PATHETIC END TO AMERICAN ETHICS IN GOVERNMENT

A lifetime of devoted public service with nary a moment of real work leads to this. It was all bribes all the time and somehow these public servants live a lifestyle with riches any king of the Age of Enlightenment would have/did kill for. How do public servants gain such wealth? Why is it legal? You and I both know the only way they could have this much wealth is if they spent that lifetime in public service selling themselves for money to the highest bidder and we all know that, as democrats, they don't stay bought like honest politicians so they have to be bought again and again and again.

Remember who repealed Glass-Steagall and destroyed the strong banking system Americans enjoyed right up until then? Yep, Bill Clinton did that and so when the Investment Bankers collapsed under the disaster they and Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and Congress implemented, they took down the S&L's and the regular commercial banks.

Bill was richly rewarded for his deliberate destruction of the United States banking system and worldwide economic collapse.

Thanks Bill.

MELLOWING THE HARSH

While perusing Watts Up With That I got to wondering how many other blowhards had predicted the irreversible tragic end of life on earth if global warming wasn't halted by 2012. I realize we're all now doomed to a horrible grisly death but it looks like any number of apparatchiks have been proven to be nothing but opportunist alarmists, liars and data fiddlers. You know the anti-free speech folks always cite the 'crime' of shouting Fire! in a crowded theater as behavior that must be punished with jail. How about we do the same to the global warmists who keep shouting Fire! and demanding a handout for pointing out the untreatable, intractable, irreversible tragedy of climate.

INTERESTING QUESTION

Found at Traditional Vibe.

CONVERSATION WITH THE PIRATE QUEEN

I thought this article was about something else.

Yep, I thought it was an article that was going to describe how the laser fence erected to protect birds was instead flash frying them with beams of light. Nope. Anyhow, Anne Bonney wondered why utility companies didn't put some sort of flashing light warning or dayglow paint strip or screamer on the giant windmills of avian death. I don't know. Why don't the biggest bird predators try to limit the carnage by giving the birds some sort of warning of impending doom?

Admittedly, I led with a joke. If you're a bird and you can't see what you've flying into, you should probably walk.

ANOTHER GOOD MAN

Mr. Felix Kumi has stepped into the clearing at the end of the path. He was selflessly sacrificed by a New York City police officer in order that the police officer might survive an illusory bullet not fired from what may be a BB gun that looked like a gun.

Greater love hath no innocent bystander than to be gunned down by cops intent on their own safety.

LOCATOR

Defiant has shifted his pennant for a few days. Departed MetroparkCentralis on Monday, return 4 September.

STYLE AND GRACE

I am amazed at the alacrity with which France has acted and, given that two of the awardees are members in good standing of the U.S. military, with how quickly the Pentagon reacted in approving the award. U.S. military personnel are not permitted to receive foreign awards without permission from the highest levels of government. Bravo Zulu guys.

French President Francois Hollande, left, poses for photographs with U.S. servicemen Alek Skarlatos (2nd left) and Spencer Stone (2nd right), US student Anthony Sadler (right) and U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley (center) after an honorary ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, August 24, 2015.(Photo: Yoan Valat, EPA)

WON'T DO THAT AGAIN

I stayed up to watch the Hugo Awards Saturday night. It was ugly. Social justice prevailed and the uppity wrong fans were put in their place by the SMOFs and CHORFs. It's always illuminating to watch the socialists at play.

Wrong Fan Getting Just Desserts at Hugo Awards

THE SCIENCE OF APOCALYPSE

Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor writes a damning indictment of global warmingology.

Man made climate change is in the same situation except that there are no lab experiments; but their models do no predict the past, so why should we believe they will predict the future? We know it has been warmer (in Viking times, and probably in Roman times), and rather than ex[plain that they adjust the data. I don’t know how to measure the temperature of my city block to a tenth of a degree; when they can do that reliably I will believe they know the Earth temperature to that accuracy. When you can take the conditions of 1950 as input to a model and run it and it gives today’s conditions, I will take the model seriously; but I cannot see any reason to spend billions of dollars on measures there is no real evidence to show we need. I like Los Angeles without smog. I don’t worry a lot about CO2 “pollution”. But then I don’t invest in green technology.

