AS SILENT AS A MARIACHI BAND

Bloomberg wrote this pathetic story about Silent Bob Mueller and it is remarkable how far the famed press has fallen. They can't even see the truth from the pit they now dwell in. Here's the headline:

Mueller's Silence Cuts Through Noise of Trump Russia Inquiries

Through all the controversy, threats and noise surrounding the Trump-Russia investigation, one person has been conspicuously silent: Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The former FBI director hasn’t uttered a single word in public since he was appointed in May to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election despite increasingly combative attacks by Republicans and their allies on the FBI, the Justice Department and the integrity of his probe.

There is not a single word about the fact that Mueller's probers are leaking like the Titanic at every opportunity and have, in fact, never missed an opportunity to leak any damaging little thing they turn up so the press always knows what Mueller's up to even if he keeps his own dishonest lips zipped.

It’s an intentional strategy meant to convey the investigation’s credibility and seriousness in an age of 24-hour noise, amplified by cable news shows and Twitter, according to current and former U.S. officials who know Mueller personally or who have followed his work.

Mueller has avoided those pitfalls. He’s provided no ammunition to fuel Trump’s tweets and given no traction to Republicans who are trying to discredit the investigation of Russian interference in last year’s presidential campaign and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it.

Srsly, Bloomberg has joined the New York Times, Newsweek and Time as a worthless waste of time, money and paper. They claim that Mueller's personal silence conveys the probity and seriousness of the bogus Russian Trump collusion and fail to note that it was the FBI and Democrats who created GPSFusion and it's dossier and brought the whole charade to undead life. It's no longer even worth opening the link to a Bloomberg article on anything. If they can miss the entire story about the insane bias of the team Mueller hand-selected to go after Trump and claim that Mueller is above it all, they can probably fail to notice a 3,000 point drop in the Dow.

AND FINALLY THE MURK BEGINS TO CLEAR

It appears that the House is finally ready to man up and investigate the Hillary and Bill Clinton Corruption Foundation with a special focus on the Uranium fleecing of America.

All I can say is that it's about time those dummies started to get to work on the issues that they were elected to carry out in the People's Name.

21ST CENTURY ROMAN POLANSKI

It looks like the queen-maker of Hollywood is about to go down for rape. In the fashion of other Hollywood scum finally snared in the nets of deceit and disguest, I suspect that Harvey Weinstein will decide later this morning to visit his very good friend Roman Polanski and enjoy an extended stay at his pied-à-terre in Poland. It's kind of disgusting how many of their "friends" stand by both rapists and continue to bleat about their artistic merits surely outweighing anything they might have done to girls or women some time in the past. After all, as Weinstein's very good friend Hillary is wont to say, "what does it matter now?"

WORD SISTER, PREACH IT

One may reliably place me in the 96% of Americans who don't trust the media in virtually all its forms. Not for nothing did I shake the American media off my shoes like a clingy piece of dog poop. This article from the Federalist gives voice to the main reason I don't pay much attention to anything that comes via the news whether it be NPR on the radio, any TV news and almost any print publication. Don't misunderstand me, I still read an amazing amount of news but I don't pay much attention to anything put out by the American media corps-de-menteurs.

As you can see below, Gizmodo is ranked 10th on her list of lying journalists. The first 9 were even more provoking in their lies and willful and deliberate misstatements of the facts. As with the 'alleged' evidence that the global warmists keep trotting out, they have to keep massaging the data and the facts to fit their models and stereotypes in order to keep the flickering embers of credibility, as they see it, alive. Read the whole article at the link.

10. Gizmodo
The tech news outlet, which was one of the first to break the story of the memo’s existence and print it in full, has since updated the post containing the text of the memo to remove all of the hyperlinks and charts. 

“The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications,” the post states. “Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted.” 

A quick look at Gizmodo’s modified version of the memo versus the actual memo shows that the media outlet removed nearly all of Damore’s supporting evidence. Was this an effort to make the memo seem less credible? 

The headline certainly doesn’t help Gizmodo’s case: “Exclusive: Here’s The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google.” 

This is why only 4 percent of Americans have a “very positive” opinion of the news media: they subvert the full truth in order to serve a political agenda.

All of them do of course but only an idiot would believe what he reads or hears in the news.

