Born, Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr. He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He was commissioned after attending OCS in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he became a pilot of Forward Observer O-1 Bird Dog liaison aircraft. He attained the rank of first lieutenant. After his return from service, he began taking courses at Texas A&M University in College Station on a football scholarship under coach Bear Bryant, for whom he played tight end.
He has saddled up, as we all shall do, saddle bags full of Karma, good and not so good and bad, to take his ride to his proper station in the Ranch of the Next Life.
Flying the O-1 was no walk in the park. In Viet Nam we called them FACs. (Forward Air Controllers). We lost over 400 of them in Viet Nam.
In 1965, I was serving in England and deeply saddened when I picked up a copy of The Stars and Stripes and read about the death of "Mac the Fac":
Mac McAllister was born on December 14, 1928, in Toledo, Ohio.
He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on March 18, 1946, and received an honorable discharge in May 1947. After completing two years of college, he entered the Aviation Cadet Program of the U.S. Air Force on September 23, 1949, and was commissioned a 2d Lt and awarded his pilot wings on October 28, 1950.
Lt McAllister next completed F-86 Sabre Combat Crew Training at Nellis AFB, Nevada, in January 1951, and then served with the 16th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Osan AB, South Korea, from February to November 1951. During this time he was credited with the destruction of 1 enemy aircraft in aerial combat, and he also flew as a forward air control pilot for 2 months in June and July 1951.
His next assignment was as an F-86 pilot with the 94th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at George AFB, California, from November 1951 to April 1953, followed by service as an F-86 pilot with the 357th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon, and later at Nouasseur AB, Morocco, from April 1953 to February 1955.
Capt McAllister then transferred to the 45th Fighter Day Squadron at Sidi Slimane AB, Morocco, where he served from February to October 1955. He served with the 1737th Ferry Squadron at Dover AFB, Deleware, from October 1955 to March 1958, followed by service as commander of the 4440th Aircraft Delivery Group at Kindley AFB, Bermuda.
Maj McAllister deployed to Southeast Asia in December 1964, and served as an O-1 Bird Dog and O-2 Milirole forward air control pilot with the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron at Qui Nhon AB, South Vietnam, until he was killed in action on April 22, 1965. William McAllister was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California.
His Air Force Cross Citation reads:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Title 10, Section 8742, United States Code, takes pride in presenting the Air Force Cross (Posthumously) to Major William Walter McAllister, United States Air Force (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force while serving as Pilot of an O-2 aircraft with the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron, Qui Nhon Air Base, Vietnam, in action over the Republic of Vietnam on 9 and 10 March 1965.
On these dates, acting as a Forward Air Controller under extremely adverse weather conditions and at night, he directed numerous air strikes in support of the Vietnamese Marines and their three American advisors. With complete disregard for his own safety, Major McAllister sought out targets ahead of the advancing Marines while under prolonged periods of hostile ground fire at dangerously low altitudes. Through his personal efforts, two American casualties were evacuated and the entire Marine unit effectively assisted in obtaining and securing their objectives. He also flew under extremely hazardous conditions under a low ceiling at night in mountainous terrain in an effort to assist friendly positions. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of hostile forces, Major McAllister reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and chil- dren? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love, And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
I worked for a Senior Master Sergeant Earl, who served in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam and saw combat first as a marine in WWII, then transferred to the army, found himself in Korea and thought he better join the more luxurious USAF only to find himself in Viet Nam. He stayed for thirty, retired and taught high school in Georgia. Good man, great sense of humor. He retired and died in his sleep at 84.
328 Mickle Street, the building where Whitman would spend the last eight years of his life, holds a significant history for Walt Whitman, the city of Camden, and the community which memorialized their poet.
328 Mickle Street, now currently residing on Martin King Luther Jr. Boulevard, was first built in 1848, twenty years after the city of Camden was established. Built in Greek revival style, this wooden-framed house was a typical style of most Victorian middle-class homes.
This two-story house contained six modest rooms and a moderately sized garden in the backyard. After living with his brother George on the nearby Stevens Street since 1873, Whitman, at the age of sixty-five, purchased this house in April of 1884. This was the first home the great poet ever owned. After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman’s devout friend, the lawyer, Horace Traubel was one of the first to recognize the need to memorialize the poet.
Traubel petitioned the City of Camden to purchase the estate and dedicate it as a memorial to the life of Walt Whitman.Although his petition failed, Traubel’s enthusiasm prevailed. The early efforts were mostly undertaken by friends and neighbors coming together to accumulate Whitman’s belongings. The Whitman House’s first major preservation effort began in 1919, when a local publisher named David Stern successfully campaigned to have the city of Camden buy the property and oversee it.
The ensuing Walt Whitman Foundation was the first academically and historically accredited preservation organization to oversee restoration; it worked to furnish the house with his accumulated belongings including his furniture and small artifacts as well as the famous deathbed of Whitman.
After the poet’s death, the residence was reclaimed by Whitman’s brother, George, and then inherited by his niece, Jessie Whitman, who sold it to the City of Camden in 1921.
In 1923, the site opened to the public as a museum of commemoration to the American poet Walt Whitman, but was not recognized as a state historical site until 1947. In 1962, the Whitman house was declared a national historic landmark by National Parks and Services, and included neighboring houses as the “Whitman neighborhood” in the register of historic places in 1978.
Norwegians these days are nearly as dumb as Swedes -
A DIAMOND IN A DUNGHEAP
The Norwegian government's token truth-teller. August 8, 2017 Bruce Bawer
Much of the world paid attention in March when the Netherlands held a general election and in May when the French chose a new president. But even in Norway nobody seems all that worked up about the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place here on September 11. One reason may be that when it comes to the most important issue of all, namely you know what, there's really not much of a choice. As in most of the rest of western Europe, there are several parties vying for seats; but this year there are pretty much only two likely outcomes to the election: a socialist coalition government led by the Labor Party under the execrable Jonas Gahr Støre and a nominally non-socialist coalition government led by the Conservative Party under the useless incumbent Prime Minister, Erna Solberg.
For a voter concerned about the Islamization of Norway, Gahr Støre is, as it happens, the guy who, when a Norwegian newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish Muhammed cartoons in 2006, came down hardest on that newspaper's courageous editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, who had to go into hiding because of death threat. Instead of standing up for Selbekk, Gahr Støre, who at the time was Norway's Foreign Minister, brutalized him, claiming that freedom of speech should be tempered by “a sensitivity to ethnic and religious values” and blaming Selbekk for the burning of the Norwegian embassy in Damascus by Islamic nutbags. Visiting the Palestinian territories that year, Gahr Støre personally apologized for Selbekk and excoriated the Jerusalem Post for reprinting the cartoons, telling its editors that “freedom of expression is there to be exercised with reason.” He even instructed Norwegian ambassadors to reply to foreign critics of Magazinet by crawling shamelessly and agreeing that free speech should have limits. Three years later, Gahr Støre promised to bring down jihad – no, sorry, he promised to bring down “all rhetoric that ties Islam to danger, violence, and terror.”
As for Solberg, this is a woman who in 2004 welcomed a fanatical Pakistani religious leader by putting one hand on her chest and bowing to him. When she succeeded Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg four years ago, she ramped up his already shameless level of appeasement and brown-nosing of Islam, issuing stomach-turning statements of congratulation on Muslim holy days and publicly honoring Norwegian Muslims for such outstanding accomplishments as having jobs and not blowing things up. This June she was the star attraction at an Eid celebration hosted by two terrorist-linked mosques. While continually sucking up to even the vilest imams and routinely responding to deadly terrorist acts by denying their connection to Islam, she has savaged Norwegian citizens who dare to openly criticize the Religion of Peace.
In a political class awash in cravenness and cowardice, there are few people who dare to voice the concerns of the many Norwegians who actually do worry about their country's future. Meet 39-year-old Sylvi Listhaug, a Progress Party politician who currently serves as Minister of Migration and Integration. Since taking office, she's repeatedly made headlines – and caused outrage throughout the political, media, and academic establishment – for saying what most of us would consider highly reasonable things. Last summer she dared to admit that most foreign aid amounts to throwing cash down a rat hole and that too many Norwegian politicians are less concerned with the actual results of such aid that with the good feeling it gives them to spread it around. In response, the Christian People's Party – of which Listhaug had given a perfect description – had a conniption fit. Last December came reports that Listhaug and Ayaan Hirsi Ali were working together on a conference about women's equality. That drew attacks, too......
One Reporter’s Experience Of The Collapse Of Democracy In Venezuela JOHN SEXTONPosted at 5:01 pm on August 7, 2017
Hannah Dreier is a reporter for the Associated Press who has been covering the situation in Venezuela since 2014. Today, Politico Magazine published an interview with her in which she describes how she started out thinking the stories of Venezuela’s decline were exaggerated but gradually came to realize the country was falling apart:
I spent my first year there really trying to argue that it wasn’t collapsing, because there was already this narrative that it was a dictatorship where people were starving. And that’s not what I initially saw. Maduro had just won an election. It was a very polarized place, but half of the country supported him. And, people were on diets. There was a super-abundance of food…
And, I think it wasn’t until the people in my life started to lose weight that I really realized that things had changed. And then, people that I knew started to be robbed regularly.
Dreier experienced this change herself when she was robbed on the street in broad daylight and later when she was kidnapped by the secret police:
I mean, there was just no way to insulate yourself from the crisis when you were there. And the thing you really can’t insulate yourself from is violence. So, I was robbed in broad daylight a couple of blocks from where I lived by two men on a motorcycle, and I kind of saw them coming and thought they might rob me, because that was happening to a lot of people at the time, and then they did. And when I told my friends about it, they were, like, “Oh, that was a good robbery. Nobody got hurt. That was good and simple.” And so your standards just start to change…
The same thing happened when the secret police grabbed me one day. I was in detention for a few hours and they made all these threats—like, they said they were going to slit my throat; they said they were going to keep me for weeks and weeks; they said I had to stay there until I married one of them—and when I got out, I told my friends, and they thought it was super funny. So, I also started joking about it, and we got drinks, and it was just like another thing that happened.
Dreier makes clear that while many people still love deceased President Hugo Chavez, almost no one loves President Maduro. Maduro’s rule has been characterized by sheer incompetence:
This is the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen—there was a day last year where the government invalidated that bank note, the hundred bolivar, which is all people were using at that point. There was no sense using anything lower than that because it was like a fraction of a fraction of a penny, so people were only using hundred bolivar notes, and we all had hoarded supplies.
And the government said, “You know what? Today you can’t use that anymore. It has no value.” And they didn’t issue a new note. So there were three days where you couldn’t pay for anything, and that day I needed to take a taxi, but I couldn’t. I needed to recharge my phone; I needed to put some more minutes on it—I couldn’t. Nobody could go out to eat. And there were riots. There was a riot in one city that destroyed more than a hundred stores, because people couldn’t buy anything, and so they just went out and started taking things.
And finally, after three days the government sent the military out to pacify the country, and said, “OK, fine. You can use your hundred bolivar notes again.” But, I mean, the whole country just ground to a halt for no reason. As for what comes next, Dreier is not very optimistic about the country’s future. She tells Politico, “my experience down there has, if it’s taught me one thing, it’s taught me things can always get worse, and worse, and worse.” She adds, “there’s no rule that says that a miserable situation has to end, just because it’s too miserable.” The clampdown on opposition figures that has happened in the past week seems to prove Dreier is right about that. In Venezuela, things just keep getting worse.
" “These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger.”
August 7, 2017 Will Mueller be reined in? By Thomas Lifson
There is a lot of evidence that Special Counsel Robert Meuller's investigation is a fishing expedition, a witch hunt that will at a minimum end up prosecuting a process crime, such as the highly questionable perjury conviction of Scooter Libby. He has staffed up with Democrats and people expert at turning witnesses with threats of prosecution in order to get incriminating testimony on higher-ups. Prosecutions are what special counsels do.
