Clearing Up Misconceptions

Rick Nebel who is in charge of the Polywell Experiments at EMC2 comments on Alan Boyle's article on progress in Fusion Power on MSNBC's Cosmic Log.

As usual, I seem to have created some misconceptions by my comments. First of all, what we said on our website is that the work on the WB-7 has been completed. We did not discuss the results. If you would like to conjecture what those results are, let me suggest that you notice the fact that we are working on the WB-8 device. The WB-8 was not a part of Dr. Bussard’s original development plan. This device came about as a result of the peer review process which suggested that there were issues that needed to be resolved at a smaller scale before proceeding to a demo. This was a conclusion that EMC2 heartily concurred with. I don’t want to leave people with the impression that everything on the WB-7 is identical to the WB-6.

Secondly, in our contract with the DOD, EMC2 owns the commercialization rights for the Polywell. However, commercialization is not something that we can do with our DOD funding. That is what we would like to look at with any contributions from the website. This will enable us to:

1. Design an attractive commercial reactor package.
2. Identify the high leverage physics items that most impact the design (i.e. how good is good enough).
3. Give us a base design when we are ready to proceed to the next step.

rnebel (Sent Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:12 PM)

I think it is evident that the Polywell people are making progress. Will it actually lead to a viable fusion power machine? There is no way to know for sure until the experiments are done. I am hopeful. It seems like Rick is hopeful as well and with better reason. He has the data.

Some of my more recent articles on the subject:

Rick Nebel has a few things to say:
Polywell - No BS - No Excuses

Pictures of past and future Polywell efforts:
WB-D

Where the money for commercialization will come from:
Venture Capital Likes Fusion

H/T DeltaV at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Change Prohibition Policy

The Wall Street Journal interviews a Drug War observer who says that changing our policy of Prohibition is a viable alternative to the Drug War.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Voting For Socialism

If the audio wasn't exactly clear this should make it plainer:

Reverend Al Sharpton told Fox News: “I think that this began the transforming of the country where the President had promised. This is what he ran on.” When the interviewer interjected that many view the vote as a step towards socialism, Sharpton didn’t skip a beat, responding:

the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.

Well it looks like vote or no vote we are going to get it good and hard.



Short version:

The variant of socialism where the government doesn’t nationalize the means of production but controls it through law and regulation is called fascism.

H/T The Foundry

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Commonsense Conservatives

Sarah Palin has a new Facebook up.

We’re going to reclaim the power of the people from those who disregarded the will of the people. We’re going to fire them and send them back to the private sector, which has been shrinking thanks to their destructive government-growing policies. Maybe when they join the millions of unemployed, they’ll understand why Americans wanted them to focus on job creation and an invigorated private sector. Come November, we’re going to print pink slips for members of Congress as fast as they’ve been printing money.

We’re paying particular attention to those House members who voted in favor of Obamacare and represent districts that Senator John McCain and I carried during the 2008 election. Three of these House members are retiring – from Arkansas’s 2nd district, Indiana’s 8th district, and Tennessee’s 6th district – but we’ll be working to make sure that those who replace them are Commonsense Conservatives.

I sure hope so. Because I'm so tired of Culture War Conservatives and the Cultural Socialism they bring with them.

I think it is past time to retire the "Tax and Spend but I'm against Abortion" Republicans. A party that favors fiscal sanity and other wise leaves the people alone to make their own (good and bad) choices is the American way. Unless you believe government can make people moral. And how is that Drug War working out for you?

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Sometimes The Science Is A Crime

An interesting report on bad science in crime labs.

Let us consider something we used to teach our sophomores - lead smelting and refining. Almost all lead occurs as sulfide ores that contain lesser amounts of other metals. Smelting removes the sulfur and refining removes most of minor elements, notably gold, silver and copper. The composition of the refined lead may be easily and inexpensively determined by, for example, spectrographic analysis.

Someone at the FBI decided that if the compositions of two bullets “matched” well enough the two were from the same box of ammunition. Then if the box of ammunition was tied to the defendant, so was the subject bullet.

My reaction to the claim is “HUH?” One crucible of refined lead could make millions of bullets, and the molten lead is not necessarily of uniform composition. A composition match does not prove a darned thing.

This erstwhile expert was clearly working far above his pay grade, but sold the idea to superiors who really should have known better. For the next two decades, thousands of innocent people were convicted on the basis of totally hokum bullet matching. The FBI was the only lab in the country that was using the technique, which should have been a warning that something was wrong.

