BETTER RED

TO FIX THE FIXERS

Glenn Reynolds has a modest tax proposal.

It’s already too late to stop global warming, say scientists. No matter what we do, sea levels willrise. Some climate activists have even released an interactive map that will let you see how much of, say Washington, DC, will be under water in the next century, with the flooded zones depicted in blue. (Not all of it, alas).

 Well, if it’s too late to stop global warming, I have a modest proposal instead: Tax the blue zones. That is, minimize the damage that will occur from flooding many decades in the future by reducing development now.

 Climate activists say that between 20 million and 31 million Americans live in places that will be at risk of flooding from global warming by the end of the century. Just to be safe, I think we should aim to reduce the number of people living in these areas by 25% within 25 years, 50% within 50 years and, naturally, 100% by the end of the century.

I'm going to be all broken up if Alexandria floods and we have an east coast Venice in America. And so far as sinking Florida, "oh my God, the manatees, the manatees!"

I'm sure the fixers never saw that coming.

OUT OF THE DARK

I sailed the Pacific and Indian Oceans a lot. I flew over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans more times than I can recall. I saw first hand how large the world is and that's down near the bottom of the atmosphere and along the top few yards of the seas. It's a very big place and it's all an enormous heat sink that our piddly efforts will not trouble at all. That is largely why I never believed in the global warming hysteria whipped into life by Al Gore and the Climategate scammers.

I stopped by Watts Up With That that tonight and found an interesting essay that was linked on the site. It was written by a warmist who looked at and examined all the facts without flailing his arms and legs about, jamming his fingers in his ears and screaming witlessly for hours. You might find it interesting. He has now seen the light.

THE ONE-MINUTE CLIMATE SURVEY

1 Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves. 

2 Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural. 

3 There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved. 

4 New research shows that fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, at both long and short time scales.
5 CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much. 

6 There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today. 

7 Sea level will probably continue to rise, naturally and slowly. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level. 

8 The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*. 

9 No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people who eat them. 

10 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface*.

It's nothing really new, but he found his way into the light of reason just from examining the facts. As all facts unite to demonstrate, the arguments in favor of man-made climate change are nothing but pathetic stories told to frighten the stupid into parting with their wealth and freedom. The essay is well worth reading.

Something else to keep in mind. The people who want to steal the world's wealth to fight an enemy only they can fight are also fighting to keep billions of people in the darkness. That's not right.

MUST BE A NEW PHOTOGRAPHER

All of my daughter's school portraits up to 6th grade arrived in the mail from the photographer and each had a tiny little flaw that one would expect a pro to notice; the hair askew, the little drip on the end of the nose. These, on the other hand, look pretty amazing. In fact, this week the pictures from Pluto and beyond have been incredible.

UPDATE: One person was heard to mutter that the shrinking of the Great Spot on Jupiter is due to global warming.

LINK STATUS UPDATE

Something unfortunate seems to have taken my Del Mar Camera off line. Winter is coming so I have added two additional live cameras covering the beach at Del Mar to make up for the loss. This way, however bleak the winter gets, we'll always have Del Mar.

On a second note, I have noticed that one of the blogs has fallen off the radar. I don't know what's up with the Mellow Jihadi but this is what returns when we link to his site:

We hope it returns soon.

WHAT'S ANOTHER WAR

We are currently fighting the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Illiteracy, War on Terrorism and now the ruling classes would like to divert us all with a War on Earth's Climate. Can we win one before we tackle a new war? Just one little tiny war?

Look at all the Giants in the background eager to fight to the last drop of your economy

HI AND TIGHT IN METROPARKCENTRALIS

I walked up the road today for a haircut at the usual place and joined in the conversation. It was a little surreal talking to the man who brought us:

Turns out he lives two streets over.

