TASTE THE IRON

It's not all that often one gets to see the Irony in action. Nobody says it better than spike.

HEADING FOR THE COAST

We are heading for the coast for the next few days. Have a good Polar Vortex.

ONLY YOU CAN HELP CUBA!

Socialism

makes their clothes fall off.

ON THAT LETTER

I have a raft of these. I look through them from time to time and think about how different the world back then was from the world today. In many ways nothing has changed between then and now. I think that perhaps the point of departure between civil discourse and ugly hate was more refined a hundred and fifty years ago but I could be wrong. There are whole topics today that one cannot even hint at discussing without inviting some really ugly and mean critters into the house. We decided early on that our rules here would be the rules of the mess. We eschew the ugly and the mean.

There are words most dare not even breath lest some idiot take them down to the foundry, cover them in molten metal, and then swing them most enthusiastically at one's head. It strikes me that much of the innerverse has become a series of closed tidal pools which are excessively intolerant places and where the occasional dissenters get eaten alive. I particularly noticed this in some of the book forums where there is literally no civil discourse. I accept that. It's easy to allow people to find their own ways to damnation and people these days generally take the freeway.

One would really like to believe that the preachers and practitioners of the worshipful voice were out there on the Sabbath preaching the unifying theory of togetherness, all God's creatures, we can all get along, but sadly, I know that's a lie.

I don't believe that the major moral movements that made America have completely flamed out. The flickering candles still appear at the odd little rally of hopeful types who join John Brown and his abolitionists in believing that if enough of the sovereigns in this country get together and unite, they can pass laws that will rebind this country to the moral path they believe was laid out for it at its founding. They don't realize that a judge will just toss out the law. They want to heal the world, heal the nation, heal the sick, comfort the poor, educate the illiterate, save the unborn, abolish slavery, end the war. You know, all the things that the Church used to do

These people are at the fringes of society where they are hanging on grimly so society doesn't entirely cast them out as society has been trying for just about always. Some of them are kooks. Some are idiots. Many are the worst sort of orcs and trolls. Quite a lot are saints and the kind of people you pray to come by and offer a hand when you need help. Unfortunately, many have become tainted and stained by devotion to unworthy causes, unsavory science, and addicted to every dollar you ever made in your life. Everything you have is theirs and they'll suffer to let you have only so much of yours as they see fit.

Everybody declares that the best approach is compromise but surely they don't mean that because if they did, how monstrous is that? There is dead and there is alive. There is no place that straddles life and death. How exactly would you compromise with the great evils in the world? Many people thought that Compromises and Treaties were just the thing to keep everybody happy...except the ones who saw all they had and ever would have, traded away for Peace in our Time.

This envelope still contains the letter that was mailed over a 150 years ago. It was mailed before computers and zip codes and it passed through a country fully engaged in a Civil War and yet see how it is addressed:

Every man knew his neighbor. This was addressed to a man using only the county and state for his address and it made it there without delay. Seemingly all of the letters mailed by this man's young son made it to his home. It was enough that the letter make it to the right county. Imagine getting a letter today addressed to you by name and nothing else but the county you live in. [This might be worth spending whatever it costs to mail an actual letter and finding out if it ever shows up at your door.]

I don't think our country is ripe for any kind of civil war. Nope. I think if some parts of it wanted to secede right now, many of the rest would get behind and push. In a way, I admire the folks of Great Britain. What other kind of fools would allow the Act of Union to be torn asunder by the vote of one half of the Union without counting the votes of the other members of the Union and yet turn about and deny the whole of the Union, the right to vote on staying within the Concert of Europe?  I think if I was English that I would hire me some ACORN managers to organize the turnout in support of division.

MODERN NAVIGATORS OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Our man of the Klystron Amplifier and Traveling Wave Tubes had a post up yesterday about some navigators. I couldn't quite see what he was talking about since there were a couple of guys in the way.  Anyhow, here's a couple of fine modern navigators that people don't see everyday.

The little bit on the pointy end opposite is the navigator of this little pencil of death known as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. The navigator was especially trained to drop bombs on the enemy at just the right spot. This navigator takes long cruises every year on seagoing ships that travel the world in mixed company. It is only good for one shot but it has lots of company and the vast majority make it to their final destination where they are frequently met by fireworks displays and great commotions.

The big fellow on the right is the navigator on a Minuteman III ballistic missile. This navigator can navigate in space and spends most of its time living in a very expensive hole in the ground under 20 feet of snow and ice. Polar bears roam the land above to keep people away. It is very lonely and under-appreciated.

LEADING TO TROUBLE CAUSES TROUBLE

:UPDATE:

The navy revealed that the smaller ship shown below momentarily fetched up on the rocks during this little protective sojourn. In terms of "providing security" it was kind of like the President's advanced security detail of Secret Service agents ending up fired for consorting with members of the opposite sex while not on duty. The Navy has inarticulately fired the ship's Commanding Officer because, "The investigation hasn’t turned up any egregious mistakes by Volpe," said Navy spokeswoman. "So far Volpe is the only person implicated."

Gads! It just makes you want to run down to the nearest recruiting station and sign up doesn't it?

----------------------------------------------

One of the articles that caught my eye this morning was from the world famous Navy Times. I admire the Times for its ability to choke on every real news story and inflate, conflate and mistake everything else.

Two navy warships have entered the Black Sea to assist the Russians with Olympic security. Here they are:

The Fleet's Flagship from an era when we had a Mediterranean Fleet

The US Mediterranean Fleet in the shape of a fine little ship which is rivaled in size by its flag

These will be a comfort to Americans in Russia should something go awry in Sochi. One is stuffed with senior officers and very little else and has no other purpose but to move officers around. The other is an escort class ship to see that little or no harm comes to the first ship. As you can see from the article, they are there to offer "security assistance." This is becoming a joke isn't it? Whenever our government or State Department speak you can feel their tongue probing your pocket, leaving a trail of slime behind and you know they are being dishonest and deceitful.

MINDS BENDING JELLO

From VDH today:

What goes through the mind of an Al Gore? Does he ever wake up and muse, “My God, I just made millions through the con of selling a broke cable network to a dictatorship in the Middle East, desperate for entry into the U.S. TV market to spread its hate-filled Islamist and anti-Semitic propaganda”?

No.

DIDN'T EVEN SLOW HIM DOWN

Joe Biden told the women of America to go out and buy a double barrel 12 gauge shotgun to protect themselves. He might have said something about it fitting neatly into a bag.

Remember the former VP? He shot a lawyer with a 12 gauge shotgun and it didn't even slow the lawyer down.

ADRIFT IN AN IDLE SEA

An interesting note from gcaptain.