Finally someone in a high position got the National Academy of Science to address the lead-matching issue. They turned thumbs down and the FBI stopped matching bullets to a particular box.

Recently the Academy performed an extensive study of the nation’s crime labs. Law enforcement agencies resented the intervention of mainstream science in the courts and an arm of the Justice Department tried to block the study. It failed and the resulting report decried the lack of science and the use of shoddy practice.

One thing the labs are really good at is producing convictions because you know - it's science. Good for mystifying the rubes. And you wonder why lawyers don't like engineers and scientists on juries.

Just round up the usual suspects.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Viagra For Sex Offenders?

The Republicans are getting really diabolical. I mean besides Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. They are going to make Democrats vote in favor of dick stiffeners for sex offenders.

On Tuesday, the GOP put its strategy into action, with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) introducing an amendment beyond agreeable. Titled “No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders” it would literally prohibit convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders from getting erectile dysfunction medication from their health care providers.

Penis politics at its best. I can see the campaign adds already.

“Why does Harry Reid want to give rapists erections”?

The best answer to that question in the comments will get an honorable mention on the front page. And if I get more than one really good answer? Well electrons are cheap. Anything else you can come up with that is really witty will also get a mention. Like getting the Democrats to vote against Mom, Motherhood, and Apple Pie (and no that one is already taken, although effective embroidery on the theme will be considered). The Decision of the Supreme Judge is final. However, individuals are allowed to come to their own conclusion.

And just for fun I think it is time to reprise the Blue Pill / Red Pill controversy.



This Republican proposal sure gives new meaning to what Mr. obama was proposing. And you will notice Mr. obama favored the Blue Pill. Oh. The irony.

I can see the ads now - "obama says sex offenders should pay half price for the blue pill."

And do we have reading material (not that kind) for you? Yes we do:

The Viagra Myth: The Surprising Impact On Love And Relationships

From a review:

"a firm erection cannot solve deeper problems."

I'll say. For that you need a Penis Extension Kit.And just to be perfectly clear. The link is to something that is clearly racist. Just in case you were wondering.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Raising The Roof Over Raising The Rates

Alternative Energy seems to be raising electric rates in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to conduct a review of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed package of electric rate hikes, and took the mayor to task for suggesting that defeat of the plan would plunge the city into bankruptcy.

On a 15-0 vote, the council asserted jurisdiction over the Department of Water and Power board's decision to approve the first of four increases over the next year to help pay for renewable energy and other expenditures.

Several council members said they were especially disturbed by Villaraigosa's warning, sent to them in writing the night before the vote, that a failure to let the rate hikes stand would cause the DWP to renege on its plan to provide $73 million to the city's strained general fund, which pays for basic services such as public safety and parks.

Public Utilities owned by government were supposed to be about preventing gouging by private corporations. It looks like gouging by government was not contemplated.

As we used to say back in the heady days of my communist youth. "What is mine is mine. What is yours belongs to the people." That should probably be amended to add "and the alternative energy companies."

Polywell - No BS - No Excuses

Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log has a new article up on Polywell Fusion.

You won't hear Rick Nebel talking about fusion as a challenge requiring billions of dollars and decades of experimentation. For the past couple of years, Nebel heads up a handful of researchers following the less-traveled path to fusion at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. in Santa Fe, N.M. That path involves creating a high-voltage chamber to sling ions so energetically at each other that at least some of them fuse and release energy.

EMC2 recently created a buzz in the fusion underground by reporting on its Web site that a series of experiments was able to "validate and extend" earlier results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard. The company is now using a $7.9 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a bigger test machine, known as WB-8. (WB stands for "Wiffle Ball," which refers to the shape of the machine's magnetic fields.)

What's more, Nebel and his colleagues are now seeking contributions to fund the development of what they say would be a 100-megawatt fusion plant - a "Phase 3" effort projected to cost $200 million and take four years.

"Successful Phase 3 marks the end of fossil fuels," the Web site proclaims.

Success isn't assured. The WB-8 experiment could conceivably show that the approach pioneered by Bussard, known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion or IEC fusion, can't be scaled up to produce more power than it consumes. And if Nebel's team comes to that conclusion, he doesn't plan to pull any punches.

"No B.S. and no excuses," Nebel told me over the weekend. "If it looks like we have a problem with this, we're going to tell them."

Now that is a really different attitude from what has gone on in ITER. It was obvious to me a few years ago that the program was in trouble. But only in the last year have they admitted it by slipping the schedule by almost three years. So far.