But there is at least a one sign that this worst-case scenario may not eventuate.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Mueller, appeared to rule that out. Daniel Chaitin reports in the Examiner:
If special counsel Robert Mueller finds any crime outside the scope of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, then he'll have to seek permission, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Sunday.
"Bob Mueller understands and I understand the specific scope of the investigation, and so no, it's not a fishing expedition," he told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."
Rosenstein pointed out that reports are based on leaks, and they may not be trustworthy:
It has been reported that Mueller's investigation has expanded to look at the finances of Trump and his associates, giving rise to concerns that Mueller could make it the focus of the probe. Rosenstein seemed to dismiss this issue.
Asked if there were no red lines under the terms of his order, Rosenstein said that the investigation is subject to the rules and regulations of the Justice Department.
If there's evidence of a crime that's found within the scope of what they have agreed, then Mueller has free rein, Rosenstein explained. If it's outside the scope of the probe, then "he needs to come to the acting attorney general, at this time me, for permission to expand his investigation," he added. Rosenstein noted this as a precedent, which was also followed by independent counsel Ken Starr during the Clinton years.
That seems strong. But what would happen if a grand jury (perhaps it will be called a "rogue grand jury" to protect Mueller) returns an indictment that falls outside the scope Rosenstein describes? At this stage of our political drama, we feel as though we're in a hall of mirrors, where the surface interpretation of statements and events has to be questioned, as if it may well be hiding a devious stratagem. It is not just the leaks, bureaucratic resistance, and sabotage coming from the left, either. President Trump, the master of the reality show, frequently sets up viewers citizens for dramatic storylines and says and tweets things for effect.
Don Surber, who has a track record of understanding Trump early and explaining him lucidly, has a very interesting blog post that draws on his own ideas and those of Thomas Wictor. He contends that "Trump is winning the leaks war," because he has been playing a strategy designed to flush out the leakers by planting slightly different versions of stories and seeing which ones get leaked.
Trump is going to war with the press over leaks with victory in hand......
Oh he is not winning on every front. The Senate is holding his political appointments hostage. Notice, he does not talk about that much. It's called discipline. He knows they have him over a barrel called the Constitution.
The press is undisciplined. Time after time it grabs anything and everything to get Trump.
He cites Wictor:
Each group or individual who leaked was given a different version of events. This is CLASSIC spycraft. If nine individuals are told nine different stories, and then each of those stories is published, you know the identity of each person who talked to the press.
And concludes:
Trump now knows who the leakers are. He doesn't stop them. He controls them. If Nixon could have fed Fake News to Mark Felt – the Deep Throat in Watergate – Nixon would have completed two terms, and maybe elected Jerry Ford president.
I don't think Sessions is in the loop on these leaks. It is an Oval Office thing.
Trump has no trouble with leaks. He leaked his 1995 income tax return to the New York Times last fall. He leaked two pages of his 2005 return to Rachel Maddow. He leaks like a sieve.
Again, Trump does not want to stop the leaks. Trump wants to control the leaks.
He knows the power of the leak better than anyone. George Steinbrenner schooled him in journalism when they wrestled for the sports fronts in the New York City dailies in the 1980s.
One thing I have noticed is President Trump will underline a Fake News leak by raising holy heck about it on Twitter. The press then leaps on the leak as if it were gospel. I don't know if he does that to trap them, but that seems to be the result because time will prove Trump right.
Then there is this from CNN. From CNN!
Mueller's investigation of Trump is going too far
Last month, when President Donald Trump was asked by The New York Times if special counsel Robert Mueller would be crossing a line if he started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, the President said, "I think that's a violation. Look, this is about Russia."
The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.
We have to continue to fear the worst, but there are subterranean forces at work, I suspect.
Bear breaks into SUV, then takes it for a short drive
Subaru trashed in Durango neighborhood By Mary Shinn Herald Staff Writer Friday, Aug. 4, 2017 3:07 PM Updated 8 hours 41 minutes ago
A bear broke into an SUV and caused it to roll into a mailbox and utility boxes early Friday. The bear fled the scene before law enforcement arrived.
After a bear broke into a car early Friday in Timberline View Estates, the vehicle rolled into a mailbox and utility box. The bear trashed the inside of the vehicle.
The commotion woke Ron Cornelius and his wife, who found the trashed Subaru in their yard on Timberline Drive in Southwest Colorado.
May 10, 2017 Bear claws its way through vehicle in Forest Lakes suburb.
“Usually, I don’t get up at 5 o’clock unless there is a bear driving a car down the street,” Cornelius joked.
After the bear broke into the car, it likely released the parking brake somehow, he said.
The couple didn’t see the bear leave the SUV and called 911 after the crash because they didn’t know if people were to blame and possibly still in the vehicle.
The car rolled backward from a neighbor’s home into Cornelius’ mailbox and over some utility boxes, he said.
La Plata County Sheriff’s Office deputies determined a bear was to blame, because it defecated in the car, likely because it was nervous, Cornelius said.
It also ripped up the interior of the vehicle. It pulled the steering wheel straight off the shaft, ripped the radio out of the dash and busted out the back window.
“It would have taken a human being hours to do what this bear did in a couple minutes,” he said.
He wasn’t sure what was in the vehicle that attracted the bear.....
The attack on the military base in Venezuela wasn't an attempt to turn the soldiers and capture the base but an effort to get weapons. In this it succeeded.
August 7, 2017 What next after Venezuela's Valencia raid? Watch for 'Operation Ninja' By Monica Showalter
Operation Ninja.
So what next in the wake of the weapons raid on the Venezuelan military base in Valencia? We know from the aggregated reports here that the government is probably lying about all being well in the wake of the attack. There are signs that the raiders did get away with a large cache of weapons, taken from the Chavistas.
My source emails:
Here is a new twist. Yesterday's operation was called "Operation David." There is now a new video out announcing a new plan of action from the same group called "Operation Ninja." Their plan is to act under cover of darkness as commandos to capture members of the leadership of the corrupt Narco-State that is Venezuela and turn them over to "international justice."
This is reminiscent of how the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel to be tried. And he was tried, convicted and hanged.
Here is the link to the video on YouTube.
So what we are seeing now from these raiders, at a minimum, is a willingness to take the lead and run with it, not lie back on their laurels à la McClellan.
That they announced their plans suggests there's an element of psychological warfare as well. What Chavista won't go to bed at night with a twinge of worry that someone may raid their place, stuff them in the trunk of a car, and then haul them off to some tribunal? Wouldn't an exile in Miami seem a better way to go than hanging around Caracas and waiting to be snatched by the "Ninjas" – that is, if President Trump's sanctions aren't keeping them out? Obviously, they are trying to scare the Chavistas in a bid to weaken them.
...that is, if this really is what their next move is. Being clever military men, they might just do something else instead to maintain the element of surprise.
This sounds like a group whose moves are worth watching.
Corporate memoranda don’t always make for interesting reading, but all of Silicon Valley is buzzing about a Google software engineer’s critique of the company’s diversity campaign and its culture. The tech website Gizmodo says the critique is “going viral inside the company.” Gizmodo has published what it says is the text of the memo, with “some minor formatting modifications” and the omission of two charts. Among the observations offered by the engineer, whose name is not disclosed in recent media reports, is the following:
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
The memo, entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” observes:
At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices...
Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.
The author defines as extremist the view that all disparities in the representation of men and women in different jobs are “due to oppression.” And the author defines as authoritarian the idea that “we should discriminate to correct for this oppression.”
Many readers will conclude that this memo is unlike any internal corporate communication they have ever seen. The author delves into a discussion of reasons—other than sexism—that might explain why women and men do not occupy tech positions in equal numbers. According to the memo:
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:
They’re universal across human cultures
They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
The underlying traits are highly heritable
They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
The author writes that various personality traits tend to be more common in either women or men and argues that men on average tend to have more of the traits that would lead one to a career in software engineering at a place like Google. He adds: “Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women,” and adds:
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
Since the memo began circulating, various online commenters have condemned it, and Google has made clear that the document is not an expression of corporate policy. Reports the Journal:
Danielle Brown, Google’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, sent a letter to employees Saturday saying the employee’s memo “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” and is “not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages,” according to a copy of the statement published by Motherboard, which earlier reported on the employee’s memo...
When reached for comment, a Google spokesman referred to Ms. Brown’s statement and an additional statement posted online by Google engineering executive Ari Balogh, one of the managers of the employee who wrote the memo. Mr. Balogh wrote the memo “troubled me deeply” because it suggested “most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful.”
In an update to the memo, the author writes:
When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.
Is this the beginning of a new debate about the goals of corporate diversity programs and the costs and benefits of achieving them? Workers far from Silicon Valley and well beyond the tech industry will be curious to know the answer.
Promises, promises. Feel-goodism versus rational self-interest.
Trump's poll numbers are tanking. They a declining in all voter categories. Yet, Trump's base remains surprisingly supportive. We have to ask why? Of course, there are those single issue Trump voters, usually sinecured and drawing on the public dole, who have a life comfortable enough to simply piss and moan about others drawing on the public dole. There are those Trumpkins deluded enough to believe Trump's problems are brought on by outside forces rather than by the man himself. There are the currently well-off who will prosper under Trump's proposed policies if he ever manages to get them implemented. There are those who are fed up with the system and view Trump as their loud roar against that system and who are willing to sacrifice their own self-interest just to have their voices heard. But what about the others, those who actually believed the bullshit Trump spouted during the election, the people who believed his promises and expected him to keep them, the 55 year old finance manager let go from Bumbfuck Financial and now selling burgers at Wendy's, the small town 40 year old widget producer unemployed since the widget factory was moved to Mexico, or the recent graduate struggling to find a job and pay off his college loans? Why would these people still support him given what they have already seen in the first six months, what has been proposed, the healthcare and budget priorities?
Despite the numerous studies that show the net advantage immigrants to the US have brought to this land, some argue all of the US' current problems are caused by the immigrant population. One can only sadly smile. They cry that our 'Christian' tradition is being destroyed by these immigrants, a pretty obvious tell. Most normal people would refer to our Judeo/Christian tradition, but well, you know...
The real reasons US culture and tradition has changed over the past 45 years are many and varied and most of them are the result of the very generation that is doing the pissing and moaning now. Left a country from their parents that was number one in the world after WWII, economically, militarily, and politically, a country that was growing at an increasing rate, a country benefitting from high productivity and key technological advances, a country where incomes were rising and the American dream seemed real for anyone who wanted it (well except for the occasional riot by those not sharing in the dream), the Baby Boomers fucked it up starting in the 60's with a couple decades of indulgence, conspicuous consumption, riots, and war. Permissiveness ran rampant and half the country never fully recovered. What was missing during all this activity was the realization that things had actually changed, that economic reality had shifted, that a new paradigm was being established, that the good times for a great many were slowing and no longer rolling.
Income growth for most slowed. Large companies became even larger by increasing their multinational operations. Jobs were shifted overseas to take advantage of low wages. Unions were demonized and began to shrink in size and importance. Technological advances started having an impact on the number of jobs. Wages flattened even more. It wasn't immigrants taking jobs that was causing all this, it was a shift in business philosophy to a more short term focus and a resulting increase in the idea of maximization of profit. It was a declining productivity rate and a shift in the allocation of those profits.
The shift was disguised for a time, decades in fact, by other factors. In order to maintain their lifestyles and the conspicuous consumption, men began working longer hours, skipping vacation, taking second jobs. Women began to work, waves of them, not only to keep up the lifestyle they had become accustomed to but because they were told they needed to by feminists and other 'progressive' thinkers in society. Latchkey kids became the norm. Parents compensated by giving their kids whatever they wanted including freedom to do what they wanted. These are the same kids now running our education system and many government bureaus. These are some of the factors that have changed us from the Ozzie and Harriet good old days, not immigration.
