Romney vs Obama Part Two

Colorado Model:  Romney 77% likelihood of popular vote victory

The University of Colorado (CU) prediction renowned for perfect accuracy will predict a popular-vote win for Mitt Romney later this month, Campus Reform has learned.

The poll has accurately predicted every presidential election since it was developed in 1980. It is unique in that it employs factors outside of state economic indicators to predict the next president.

CU Political Science Professor Dr. Michael Berry, who spoke with Campus Reform at length on Tuesday, said there is at least 77 percent chance that Romney will win the popular vote.

MSNBC undecideds go for Romney after the debate

Romney’s record as a businessman seems to be moving people.

Romney:  “We don’t have to settle for this”

Romney kept exposing the Obama record.

Romney exposes an Obama vote as the definition of insanity*

Romney shot back that "if you elect President Obama, you know what you're going to get -- you're 

going to get a repeat of the last four years."

*definition of insanity:  doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

When Obama folded last night

The most single telling moment of Tuesday's debate - and possibly of any of the debates - came early, when Obama attempted to interrupt Romney one time too many. The governor rebuked him, politely but firmly, and Obama simply turned and went back to his stool...

….For a fleeting instant, Americans saw Obama the way that Putin, Jiang, Khamanei, and Jihadis see him. It was not an impressive sight, and it cannot be made up for.

CNN/CBS on who won the Debate

After posting this, I took a couple of hours sleep, woke up and looked at the polls. They present a more mixed impression of the evening than the live event suggested. CNN shows an Obama win overall, but it also has Romney ahead on the economy (18 points) and leadership (3 points).  CBS, again found that Obama won the debate.  But it also reports that Romney leads on the economy by 65 to 34 per cent. The implication is that Obama won on style and Romney on many specifics.

Town-Haul

Jay Homnick thinks Romney’s performance was the best ever in a Presidential debate even better than his hero Ronald Reagan.  For instance:  

First of all, he solved the age-old conflict of how to call a President a liar without seeming impudent. This conundrum had bedeviled challengers since the dawn of time. So many times in the past we have seen the Bob Doles and the McCains of the world let the lie fly by while they are too paralyzed by seemliness to take a swat.

Romney solved this with an inventive linguistic approach. Instead of saying something was wrong, he said the inverse of the inverse, something on the order of "How can this be so?"

Michael Barone on the second debate

Michael’s bottom line, this debate doesn’t change anyone’s mind.

Debate #2:  Scored like a boxing match

This was actually an entertaining and interesting look at last night’s debate.  Here’s the part I found especially insightful.

As a former boxer (1976 Golden Gloves), I thought I recognized what Romney was doing -- he was trying to see what Obama had.  Or maybe he was just nervous, but he gave Obama the first round.  Thereafter, it was all Romney.  Romney attacked Obama and his record with ease and effectiveness -- sticking and moving, sticking and moving.  He challenged him face to face, but with respect for the champ, while Obama clearly had no respect for him.

Romney killed on energy, at one point, asking the President a direct question on drilling, which forced Obama to sit down.  To know the significance of this, watch the moment with the sound off.  It's a standing 8 count.

After Debate #2:  Now what happens?

The core dynamic here is that Romney has proven himself to be a perfectly acceptable alternative to Obama. The silly portrayal of Romney in all those negative ads has been exploded. Obama’s inevitability is gone. The underlying state of the country, which is not at all good, has become the issue. All of that is bad for Obama and very good for Romney.

Does this guarantee victory to Romney? Not necessarily, but the fundamental dynamic of the race now favors the challenger. The core of Obama’s strategy was to distract attention from his record by rendering Romney unacceptable. That strategy has failed. In its absence, all Obama has is the hope of that his base is now large enough to hand him a narrow victory. Not impossible, but unlikely.

I think Mr. Kurtz is correct in his assessment.  And history is on Romney’s side.  Incumbent presidents don’t get reelected with this kind of an economy.

Obama’s Freudian Slip

"The way we're going to create jobs here is not just changing our tax code, but also to double our exports. And we are on pace to double our exports, one of the commitments I made when I was president. That's creating tens of thousands of jobs all across the country."

So Obama is already talking about being president in the past tense. 

What fair and balanced looks like to the left

Crowley interrupted Obama 9 times and Romney 28 times.

It couldn’t be because he was talking too long since Obama talked 10% longer than Romney did.

The Red Telephone Ad:  Hillary was right

Here’s the famous 3 AM ad.  It appears Barack has put that phone on call forwarding to Hillary.