You can read my earlier post on what I learned from EMC2 at WB-D which has some nice pictures of experiments and their proposed 100 MW device.

From time to time there are people reading here who need to be brought up to speed on fusion I'm reposting my usual: You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years or less.

I'm a big fan of small fusion projects. Especially after hearing what Plasma Physicist and author of Principles of Plasma PhysicsDr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good." And they seem really hard to build even. And who knows, if the Polywell experiments being done by the US Navy are successful the ITER project may just wind up as a big hole in the ground in France.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Laugh While You Can

Bill Whittle is up to his old tricks. And good ones they are.

And so now we have it.

I thought I might need to try my small part to cheer people up and calm them down, but for once I have underestimated the American people. People, by and large, seem not only calm but absolutely determined. Everywhere I have looked this morning the reaction seems to be more or less the same: a nation of steely-eyed missile men. These Marxist bastards have no idea what is coming for them. No idea.

Laugh while you can, Monkey Boys.

There is no doubt this is going to be painful. But I do believe we can wind up a much better country for it. With a much better medical system. We need to get to a system where the consumer pays for regular medical expenses and not insurance companies or government. This will put downward pressure on costs. Catastrophic coverage is the way to go.

Free standing MRI Clinics charge 1/4 of what hospitals charge for an MRI. And Doc In A Box type services are popping up all over. Cash at the door eliminates a LOT of hassle for the doctor and the patient.

And after that maybe we can go after the Drivers License Scam.

“Personal liberty – or the right to enjoyment of life and liberty – is one of the fundamental or natural rights, which has been protected by its inclusion as a guarantee in the various constitutions, which is not derived from nor dependent on the U.S. Constitution. … It is one of the most sacred and valuable rights [remember the words of Justice Tolman, supra.] as sacred as the right to private property … and is regarded as inalienable.” 16 C.J.S. Const. Law, Sect.202, Pg. 987

You can find a rather long discussion of this starting here. And how does this relate? Well the requirement to buy insurance comes up at the very start of the discussion (13 pages earlier).

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Steal This Flag

H/T DullHawk.com

Cross Posted at Classical Values

What To Do?

The Health Destruction Bill has passed and Americans are up in Arms. So the question is "What to Do? Well that is obvious. Throw the Democrats out in November.

The great imponderable in American elections is the 30% to 50% (more or less) that don't vote in elections. My guess is that a lot of them will be motivated. Say we can get just 1/2 of that 30% to the polls.

No seat is safe. Not one.

What to do? Voter registration drives. Massive voter registration drives. Starting now.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Rockford Is Improving

According to our local paper, fondly called The Red Star, only 25% of house sales in the area are foreclosure sales. Except that I know for a fact that the banks are putting off foreclosure as long as possible so as to avoid as long as they can booking the losses.

In Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties in February, just 62 of the 243 recorded sales were from bank, mortgage or government agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That was the lowest number of bank-owned property sales in a month since December 2008.

The flood of foreclosures in the country has been largely to blame for falling prices, because the homes are usually sold at steep discounts. Real estate experts think prices won’t rise with any regularity again until we cycle through the millions of distressed properties in the U.S.

Unfortunately, February’s decline in foreclosure sales is most likely an anomaly. The number of new foreclosure cases being filed continues to rise.

And we haven't even started to tear into the commercial real estate bubble. It is only a matter of time. And then the housing market will re-collapse.

Good times? Only if you like breaking records. Take unemployment in the area.

Local economists weren’t the only ones shocked by the jump to the Rockford area’s January unemployment rate.

It was the highest year-over-year increase in the nation.

The metro area’s unemployment rate was 19.7 percent, a 5.8 percentage point increase, higher than all 372 metro areas in the country, according to an analysis released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two other Illinois metros made the list of top five biggest increases: Peoria tied for second with a 5.5 percentage point increase, and Decatur was close behind with a 5.2 percentage point increase.

Rockford also had the fifth-highest unemployment rate of all metro areas, outpacing rust belt mainstays such as Flint, Mich., Elkhart-Goshen, Ind., and Detroit.

As far as the statistics go I'm not counted. I'm retired on Social Security. And my mate? She works for the school system so her job will be one of the last to go.

And what is one of the biggest problems our city faces? Public employee pensions.

The debate over how to balance the city budget without cutting services has now zeroed in on the budget’s ticking time bomb: pensions.