AINT WORKIN FOR THE MAN

In the old days, prospective ambassadors were called into the Secretary's office and asked to point at the country they represented. Most of them spun the globe and pointed to the country they were being sent to instead of to the United States. No more. Now nobody in the State Department works for the United States. They're all out there feathering their nests with money they "earn" doing business on the side for everybody except the United States. Here's the Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Clinton explaining/justifying her outside job while woring for the State Department,

“The UAE’s culture is very different than ours,” she told the Post.
“We had to have extensive discussions and negotiations to step through how this university could exist consistent with their framework, how we ensured the right protections for faculty and for students as they did their work. 

The revelation comes amid heightened scrutiny on the work arrangements for Clinton’s former top aides. 

In addition to Mills, longtime Clinton confidante Huma Abedin also received permission to work for an outside firm while employed at the State Department. Abedin’s decision to split her time between the government and a private consulting firm have led to allegations about a possible conflict of interest. 

In her discussion with the Post, Mills said that did not recall the State Department’s ethics office flagging any questions about her unusual work arrangement.

We could save a great deal of time and effort if we fired the State Department's ethics office and hired Apple to represent us overseas. They, at least, make money the old fashioned way and not as bribes piled on bribes piled on bribes.

RIDING THE ACTUAL MIRKY AND GLOOMY DRAB

I enjoyed my first newspaper today in years and found this one picture terribly amusing. I expected better of the Journal.

Words have meaning.

Now if only we could pack all of our lawmakers into similar dinghies and send them to Australia....

ON A JOVIAL NOTE

Viewed at semi-sweetsouthernbelle,

Gentle readers, I am shocked by the language on that blog. Shocked!

UNSAVORY TURKEY TRUTH

USA Today, a rather pointless and useless paper had an interesting view about the recent islamic caliphate bomb attack on the old caliphate. It wondered, rather obtusely, how this would affect our single most useless NATO ally.

Is Turkey next? The world should be very worried about how that question is answered. The twin bomb blasts in Ankara this past weekend — the deadliest incidents in the modern history of that NATO member and American ally — have all the hallmarks of Islamic State. And by expanding into Turkey, ISIL’s efforts to re-create the ancient Islamic Caliphate would be a dramatic uptick in the stakes and scope of an already expanding conflict.

The attacks come as Turkey is at risk of losing control of stretches of its border areas that have become highways into Syria for ISIL recruits from North Africa and Europe. The flow of jihadists and supplies allows ISIL to pursue its murderous effort to build and protect a new state on the territory of Turkey's neighbors.

The author of the piece misses the fact that Erdogan is no friend of ours or of the West and will be delighted to assume the mantle of the caliph reborn once he exterminates those troublesome Syrians and Iraqis who are letting the cat out of the bag. He's probably already worked something nice out with Putin in that regard.

In so far as Turkey's rights and obligations under the NATO Treaty, when has Obama ever upheld the law of the land? Name one single time when he stood by an ally of the United States. If Erdogan gives us any trouble we'll let him have the 4th Infantry Division to stiffen the Kurdish resistance to the Islamic State and, given the shabby way Turkey dealt with them last time, we'll send them overland from New Jersey so they don't have to worry about getting Turkish permission to get off the ships. It might take some time for them to cross the Atlantic. The Army is not likely to forget that Turkey refused permission for the 4th to land and assault Iraq from the north at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We have probably had enough of 'moderate' islamic fanatics for awhile. Maybe about a century.

ALMOST DEATH FROM ABOVE

If someone from ISIS killed my leader I'd be all broken up. I probably wouldn't be able to carry on and might end up in a dismal tail spin of quiet despair.

The former leader of the West and current Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces lives on the pennies he earned as a community organizer in the most deadly and violent city in America and currently lives in the only house still standing on his block in one of America's other poorest and most violent cities. One of his predecessors moved out of that house claiming to be flat broke and stole much of the remaining old furniture on her way to the poorhouse.  Like his predecessors, he's not afraid of anybody and unlike many before him, he doesn't believe in the right of self-defense.