The U.K. Maritime and Coast Guard Agency is warning mariners to keep a close watch for shipping containers floating in the English Channel after hundreds of boxes fell from the deck of a Maersk cargo ship last week.

Earlier this week, Maersk Line said that as many as 520 containers had been lost from the deck of the ship as she sailed through the Bay of Biscay on her way to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Maersk Line noted that that 85 percent of the containers were empty and that none of the filled containers carried hazardous materials.

85% of the shipping containers outbound from Europe to Sri Lanka were empty when they washed overboard. Trade takes many forms and there are all kinds of reasons why a country exports containers full of goods and receives back deck loads of empty containers. It doesn't take a master of the dismal science to explain how empty ships can return to overseas ports; there to load goods to take back to the people with money. Spain was once the greatest practitioner of such an arrangement; boatloads of men to the new world on ships that returned laden with nothing but gold and silver.

Spain reaped such a profit on the deal that it became the richest and most powerful country in Europe.

I'LL RAISE MY GLASS

Mark Steyn has embarked on a legal counter-attack on a rather loathsome man who had the opportunity to watch and admire Steyn as he eviscerated the muslim despoilers of truth and freedom of speech in Canada who brought suit against him there for speaking no less than the truth about islam. This noted academic unquestionably knew what he was dealing with when he decided to sue Steyn for attacking his pet political theory but went ahead anyway and filed a lawsuit against Steyn and entities that used to matter when it came time to stand up and be numbered with Truth, Justice and the American Way of life. In other words, the idiot knew he was smearing himself in BBQ sauce prior to throwing himself into a pool filled with piranha and went ahead and did it anyway.

I enjoyed watching Steyn wage a war against seventh century muslim thugs and their government enablers in Canada. Canada had sunk to such a low estate I did not think that he would prevail. I don't know how anybody with an academic bent of mind could rationalize filing a law suit against the man who prevailed in the kangaroo courts of Canada.

Glasses up,

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."

Journals and journalists carry libel insurance as a matter of routine. Do you suppose professors at Penn State are in the habit of carrying any kind of legal insurance to pay $10 million dollar legal judgements against them? Yeah, me neither.

FIRST OF FOOT RIGHT OF THE LINE

 BZ gentlemen. Keep up the good work.

ROLLING DARKNESS AFLAME IN THE NIGHT

I have been looking into the abyss the last couple of days and it is not looking good. There have, however, been some brightish spots in the darkness. This story at the Jawa Report is amusing. I really liked the graphic that went along with the story about a mysterious airplane crash in Libya.

Making things go bump in the night since ?

TRON DIES HORRIBLY ON THE WIRE IN CYBERWAR

Iranian muslims were surfing the Navy Marine Corps Internet for over 4 months that we know about. They made their way into the unclassified network in the usual way of hackers and other cyber ne'er-do-wells and had a fine time examining all the content they could suck through their cyber hookahs. The ugly little secret is that once you're in to the NMCI network you can pretty much roam at will through the largest intra-net in the world. Once you're in and attach the data vacuum all you have to do is suck, a lot. The code breakers and other hackers will get you into the password protected sites and files and you can read them at your leisure.

Nothing happens without a reason. I hope the Iranians enjoyed reading the public mail. Sometimes one has to remember that the Soviets didn't suddenly come to the realization that they were competing so far out of their league it wasn't even a contest. Somebody had to help them to see for themselves just how disparate was the correlation of forces. There's enough on the unclassified networks to make it pretty clear that the US could do a complete take down of the Iranian forces and impose a regime change in less than a week. If it wanted to. It doesn't hurt anybody to let them know that before they make it necessary.

A CONNECTICUT FRIEND IN NEED

Dear Armed Citizens of the People's Republic of Connecticut,

I will happily accept full ownership of any weapons you may temporarily feel the need to give away in order to avoid going to jail because your fellow citizens opted to sell you down the river.

You can still avoid the harsh penalties law-abiding slaves voted into effect when you all passed the Totalitarian Dream Act. When you contact me we will arrange for the transfer and storage of the weapons and magazines until you all get your act together and reclaim your heritage at which point they will be returned in the exact condition received.

A friend.

SECOND TO NONE

President Obama, second to none. From American Digest.

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

First President to violate the War Powers Act.

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the US, including former convicts.

First President to demand a company hand over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 90 to date.

First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize one month into his first term.

First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; paid for by us.

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

It's going to be very hard for us to find another man like this to put in the White House. Populist presidents don't just grow on trees. We'll basically have to look under every rock in the world to find another man as honest, ethical and transparent as the current ruler. Fortunately for us, Hillary has a record every bit as distinguished as Obama's. One that we can all be proud of and unlike Obama, her spouse is adored by billions.

ODERINT DUM METUANT ON THE BLINK

Sometimes in war, things go awry.

People forget that this country is still at war in Afghanistan. Story from American Digest.  Whenever I hear people talk about Information Dominance or Total Domain Awareness and something like this happens I know I'm hearing from people who don't really understand that it only takes a single glitch in the system to ruin your whole day. Examples abound.

PERCEIVED LIBERAL BIAS

This is an interesting bit of scholarly research on an area vital to understanding how America got here. It talks about a time before most Americans now alive were born:

Looking back, it is hard to even think that a mere 25 years ago, a handful of liberal anchormen and a dozen or so newspaper columnists pretty much controlled how the nation saw or read the national news. Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Harry Reasoner and the others, all good Americans to be sure but liberal to the core, talked to us every night and gave us the news that they had selected to be the news. They were pretty authoritative, and had the power to be.

Cronkite even used to close his broadcasts by intoning, “and that’s the way it is, today” followed by that day’s date. They insisted that they were just giving us news and that they were impartial, and they did sound dispassionate, but reality was otherwise. By choosing what was news, what they prioritized, the tone they used and whom to interview, the old set of journalists were able to bias the news. Comment, context and background in the transmission of news massage the message. It wasn’t just news we were getting. When Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War the gig was up, and LBJ knew it, saying famously, “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost the nation.” The nation really did pay attention to what Uncle Walter said.

Those were my times. I used to be in the news business back when I was young. Before the internet and the resurgence of AM radio there was only one source for news in America. It was the way it was and I have no complaints. If there was bias, it got there naturally as media was sceptical of the ruling class in this country and it showed in their early bias. They didn't really pull all that many punches on either party's foibles and if they gaffed off Ted Kennedy's driving habits they also gave a miss on telling us all about Eisenhower's driving habits in England during the war.

Nowadays I watch as people endlessly debate the perception of liberal bias in the main stream media and Fox news and I have to say that I don't see a liberal bias in either.*

*Stopped watching years ago.

