[CLIMATEDEPOT] The Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, wildfires still raging out of control are the work of a serial arsonist and not the result of global warming. Yesterday, officials jugged You have the right to remain silent... the dangerous firebug accused of setting 17 of California’s wildfires as firefighters battle the still-raging firestorms across the state. Previously, global warming alarmists said the wildfires were a result of the long-running California drought that has left a lot of dry tinder on the ground. Numerous studies have shown the California drought is entirely natural and part of a regular cyclic pattern for the state.
The man accused of setting the California wildfires is Damian Anthony Pashilk, who has been arraigned on 17 counts of serial arson. Unfortunately, the fires are still raging and the worst is yet to come. Fireseason for much of California is September through October when ground kindling is at its driest.
The wildfire that began as a small brush fire has also forced California into a state of emergency. As of today, the wildfire in San Bernardino, dubbed the Blue Cut fire, has burned about 18,000 acres and drove 82,000 people from their homes. It was so hot it melted bikes and destroyed thousands of homes.
With the ongoing drought, summer heat, and strong winds, there was even a firenado spotted. Another fire, called the Clayton Fire, has wiped out roughly 4,000 acres and 175 homes since Saturday. While many residents are happy that Pashilkis behind bars, he has left a trail of misery in his wake. He has started at least 17 fires across the state, with many of them still burning.
Prior to his capture, some people were speculating that the wildfires were part of a larger global warming picture. Some said that the fire season had started earlier this year and blamed it on the drought, high winds, and higher temperatures.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/18/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
If there's any justice in this world, AlGore will be found frozen like Hatchet Jack
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/18/2016 9:20 Comments ||
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#2
Prior to his capture, some people were speculating that the wildfires were part of a larger global warming picture.
Got off easy. As a high priest I would have made them do 10 Al Gores and 10 Commie Manifestos, then sacrifice a large HVAC System.
[Politico] The National Security Agency’s website was offline for almost a full day until Tuesday evening, in an unexplained outage that began shortly after hackers claimed to have stolen a collection of the agency's prized cyber weapons.
[TODAYONLINE] Venezuelan police crushed and chopped up nearly 2,000 shotguns and pistols in a Caracas city square on Wednesday, as the new interior minister relaunched a long-stalled gun control campaign in one of the world's most crime-ridden countries.
Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the event marked the renewal of efforts to disarm Venezuelans, through a combination of seizures and a voluntary program to swap guns for electrical goods.
Venezuela has the world's second highest murder rate and the street gangs that plague its poor neighborhoods have become increasingly heavily armed in recent years, at a time when a deep recession has reduced resources available to police.
Gangs often get weapons from the police, either by stealing them or buying them from corrupt officers, experts say.
With inflation of 185 percent in 2015 and a currency collapse, police salaries have fallen far behind rising prices creating more incentives for corruption.
President Nicolas Maduro promoted Reverol this month, days after the United States accused the former anti-drugs tsar of taking bribes from cocaine traffickers.
"We are going to bring disarmament and peace," Reverol told news hounds, while coppers drilled and sawed at rusty shotguns, home made pistols and some newer weapons.
Other guns were crushed in truck-mounted presses. Some members of the public watched, although more danced to a nearby sound system playing salsa music.
Venezuela has also bought laser technology to mark ammunition, Reverol said, in an attempt to keep a registry of the bullets given out to the South American nation's many state and municipal police forces.
Experts say that much of the ammunition used in crimes in Venezuela is made at the country's government munitions factory and sold on by corrupt police.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/18/2016 00:00 ||
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Japan is planning to develop a new tactical ballistic missile that would reset Chinese military strategy around disputed islands in the East China Sea. Plans for the surface-to-ship weapon, which would be the longest-range missile ever built by Japan, have emerged after prolonged months of rancour between Tokyo and Beijing over rival territorial claims.
As tensions have persisted, Japan revealed last month that it scrambled fighter jets a record 199 times in the second quarter as Chinese military activities intensified around Japan’s territorial waters and drew closer to the Senkakus — a chain of uninhabited islets known as the Diaoyu in China.