Mayor Larry Morrissey, in his State of the City address earlier this month, got everybody’s attention with one example:

A 25-year-old police officer hired today at base pay and receiving an annual 3 percent wage increase and required step and longevity increases, with no promotions, will pay $304,506.25 toward his or her pension throughout a 30-year career. If the officer or the officer’s spouse lives 30 years after retirement, he or she will receive a total of $5.8 million, from employee and city contributions and investment returns to the pension fund.

Now, multiply that by the number of police officers and firefighters the city expects to employ in the next 30 years. Right now the number is 549.

The city’s annual pension obligation — the amount the state says it must pay into three separate state-mandated retirement systems for its union employees — jumped from $11.3 million in 2009 to $12.8 million this year to a projected $16.3 million in 2011.

But at the same time, money coming into the city’s general fund fell from $112.4 million in 2009 to $110.1 million in 2010.

Let me do the multiplication for you. And to make it easy we will say the obligation is $5 million for 550 people. That would be around $90 million a year in a city whose budget is $110 million a year. A total 30 year obligation of $2.75 billion. Roughly.

That is unsustainable. And that which can not be sustained will not be sustained. I see bankruptcy in the city's future. Some improvement.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

An Old Soviet Proverb

There is No News in the "News"papers.

Atmospheric Fusion Reactions

My friend chrismb at Talk Polywell alerted me to this Russian paper on atmospheric fusion reactions caused by Deuterium - Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) reactions in lightning.

To produce thermonuclear reaction it is necessary, firstly, to have nuclei with a large quantity of neutrons available, for example, deuterium nuclei, and secondly, these nuclei should possess sufficiently high velocity and merge together upon collision, having overcome the Coulomb barrier. It turns out that all these conditions are observed in the course of a stroke of lightning - such a conslusion is evident from calculations by B.M. Kuzhevsky, Ph.D. (Physics&Mathematics), head of the neutron research laboratory, Skobeltsin Scientific Research Institute of Nuclear Physics (Moscow State University).

Deuterium is always present in water: on average, a molecule of DHO (water, where one of hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium) falls to 6,800 molecules of H2O. That means - taking into account the quantity of water vapour available in the atmosphere (i.e. 5õ10^-4 g/cubic centimeter) - there will be 10^15 deuterium atoms per cubic centimeter. In lightning, these atoms turn into ions and are capable of gathering speed up to considerable energy. With the lightning canal diameter varying from 2 millimeters to 5 centimeters, and discharge duration making the ten-thousandth of a second, it proves that billions of deuterium atoms will have time to start reacting with each other and to generate precisely two times less atoms of helium-3 and neutrons. These neutrons already possess enormous energy - 2.45 MeV. However, in the atmosphere of our planet they are capable of living at most for 0.2 seconds, during which they will inevitably meet with nitrogen atoms and be absorbed by them. This time period is sufficient for neutrons to fly a distance of one or two kilometers.

The calculation has been also confirmed by experimental data. The DYAIZA facility developed at the Institute and installed in Moscow at the Vorobyevy Hills repeatedly recorded neutron emission peaks during thunderstorms, their magnitude exceeding that of the background by hundreds of times.

Several important conclusions can be drawn from the above effort. Firstly, this helps to solve a long-standing puzzle: why cosmonauts on board the MIR space station observed high neutron background in the area of the equator. Keeping in mind that thunderstorms permanently burst out in this region, it is easy to guess where high neutron background comes from. Secondly, the same mechanism should also work in the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter where thunderstorms are also frequent and sporadic neutron streams should arise there.

In effect the atmosphere has been running its own fusor experiments for billions of years.

My Computer Died

Blogging will be on an as able basis until I get it fixed. My boot disk will not bring it back. I do have a data backup hard drive but I have been unable to check it. Maybe tomorrow.

Hits to the tip jar most appreciated.

Originally posted at 3/07/2010 11:56:00 PM. It will stay at the top until I get my computer fixed or replaced.

Update:

I was able to check my backup drive and it seems intact. I will post more about my backup system once everything is restored to its last known good state.

Update:

My son is home from college and I was able to prevail on him to let me use his computer. I still need some help even though posts will be a little more frequent until he goes back to school.

Update:

I took my machine to Best Buy and had them do an instant check. I watched while it was done and came to the same conclusion they did. Dead. Recovery not likely. So I'm looking for a new machine at under $400. I want to get one from a local store so if there are problems in the first 90 days I can get local service. My choices are an HP machine with a 500 GB HD with a single core processor and an e-machine. Any other suggestions welcome. Very much welcome. And if you can help out it would be very much appreciated. I live on a fixed income and even at $400 this is going to be very, very, hard to do. And to all those who have donated so far. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!