IMPERIAL SENATOR-AT-LARGE

It is almost impossible to find something impossible to believe about an American politician these days. That said, I do like this campaign blit for His Imperial Senatorship Pat Roberts. I'm sure he'll win re-election but how is he representing the voters of Kansas by living in Virginia?

Overland Park – Pat Roberts has been wildly unsuccessful trying to explain away his lack of residency in Kansas.  After several attempted explanations, it’s time for Pat Roberts to come clean and acknowledge the simple truth.

Truth is, Pat Roberts is a permanent resident of Alexandria, Virginia, and he has been for some time.  Pat Roberts lives in his home in Virginia, he has his mail delivered to his home in Virginia, and he even registers his vehicle, and vanity license plate in his home state of Virginia.

In 2008 Pat Roberts filed for the ballot using the address of his rental property in Dodge City that was occupied by someone else, and he had his absentee ballot mailed to his home in Virginia.  He must have known this didn’t satisfy the Article 1, Section 3 requirement in the Constitution that requires a Senator to be an inhabitant of the state they represent, because the day before Milton Wolf announced a primary challenge last October, Pat Roberts was signing up to rent a room from donors, and changing his voter registration address.

 The Senate was in recess for 214 days last year, and Senator Roberts refuses to tell Kansans how many of those days he spent in Kansas.  After having 6 employees research his schedule, he decided not to release their findings, most likely because the results were damning.

 Senator Roberts’ distance from Kansas has been shown the most in his votes.  Roberts has cast 11 votes to raise the debt ceiling, he voted for Barack Obama’s $600 billion tax hike, and he cast two crucial votes to confirm Kathleen Sebelius to run ObamaCare.  These votes are not consistent with Kansas values, they are consistent with the big-government career politicians that live and work with Pat Roberts in Washington DC.

 Renting a "room" in Kansas. You would think a man who has spent 47 years laboring selflessly for his Kansas constituents as a mere public servant could, after all this time, afford an apartment. I just checked the ads in Junction City and he could get a nice place for under $750.

In addition to his Imperial Senatorship, His Gravitas is also a Prince-Cardinal of the NSA.

ONLY THE THINNEST VENEER OF CIVILIZATION

The title may say it all about the video at this link.

I watched it 3 times and I'm having trouble deciding who was more anti-civilized. When I'm striding down the sidewalk and I have somebody come out of a door, look right at me 20 feet away and then turn deliberately into my path and set off at a snail's languid pace while blocking the sidewalk.....well, I was gently raised by a Spartan. The rules were always very clear that boys don't ever hit girls but the rest was open to interpretation.

Watching that was like listening to that pack of surviving bicyclists 20 years ago who blocked the road riding 20 abreast in Marin one day and were utterly shocked when a driver simply plowed right into them. Rights are very balanced in reality.  If you go around willfully ignoring other people, stand by to roll with the punch. What kind of "me" bubble do guys grow up in and not learn that? On the other hand, poor impulse control is no excuse for clocking an idiot who is just being stupid.

You never know what makes someone snap but you could guess, right?

INTERESTING FREQUENCY

At xkcd. Ripped off from Coyote.

WATER THIEVES OF THE APOCALYPSE

California has a little problem and has had for decades. It doesn't have much water. The State has secretly funneled hundreds of billions of gallons of fresh water into the showers of San Franciscans after stealing it from farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and every other farming county in the State.

When I first moved to California they were droughtish but it got worse and we went into 7 years of no rain. Yet, the farmers still had plenty of water to raise crops ceaselessly in the richest farmland in the world, but the cities were running low on water. It seems the farmers had locked up the water rights ages ago when first they came to the territory and continued to sew them up for the next 4 generations. There have been some great movies made about how and why they did it.

A while ago the politicians came up with a way to steal the water the farmers were legal owners of. They arranged to have some liars come up with a half-assed completely unbelievable story about an endangered fish that needed the water in order to survive.

CA has 53 Congressmen, the most of any state. Have you ever heard them argue for some way to rein in the EPA and the courts and the law about the killing fish?

It was never about a fish. You didn't really believe it was did you?

A SAKI FUELED DRIVE-BY ON CONGRESS

This short piece by the Federalist is interesting but it doesn't go far enough.  It explains the slightly tortured way the President got an open limit on the deficit ceiling from his friends in the Republican Party.

I think for the president to ask for a clean debt ceiling when we have a debt this size of our economy is irresponsible.” What McConnell should have added then is: but there’s nothing we can do about it right now. We have to work on winning more seats, and then we can stop this endless cycle of irresponsible spending.

If you always cave in to the so-called moderates, it looks like you never do anything except compromise your standards for nothing in return. It's always easier to be a little evil but that isn't the goal now, is it? When you repeatedly slither to the far left in search of 'moderate' support from the likes of Arlen Specter, what use are you to the people who thought they elected the opposition? Remember, Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party after a quick bit of betrayal and backstabbery.

Specter conspired with Harry Reid to be the 60th vote in the Senate to pass Obamacare. This was one of the "moderate voices" republicans are ordered to pay attention to lest they abandon the party in the name of principle.

This was not a nameless beach that anybody was going to die on. This was a simple matter of urging your party to vote for its principles and the republican leaderships couldn't even risk that. It may sound like I am advocating another government shutdown but that is not the case. I'm simply pointing out that enough of the men and women elected to the Senate as republicans can always be counted on to vote democrat and spend more money than the nation has. Let them vote their principles in an open unforced vote so the people can clearly see what they elected to represent them in Congress.

Cruz wants people to see that it is not enough to vote Republican since all kinds of low-lifes revel shamefully in that guise. You can see the kind of faith and trust the people have in their government and how it is reciprocated by the government when you look at arms and ammunition sales in this country.

When the revolution comes, it's going to be a bloodbath.

Writing this brought back old memories of reading Saki when I was young. There was just a 2 hour interlude while I reread some of my favorites such as The Storyteller. Here is a smidgeon of what Christopher Hitchens wrote about H H Munro in 2008.

Saki surprised all his elite admirers. His reasons for insisting on signing up for the trenches, when he was easily old enough to evade that fate, were almost comically reactionary. Enraged by the antimilitarist left that thought socialism preferable to world war, he argued in effect that even world war was preferable to socialism.

I don't suppose he would have been amused to see entire ways of life swept away by the World War and the ultimate triumph of socialism in the West. One can read many of the stories of H H Munro here.

REPUBLICAN SLOTH WE CAN ALL ADMIRE

I found this little gem at the National Review:

Less appreciated is Susan B. Anthony’s run-in with the law after she was arrested by U.S. marshals for casting a ballot in the 1872 election: “Positively voted the Republican ticket — straight,” as she put it in a letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Antony maintained that the 14^th Amendment, which contains no language of sexual exclusion, conferred upon her equal rights of citizenship so far as the federal government was concerned, including the right to vote in federal elections. She was prohibited from testifying in her own defense, and Justice Ward Hunt, after having given the jury explicit instructions to find her guilty, issued an opinion that had been written before the trial was even completed. Because of her national stature, Anthony was not sentenced to jail time, only a $100 fine.