The new missile, say military experts familiar with the plans, is designed to “complicate enemy planning”. By positioning them on Japanese islands in the East China Sea and with a range that stretches to the edge of Japan’s territorial claims, the missiles would discourage naval aggression. If an attacking force were planning a landing on a Japanese island, its commander would need to destroy the missiles beforehand — in effect initiating conflict.
Japan’s move to build the missiles comes as the country strengthens its internal capability to develop military equipment after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ended the country’s self-imposed ban on the export of weapons in 2014. The programme is part of a wider effort to reduce spending on foreign-made weaponry if a domestic alternative can be produced.
The new vehicle-mounted, GPS-guided missile system is expected to be deployed to locations such as the southern island of Miyako in Okinawa, according to people familiar with the plan.
With a range of about 300km, the system will be able to cover the waters around the Senkakus. Experts say the current Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles, which Japan procured in 2012, have a range of roughly 200km.
I'd have the Type 12's deployed to these islands like right now, along with a Patriot battery or two. Don't worry about complicating Chinese military plans in 2023, worry about complicating them today.
The defence ministry said it was studying ways to enhance its existing surface-to-ship missile capability to deter invasion of Japan’s remote islands. But it declined to comment on details after an August 14 report in the Yomiuri Shimbun newsppaper said the new missiles were expected to be deployed around 2023.
That's a long lead time...
Industry watchers say the move to develop a new missile is no surprise given that the ministry’s defence guidelines released in 2013 called for Japan’s Self Defence Forces to strengthen their ability to deal with attacks on islands using aircraft, naval vessels and missiles.
The ministry is currently explaining to local municipalities in Miyako and Ishigaki islands in Okinawa and Amami island of Kagoshima in southern Japan about its plan to deploy its surface-to-ship guided-missile units.
It is expected to seek funding for development of the new missile in its initial budget requests for the 2017-18 fiscal year, to be submitted later this month.
Governments in the Asia-Pacific region are closely scrutinising Japan’s military posture following this month’s appointment of Tomomi Inada as the country’s defence minister. The outspoken nationalist, who returned on Wednesday from a visit to a Japanese military base in Djibouti, has previously expressed a hardline position on Japan’s territorial rights in the East China Sea.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/18/2016 00:00 ||
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How about those miniaturized Nuke warheads?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/18/2016 9:27 Comments ||
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[WASHINGTONPOST] The second in command of North Korea’s embassy in London defected to South Korea with his family, officials in Seoul said Wednesday, describing him as "sick and tired" of Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... ’s regime.
The defection, the latest in a string of high-profile escapes, constitutes an embarrassing blow to North Korea’s authoritarian leadership and potentially an intelligence windfall for South Korea and its allies, including the United States.
Thae Yong Ho, a cosmopolitan career diplomat, was a key official at the embassy, in a residential area of west London, and is thought to have escorted Kim Jong Chul, the North Korean leader’s older brother, during his trip to Britannia last year to attend an Eric Clapton concert.
"He is absolutely central to the operation of that embassy," said Adam Cathcart, a North Korea expert at Leeds University who met Thae several times. "He’d been there longer than the ambassador, and all the North Korea hands in London assumed that he was a really key person there."
Thae in some ways had been the public face of the embassy, giving talks at bookshops and at British Communist Party meetings in which he extolled the virtues of the North Korean system, a sign of the latitude he had within the regime, Cathcart said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/18/2016 00:00 ||
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#4
First and
foremost, the tactical weapons have no military
utility, and, because the likelihood of their use
is extremely low, their presumed political value
is a chimera
Stimson Center report suggests airborne delivery is no longer guaranteed. I suppose technological equivalency of former likely military targets makes airborne platforms vulnerable but now there are many less sophisticated for which the B61 can provide area denial.
The hate group -- which says it has some 2,500 members on Long Island -- is planning to disrupt a Black Lives Matter rally scheduled for noon Sunday at the traffic circle near Village Hall in Westhampton Beach, according to Patch.com.
