Very interesting information pertaining to the malfunctioning spy satellite which the US will attempt to destroy before it reaches earth:

Giant golf ball deployed. CNN says that “a floating X-band radar has to be modified to track the satellite’s trajectory.” That would be the massive — and massively controversial — Sea-Based X-Band Radar. The $815 million, 28-story, orb-like contraption has the ability, in theory, to tell which way a baseball is spinning — from 3,000 miles away. But it’s also proven to susceptible to the elements and high seas. The thing has been in and out of the repair shop for years.

Update: CNN is reporting that an attempt may be made on Thursday to destroy the satellite.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Navy will likely attempt to shoot down a faulty spy satellite Thursday, the day after the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land, two officials told CNN Monday.

Michael Barone takes a look at the democratic race and breaks down those tricky delegate counts. When it comes to elections he is one of the few who can catch and keep my attention when it comes to number crunching:

With the help of thegreenpapers.com the invaluable Green Papers, I made some calculations in a best-case scenario for Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas primaries. I assumed that Clinton won statewide in each case, and that Obama carried only congressional districts (or in Texas, state Senate districts) dominated by upscale white voters and/or black voters. This is an especially optimistic assumption in Wisconsin, where Clinton currently trails Obama by 4 or 5 percent in public polls. The results are as follows: a 44-30 delegate edge in Wisconsin, an 83-58 delegate edge in Ohio, and an 82-41 delegate edge in Texas. Overall this is an 80-delegate advantage, based (again I emphasize) on optimistic assumptions.

This would be enough to erase the current 58-delegate edge Obama has in total delegates according to Real Clear Politics. But not enough to overcome the 137-delegate edge he has among “pledged delegates,” that is, those chosen in caucuses and primaries. And it doesn’t account for the fact that Texas on March 4 will also have caucuses to select another 67 delegates. The Obama campaign has swamped the Clinton campaign in almost all the caucuses and probably has far more in the way of organization in Texas’s 254 counties than the Clinton campaign does.

Much more at the link.

Clever number quiz you can take on line. I tried it twice and both times the answer was correct. A bit of fun for Tuesday.

This evening Frontline will tackle the complex situation which occurred in Haditha.

The upcoming Frontline broadcast of “Rules of Engagement: What Really Happened in Haditha” is a major event. A co-production with Yellow River Productions, it will air February 19th at 9 p.m. ET on PBS. For the first time, television viewers will hear the facts about the incident in Haditha.

Arun Rath is the documentary’s producer, writer, and director. He took some time from a hectic postproduction schedule to talk with Defend Our Marines.

Not Murtha’s version of Haditha

“I am a journalist and tend to follow world news fairly closely, but before starting work on this project all I knew about the Haditha incident was basically the headlines,” Rath told me.

“When I first heard about it I thought it was interesting and counterintuitive. I knew that Marines had more intense training than our other forces, so the idea that so many would suddenly snap under pressure seemed a little strange. But I also knew that horrible things happen in wars, and figured something bad must have happened.

“Once we started to look into the story more deeply, we realized how far off the popular notion of what happened in Haditha was. For instance, the idea that there were no firefights when we know that November 19, 2005 was a day of very intense attacks across the town. We spend some time in our film spelling this out, using an interview with Major (then Captain) Jeffrey Dinsmore, the battalion’s intelligence officer, to help bring that day to life. We were also able to obtain the ScanEagle video from that day. That will be eye-opening for much of our audience.”

If interested, please check your local PBS station for availability.

Written by Sue

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