THE ORACLE OF CHAPPAQUA

After the Iranian nuke explodes over Tel Aviv,

A bunch of Jews. Who Cares? 

After the Russians invade all the Baltic Nations,

They're all Dead. What does it matter?

Explaining why she didn't answer that other 3am phone call,

Couldn't find the Phone. Where is it?

Gennifer Flowers,

That bitch? Never heard of her.

SOLVING GERMANY'S MIGRANT PROBLEM

Don't get me wrong, I was born there. However, I noticed today that a certain type of person is returning to the forefront of basic political life in the Reich. They are whining about the influx of millions of assassins, terrorists, muslim fanatics and other non-German types who are flooding the Reich with their insane demands and calls for not just Euros but Lebensraum! The pushback is getting fierce and with just a simple scan of the numbers it does look like the natives have good reason to be restless.

On the face of it, the whiners may have a point, but they forget that the map is not the terrain. Let's look at the real map of Germany shall we?

See how much German land suddenly reappears? As any fool can plainly see, there is plenty of German land available to settle the new Germans on. Just give each of the new Germans an assault rifle, 200 rounds of ammo and point them east towards Königsberg, Prussia and Silesia. If they prefer wine they can settle the sparsely settled Alsace and Lorraine (hardly any Germans there now). Migrant problem solved!

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

This was sadly and pathetically amusing:

The Army must rely on more rotational forces as well as the National Guard and Army Reserve as it prepares to expand its training mission in Ukraine and continue reassuring its European allies in the face of Russian aggression.

“We’ve only got 30,000 [soldiers],” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe. “We’ve got to make it look and feel like 300,000.”

I'm pretty sure McArthur was saying the same thing back in 1950 as he watched N. Korea roll over the Republic of Korea. Instead of importing Guardsmen and Reservists from America, why not invite our NATO allies to actually recruit, train and equip soldiers of their own?

 Good luck with calling up the Guard and Reserve short of an actual war, General. I'm sure you'll be  hearing from Congress.

A LOVELY LITTLE STRIKE FROM THE CASPIAN SEA

This is pretty cool. A strike from the Caspian Sea on some junior varsity terrorists but with a unique twist. For once it's not one of our strikes but a Russian strike from the sea. It's been a long time since they did anything like that.

The last time was....

Try to imagine the insanity rampant in a newsroom that publishes garbage like this:

While the Kremlin’s stated aim in the conflict is to fight the Islamic State in Syria, the United States and its allies say Russia is concentrating its firepower against other rebel groups to prevent Assad from being overrun. One video on Wednesday appeared to show the Free Syrian Army, a moderate force backed by the West, firing anti­tank missiles at government troops advancing with Russian air support.

One would think that by this point even a journalist has to accept the fact that there is no such thing as a well armed moderate muslim shooting anti-tank and anti-personnel missiles at government troops even if those troops don't have Soviet airpower in support. They are all complete and total fanatics. I think we can agree that some of them are fighting for their country and their family but they are also supporting one of the most brutal dictatorships of the faithful left on the planet.

There's another point to make with this cruise missile attack.

The Caspian Sea is a Soviet Lake

Even though it is a Soviet lake, look at the warships afloat on this landlocked sea. They are capable of firing land attack missiles at targets up to a thousand miles away in any direction. Contrast with the USN's rather pathetic littoral combat ship which can't project any weapon more than about 8 miles from the ship and even that is straining it beyond it's limits.

On the gripping hand, this looks like the kind of thing that the American military was guilty of all too often. It almost looks like the Russian navy felt that it had to contribute something to the fight against islamic terrorism or be viewed as a waste of resources and so it fought for the right to fire off a full salvo of missiles from the lake in the backyard and hint at what it's ocean going naval units might be capable of.

All in all, a very nice bit of work. I enjoy how the media call this some sort of escalation as if Obama hadn't ordered the navy to fire a hundred land attack missiles into Libya to get Qadaffi.