As I read the news about witchfinders in climate science I am struck by the hysteria with which the warmists approach the apocalypse they alone predict. They are not people I would trust with a gun because I have no doubt they would use it to compel all the rest of us to obey the hysterical nonsense they spout.

WAR IN THE OFFING ONPEN

The rhetoric surrounding this years Ulchi Focus exercise is a little more worrisome given that both sides are now firing artillery at each other over the border. It will be interesting. This is the first time I can recall the US and ROK have stood down from the exercise because of outraged bleating from North Korea.

I'm unutterably glad that I'm not there. Seven straight years of being present for every US/ROK exercise; Ulchi Focus Lens, Foal Eagle, Freedom Banner, etc was enough. It was hard not to parrot the USFK staff who were upfront and honest when they said again and again that what we were doing was futile since the staffs used to rotate offpen (off Peninsula) every year which left us with the same level of expertise after 50 years of playing the same game as rookies playing their first game. Naturally, that is not how the norks played the game.

In the old days one might wonder if naval reinforcements were being dispatched to the western Pacific. Since our national command authority has their heads in a bag I doubt we've so much as issued an alert order for movement much less dispatched a battle group.

As the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact collapsed it was an accepted article of faith by those familiar with the Kim's that they would never part with their weapons of mass destruction and would sooner use them and lose the war than surrender an inch. Carting a gas mask around Seoul seemed to us to be a stupid waste of time and effort since we figured the norks will nuke the place in their opening shot of the next war. Thank you Madeline Albright, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. You made it all possible with your addlepated ignorant 'diplomacy.'

HILLARY CLINTON MUST GO TO JAIL

Those familiar with the history of World War II and the code breaking era know of the extraordinary damage the allies were able to wreak on our enemies because we read their top secret messages because we were able to break the Enigma and Purple Codes (and a host of others). We were able to predict the Japanese attack on Midway and position what remained of our Pacific Fleet in a position to destroy the Japanese Navy's aircraft carriers and end the Japanese onslaught and begin turning the war into a string of never-ending defeats for Japan.

Hillary and her enablers in the State Department put us in the position of the Japanese and the Germans by giving away our top secret positions on every single matter of diplomacy and war that fell under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. Those people need to go to jail.

People (albeit dim witted people) wonder how Putin was able to pull off such masterful accomplishments as stealing Crimea back from Ukraine, aiding Syria in pulling off the Syrian chemical weapons scam that bamboozled the ignorant because he knew that Barack was only lying when he talked about a red line and invading Ukraine with impunity and complete assurance because he knew that diplomatically and presidentially nothing would happen to him as a result of invading a foreign sovereign government's country. How did he know all this? He read it in Hillary Clinton's damned email because the Russians had every scrap of data off her server in real time.

People who have no idea how National Security Information works may wonder at the vehemence of those who do know at the calamity that Hillary initiated because she broke the law. Charlie Martin gives an expert and easy to follow example of just what had to happen in order for Top Secret SCI information to get onto Hillary's home server and servers in a bathroom closet in Denver in Hillary's Air Gap Problem.

Hillary Clinton and her aides and even 'real diplomats' who sent Top Secret information to Hillary at her .com address need to go to jail. People who break those laws must be sentenced to prison and not receive presidential pardons if the law is to have any meaning and encourage people to obey the law. Scooter Libby was sentenced to prison for far less and people like Pollard and Manning will spend decades in prison for violating the same exact law.

I've always known that Hillary Clinton was scum but this time she cannot evade responsibility for her actions and neither should any of those who sent her TS SCI information at her email address. There was NO WAY that this could have happened by accident. No way in the world could it happen by accident. Some idiot installer may stupidly and inadvertently connect a SIPRNET server to a NIPRNET connection but there is no way that can happen with this level of information. Somebody pulled it off a stand-alone terminal, stripped the headers and footers and the paragraph markings and knowingly communicated it to an unclassified unprotected server.

