Paul Mingeroff quotes Dave Keene putting into perspective the increasing volume of calls for Republican unity urging conservatives to get behind John McCain.

There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House,” Mr. Keene said. “This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”

CNN:

An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days.

Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

Ships have been dispatched to repair two undersea cables damaged on Wednesday off Egypt.

FLAG Telecom, which owns one of the cables, said repairs were expected to be completed by February 12. France Telecom, part owner of the other cable, said it was uncertain when repairs on it would be repaired.

Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the cables off Egypt were likely damaged by ships’ anchors.

The loss of the two Mediterranean cables — FLAG Telecom’s FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies — has snarled Internet and phone traffic from Egypt to India.

Officials said Friday it was unclear what caused the damage to FLAG’s FALCON cable about 50 kilometers off Dubai. A repair ship was en route, FLAG said.

Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst with TeleGeography, said the FALCON cable is designed on a “ring system,” taking it on a circuit around the Persian Gulf and enabling traffic to be more easily routed around damage.

Schoonover said the two cables damaged Wednesday collectively account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East, so their loss had a much bigger effect.

Al Jazeera on outage impact on India

The outages extend from Egypt to Ceylon, and inevitably provoke suspicion of this being the result of deliberate attack on communications by some rogue state or terrorist group.

WND summarizes:

A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a “fossil fuel” derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.

The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

The abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure. …

The abiotic theory argues, in contrast, that hydrocarbons are naturally produced on a continual basis throughout the solar system, including within the mantle of the earth. The advocates believe the oil seeps up through bedrock cracks to deposit in sedimentary rock. Traditional petro-geologists, they say, have confused the rock as the originator rather than the depository of the hydrocarbons. …

Lost City is a hypothermal field some 2,100 feet below sea level that sits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the center of the Atlantic Ocean, noted for strange 90 to 200 foot white towers on the sea bottom.

In 2003 and again in 2005, Proskurowski and his team descended in a scientific submarine to collect liquid bubbling up from Lost City sea vents.

Proskurowski found hydrocarbons containing carbon-13 isotopes that appeared to be formed from the mantle of the Earth, rather than from biological material settled on the ocean floor.

Carbon 13 is the carbon isotope scientists associate with abiotic origin, compared to Carbon 12 that scientists typically associate with biological origin.

Proskurowski argued that the hydrocarbons found in the natural hydrothermal fluids coming out of the Lost City sea vents is attributable to abiotic production by Fischer-Tropsch, or FTT, reactions.

The Fischer-Tropsch equations were first developed by Nazi scientists who created methodologies for producing synthetic oil from coal.

“Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water and moderate amounts of heat,” Proskurowski wrote.

The study also confirmed a major argument of Cornell University physicist Thomas Gold, who argued in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels” that micro-organisms found in oil might have come from the mantle of the earth where, absent photosynthesis, the micro-organisms feed on hydrocarbons arising from the earth’s mantle in the dark depths of the ocean floors.

Affirming this point, Proskurowski concluded the article by noting, “Hydrocarbon production by FTT could be a common means for producing precursors of life-essential building blocks in ocean-floor environments or wherever warm ultramafic rocks are in contact with water.”

abstract

Earlier post on Abiotic Natural Gas containing useful link.

Chuck Asay comments in this cartoon on the intrinsic logic of democrat party approaches to several policy issues.

From Dr. Sanity via Bird Dog.

Peggy Noonan contemplates the situation of the two parties from a somewhat higher intellectual ground.

Republicans:

On the Republican side an embrace, but an awkward and unfinished one. It’s like the man-hug the pol at the podium now feels he must give to the man he’s just introduced. They used to just shake and say, “Thanks, Bob,” and go to the podium. Now they embrace, with an always apparent self-consciousness. Can you imagine JFK doing this? Or Reagan?