SENATOR MCCAIN GOES FOR A DRIVE IN ARIZONA TOMORROW

Trump says, "hello" and,

"Thanks for voting, asshole"

UNSEEN SEA OF CORRUPTION

It looks like some of us elected a man to send to Washington to drain the swamp and he is under prepared. Not his fault. We both thought he was dealing with a swamp until he got there and found out it's as deep as an ocean and quite a bit wider.

The information put out on Jerry Pournelle's site in an interesting case in point. It appears that Comey is no different from other democrat apparatchiks and probably even worse than Jamie Gorelick who gives every appearance of being one of the most vile people in our history.

What is it with the swamp denizens in DC that they turn the likes of recently fired DNC Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz into their flag bearers and champions even if they know they are liars and charlatans? And now you don't hear about the lawyers for the DNC case down in Florida telling the court that the DNC is in no way bound by the will of the electorate and the DNC crew of evil men and women can simply 'appoint' their candidate and that's that.

I believe that if I poked around into the backgrounds of every single one of the various appointees in DC, more than 90% of them would prove to be human scum that only float on the swamp known as DC and Wall Street. What can you say about a group that collectively and individually have never been blamed for a single disaster they created whether it be the banking collapse, the housing collapse, the EPA mine disaster? You name the disaster and not ONE SINGLE SCUMBAG in DC was punished or even investigated for wrongdoing. Look at that worthless 'investigation' into Clinton's email thievery and knowingly disclosing classified information on her private server to enemies of the United States. It now appears, finally, that acting on some of that Clinton information, China rounded up all the agents there working for the CIA (US) executed them. How's that for 'no consequences' and 'what does it matter anymore?'

So Trump is no longer laboring under any illusions/delusion about what he's working with. On the gripping hand, they are beginning to get some idea of who they are dealing with and it's looking more like a fair fight, hopefully to the death. One side telling of that is the news filtering out that after thousands of high level leaks from the so-called "intel" community, there has not been one actionable peep out of any of those SCUMBAGS that points to any collusion between Trump's entire campaign staff or him personally conspiring with Russia to interfere in our elections.

Where are all those democrats in congress howling about the interference of the DNC handpicked staff and delegates interfering in the free exercise of democracy by all those chumps that voted for Bernie? The DNC sure as hell conspired against them. Their own hacked records prove it.

And the second thing for Trump; he visited the King of Saudi Arabia and did very well. He visited Jerusalem and did very well. He visited the pope in the Vatican and on this holy ground handed him a first edition copy of the works of some guy named Martin Luther blah blah. How's that for a poke in the eye? Subtle enough that even the clowns on NPR never mentioned it today. That was the bright shining moment of the political day today and they never even noticed.

INTERMEDIATE RANGE NUCLEAR MISSILES

I was listening to Socialist People's Radio (NPR) this afternoon and listened to a pair of smarmy lickspittles discussing the issue of Russia's intermediate range nuclear missile deployments. These weapons were banned by the Reagan administrations negotiations and treaty with the USSR in 1987.

The treaty gave both parties the right to conduct inspections of just about any site where ground launched cruise missiles or intermediate range ballistic missiles were produced. That gave the Soviets and Russians the right to enter my classified workspace and search around for anything that might look like a Transporter Erector Launcher TEL since the Air Force and General Dynamics used to build those at Air Force Plant 19 in Old Town, San Diego at what used to be the Consolidated Vultee production facility and is now home to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. We were admonished to keep all of our secrets in spaces smaller than the footprint of the old TELs so the Russians could be barred from searching anything or space smaller than an actual TEL.

My old office top floor and where LockMart/ULA used to make the fuel tanks for Atlas Launchers

The National People's Radio discussed Trump's flailing Russian policy with the lickspittle commenter noting for us that Trump had no Russian policy and probably wouldn't until he got around to filling the National Security Advisor position and the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Policy) jobs and got some Deputy Secretary at State that could comprehend Russia.

What I despise about NPR is that they cherry pick 100% of their guests to follow the liberal chains of thought on all policy or topics and never give so much of a hint about what is really going on by asking some actual spokesperson from the non-liberal half of the country to come on and comment. The lickspittle guest did observe that Russia violated the INF treaty in 2014 during Obama's administration but offered no hint as to what measures Obama adopted to challenge or counter this violation and the NPR lickspittle naturally let him off the hook and didn't ask any of the obvious questions that immediately occur to anybody with a functioning brain.

