Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

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  • Wednesday Afternoon Links

    Links Ahoy!  Today, I will mix a little substance/current events in with my usual fluff. Just because.

    • Got a bit crashy and shooty today on Capitol Hill.
    • Housing Startzzz!!! If I remember correctly from the past 8 years, this is completely as a result of Teh Prezident’s Awesomeness – nothing cyclical, normal or whatnot.
    • I am not sure how to snark on this one…can you all help me out?
    • Um…wut?
    • Odds on someone getting beheaded for this? But seriously, Egypt is the heavyweight of the Arab world when it comes to TV, movies or music.

    Enjoy your afternoon, and snark on!

  • An Example of Counter-Counterinsurgency

    I have previously described how being cheerful, helpful and non-intrusive had help possibly save me from getting blowed up real good. Well, the other side of the Afghan War (2001-present version) knows a thing or two about sowing doubt and mistrust. And they used just such a tactic against us in the area I was responsible for.

    "I've got a really bad feeling about this"
    Some of the 3/116th INF at Qarabaghi-Robat

    I spent a fair amount of time accompanying the 3/116th INF’s (VA ARNG) patrols in the area around Bagram, AF. Almost every time, the people were a mix of curious, glad, interested or slightly wary when they saw us. However, one of the times I was given quite a fright came when I went with a patrol to the village of Qarabaghi-Robat.

    Our patrol had a local policeman along with us – and his behavior told me something was wrong from the get go. Normally, we would come to a village and the inevitable crowd would gather. We would then ask to see the village elder(s) and let them show us around, talk about what was going on in the area, etc. This time was different. Our policeman started suggesting that we wait outside the village, and he would go find the elder and bring him to us. When we told him that we had to go into the village, he became very agitated. He left to find someone while we waited where you see in the picture below.

    "Sir, they don't look very happy to see us. I think that is a AK in their pockets."
    Crowd gathering at Qarabaghi Robat

    The people that did gather around while we waited for the elder were not acting normal either – sullen, not talkative (a non-talkative Afghan from the Bagram area was truly alarming) and they made my interpreter nervous. The interpreter (a fellow from Kabul) told me that the people were not happy we were there – and they were making rather rude and crude remarks about us, and him as well.

    Eventually the policeman returned and told us no elder or other representative of the village was around, and we should wait for them outside the village. Before I could think of something suitably sarcastic to say, the NCO leading the patrol said, “You tell him we are going to look around, and he can wait somewhere else if he wants,” to our interpreter. The policeman then did leave, much to my surprise. Also, the crowd had grown in size and surliness.

    The NCO and I looked at each other, shrugged, and moved out. A group of men of the village followed us as we walked through the center of the village and turned down an alley. We had obviously gone someplace nobody wanted us to go by the villager’s reaction. They were getting louder, and our interpreter mentioned they were starting to make threats.

    When we got to the end of the alley, one of the soldiers told me he had walked over a hollow sounding patch of ground – and that when his platoon had been in the South of Afghanistan (near the Pakistan border), this was how many weapons caches were hidden. We stopped to check the spot out, borrowing a shovel from the property owner (he looked like he had just sucked an entire lemon). The covered over pit was full of garbage, and we figured it wasn’t a weapons cache – but as we were giving the shovel back, the interpreter told us that “these people are crazy”. I asked him why, he said that they were telling him how they were going to kill him, and then all of us. I thought about it, and drew inspiration from that legendary hero – King Arthur, of Monty Python and the Holy Grail – RUN AWAY!  RUN AWAY!

    I quietly mentioned to the NCO what was being said, and we agreed it was time to leave Qarabaghi-Robat.

    As we were leaving, the village elder suddenly appeared. He confined his conversation to asking for supplies and help with the local school. I was upset at first, but then had to admire the man. Here were his people threatening to kill us, and he wanted school supplies…

    We went back to Bagram AF and reported everything. Later, I had the leader of the area around that village, one Haji Sultan Qand (aka “Commander Qand”) apologize on behalf of the people and promise to give them a swift kick up the backside. He said that someone had told the village that the Americans were coming to look through your houses (a particularly touchy subject with the Afghans – you would bring dishonor to them, see their women, etc.) and do all sorts of bad things. The enemy had very cleverly engaged in disinformation. If we had not kept our cool, or someone had as much as thrown a rock – the effort would have probably yielded great results for the enemy. Forget LT Calley and My Lai, it would have been MAJ Swiss and Qarabaghi Robat.

