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.
1969		Charles Manson's followers kill actress Sharon Tate and her three guests in her Beverly Hills home.
1974		Gerald Ford is sworn in as president of the United States after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Is Obama going to win in a landslide?

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast think so.

There’s a secret lurking behind everything you’re reading about the upcoming election, a secret that all political insiders know—or should—but few are talking about, most likely because it takes the drama out of the whole business. The secret is the electoral college, and the fact is that the more you look at it, the more you come to conclude that Mitt Romney has to draw an inside straight like you’ve never ever seen in a movie to win this thing. This is especially true now that it seems as if Pennsylvania isn’t really up for grabs. Romney’s paths to 270 are few.

Sure, something big could happen to alter the dynamic completely. But we’ve watched these guys go, what, six or seven rounds now (out of 15). After seven rounds, you can pretty well tell some things. All the supposedly game-changing events of the last few weeks haven’t changed much of anything. This is a paradoxical situation that has little or no modern precedent, which makes it hard for people to accept. Liberals are too nervous to think it, reporters too intent on a “down to the wire” narrative, and conservatives too furious and disbelieving, but it’s shaping up to be true: An extremely close election that on election night itself stands a surprisingly good chance of being not that close at all.

I will say that the level of vitriol, and outright lies, coming from the Romney folks, and the repugicans generally, have started to make me wonder if the repugican party isn't already in panic mode about November election.

Non Sequitur

July in U.S. was hottest month ever in history books

By Seth Borenstein

• 
  FILE - In this July 18, 2012 file photo, Jazia Pratt, 8, fills a bucket with water from a fire hydrant in the afternoon summer heat in Philadelphia. Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The average temperature last month was 77.6 degrees. That breaks the old record from July 1936 by 0.2 degree, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Records go back to 1895.

This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
And even less a surprise: The U.S. this year keeps setting records for weather extremes, based on the precise calculations that include drought, heavy rainfall, unusual temperatures, and storms.
The average temperature last month was 77.6 degrees. That breaks the old record from July 1936 by 0.2 degree, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Records go back to 1895.
"It's a pretty significant increase over the last record," said climate scientist Jake Crouch of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In the past, skeptics of global warming have pointed to the Dust Bowl to argue that recent heat isn't unprecedented. But Crouch said this shows that the current year "is out and beyond those Dust Bowl years. We're rivaling and beating them consistently from month to month."
Three of the nation's five hottest months on record have been recent Julys: This year, 2011 and 2006. Julys in 1936 and 1934 round out the top five.
Last month also was 3.3 degrees warmer than the 20th century average for July.
Thirty-two states had months that were among their 10 warmest Julys, but only one, Virginia, had the hottest July on record. Crouch said that's a bit unusual, but that it shows the breadth of the heat and associated drought.
For example in 2011, the heat seemed to be centered mostly in Oklahoma and Texas. But this summer "the epicenters of the heat kind of migrated around. It kind of got everybody in the action this month," Crouch said.
The first seven months of 2012 were the warmest on record for the nation. And August 2011 through July this year was the warmest 12-month period on record, just beating out the July 2011-June 2012 time period.
But it's not just the heat that's noteworthy. NOAA has a measurement called the U.S. Climate Extreme Index which dates to 1900 and follows several indicators of unusually high and low temperatures, severe drought, downpours, and tropical storms and hurricanes. NOAA calculates the index as a percentage, which mostly reflects how much of the nation experience extremes. In July, the index was 37 percent, a record that beat the old mark for July last year. The average is 20 percent.
For the first seven months of the year, the extreme index was 46 percent, beating the old record from 1934. This year's extreme index was heavily driven by high temperatures both day and night, which is unusual, Crouch said.
"This would not have happened in the absence of human-caused climate change," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
Crouch and Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said what's happening is a double whammy of weather and climate change. They point to long-term higher night temperatures from global warming and the short-term effect of localized heat and drought that spike daytime temperatures.
Drought is a major player because in the summer "if it is wet, it tends to be cool, while if it is dry, it tends to be hot," Trenberth said.
So the record in July isn't such a big deal, Trenberth said. "But the fact that the first seven months of the year are the hottest on record is much more impressive from a climate standpoint, and highlights the fact that there is more than just natural variability playing a role: Global warming from human activities has reared its head in a way that can only be a major warning for the future."
Here are some more numbers unlikely to provide cold comfort. The coolest July on record was in 1915. The coldest month in U.S. history was January 1979 with an average temperature of 22.6 degrees.