Anthony, to her credit, refused to pay that fine. She dared the federal government to come and haul her away to prison, and the federal government, lacking the courage of conviction, never did. (Perhaps President Grant simply appreciated her vote.) Anthony was unquestionably a law-breaker, but I find it impossible to conclude that her law-breaking was anything other than a positive good and patriotic.

ALWAYS FUNNY

I find it amusing when people who make their living from actually using language don't understand the plain and simple language they use. Take the quote below for instance:

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- In a first for the South, Virginia's same-sex marriage ban has been overturned, with a federal judge ruling that the voter-approved amendment is unconstitutional and declaring the move "another moment history when We the People becomes more inclusive."

See how one single solitary plaintiff became "we the people," in deciding to overturn and set aside a referendum that was overwhelmingly ratified by all the voters of Virginia?  It kind of makes me wonder if people actually understand how the system was supposed to work in this country. The will of the people is found in the actual votes of the people.

One lawyer/judge/queen has disemboweled the plain meaning of democracy. She decided that she alone could determine what was legally permitted to the people to decide what is law. You and I know that once they cross over that little tiny wicket barrier they rapidly move on to decide all the laws for us. Laws long based on the standards of the community such as legal age of consent, polygamy, home schooling, zoning, etc are all tossed onto the PCB/lead/mercury waste-heap of history when not only are the people refused the right to determine their laws, so too are their elected representatives.

I am always surprised that we don't wake up each morning and find that Justice has once again made the newspapers by being found raped, robbed and murdered during the night.

STUFF BUSH DIDN'T DO

From Director Blue:

DARKNESS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

This pretty much sums up what I spent a lifetime opposing for the very best of reasons. What we called communism oozed into socialism and then to liberalism and finally to progressivism. It ruins everything it touches and leaves nothing but slime behind.

It happened to the Athenians and the Romans and on and on throughout history. It happens here too. When governments are designed to force business to fail and to maximize human misery, it is no surprise that they succeed at that, if nothing else. It's an interesting contrast Norway with its North Sea largesse and Venezuela with the fifth largest oil reserves in the world.

WAR INEVITABLE. ARCTIC DOOMED

The Secretary of State has declared that he will appoint a Special Fool to be in charge of U.S. affairs in the Arctic. I expect an outbreak of terrorism followed by a Civil War and genocide within the year.

Alas the poor Arctic. Perhaps we could settle displaced Palestinians there? I'm sure a Special Fool from the State Department will work something out at our enormous expense and everybody's mutual dissatisfaction. It is their skill.

You know the Special Fool is already looking forward to blending in with the Arctic natives. It's enough to hope that they actually run into some of the real natives, assuming any are left.

Plenty of room for diplomats...er, diplomacy

INEVITABLE PERVERSION OF SWIFT JUSTICE

The notoriously confused New York Times reports today that Brigadier General Sinclair is facing a discontinuity in the swift and merciless application of military justice to the "he said/she said" case that began almost TWO years ago, when he was sent home early from Afghanistan for an investigation into charges made by a female captain. It seems that the prosecutor has quit the case.

I have seen many cases where a defense counsel seeks to withdraw from a case and has to appeal to the court for authorization to do so. In some cases, the court has refused. I wonder how the defendant gets the best possible defense when his lawyer is acting under court imposed duress... How the lead prosecutor justifies that he is finished with the case before it goes to trial is a mystery to me.

The speculators are suggesting that the prosecutor may have reached the conclusion that the woman that made the charges is lying. I can certainly see having a serious problem with continuing a legal case against a man who could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty, if you believe that the single witness to the case is a liar who is lying about the matter. Quitting at that point must be construed as prejudicial to the prosecution's case and entirely dishonorable.

It appears that General Sinclair conceded that he was involved in a relationship with the woman and that his conduct was unbecoming an officer. With that alone he could be found guilty and sentenced, but the Army wants blood and is proceeding on the main charges.

Congress people want every single case like this to proceed in just this fashion.  They want every single claim of sex anything to be treated as a criminal matter and to go to court martial. A backhand to the face or slap on the wrist after a minimum of 2 years of legal wrangling is not sending any deterrent message to people considering violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A. Everybody has sex. B. The odds that you'll get caught in this trap is vanishingly small.

The general admitted that he violated the UCMJ. His boss, the Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division, could have hauled him into his office in Afghanistan, in mid-May 2012, told him he was a disgrace, reduced him in rank to Colonel, ordered him confined or restricted for up to 2 months, fired him on the spot and shipped  him home. Message sent and everybody would have seen that the rules apply to all and all would benefit.

Trust the idiot Army 4 stars and politicians to screw that one up too. Consider that what the general did with the captain was exactly the same thing that General Petraeus was doing with a major at the same time and in the same country. The President appointed Petraeus head of the CIA. "Justice" appears kind of perverse. That's what happens when something is warped and twisted in pursuit of an overriding objective.

TURPITUDE THIS!

Turpitude is a term used with a modifier that we wish to address this evening. My attention was invited to this place, and I found the paragraph below to be one of great interest in this, our most enlightened age:

Most military commanders are upstanding and well-respected by their troops. Many are hailed as heroes, particularly after more than a dozen years of war. But in recent months, the armed forces have been shaken by an embarrassing number of generals and admirals who have gotten into trouble for gambling, drinking and sleeping around, among other ethical lapses.

Is that not a most curious thing? Gambling, drinking and sleeping around are all quite legal. The military used to be governed by some iron-clad standards of moral and ethical conduct but that was long ago, back when we accepted the necessity of using nuclear weapons on civilian populations and planned to irradiate a bad fifth of the world's surface if push came to shove.

We don't have moral standards anymore. They've all been declared illegal. Ethical standards are guidelines for proper behavior in a moral society. If you take away the one, there is no other.

Some people held the line for a reason beyond most mortal ken because they knew the story of the little Dutch boy and knew that if the dam was breached, in even the slightest and most insignificant way, that the rest would follow. How could people not realize that the death of morality meant the death of ethical standards? Ethics are pegged to a moral compass.

This is no screed against what has been wrought by the latest interpretive dance of those who eschew God. Nope. This is more an observation along the lines of, 'now you can grow your pot and smoke it too. ' Hopefully, we will soon come to the end of these Salem Witch type trials of men who simply like a good cigar, a minor wager and a little nip on the side.