Consider all the damage we were able to do to our enemies throughout World War II and much of the Cold War because we could read their diplomatic and military coded messages and communications. There were a lot of times when we weren't bluffing at all because we knew what our enemies would accept if push came to shove and our President and his staff knew they could get away with forcing the enemy that far, if no further. Hillary put us in that position but this time it was our enemies who knew what are diplomatic bottom line was better than anybody on the planet because they read her mail and it included the President's stance on any given topic under active consideration at the State Department.

I'm going to wait patiently for somebody to now leap out of the woodwork and exclaim that "Hillary was a Stalking Horse and she was DELIBERATELY feeding misinformation to our enemies by engaging in this private home based server email system!" She was being used by the Intel Community in a deliberate plan for deceiving our enemies. Wait for it, it will happen soon. Never mind that it seems to have always worked in favor of damaging our national security our credibility  and world peace.

INSTAPUNDIT ON MARINES

Glen Reynolds describes U.S. Marines with a pithy statement.

Sometimes I regret pulling the plug on the news. I'm glad that there were some Marines on the train because otherwise it sounds like it would have been an absolute massacre.

UPDATE: It seems that the heroes involved were actually an Air Force Airman, an Army National Guardsman and an American civilian, 3 friends who were traveling together at the time. Bravo Zulu guys.

ADIEU TO GRACE

From Patterico and the 7th Film,

One can only hope that Dante got it wrong.

RAVING MAD IN CALIFORNIA

I see that the People's Democratic Republic of Californiastan are legislating again in their ongoing endeavor to make the Republic safe for illegal aliens, public sector unions and elected politicians. They've come up with a crafty plan to ensure continued Title IX employment for life at every level of education in both the private and public arenas. All this in response to claims that not enough is currently being done about campus sexual assault accusations. "Yes-means-yes policies already define sexual consent in a way that will lead to more students being accused of sexual misconduct for non-criminal activities."

Two more bills currently in the California state legislature would aim to address the issue. One would require all of the state's universities – public and private – to disclose what disciplinary actions were taken against students accused of sexual assault. Another bill would require universities to indicate on transcripts when a student cannot re-enroll due to a suspension or expulsion.

I don't know why these people run in fear of the Feds and their iron barbed whips. If I was the campus administrator or university president I would dignify every accusation with the same response and have my people call the local police with jurisdiction and have them investigate each allegation. How can justice be better than that? We are all in search of justice, aren't we?

NO CONTROLLING LEGAL AUTHORITY

It's interesting how that was Al Gore's mantra during his days as Vice President to Mr. Vice. He uttered those words 'no controlling legal authority' seven times in response to claims that he violated the law. Does anyone doubt that Obama and whoever his vice president is break that law every single day now with complete impunity?

Hillary is interesting in that she has not so far as I know, used Al Gore's words but she must be getting close as the usual Clinton fire walls go up in flames. You see this time she doesn't have anybody to blame. There is no cutout man who can take the fall for such an obvious and flagrant abuse of national security information. She took point on this one and deserves to get Gored.

The thing I wonder about now is, just how many other throne dwellers are making the same cavalier assumption that the rules don't apply to them? Do you suppose any of the various Inspectors General have made queries about the status of their management of classified information over unclassified networks? Have they investigated the readiness of their organizations to respond to Freedom of Information requests? I doubt it.

I've been on the wrong end of FOIA requests. I remember one that came in while I was at NAVCENT asking us for information on every ship, squadron, mobile unit, detachment and person who was in a given place five years earlier during DESERT STORM. We all kind of laughed and wondered who among us would have records dating back to the time of the person holding the job 4 times removed from the time in question. There wasn't a scrap of information about that time in the files I inherited. I recalled that we'd rolled 6 to 9 mobile units through the area in question during the war but I couldn't tell you which ones.

Electronic record keeping was also something of a joke. That command didn't even have an unclassified network. We had a fully operational and stable classified network but there were severe network storage limits that constrained the number of mbytes of storage one could retain. There was no disc burning or external drives. Everything was pretty much overwritten by new stuff every couple of weeks. I suspect that this is how it works even to this day.