Obamacare:  Now we know what’s in it

Every expansive promise made by the president for his signature legislation has been shown to be smoke and mirrors.  Though touted as healthcare reform (change for the better), the ACA is more accurately described as Obama's Act of Healthcare Exacerbation (change that makes things worse).

A new study by the Pioneer Policy Institute in Massachusetts adds number 10 to the list (below) of reasons why Americans hate the ACA.

Merkel vs Obama

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday Germany needs to stimulate domestic economic demand and urged opposition parties to stop blocking proposed tax cuts in the upper house of Parliament. Merkel told business leaders Germany should end the automatic progression of workers into ever higher tax brackets due to inflation, which siphons more than 20 billion euros ($26 billion) out of the economy each year. She also renewed her calls for cuts in pension contributions as another way to boost purchasing power.

Apparently she is at odds with BHO’s strategy

Best Bumper Sticker

“I’m not a racist.  I don’t like Biden either.” 

The coming landslide

What’s New Today

Story # 1 is today’s signs of desperation.  #2 is another reason for desperation as more and more businesses are voting with their donations.  #3 looks at the coming election and sees a landslide.  #4 talks about the bigotry of the left.  #5 diagrams out Voter Fraud.  #6 is a video comparing Sandra Fluke with Rachel Elizabeth of Chick-fil-A.  #7 we finally see Klavan on the Culture look at the vocabulary of the Media.  

Today’s Thoughts

Liberals feel business success comes from the benefits bestowed by government while business failures are caused by the greed of entrepreneurs such as Bain Capital and Mitt Romney.  Heads they win, tail you lose.  

The lies coming out of the Obama camp are extensive and transparent.  So why are they doing this if they keep getting caught?  Because they know the voters won’t vote for Obama so they need to give them something to vote against.   

Mr. Joe Soptic said that after he lost his job, he found work as a school custodian about six months later and had the option to put his wife on his insurance plan. But he opted not to.  If this ad had been reversed, that is put out by the Romney campaign; wouldn’t the Obama supporters be characterizing Mr. Soptic as a free rider?  

President Obama in a speech in Denver touting equal pay ended up complaining that the first lady doesn’t get any pay for what she does “even though that's a tough job!"

1.  Signs of Desperation

The Story So Far: two days ago, the Obama administration – using the fig-leaf/cutout of Super PAC Priorities USA – accused Mitt Romney of being a murderer because a company that Romney used to own closed down a steel mill (several years after Romney left that company) and that meant that the wife of the husband who lost his job at that steel mill (one Joe Soptic) didn’t have any insurance after the wife left her job several years after the layoff and several years after all of that the wife was diagnosed with cancer and then died.  As Erick notes in the link above: if that’s an acceptable logic chain that legitimately leads one to a charge of murder, then (to give just one example) this administration murdered US Border Agent Brian Terry and Eric Holder needs to give himself up right now.
But wait!  It gets even more convoluted.  You see, the Media is balking at taking this line of attack seriously, and the Obama administration has already done its best to distance itself from the Priorities USA ad, to the point where Obama for America (OfA) spokesman Stephanie Cutter denied that they had any knowledge of Soptic’s story.

So… who’s that voice at the end of this conference call, Stephanie?  Your evil twin?
The audio is from Guy Benson; it’s from a May 2012 conference call where Mr. Soptic recounted his story – without mentioning the details that Romney wasn’t with Bain at the time of the layoff; that his wife still had healthcare until she lost her job, years later; and that five years passed between M’. Soptic’s layoff and Mrs. Soptic’s  cancer diagnosis – and Stephanie Cutter was not only on the call.  She introduced Joe Soptic, then wrapped up his testimony….

http://moelane.com/2012/08/08/collusion-between-obama-for-america-and-priorities-usa-on-their-lying-soptic-ads/

Desperation is an ugly thing to look at and the Obama campaign is looking uglier and uglier.  The lies are flowing more and more freely. 

2.  Business People are voting with their contributions

Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman gave three-fourths of their campaign donations to Democratic candidates and committees, including presidential nominee Barack Obama. This time, they’re showering 70 percent of their contributions on Republicans.

That’s the biggest switch among the 25 companies whose employees have given the most to candidates and parties since 1989, according to data through June 30 compiled by Bloomberg from the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks campaign donations. Goldman isn’t alone; 13 of the companies’ employees are now giving more to Republicans after backing Democrats four years ago. 