    So the lesson for those that would engage in counterinsurgency (or policing, hint hint), you must be prepared to sometimes just stop looking around and leave people alone. Then find out what is going on, if you do need to go back for a good reason (we did not). For police, I think, the hassling, the stop and frisk, and searches of homes that more resemble a ransacking would have a similar bad effect. The people of the community you are policing would then be confirmed in their belief you don’t care, you are just there to push them around. They will be sullen, uncooperative, or hostile.

    Better to just come back if everyone is riled up at you – and there is no threat to life or property. I wasn’t about to shoot up a village to inspect a garbage pit, and the police should not trash homes or violate people’s bodily integrity just trying to find their own garbage dump.

  • Truth is Beauty; Beauty is Truth

    I really don’t like Bill O’Reilly. He’s a blowhard, a grade-A prick and often seems inordinately proud of being, at best, a mediocre thinker.

    But he’s not wrong. That is James Brown’s hair. I don’t know if she stole the wig off his corpse or they just go to the same wigmonger or if there is something even darker, even more sinister behind the resemblance.

    Maybe Maxine Waters was James Brown all along and before she could be exposed, she faked “his” death. Maybe James Brown was Maxine Waters the entire time and terminally retired from show business to be one of the leading idiots in Congress. Maybe they both are from the planet Fucktard Salon.

    But the one thing I do know is that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed O’Reilly is king, and it’s a sad ass day for all us when we leave it up to him to point out The Emperor’s New Weave.

  • Wednesday Morning Links

    Good morning, friends.  I hope you’ve had a solid start to your week.  And I hope it finishes even better for you. Let’s jump right in, shall we?

    This starts today.

    Our closest friend and ally in Europe will invoke Article 50 today and tell the European Union they are leaving.  Pants will be soiled. Fainting couches will be used.  And the world will continue to turn.

    President Donald Trump says a scheduling conflict will prevent him from throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals season opener. (TW: Salon) And the leftosphere, who complain every time he takes a dignitary to Mar-a-Lago, now complain that he’s not taking the time off to do this.  Maybe he didn’t have the mom jeans in his closet necessary to look presidential out there as he one-hopped it to home plate with the mechanics of an 11 year old girl.  Or was that somebody else?

    Former President throws out first pitch, which current president apparently will skip this year.

    Rep Devin Nunes’s actions have shifted the intel “investigations” to the Senate.  As best as I can read it, Dems want him to recuse himself because he took info from a whistleblower and shared with America that he had received it and that it potentially corroborated a few tweets and the words of a certain former judge/question asker that is currently unemployed.

    Cleveland podiatrist charged with groping employee, exposing himself.  No foot fetish, anyway.  That we know of.

    A halfway house in Oakland burned to the ground last weekend, killing 4 people. The list of characters involved is a bizarre one.  Lets just hope the eclectic nature of it doesn’t detract from the fact that city investigators were notified on countless occasions of its unsafe nature yet did nothing to prevent the deadly blaze, whether out of apathy, stupidity or just plain malevolence. Just like what happened with the fire last year where 36 people died

    City plays shell game with funds.  Seriously, why does this surprise anybody with a functioning brain?

    Thanks to Trump rolling back the environmental regs, this will likely not happen for another 4 years anyway.  Actually, it will never happen, as man always marches forward.

    Go out there and enjoy your day.  Tell somebody you don’t often tell how much they mean to you.  Tell a family member or forgotten friend that you love them.  And enjoy the hell out of it.

  • Jewsday Tuesday

    Despite my interest in and open-mindedness about other countries and cultures, I’m not one who could be described as a “cultural relativist.” There are some cultures which are just superior to others. And here, let me look toward the Middle East.

    Jews vs. Muslims. Sorry, it’s not even close. Gather a bunch of hot women in the army and Jews will put them in bikinis and set up an Instagram account.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/4yNqFZn6AJ/?taken-by=hotisraeliarmygirls&hl=en

    https://www.instagram.com/p/4PEtfNH6Az/?taken-by=hotisraeliarmygirls&hl=en

    https://www.instagram.com/p/21QASWH6AC/?taken-by=hotisraeliarmygirls&hl=en

    Muslims will cut some eyeholes in black blankets and throw them over the women.