Working at a systems acquisition command we had an unclassified network but had to beg time on classified networks. Unclassified electronic record retention was useless. The information was all coded to the person and was thus unretrievable in any case after they transferred. The classified material could not even be printed much less stored to any electronic storage media.

We know Clinton didn't review her 60,000 emails but somebody did. What kind of security clearance did that crew have? They obviously weren't familiar with what constitutes national security information but I'll bet anything you like that they knew how to snuff out smoking political guns and deep six information damaging to the Hillary's political ambitions. It's really too bad she couldn't be bothered to have a couple of real national security/America First types working in that organization of hers. Of course, her employees all worked for the State Department.

ONE LITTLE MISTAKE

I made one change to my browser last week and lost all ability to comment on my own blog or on anybody else's blog for that matter. It took some tweaking to make it right again. Can you imagine what would happen if I was to go all Lex and decide to mess around with SQL?

Exactly! You'd never hear from me again.

SOME FASCINATING FINANCIAL NEWS

If you are not familiar with IceCap Asset Management, their newsletter for August makes fascinating reading. I was struck by their observation on Greece.

As they go on to note, there is no way on earth that Greece can repay the loans it keeps taking from the EU, IMF and Central Banks. Even if they did raise taxes, cut spending and start paying back the principle it still cannot be done.

For an interesting counterexample, they follow this up with how Iceland handled the 2008 financial devastation by defaulting and throwing bankers in jail. Oddly enough, Iceland is back to within 3% of its GDP before the 2008 collapse while Greece is another 33% in the hole after taking loans from everybody in an attempt to ward off accountability.

People who have knocked Farage et al for their continued doomsaying about the EU gloss over the fact that he is right and that all that has happened since 2008 is a series of frantic efforts to paper over the obvious fact that the EU is broken at a fundamental level. Of course, one can say that about our Congress and government.

When there is no more money the answer is not to spend more money.

SUNNY TV IS BACK

In the mail today was the announcement we've been waiting for.

DEMOCRATIC SUPER GENIUS!

Writing as one with an extensive background in the issues involved in the ongoing crisis that is exposing Hillary Clinton as quite possibly the stupidest politician of this age, I have to point out that she wasn't the first powerful democratic party figure to flail away all the rules and laws about transmitting and storing classified data. Remember that Obama insisted on keeping his Blackberry and there are many photos of him wearing it on his belt in the early days. He too, thought it the wisest course of action to co-mingle his ongoing private electronic mail with his official electronic mail. That's how smart he is. He demanded it. Sirica's actions in forcing Nixon to release the tapes meant nothing to this Constitutional scholar.

That means Obama gets to go through the same ridiculous shaming that Hillary set herself up for when she mingled her accounts. She didn't have to do it and despite what some expert tells you, it's really very easy to find out if she did turn over all the official emails by comparing all the email that her Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff and Department Heads sent to the email account of the Secretary of State and if she didn't produce them in response to judicial orders then she is in contempt of court. She's also an idiot.

She hung herself out to dry because she thought she could get away with it. She could hide all her crimes and felonies in a basement in Chappaqua and nobody would ever find out because there could always be a tragic basement fire or flood that destroyed the hard drive that might be used downstream to incriminate her. You know what else she did that was stupid? She let everybody know that the ONLY way to reach her was at her private email address and server. Literally everybody who corresponded with idiot knew she was breaking the law and trying to hide official records and anyone of them could have ratted her out 5 years ago. She counted on the loyalty of henchmen. Of course, she went to extraordinary steps to make sure that nobody but Obama could ever sit in judgement of her while she was Secretary.

She forgot that she wasn't always going to be an untouchable and that oft evil will shall evil mar. There's always a Wormtongue around when you least expect it and when you consider that the phrase was spoken after the idiot used the 'all-seeing' Palantir as a rock and threw it at the enemies of his master it makes you appreciate the amazing JRR Tolkien all the more.

