Must Be A Friday, or Facts Are Stubbon Things

The hard drive in my laptop failed (I have backups, of course) but so I had to spend two hours opening a warranty case with HP. Makes me think they'd rather I just bought a new hard drive. ;-) Just so the day isn't a complete loss, here are a pair of links:

1) There's been a lot of argument as to whether or not humans were living in North America prior to the arrival of the Clovis people. Apparently, yes, Virginia, there were, and one of their spear points got stuck in a mastodon's leg bone.

2) Global warming skeptics held out high hopes that University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller would show that global warming wasn't happening, or at least not as rapidly as predicted. Well, his results are back, and Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." So much for "Climategate."

Facts are stubborn things. They just don't go away if you disagree with them.

I'm Confused

Okay, so Obama announces today that we're pulling all the remaining American troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. Now, since A) he campaigned on that plan and B) that's the deal that Bush signed, I find this announcement as surprising as snow in Chicago in January.

However, I walk by the TV in the lobby, and Fox News is screaming about how we're abandoning Iraq. See, I thought we went into Iraq to:

1) Remove Saddam from power
2) Ensure his chemical and biological weapons programs were stopped
3) Establish a democratic government

By my count, #1's done and the body's cold, there proved to be no #2 to worry about, and the whole reason we're leaving is that the democratic government created in #3 says "you can't stay unless you play by our rules" and we don't like those rules. So, what's the problem? Looks like "Mission Accomplished" to me.