    Conclusion: Jewish culture superior.

  • Tuesday Afternoon Links

    It is sort of dreary and blah around here, and work is a grind. What cures that? MOAR fluff links.  Prepare for a dose of the “not have to think too hard” links!

    • AIEE!! DANGER!!! DEATH!!! (possibly, maybe sometime in the future. Perhaps)
    • CLOWNZ!!
    • Ah, Divorce Court and legal fees – who wins (other than the lawyers, of course)
    • German-Polish relations strained?!  Has that ever happened before?
    • This one is for Playa Manhattan.

    Thar they be. Bat them around, comment on whatever, and enjoy.

  • Trump Wiretapping May Actually be a Thing…and it Looks Nasty!

    By Trump Lotto of The Unforgiving Shadow

    The Trump wiretapping scandal is back with a vengeance and you’ll want to pay close attention this time! Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, came forward with new information involving surveillance of Trump transition team members. Nunes claims communications of Trump’s team were captured on multiple occasions, incidental to collection on foreign targets. Nunes further claims these intel reports include details about transition team members that offer “little to no foreign intelligence value.” The intelligence reports were widely disseminated in the intelligence community, and the identities of US citizens exposed during collection, were left unmasked. Finally, Nunes said none of the surveillance was related to Russia or investigations into ties between Russia and team Trump, an obvious but futile attempt to head off more Russian conspiracy theories.

    My fellow Glibertarians, if this is indeed true, the significance is staggering! If you are not familiar with SIGINT collection operations you probably don’t fully appreciate what the implication is here. When signals intelligence incidentally collects information on a US citizen, it is a huge deal! The collectors must take steps to mask the identity of the US person, destroy or at least restrict any information gained from or about the US person that has little to no foreign intelligence value, and attempt to limit future collection on the US person. If Nunes is right, this didn’t happen. Whoever disseminated these intel reports never masked the Trump transition team members, included details with no relevant intelligence value, and then disseminated this information. This does not happen accidentally! I’ve seen people lose their access for far, far less.

    It’s time now to put on the speculation hat and try to crack this thing wide open: If I’m President Obama and I want to dig up dirt on Trump, directly spying on him would never fly. I need a method that at least offers plausible deniability. So, I do some research and find some foreign friends of the Trump transition team; foreign persons that Trump team members have regular contact with. Next, I get a trusted intel staffer to cook up some BS accusations about these foreign targets being involved in a conspiracy or terrorism. I get my intel subordinates to present this to the FISA court, and you’re approved for surveillance! It’s easier than buying a toaster.

    Next, an appropriate agency begins collection and whoops, since these foreign targets have regular contact with Trump transition team members, we just happen to incidentally collect information on them, too, but we totally weren’t intending to do that….wink, wink. This is where things fall apart for plausible deniability: If the rules are followed, the identities are masked, information is withheld, and the rest of the intel community will have no idea who the US persons were in those intelligence reports. Of course, if the rules are followed, that destroys any attempt to get dirt on Trump. So somewhere along the line, someone high up in the intel chain-of-command (most likely a director/agency head) made the call that these US citizens would remain identified in the disseminated intel reports. This was not a low-level decision!

    Trump Has a Serious Intel Problem

    Trump may be a master of media manipulation, but I don’t know if he fully appreciates the situation he’s in. Signals intelligence dudes illegally and improperly collected and disseminated information on his team and maybe even him. This information was probably seen by hundreds of analysts and the heads of every major US intel organization. Why the hell didn’t anyone come to Congress sooner? Sure, this looks bad for Obama, who is the probable mastermind, but it appears that a large portion of the intel community has been silent on this.

    A sitting President has an intelligence powerhouse with vast surveillance powers and no qualms about blatantly illegal and unethical surveillance on the President’s own team! Trump needs to clean house and do it fast or this could get ugly. Trump’s relationship with the intel community has already been frosty, but he may have a fair number of entrenched and powerful enemies willing to go to war if it means taking him down.

    This revelation also comes on the heels of FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony that he has “no information” to support Trump’s wiretap claims. It strains credulity if we are to believe Comey never saw these intel reports. Perhaps Comey is merely playing semantic games here, ignoring this incidental surveillance because it isn’t physical wiretapping. Either way, it doesn’t look good for Comey, and it is high time Trump gave him the ax.