Morality is, by official decree of the State, for losers.

LIFE IS BETTER

Happy Valentine's Day.

Often times, our point of view is what allows us to see all that is beautiful in life. From here, the view is wonderful. Have a good day. And some pie.

SENSE OF WONDER

Party tonight. It was fun. 

We were also going to use every weapon we had to sink as many nuclear propelled and nuclear armed submarines in mid-ocean as we could find. Funny how the world changed and the communists won after all.

NINTH CIRCUIT JOINS AMERICA

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held a vote and 2-1 found that the right to bear arms enshrined in the Constitution actually gives citizens the right to bear arms.  Those guys must be really slow readers and one of them is still struggling with the concept that printed words actually mean something.

SURVIVING THE ICE

First, grow a beard.

Second, stay off the ice.

Three, stay in bed.

 

Well, I'm sure you'll think of something if the need ever presents itself.

SHOOT THE LAPD. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SAFE

This is disgusting and outrageous.

The LA Police Commission refused to discipline or fire any of the police scumbags who shot up town and  found that given the high priority location to which they were assigned, the officers "were equipped with inferior firepower and were at a significant tactical disadvantage." It said they should have been deployed with patrol rifles and possibly slug shotguns.

Nevertheless, the murderous little police scumbags opened fire on a lady delivering newspapers on February 7, 2013. An officer claims he heard a sound like a gunshot and immediately opened fire. 7 other police scumbags, unable to see clearly into the vehicle, blasted the pickup truck with 103 rounds, hit seven nearby homes and nine other vehicles with gunshots and shotgun pellets.

Unarmed Margie Carranza suffered minor injuries and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez was shot in the back. In April, the city agreed to pay Carranza and Hernandez $4.2 million. The agreement was in addition to a separate $40,000 settlement for the loss of the pickup truck.

If you are routinely carry a weapon when you're out and about, you should give serious consideration to doing the responsible thing the next time you see an LAPD officer pull his weapon out, and shoot him before he has a chance to shoot 2 innocent people, 7 nearby homes and any other idiot police officers in range of his weapon.

For your own sake, take away the moron's bullets if you won't take away their guns or at least swap them out for snub nose 38's and don't let them have more than 5 rounds on patrol. Thank God these idiots are such incredibly lousy shots. Can you imagine the carnage if they knew how to fire their weapons and hit what they aim at?

Roosevelt said it best, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." In LA, the only thing cops have to fear, is a rolled up newspaper. LA should fear it's police.

LA, you could eat a handful of slime and puke a better police force than what you've got.

PUERTO RICO GOES SOYLENT GREEN

Whenever something like this happens to an idyllic tropical paradise there is only one thing to blame: the people. It makes you wonder whether or not all people can wear a democratic or republican form of government or if there are some who must labor on under the kind of rulers that don't have to pander to the stupidest people. People who really don't understand that even governments can run out of money.

It could have been a paradise.

It didn't help matters when the people's masters and the progressive Illuminati all rushed to kick the US Navy out of Vieques since at least one of them must have known what would follow.

One of the messes George W. Bush inherited was the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques. In the waning years of the Clinton Administration, protesters demanded the U.S. Navy abandon the bombing and naval gun fire exercises there. It became a leftist cause. Liberals bumped into each other to fly to Puerto Rico and get arrested: Al Sharpton, Robert Kennedy Jr.,  Edward Olmos, Mrs. Jess Jackson, just to name a few. 

Mrs. Clinton, running for Senate, played to the Puerto Rican population of New York and criticized the Pentagon for not caving, which here husband then did, ordering a phase-out of the facility. The Bush Administration reluctantly decided to close the range contrary to the recommendations of the Navy. So last week marked the Navy’s final bombing exercises. 

Protesters showed up waving Puerto Rican flags and shouting, “Navy Get Out!”
Well, they’re getting out. In fact, now Navy officials are talking about closing the major support base. That’s right; there goes the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station, one of Puerto Rico’s largest employers, estimated to pump $300 million dollars into the local economy ever year. 

Suddenly, the governor says, “Wait a minute! The people of Puerto Rico don’t have any interest in the closing of the Roosevelt Roads base. The government of Puerto Rico is interested in that base staying in Puerto Rico for all the Economic benefits.”
“No doubt, Madam Mayor,” Admiral Robert Natter, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet says. “Without Vieques there’s no way I need the Navy facilities at Roosevelt Roads. None.”

You almost have to wonder how a place could get $70 billion in debt. That's a lot of money. Where did it all go? What did they piss it away on?

We need a mandatory course on the impact of socialist political/economic policy on every place that fell into that trap.  Good job Puerto Rico, you show up on the syllabus right under Cuba and Haiti.

MAVERICKS

I just upgraded the Operating System tonight and it seems to have taken hold just fine. The computer runs a little bit slower for now and I had to reverse the polarity of the mouse and Skype has dropped synch, but other than that, good to go. The next step will be to see how it works with the hardware lying around here that drove me to the extraordinary step of upgrading from a perfectly good but obsolete OS X version to the latest one.

It feels a little odd, to be truthful, to update the newer operating system while leaving Windows XP Pro running on the other laptop. If only I had a smidgeon of the trust I have in Apple for the folks that run Microsoft... Never going to happen. It was interesting though, talking to the family guru on computers tonight and learning that he'd shifted all 7 of the family Macbooks over to OS X 10.9.1 last month. It is nice when something so fiendishly complex works properly after it's installed. It would  have been nice if the idiots running the government's bizarre schemes had the good sense to turn to a crew that actually knows how to do that without using its customers as beta testers.

SUCH ANGRY LITTLE WORLDS

I spend some minutes each day reading at a couple of websites run by authors who are willing to share a bit of the art with those interested in the craft of writing. I was drawn to the first one long ago and I have enjoyed being a subscriber at his place for many years. He is getting on in years but is still quite interesting and well connected and he writes what he means and believes what he says. I found the second one by accident one day and cannot recall the exact circumstances, but he is a unique individual with some stand-out beliefs that would have made any Jesuit happy and still be the despair of every nun on the planet. Both of them write about things I'm interested in and both of them have attracted the negative attention of many people who labor under the delusion that no man is free to speak his mind if it offends even the least.

Their detractors are actually pretty rabid and go out of their way to stamp on both of these men and those like them. They have been tossed overboard by the frenzied haters who despise them to death. Of course, from their perspective, and mine, they've been pitched off the Titanic-----at her last port of call. The increasingly deranged lunatics are underway on manic power. Destination, the nether reaches of publishing. The truly odd thing though is that this bunch of wreckers claims ownership of the broad reaches of the mental landscape but feel no tolerance at all for other world builders that do not suit their very narrow and parochial interests. The haters have become a cult...

