Free Republic

....Never has the dominance of the image over the word seemed more significant than this year, as the parties and the public prepare for the three general-election debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that are scheduled to begin September 26 (as it happens, the anniversary of that first Kennedy-Nixon debate) and the one vice-presidential debate between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, scheduled for October 4. ...I believe that Donald Trump is by knowledge clownishly unprepared to be president and even less suited by temperament. As a voter, I hope that the effect of the debates, whether he participates or...

Fishermen in New England say President Barack Obama needlessly dealt a big blow to their industry when he created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument and circumvented the existing process for protecting fisheries. The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. The designation will close the area to commercial fishermen, who go there primarily for lobster, red crab, squid, whiting, butterfish, swordfish and tuna. After Thursday’s announcement, fishermen pondered their next move: sue, lobby Congress to change the plan or relocate. It’s...

The world’s largest viking ship has arrived in North America after crossing the North Atlantic Ocean on a journey from its homeport in Haugesund, Norway. The Viking ship, named Draken Harald Hårfagre, set sail from Norway with its approximately 32 crew members in late April and made stops in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, Canada, before making its way through the Saint Lawrence Seaway to Toronto for the Tall Ships Challenge Great Lakes 2016 festival this weekend. Future stops for the Viking ship include Chicago, Green Bay and Duluth, before heading to U.S. east coast with stops in New York City...

Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said that his country plans to deploy a naval presence in the Atlantic Ocean sometime this year. The Atlantic Ocean borders both North America and western Europe. Sayyari did not specify how close to the United States his ships would sail, though he said his navy would act "in accordance with international laws and regulations." So reports MNA, an Iranian news agency. Speaking with reporters on Saturday, Sayyari emphasized the self-sufficiency of the Iranian Navy: "All equipment and facilities of the Navy are now home-produced, and...

America is fighting the Fourth Battle of the Atlantic: Navy admiral warns Russian submarines are waging Cold War-style operations in 'alarming and confrontational ways' The commander of the Navy's US 6th Fleet has warned that Russian submarines are waging a Cold War-style 'fourth battle of the Atlantic'. Vice Admiral James Foggo III outlined Russia's submarine operations, which he said is probing US anti-submarine networks, in an article for the US Naval Institute's June issue of Proceedings. In his article he explained the submarine battles between the Allies and the Germans in World War I, World War II and the Cold...

SPECIAL TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 740 PM EDT THU MAY 26 2016 For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: 1. Shower activity associated with the low pressure area located between Bermuda and the Bahamas has become somewhat better organized since yesterday, and the circulation of the low has become a little better defined. Environmental conditions are expected to be generally conducive for a tropical or subtropical cyclone to form on Friday or Saturday while this system moves west-northwestward or northwestward toward the southeastern United States coast. All interests along the southeast coast...

Color me shocked. (Sarcasm intended.) The long awaited plans for U.S. offshore oil leases are coming out shortly and you’ll never guess what happened. After years of working toward expanded development in the Atlantic shelf, the White House has reportedly yanked the plans entirely and will cancel all plans for such leases. (New York Times) The Obama administration is expected to withdraw its plan to permit oil and gas drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast, yielding to an outpouring of opposition from coastal communities from Virginia to Georgia but dashing the hopes and expectations of many of those states’...

New Jersey lawmakers have proposed expanding the state’s oversight of Atlantic City’s troubled finances, sparking outrage from local leaders who say they are already under heavy state control. Atlantic City’s budget and administration have been subject to approval by a state monitor since 2010, and an emergency manager has overseen the city’s day-to-day finances for the past year.

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin. > But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known. >

A Spanish research team, using 3-D reflection seismology, has for the first time mapped the geomorphological features of the Ebro river basin 5 to 6 million years ago. The images obtained show that the surface analysed is today 2.5 or 3 kilometres below the sea bed. "The results shed light on the way in which the sea level fell during the Messinian (between 5.33 and 6 million years ago), and imply that the subsequent inundation of the river margins happened extremely quickly," says Roger Urgeles, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Department of Marine Geology of...

Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago. The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin. The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters... show that the resulting flood could have filled the basin within two years. The team was led by Daniel Garcia-Castellanos from the Research Council of Spain (CSIC)... Using existing borehole and seismic data, his team showed how the flood would have begun with water spilling over a...