Gary Monker, the Exalted Cyclops Chief Officer of the KKK’s New York chapter, told Patch on Tuesday that Black Lives Matter and the Black Panthers group aren’t who they say they are.
"[They are] a contradiction," Monker told Patch. "They always say they have peaceful protests but nothing is ever peaceful. They rape, pilfer, loot. They’re rioting and using this as an excuse to do wrong. It’s not right."
Black Lives Matter officials argued that their rallies are always peaceful.
"[There has been] absolutely no violence. Where is he getting his information?," Black Lives Matter organizer Vanessa Vascez-Corleone told Patch.
Vascez-Corleone said the KKK was welcome to show up -- if they have the guts.
"I would like to invite them to the rally. I honestly don’t believe they’re going to show up. I hope they come out of hiding," she told Patch.
"As for drugs and rape, those are all separate issues in everyone’s community, including the white community so that’s irrelevant," she said, adding: "Everything he’s saying is ignorant. It’s hard to respond to ignorance."
Meanwhile, Monker claimed the KKK is undergoing a resurgence -- not just in New York, but across the country.
The group’s primary goal, Monker claimed, is to "end the corruption" by dismantling the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Service.
The cowardly hate group -- whose members shield their faces by wearing hoods -- was founded in Tennessee in 1866 and soon spread like wildfire in almost every Southern state in the US, waging an underground war against Reconstruction-era Republican leaders who advocated for economic equality for all blacks.
The group’s violent and murderous tactics reached their pinnacle during the 1960s civil rights era.
#4
It's all theater. Both groups are militant arms of the DNC (funny ow the author fails to point that out) and the DNC is pretending to clash them against each other to drive up membership in both groups.
He can only come out for important things. Like fundraising for Hillary.
Amid historic devastation in Louisiana, the state's largest daily newspaper is calling on President Barack Obama, who is being kept abreast of the situation by White House officials, to cut his Martha's Vineyard getaway short to view flood-ravaged areas of the state.
"A disaster this big begs for the personal presence of the President at ground zero," read the editorial published in The Advocate on Thursday. "In coming here, the President can decisively demonstrate that Louisiana's recovery is a priority for his administration -- and the United States of America."
"The President's vacation is scheduled to wrap up on Sunday. But he should pack his bags now, and pay a call on communities who need to know that in a national catastrophe, they are not alone," read the column. "The President's presence is already late to this crisis, but it's better later than never."
Calling Obama's vacation destination "a playground for the posh and well-connected," the paper said that the waters had receded enough to allow for a presidential visit.
Before emerging from his vacation compound Wednesday for a round of golf, Obama spoke with FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, who had been dispatched to view the damage caused by two feet of rain which fell at the end of last week.
On Thursday, Obama's Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson was set visit the region to "review the ongoing response," the White House said.
But as of Thursday morning, there were no announced plans for Obama to cut his vacation short, nor was Obama planning to address the flooding in an in-person statement.
Earlier in the week, Obama phoned the state's governor, John Bel Edwards, shortly after approving the Democrat's request for federal disaster funding. The White House said Obama's top homeland security official Lisa Monaco, traveling with him on Martha's Vineyard, was updating him on new developments, along with other aides.
The federal assistance structure is the result of an overhaul after a widely maligned response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Congress passed legislation a year after the storm that allowed FEMA to work more closely with local and state governments in administering aid.
Like Obama, President George W. Bush was on vacation as Katrina devastated parts of Louisiana. He cut his stay at his Texas ranch short by two days to return to Washington -- assessing the flooding from above on Air Force One during the return trip. Despite those efforts, Bush's response to Katrina was viewed as inadequate, and Bush himself acknowledged the period inflicted lasting damage on his reputation as commander in chief.
In the editorial on Thursday, The Advocate warned Obama against repeating Bush's mistakes.
"We've seen this story before in Louisiana, and we don't deserve a sequel," the paper wrote. "In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The current president was among those making political hay out of Bush's aloofness."
When presidents travel on vacation, the job of running the federal government is never far away. Aides and secure communication equipment are all moved to the getaway destination to ensure that updates and briefings can continue apace.
