THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SAUD

Many Americans rejoice at what they perceive as a liberal wave sweeping over the Arabian Peninsula and are glad to see that once again Saudis can go to movies and women can drive cars and that the new Crown Prince seems to be open to liberal and progressive thoughts that first swept the world 200 years ago. I'm not so sanguine. This same sort of liberal outbreak occured once before in another Kingdom bordering the Persian Gulf and it did not end well for the people, the ruling elite or the country. You can read about it in Paved With Good Intentions by Barry Rubin

It looks like the Crown Prince has disciplined the House of Saud but I don't really see any sign that he has revoked the powers of the Mutawa or in any way, shape or form reduced the militant demands of the most militant and intolerant religion on the planet. He has, perhaps, won the war over family but it is not yet seen that he has even engaged in the war with the mullahs and unlike the West, religion is the ONLY thing that matters in the Kingdom.

The Crown Prince has acted as the bottom has fallen out of the petroleum industry and reduced OPEC to a floundering helpless wreck of its former self. The floor price for a barrel of oil needed to keep the Kingdom solvent is history and won't be seen again for decades, if ever. Even as he brings the family to heel and starts to round up the money he is faced with external revolt and war in Yemen and external rebellion and war in Syria and a grasping Egypt who needs billions of Saudi petrodollars in subsidies every year to feed its massive population. It doesn't look good now and that doesn't count what happens when his shiites go up in flames next year and lay waste to the oil producing parts of Saudi Arabia.

While some are getting optimistic about Arabia I sense doom closing in. Their repeated and failed efforts to put Saudis to work in the workforce have largely been in vain for nothing. They do not produce anything and if they did they couldn't compete with the rest of the world.

THE DEFIANT SQUIRRELS

A sort of stream of conscious day.

I read a number of people who were appealing for President Trump to stand with the pipsqueak May in response to the killing on British soil of some 'well regarded' Russian oligarchs and their patrons by what some claim to be Russian agents. I just wondered to myself as I saw some people demand Trump align himself with May and denounce Putin, how many of our rogue intel agents does President Trump actually command or control? It seems to me that most of our intel agencies and agents work for the Clintons and the DNC and certainly not for the one they call Mr. Orange.

What if Putin had as much control over his rogue intel agents as President Trump has over his?

I don't know the ins and outs of DC the way some do but I strongly suspect that President Trump has an outer perimeter, an inner perimeter and a perimeter made up of men he trusts to protect him and his family. I don't know how they work it with the SS but I'm sure they've reached an accommodation that suits the President. After all, so far it appears that the intel community works for everybody on the planet except Americans and Republicans and President Trump.

I see somehow they just gave Clapper a pass for lying in his testimony to Congress. The man hasn't breathed without lying for over 20 years but I'm surprised that there has been nobody left alive in the wings waiting to finally tear him down and rid us of him after all these years.

Can you imagine being on Bill Clinton's SS detail after all these years? They must have been witness to some truly amazing and bizarre crimes Clinton business deals. I'm not exactly sure how a federal agent can witness a crime and then fail to report it but I'm sure they worked something out for the Clintons decades ago.

After watching the video of Hillary attempting to slalom down the steps in India, I wonder just how long it will be until we wake up to the sad news that she 'fell down the stairs last night and broke her neck in the fall' and no living person saw who pushed her.

A QUESTIONABLE ARRANGEMENT

I don't understand what either Russia or Trump would have gotten out of the non-crime of colluding. What benefit was either to reap from colluding with the other? Has anyone seen any benefit to either party in such a perfectly legal collusion even if we don't know what it was? What did they collude about? Was it as bad as Hillary and the DNC burying Bernie in a fake primary that Hillary could not lose?

If you pay for something you expect to get something in return. That said, who paid in the BS Trumpgate nonsense? Did Russia pay Trump? Did Trump pay Russia? Was there some sort of quid pro quo? If Putin was involved, what did he get out of it? He already got our uranium from Hillary and the DNC.

I've never seen any discussion of the why behind the allegation of collusion. Why collude at all?

FINALLY SOME REAL RACE TALK

I am looking forward to the Winter Games where I know that unless I watch American TV the only race I'm going to hear talk of are physical contests of speed and grace. I am sick to death of the endless talk about the other kind of race because, let's face it, nobody is going to win that one.