Approximately five million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up after it was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean. According to earth scientist Rob Govers of Utrecht University, a reduction in the weight on the Earth's crust led to the Straits of Gibraltar moving upwards. Govers will publish his conclusions in the February issue of the earth sciences journal Geology. Much like a mattress springs back into shape after you get off it, the Earth's crust moves upwards when sea levels fall. Known as isostasy, this phenomenon explains how the Mediterranean Sea was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean five...

The Mediterranean Was a Desert Alan Feuerbacher In the past three decades convincing evidence has been found that the Mediterranean Sea has completely dried up at least once, and probably many times. The first solid evidence came in the summer of 1970, when geologists aboard the deep sea research and drilling ship Glomar Challenger brought up drill cores containing gypsum, rock salt, and various other minerals that could only have been formed by drying up of seawater. What was remarkable was that these minerals were found on the ocean floor, one to three kilometers deep, buried under as much as...

Search for "Lost" Atlantis Centers on Strait of Gibraltar The Record, Bergen County, New Jersey January 4, 2002 It was Plato, around 360 B.C., who first described an ancient, exotic island kingdom catastrophically buried beneath the sea when its once-virtuous people angered the gods with their pronounced tilt toward sin and corruption. Since then, creative souls ranging from Jules Verne to Kirk Morris, Maria Montez, Fay Spain, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael J. Fox, and Walt Disney have sought to explain and exploit the terrible fate that befell Atlantis. Vases from Atlantis? Archaeologists made an important find in the 1960s, lending support ...

An archaeologists analysis on how the construction of megalithic monuments in Atlantic Europe are not restricted to a single purpose, nor how they reflect one aspect of the community that built them... well-rounded evidence for practical and symbolic components of the early agricultural lifestyle within the Neolithic. Depictions in the architecture of these structures explore complex symbolism and the socio-ritual interactions where monuments offer places for gatherings... Megalithic monuments of Atlantic Europe have long attracted attention from those who are interested in the early past of mankind. The word megalith originates from the Greek, meaning ‘great stone’ and is used...

Some time in December, Ben Hooper will step on to a beach in Dakar, Senegal, and plunge into the warm blue waters of the Atlantic. He will not stop swimming until he hits Natal in Brazil. The distance is 1,763 miles. But that’s only if he goes in a straight line. And swimming across the Atlantic in a straight line is a bad idea: “The currents in the centre are so strong, I’d never get there. It’s an absolute car wreck in the centre. Great for rowers, great for sailors, horrible for swimmers,” he says. Instead he will go in...

It is, for our home planet, an extremely warm year. Indeed, last week we learned from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe’s surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going back to 1880. It’s just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015. Yet, if you look closely, there’s one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has seen...

High-tech spy vessel carries cable-cutting gear, mini-subs U.S. intelligence ships, aircraft, and satellites are closely watching a Russian military vessel in the Atlantic that has been sailing near a U.S. nuclear missile submarine base and underwater transit routes, according to Pentagon officials. The Russian research ship Yantar has been tracked from the northern Atlantic near Canada since late August as it makes its way south toward Cuba.

David Frum, in an article published in the Atlantic on 23 May, takes considerable liberties with the facts and truth.   The article is under the "politics" section, so it should be a bit more concerned with facts than a typical opinion piece.  But disarmists seldom let reality interfere with their fantasies.  Frum makes a number of assertions as fact that are not true.  He selectively ignores other facts that invalidate his thesis.  Here are some of the more egregious errors. He claims that mass killing with firearms is a distinctly American phenomena.  That is simply false, an echoing of...

If millions of dollars partnered with “aggressive social media” can wipe out corruption and bald-faced lies, then Hillary Clinton, who comes with great stores of both, could be America’s next president That it was suddenly magnanimous, home-grown Irish, a coming together of young and old, who made their country the first to approve same-sex marriage by way of referendum, is an exaggeration that surpasses the gifts said to come to the kissers of the legendary Blarney Stone. It was in point of fact American money raised by the billion dollar resourced Atlantic Philanthropies organization who poured in mega millions to...