    The Liberal Media Playbook

    This is the level of commentary you can only expect here in Glibertaria. Meanwhile, CNN’s coverage on this revolves around Nunes apologizing for not notifying Democrats of the intel before his press conference: Nunes only notified Republicans prior to the conference. Now I agree that Nunes should have briefed his Democrat committee members, but this is slow news day coverage at best. On the other hand, evidence that the former President used his powers to spy on an opposition candidate, that’s huge! But at this point, any of us could have called the news coverage a mile away.

    Still, I think it’s interesting to discuss the liberal media playbook. If this is substantiated, it’s big and very bad. In the short term, they’ll continue to ignore it or downplay it like they’ve been doing. Once more details are provided, they’ll have to cover it, but I suspect the Clinton email plays will be marched back out to paint this as another unsubstantiated right-wing conspiracy theory. And with tremendous irony, they’ll fire back with their own conspiracy theories. Even if there isn’t a Russian within a light-year of this thing, liberal outlets will be wildly throwing around accusations that this is proof of a Russian conspiracy. The collection efforts were exposing those connections, contrary to Nunes’ comments, and now Republicans are trying to cover it up!

    There’s one more important takeaway here: If the intelligence community willingly participated in a scheme to spy on a US Presidential candidate, what’s to stop them from doing far worse to your average US citizen? They had to realize if this got out it could be very bad for them. On the flipside, abusing your power to target a lowly US peasant, that’s easy to hide. It’s time to be paranoid folks…. very, very paranoid.

  • The Derponomicon: Part 4

    Welcome once more to my magnificent nightmare.

    I will devote this installment to the prog’s views on science and the environment.

    His response to this article on failed Earth Day predictions:

    Don’t forget to pack a wife.

    The problem with your “ridiculous predictions” article, is that most of them AREN’T ridiculous, and actually have more than a grain of truth in them. For instance there IS a worldwide hunger and famine epidemic all across Africa and Asia, much of which is caused by extreme droughts and desertification caused by climate change. Thousands of people die every day from starvation and famine on this planet. That’s not even debatable. Many of these are just general statements….like number 3 saying we need toconserve our resources or face possible extinction. That’s a factual, true, logical statement. There is no arguing that using all our resources would lead to extinction. For instance if we had no fresh water, or couldn’t grow crops…we would die. This is not ridiculous or untrue. People DO die from air pollution, all the time, cancer rates have been increasing for decades due to increased exposure, asthma is at an all time high. These are all problems caused by the environment in which we live. Most of the rest of these are just unsubstantiated claims made in no official scientific capacity or have no specific time frame attached to them. So quite frankly, I call bullshit on ALL of those. None of them are ridiculous and most of them are mere logical statements of fact.

    No attempt made to rebut any of the claims, just lots of hand-waving.

    His response to the skeptic’s case against climate change:

    Have you ever felt giant teeth crushing your pelvis?

    On the climate change thing; The common misconception among deniers is that climate change science is coming from the government, which is just about as accurate as saying vaccination science is coming from the government, or evolutionary science is coming from the government. Just because the government accepts the widely researched scientific concensus on a subject and adopts policy to reflect that, does not at all mean that information is coming from “the government”. Climate change has been widely researched since the 1970s, and ALL of the effects that were widely discussed then ARE happening now. We are seeing climate change happening, as predicted decades ago. The official position of EVERY government in the entire world has accepted the fact that not only is climate change real, but is being greatly exacerbated by human activity. The ironic thing is that everyone that claims that this is all an agenda of the government’s of all the world’s nations is somehow rooted in some evil grab for power, when in fact the only entity fighting against the science is the most powerful corporations in human history. In fact literally every single source that refutes climate science can be traced back to the most wealthy and monied and nefarious interests in known history, big oil and coal. Literally every single source, there is not one credible source that refutes AGW that is not linked to the most monied interests of all. The very small amount of credible peer review scientists that actually do deny AGW, don’t even deny It at all, they simply speculate that it may not be as bad as it has been thought to be, or that the amount of it being influenced by man is up for debate. But there is literally not one single credible scientific source in the entire world that flat out denies AGW. It IS happening, we see it in the strange weather extremes, the shifting on animal migratory patterns, breeding habits, growth patterns of fungi and plants. These are not things that have an agenda. Because I am out in nature all the time and speak with a multitude of biologists and nature hobbyists of all kinds and EVERY single one of them agrees that these changes are happening exactly as predicted, I have no reason whatsoever to even for a moment consider that oil lobbyists are right.