It's pretty sad. I used to be able (many years ago) to listen to NPR for up to an hour at a time. These days it's down to about 1 minute/day. Oh well, MetroParkCentralis has some excellent music stations.

SCUM OF THE EARTH

I am a little disgusted with law enforcement types all over the world. I have also come to loath and despise everyone who works, in any capacity, in the mainstream news media. It's not enough that law enforcement totally tanked during the investigation into the appearance on Hillary Clinton's unclassified mail server of Top Secret, SCI and SAP information, it has to include the media who brushed it all under the carpet in the twinkling of a jaundiced eye.

Tonight I see that the shooter in Fort Lauderdale who was in the hands of the FBI, who took away his gun and then gave it back to him, must have known that he was a muslim convert who went the full jihadi route and nobody is telling the people that another muslim terrorist has killed Americans in this country again. Nobody. Not law enforcement, not homeland security, not the mainstream media.

I wonder if these people will make a full reversal of their vile and despicable behavior after 20 January and start laying all of the blame for these attacks at the feet of the President and his cabinet appointees. I don't really. I know they will.

SYRIA, IN OMAR BRADLEY'S WORDS

As I watch John Kerry hurl himself into supporting ISIS in Syria and attacking the duly elected government of Assad I am struck by how all this resembles another 'police action' a long time ago when the USA tried to lead a coalition of countries to expel and repel the communists from South Korea. My post yesterday included the words at the link but as I read the New York Times today and it's secret recording of Kerry explaining 'diplomacy' to terrorists and friends of terrorists in the Netherlands I hear General Bradley's words ringing in my ears.

"The wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."

You would think the Winter Soldier would know that after his searing experiences in Cambodia.

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned With a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped. 

As a veteran and one who feels this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this country. 

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart. 

We are probably much more angry than that and I don't want to go into the foreign policy aspects because I am outclassed here. I know that all of you talk about every possible alternative of getting out of Vietnam. We understand that. We know you have considered the seriousness of the aspects to the utmost level and I am not going to try to dwell on that, but I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism.

You just have to despise the kind of traitorous little turd who, as a young man, believed war was immoral and wrong and as an old man can't find any problem that a good little war  and the use of military force won't solve.

The New York Times acquired the taped conversation between the US Secretary of State and two dozen Syrian civilians from education, rescue, and medical groups working in rebel-held areas, during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

The leaked recording reveals how angry John Kerry really is about being unable to topple President Bashar Assad by military means. 

“I've argued for use of force. I stood up. I’m the guy who stood up and announced we’re going to attack Assad because of the weapons, and then you know things evolved into a different process,” the Secretary of State said in the tape. 

He told the civilians that “you have nobody more frustrated than we are (the US)” that the Syrian issue is now being solved diplomatically.

Syria demonstrated the wiley perfection of Chicago crime organizer Obama and the ignorant  and intolerant ingenue Clinton, neither of whom ever managed or supervised more than a dozen slaves. Working together they deliberately unleashed disaster after backing the muslim brotherhood takeover in Egypt, totally destroying an unaligned Libya, and attempting to destroy a neutral Syria in the name of the United States.

Just contrast these idiots with George Bush (DCIA), George Bush II (two time governor of Texas) and Colin Powell (4 star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and Condoleezza Rice (6 years Provost and Chief Academic and Budget Officer, Stanford University). The neo-cons have much to answer for.

You have to admit, whoever you are, that the Democratic Party just doesn't have a very deep or meaningful pool of talent. They have one dud after another and it showed in the primaries when a socialist who isn't even a Democrat was the only one to vie for the nomination against a dud who has never done anything in her entire life that was good, honest or ethical and never managed or led any project, business or great enterprise. In fact, even her supporters can't point to any achievements  accomplished by her over a lifetime of hanging on to Bill's coat tails. Contrast with the 17 characters who vied for the Republican nomination

ALL THEY HAD TO DO TO SAVE THEMSELVES

I overheard NPR yesterday while driving and, ok, I admit, I tuned to NPR like I used to and listened to Terry Gross and an official of the local Case Western Reserve University discuss how the Republic came to have somebody like Donald Trump as the Republican nominee this year for President. Neither one of them even came close to figuring out why we got Trump. The guy from Case kept bleating about how conservatives disdain Trump almost as much as 'we' do and said even Fox News hates the guy and the only real voice of advocacy he ever had is that horrible, awful, disgusting, mean Ann Coulter, who, he said, was the first to announce that Trump would win and she did that the second he threw his hat in the ring.