Obama has been loath to interrupt his vacations for public appearances, however, and said during a Monday night fundraiser for Hillary Clinton that first lady Michelle Obama typically insists he avoid working.
"Michelle is very strict about me actually taking a vacation when I get a vacation," he said. "She gave me a special dispensation for this evening because she understands, just as all of you understand, how important this is."
The newspaper editorial said Thursday that "if the President can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that's displaced thousands."
The paper praised the work of FEMA, calling it a "far cry" from the bungled response to Katrina. The agency said on Wednesday it was providing federal aid to assist with rental payments for temporary housing, grants for home repairs and property replacement, unemployment assistance for Louisiana residents who lost jobs due to the flooding, and assistance to small businesses affected by the rising waters.
More than 70,000 people had registered for individual assistance since the federal disaster was declared, and more than 9,000 had filed flood insurance claims, according to the federal disaster agency.
Obama's formula for responding to federal disasters has remained largely the same in the past several years, typically including a phone call to the governor and approval of requests for federal assistance. In some cases, he's traveled to communities hit by natural disasters, including viewing tornadoes in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and viewed destruction in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.
The last time Connecticut voted for a Republican presidential candidate, Americans were listening to music on cassette tapes and most cell phones were the size of shoe boxes.
Yet Donald Trump's campaign spokesman insists they believe he has a chance to turn Connecticut red for the first time since 1988, and that's why he is holding weekend rally there on Saturday.
Veteran Republicans, however, see Trump's Fairfield, Connecticut, campaign stop ares a fool's errand -- a prime example of what many worry is a political operation that takes Trump's proclivity for defying convention a step too far.
Trump has spent most of his campaign time in real battleground states: Florida, Virginia, Iowa and Pennsylvania. But with the general election now in full swing, any time spent in a solidly blue state feels atypical.
And, it isn't just Connecticut that has Republicans scratching their heads. Trump traveled to Maine last week, a state that has also been blue since 1992.
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller says their internal polling shows him up in Maine. Plus, Maine awards two of its four electoral votes by congressional district, of which there are two, and Trump is very popular in one of them.
Concerned Republicans say their worries go beyond the campaign's decision to send its greatest resource -- the candidate himself -- to chase one or two electoral votes in Maine, or to what they believe are unwinnable states like Connecticut. The other phenomenon perplexing veteran operatives is that the Trump campaign now has the needed money to finance television ads and ground operations -- they just don't appear to be spending it.
Spending nothing on TV ads
The imbalance in ad spending is astonishing. Since the end of the primaries, Hillary Clinton has spent $42.9 million in ads. Donald Trump has spent zero.
"They have to spend money efficiently right now to avoid getting buried by Hillary," argued Austin Barbour, a longtime Republican political operative.
"We saw this in 2012 against Obama when we were working on Romney. They were burying us with negative ads in swing states well before Labor Day. That same thing is happening with Trump," added Barbour.
Miller says the Trump campaign plans to start running television ads "soon" but declined to go further than that, saying he doesn't want to reveal internal campaign strategy.
Democrats see chance to reshape map as Trump stumbles
Trump himself regularly complains about the content of Clinton's paid television ads. "They're false, they're deceptive, and they know they're false," said Trump last week in New Hampshire.
Still, he declared it too early for him to be spending money, and compared himself to an "old race horse" saying he is hanging back to see what happens.
"I think we have some pretty good ads but we don't want to go too fast. Just nice and easy," said Trump.
But many Republicans wonder what Trump is waiting for, since Clinton has used time and money to define herself, and more importantly, Trump, without much of a retort.
"Getting buried by paid media is a very real problem. There is no worse feeling on a campaign than seeing your opponent hit you in a TV and you're not responding," said Barbour.
During the Republican primaries, Trump's strategy to rely on "earned media" -- the fact that he was a celebrity candidate who deluged the airwaves with interviews -- worked. He won despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by his opponents.