PUSHING STUPIDITY'S BOUNDARIES

It's amusing that people who effect to be able to draw a straight line from 2000 year old tree rings to modern global warming science are unable to clearly see what "Gun Free Zones" imply in a country with almost a billion firearms in circulation. They literally cannot see how they can be safe unless they go to school in a gun free zone. They cannot make that tiny mental quiver that isn't enough to qualify as even the tiniest leap and see that by disarming they invite predators to attack. What is the predator going to lose by attacking defenseless prey?

From the OCR,

Recent school shootings include a mass killing in Isla Vista last year, near the campus of UC Santa Barbara, where a gunman killed six people and injured 14 before committing suicide. 

Christina Sandoval, 24, a senior studying psychology, said she only learned recently that her school was at one point home to the worst mass murder in Orange County’s history. In 1976, a school custodian killed seven people on campus and injured two others. 

“This shooting epidemic is getting pretty bad,” said Sandoval, who noticed a sign at an Orange County movie theater last week that bags may be searched. “I’m so for gun control.”

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. In California they put out that rotten little bastard's eye. 

THOSE POOR LITTLE BASTARDS

The FBI is now investigating a second Clinton email holding company. Little Datto let the FBI know that they had backed up Hilary's server at the request of either the Hilary or the little company that she hired to run her other private email server. We all know how this is going to end now, don't we?

"The FBI revealed today that it had charged company officials and technicians at both Datto and Platte River Networks with violation of the Espionage Laws for improperly maintaining and storing highly classified government files on unclassified networks." The officials were led away in handcuffs after an extensive perp walk through every city, town and village in America.

Snowden laughs out loud from his hideout in Moscow.

OUR TITLED NOBILITY

Her Dismal Malignancy

The Accused

President-Lying-in-Wait

Queen Basilisk I

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....

ROLL OF SHAME

A pack of lunatic, almost, but not quite, scientists, signed a letter and submitted it to the Attorney General of the United States demanding that climate deniers be purged, prosecuted as criminals and thrown in jail for the crime of debating the actual science of global warming. I didn't want them to pass unnoticed.

The list below contains the names and affiliations of pseudo-scientists who wrote to President Obama urging him to use the RICO statute to prosecute people who disagree with them on climate science and telling him to use all necessary law and force to end the debate on climate science and put scientific disagreement with the global warming scam in the same status as organized crime.  If they can't win the scientific debate with persuasion, they will win it by sending the deniers to jail.  From the letter:

One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. The letter was signed by the following "climate priests/scientists":

• Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
• Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
• Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
• T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
• Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
• Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
• Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
• Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
• Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
• Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
• Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT

I returned to the source to check my facts and this is what now appears in place of their despicable letter:

The letter that was inadvertently posted on this web site has been removed. It was decided more than two years ago that the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) would be dissolved when the projects then undertaken by IGES would be completed. All research projects by IGES were completed in July 2015, and the IGES web site is in the process of being decommissioned.

It appears that the IGES people have suddenly been made aware of just where they stand under the law and how it deals with corrupt practices. For more on that see the fascinating reading at Watts Up With That.

It would appear that there’s about $31.5 million in overhead (1/2 of 63 million) that should have gone to GMU, but the grants were run through the consulting company, in clear violation of the rules for state employees. This is money that the taxpayers of Virginia had to pony up instead. 

IGES’ Form 990 shows Shukla worked 28 hours per week for it. That can only happen if the Dean approves an overage beyond the eight hours allowed.  

GMU’s faculty Dean had to know about the magnitude of the money flowing through IGES and into the Shukla family. 

GMU’s Provost had to know this, because no Dean would permit that all that overhead to not go to the university on his or her own. 

Perhaps the President knew. 

NSF had to know this. 

NOAA had to know this. 

NASA had to know this. 

Apparently each one of these entities felt they were above the law. You may be looking at the largest science scandal in US history. 