It is this kind of embrace many in the Republican party are giving John McCain. He has real supporters. He keeps winning. But he’s not getting even close to half the vote, as the presumptive nominee should. And he has been at odds with his party on so many things. …

Mr. McCain seems to me to have two immediate problems, both of which he might address. One is that he doesn’t seem to much like conservatives, and never has. They can’t help admire him, but they’ve disagreed with him on so many issues, and when they bring this up his demeanor tends to morph into the second problem: He radiates, he telegraphs, a certain indignation at being questioned by people who’ve never had to vote in Congress and make a deal. He’s like Moe Greene in “The Godfather,” when Michael Corleone tells him he’s going to buy him out. “Do you know who I am? I’m Moe Greene. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders.” I’ve been on the firing line, punk. I am the voice of surviving conservatism.

This doesn’t always go over so well. Mr. Giuliani seems to know Mr. McCain is Moe Greene. Mr. Huckabee probably thought “The Godfather” was kinda violent. Mr. Romney may be thinking to himself, But Michael Corleone won in the end, and had better suits.

Democrats:

All parties, all movements, need men and women who will come forward every decade or so to name tendencies within that are abusive or destructive, to throw off the low and grubby. Teddy’s speech in this regard was a barnburner. He went straight against the negative and bullying, hard for the need to find inspiration again.

He is an old lion of his party, a hero of the base. But people do what they know how to do, and objects at rest tend of stay at rest, and Teddy has long led a comfortable life as a party panjandrum who knew to sit back and watch as the dog barked and the caravan moved on. In a way he seemed to rebel against his own tendencies. He put himself on the line.

“I love this country,” he said, “I believe in the bright light of hope and possibility. I always have.”

As a conservative I would say Ted Kennedy has spent much of his career being not just wrong about the issues but so deeply wrong, so consistently and reliably wrong that it had a kind of grandeur to it. So wrong that I cannot actually think of a single serious policy question on which I agreed with him. But I remember the night President Reagan spoke of Sen. Kennedy’s brother at a fund-raiser for the JFK Library, and I remember the letter Reagan got from Teddy. “Your presence itself was such a magnificent tribute to my brother. . . . The country is well served by your eloquent graceful leadership, Mr. President.” He ended it, “With my prayers and thanks for you as you as you lead us through these difficult times.”

Liberals are rarely interested in pointing out, and conservatives by and large may not know, but everyone who knows Teddy Kennedy knows that he holds a deep love for his country, that he feels a reverence for the presidency and a desire that America be represented with grace abroad and stature at home. He has seen administrations come and go. And maybe much of what he’s learned came forward, came together, this week.

His principled and uncompromising rebellion seemed to me a patriotic act, and adds to the rising tide of Geffenism. When David Geffen broke with Mrs. Clinton last summer, and couched his disapproval along ethical lines, he was almost alone among important Democrats. It took some guts. Now others are joining his side. Good.

Leading New York Times traitor James Risen is facing a federal investigation for being the beneficiary of further Intelligence Community anti-Bush Administration leaking.

A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday.

The subpoena was delivered last week to the New York law firm that is representing the reporter, James Risen, and ordered him to appear before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Feb. 7.

Mr. Risen’s lawyer, David N. Kelley, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan early in the Bush administration, said in an interview that the subpoena sought the source of information for a specific chapter of the book “State of War.”

The chapter asserted that the C.I.A. had unsuccessfully tried, beginning in the Clinton administration, to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material in that chapter appeared in The New York Times.

Hat tip to Frank A. Dobbs.

Ann Coulter: “I will campaign for (Hillary) if it’s McCain. …Hillary is more conservative than John McCain. She lies less than John McCain. She’s smarter than John McCain, so that when she’s caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they’ve been caught lying. McCain is so stupid, he doesn’t even know he’s been caught.”

3:45 video

I’m not planning to campaign for Hillary personally, but one has to admit Ann Coulter’s got a point.

Hat tip to Allahpundit.

“Gus McCauley of Americans Against Guns” interviewed on a Fox 1/2 Hour News video

Hat tip to Xavier.

Even a few people on the left can see through the lunacy of Global Warming. Here’s Alexander Cockburn promoting his new book attacking the leading popular delusion of our time.

Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.