Naturally they had to blow off Ann as an idiot troll of the first water and neither of them spent even a second contemplating that perhaps Ann Coulter has a way better handle on what the people of the rest of the country are feeling about politics then any of the talking heads, pundits, politicians or media clowns. She's a populist who knows what real people think. Yeah, she's figured out democrats but she is unique in having figured out what the Tea Party is. It was a movement, not a Party and the movement remained strong and vital even after the media drove a stake through the heart of the Party.

The Republican leadership put Trump where he is today. We the People elected them and elected them to serve us. We gave them an overwhelming majority in the House and the Senate and what did the Republican leadership do with that majority? Nothing. Not a damned thing. They didn't lift a finger to repeal ObamaCare and they didn't lift a finger to rein in the out of control Executive agencies like the IRS or EPA or DOJ.  THEY DID NOTHING.

We tried to express how deeply unhappy we were with this state of affairs when the voters of Ohio repudiated John Boehner, the actual Speaker of the House, and kicked his slimy worthless ass out of Congress because he never did a single damned thing for us. Would you believe that none of the rest of those scumbags got the message? The majority of the voters had to signify their contempt for business-as-usual Rethuglicans and kick them to curb by voting Trump.

You know what the rethuglicans actually in Congress had to do right? It isn't hard. They merely had to put up a fight on our behalf the way the democrats fight on behalf of their masters. I guarantee that Boehner would have remained in office and the Rethuglicans would have been overwhelminingly voted for by a pleased group of GOP voters if they had voted to repeal ObamaCare. No, they didn't have the numbers to overcome a presidential veto but that isn't the point. They never understood that so they never even tried.

If the House had voted to repeal ObamaCare and slashed 50% funding from DOJ, IRS and EPA it would have sent a message. If Mitchell had copied Reid and simply used the nuclear option on Cloture and the Senate voted to follow the House then we would have "our" representatives doing what 'we' elected them to do but they couldn't be bothered. Mitchell wouldn't retaliate with a nuke or two of his own and Boehner wouldn't take to a vote anything that wasn't veto proof. Well, sucks to be them.

If they had played honestly with us, we would have entertained the idea of electing one of their 'wise old birds' but they didn't. They should have passed a repeal bill every single time Obama left the country on one of his vacations or boondoggles. They should have put him and the rest of the democrats on record again and again as supporting that abortion known as the Affordable Care Act where people are now required by law to pay whatever the price is irregardless of the service or details in order to get health care insurance even if it is now a monopoly in their state and only one company offers a plan that meets the law's requirements.

We'll never know if that would have brought out the voters for a Cruz or Rubio because the elected Rethuglicans who actually sit in Congress didn't lift a finger to act like the Representatives of the people who sent them there.

A LITTLE ZOMBIE MAGAZINE IS STILL ALIVE!

I knew that Newsweek was sold to some rich sucker several years ago for 1 dollar. I thought that it had gone under since I don't have California supermarkets to wade through anymore and the checkout lineS at the placeS I shop for groceries are blessedly free of copies of People, National Enquirer and Newsweek. Thank God it is also usually free of those little 8 packs of delicious crumb donuts which I love. I was really surprised to see this little add in an online article I read last night.

Imagine the hubris of a magazine asking people to pay more each week for a copy of the worthless magazine than what the entire thing fetched when it was sold for a single dollar to a sucker investor. I might pay all of a whole dollar for a lifetime subscription for Newsweek but then, I'd never read the damned things and they'd just pile up and have to be taken out to the trash, so no.

I find the article itself somewhat bizarre too. Let's be honest. When the Russians were ever bothered by some living thing, they took pains to thoroughly kill it. They probably air dropped an AK-47 and a thousand rounds of ammo.....or a couple dozen vials of sarin gas. Russians have a hasty way of responding to threats.