Economically, the following chart shows what has happened to this country.
You will note that the changes started to manifest themselves when Reagan came into office. The Great Communicator is considered a hero by many, yet, it was during his presidency that major shifts occurred. The decline of the unions began, wage growth began to slow, deficits began to explode, and income inequality began to accelerate. And as we noticed in 2008, those at the top of the income ladder suffered not a whit, in fact, they have benefitted economically. They do it in good times and bad while those left behind find themselves even farther behind. These trends continue today. These are the things Trump promised to change during the election. Today, while he keeps promising the same during campaign rallies, his actions and proposals as president say the exact opposite.
It’s true that the country can’t magically return to the 1950s and 1960s (nor would we want to, all things considered). Economic growth was faster in those decades than we can reasonably expect today. Yet there is nothing natural about the distribution of today’s growth — the fact that our economic bounty flows overwhelmingly to a small share of the population.
Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for corporate consolidation.
Remarkably, President Trump and the Republican leaders in Congress are trying to go in the other direction. They spent months trying to take away health insurance from millions of middle-class and poor families. Their initial tax-reform plans would reduce taxes for the rich much more than for everyone else. And they want to cut spending on schools, even though education is the single best way to improve middle-class living standards over the long term.
Most Americans would look at these charts and conclude that inequality is out of control. The president, on the other hand, seems to think that inequality isn’t big enough.
Perhaps, I should have said 'not including' immigration; however, I was responding to a view expressed here recently that immigration was the root cause of all our problems. In fact, numerous studies have shown that the net effect of immigration through our history has been positive. As far as 'changing our Christian tradition' the factors I pointed out have far more to do with that than immigration despite the regional problems experienced in the Southwest. I find it a little ironic when secularists and atheists end up having to redefine what 'Christian tradition' means in order to use it as an excuse for their xenophobia. The crime problems in Chicago and other large cities aren't the fault of immigration. The primary causes of the current opioid crisis isn't the ready supply as much as the reasons driving these people to take the drugs.
As for the Times, they weren't talking about immigration at all but merely the trend towards more and more income inequality. I merely used the article to point out one of the economic root causes that leads to other causes for our changing culture. I could have gone farther, the secularization of the society, the decline of two parent families, the changing nature of the jobs being created, government spending priorities, a declining birth rate, social media, etc.
Two Californias Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.
Victor Davis Hanson
We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.”
I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants.
There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.
"California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland.
Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road.
But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.
In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food.
I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands. So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta.
How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public
Victor Davis Hanson
If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented. It is difficult for the National Council of La Raza to attempt to airbrush away vocabulary like “anchor baby” and “illegal immigration,” while insisting that its own nomenclature “La Raza” has nothing to do with race.
The public knows that La Raza means “The Race,” and that those who founded that organization chose that racially charged noun for the precise purpose of ethnic triumphalism — in the way that every infamous 20th-century Latinate racist demagogue from Mussolini to Franco found a use for Raza/Razza, a mostly taboo term in Mediterranean Europe today.
In an age when the Washington Redskins earn a presidential rebuke, it is inconceivable that the chief illegal-immigration advocate is a federally subsidized group known as the National Council of La Raza.
No other organization would dare use such a term. In the public mind illegal immigration has gone from the old narrative that racists were enforcing the law to keep out mostly brown people to a new generation of racists who are trying to subvert the law to bring in mostly brown people...
...It is still common to find at immigration rallies thousands of Mexican flags, with far fewer — if any — American flags.
Illegal aliens do not just root for visiting Mexican sports teams, but go the extra mile of booing the American opposition. The message is incoherent: “I will salute the country that drove me out but less so the one that welcomed me in.”
In fact, the entire narrative of illegal immigration has become unhinged. The vocabulary of protest is never aimed against the nation that forced them out, only against the one that most generously welcomed them in.
Nowhere is this disconnect more evident than in the university, where two antitheses are promulgated. Even as the various Chicano and Ethnic Studies departments indoctrinate students with the supposedly sinister history of the United States, they simultaneously champion the rights of the illegal aliens to enter, reside, and stay in the odious country they have just damned.
The message makes little sense. Millions of Americans have finally caught on to the incoherence, and feel that ingratitude is among the worst of all sins.
It is alleged that Donald Trump is a demagogue who whips the ignorant up. Perhaps. But on matters of immigration he came late and often in antithesis to his own former positions.
The truth is that the illegal-immigration lobby was its own worst enemy, its message couched in racism, illegality, untruth — and finally incoherence. People are tired of being called racists by racial chauvinists, of being dubbed insensitive by unfeeling opportunists, and of being called politically naive by political manipulators.
There is no one contributing to these august pages that can make an ironclad argument in favor of any of the options available to the USA in regard to North Korea. What we have tried in the past under both Republican and Democrat Presidents has obviously not worked.
If The Donald preempts tomorrow morning at 2:27 am Korean time I will not be criticizing him, but will be hoping for the best.
Low Energy JEB ! Bush can't help himself and has just jumped into the fray, still feeling the sting from spending $100 million dollars for two delegates in the primaries, by saying he hopes The Donald grows up, or some such personal put down statement.
AUG. 7, 2017 AT 5:54 AM The Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats And it’s not just 2018.
By David Wasserman
Filed under Electoral College
When Democrats think about their party’s problems on the political map, they tend to think of President Trump’s ability to win the White House despite losing the popular vote and Republicans’ potent efforts to gerrymander congressional districts. But their problems extend beyond the Electoral College and the House: The Senate hasn’t had such a strong pro-GOP bias since the ratification of direct Senate elections in 1913.
Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.
This is partly attributable to the nature of House districts: GOP gerrymandering and Democratic voters’ clustering in urban districts has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation. Part of it is bad timing. Democrats have been cursed by a terrible Senate map in 2018: They must defend 25 of their 48 seats1 while Republicans must defend just eight of their 52.
But there’s a larger, long-term trend at work too — one that should alarm Democrats preoccupied with the future of Congress and the Supreme Court.
In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.....
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Truman in a dark suit and tie and light hat shakes hands with MacArthur, in uniform wearing a shirt but no tie and his rumpled peaked cap.
General of the Army MacArthur shakes hands with President Truman at the Wake Island Conference.
On 11 April 1951, U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements which contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then the commander of United Nations forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil-military relations.
MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, he was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, for which he was hailed as a military genius. However, when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China intervened in the war and inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur's public statements became increasingly irritating to Truman, and he relieved MacArthur of his commands. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief, and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride."[1] An apolitical military was an American tradition, but one that was difficult to uphold in an era when American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained, but the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military. This made civilian control increasingly problematic when coupled with the constitutional division of powers between the President as commander-in-chief, and the Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and wage wars. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the President's role as pre-eminent....
My wife has been blaming the current situation on Truman, saying if MacArthur had been left in charge none of this shit with the Norks or the Chinese would be bothering us now.
I am taking great comfort in listening to Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, and finally realizing at least one American is fully insightful and possesses more intelligence than our entire Intelligence Community combined.
All I am wondering about is whether or not she is some kind of Lesbian dyke.
As lightning swiftly from the sky, one of First Quorum has fallen.
An extramarital affair ?
A 15 round bout with Demon Rum ?
Showing some Un-elect the interior of the Sacred Temple ?
Selling cigarettes to minors ?
Pilfering the church safe deposit box ?
We may never know, but we bow our heads in prayer for his swift repentance and return and salvation.
High-ranking Mormon official, who twice spoke in General Conference, is excommunicated; first such ouster in nearly 3 decades (Courtesy LDS Church) Former LDS general authority James J. Hamula
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
By David Noyce · 11 hours ago
For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Mormon church has excommunicated one of its top leaders.
On Tuesday morning, James J. Hamula was released from his position in the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after disciplinary action.
LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins provided no details about the removal. But the church did confirm Hamula was no longer a member of the church and that his ouster was not for apostasy or disillusionment.
In cases involving members of Mormonism’s presiding quorums — rare as they are — the faith’s governing First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles form a disciplinary council to consider such actions.
Hamula, 59, who could not be reached Tuesday for comment, was born in Long Beach, Calif., and served in many positions with the Utah-based church — including as a full-time missionary in Germany, bishop, stake president (overseeing a number of LDS congregations), mission president and Area Seventy.
When Vicki Wimmer Johnson was rearing young children in Mesa, Ariz., Hamula was her stake president, and their children went to the same elementary school.
“I remember feeling the love of my Savior, Jesus Christ,” Johnson wrote in an email Tuesday, “when President Hamula taught us.”
Both families had teenagers when the Mormon leader was called to be a mission president in Washington, D.C., and then as an LDS general authority,
“I had some very painful times during my years of raising children, and I remember well a time when I wanted to give up. I no longer wanted to live,” said Johnson, who still lives in Mesa. “Elder Hamula was in town and giving a fireside for the adults in our stake, and I felt prompted to go. It feels like yesterday sitting near him while he spoke.” The Mormon authority encouraged members to “never, never, never give up,” she recalled. “I felt Jesus Christ speak to me that night through James Hamula’s words. His words saved my life.”
Hamula became one of the church’s general authorities in April 2008. These full-time leaders — from the faith’s prophet at the top to its apostles and dozen of members of the First and Second Quorums of the Seventy and Presiding Bishopric — leave behind their careers and work only for the church. They receive a living allowance that the church says is the same across the board for all of them.
From 2009 to 2014, Hamula was a member of the Pacific Area Presidency, headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. Upon his return to church headquarters in Salt Lake City, he served as assistant executive director of the Church History Department from 2014 to 2016. Before his removal, Hamula was serving as executive director of the Correlation Department.
According to a biography on the LDS Church’s website, Hamula earned a bachelor’s degree in 1981 in political science and philosophy from church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, where he graduated magna cum laude. Four years later, he received a master’s in political philosophy and a law degree from BYU.
He worked as an attorney until his assignment to full-time church service, the bio states. He married Joyce Anderson in April 1984. They are the parents of six children.
Twice, Hamula addressed Mormons worldwide during the faith’s semiannual General Conferences. In October 2014, he talked about the sacrament (or communion) and Christ’s atonement.
“With a small cup of water, we signify that we remember the blood Jesus spilled and the spiritual suffering he endured for all mankind,” Hamula said. “ … In taking the water to ourselves, we acknowledge that his blood and suffering atoned for our sins and that he will remit our sins as we embrace and accept the principles and ordinances of his gospel.” All people, he continued, have become “soiled with sin and transgression. We will have had thoughts, words and works that will have been less than virtuous. In short, we will be unclean.”
Jesus offers a way to erase those misdeeds, Hamula counseled. “He ... offers to make us clean if we will have faith in him sufficient to repent.”
In October 2008, six months after his call to the Seventy, Hamula took to the Conference Center pulpit in downtown Salt Lake City in a speech to the all-male LDS priesthood, specifically urging teenage boys to remain faithful and win the war against evil.
“Satan is marshaling every resource at his disposal to entice you into transgression. He knows that if he can draw you into transgression, he may prevent you from serving a full-time mission, marrying in the temple, and securing your future children in the faith, all of which weakens not only you but the church,” he said. “ … Make no mistake about it — the focus of his war is now on you — you who seek to keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Mormons view excommunication as a way for offenders to get right with God and the church. Ousted members can and do rejoin the fold — through rebaptism — if they show sincere repentance.....
Mumbai jihad-terror savages form political party with Muslim mass murderer at helm By Pamela Geller - on August 8, 2017 INDIA
The Muslim reporter for this article (the enemedia always has Muslims write up jihad new stories) rounds out the edges and bleaches the blood. Muslim reporter Asif Shahzad opens up his “report” with this sentence:
“A Pakistani charity that the United States accuses of being a front for anti-India militant group that staged the 2008 Mumbai attacks has entered politics by forming a new party, charity officials said on Monday.”