Hell bent on their own dissolution and slow demise. I won't miss any of that bunch.

MSNBC AND WASHINGTON POST STUCK ON STUPID

Setting aside for the moment the idea that refusal to instantly bow to the will of the emperor is what America is all about, consider the sheer bloody stupidity of the Washington Post that wrote:

What do the debt ceiling negotiations tell us about the state of the Republican party and, specifically, Boehner's role at the top?  In truth, nothing all that new. Tea party conservatives feel no loyalty to Boehner and nothing he can say or do convinces them to get behind a piece of legislation. There are enough in that bloc (somewhere between 30-50 depending on the legislation) to ensure that passing a vote with GOP votes alone is impossible.  Boehner is then left with two bad options: 1. Allow things like the debt ceiling to be breached or 2. Turn to Democrats to provide the necessary votes to pass controversial measures. He has typically opted for option 2 but, in so doing, has made his chances of winning reelection as Speaker (if Republicans hold the House in November) that much more perilous.

The only point in having another party in a two party democracy is to have an opposition. If one of the parties doesn't oppose anything the other espouses, what is the point of having the second party and what is the point of thinking you live in a free and democratic republic?

Why would the TEA bunch feel any loyalty at all to a party that believes in more taxes and spending more money? What is there to be loyal to? Nobody can kick if some members of the majority are not wholly onboard with all the idiot notions of the majority. That's America. The majority believed in slavery. The majority believed in 'separate but equal.' The majority consistently believe many many things that the courts later overturn and declare unconstitutional.

The majority still believe that nobody is above the law. Nobody gets to decide what laws to obey and refuse to obey....except guys in black robes. And dictators. It's difficult to feel any loyalty for either.

WELCOME TO THE BANANA REPUBLIC

One man making the law for everybody. Unelected bureaucrats deciding to create trillion dollar entitlements in furtherance of their own twisted desires and ambition. It's looking more and more like we got the reincarnation of Hugo Chavez running this bizarre regime.

It would be nice if the lawmakers took some action to rein in the monster they created and also fire about half of the executive branch by defunding them. I'm OK with another sequester fight and war to the knife over the debt ceiling.

THE DESCENT OF MR. X

If we spent $200,000 per year over 8 years to educate the nation's very smartest and most connected young minds and trained them in all the arcane mysteries of international relations and foreign affairs, and then admitted them to the Foreign Service, how did we end up with all the donkeys in the State Department? You really cannot point to a single accomplishment performed by the gruesome morons at State that couldn't have been achieved by a highly motivated 5 year old with a hammer.

They didn't learn anything from the study of history. They failed to learn anything about elementary psychology and negotiation. They don't understand the first thing about ethical standards and the importance of even just appearing to be men of their word. They don't actually know anything beyond what they've read in the New York Times or the Village Voice and they self-select on a scale not seen since the ancient Egyptian royal family.

99 out of a hundred, if called into a room with a globe and asked to point to the country on it that they represent, wouldn't get it right. When you wonder where we get Congresscritters who think illegal aliens have rights that trump yours, now you know. They got the same double bolus of stupid. It must be in the water and since those cretins only drink Evian, I blame the French.

BOUNDLESS ENERGY

It is 19º outside at 1830 tonight and the snow is a foot deep with drifts up to 3 feet high and a man just came to my door which is set well back from the street. He was very determined to talk with me since he rang the doorbell not once but twice. He stood there shivering on my front step and wanted to talk to me about his group's cunning plan to ban the import of dangerous chemicals into Ohio that would be used to pump into the ground in order to increase oil production through such methods as fracking.

I was tempted to see how long I could engage him in conversation, standing there on the front porch but I was unfairly handicapped. I am painting all the trim downstairs that I have successfully put off painting since May and because I am the sloppiest painter in the world, I paint wearing nothing but shorts, T-shirt and boots.

Sadly, it would have been me frozen in my door. I wasn't up to it so I let him get away. I'm sure he walked off thinking I was some kind of high energy drug freak who burns BTUs like the space shuttle taking off. I think he's probably an idiot from California and one of the chemicals he wants to forbid is propane. I'm sure it's a dangerous chemical just like dihydrogen monoxide. A real killer.

WANNA SEE SOME RACISM?

President Obama has made a few judicial nominations that are not meeting with universal approval. No doubt he campaigned on this and will simply appoint them in spite of Congress the next time they recess for lunch or the evening or the weekend if he's feeling really patient about putting up with Congressional intransigence.

Georgia Rep. David Scott (D), said he approached Jarrett about two nominees in particular: one who once supported a state bill to keep the Confederate battle emblem a part of Georgia’s flag, and another who led the defense of the state’s photo ID law, which Scott claims is a statute designed “to keep black folks, as much as possible, from voting.”

I'm shocked that even a Congressman can get away with shouting that blacks are too stupid to get a free photo ID because Racist! You would think the great mass of liberal progressives would ride this jackass out of town on a rail for being so racist and slandering all blacks with this sort of vile stereotype.

The issue the Congressman has with the second nominee fails to surprise me. Just from reading the language the Hill used to describe the problem, it sounds like he was state solicitor or a state's attorney charged with both upholding and defending the laws of the state. He should be penalized for that because, why? Oh yeah, now I remember. This is the party that wanted every lawyer who ever agreed with Bush to be fired and jailed forever for thought crimes.

HOW DO THEY DO THAT?

Every illegal alien that Congress turns into a citizen will compete head-to-head against blacks and other hispanics in this country for jobs. They will work longer, smarter, better and come back on time the next morning to do it all again. They will work for the current minimum wage and be more productive.  If you're an employer and you have a choice between the kids you see on youtube or the guy that spent a year as a migrant laborer working every hour of daylight at stoop labor picking crops in California and learning English, which one would you want working for you?

So why are ALL the Democrats rabidly in favor of a comprehensive immigration bill that gives amnesty to the current crop of illegal aliens and invites a tidal wave of new job seekers? I know why the politicians are since they see generations of voters who will always vote the Democrat ticket but why are the proletariat so rabidly in favor?

I notice that every time they think they're getting close to passing such a law, the popular news outlets are filled with stories about how satisfied every Mexican is with his/her life in Mexico and they wouldn't want to come to this crummy country anyway. Pravda ITAR Tass the democratic people's party's press offers reliable and innovative reports that the waves of economic migration are over.

It's funny. There is nothing these people won't believe. You can fool them all the time. 

Mexico before unchecked immigration resulted in the loss of significant territory to unwanted immigrants from the north

RUTHLESS

I think we would be OK with a bit of ruthless. Her problem is that she would be ruthless exactly like Stalin and Mao and Kim. After all, their ideology is her ideology. I don't want another stupid ruthless dictator for life like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Haven't we had enough of these ignorant vicious rulers? She and they persistently con the proletariat into believing that all can be wealthy by stealing other people's money.