Russians also have long memories. I'm kind of surprised by the outpouring of news stories discussing how Putin and the dictator of Turkey are turning into good buddies. Erdogan screwed up and if he now thinks Putin is friendly and decides that it's in his best interest to snuggle up to Russia, I have news for him. Russian autocrats only did that good pal/folksy thing to lure their enemies into knife range. Putin won't hesistate to order a decapitation strike on a non-nuclear power and his little Black Sea Fleet of ships and submarines has shown just how lethal a lilliputian vessel can be. (not ours of course, our's are quite worthless.)

HOW INCREDIBLY IRRITATING

So, nothing to report today. BWI> off.

I'd be curious to see what the news reported about the incident with Hillary this morning, just not curious enough to watch the news. I doubt it made the news. As I watch the progressives shove the brain-dead Hillary down the voter's throats I wonder, who benefits from a brain-dead president of the United States? We've had 8 years of that and see what we got from that? Obamacare? Syria? Iraq? Libya?

I dare to say it is the enemies of the United States.

Hillary Clinton, Manchurian candidate of the 21st century.

LURCHING INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

I know I've concealed my admiration for Nigel Farage from you, my readers, but I was looking at the latest video and it segued into an old clip of Farage going full bore at the President of the EU, Tony Blair. Looking at the smirks on the faces of the 1% as they sneer at the foolish dolt Nigel Farage is priceless.

I like the www. Thank you so very much Tim Berners-Lee. I appreciate the hell out of it and you.

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.

INTERRED NEGLECT

With the endless tales of woe bleeding from every key of my computer keyboard I am not at a loss for things to write about that I find distasteful and distressing. On the other hand, I don't want to be a chronicle of the endless stupidity and misery inflicted on us by the combined forces of ignorance and tyranny.

There are dozens of people who write fascinating diatribes about things that are executed competently by the enemies of civilization. I don't want to play Boswell to the ruiners. Besides, 662 draft posts is just ridiculous.

MAKING THINGS HARDER THAN THEY HAVE TO BE

I daresay the admirals in Norfolk and Bahrain are asking today just who approved this and what kind of risk assessment was used when generating the Frago to transit two boats from Kuwait to Bahrain. I'm equally sure that they'll want to know who was providing the adult leadership.

Only Riverine boats and sailors could get so hopelessly lost and run out of gas in Command Boats

I know these boats have satellite radios. I know it because all of our boats have satellite radios. We've been continuously operating patrol boats in that area since 2001.

What I hate the most about this inept and stupidly executed plan is that it just made doing everything all that much harder because now every level of command has to convince the level above that it is not just complying with reasonable risk management strategy, it now has to go into infinite detail about how it has analyzed every possible risk to future missions and how each risk is mitigated or avoided by active staff planning.

I used to work with these people. In fact, I used to work with these people at every level of staff and command for over 20 years and I never heard a more succinct and astute analysis of the dimwittedness of some of them who struggle every day to "Make things harder than they have to be."*

So, congratulations you f@cksticks** at CTG56, you continued a horrible tradition by making things harder than they have to be. If I recall correctly, the last time we had anything like this happen it was the Commodore himself who ordered that all truck movements had to have dismounted road guides to make sure they didn't run over anything. Yes, you guessed it, that stupid insane policy continued right up until one of the truck drivers ran over his road guide with a 5 ton truck.

In addition to the now mandatory retraining and certification of all boat OICs, we'll see requirements heaped onto every task to ensure that they are now idiot proofed through the concentrated application of staff planning, paperwork and close personal oversight. You thought Operational Risk Management paperwork was a pain in the ass? You ain't seen nothing.

No, I won't be surprised if the after action report lays the blame at the feet of someone who thought miles and kilometers were the same thing and couldn't convert or even understand the difference between miles and kilometers.

*Said all the time by my predecessor at Operations in Group ONE as we began Operation Iraqi Freedom.
**Commonly used by CDR Joe G., the first N36 I worked with when establishing Task Group 56 for our guys in '96.

DRAWN AND QUARTERED MOHAMMED

Remember when some artists got together in Texas to draw Mohammed? Recall how the media bravely demonstrated solidarity with the jihadist wannabe terrorists and killers of innocent people? 

I do.