Notice that Shahzad reports as fact “charity officials” — meaning the jihad savages — giving them the imprimatur of legitimacy, while accusing the US government of “accusing.” It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. We know exactly who staged that monstrous Islamic attack in Mumbai. But this is what passes for “top notch” Reuters reporting in the Islamic era.
And the headline again calls these savage murderers a charity. Like the Holy Land foundation was a “charity.”
CHARITY RUN BY PAKISTANI ISLAMIST WITH $10 MILLION BOUNTY LAUNCHES POLITICAL PARTY
Here are the details the Muslim reporter for left out of the story. On November 26, 2008, jihadists staged 11 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308. The carnage was unimaginable, the torture unspeakable. Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker who was captured alive, confessed upon interrogation that the attacks were conducted with the support of Pakistan’s ISI. Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital (a women and children’s hospital), the Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema, and a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier’s College.
.At the Oberoi, an attacker asked whether to spare women (“Kill them,” came the terse reply) and Muslims (he was told to release them and kill the rest). (New York Times)
Muslims were released.
All the hostages were asked to reveal their religion. When the Muezzinoglus said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed. The other three Caucasian women were removed from the room next day, and the terrorists informed the Muezzinoglus that they had been shot. (Times of India)
The Jews were targeted first (Islamic antisemitism is a basic tenet in Islam). According to radio transmissions picked up by Indian intelligence, theattackers “would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews.” In my extensive coverage of the savage Muslim attacks on the West in Mumbai, India, the obsession with targeting the small little Jewish Chabad house from the inception of the planning was shocking. The Jewish Chabad house was part of a larger attack on hotels and public buildings across Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of at least 166 people. But for the Muslim terrorists themselves, Nariman House was different. It was the only Jewish target, and the Muslim terrorists were told by their central command in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews. The organizers had sought it out with care. Their handlers would emphasize to them the importance of killing Jews.....
London is now the acid attack capital of the world, with attacks at “epidemic levels” : http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/london-acid-epidemic.html/
Google's Blacklist: Destroying careers because of different political beliefs : http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/google-blacklist.html/
And here's a good one -
Burka-ed Statue of Liberty Hangs in Democrat Congressman’s Office By Pamela Geller - on August 8, 2017 CULTURAL JIHAD
Cultural jihad. When I had the Statue of Liberty in a burka on the cover of my 2010 book, people thought I was overstating it.
Now it hangs in a Congressman’s office (a Democrat, of course) — not as a warning but as an aspiration.
The art implies that we are all subjugated Muslim women. We are not.
This is deeply offensive to every freedom-loving American (and immigrant) “yearning to be free” who escaped the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth, the sharia.
Congressman J. Luis Correa, a congressional Democrat, is standing in support of gender oppression, gender apartheid, female genital mutilation and honor killing.
A PAINTING OF LADY LIBERTY IN HIJAB HANGS IN CONGRESSMAN’S OFFICE. DESPITE PROTESTS, HE SAYS IT’LL STAY
View image on Twitter
August 8, 2017, Samantha Schmidt August, , Washington Post, August 8, 2017:
Each year, scores of high school students across the country compete in the Congressional Art Competition, submitting works of art for a chance to be featured at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, for the second year in a row, a teenager’s painting for the contest has become the center of a political controversy, drawing ire from conservative groups. This time around, the artwork stirred complaints even before making it to D.C.
The painting, a finalist in the competition, currently hangs in California, in the Santa Ana office of Rep. J. Luis Correa, a congressional Democrat. It depicts the Statue of Liberty wearing a hijab, holding her torch across the left side of her body.
(Courtesy of the Amplifier Foundation)
While the painting is simply a piece of art created by a local female high school student, its symbolism is clearly political. It evokes imagery similar to other works of art that have circulated since President Trump’s election, such as the popular “We The People” poster of a woman wearing an American flag as a hijab.
But for some conservatives, the painting has no place in the office of an elected congressman.
When local activist group We the People Rising saw the painting in Correa’s office, its members set out on a campaign to have it removed, calling it a separation of church and state issue.....
August 9, 2017 Just one more threat, and North Korea is history By Stephen Bryen
Kim Jong-un had better think more than twice about making another threat about incinerating the United States. As things now stand, one more threat will be fatal for him and for North Korea.
This message, loud and clear, has been sent by the president.
I believe that the president has the support of the American people. That is all he needs.
It is really foolish of North Korea and her myopic leaders and sycophantic generals to threaten the U.S., the world's only true superpower. They cannot defeat the United States, and they cannot survive an air attack from the United States.
Probably we will launch B-1 and B-2 bombers, followed by B-52s to carpet-bomb some of the missile factories and nuclear installations. The United States does not need to use nuclear weapons to do the job; the bunker-busters and the biggest conventional bomb of them all, the GBU 43/B, sometimes called the Mother of All Bombs, will do the job. The MOAB was tried out this past April in Afghanistan, where it was pushed out the back of a C-130. It destroyed deep underground caves to the point where there was nothing left.
That's the sort of bomb, now proven to work, that can destroy North Korea's nuclear stockpile, her underground facilities, her reactors, and the government's underground network in Pyongyang. Kim will have no place to hide, and afterward, it is unlikely that anyone will find any single part of him worth burying.
Why would North Korea be so brazen and make such dangerous moves?
For a long time, it was thought that if a country had nuclear weapons, even if it couldn't feed itself, it had a strange kind of ultimate leverage over civilized countries and peoples. That's why countries such as South Africa, when it was still an Apartheid state, was building nuclear weapons. No more. South Africa realized that nuclear weapons were more of a hazard than a benefit.
Today, many other wobbly countries have tried to obtain nuclear weapons. Libya made many efforts over the years to buy ready-made weapons or the technology to produce her own. Perhaps it was Gaddafi's dream. Iraq tried to do the same thing, but the Israelis smashed their reactor, and the United States and coalition forces flushed out whatever other nuclear weapons technology survived thereafter. Syria built a reactor like the one at Youngbin, hoping it would not be discovered, but the Israelis found it and ruined it utterly. And Iran is still in the midst of developing nuclear weapons, although she is supposed to be in a "pause" under the deal made under the Obama administration.
Some have gotten away with it – India, which is a very large country, and Pakistan, which is not. They are a danger to each other, and Pakistan is responsible for spreading nuclear technology around the Third World. The country remains a true menace still tolerated by the United States, which is bizarre, given her inherent instability and the fact that no solution exists if Pakistan falls completely into the hands of radical Islamists.
Others have tried to get nuclear weapons but for one reason or another failed. Some other countries may have them but don't say so, such as Israel and Sweden. Indeed, it is Israel's policy to maintain a posture of strategic ambivalence. It is Sweden's to keep quiet.
But overall, it is clear that the promise of inviolability to be gained from nuclear weapons does not always pan out. In the case of North Korea, she does not yet have delivery systems for her missiles, although the U.S. apparently now thinks North Korea has succeeded in miniaturizing her bombs so they can be put on top of a rocket. Why, then, should we allow the North Koreans to keep threatening us at a time when they can't deliver on their threats, and where, if we allow them time, they will be in a position to incinerate our cities in a few years?
That's why President Trump could attack North Korea at any time with or without new threats. But even the president of the United States needs a casus belli. Kim is about to hand him just that.
The grand recycling continues lads.
ReplyDeleteBorn, Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr. He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He was commissioned after attending OCS in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he became a pilot of Forward Observer O-1 Bird Dog liaison aircraft. He attained the rank of first lieutenant. After his return from service, he began taking courses at Texas A&M University in College Station on a football scholarship under coach Bear Bryant, for whom he played tight end.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHe has saddled up, as we all shall do, saddle bags full of Karma, good and not so good and bad, to take his ride to his proper station in the Ranch of the Next Life.
DeleteI don't recognize the guy. Can't recall him at all, which is odd, as I watched plenty of cowpoke stuff back in the day.
ReplyDeleteNice lookin' young bronco, surely a good filly roper in any western saloon.
Kind of a country Quirk type....
Flying the O-1 was no walk in the park. In Viet Nam we called them FACs. (Forward Air Controllers). We lost over 400 of them in Viet Nam.
ReplyDeleteIn 1965, I was serving in England and deeply saddened when I picked up a copy of The Stars and Stripes and read about the death of "Mac the Fac":
Mac McAllister was born on December 14, 1928, in Toledo, Ohio.
He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on March 18, 1946, and received an honorable discharge in May 1947. After completing two years of college, he entered the Aviation Cadet Program of the U.S. Air Force on September 23, 1949, and was commissioned a 2d Lt and awarded his pilot wings on October 28, 1950.
Lt McAllister next completed F-86 Sabre Combat Crew Training at Nellis AFB, Nevada, in January 1951, and then served with the 16th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Osan AB, South Korea, from February to November 1951. During this time he was credited with the destruction of 1 enemy aircraft in aerial combat, and he also flew as a forward air control pilot for 2 months in June and July 1951.
His next assignment was as an F-86 pilot with the 94th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at George AFB, California, from November 1951 to April 1953, followed by service as an F-86 pilot with the 357th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon, and later at Nouasseur AB, Morocco, from April 1953 to February 1955.
Capt McAllister then transferred to the 45th Fighter Day Squadron at Sidi Slimane AB, Morocco, where he served from February to October 1955. He served with the 1737th Ferry Squadron at Dover AFB, Deleware, from October 1955 to March 1958, followed by service as commander of the 4440th Aircraft Delivery Group at Kindley AFB, Bermuda.
Maj McAllister deployed to Southeast Asia in December 1964, and served as an O-1 Bird Dog and O-2 Milirole forward air control pilot with the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron at Qui Nhon AB, South Vietnam, until he was killed in action on April 22, 1965. William McAllister was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California.
His Air Force Cross Citation reads:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Title 10, Section 8742, United States Code, takes pride in presenting the Air Force Cross (Posthumously) to Major William Walter McAllister, United States Air Force (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force while serving as Pilot of an O-2 aircraft with the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron, Qui Nhon Air Base, Vietnam, in action over the Republic of Vietnam on 9 and 10 March 1965.
On these dates, acting as a Forward Air Controller under extremely adverse weather conditions and at night, he directed numerous air strikes in support of the Vietnamese Marines and their three American advisors. With complete disregard for his own safety, Major McAllister sought out targets ahead of the advancing Marines while under prolonged periods of hostile ground fire at dangerously low altitudes. Through his personal efforts, two American casualties were evacuated and the entire Marine unit effectively assisted in obtaining and securing their objectives. He also flew under extremely hazardous conditions under a low ceiling at night in mountainous terrain in an effort to assist friendly positions. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of hostile forces, Major McAllister reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
Some of us get recycled out of turn. Other like Ty Hardin are more fortunate. So it goes.
ReplyDeletefrom Song of Myself
ReplyDeleteWalt Whitman
Section 6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may
see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and chil- dren?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
from Song of Myself
ReplyDeleteWalt Whitman
Section 5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
This:
DeleteI mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning
marks the moment Whitman finally 'got it'.
It came naturally to him, organically, almost easily, while on the other hand Roethke had severe struggles arriving at the same understanding.
I worked for a Senior Master Sergeant Earl, who served in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam and saw combat first as a marine in WWII, then transferred to the army, found himself in Korea and thought he better join the more luxurious USAF only to find himself in Viet Nam. He stayed for thirty, retired and taught high school in Georgia. Good man, great sense of humor. He retired and died in his sleep at 84.
ReplyDelete328 Mickle Street, the building where Whitman would spend the last eight years of his life, holds a significant history for Walt Whitman, the city of Camden, and the community which memorialized their poet.
ReplyDelete328 Mickle Street, now currently residing on Martin King Luther Jr. Boulevard, was first built in 1848, twenty years after the city of Camden was established. Built in Greek revival style, this wooden-framed house was a typical style of most Victorian middle-class homes.
