Minor Notes, Mostly Political -- March 1, 2015

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

WATFORD CITY — Adam and Elizabeth Powell came to North Dakota as a package deal.

The newlyweds who recently completed serving four years in the U.S. Navy moved to Watford City to take on leadership roles with a startup energy company.

The couple met while serving on the same ship in San Diego. Even before they began dating, Adam was talking about moving to North Dakota after he left the Navy and researching jobs in the oil industry.

The couple works for the expanding Citadel Energy Co., which operates a saltwater disposal well and provides freshwater and other services for the oil industry.

Adam, who most recently was department head and navigation officer for the USS Sampson, was hired to be Citadel Energy’s manager of technical operations.

Elizabeth, 27, serves as Citadel’s logistics and planning manager, putting to use her Navy experience planning and managing training and deployment schedules.

As former Navy surface warfare officers, both are used to working long hours and getting called to duty any time of day, similar to what’s required in the oil industry.

Much, much more at the link. 

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Clawing the Friendship Back 

After weeks of reports of growing animosity between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, there are signs that the US president feels he may have gone just a bit too far. It appears the White House has told SecState "throw my medals over the White House fence" Kerry to claw back all the animosity. Exhibit A: this headline in today's Los Angeles Times -- Kerry Seeks to Tamp Down Controversy Over Benjamin Netanyahu's vist.

Interestingly, this is being reported at the same time the Israeli media is reporting that the US President threatened to shoot down Israeli jets if they tried to take out the Iranian nuclear complex. From another souce:

Last week, Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, said the partisanship caused by Netanyahu's looming address was "destructive to the fabric of U.S.-Israeli ties."
Asked about this on the ABC program "This Week", Kerry said "the prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. And we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history."

He said he had talked to Netanyahu on Saturday, adding, "we don't want to see this turned into some great political football." Israel and the United States agreed that the main goal was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, he said.

It would seem strange that the Israeli ambassador to the United States hasn't called US SecState to the Israeli Ambassador's office to get to the bottom of this -- whether in fact the US was ready to shoot down Israeli jets. 

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What's In A Name?

Back on February 23, 2015, just a few days ago I had a piece on "what's in a name?"

Just because you have Islamist in your name does not mean you are an Islamist organization. If that is accurate, I suppose that just because someone says he's a Christian does not necessarily mean he's a Christian. I was reminded of that when reading this story: why are Americans confused about the president's religion. The confusion crosses political lines:

In June, 2012, Gallup asked, "Do you happen to know the religious faith of Barack Obama?" Forty-four percent said they did not know, while 36 percent said he is a Christian, 11 percent said he is a Muslim, and eight percent said he has no religion.

The "don't know" group included 36 percent of Democrats. (A larger number of Republicans, 47 percent, said they didn't know Obama's religion, as did 46 percent of independents.)

You know the name: Barack Hussein Obama II.

[Update: just a few days after posting the above about "what's in a name,"FoxNews reported that a darling of the Obama administration in the bluest of blue states has also "confronted" the president on the issue of "what's in a name."]

There are an increasing number of stories on the "Is Obama a Christian" question (google it).  A president's religion should not matter ... unless if affects American foreign policy. If any of this story is accurate, it's very, very scary. At the moment the story appears to being reported only in the Israeli media. It will be interesting if any investigative reporters covering the US Department of Defense pick up on this story. It's very likely there's a bit of truth in the story. The bigger question is why would the President not want a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

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Global Warming

Climate Change

Ice Age Now

Source: Facebook.

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Iron Age (1200 - 550 BC) -- A Period of Rising Sea Levels

It is well documented that humanity was significantly affected by a period of rising sea levels in the Iron Age (google it).

There are many references to this in Graham Robb's The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, c. 2013, an absolutely fascinating book.

"In the late Iron Age, when sea levels were higher than they are today, Loon was an island called Lugdunum, which means "fortress of Lugh," the Celtic god of light." -- p. 65