Daily Funny

There was once a man and woman who had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box.

When he opened it, he found two crocheted doilies and a stack of money totalling $25,000. He asked her about the contents.

"When we were to be married," she said, "my grand-mother told me that the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doily."

The little old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears. Only two precious doilies were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving.

He said, "But what about all of this money? How did you manage to save all this money?"

"Oh," she said, "that's the money I made from selling doilies."

Did you know ...

At the repugican convention there are no puppets allowed

(Well, there goes that convention - they'll be no one there because they're all puppets) 

csi: target

That Romney will lower your taxes - if you're part of the richest 5%
(Aw, now ain't that just sweet)

Did Faux cause Olympian Gabrielle Douglas to stumble

We wrote about Faux News' not so subtle racist attack on Olympian Gabrielle Douglas.  Other media decided to go after her mother.  And some folks decided to criticize her hair.
Well, she spoke out about all of this, as it was clearly getting to her.  Not something an Olympian needs before a competition.

So what happened next?  She stumbled and lost what might have been her next medal.  Was it because her country was rooting for him, but rather was criticizing her, incessantly, in her moment of glory?

More on this from Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post:

It took just four days to suck all the energy out of Douglas.First, she awoke after the achievement of a lifetime to a ludicrous, racially loaded conversation about the neatness of her coif, started by a bunch of Twitter critics. To be frank, anyone who eyed Douglas’s ponytail was looking for a reason to criticize. Her performances were so entrancing that you could only notice her hair if you dragged your eye there with a malicious purpose. So instead of reveling in her victory, Douglas found herself addressing her coif.

Faux is worried about black Olympians' patriotism.  Perhaps it should examine its own.

Five Olympians Who Won Fame by Losing

People love to root for the underdog, and we all love a good story. Every once in a while an athlete or a team makes it to the Olympics and fails so spectacularly (often with an interesting backstory) that they become a fan favorite just for participating. Remember the Jamaican bobsled team?

Their underdog status endeared them quickly to fans and inspired the 1993 film "Cool Runnings." The Jamaicans had not practiced much before shipping off to Calgary, where they had to borrow sleds from their competitors to race.
Despite their poor showing in Calgary and in the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, the team surprised skeptics with a 14th-place finish in the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, beating out the United States, Russia and France.

Read more about the team and four other fan favorites at ABC.

Talking about cars

Former MPAA CTO who switched sides explains to the White House why SOPA is stupid

You may remember Paul Brigner, the geek who quit his job as CTO of the MPAA to work for its arch-rival net-freedom advocates at the Internet Society, who manage the .ORG top-level domain. He has just filed comments with the White House's IP Czar rubbishing the techniques proposed in SOPA, which contemplated censoring the Internet by tinkering with the domain-name service in the hopes of reducing copyright infringement. At the time that Brigner left the MPAA for ISOC, a lot of us were worried that he'd officially endorsed SOPA and argued in favor of it at Congress. Brigner and ISOC both assured us that he'd had a genuine change of heart, and these comments are the proof in the pudding. As Mike Masnick notes, Brigner was a pretty half-hearted, ineffective SOPA advocate, but he's a rip-snortin', ass-kicking critic of it.