I understand the low information voters who will vote for her even if she ate a black baby on live TV but I don't understand the professoriate and the elite cognoscenti who think she would make anything but a disaster as president. I figure that, as with those same folks who elected Obama, they figure they'd own her once she took office. Consider that the National Debt tripled under Obama because he owed so many favors to so many plutocrats and they didn't want a measly million here, a million there, they wanted hundreds of billions of dollars. And they got it.

I HAVE TO GET ONE OF THESE SIGNS

I have to get me one of these signs.

UPDATE: The most recent update of her serial high crimes and violations of the law.

I suppose we could have the FBI send the server to the NSA and order them to restore all the data that was on that server when Clinton resigned as Secretary of State. Alternatively, we could send it and a million $ to the Peoples Liberation Army National Cyber Warfare Center and ask them to do the same and send it back. Either way, we'd get more information out of it then we will now.

A GAS BAG GETS BLOWN AWAY

There is an interesting review of Steyn's latest book posted at wattsupwiththat. I highly recommend hitting the link and reading the entire review. I found it amusing but disturbing that Mann's friend decided to write his own review even though the book hasn't shipped yet and I doubt Steyn or his publisher would send him an advance copy.

This is the final nail through the coffin lid of the Global Warming Scam and it's little sidecar of deceit. Al Gore made it a war on warming but I think we have all seen how the failure to win that war lead to the war on climate change. It looks like a war nobody can win because whatever kind of weather we experience in the future the fools and morons will rush to shriek, "Climate Change!!!!" and demand our billions of dollars to "fight it."

Anyway, if you enjoy a rousing debunking of a myth manufactured out of pseudo-science, lies and deceit, you won't find better.

JUXTAPOSITION

There's a nice page up at Drudge which pretty much captures the entire round of Hillary Clinton's life.

You see how Clinton denied for months and months that there was anything wrong with having an illegal email account used to conduct business as Secretary of State and then claimed that all relevant emails had been turned over to the State Department who has reported themselves as having some trouble winnowing through the emails because they had to ensure that none were classified before release in accordance with a federal judge's order. Their months long process is one that would take me about one month to go through and determine classification before releasing all the unclassified ones and then recommending that Clinton and her top aides be charged with serious breaches of national security along the lines of Pollard or, if you prefer, Petraeus after showing that they had failed to protect national security information.

The next part merely shows how Clintons have operated ever since the TravelGate days, the Rose Law Files days, the Vince Foster execution days, well, I could go on and on and on. The FBI seizes the evidence and while they used to be a fine law enforcement and investigation outfit I'm sure none of think very highly of them anymore. They tend to string out an investigation for 15 or 20 years when it involves politics unless it is a Republican.

The true kiss of death for any Clinton investigation lies where it has always lied and as shown with countless Obama/Clinton scandals over the last 7 years, proven that it simply throws all evidence into a blackhole from which nothing ever comes out. The Department of Justice is the Praetorian Guard of all accused democrats and simply ignores any and all objections to its non-handling or failure to investigate cases that a 12 year old could solve given their resources.

Will nobody rid us of these indolent, useless, counterproductive bureaucrats? That's your cue Congress. You are the ones in charge of oversight and control the funding and the laws of the land and you stopped doing your actual job back in the 1960s. Stop bleating about Inspector Generals or give the ones selected by you the authority to simply relieve and remove officials that fail to comply with the law of the land.

NEW DOWNFALL ART

This just in via the Instapundit. It's astonishing to me how much of Amerika's government antics can be displayed by putting words in the mouths of the most evil Nazis that ever lived as portrayed in the movie Downfall. It's like the moviemakers set out to demonstrate the close parallels between our socialist democratic party and the national socialists in the 3rd Reich.

TRAINWRECK

Go see it. It's entirely about sex.....and love.

I garden tooled off the cast. I may blog a bit more often as a consequence. You've been warned.

I do the shortest movie reviews on the planet.

IT'S TRIGHT BUT RIGHT....TODAY

ME, DERSH AND THE CONSTITUTION

Alan is the first to bring up a question I raised weeks ago.