This one has a track record. You can see what she has done with all the advantages of Bill, as First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. She compares favorably with madame Chiang.

SWISS PEOPLE'S PARTY WINS BIG

The famously liberal and progressive Wall Street Journal just wrote about the Swiss People's Party's decisive win over the forces of unrestrained immigration in the face of outright threats from the Thugacracy of the European Union. A treaty Switzerland signed with the EU gave any EU citizen a residence permit in Switzerland provided they had a job. Anybody can immigrate to the EU and becomes a member citizen the next morning.   

ZURICH--Swiss voters passed on Sunday a widely watched referendum on capping immigration, setting up a potential diplomatic row with the country's biggest trade partner, the European Union.
Citing preliminary results, Swiss media reported 50.3% voters had approved the Stop Mass Immigration measure that requires the government to introduce quotas. The initiative also received approval from more than half the country's 26 cantons, a requirement for passage.
Turnout for the measure, which was introduced by the right-wing Swiss People's Party, was high, with 56% of the country's registered voters participating in the vote. It was the fifth-biggest turnout since 1971 when Switzerland gave women the right to vote.

 I have not looked yet but most perpetrators of the People's News Bureaus almost always describe anybody who wants to limit immigration as Extreme, far-right fascist and racist. It will be interesting how they spin labeling the majority of voters and Cantons in Switzerland with such traditional names of pure evil. They all think it's better to drive the opposition underground or imprison them. I wonder how that works out. When I ask myself that, I look and see. It didn't work out so well.

It existed once. Everything that is necessary to make it exist again has been lovingly created and nurtured by the European ruling class. Good job guys. I hope you're first against the wall come the Revolution.

THE DATA REMAIN

One of the interesting facets of the intertubular world is that despite every effort to purge the files of data that throws earlier decisions, data and conclusions into the garbage heap of history, it remains. It sticks to the walls, floor and ceiling of the interwebular microscope for all time. Admittedly, it can be buried under a storm of misdirection, obfuscations and refutation but the original can still be turned up if one is diligent and uses a variety of search engines and has the patience and knowledge to find it.

I noticed this back when the dinosaur J. McCain ran for president and I found people spewing the most hateful and vile stupidities about the man's naval career. I wondered where they could possibly be getting all this crap that was not just wrong but viciously twisted and distorted beyond all reason. I turned to google as many of us do and found that the first 10 screens of "data" about the man were all lies and falsehoods. I don't like the guy but I don't hate anyone enough to attempt to use lies to destroy them and their credibility. The people that I dislike do a quite adequate job of destroying themselves all by themselves. They don't need any help from me.

The word hypocrite used to have a meaning in America. It was not a good one. It implied that the person was clearly a two-faced lying piece of crap. Well we now have the means to search the public record of every person who makes the news and we can pull up information from their past that shows how they really felt and expressed themselves on just about any issue in the past. Obviously, this is trickier because there are net denizens who devote their entire lives to masking the facts and obscuring the details and hiding the truth under an ocean of lies.

This is not new. It has been going on since the first person starting writing information down. These days we have a number of names for it: revisionist history, hagiography, lies, damn lies and statistics.  This is why young scholars are directed so firmly to use primary source material whenever possible. I think the modern corollary must be, "Don't Use Wikipedia!" Even with primary source material it is easy to get a bum steer. You would not want to form your opinions about Abe Lincoln by reading the things his enemies said about him and no more would you want other people to only ascribe to you the characteristics and flaws your enemies would ascribe to you.

People are airbrushing history from moment to moment. Multiple sources are recommended when treading unfamiliar territory.

DEATH AND KILLING IN A DRUG WAR

Some of us remember when the drinking age was 18 and a kid could drive at 16 if licensed by the State. I don't recall any restrictions on either once you reached the minimum age. It was easy and I thought it made sense. When I was 16 they raised the drinking age in my state but we could still drive to Tennessee and buy beer so I didn't much care. When I went to school, the age in that state was 21, and shortly after I graduated, that became the mandatory Federal minimum age to purchase or consume a beer that was heretofore, as legal as driving a car load of friends to the beach.

For a time, for a very long time, the States set the minimum age for drinking and fenced it with rules and limitations as they saw fit. Then the Federal government got involved and decided to regulate things to make it better. They criminalized and severely penalized what had been legal behavior. It wasn't a big deal when I was young because the mechanism used by the State to enforce the laws was to hold businesses strictly accountable to observe it. You could get busted a hundred times by the store or the bar bouncers for a bad fake ID but nobody called the police.

That wasn't the way the State and Federal government decided to proceed against Americans who violated the Federal government's law against drugs. Whole new agencies of government were created, police at every level moved to establish drug task forces and prosecute every aspect of the drug laws with the broadest application possible. They went after the growers/manufacturers, they went after the sellers/dealers, they went after the buyers and users and then they went after the doctors and people in pain. They criminalized medicine. How funny is that?

Along the way it quickly became clear that the police and federal agents were a major part of the problem. They bought the stuff, sold the stuff, used the stuff. In some perverse way, it became legal for the police to deal drugs but not the rest of the citizens. As their need became greater, they became more rash and allowed fewer and fewer constraints on their behavior. In fact, the police know no restraints on their behavior. I don't think we can point to a single law on the books and say that it was not legal somewhere for the police to break that law. For our own good of course. Yes I am talking about everything from speeding to Justice Department sanctioned killing if that is what it took for an informer to make a case against the mob.

Something changed in the this decade. The drug war which was once perceived as a solid front against everybody in a war waged by every law enforcement official from the meter maid to the FBI and DEA, cracked under the strain of unleashed police violence. People got fed up with the meritless war against the people and rolled back the police authority to proceed against some drugs. In short, they invited the police to Fuck Off.

We're back now to the somewhat chaotic state that reigned in this country up until implementation of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. Remember when it was so legal to buy alcohol at different ages in different states that a lower-age state's borders were wall to wall beer shops at the first highway off ramp? Sure. The police weren't enforcing that law uniformly and the only time it was enforced was at the point of sale. You could transport an ocean of beer legally at ANY age.

On that topic, I come to Ohio after 30 years living in California, Washington and the world and still laugh when I go to the supermarket here to buy wine or beer (which is all they're allowed to sell since the State has the monopoly for selling all other booze) and the cashier must hold up business to get an adult to scan the wine and beer since they are not legally permitted to touch it or sell it since the State views them as minors. How pathetically charming. And stupid.