This two-story house contained six modest rooms and a moderately sized garden in the backyard. After living with his brother George on the nearby Stevens Street since 1873, Whitman, at the age of sixty-five, purchased this house in April of 1884. This was the first home the great poet ever owned. After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman’s devout friend, the lawyer, Horace Traubel was one of the first to recognize the need to memorialize the poet.
Traubel petitioned the City of Camden to purchase the estate and dedicate it as a memorial to the life of Walt Whitman.Although his petition failed, Traubel’s enthusiasm prevailed. The early efforts were mostly undertaken by friends and neighbors coming together to accumulate Whitman’s belongings. The Whitman House’s first major preservation effort began in 1919, when a local publisher named David Stern successfully campaigned to have the city of Camden buy the property and oversee it.
The ensuing Walt Whitman Foundation was the first academically and historically accredited preservation organization to oversee restoration; it worked to furnish the house with his accumulated belongings including his furniture and small artifacts as well as the famous deathbed of Whitman.
After the poet’s death, the residence was reclaimed by Whitman’s brother, George, and then inherited by his niece, Jessie Whitman, who sold it to the City of Camden in 1921.
In 1923, the site opened to the public as a museum of commemoration to the American poet Walt Whitman, but was not recognized as a state historical site until 1947. In 1962, the Whitman house was declared a national historic landmark by National Parks and Services, and included neighboring houses as the “Whitman neighborhood” in the register of historic places in 1978.
We've come a long way, baby.
ReplyDeleteLa Racist Chairs Democratic National Committee
Throughout the entire case, Perez pursued Arpaio with a vengeance.
Tom Perez began his legal career as a LaRaza attorney in Maryland.
He currently is Chair of the Democratic National Committee, a major force in moving the Democratic Party in a hard-left direction.
https://www.infowars.com/where-is-trump-sheriff-arpaio-asks/
Was just going to post that Where Is Trump - Sheriff Joe Arpaio article.
DeleteLike young Jonathan Riggers -
I was fast on the draw
But slow on the triggers.
You 'gunned me down' again !
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteImages of Walt Whitman
ReplyDeletehttp://whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/gallery.html?sort=year&order=ascending&page=1
I've always loved the New York 1954 images.
Here:
http://whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/image003.html?sort=year&order=ascending&page=1
And here:
http://whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/image005.html?sort=year&order=ascending&page=1
Walt designed his own modest tomb.
Crazy Maxine News - Bringing Us All Together
ReplyDeleteMaxine Waters Won't Rule Out All-Black Party....DRUDGE
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/07/maxine-waters-wont-rule-out-all-black-party-video/
Norwegians these days are nearly as dumb as Swedes -
ReplyDeleteA DIAMOND IN A DUNGHEAP
The Norwegian government's token truth-teller.
August 8, 2017 Bruce Bawer
Much of the world paid attention in March when the Netherlands held a general election and in May when the French chose a new president. But even in Norway nobody seems all that worked up about the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place here on September 11. One reason may be that when it comes to the most important issue of all, namely you know what, there's really not much of a choice. As in most of the rest of western Europe, there are several parties vying for seats; but this year there are pretty much only two likely outcomes to the election: a socialist coalition government led by the Labor Party under the execrable Jonas Gahr Støre and a nominally non-socialist coalition government led by the Conservative Party under the useless incumbent Prime Minister, Erna Solberg.
For a voter concerned about the Islamization of Norway, Gahr Støre is, as it happens, the guy who, when a Norwegian newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish Muhammed cartoons in 2006, came down hardest on that newspaper's courageous editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, who had to go into hiding because of death threat. Instead of standing up for Selbekk, Gahr Støre, who at the time was Norway's Foreign Minister, brutalized him, claiming that freedom of speech should be tempered by “a sensitivity to ethnic and religious values” and blaming Selbekk for the burning of the Norwegian embassy in Damascus by Islamic nutbags. Visiting the Palestinian territories that year, Gahr Støre personally apologized for Selbekk and excoriated the Jerusalem Post for reprinting the cartoons, telling its editors that “freedom of expression is there to be exercised with reason.” He even instructed Norwegian ambassadors to reply to foreign critics of Magazinet by crawling shamelessly and agreeing that free speech should have limits. Three years later, Gahr Støre promised to bring down jihad – no, sorry, he promised to bring down “all rhetoric that ties Islam to danger, violence, and terror.”
As for Solberg, this is a woman who in 2004 welcomed a fanatical Pakistani religious leader by putting one hand on her chest and bowing to him. When she succeeded Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg four years ago, she ramped up his already shameless level of appeasement and brown-nosing of Islam, issuing stomach-turning statements of congratulation on Muslim holy days and publicly honoring Norwegian Muslims for such outstanding accomplishments as having jobs and not blowing things up. This June she was the star attraction at an Eid celebration hosted by two terrorist-linked mosques. While continually sucking up to even the vilest imams and routinely responding to deadly terrorist acts by denying their connection to Islam, she has savaged Norwegian citizens who dare to openly criticize the Religion of Peace.
DeleteIn a political class awash in cravenness and cowardice, there are few people who dare to voice the concerns of the many Norwegians who actually do worry about their country's future. Meet 39-year-old Sylvi Listhaug, a Progress Party politician who currently serves as Minister of Migration and Integration. Since taking office, she's repeatedly made headlines – and caused outrage throughout the political, media, and academic establishment – for saying what most of us would consider highly reasonable things. Last summer she dared to admit that most foreign aid amounts to throwing cash down a rat hole and that too many Norwegian politicians are less concerned with the actual results of such aid that with the good feeling it gives them to spread it around. In response, the Christian People's Party – of which Listhaug had given a perfect description – had a conniption fit. Last December came reports that Listhaug and Ayaan Hirsi Ali were working together on a conference about women's equality. That drew attacks, too......
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267496/diamond-dungheap-bruce-bawer
Stop Moslem Immigration To USA Now !
Save us from all the troubles.....
Meanwhile the Poles are showing us the way.
DeleteOne Reporter’s Experience Of The Collapse Of Democracy In Venezuela
ReplyDeleteJOHN SEXTONPosted at 5:01 pm on August 7, 2017
Hannah Dreier is a reporter for the Associated Press who has been covering the situation in Venezuela since 2014. Today, Politico Magazine published an interview with her in which she describes how she started out thinking the stories of Venezuela’s decline were exaggerated but gradually came to realize the country was falling apart:
I spent my first year there really trying to argue that it wasn’t collapsing, because there was already this narrative that it was a dictatorship where people were starving. And that’s not what I initially saw. Maduro had just won an election. It was a very polarized place, but half of the country supported him. And, people were on diets. There was a super-abundance of food…
And, I think it wasn’t until the people in my life started to lose weight that I really realized that things had changed. And then, people that I knew started to be robbed regularly.
Dreier experienced this change herself when she was robbed on the street in broad daylight and later when she was kidnapped by the secret police:
I mean, there was just no way to insulate yourself from the crisis when you were there. And the thing you really can’t insulate yourself from is violence. So, I was robbed in broad daylight a couple of blocks from where I lived by two men on a motorcycle, and I kind of saw them coming and thought they might rob me, because that was happening to a lot of people at the time, and then they did. And when I told my friends about it, they were, like, “Oh, that was a good robbery. Nobody got hurt. That was good and simple.” And so your standards just start to change…
The same thing happened when the secret police grabbed me one day. I was in detention for a few hours and they made all these threats—like, they said they were going to slit my throat; they said they were going to keep me for weeks and weeks; they said I had to stay there until I married one of them—and when I got out, I told my friends, and they thought it was super funny. So, I also started joking about it, and we got drinks, and it was just like another thing that happened.
DeleteDreier makes clear that while many people still love deceased President Hugo Chavez, almost no one loves President Maduro. Maduro’s rule has been characterized by sheer incompetence:
This is the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen—there was a day last year where the government invalidated that bank note, the hundred bolivar, which is all people were using at that point. There was no sense using anything lower than that because it was like a fraction of a fraction of a penny, so people were only using hundred bolivar notes, and we all had hoarded supplies.
And the government said, “You know what? Today you can’t use that anymore. It has no value.” And they didn’t issue a new note. So there were three days where you couldn’t pay for anything, and that day I needed to take a taxi, but I couldn’t. I needed to recharge my phone; I needed to put some more minutes on it—I couldn’t. Nobody could go out to eat. And there were riots. There was a riot in one city that destroyed more than a hundred stores, because people couldn’t buy anything, and so they just went out and started taking things.
And finally, after three days the government sent the military out to pacify the country, and said, “OK, fine. You can use your hundred bolivar notes again.” But, I mean, the whole country just ground to a halt for no reason.
As for what comes next, Dreier is not very optimistic about the country’s future. She tells Politico, “my experience down there has, if it’s taught me one thing, it’s taught me things can always get worse, and worse, and worse.” She adds, “there’s no rule that says that a miserable situation has to end, just because it’s too miserable.” The clampdown on opposition figures that has happened in the past week seems to prove Dreier is right about that. In Venezuela, things just keep getting worse.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/07/one-reporters-experiences-socialist-dictatorship-venezuela/
" “These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger.”
Bernie Sanders
Incomes are equal alrighty.
No one has any income.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSnopes says the claim that NBC paid Chelsea Clinton $900,000 a year is FALSE!
Delete...she only made $600,000 a year.
She's not worth 1/1000th of that.
DeleteNBC got skinned.
Even $600 is really pushing it.
DeleteShe probably should have paid them for the chance.
This is good - heh -
ReplyDeleteAugust 7, 2017
Will Mueller be reined in?
By Thomas Lifson
There is a lot of evidence that Special Counsel Robert Meuller's investigation is a fishing expedition, a witch hunt that will at a minimum end up prosecuting a process crime, such as the highly questionable perjury conviction of Scooter Libby. He has staffed up with Democrats and people expert at turning witnesses with threats of prosecution in order to get incriminating testimony on higher-ups. Prosecutions are what special counsels do.
But there is at least a one sign that this worst-case scenario may not eventuate.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Mueller, appeared to rule that out. Daniel Chaitin reports in the Examiner:
If special counsel Robert Mueller finds any crime outside the scope of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, then he'll have to seek permission, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Sunday.
"Bob Mueller understands and I understand the specific scope of the investigation, and so no, it's not a fishing expedition," he told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."
Rosenstein pointed out that reports are based on leaks, and they may not be trustworthy:
It has been reported that Mueller's investigation has expanded to look at the finances of Trump and his associates, giving rise to concerns that Mueller could make it the focus of the probe. Rosenstein seemed to dismiss this issue.
Asked if there were no red lines under the terms of his order, Rosenstein said that the investigation is subject to the rules and regulations of the Justice Department.
If there's evidence of a crime that's found within the scope of what they have agreed, then Mueller has free rein, Rosenstein explained. If it's outside the scope of the probe, then "he needs to come to the acting attorney general, at this time me, for permission to expand his investigation," he added. Rosenstein noted this as a precedent, which was also followed by independent counsel Ken Starr during the Clinton years.
That seems strong. But what would happen if a grand jury (perhaps it will be called a "rogue grand jury" to protect Mueller) returns an indictment that falls outside the scope Rosenstein describes? At this stage of our political drama, we feel as though we're in a hall of mirrors, where the surface interpretation of statements and events has to be questioned, as if it may well be hiding a devious stratagem. It is not just the leaks, bureaucratic resistance, and sabotage coming from the left, either. President Trump, the master of the reality show, frequently sets up viewers citizens for dramatic storylines and says and tweets things for effect.
DeleteDon Surber, who has a track record of understanding Trump early and explaining him lucidly, has a very interesting blog post that draws on his own ideas and those of Thomas Wictor. He contends that "Trump is winning the leaks war," because he has been playing a strategy designed to flush out the leakers by planting slightly different versions of stories and seeing which ones get leaked.
Trump is going to war with the press over leaks with victory in hand......