But the general election is quite different. The electorate he must reach to win goes beyond the GOP base yearning for a populist, off-beat and sometimes off-color candidate like Trump.
Some Republicans outside the Trump campaign think paid advertising could be especially helpful for a candidate like Trump, who lacks discipline, to maintain a consistent message for voters. He has spent the past three weeks creating news story after news story with decidedly off-message comments -- the biggest of which was going after Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Gold Star parents who attacked Trump at the Democratic convention.
Others, however, say they worry paid advertising is a waste of time if the candidate doesn't effectively mirror the messages in "earned media" --- what Trump says on the stump or in interviews.
Money and organization
When Trump first locked up the GOP nomination, he was a self-funder who was starting raising campaign cash from scratch. Early fundraising reports were paltry, but that is no longer the case.
Earlier this month, the campaign announced raising $64 million dollars in donations for July, mostly in conjunction with the Republican National Committee.
And though the Trump campaign made the unorthodox decision to rely heavily on the RNC for its ground operation in battleground states, some are still alarmed at the lagging operations.
Veteran New Hampshire Republican Tom Rath, an RNC Committeeman who has been through decades of presidential politics in the Granite State, says the Trump ground game in that important swing state is minimal.
"Republicans want to see a campaign that has a clear strategic direction that reflects reality and is backed up by a disciplined message and resources," said Rath.
"While it is not too late, it is getting close to that," he added.
No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Yet the Cincinnati Enquirer reported this week that Trump doesn't even have an office in Hamilton County, the most crucial Republican county in the most crucial GOP state.
"The campaign has yet to find or appoint key local leaders or open a campaign office in the county and isn't yet sure which Hamilton County Republican party's central committee members are allied with the Republican presidential nominee," reported the Enquirer.
In other key states like Florida, where Trump, along with the RNC, does have staff, they are outnumbered by Democrats. The RNC says it has over 70 paid staffers and plans at least 20 offices statewide. Democrats already have 200 staffers and say they're aiming for 100 offices in Florida.
Time to change course?
Trump's low-budget approach carried him to victory in the primaries, but even he seems to now realize the general election against Clinton is quite different.
At a rally Thursday in Florida, Trump, who normally only speaks about winning, admitted he is having a "tremendous problem" in reliably red Utah.
And new swing state poll numbers from NBC, The Wall Street Journal and Marist show Trump lagging behind Clinton in four crucial swing states: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Now, with fewer than 100 days until the election, the question is whether Trump's "hang back" strategy with his money and advertising will work -- allow him to come from behind and win the race.
#2
Trump should be able to repay his loans to the campaign using donor cash. We've always viewed pols to be self-absorbed. It looks like Trump has raised "looking out for No. 1" on the political stage to a whole new level.
#3
Our president is placing the enemy INSIDE the wire. Nothing good will come of this.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/18/2016 10:12 Comments ||
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#4
The quality of on post housing has significantly increased. DoD should either:
1. Offer the vacant billets to veterans first or,
2. Suspend BAH in area where there are vacancies.
To spend all the money that they have to improve post housing, see it empty, and still pay BAH is wasting our money.
#5
The article specifically references this program and Ft Hood. Does this not strike anyone as..a very strange choice? Why at Ft. Hood? Maybe for the same reason you build a giant mosque at Ground Zero. ..just wondering out loud.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
08/18/2016 11:13 Comments ||
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#6
No doubt they'll be walking into the PX/BX, med clinics and hospitals.
I'll never forget seeing the saree and dip tags crowd shopping at Belvoir, loading up on items to ship back home. Appears we've kicked it up a notch.
#9
Prob reminds them of home ahhhhh, well in that case here in CA, we have some available real estate on HWY 395, just south of Independence that seems perfectly suited - and the foundations are already poured.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
08/18/2016 15:50 Comments ||
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#10
Our leadership isn't incompetent--its merely working for the other side.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
North Korea
The Klu Klux Klan is coming to the Hamptons.
The last time Connecticut voted for a Republican presidential candidate, Americans were listening to music on cassette tapes and most cell phones were the size of shoe boxes.