Media Blackens and Blots Out Mohammed

BLANDLY STUPIDLY OBTUSE AND IN CHARGE

We are all used to elected officials of surpassing stupidity who nevertheless thrust themselves into the limelight to throw their idiocy and ignorance into the harshest glare of public self-shaming. Here's a new one. This one wears a uniform.

A Pentagon spokesman expressed concern about the surface-to-air missiles and other aerial targeting weaponry because it suggests the Russians are rejecting a call from American officials to focus on targeting the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or Daesh.

“Certainly we are aware of what they’re putting in there ... it’s a capability that we don’t see as being productive in the fight against ISIL,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday.

“Whether it’s putting air-to-air missiles on planes or putting in surface-to-air missiles, those are things that are clearly not about ISIL, as ISIL doesn’t have any aircraft,” Davis said. “So far it has not had any impact on our operations [over Syria] but it's certainly something we're aware of, particularly with the surface-to-air missiles."

I don't know why this idiot is surprised that Russia is 'rejecting a call from American officials to focus on targeting our friends in ISIS.' To paraphrase the captain, I wonder why the Russians don't view themselves as the selfless myrmidons of the Greater EU like we do and simply do as they're told by their betters, Dammit!

Isn't it fascinating that a navy captain is the Voice of Quality Assurance and can tell the Russians that they don't need to defend their aircraft from other aircraft in the ongoing spat over Syria. Evidently, the captain suffered through one too many Deming TQL/TQM sessions and fixated on productivity to the exclusion of results and accomplishment, high on the list of which, in war, would be surviving the engagement.

I like that the missile deployment hasn't had any impact on American operations over Syria though. That's a good touch. So far as it can be determined American operations over Syria haven't had any measurable effect on ISIS so things are balanced with total futility on our side and a cold-eyed assassin's approach to killing its enemies on Russia's side.

You know, we haven't even started to discuss the eventual "unexpected discovery" of Stinger missiles in ISIS inventories. "How'd those little suckers get there," mused Pentagon Spokesman, Captain Jeff Davis. I mean, you just know that if our FBI and ATF couldn't resist selling guns and ammo to the Mexican drug cartels, their military and intelligence agency counterparts will be unable to refuse to give away surface to air missiles to ISIS.

On that note, I see this morning that Robert Crumplar has a new essay; How Offering Tomahawks for Foreign Military Sales Will Strengthen Allies and Deter Adversaries. Idiocy isn't confined to Turkey and the Pentagon. It's everywhere.

CULT OF MEDIA LIARS

If looks could kill, they probably will,

Hillary's crumbling frontier of lies and deceit. 

It's interesting watching another, once respected journalisto, so in the bag for Hillary and the democratic narrative in this war on Truth. It's like the journolists cannot learn anything from the past and are doomed to repeat it.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

Oh fisk this.
Anybody can fisk.

REUTERS/SUZANNE PLUNKETT

Russia is engaged in "classic asymmetric warfare" in Syria by using its military clout to prop up President Bashar al-Assad while saying it is attacking Islamic State militants, Britain's foreign minister said on Sunday. The actual goal of warfare is to kill and destroy one's enemies. That's why warriors actively seek to outnumber the enemy or surprise him and then kill and destroy. Most foreign ministers know that sort of thing. Usually, once enough have been killed people start to talk about opening diplomatic channels and negotiating. But, not usually until then.

Russia last week began striking targets in Syria - a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in the civil war which has been criticized by the West as an attempt to prop up Assad, rather than its purported aim of attacking Islamic State. The US, NATO, Turkey, et al are all bombing and shooting ISIS so just what got escalated when the Russians joined in?

"It looks like a classic bit of Russian asymmetric warfare - you have a strong propaganda message that says you're doing one thing while in fact you are doing something completely different and when challenged you just flatly deny it," Philip Hammond told Reuters in an interview in Manchester. The Russians are very direct. They never had any of that wafflie 'indirect approach' nonsense. ISIS is both Russia's enemy and Assad's enemy and they get goodies if they help out Assad and benefit themselves from killing ISIS. It's a real no-brainer.

He said Britain had held discussions with Russia but kept on getting the same response - that Moscow was attacking Islamic State militants in Syria. I'll bet the Russians remember years of begging Britain to open a second front on the Atlantic coast to reduce the nazi pressure to kill every living Russian.