Oh he is not winning on every front. The Senate is holding his political appointments hostage. Notice, he does not talk about that much. It's called discipline. He knows they have him over a barrel called the Constitution.
The press is undisciplined. Time after time it grabs anything and everything to get Trump.
He cites Wictor:
Each group or individual who leaked was given a different version of events. This is CLASSIC spycraft. If nine individuals are told nine different stories, and then each of those stories is published, you know the identity of each person who talked to the press.
And concludes:
Trump now knows who the leakers are. He doesn't stop them. He controls them. If Nixon could have fed Fake News to Mark Felt – the Deep Throat in Watergate – Nixon would have completed two terms, and maybe elected Jerry Ford president.
I don't think Sessions is in the loop on these leaks. It is an Oval Office thing.
Trump has no trouble with leaks. He leaked his 1995 income tax return to the New York Times last fall. He leaked two pages of his 2005 return to Rachel Maddow. He leaks like a sieve.
Again, Trump does not want to stop the leaks. Trump wants to control the leaks.
He knows the power of the leak better than anyone. George Steinbrenner schooled him in journalism when they wrestled for the sports fronts in the New York City dailies in the 1980s.
One thing I have noticed is President Trump will underline a Fake News leak by raising holy heck about it on Twitter. The press then leaps on the leak as if it were gospel. I don't know if he does that to trap them, but that seems to be the result because time will prove Trump right.
Then there is this from CNN. From CNN!
Mueller's investigation of Trump is going too far
Last month, when President Donald Trump was asked by The New York Times if special counsel Robert Mueller would be crossing a line if he started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, the President said, "I think that's a violation. Look, this is about Russia."
The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.
We have to continue to fear the worst, but there are subterranean forces at work, I suspect.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/will_mueller_be_reined_in.html
Maybe Mueller will be the caught and landed fish.
Heh
Whomever properly controls and analyses leaks rules.
DeleteQuirk Quote:
Delete"He who properly plants the seeds of abhorrence and desire rules"
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFor Doug -
DeleteBear breaks into SUV, then takes it for a short drive
Subaru trashed in Durango neighborhood
By Mary Shinn Herald Staff Writer
Friday, Aug. 4, 2017 3:07 PM Updated 8 hours 41 minutes ago
A bear broke into an SUV and caused it to roll into a mailbox and utility boxes early Friday. The bear fled the scene before law enforcement arrived.
After a bear broke into a car early Friday in Timberline View Estates, the vehicle rolled into a mailbox and utility box. The bear trashed the inside of the vehicle.
The commotion woke Ron Cornelius and his wife, who found the trashed Subaru in their yard on Timberline Drive in Southwest Colorado.
May 10, 2017
Bear claws its way through vehicle in Forest Lakes suburb.
“Usually, I don’t get up at 5 o’clock unless there is a bear driving a car down the street,” Cornelius joked.
After the bear broke into the car, it likely released the parking brake somehow, he said.
The couple didn’t see the bear leave the SUV and called 911 after the crash because they didn’t know if people were to blame and possibly still in the vehicle.
The car rolled backward from a neighbor’s home into Cornelius’ mailbox and over some utility boxes, he said.
La Plata County Sheriff’s Office deputies determined a bear was to blame, because it defecated in the car, likely because it was nervous, Cornelius said.
It also ripped up the interior of the vehicle. It pulled the steering wheel straight off the shaft, ripped the radio out of the dash and busted out the back window.
“It would have taken a human being hours to do what this bear did in a couple minutes,” he said.
He wasn’t sure what was in the vehicle that attracted the bear.....
https://durangoherald.com/articles/176934-bear-breaks-into-suv-then-takes-it-for-a-short-drive
The attack on the military base in Venezuela wasn't an attempt to turn the soldiers and capture the base but an effort to get weapons. In this it succeeded.
ReplyDeleteAugust 7, 2017
What next after Venezuela's Valencia raid? Watch for 'Operation Ninja'
By Monica Showalter
Operation Ninja.
So what next in the wake of the weapons raid on the Venezuelan military base in Valencia? We know from the aggregated reports here that the government is probably lying about all being well in the wake of the attack. There are signs that the raiders did get away with a large cache of weapons, taken from the Chavistas.
My source emails:
Here is a new twist. Yesterday's operation was called "Operation David." There is now a new video out announcing a new plan of action from the same group called "Operation Ninja." Their plan is to act under cover of darkness as commandos to capture members of the leadership of the corrupt Narco-State that is Venezuela and turn them over to "international justice."
This is reminiscent of how the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel to be tried. And he was tried, convicted and hanged.
Here is the link to the video on YouTube.
So what we are seeing now from these raiders, at a minimum, is a willingness to take the lead and run with it, not lie back on their laurels à la McClellan.
That they announced their plans suggests there's an element of psychological warfare as well. What Chavista won't go to bed at night with a twinge of worry that someone may raid their place, stuff them in the trunk of a car, and then haul them off to some tribunal? Wouldn't an exile in Miami seem a better way to go than hanging around Caracas and waiting to be snatched by the "Ninjas" – that is, if President Trump's sanctions aren't keeping them out? Obviously, they are trying to scare the Chavistas in a bid to weaken them.
...that is, if this really is what their next move is. Being clever military men, they might just do something else instead to maintain the element of surprise.
This sounds like a group whose moves are worth watching.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/what_next_after_venezuelas_valencia_raid_watch_for_operation_ninja.html
Bernie Sanders has written a new children's book on politics called:
ReplyDeleteBernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution
by Bernie Sanders, Kate Waters
At $9.99 it is less than $10.00.
Also availble on compatible NOOK Devices.
Perfect for young socially conscious and motivated folks like Ash.
(Kate Waters actually wrote the book)
""Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
ReplyDeleteJohn Adams
From WSJ........AHH DIVERSITY!
ReplyDeleteCorporate memoranda don’t always make for interesting reading, but all of Silicon Valley is buzzing about a Google software engineer’s critique of the company’s diversity campaign and its culture. The tech website Gizmodo says the critique is “going viral inside the company.” Gizmodo has published what it says is the text of the memo, with “some minor formatting modifications” and the omission of two charts. Among the observations offered by the engineer, whose name is not disclosed in recent media reports, is the following:
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
The memo, entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” observes:
At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices...
Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.
The author defines as extremist the view that all disparities in the representation of men and women in different jobs are “due to oppression.” And the author defines as authoritarian the idea that “we should discriminate to correct for this oppression.”
Many readers will conclude that this memo is unlike any internal corporate communication they have ever seen. The author delves into a discussion of reasons—other than sexism—that might explain why women and men do not occupy tech positions in equal numbers. According to the memo:
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:
They’re universal across human cultures
They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
The underlying traits are highly heritable
They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
The author writes that various personality traits tend to be more common in either women or men and argues that men on average tend to have more of the traits that would lead one to a career in software engineering at a place like Google. He adds: “Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women,” and adds:
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
continued:
DeleteSince the memo began circulating, various online commenters have condemned it, and Google has made clear that the document is not an expression of corporate policy. Reports the Journal:
Danielle Brown, Google’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, sent a letter to employees Saturday saying the employee’s memo “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” and is “not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages,” according to a copy of the statement published by Motherboard, which earlier reported on the employee’s memo...
When reached for comment, a Google spokesman referred to Ms. Brown’s statement and an additional statement posted online by Google engineering executive Ari Balogh, one of the managers of the employee who wrote the memo. Mr. Balogh wrote the memo “troubled me deeply” because it suggested “most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful.”
In an update to the memo, the author writes:
When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.
Is this the beginning of a new debate about the goals of corporate diversity programs and the costs and benefits of achieving them? Workers far from Silicon Valley and well beyond the tech industry will be curious to know the answer.
Update on the Software Engineer's job status: He was fired.
DeleteDanielle Brown, Google’s vice president for diversity and inclusion.
DeleteAre you shitting me? Is that someone's real title? Did she major in Diversity and minor in Inclusion?
She majored in bullshit and minored in non sense.
Delete.
ReplyDelete(Op-Ed from the Heartland)
Promises, promises. Feel-goodism versus rational self-interest.
Trump's poll numbers are tanking. They a declining in all voter categories. Yet, Trump's base remains surprisingly supportive. We have to ask why? Of course, there are those single issue Trump voters, usually sinecured and drawing on the public dole, who have a life comfortable enough to simply piss and moan about others drawing on the public dole. There are those Trumpkins deluded enough to believe Trump's problems are brought on by outside forces rather than by the man himself. There are the currently well-off who will prosper under Trump's proposed policies if he ever manages to get them implemented. There are those who are fed up with the system and view Trump as their loud roar against that system and who are willing to sacrifice their own self-interest just to have their voices heard. But what about the others, those who actually believed the bullshit Trump spouted during the election, the people who believed his promises and expected him to keep them, the 55 year old finance manager let go from Bumbfuck Financial and now selling burgers at Wendy's, the small town 40 year old widget producer unemployed since the widget factory was moved to Mexico, or the recent graduate struggling to find a job and pay off his college loans? Why would these people still support him given what they have already seen in the first six months, what has been proposed, the healthcare and budget priorities?
Despite the numerous studies that show the net advantage immigrants to the US have brought to this land, some argue all of the US' current problems are caused by the immigrant population. One can only sadly smile. They cry that our 'Christian' tradition is being destroyed by these immigrants, a pretty obvious tell. Most normal people would refer to our Judeo/Christian tradition, but well, you know...
The real reasons US culture and tradition has changed over the past 45 years are many and varied and most of them are the result of the very generation that is doing the pissing and moaning now. Left a country from their parents that was number one in the world after WWII, economically, militarily, and politically, a country that was growing at an increasing rate, a country benefitting from high productivity and key technological advances, a country where incomes were rising and the American dream seemed real for anyone who wanted it (well except for the occasional riot by those not sharing in the dream), the Baby Boomers fucked it up starting in the 60's with a couple decades of indulgence, conspicuous consumption, riots, and war. Permissiveness ran rampant and half the country never fully recovered. What was missing during all this activity was the realization that things had actually changed, that economic reality had shifted, that a new paradigm was being established, that the good times for a great many were slowing and no longer rolling.
{...}
{...}
DeleteIncome growth for most slowed. Large companies became even larger by increasing their multinational operations. Jobs were shifted overseas to take advantage of low wages. Unions were demonized and began to shrink in size and importance. Technological advances started having an impact on the number of jobs. Wages flattened even more. It wasn't immigrants taking jobs that was causing all this, it was a shift in business philosophy to a more short term focus and a resulting increase in the idea of maximization of profit. It was a declining productivity rate and a shift in the allocation of those profits.
The shift was disguised for a time, decades in fact, by other factors. In order to maintain their lifestyles and the conspicuous consumption, men began working longer hours, skipping vacation, taking second jobs. Women began to work, waves of them, not only to keep up the lifestyle they had become accustomed to but because they were told they needed to by feminists and other 'progressive' thinkers in society. Latchkey kids became the norm. Parents compensated by giving their kids whatever they wanted including freedom to do what they wanted. These are the same kids now running our education system and many government bureaus. These are some of the factors that have changed us from the Ozzie and Harriet good old days, not immigration.
Economically, the following chart shows what has happened to this country.
Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart
You will note that the changes started to manifest themselves when Reagan came into office. The Great Communicator is considered a hero by many, yet, it was during his presidency that major shifts occurred. The decline of the unions began, wage growth began to slow, deficits began to explode, and income inequality began to accelerate. And as we noticed in 2008, those at the top of the income ladder suffered not a whit, in fact, they have benefitted economically. They do it in good times and bad while those left behind find themselves even farther behind. These trends continue today. These are the things Trump promised to change during the election. Today, while he keeps promising the same during campaign rallies, his actions and proposals as president say the exact opposite.