CRITICAL MEASUREMENT

I laughed out loud at this one from Last of the Few. It burns, oh how it burns.

HOW COOL IS THAT

A nearish miss by a minor planetoid with moons. It's obviously the way to travel, with satellites.

GORE BLOWN AWAY AT BOX

I think it is kind of funny that the new Weathermen will downplay the utter failure of Gore's latest pack of lies to lure audiences into the theater to be lied to again. What is really funny is how they're going to have to spin it after the buildup they awarded it all by themselves.

Gee, do you suppose that failing to fill the theaters shows Donald Trump and the rest of the sane people don't believe in the scary BS future Al Gore and the criminal climate data pirates at the various universities here and in Britain have been pitching for over a decade? I'm sure that's not how they're going to pitch the failure of the masses to show up and urge a climate revolution before, for the 322nd time in this century, it is TOO LATE TO CHANGE!!!!!

OH NO! The world is doomed.

THANK JEEEBUS AGAIN!!!

I'm rather surprised the cops didn't load him up and then tell us he died of lead poisoning. Yeah, he is insane, could it possibly have hurt anyone to play the damned song? Here, I'll do it.

Oh, never mind. I mean, it's OK if you want to get your ears clipped and sandblast your brain. Good on ya! Me? Not going to pollute the tubes with that. I thought it was a tune like I play around here and I'm a connoisseur. I don't just play any random crap. I have to hunt it down and kill it thoroughly and then do some data reduction, post analysis, and see if it is still space-worthy before I play a tune here. Rules are rules,

TURBULENTS

There isn't a shadow of a crime but the infinitely deep pockets of the State's Attorneys General are investigating ExxonMobil and will go to any lengths to force them to go out of business. I mean, that's not what they say but it's pretty clear that'w what they intend.

Top law enforcement officers in several states are joining with the Chicken Littles of green activism to weaponize the scientifically dubious argument that human activity is not only changing the earth's climate but that unprecedented world catastrophe awaits unless draconian, economy-killing carbon emission controls are imposed more or less immediately.

The litigation offensive has nothing to do with justice. It is aimed at forcing those few remaining holdouts in the business community who stubbornly cling to science to confess their thought crimes and submit to the know-nothing Left's climate superstitions. It is part of modern-day environmentalism's ongoing assault on knowledge, human progress, markets, and the rule of law.

Repent and embrace the true green faith or else you'll be investigated and denounced as a climate criminal, is the message of “Inspector Gotcha,” New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman.

“It’s too early to say what we’re going to find,” he said of the five-month-old witch hunt aimed at his current target, the gigantic ExxonMobil, at a press conference this week in Lower Manhattan. “We intend to work as aggressively as possible, but also as carefully as possible.”

One can certainly gain an appreciation for Henry II as we watch the legal theater use naked power against witches, orcs and angevins. As usual, I can't help but wonder if ExxonMobile decided to terminate all business in New York to first put out the light, and then put out the light and rid themselves of this turbulent pipsqueak.

It's all pretty theater and I'm sure the Attorney General of Pennsylvania would be in it up to her eyebrows if not for her own long fall from grace.

I wonder if these people understand why more and more people are preparing for turbulent times. It's like they expect some kind of massive breakdown of law and order.

DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT

We're not as smart as we think we are.

The phenomenon was first tested in a series of experiments during 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of the department of psychology at Cornell University.[1][2] The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.[3] The authors noted that earlier studies suggested that ignorance of standards of performance lies behind a great deal of incorrect self-assessment of competence. This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing games such as chess or tennis.

One trips over the damnedest things on the web. Read carefully.*

 *I think I may be the last person in America who grew up with this on the bookshelf. It passes belief that this perfectly ordinary book, like Aesop's Fables or The Bobbsey Twins, survives in this day and age.
** I saw this evil film twice in Fort Riley when I was a Tenderfoot. (yep, I dindo a ** above. I like alert readers!)

DASHED

New World Order Times

Dateline: Albuquerque, NM

1/21/2017

Democrats hopes and prayers for a sudden flowering of galactic goodwill and wellbeing after the new President took office yesterday were slightly dashed by the festive heavenly show that brought about near complete global extinction. Right wing white cis male thugs to blame for the disaster.