Where did our tool get the idea that he had the sole right to negotiate and arrogate a treaty that none of us signed off on?

Constitution you lame ass senators and justices....

ME AND THE KITCHEN SINK

Do you never raise an arm and wonder,
Why don't we hook up the dishwasher?
It doesn't need a kitchen sink
To clean dishes
now.

WILD THING

So, anyway, I was reading about this Senko loser and decided to floss.

PRAVDA

Watching any of the written media do gopsplaining is of little interest to me. They would all be deeply ired to know that nobody who thinks would dream of reading or taking their political shadings as truth.

We know that they're all in the bag for Hillary who is nothing but a media myth which is surprising given that she treats them all like the scum they are. Yes indeed we like the Trump scourge but we also know that is another myth. We just want an honest man to say the same things about the Truth.

Some of us have resigned ourselves to never seeing that again in our lifetime. Reagan was a one-off.

AMERICAN GESTAPO

If you follow what happened in Wisconsin at all during the last 2 years, you are forced to realize that, just as in Texas, not one single law officer refused the orders of the attorney general and refused to brutally enforce the "law."

Here's a video that shows what it is like when the lawmen come calling.

They got the wrong house but they have immunity.

Given a trial by jury by one's peers?

It works the other way too. The comments are priceless.

ON ATOMIC BOMBING

We have moved into an anniversary of sorts. The low information sorts will probably re-exploit their mantra but some of us have moved on and consider what the United States just did in sanctioning the Ayatollah's atomic bomb project the final step on the path to atomic war. A lot of people are curious about the effect of the ayatollah launching a nuke at what he calls a "one bomb state."

Me?

I wonder how much of Persia is going to disappear in thermo-nuclear dust. Oh sure, Qom, Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Shiraz. I'm not really sure what will be left but it will be highly radioactive. What exactly makes the idiots who run Iran think that Bibi Netanyahu is going to soak up the first hit with an atomic weapon? Who could fail to remember the wars against Israel? Bibi is Maggie Thatcher and Golda Meir on testosterone.

My standing orders from COMIDEASTFOR and the NCA in the Persian Gulf over 30 years ago let me shoot first if I thought an attack was imminent because the enemy displayed hostile intent. The orders went so far as to order me to not suck up the first strike. In 1984 we weren't concerned about retaliating against Iran, we were going to see to it that the attacker died trying. That's what all the press agony was about when Vincennes terminated an apparent attack after we fought a major sea battle against Iran in 1988. Admittedly, you didn't notice but we destroyed a significant fraction of their navy in an afternoon after they stupidly attacked USS Wainwright about 11 miles from me.

I was there.  NOBODY  ignored warnings to change course and shear off. That would inevitably lead to death. When Saudi or UAE air defense issued a warning on IAD and MAD, pilots all over the Gulf responded with emphatic cries that they were changing course.

Obama doesn't have the gonads to attack Iran but most of the rest of the world is forced to conclude that Iran is not giving them any choice in the matter and they are ready. . . now. We were ready then.

We Are Ready Now

AMUSING

I'm sure the good general does not find it at all amusing.

From the duffleblog, where else.

YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO COMMENT

I get a kick out of the places that order me to log in to comment. It goes without saying that I don't. I'm just not compliant.

DEEP DEEP IN THE DARKNESS

Do you know where your children are?

I must stand and ask the question.

...they little knew nor cared... but I care.

Planned parenthood doesn't hover at the evil abyss, it actively dwells on the far side of evil.

LAYERED POLYMERS AND THE NEED FOR SPEED

 I got to looking at the arm tonight. It's fibre-glass. It's a layered polymer. As I contemplated it, it struck me that it could use a rudder, tiller, centerboard and a mast with a small sail. It has been a long time since my last competitive sail When I was truly young I qualified for the Laser Nationals in San Francisco. I was 15 at the time and tied for 3rd in the Southeastern regionals. Open invite to compete at the national level. I parted with 14747 most reluctantly. I sailed her to Angel Island a few times but it was nowhere near as lethal as the world championships that year and it was decades later when I was older and wiser.