I digress. The drug war has now been rolled back to just such Confusion. What one branch of government perceives as criminal from initiation through consumption is now legal in many states and the local law is enjoined from arresting or prosecuting pot growers and consumers. In the rest of the states, the cops are still willing to kill you to keep you from raising a plant that is legal to grow, sell and smoke in the next state.

Sometimes in war, it doesn't go as expected.

“The events on December 19, 2013 are tragic. In my opinion, the Burleson County Sheriff’s Office did nothing illegal by securing and executing a “no knock” search warrant that day. I believe the evidence also shows that an announcement was made. However, there is not enough evidence that Mr. Magee knew that day that Peace Officers were entering his home. The events occurred in a matter of seconds amongst chaos. The self-defense laws in Texas are viewed in the mindset of the actor, not the victim, which allows for tragedies to occur when one party is acting lawfully, but it can be reasonably seen as a threat of deadly force by another. However, the Burleson County Sheriff’s Office would not have been there that day if Mr. Magee had not decided to live a lifestyle of doing and producing illegal drugs in his home. Therefore, we will fully prosecute the drug charges against him. This event should wake the community up that drug crimes are not victimless.”

The "Peace Officer" was killed while violently breaking into a man's home late at night when the man was asleep and woke with legitimate fear that violent criminals were smashing their way into his house. As his lawyer said, they didn't need to do that. They could have waited until he left the house and arrested him openly and he wouldn't have resisted. They could have come and knocked on the door during daylight and he wouldn't have resisted. But the police could not help themselves. There was a war on! In a war, it is legal to attack with lethal intent and it is just as legal to resist with lethal force.

In my opinion, the police are not well served by the instant escalation of force and violence. We certainly didn't train security forces that way. I don't know what happened or when but the instantaneous overwhelming resort to force and violence has been something new. I don't remember hearing about it growing up in America. The first case I can recall was the vicious unprincipled murder in Waco, Texas when all the police and federal agencies decided that a community must be attacked and the women and children burned alive for the safety that was in it. They could have arrested the man they wanted the next time he went to town but they were compelled to attack his house and kill everybody.

It might be time for the police around the country to sit down and ponder how they behave in the matter of fireworks laws. In addition to the beer sales along the state fringes in my kind of states, there are also states where it is perfectly legal to buy, sell and use all kinds of fireworks that cause other states to go hermatile. You can buy them in one state and transport them across the state line and the only people who are regularly vicious unprincipled thugs about that sort of thing are the Alcohol Tax losers in Virginia. That wasn't the story I was looking for but it will do. Drawing a gun on three girls over bottled water? Do you suppose even if they had bought beer and one was underage that it was worth shooting them for that crime?

The Runaway

 The picture above represents the police I had when I grew up in America. Your Police May Vary.

ON THE WEARING OF RINGS

Speculation.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Who wears the rings?

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA SCIENTIA

It happened one day over a year ago when a world famous charlatan accused several of his tormenters of defaming and libeling him. This victim of verbal bullies filed a law suit against three of the parties he felt most damaged by and went to court. They countered with lawyers who sought to challenge the basis of the law suit instead of take it to the jury and seek a decision. Two of the defendants probably wanted more than anything for the law suit to go away. The third defendant had something far nobler in mind and it took the full stupidity of the legal profession and the judge in the case to set him free from the timid warriors who decline to fight even when challenged.

The accuser is a man of rank fame for he works at the same institution of higher learning that was also the workplace and institution of higher learning of one of the more athletic child molesters of the 21st century. They were both employees of the Pennsylvania State University. They were both investigated by the peerless investigators of the Pennsylvania State University and both men were found completely above board with nary a scratch upon the escutcheon of their pride and honor. One of these two went on to be convicted of child abuse and was sentenced to 4 million years in prison. The other is still a professor at my alma mater.

The law suit he filed claimed that he was not a vile torturer and manipulator of data used to craft his global warming charade in the form of a hockey stick. There were some other things he objected to but those were tossed out by the new judge or redacted by his own legal team. The publisher parties to the law suit appeared most desirous of a settlement that saw the suit vanish. One party, as I said, wants to bring his ship alongside Mann's, sweep the decks with grape shot and cannister, board it and put everybody left alive to the sword before burning it to the waterline.

The good news is that this is what will happen because that man is now preparing to go to trial with no more waffling about getting the law suit dismissed on any technicalities. It's lawfare you want and it's a lawfare you'll get he declares and promptly announces that he is prepared to move to the discovery phase of the trial and get at the data Mann claims was carefully nurtured and gently raised and not tortured at all. The problem as I see it though is related here at Forbes.com.

Upon careful investigation, McIntyre and McKitrick discovered fundamental statistical method errors so profound that even random numbers fed into Mann’s program would produce a hockey stick curve. That wasn’t all. The Medieval Warm Period which occurred about one thousand years ago and the Little Ice Age (not a true Ice Age) between about 1300-1850 somehow turned up missing.

And as for those Yamal tree samples, they came from only 12 specimens of 252 in the data set… while a larger data set of 34 trees from the same vicinity that weren’t used showed no dramatic recent warming, but warmer temperatures in those Middle Ages.

Scientific critics have also raised another looming question. Since Mann’s 1,000-year-long graph was cobbled together using various proxy data derived from ice cores, tree rings and written records of growing season dates up until 1961 where it then switched to using  surface (ground station) temperature data, then why change in 1961?   Some theorize that maybe it’s because that’s when other tree ring proxy data calculations by Keith Briffa at the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) began going the other way in a steady temperature decline.

 For all that Al Gore swears he created global warming and thus proves the science that is in it, I see the facts, read the science, note the telltale absence again and again from the various researchers who uniformly fail to produce the actual data used to derive any of the models they claim predict global warming and then note that not one single global climate model predicted the current 17 year absence of warming. I get angry when I hear my position called one of denial.

The people that have pushed global warming for the last 30 years are of the same ilk that pushed eugenics, socialism, communism, phrenology, and lobotomy. There was even a Nobel Prize awarded in 1949 to a Portuguese man who pioneered the idea of sticking ice picks into a patient's brain in order to make it better. Science!

Real science. Repeatable, verifiable science. Reputable science. Reputations matter because with one shiny enough you can convince the simple minded that what you're doing in shipping off millions of people to death camps, gulags, and killing fields, is all done in the name of science. You remember that right? All those guys had science on their side. They said so. Loudly. Repeatedly.*

Making idiots believe is not science. That's religion.

*Science and lobotomy: The USSR officially banned the procedure in 1950^[133] on the initiative of Gilyarovsky.^[134]  Doctors in the Soviet Union concluded that the procedure was "contrary to the principles of humanity" and "'through lobotomy' an insane person is changed into an idiot."^{[135] [wikipedia]}