THE COLD HALF OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

I drove out to the FarmMetroPark to drop off something warm and came home in the deepening lake effect snow I've been hearing about but seldom see. It is really cold and snowy out there on this side of the solar system.

TIME'S FULL CIRCLE

For generations men carried time in their pockets

Briefly experimented with

and recently settled on time in their pockets again

Perhaps next time we'll look at the mutability of time and discuss why one minute in a dentist's chair seems to last so much longer than hours spent in other places.

A MEME FOR SATURDAY

Jihad is caused by Global Warming

Orbital decay is caused by Global Warming

Degenerate matter is caused by Climate Change

Racism is caused by Climate Change

Giant Red Spot disappearing on Jupiter is caused by Global Warming

Earth's polarity shift is slowed by Climate Change

Terrorism is caused by Global Warming

Falling SAT scores are caused by Climate Change

It's wonderful stuff.. You can blame it all on the weather! Even better, there is nothing anyone can do about the weather except complain about it which lets politicians everywhere off the hook for everything because.........weather!

TOTAL DOMAIN AWARENESS

We used to talk about this at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. This is kind of what the surface layer of TDA looks like. (full screen to see)

The goal was to have a picture with as much detail and information as possible in real time of all the domains (air, surface, subsurface, electronic, etc). Proponents of Total Domain Awareness proposed that with it, a single frigate could deny the oceans of the world.

I thought it was kind of silly, back then...

UNBELIEVABLE COVERAGE

Bloomberg takes the prize this week for truly awful sports coverage. The only photo in the piece is of the loser and the only quote from the winner is an 'apology for upsetting a potential historic event.' I know, it wasn't sports coverage despite the misleading title. Par for this course.

Speaking of par, I glimpsed at the Washington-Redskin's-birdcage-lining-Post that a new Federal Study finds that adults over the age of 50 should lower their blood pressure and the latest study forms the basis for the Post's call for those geezers to get their systolic blood pressure under 120 in spite of the fact that long available studies have shown both that normal blood pressure is under 120 and that once you have high blood pressure there isn't a damn thing you personally can do about it except get your doctor to put you on blood pressure medication. There is little need for Dr. Weintraub to lecture the public with his asinine quote reproduced in the redskin Post:

"grazing". Really? Srsly?

There is more but the Post restricts viewers like me to 2 lines at a time. There are also helpful directives mixed in that claim we eat to much salt etc. When, I wonder, did Federal researchers get anything at all right after the invention of the hydrogen bomb? All of the dietary and health revelations are overturned as so much make-believe and show as much resemblance to actual science as Michelle Obama's school lunch directive or the chicken little global warming scam preached by famous federal researchers like Al Gore and Michael Mann.

Don't you find it curious that 'researchers' are always finding ways of extending human lifespan and blame any failure to live forever on some weakness or character flaw that leads people to have strokes, heart attacks or even cancer? I've noticed that some people with good genetics live a long time and stay active and mentally sharp decades after other good people have succumbed to the ailments of age. I think lifespan is almost purely a matter of genetics and luck and that people prattling about healthy lifestyles are making it up as they market snake oil science.

AUTHOR REPLIES TO HIS CRITICS

Some guy I never heard of wrote the latest Star Wars book and was saddened by the lack of support for his novel approach to Galactic Empires filled with Evil. He lashed out at all readers in his blog, Terrible Minds.

Wendig hit back at readers who accused the author on Amazon of “blatantly pushing a gay agenda” and suggested that the franchise was no longer “children friendly”. 

“If you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you,” Wendig wrote. “Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct.” 

“You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.”

It is what we have come to expect from the SJWs who dominate popular culture (they think), and is as filled with inclusion and tolerance as any guard barracks at any gulag in the USSR.  On second thought, he talks about making people who disagree with him extinct and that kind of tolerance is older and rarer although some of us expect to see a comeback in Europe by the socialist machine as it gears up to handle the flood of muslim and African immigrants. Nobody does extinction like Europeans.

You can see the love right?

THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

It's a nice place. Interesting things happen there.

THE OLD RELIABLE

Hillary is awful but just think, what kind of creature would she choose as her running mate?

She is the old reliable. We can count on her to get just the right man for the number 2 job in her administration.

WANT TO BET?

In 2015 will Obama order a drone strike on:
Netanyahu
Kim
Putin
any random Kardashian?

I'm voting for Netanyahu.