I don't know about the largest science scandal in history. I always thought that honor fell to the National Ignition Facility (NIF). What the people who signed that letter did was a scandal and a discredit to science and their affiliated universities. Siccing the prosecutor of the United States on people who do nothing more than disagree with Al Gore's science, research methods or practices, is inexcusable.

ON FARAGE

As I was reading way into the night I was struck by this passage,

...But the fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.

I had to double check and see if the author was talking about Farage about whom the labor party said the most amazingly vile things. I find it fundamentally funny that people who vote for a thing like Corbyn could evidence such visceral hate for a genuine man who hasn't harmed anybody or palled around with jihadis, terrorists, or the rest of the despicable brew that make up and support the labor party of Britain and our democrats. I have to be careful because in my country the majority voted for labor's evil counterpart here and brought us a leader so deeply un-American its like has never been seen here before. We elected a man who hates and despises his own country. I suppose the British left are merely following in our footsteps.

The only way to defeat evil is to fight it.

Oh well, we have a long history of dragging each other into the good fight against evil.

IN THE NEWS

This is the current page of the New York Times.

This is what the same day looks like at the UK's Daily Mail.

Can you spot the difference? It is why I stopped watching the news here many years ago shortly after I canceled my subscriptions to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. I will leave it to others to wage the struggle to end gun-free zones but it is painful to read the praise deservedly heaped on the two patrol officers who responded and realize the truth of that old saying, when you're at a life and death moment it is of little use to you that the police are just minutes away.

THE NEW SLAVERS

It seems that one simply cannot take the desire to enslave other people out of progressive liberals even if they are seated firmly on the Supreme Court.

How would you like a free butler, maid, chef and chauffeur? Try that and the Department of Labor will sue you for violating the minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act — unless you are Justice Sonia Sotomayor. That’s right. Since 2010, she has hired unpaid interns as her servants. No other justice does this. 

Justice Sotomayor’s job description, posted on a Latino Facebook page and other places, tells us that applicants do not need a law degree, but “a driver’s license is a must” because the intern’s duties will include running “errands outside of the Courthouse.” The intern will prepare “lunch and snacks for the Justice,” photocopy, and answer the phone. The intern is responsible for his own living arrangements and transportation. She pays them nothing.

If it wasn't for double standards they'd have no standards at all. On the other hand, they unfailingly advance the socialist standards and banners. Who else in America would demand servants and refuse to pay them anything?

THE SHINY ONES

The NID announced that they pulled their undercover operatives out of China after the OPM hack raided the State Department's files and China found itself in the position of now knowing for certain who was an actual state department employee and who was just pretending to work for Uncle Sam's foreign affairs personnel meat grinder.

This is what NID had to say on the matter as relayed from Ars Technica.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the committee that while "we don't know in terms of specifics" what was taken in the OPM breach, it had "potentially very serious implications, first among them close to home [for me] in terms of the Intelligence Community and identifying people who may be under public status... This is a gift that's going to keep on giving for years." Still, he said, as "egregious" as the OPM breach was, it didn't amount to an attack on national infrastructure. "Rather, it would be a form of theft or espionage. We, too, practice cyber espionage. We're not bad at it."

I think we are going to have to take Clapper's word that we are not bad at cyber espionage but the only case I can think of was what we learned about the NID from Snowden so I'm not sure that's a credibility gap filler for me. But they sure do spy on everybody, don't they?

You remember valerie plame who launched the vandal that sank Scooter Libby because she claimed that 'he' outed her as an undercover CIA agent? Yeah, me neither but isn't it odd that that was a crime deserving the appointment of a special prosecutor who only ended up tripping up Scooter because he misremembered under oath and didn't know enough to just claim he could not recall. Funny too how it was actually a State Department loser who actually outed plame to the press and he got off scot free. Where is the special prosecutor in this case? Who has been fired or jailed at OPM?