And on another related note: I have to stay home to help my ill son. Any work I can do for you from home would be much appreciated. Obviously I can write. I can also do electronic design. And I am more than willing to charge by the project milestone with guaranteed delivery dates or no charge.

Update 20 March 2010 0130z

Thanks to the help of all my friends here at Power and Control (and my Mom) I was able to go out to Best Buy tonight and get a Gateway DX4831-01e. My geek friends tell me it is a very good machine for the price.

I haven't started setting it up yet. When I do get online with it I will tell you how I like it. Thanks to all your help I was able to go from a barely adequate box to one that should serve my needs for quite some time. i.e. 64 bit instead of 32.

And to the person who sent me a monitor when mine died a while back - thanks again. I will be using it with this new machine. And to those who helped with donations back then: the gas company thanks you and I do too!

And finally - this post will drift away and you won't be bothered with it any more. Yipeeee!!!!

Get It Legal Tour

My friend E. J. Pagel advises me via e-mail that the Cheech and Chong Get It Legal tour is coming to the Rockford Coranado Theater on March 27th. Tickets are $35 and $50 per person.

I have a former police officer friend who says that pot prohibition will end in America about 5 years after the first state legalizes. That first legalization could come as early as this November in California.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

We Will Keep Stealing

Congressman Tom Perriello tells what is bad about Congress. "If you don't tie our hands we will keep stealing."

And the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Republicans generally steal less. Faint praise indeed.

From Real Clear Politics.

H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Idaho Will Sue

If the Health Care Destruction Bill passes Idaho will sue the Federal Government to prevent implimentation of the individual mandate.

Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

Constitutional law experts say the movement is mostly symbolic because federal laws supersede those of the states.

Well maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. It sure means enforcement is going to be difficult.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

WB-D

EMC2 (Polywell Fusion) has updated their site with an image of WB-8 shown above. The Drawing is labeled as "with diagnostics".

And then there is this picture:



Labeled:

WB-D 100MW Polywell Demo Device

Your Contributions Will Help Us Design The WB-D Polywell Device

Send your supporting contributions to:

New Mexico Community Foundation

Contact Energy Matter Conversion Corporation

1202 Parkway Drive Suite A
Santa Fe, NM 87507
Phone: 505-471-2050
Email: Rick at Emc2fusion dot com

There is considerable speculation at Talk Polywell as to what it all means.

And since from time to time there are people reading here who need to be brought up to speed on fusion I'm reposting my usual: You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years or less.

I'm a big fan of small fusion projects. Especially after hearing what Plasma Physicist and author of Principles of Plasma PhysicsDr. Nicholas Krall said, "We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good." And they seem really hard to build even. And who knows, if the Polywell experiments being done by the US Navy are successful the ITER project may just wind up as a big hole in the ground in France.

Update:

Here is the progress report given so far by EMC2:

EMC2 Fusion Development Corporation has been formed as a charitable research and development organization in frontier energy technologies with emphasis on fusion.

Fusion R&D Phase 1 - Validate and extend WB-6 results with WB-7 Device: 1.5 years / $1.8M, Successfully Completed

Fusion R&D Phase 2 - Design, build and test larger scale WB-8 Polywell Device: 2 years / $7M, In Process

Fusion R&D Phase 3 - Design, build and test full scale 100 MW Fusion System: 4 years / $200M, In Design Phase

Successful Phase 3 marks the end of fossil fuels

Good luck and happy fusing to the EMC2 folks and Rick Nebel who is leading the project.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Use It Or Lose it

I love the American tie. There were always some Brits who supported the American Revolution. Good to see that the supply hasn't dried up. And here is hoping we can return the favor.

Here is a bit from the page this video was posted on.

The case for a climate treaty is in tatters. We've seen the Climategate emails expose scientists who adjusted their data to suit their politics. We've seen Glaciergate in which we've learned that the famous IPCC climate change report falsely stated that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 and based this not on science, peer reviewed or otherwise, but on the unfounded claims of the WWF, an environmental campaigning organization. Now we're learning about Nasagate – that climate researchers at the American space agency concede that their temperature data was inaccurate and inferior to the data used at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia which is the very data that the Climategate emails reveal has been tinkered with. These days we can't seem to go a week without witnessing some further aspect of the climate charade collapsing into a new “gate.”