It’s true that the country can’t magically return to the 1950s and 1960s (nor would we want to, all things considered). Economic growth was faster in those decades than we can reasonably expect today. Yet there is nothing natural about the distribution of today’s growth — the fact that our economic bounty flows overwhelmingly to a small share of the population.
Different policies could produce a different outcome. My list would start with a tax code that does less to favor the affluent, a better-functioning education system, more bargaining power for workers and less tolerance for corporate consolidation.
Remarkably, President Trump and the Republican leaders in Congress are trying to go in the other direction. They spent months trying to take away health insurance from millions of middle-class and poor families. Their initial tax-reform plans would reduce taxes for the rich much more than for everyone else. And they want to cut spending on schools, even though education is the single best way to improve middle-class living standards over the long term.
Most Americans would look at these charts and conclude that inequality is out of control. The president, on the other hand, seems to think that inequality isn’t big enough.
.
"These are some of the factors that have changed us from the Ozzie and Harriet good old days, not immigration."
Delete===
Good to know that the combined genius of Quirk and the NY Times have established that it is either/or, therefore immigration has had no effect.
Tell that to anyone over 50 that has lived in LA, San Bernardino or California's central valley.
Yep. I'm a one issue voter.
DeleteThe issue is, he isn't Hillary
.
DeletePerhaps, I should have said 'not including' immigration; however, I was responding to a view expressed here recently that immigration was the root cause of all our problems. In fact, numerous studies have shown that the net effect of immigration through our history has been positive. As far as 'changing our Christian tradition' the factors I pointed out have far more to do with that than immigration despite the regional problems experienced in the Southwest. I find it a little ironic when secularists and atheists end up having to redefine what 'Christian tradition' means in order to use it as an excuse for their xenophobia. The crime problems in Chicago and other large cities aren't the fault of immigration. The primary causes of the current opioid crisis isn't the ready supply as much as the reasons driving these people to take the drugs.
As for the Times, they weren't talking about immigration at all but merely the trend towards more and more income inequality. I merely used the article to point out one of the economic root causes that leads to other causes for our changing culture. I could have gone farther, the secularization of the society, the decline of two parent families, the changing nature of the jobs being created, government spending priorities, a declining birth rate, social media, etc.
.
Glen Campbell............dead.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that some of you are xenophobes, good that Quirk isn't.
ReplyDeleteMany Latinos are native Americans.
DeleteIt's darker at midnight than at noon.
DeleteMost aren't.
DeleteChances are, if your parents don't have children, you won't either.
DeleteWeren't you the one who was saying that Southwest of the USA is an example of why immigration is bad? What's "bad" about it?
DeleteWho, me? I love the Southwest. I have a home there. It's God's country. And according to MOMEipedia its smack dab in the middle of the heartland.
DeleteTwo Californias Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.
DeleteVictor Davis Hanson
We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.”
I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants.
There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.
"California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland.
Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road.
But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.
In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food.
I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands. So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255320/two-californias-victor-davis-hanson
How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public
DeleteVictor Davis Hanson
If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented. It is difficult for the National Council of La Raza to attempt to airbrush away vocabulary like “anchor baby” and “illegal immigration,” while insisting that its own nomenclature “La Raza” has nothing to do with race.
The public knows that La Raza means “The Race,” and that those who founded that organization chose that racially charged noun for the precise purpose of ethnic triumphalism — in the way that every infamous 20th-century Latinate racist demagogue from Mussolini to Franco found a use for Raza/Razza, a mostly taboo term in Mediterranean Europe today.
In an age when the Washington Redskins earn a presidential rebuke, it is inconceivable that the chief illegal-immigration advocate is a federally subsidized group known as the National Council of La Raza.
No other organization would dare use such a term. In the public mind illegal immigration has gone from the old narrative that racists were enforcing the law to keep out mostly brown people to a new generation of racists who are trying to subvert the law to bring in mostly brown people...
...It is still common to find at immigration rallies thousands of Mexican flags, with far fewer — if any — American flags.
Illegal aliens do not just root for visiting Mexican sports teams, but go the extra mile of booing the American opposition. The message is incoherent: “I will salute the country that drove me out but less so the one that welcomed me in.”
In fact, the entire narrative of illegal immigration has become unhinged. The vocabulary of protest is never aimed against the nation that forced them out, only against the one that most generously welcomed them in.
Nowhere is this disconnect more evident than in the university, where two antitheses are promulgated. Even as the various Chicano and Ethnic Studies departments indoctrinate students with the supposedly sinister history of the United States, they simultaneously champion the rights of the illegal aliens to enter, reside, and stay in the odious country they have just damned.
The message makes little sense. Millions of Americans have finally caught on to the incoherence, and feel that ingratitude is among the worst of all sins.
It is alleged that Donald Trump is a demagogue who whips the ignorant up. Perhaps. But on matters of immigration he came late and often in antithesis to his own former positions.
The truth is that the illegal-immigration lobby was its own worst enemy, its message couched in racism, illegality, untruth — and finally incoherence. People are tired of being called racists by racial chauvinists, of being dubbed insensitive by unfeeling opportunists, and of being called politically naive by political manipulators.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/illegal-immigration-finally-turned-off-public/?singlepage=true
As I noted above, an open racist far left Latino now is Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
DeleteDon't forget that the racist muzz jihadist from Minnesota has risen high in the Democrat Party ranks now too.
DeleteWho here has ever said that immigration is the root cause of all our problems, Quirk ?
ReplyDeleteI can't recall anyone ever saying anything like that.
Just heard Kim has miniaturized nukes to fit in warheads.
DeleteThat's a problem.
Terrorism is a problem.
Our medical system has all sorts of problems.
Crime in big cities is a terrible problem.
I can think of dozens of problems that have nothing to do with immigration.
DeleteYeah the left by itself is bad enough:
Combined with illegals and racist Latinos in Sanctuary states, utopias are born.
On a serious note, I think Lil Kim's about to find out if Trump is for real or not.
ReplyDeleteJust woke up here, but the rhetoric on all sides seems to have risen some notches.
ReplyDeleteAt MSNBC they are all saying we need to negotiate this out with Kim.
ReplyDeleteMaking it seem as if it's all The Donald's problem, who has been in office six months and was never in politics before.
heh
Got to drive into town....
ReplyDeleteCheers and Ciao !
There is no one contributing to these august pages that can make an ironclad argument in favor of any of the options available to the USA in regard to North Korea. What we have tried in the past under both Republican and Democrat Presidents has obviously not worked.
ReplyDeleteIf The Donald preempts tomorrow morning at 2:27 am Korean time I will not be criticizing him, but will be hoping for the best.
USA should do its best to protect our friends in Canada, including young brash know-it-all Ash, who alone are helpless in the face of Kim.
Delete
DeleteI'd be thinking about Seoul if there were "fire and fury."
It all brings to mind something I recall from my high school days.
DeleteWe were in English class and the subject was Dante's The Divine Comedy and the topic was the Inferno.
Some gal on the other sided of the class, after the teacher said 'the mind is it's own place and can make a heaven of hell or hell of a heaven' said:
"I think we're in hell now."
That has stuck with me all these years, and after much diligent searching through the High School Annuals I still cannot identify that young lady.
Kim may have somewhere between 20 and 50 nukes, just heard on Fox.
DeleteI doubt it.
Delete...but that's just me.
I have no idea.
DeleteI'm out of the loop here in this wilderness area.
I am preparing the farm to receive a refugee from Detroit, though.
Stock your lava tube with food, water, medicine and arms, Doug.
You are always welcome at the farm if you opt to come to the mainland.
Drudge gives me 8 - 12 minutes.
DeleteDoesn't seem fair.
Or right.
DeleteSource here says under 20 minutes.
Think that's closer, and plenty of time for a second drink.
GLENN CAMPBELL DEAD....DRUDGE
ReplyDeleteRIP
He had Alzheimer's disease.
If you rob the house, and take a crap, remember to flush.
ReplyDeleteBurglar Caught After Leaving DNA in Unflushed Toilet....DRUDGE
DeleteRobbers broke into a house Carolla was working on and stole all his tools.
...and took a crap in the bathtub.
Anybody have any idea why Loretta Lynch was using an alias in her e-mails concerning her meeting with BillyGoat on the airport tarmac ?
ReplyDeleteAsh ?
Good News
ReplyDeletePhiladelphia Tax Makes Soda More Expensive Than Beer....DRUDGE
Stout beer in moderate amounts is said to be better for you than sugar water.
All of them over at MSMBC are saying this is a very grave moment but none have a good word to say about The Donald.
ReplyDeleteSome grudging seem to think somewhat highly of his Generals and T Rex, however.
None have any idea what to do, other than let's talk to Kim.
If they could they'd say it's all The Donald's fault but given the history no one - so far - has said that far as I know.
I am soliciting the advice of Ash, and Quirk.
What good ideas have you two ?
Low Energy JEB ! Bush can't help himself and has just jumped into the fray, still feeling the sting from spending $100 million dollars for two delegates in the primaries, by saying he hopes The Donald grows up, or some such personal put down statement.
DeleteAUG. 7, 2017 AT 5:54 AM
ReplyDeleteThe Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats
And it’s not just 2018.
By David Wasserman
Filed under Electoral College
When Democrats think about their party’s problems on the political map, they tend to think of President Trump’s ability to win the White House despite losing the popular vote and Republicans’ potent efforts to gerrymander congressional districts. But their problems extend beyond the Electoral College and the House: The Senate hasn’t had such a strong pro-GOP bias since the ratification of direct Senate elections in 1913.
Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.
This is partly attributable to the nature of House districts: GOP gerrymandering and Democratic voters’ clustering in urban districts has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation. Part of it is bad timing. Democrats have been cursed by a terrible Senate map in 2018: They must defend 25 of their 48 seats1 while Republicans must defend just eight of their 52.
But there’s a larger, long-term trend at work too — one that should alarm Democrats preoccupied with the future of Congress and the Supreme Court.
In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.....
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-congressional-map-is-historically-biased-toward-the-gop/
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Truman in a dark suit and tie and light hat shakes hands with MacArthur, in uniform wearing a shirt but no tie and his rumpled peaked cap.
General of the Army MacArthur shakes hands with President Truman at the Wake Island Conference.
On 11 April 1951, U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements which contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then the commander of United Nations forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil-military relations.
MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, he was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, for which he was hailed as a military genius. However, when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China intervened in the war and inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur's public statements became increasingly irritating to Truman, and he relieved MacArthur of his commands. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief, and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride."[1]
An apolitical military was an American tradition, but one that was difficult to uphold in an era when American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained, but the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military. This made civilian control increasingly problematic when coupled with the constitutional division of powers between the President as commander-in-chief, and the Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and wage wars. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the President's role as pre-eminent....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Truman%27s_relief_of_General_Douglas_MacArthur
My wife has been blaming the current situation on Truman, saying if MacArthur had been left in charge none of this shit with the Norks or the Chinese would be bothering us now.
I am taking great comfort in listening to Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, and finally realizing at least one American is fully insightful and possesses more intelligence than our entire Intelligence Community combined.
ReplyDeleteAll I am wondering about is whether or not she is some kind of Lesbian dyke.
"We have no idea what is going on inside the President's head"
DeleteR. Maddow
I KNOW what HAS gone on in R. Maddow's head.
An egg has been scrambled.
As lightning swiftly from the sky, one of First Quorum has fallen.
ReplyDeleteAn extramarital affair ?
A 15 round bout with Demon Rum ?
Showing some Un-elect the interior of the Sacred Temple ?
Selling cigarettes to minors ?
Pilfering the church safe deposit box ?
We may never know, but we bow our heads in prayer for his swift repentance and return and salvation.
High-ranking Mormon official, who twice spoke in General Conference, is excommunicated; first such ouster in nearly 3 decades
(Courtesy LDS Church) Former LDS general authority James J. Hamula
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
By David Noyce
·
11 hours ago
For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Mormon church has excommunicated one of its top leaders.