“A switch in party preference of this magnitude is virtually unheard of among major companies with an established presence in Washington,” said Rogan Kersh,  provost at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

Dallas-based AT&T Inc. employees, who divided their contributions evenly between the parties in 2008, are now giving almost two-thirds of them to Republicans. Chairman Randall Stephenson gave $30,800 to the Republican National Committee in February -- his biggest donation in more than two decades -- six weeks after the Obama administration rejected a proposed merger with T-Mobile USA Inc. 

“We don’t comment on personal contributions,” said Claudia Jones, AT&T’s spokeswoman.

General Electric Giving

Employees of GE are giving 63 percent of their contributions to Republicans this year, almost a mirror image of their distribution in 2008 when Democrats received 66 percent of their donations…. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-09/goldman-sachs-leads-split-with-obama-as-ge-jilts-him-too.html

Another sign of desperation for the Obama campaign as even as they hold power they are losing donors.  That isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  Businesses are practical and give to insure access.  The Obama Administration’s hostility toward businesses has changed the rules and the results. 

3.The Coming Landslide

… In consequence, none of these psephologists has reflected adequately on the significance of the emergence of the Tea-Party Movement, on the meaning of Scott Brown’s election and the particular context within which he was elected, on the election of Chris Christie as Governor of New Jersey and of Bob McDonnell as Governor of Virginia, and on the political earthquake that took place in November, 2010. That earthquake, which gave the Republicans a strength at the state and local level that they have not enjoyed since 1928, is a harbinger of what we will see this November.

Yes, Barack Obama is ahead in some polls. And, yes, it looks like a neck-and-neck race. But that is because the President is spending everything that he has right now in a desperate attempt to demonize Mitt Romney, and it is because Americans are not yet paying attention. Obama’s support is a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep….

…Romney wants to win. He is a man of vigor, and he has a wonderful case to make. He is a turn-around artist, and this country desperately needs turning around. Barack Obama has no argument to make. He can only promise more of the same -- yet another stimulus and higher taxes on the investing class. All that Romney has to do if he wants to win is to make himself presentable, and that should not be hard. He is handsome, tolerably well-spoken, and accomplished. If, in the debates, he stands up to the President, he will seem the more presidential of the two – and that will do the trick, as it did in 1980.

The question that everyone will pose to himself on the first Tuesday in November is this: “Do I want four more years of this?” And Romney can drive it home: “Do you want four more years of massive unemployment? Do you want four more years of food stamps? Do you want to lose the job that you have? Do you want to be out of work when you get out of college? Or do you want to see this country get moving again? Barack Obama took his shot – the stimulus bill, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. And where has it left us? With the most anemic recovery in the history of this country!”…

…Second, he needs to force Obama to make errors. To this end, he needs to get under the President’s skin. He did this to Newt Gingrich in Florida, and it worked like a charm. Obama is even vainer than Newt, and he cannot stand mockery. Moreover, he hates Romney with all the resentment that phony intellectuals ordinarily harbor for successful businessmen. The gentler the mockery in this case, the lighter the touch, the more devastating it will be. Romney’s theme should be that the poor fellow is just not up to the job and that he should be left free to spend all of his time doing what he really enjoys -- playing golf. The SuperPACs may be able to carry the ball on this…

…In the meantime, you should not be afraid. This is going to be fun, and our margin of victory is going to be large.

http://www.ricochet.com/main-feed/Landslide-on-the-Horizon

I agree the margin is going to be big.  Obama will not be able to alter the facts that the economy is in horrible shape.  Throughout our history, the economy has been the factor that has defeated Presidents running for reelection. 

4.  Liberals and Religious Bigotry

… For decades, the American left has aggressively attempted to redefine constitutionally enumerated rights to favor one or more groups over others.  If the Declaration of Independence were to be rewritten by today's liberals, it might begin something like this:

American progressives hold these truths to be self-evident:

• All cultures and religions are equally meritorious (except for Christianity)

• There is no objective truth (until and unless progressives declare the truth)

• You cannot legislate morality (Therefore, everything is "moral" -- except Christian morality)

• Progressives celebrate diversity and are tolerant, inclusive, and accepting of all fellow humans (except conservative, white and Christian people)

• Progressives are intelligent, thoughtful, reality-based, and benevolent

Objective?  Diverse?  Inclusive?  Thoughtful?  Reality-based?  Benevolent?  Not really.  Progressives -- liberals -- are the worst offenders of their own axioms when they talk about the "evils" of those who dispute liberal versions of facts, policy, or, especially, morality.  The bigotry liberals direct toward those with whom they merely disagree is staggering.