"You try talking to the Russians," he said. "They just keep repeating their position – that is by the way also the Iranian position – and it is just incredible." Is this dolt's father the prime minister? Is that how he got the job as foreign minister?

He said that Britain needed "absolute clarity" that Assad would not be part of Syria's future and rubbished proposals put forward by Russia and Iran for elections as a means to end the conflict. What a pity he doesn't bring that same demand for action and clarity to the issues affecting the EU and Britain's referendum.

Hammond said Syria was "a million miles away" from being able to hold a free and fair vote. Does this guy think he's Woodrow Wilson? Where does he stand on Palestinian elections or Ukrainian elections? Say, why isn't he bleating about Russian attacks in Ukraine?

"In a country where 250,000 people have been killed and 12 million people have been displaced, half of them outside the country – how can you talk about free and fair elections?" he said. So that's how Labor defeated Churchill in July of 1945!

ASSAD END GAME?

Hammond said the key to ending the suffering caused by the four-year civil war was a managed transition to peace - even if it meant Assad retained power temporarily. Just 3 paragraphs above this idiot said that Assad would not be part of Syria's future and rubbished Russian proposals for elections.

"If the price for doing that is that we have to accept that Assad will remain as titular head of state for period of time, do I really care if that's three days, three weeks, three years or even longer? I don't think I do," he said. His problem, which Reuters is blind to but Assad and Russia are not, is simply that nobody at all believes a word uttered by any UK or US diplomat or minister since they have the ugly truth about what happens next. They can look at dead Sadat, imprisoned Mubarek and equally imprisoned Morsi and dead Shah and dead Qadafi and ex-Yugoslavia and the unhappy Iraq and Afghanistan and know that no American or British word on anything can be trusted. Toppled dictators are so much dead meat to the English speaking world. The Frogs love them.

But Hammond said that for such a transition, Assad should make a pledge not to run in any future election and that he would give up control over Syria's security apparatus. Isn't this the same chump that crowed about the Assad agreement to give up all his WMD years ago and 'discovering' just a few months ago that they lying bastard didn't actually surrender all of his chemical weapons after all? He'd still accept Assad's word though on a simple matter of life and death. Assad knows that if he leaves power he'll be dragged to the Hague and tried as a criminal in a heartbeat that lasts 50 years.

He added that there was no agreement with Moscow and Tehran on such a transition. Just now still not realizing that the Russian and the mullahs  have a totally different agenda that doesn't include any kind of 'agreement' about Syria.

"The key is that there must be a transition – at the moment there is no agreement with the Russians and the Iranians even that there should be a transition," he said.

Hammond also said Russia represented a threat to the international system upon which Britain's security depended, saying it had shown that it did not respect diplomatic norms. This idiot is so used to schooling putrid little losers like Clinton and Kerry that he hasn't yet grasped that he is dealing with real statesmen who know very well how to play the Great Game.

He pointed to Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last year as an example of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin's approach to international law. But Hammond is utterly determined to learn nothing from previous behavior. Nothing! He is still outraged that Russia isn't playing by his rules.

But, he said that Moscow still had an important role to play in the Middle East and that Britain could not afford to ignore Russia's role in negotiating peace in Syria. Russia is not negotiating any peace. It is going to exterminate its/Assad's enemies until they run away or die trying.

"It would not be in our own interests to say that we will not talk to the Russians about the situation in Syria because we object so strongly to what they are doing in Ukraine," he said. Having proven to be total and complete pussies over Ukraine, no real player is going to pay any attention at all to your pathetic little bleatings.

"We have to compartmentalize these disputes," calling for Russia to re-engage with the international system. "We're getting our asses  handed to us on that front so we're going to stick our head way up our ass and pretend it doesn't exist while we sally forth to get our ass kicked even harder in this other current unpleasantness. We cannot do things at the same time you know!

"We just need a Russia that accepts there are rules in the system, and you can't throw your toys out of the pram and resort to military force every time you don't get your way," he said. WTF!? and why can't they resort to military force when you and all the rest of continental NATO have conclusively shown that you cannot and will not resort to force because all of you have disarmed so totally that you couldn't put two fighter squadrons over Syria if your lives depended on it.

And seriously, the minister said they tossed their toys out of the pram? 

(Editing by Liz Piper and Guy Faulconbridge)

and I helped....