On Tuesday morning, James J. Hamula was released from his position in the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after disciplinary action.
LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins provided no details about the removal. But the church did confirm Hamula was no longer a member of the church and that his ouster was not for apostasy or disillusionment.
In cases involving members of Mormonism’s presiding quorums — rare as they are — the faith’s governing First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles form a disciplinary council to consider such actions.
Hamula, 59, who could not be reached Tuesday for comment, was born in Long Beach, Calif., and served in many positions with the Utah-based church — including as a full-time missionary in Germany, bishop, stake president (overseeing a number of LDS congregations), mission president and Area Seventy.
When Vicki Wimmer Johnson was rearing young children in Mesa, Ariz., Hamula was her stake president, and their children went to the same elementary school.
“I remember feeling the love of my Savior, Jesus Christ,” Johnson wrote in an email Tuesday, “when President Hamula taught us.”
Both families had teenagers when the Mormon leader was called to be a mission president in Washington, D.C., and then as an LDS general authority,
Delete“I had some very painful times during my years of raising children, and I remember well a time when I wanted to give up. I no longer wanted to live,” said Johnson, who still lives in Mesa. “Elder Hamula was in town and giving a fireside for the adults in our stake, and I felt prompted to go. It feels like yesterday sitting near him while he spoke.”
The Mormon authority encouraged members to “never, never, never give up,” she recalled. “I felt Jesus Christ speak to me that night through James Hamula’s words. His words saved my life.”
Hamula became one of the church’s general authorities in April 2008. These full-time leaders — from the faith’s prophet at the top to its apostles and dozen of members of the First and Second Quorums of the Seventy and Presiding Bishopric — leave behind their careers and work only for the church. They receive a living allowance that the church says is the same across the board for all of them.
From 2009 to 2014, Hamula was a member of the Pacific Area Presidency, headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. Upon his return to church headquarters in Salt Lake City, he served as assistant executive director of the Church History Department from 2014 to 2016. Before his removal, Hamula was serving as executive director of the Correlation Department.
According to a biography on the LDS Church’s website, Hamula earned a bachelor’s degree in 1981 in political science and philosophy from church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, where he graduated magna cum laude. Four years later, he received a master’s in political philosophy and a law degree from BYU.
He worked as an attorney until his assignment to full-time church service, the bio states. He married Joyce Anderson in April 1984. They are the parents of six children.
Twice, Hamula addressed Mormons worldwide during the faith’s semiannual General Conferences.
In October 2014, he talked about the sacrament (or communion) and Christ’s atonement.
“With a small cup of water, we signify that we remember the blood Jesus spilled and the spiritual suffering he endured for all mankind,” Hamula said. “ … In taking the water to ourselves, we acknowledge that his blood and suffering atoned for our sins and that he will remit our sins as we embrace and accept the principles and ordinances of his gospel.”
All people, he continued, have become “soiled with sin and transgression. We will have had thoughts, words and works that will have been less than virtuous. In short, we will be unclean.”
Jesus offers a way to erase those misdeeds, Hamula counseled. “He ... offers to make us clean if we will have faith in him sufficient to repent.”
In October 2008, six months after his call to the Seventy, Hamula took to the Conference Center pulpit in downtown Salt Lake City in a speech to the all-male LDS priesthood, specifically urging teenage boys to remain faithful and win the war against evil.
“Satan is marshaling every resource at his disposal to entice you into transgression. He knows that if he can draw you into transgression, he may prevent you from serving a full-time mission, marrying in the temple, and securing your future children in the faith, all of which weakens not only you but the church,” he said. “ … Make no mistake about it — the focus of his war is now on you — you who seek to keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Mormons view excommunication as a way for offenders to get right with God and the church. Ousted members can and do rejoin the fold — through rebaptism — if they show sincere repentance.....
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/08/high-ranking-mormon-official-excommunicated-first-such-ouster-in-nearly-3-decades/
My bet is some younger lusty lass has led Brother James astray.
DeleteMumbai jihad-terror savages form political party with Muslim mass murderer at helm
ReplyDeleteBy Pamela Geller - on August 8, 2017
INDIA
The Muslim reporter for this article (the enemedia always has Muslims write up jihad new stories) rounds out the edges and bleaches the blood. Muslim reporter Asif Shahzad opens up his “report” with this sentence:
“A Pakistani charity that the United States accuses of being a front for anti-India militant group that staged the 2008 Mumbai attacks has entered politics by forming a new party, charity officials said on Monday.”
Notice that Shahzad reports as fact “charity officials” — meaning the jihad savages — giving them the imprimatur of legitimacy, while accusing the US government of “accusing.” It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. We know exactly who staged that monstrous Islamic attack in Mumbai. But this is what passes for “top notch” Reuters reporting in the Islamic era.
And the headline again calls these savage murderers a charity. Like the Holy Land foundation was a “charity.”
CHARITY RUN BY PAKISTANI ISLAMIST WITH $10 MILLION BOUNTY LAUNCHES POLITICAL PARTY
Here are the details the Muslim reporter for left out of the story. On November 26, 2008, jihadists staged 11 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308. The carnage was unimaginable, the torture unspeakable. Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker who was captured alive, confessed upon interrogation that the attacks were conducted with the support of Pakistan’s ISI. Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital (a women and children’s hospital), the Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema, and a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier’s College.
.At the Oberoi, an attacker asked whether to spare women (“Kill them,” came the terse reply) and Muslims (he was told to release them and kill the rest). (New York Times)
Muslims were released.
All the hostages were asked to reveal their religion. When the Muezzinoglus said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed. The other three Caucasian women were removed from the room next day, and the terrorists informed the Muezzinoglus that they had been shot. (Times of India)
The Jews were targeted first (Islamic antisemitism is a basic tenet in Islam). According to radio transmissions picked up by Indian intelligence, theattackers “would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews.” In my extensive coverage of the savage Muslim attacks on the West in Mumbai, India, the obsession with targeting the small little Jewish Chabad house from the inception of the planning was shocking. The Jewish Chabad house was part of a larger attack on hotels and public buildings across Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of at least 166 people. But for the Muslim terrorists themselves, Nariman House was different. It was the only Jewish target, and the Muslim terrorists were told by their central command in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews. The organizers had sought it out with care. Their handlers would emphasize to them the importance of killing Jews.....
http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/mumbai-slaughter-political-party.html/
London is now the acid attack capital of the world, with attacks at “epidemic
Deletelevels” : http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/london-acid-epidemic.html/
Google's Blacklist: Destroying careers because of different political beliefs :
http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/google-blacklist.html/
And here's a good one -
Burka-ed Statue of Liberty Hangs in Democrat Congressman’s Office
By Pamela Geller - on August 8, 2017
CULTURAL JIHAD
Cultural jihad. When I had the Statue of Liberty in a burka on the cover of my 2010 book, people thought I was overstating it.
Now it hangs in a Congressman’s office (a Democrat, of course) — not as a warning but as an aspiration.
The art implies that we are all subjugated Muslim women. We are not.
This is deeply offensive to every freedom-loving American (and immigrant) “yearning to be free” who escaped the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth, the sharia.
Congressman J. Luis Correa, a congressional Democrat, is standing in support of gender oppression, gender apartheid, female genital mutilation and honor killing.
A PAINTING OF LADY LIBERTY IN HIJAB HANGS IN CONGRESSMAN’S OFFICE. DESPITE PROTESTS, HE SAYS IT’LL STAY
View image on Twitter
August 8, 2017, Samantha Schmidt August, , Washington Post, August 8, 2017:
Each year, scores of high school students across the country compete in the Congressional Art Competition, submitting works of art for a chance to be featured at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, for the second year in a row, a teenager’s painting for the contest has become the center of a political controversy, drawing ire from conservative groups. This time around, the artwork stirred complaints even before making it to D.C.
The painting, a finalist in the competition, currently hangs in California, in the Santa Ana office of Rep. J. Luis Correa, a congressional Democrat. It depicts the Statue of Liberty wearing a hijab, holding her torch across the left side of her body.
(Courtesy of the Amplifier Foundation)
While the painting is simply a piece of art created by a local female high school student, its symbolism is clearly political. It evokes imagery similar to other works of art that have circulated since President Trump’s election, such as the popular “We The People” poster of a woman wearing an American flag as a hijab.
But for some conservatives, the painting has no place in the office of an elected congressman.
When local activist group We the People Rising saw the painting in Correa’s office, its members set out on a campaign to have it removed, calling it a separation of church and state issue.....
http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/burka-statue-of-liberty-congressman.html/
Sweden ?
ReplyDeleteNuclear armed ?
August 9, 2017
Just one more threat, and North Korea is history
By Stephen Bryen
Kim Jong-un had better think more than twice about making another threat about incinerating the United States. As things now stand, one more threat will be fatal for him and for North Korea.
This message, loud and clear, has been sent by the president.
I believe that the president has the support of the American people. That is all he needs.
It is really foolish of North Korea and her myopic leaders and sycophantic generals to threaten the U.S., the world's only true superpower. They cannot defeat the United States, and they cannot survive an air attack from the United States.
Probably we will launch B-1 and B-2 bombers, followed by B-52s to carpet-bomb some of the missile factories and nuclear installations. The United States does not need to use nuclear weapons to do the job; the bunker-busters and the biggest conventional bomb of them all, the GBU 43/B, sometimes called the Mother of All Bombs, will do the job. The MOAB was tried out this past April in Afghanistan, where it was pushed out the back of a C-130. It destroyed deep underground caves to the point where there was nothing left.
That's the sort of bomb, now proven to work, that can destroy North Korea's nuclear stockpile, her underground facilities, her reactors, and the government's underground network in Pyongyang. Kim will have no place to hide, and afterward, it is unlikely that anyone will find any single part of him worth burying.
Why would North Korea be so brazen and make such dangerous moves?
For a long time, it was thought that if a country had nuclear weapons, even if it couldn't feed itself, it had a strange kind of ultimate leverage over civilized countries and peoples. That's why countries such as South Africa, when it was still an Apartheid state, was building nuclear weapons. No more. South Africa realized that nuclear weapons were more of a hazard than a benefit.
Today, many other wobbly countries have tried to obtain nuclear weapons. Libya made many efforts over the years to buy ready-made weapons or the technology to produce her own. Perhaps it was Gaddafi's dream. Iraq tried to do the same thing, but the Israelis smashed their reactor, and the United States and coalition forces flushed out whatever other nuclear weapons technology survived thereafter. Syria built a reactor like the one at Youngbin, hoping it would not be discovered, but the Israelis found it and ruined it utterly. And Iran is still in the midst of developing nuclear weapons, although she is supposed to be in a "pause" under the deal made under the Obama administration.
DeleteSome have gotten away with it – India, which is a very large country, and Pakistan, which is not. They are a danger to each other, and Pakistan is responsible for spreading nuclear technology around the Third World. The country remains a true menace still tolerated by the United States, which is bizarre, given her inherent instability and the fact that no solution exists if Pakistan falls completely into the hands of radical Islamists.
Others have tried to get nuclear weapons but for one reason or another failed. Some other countries may have them but don't say so, such as Israel and Sweden. Indeed, it is Israel's policy to maintain a posture of strategic ambivalence. It is Sweden's to keep quiet.
But overall, it is clear that the promise of inviolability to be gained from nuclear weapons does not always pan out. In the case of North Korea, she does not yet have delivery systems for her missiles, although the U.S. apparently now thinks North Korea has succeeded in miniaturizing her bombs so they can be put on top of a rocket. Why, then, should we allow the North Koreans to keep threatening us at a time when they can't deliver on their threats, and where, if we allow them time, they will be in a position to incinerate our cities in a few years?
That's why President Trump could attack North Korea at any time with or without new threats. But even the president of the United States needs a casus belli. Kim is about to hand him just that.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/just_one_more_threat_and_north_korea_is_history.html