We are also of the opinion that any enforcement attempts – at both national and international levels – should ensure and not jeopardize the stability, interoperability and efficiency of the Internet, its technologies and underlying platforms. The Internet – a network of networks – is based on an open and distributed architecture. This model should be preserved and should surpass any enforcement efforts. For the Internet Society preserving the original nature of the Internet is particularly significant, especially when enforcement is targeting domain names and the Domain Name System (DNS) in general. There are significant concerns from using the DNS as a channel for intellectual property enforcement and various contributions have been made on this issue by both the Internet Society and the technical community. It needs to be highlighted that from a security perspective, in particular, DNS filtering is incompatible with an important security technology called Domain Name Security Extensions or DNSSEC. In fact, there is great potential for DNSSEC to be weakened by proposals that seek to filter domain names. This means that DNS filtering proposals could ultimately reduce global Internet security, introduce new vulnerabilities, and put individual users at risk.
Our second recommendation relates to the legal tools that should be in place in any enforcement design. ISOC would like to stress the absolute need for any enforcement provisions to be prescribed according to the rule of law and due process. We believe that combating online infringement of intellectual property is a significant objective. However, it is equally important that this objective is achieved through lawful and legal paths and in accordance with the notion of constitutional proportionality. In this regard, enforcement provisions – both within and outside the context of intellectual property – should respect the fundamental human rights and civil liberties of individuals and, subsequently, those of Internet users. They should not seek to impose unbearable constitutional constraints and should not prohibit users from exercising their constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of association and freedom of expression.
As a general recommendation, we would like to emphasize our belief that all discussions pertaining to the Internet, including those relating to intellectual property - both at a national and international level - should follow open and transparent processes.

Former MPAA CTO Tells The White House Why SOPA Is The Wrong Approach For IP Enforcement

Japanese Company Switches Entirely to the English Language

Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten Inc., has a bold approach to making his company competitive in international markets. He's making employees conduct all of their communications--meetings, emails, verbal conversations--in the English language:

At the time of the 2010 announcement, only about 10 percent of Rakuten’s 6,000 Japanese employees could function in English, according to a case study by the Harvard Business School. Rakuten operated in just two foreign countries — it has since expanded into 10 more — and most of its business came from Japan. Critics argued that Rakuten’s employees, forced to hold meetings and write memos in English, would simply become less articulate, less efficient and far less happy.
At times, the two-year transition from Japanese to English — dubbed by the company as “Englishization” — has been as awkward as the term itself. Workers were told they would face demotions if they didn’t reach target test scores, and a handful of employees quit, Mikitani said. Other workers, quoted without the use of their names in the 2011 Harvard case study, saw it as an “exercise in perpetual humiliation” or as a “layoff tool.” [...]
At Rakuten, workers scrambled to improve their language skills by the July 1 target date, after which all major internal documents and meetings were to be in English. About 75 percent of Rakuten’s employees are based in Japan, the company says, and its foreign employees face the same language requirements.

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Mexican-US illegal migration has been largely static since the 1950s

Princeton's alumni magazine has an excellent profile of Douglas Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and director of Princeton’s Office of Population Research. Massey studies patterns of US migration, particularly illegal immigration from Mexico. His research is the only rigorous census of Mexican-American illegal immigration flows, and its conclusions are that the US perception of Mexican migration is completely backwards, and that the major immigration problems are the result of bad policy, not changes in volume:

The MMP’s reports are freely available to anyone through its website, http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu. But statistics can be sterile things. Get Massey going, and one gets an earful about the true state of affairs along the border. To wit:
* We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened.
* Net illegal migration has stopped almost ­completely.
* Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst.
* There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country.
* And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically.
Mull over that last point for a minute. If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades — if it had just left the border alone — there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today, Massey believes.

Crisis Contrived

US seeks smooth but unlikely transition in Syria

But the U.S. faces a hard sell with Syria's fighters after refusing to back them militarily and watching them squabble for months over how to reshape their country the day after President Bashar Assad's regime crumbles, as expected.

 More

American off-duty cop complains he couldn't pack heat in Canada, worries about guys who talked to him and then went away

"This letter to the editor for a Kalamazoo police officer to the Calgary Herald has been floating around Twitter and the internet today, mostly for the purposes of mocking it. The officer describes an incedent that he feels is a good example of why Canada should allow concealed firearms. Two men came up to him and his wife to ask if they had been to the Calgary Stampede, and...that's all. The newspaper has already released an editorial explaining that it's a real letter they received from a real police officer, and that it isn't a hoax. I thought it might be right up Boingboing's alley. It really does illustrate a cultural divide between Canadian and (some) Americans' views on gun control. It has also sparked the Twitter hashtag #NoseHillGentleman." Even with the newspaper's reassurance, I find it hard not to believe that this guy isn't trolling -- the cliche is too perfect.