Well all this has the bureaucrats of the U.N., left-wing climate organizations and the businesses planning to cash in on the climate change scare, racing to restore their position before the gate closes for good on the entire climate change scare.

Polls tell us that the public has seen through the climate scare, but that their governments are not yet listening to them. People of good sense and good intentions need to make their voices heard. Let your elected representatives of every party know that they will pay a handsome price at the ballot box unless they withdraw their support from unwise climate change treaties and legislation and actively oppose them. Tell the U.N. Representatives meeting in Bonn that there must be no new climate change treaty.

For more information here is the CFACT home page.

And here is the contact info for the American Government:

House of Representatives

The Senate

The President

Light up their tails.

H/T The Air Vent

The American People Are Getting Tired Of This Crap

About 1:22 into the video.

H/T Stephen Green at PJTV

Some Random Drug War Notes

Well not so random actually. They are the working notes of anti-Drug War Lobbiest and retired Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge.

De Nile is also a river in Egypt:

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting this week our Deputy Secretary of State for the Americas, Mr. Valenzuela was asked by the chairman about the murders of 16 school kids at a birthday party in Mexico. His response was ‘the murders were a sign of success’ of the policy of Mexican President Calderone. I did not believe my ears. After the hearing I asked 2 others if I had heard correctly. Yes. I reviewed the tape at home. Yup. Like body counts in Vietnam and Iraq, dead students are a sign of success. Who knew?

Unsurprisingly a modest search of the Internet turned up nothing about those remarks.

Hell froze over:

On Tuesday I attended a press conference in the Capitol. The IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) endorsed the Webb Commission bill. 17 of my colleagues in full dress uniforms stood behind four Senators asking the Congress for a speedy passage* of the bill. The IACP represents 20,000 Top Cops. It is the only major group to endorse the Webb bill. The rest are fighting it for all their worth.

I never thought the IACP would support this bill. I was wrong. On this occasion it is good to be wrong.

More about IACP support.

And why are the rest of the top police opposing it? Follow the money.

Last month in the hallway of the Heritage Foundation, I ran into Ron Brooks, chief lobbyist for the nation's 69,000 narcotics officers (one cop in 12 is a narcotics officer). He smugly stated that my organization only had a few thousand members vs his 59,000 strong organization. I countered that a solid poll had just shown that 22 percent of all active duty cops would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. This percentage meant about 225,00 cops feel like I do. Per the same poll, a majority of cops felt that marijuana should be just a ticket, not an arrest. I told him that he and the narcs favored prohibition because it was a big, overtime check and job security. He became upset and stormed off.

That is not the only corruption going on in the Drug War. Ever wonder how all those drugs get across the border?

Worse than we thought:

Senator Pryor (D-AR) had the courage ( no other Senators attended the event) to call a hearing on the ‘Corruption of federal officers by the Mexican Drug Cartels.’ One witness stated that the polygraph exam was washing out 60% of the applicants. The audience was stunned at such a figure.

Then came the bad news. The Border Patrol only polygraphs 15% of applicants. The witnesses testified further that the Drug Cartels are hiring people who then apply to the Border Patrol. Why receive only one paycheck? And you wonder how drugs flow across the border like beer in a German bar?

Well not to worry. We are winning the Drug War. In fact we have been winning it for 40 years. Or would that be 96 years - since the passage of the Federal anti-cocaine and heroin laws - or for 73 years since the passage of the Federal anti-marijuana laws?

YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS

“So what numbers can you ‘hang your hat on?” asked Wooldridge. “In 2005 our federal government reported these sobering numbers: One – 110 million Americans had tried an illicit drug at least once. Two – 35,000,000 had used an illicit drug the previous year. More importantly, ask yourself what is the most crucial question for you and your children. Is it how much has drug use has gone up or down or how easy is it for your kids to buy drugs from marijuana to heroin. Of course it is drug availability which is the crucial question and that is why the Prohibition Crowd never, ever wants to discuss that aspect.

“Drug Prohibition will be repealed when a majority understand its destructive effects AND tell their politicians. Help your family by re-directing police time towards public safety, not personal safety. Going after Willie Nelson smoking marijuana on his back porch is NOT making America safer. Silence here means politicians will keep voting billions to feed the police drug machine.”

Which just goes to show you how long failure can be maintained if you are spending other people's money to support it.

Cross Posted at Classical Values