Liberals believe in free speech, unless it offends someone's tender sensitivities (meaning only that liberals disagree with it).  They protest the "wealthiest 1%," but exempt from their condemnations billionaire liberals and wealthy movie and rock stars, most of whom share the same ideology.  Many liberals believe corporations -- and capitalism itself -- to be evil, even though the capitalist system and many of the corporations of which they disapprove have created the products and standard of living liberals enjoy.

But the American left reserves its ugliest bigotry for Christians.  When liberals speak or write about practicing Christians, especially evangelical Christians and, in this presidential election year, Mormons, no slander is unacceptable and no religious custom is off-limits.  America's most prominent liberal has condescendingly denigrated Christians as "bitter clingers" to guns and religion.  Liberals have (seriously) asked: "Do All Evangelical Leaders Believe Gays Should Be Put to Death?”  They worry about reports that evangelicals are voting in record numbers.  And they invent scenarios which question whether religious convictions resonate in the political arena.  Every Christian, of any age or gender, is fair game for liberal animosity -- or left-wing redefinition. Liberals bash Christians with impunity, because Christians are...well...Christian, and behave in a Christian manner from which liberals fear no reprisal.  Ironic, huh?  And opportunistic, too.

No one on the left would dare speak of Muslims the way they do about Christians.  Doing so would violate the liberal orthodoxy of multiculturalism, but, more importantly, such behavior might invite retaliation from some in the Muslim community.  Apparently, there is nothing like a savage history and a continuing, credible threat of violence to immunize a group from liberal animus, to focus the liberal mind, and to encourage liberals to attend to their own affairs….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/liberal_bigotry.html#ixzz2335HwHrB

Its open seasons for the left on Christianity.  

5.  Voter Fraud:  Does it exist? 

In the eyes of the Obama administration, most Democratic lawmakers, and left-leaning editorial pages across the country, voter fraud is a problem that doesn't exist. Allegations of fraud, they say, are little more than pretexts conjured up by Republicans to justify voter ID laws designed to suppress Democratic turnout.

That argument becomes much harder to make after reading a discussion of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race in "Who's Counting?", a new book by conservative journalist John Fund and former Bush Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky. Although the authors cover the whole range of voter fraud issues, their chapter on Minnesota is enough to convince any skeptic that there are times when voter fraud not only exists but can be critical to the outcome of a critical race.

In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race….

http://washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163#.UCOo-qDfWSo

So far a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it appears voter fraud is a problem that can change election results.

6.  Fluke vs Rachel (Chick-fil-A employee)

This is a video of The Five discussing Sandra Fluke vs Rachel Elizabeth.  Tell us what you think in the comments. Who is classier? Who is more opportunistic?

http://nation.foxnews.com/five/2012/08/08/fivesandra-fluke-vs-chick-fil-employee

7.  Klavan on the Culture:  MSM Glossary

After watching and listening to mainstream media news reports of the presidential race, you may have begun to realize that our journalists use words in a different way than the rest of us. This is because they are highly trained news experts who have developed a precise technical language in order to explain things more exactly. So to help you decipher their coverage, I’d like to offer a partial glossary of terms that may come in handy over the next couple of months.

Let’s begin with the word gaffe. Now and then you may hear a news “person” say something like, “Mitt Romney made a gaffe!” or “Mitt Romney’s foreign trip was full of gaffes!” or “Wow, that Barack Obama, he’s so darned wonderful, he never makes a gaffe!” and you may wonder what that particular word means.
Gaffe comes from the french word for “hook.” A gaffe is something a Republican says that is absolutely true, but that can be twisted like a hook to sound false or embarrassing by the journalist using the gaffe. For instance, when Mitt Romney recently said that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that cultural differences between the Israelis and Palestinians accounted for Israel’s greater success, he was trying, in his silly, fumbling way, to say that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and that cultural differences between the Israelis and Palestinians accounted for Israel’s greater success. But even though these statements are not only wholly factual but also obvious, a chronically dishonest PLO official pretended to be outraged, thus giving journalists the opportunity to put in “the gaffe.”…

http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2012/08/06/a-mainstream-media-glossary/?singlepage=true

Klavan is always fun. You can read or watch the rest of his findings by clicking the link above. 

An AGW alternative

What’s new Today 

Story #1 tells what really happened with the Osama bin Laden killing.  #2 tells of Obama’s problem with the economy.  Mediocre is not good enough.  #3 Is a story on a new study which puts the AGW hypothesis on its head. 

Today’s thoughts

With Obama still talking about green power and the jobs it will create has he noticed Spain which decided to take that route in Europe has an unemployment rate of 24.4%.