    Note how he fails to address any of the claims made. I originally sent him a video version instead of text because I didn’t think he was capable of reading it all.

    A response to this video on food irradiation (or, for those who prefer to read):

    (Food not pictured.)

    On food irradiation….Like everything else conservatives support the misinformation is coming directly from lobbyists and the corporations that seek to profit off of the ignorance of the public. Just like climate change denial, the ONLY studies that are saying food irradiation is safe is the lobbyists and companies paying for the studies in their favor in the first place. You would be hard pressed to find any legitimate scientist or biologist that would advise eating food that has been exposed to radiation. The real problem of course, is the corporate factory farms and fast food restaurants using substandard practices and cleaning procedures to process their food. Almost all the major food poisoning outbreaks of the last few years have come from these large scale agri-businesses and fast food restaurants improperly handling the product or knowingly using tainted water or meat. Much like the recent cancerous cows recall. You know which farms very rarely if ever cause any of these kinds of problems? Small family owned farms, that have caring people and proper oversight running them. Irradiating all of the food to stop food poisoning is trading in one problem for another. Small levels of radiation in some carrots or a hamburger probably aren’t a big deal, but if EVERYTHING you ate was exposed to radiation eventually it would have very adverse and widespread effects. And that’s not even up for debate.

    Hmm… some No True Scotsmen and question-begging. And of course, deflection. Note also that he has not the faintest idea of how food irradiation works. But that doesn’t stop him from having an opinion on it.

    At the time of our correspondence, I was working as a process engineer in a food packaging factory. I tried in vain to explain to him that most plastic food packaging is exposed to radiation during its manufacture. The process is called electronic cross-linking. The plastic is “cooked” with a beam of electrons which makes the plastic tougher. While the radiation released by this process can be harmful without proper shielding, the plastic is harmless. It does not become radioactive.

    Worrying about irradiated food is just as stupid as worrying that cooking food in a microwave will make it radioactive.

    I also tried to explain to him that the smoke detectors in his house contain the radioactive isotope americium 241, which releases alpha and gamma radiation as it decays.

    It was no use. Like guns, radiation and nuclear energy are just an evil totems for progs.

  • Tuesday Morning Links

    I don’t even know what to open with this morning, other than this: find a video some time today or go to the Golf Channel On Demand app and watch the Feherty episode from last night with Condoleezza Rice.  It was actually great TV.  That man is by far and away the best interviewer on TV and the late night (plus Comedy Central) talking heads could take lessons from him.  And now the links…

    Kill Obamacare Take 2.

    Finally, somebody on Team Red gets it. I sure as hell hope this gets to the floor.

    Victor Davis Hanson offers a blistering takedown over the Russia hysteria that has all but consumed the left.  Well, either “consumed” or they’re using it as deflection for all the illegal goings-on the deep state has been carrying out since November 9, 2016.  You can decide that as soon as the Nunes reports start coming out.

    Politico laments Trump’s “war” on civil servants.  I didn’t see anything in there about the incredible growth in size and scope of the federal bureaucracy in an age when information systems should be shrinking it. Nor did I see anything lamenting the strain federal pension systems are beginning to create on the budget.  Of course, its Politico, so if I was expecting that, I should run out for a lobotomy this morning.

    Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the DoJ will withhold funds from sanctuary cities. The grants represent billions of dollars.  Good.

    Curtis Samuel would have scored this TD if you were playing touch football, Jourdan.

    Mom films her son, who suffers from Sensory Processing Disorder, going through a TSA pat down. She is not happy.  Hey, welcome to the club, lady.

    Michigan standout Jake Butt makes excellent point about college athletes being compensated beyond their scholarships, tutors, access to world-class athletic facilities, trainers and nutritionists, etc. Because his argument involves using his own name and likeness rather than developing a system that Title IX would kill.  On a related note, Jakey-boy was 0-4 vs The Ohio State University Buckeyes in his career at Michigan.  Same as his teammate Jourdan Lewis of “Shit happens, Bum Juice” fame.

    Don’t Look Back. The future is in front of you.

  • Comic: Chuck Schumer Strips His Sleeves and Shows His Scars

    by Pomp/Pompey