Recently, while out for a walk in Nose Hill Park, in broad daylight on a paved trail, two young men approached my wife and me. The men stepped in front of us, then said in a very aggressive tone: "Been to the Stampede yet?"
We ignored them. The two moved closer, repeating: "Hey, you been to the Stampede yet?"
I quickly moved between these two and my wife, replying, "Gentle-men, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye." They looked bewildered, and we then walked past them.
I speculate they did not have good intentions when they approached in such an aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner. I thank the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort, but rather concluded it was in their best interest to leave us alone.
Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know - it's because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.

Nose Hill Park confrontation makes visitors feel unsafe

Random Celebrity Photo

Sikh temple killing suspect's ex-con, white power, ex-girlfriend, busted on illegal gun rap

Misty Cook, 31, and Wade Michael Page drifted apart in the weeks before the killing, a neighbor says. She is forbidden to own firearms because of a felony conviction for fleeing and eluding a traffic officer.  

Police have taken the ex-girlfriend of Wisconsin Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page into custody on a weapons charge, ABC News reported. Misty Cook, 31, is forbidden to own a firearm because she is a convicted felon. But cops in Milwaukee say they found a gun in the home she shared with Page and arrested her Tuesday.

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Another man arrested for bringing Glock, four knives, ton of ammo to Dark Knight movie

Westlake Patch (Ohio):

No one else was in the theater when Smith sat down in the middle of the back row, Arcuri said.

"Where he was sitting, he had the tactical advantage," Arcuri said. "He had targets to the left, to the right, and straight ahead."

While the manager had let Smith through, off-duty Westlake police officer Jeremiah Bullins grew suspicious of Smith and followed him into the theater. When he spotted Smith in the back row, Smith had removed the bag from his waist and placed it on the floor.

Bullins asked Smith if he could search the bag and Smith agreed. That's when Bullins opened the zippered compartment and found a loaded 9MM Glock semiautomatic handgun, two additional fully loaded magazines, and three knives. A fourth knife was found elsewhere on Smith.

Also in the bag, Arcuri said, were a flashlight, medicated bandages that help clot blood, and a capsule that is dropped in fresh water to make it safe to drink.

At his home, police found pistols, shotguns and rifles, "thousands" of bullets, and a gas mask.

Because what rabbit hunter doesn't need thousands of bullets and a gas mask?

The NRA, and their gun nuts in Congress, keep defending our lax gun slaws, claiming they're all we need to keep crazy people from getting guns.  Yet the crazy people keep getting guns, lots of them, not to mention additional gear like kevlar and gas masks that will help improve their kills during the next mass slaughter.

We've tried it the NRA's way, and they failed.

Criminal Mastermind Tries to Carjack US Marshals

A carjacker in Shreveport, Louisiana experienced a major failure in the victim selection process when he tried to take a car that was stopped at a red light. Inside were three US Marshals:

Authorities say when Carter realized he had just tried to carjack three officers, he started running, but was caught a short time later.
He was booked into jail for attempted carjacking.
"To us, it's kind of comical. It's the kind of thing a police officer almost wishes would happen to him so somebody in the general public doesn't become a victim," said Turner

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Man Tries to Sell Counterfeiting Machine at a Famous Pawn Shop

American Jewelry and Loan in the famous Detroit pawn shop where the reality TV show Hardcore Pawn is shot. According to its flamboyant owner Les Gold, people travel enormous distances to visit it and possibly appear on the hit show. One customer took even more extreme measures. He tried to sell his counterfeit money and the machine that he used to make it:

So Gold didn’t bat an eyelash when Smith showed up and wanted to sell him his counterfeit money and machine. He wanted to be on the show. Smith told Gold he would bring his counterfeiting equipment to the store. A short time later the Secret Service showed up at American Jewelry and Loan. They had been tracing Smith's activities since he had been passing his fake bills.
Gold filled them in on what Smith had told him and the agents found out Smith's counterfeiting claims had been captured on camera for the show. [...]
 As Gold says, “All because he wanted his five minutes of fame on TV."
Smith actually signed a waiver to be on the TV show.

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