If the President and the Democrats are so eager to insure that the interest rate on college loans doesn’t increase, why is he threatening to veto the bill passed in the House?

1.   Obama’s Gutsy Call?

Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. Here’s the text, which summarized the situation:

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am….

…Only the memo doesn’t show a gutsy call. It doesn’t show a president willing to take the blame for a mission gone wrong. It shows a CYA maneuver by the White House….

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Get-bin-laden-memo-CYA

Talk about bad timing.  The DNC has just put out an ad that reiterates the “gutsy call” scenario and questions whether Romney would have made it.  It appears that the qualification of the “risk profile” was a perfect cover to blame the military if things went badly.

2.  Obama’s economic problem

Weak Growth, Weak Hiring

How weak was the economy's 2.2 percent growth rate from January through March? It depends.

Consider that a growth rate of 2.5 percent or higher is considered good when the economy is healthy.  But not at a time of high unemployment.

With 12.7 million people unemployed, today's economy needs much faster growth to boost hiring. Growth would have to be roughly 4 percent for a full year to lower the unemployment rate, now 8.2 percent, by 1 percentage point.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/28/US-growth-too-sluggish-to-drive-down-unemployment

This is a huge problem for Obama.  Even if the growth spurted now, the unemployment rate would most likely rise as there are 5 million people missing from the employment numbers and they would come back into the unemployed numbers. 

3.  Svensmark's cosmic Jackpot--a death knell for AGW?

Nigel Calder asks us to republish this post for maximum exposure. He writes:  

Today the Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes (online) Henrik Svensmark’s latest paper entitled “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”. After years of effort Svensmark shows how the variable frequency of stellar explosions not far from our planet has ruled over the changing fortunes of living things throughout the past half billion years. Appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, it’s a giant of a paper, with 22 figures, 30 equations and about 15,000 words. See the RAS press release at http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive

By taking me back to when I reported the victory of the pioneers of plate tectonics in their battle against the most eminent geophysicists of the day, it makes me feel 40 years younger. Shredding the textbooks, Tuzo Wilson, Dan McKenzie and Jason Morgan merrily explained earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain-building, and even the varying depth of the ocean, simply by the drift of fragments of the lithosphere in various directions around the globe.

In Svensmark’s new paper an equally concise theory, that cosmic rays from exploded stars cool the world by increasing the cloud cover, leads to amazing explanations, not least for why evolution sometimes was rampant and sometimes faltered. In both senses of the word, this is a stellar revision of the story of life.

Here are the main results:

·         The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.

·         The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.

·         Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..

·         As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times.

Presented with due caution as well as with consideration for the feelings of experts in several fields of research, a story unfolds in which everything meshes like well-made clockwork. Anyone who wishes to pooh-pooh any piece of it by saying “correlation is not necessarily causality” should offer some other mega-theory that says why several mutually supportive coincidences arise between events in our galactic neighbourhood and living conditions on the Earth.

An amusing point is that Svensmark stands the currently popular carbon dioxide story on its head. Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around.

By implication, supernovae also determine the amount of oxygen available for animals like you and me to breathe. So the inherently simple cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis now has far-reaching consequences, which I’ve tried to sum up in this diagram.

Cosmic rays in action. The main findings in the new Svensmark paper concern the uppermost stellar band, the green band of living things and, on the right, atmospheric chemistry. Although solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays is important to us on short timescales, its effects are smaller and briefer than the major long-term changes controlled by the rate of formation of big stars in our vicinity, and their self-destruction as supernovae. Although copyrighted, this figure may be reproduced with due acknowledgement in the context of Henrik Svensmark's work.

By way of explanation

The text of “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth” is available via ftp://ftp2.space.dtu.dk/pub/Svensmark/MNRAS_Svensmark2012.pdf The paper is highly technical, as befits a professional journal, so to non-expert eyes even the illustrations may be a little puzzling. So I’ve enlisted the aid of Liz Calder to explain the way one of the most striking graphs, Svensmark’s Figure 20, was put together. That graph shows how, over the past 440 million years, the changing rates of supernova explosions relatively close to the Earth have strongly influenced the biodiversity of marine invertebrate animals, from trilobites of ancient times to lobsters of today. Svensmark’s published caption ends: “Evidently marine biodiversity is largely explained by a combination of sea-level and astrophysical activity.” To follow his argument you need to see how Figure 20 draws on information in Figure 19. That tells of the total diversity of the sea creatures in the fossil record, fluctuating between times of rapid evolution and times of recession….

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/