Year: 2015

And in the Ongoing Clusterf%$# in Syria………

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There is a very good reason why Presidents should never, Ever listen to the war mongering interventionists (on both sides of the political) who prowl the halls of power in Washington. Because they are always wrong.

All they bring are disaster and misery, in this case, of course, we are talking about Syria, where our support for regime change in Syria, particularly when juxtaposed by the Saudi desire to overthrow a secular Arab government at all costs has created an unrelenting string of disasters.

First, we are now seeing a realignment in the Middle East, with Russia, Iraq, Iran, and Syria sharing intelligence to aid each other in their fight against ISIS:

For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State.

Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday.

It was another sign that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was moving ahead with a sharply different tack from that of the Obama administration in battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by assembling a rival coalition that includes Iran and the Syrian government.

For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State.

Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday.

It was another sign that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was moving ahead with a sharply different tack from that of the Obama administration in battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by assembling a rival coalition that includes Iran and the Syrian government.

The ineptitude of our foreign policy apparatus has allowed Russia to resurrect the Soviet era relations that used to exist there.

It gets even worse, with even the Syrian Kurds approaching Russia military aid:

The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has asked Russia to support it in its fight against ISIS as well as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front.

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye—which is owned by Moscow—that his fighting force requested arms from Russia as well as general military coordination, according to a translation of the interview prepared by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

“He also called on Moscow to bomb Al-Nusra Front’s positions,” Anadolu added a day after Russia began its airstrikes in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

In turn, the report added that a foreign relations official for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party—which controls the YPG—said his party was “ready to cooperate with any actor fighting ISIS.”

I rather expect that the YPG does not expect Russia to support them, after all they want to secede from Syria, but this is a a great way to whipsaw the US into bombing other Islamist targets, and, more importantly, keeping the Turks from bombing the Kurds.

Yet another failure in a chain of failures.

It really is beginning to look like the end stage of empire:  Increasingly delusional policies that lead to failures, which lead to doubling down on delusional policies.

This is part of a series of failures that feed on themselves.

What Happens When Your Intelligence Service Thinks Itself a Breed Apart………

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It turns out that the CIA’s unwillingness to play nicely with other US Agencies left a trail of bread crumbs that the KGB used to identify covert operatives:

As the Cold War drew to a close with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, those at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, finally hoped to resolve many long-standing puzzles.

The most important of which was how officers in the field under diplomatic and deep cover stationed across the globe were readily identified by the KGB. As a consequence, covert operations had to be aborted as local agents were pinpointed and CIA personnel compromised or, indeed, had their lives thrown into jeopardy.

………How could these disasters have happened with such regularity if the agency had not been penetrated by Soviet moles?

The problem with this line of thought was that it did not so much overestimate CIA security as underestimate the brainpower of their Russian counterparts.

A name soon emerged from the KGB undergrowth: that of Yuri Totrov, a veritable legend who soon became known with grim humor as the shadow director of personnel at CIA.

The Cold War over, a senior and very experienced officer was dispatched to Japan to seek out Totrov and offer him a vast sum of money for his “memoirs.” Totrov’s retort was typically blunt. “Have you not read what is on my file at Langley? It says, ‘Not to be Pitched.’”

………

So how, exactly, did Totrov reconstitute CIA personnel listings without access to the files themselves or those who put them together?

………

What Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas. Other indicators of a more trivial nature could be detected in the field by a vigilant foreign counterintelligence operative but not uniformly so: the fact that CIA officers replacing one another tended to take on the same post within the embassy hierarchy, drive the same make of vehicle, rent the same apartment and so on. Why? Because the personnel office in Langley shuffled and dealt overseas postings with as little effort as required.

The invariable indicators took further research, however, based on U.S. government practices long established as a result of the ambivalence with which the State Department treated its cousins in intelligence.

Thus one productive line of inquiry quickly yielded evidence: the differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased.

It is very interesting to see that many of the CIA’s failures during the cold war appear not to be the result of treason, or of individual incompetence.

They are the result of a toxic and dysfunctional organizational culture, and the events since then, torture, spying on congressional staffers investigating them, etc. has indicated that if anything, the problem has gotten worse.

Do’h!!!!!!!

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Bummer of a birth mark, Федеральное космическое агентство Россиu

It appears that there may be a few issues with the Russian space program:

The Soyuz TMA-16M capsule with international space crew descends beneath a parachute just before landing near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

Work at Russia’s new $ 3 billion spaceport in the Far East has ground to a halt after a critical piece of infrastructure was discovered to have been built to the wrong dimensions, and would not fit the latest version of the country’s Soyuz rocket, a news report said.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome, under construction in the Amur region, north of China, is intended to become Russia’s primary spaceport, replacing the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The cutting-edge facility was meant be ready for launches of Soyuz-2 rockets in December, but an unidentified space agency of a of a told the TASS news agency of a of a late Thursday that the rocket would not fit inside the assembly building where its parts are stacked and tested before launch.

The building “has been designed for a different modification of the Soyuz rocket,” the source said, according to news website Medusa, which picked up the story from TASS.

………

“Work with the rocket at the integration and testing complex now can not be conducted because the facility is not ready,” the spokesperson said in the report. “There are still imperfections in the construction.”

The problems with the testing and assembly building are the latest incident in a saga of corruption scandals, embezzlement cases, high-profile arrests, worker strikes, and construction delays at the Vostochny cosmodrome.

If there is an equivalent of The Daily Show in Russia, they are all getting drunk right now, because their script has already been written. 

Good Idea

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The Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China, their central bank, is calling for the the imposition of a financial transactions tax:

China should take measures, such as the so-called Tobin tax, to deter currency speculators, according to central bank Deputy Governor Yi Gang.

The steps could include a punitive levy on foreign-exchange trades and the imposition of “handling” fees to counter short-term capital flows aiming for arbitrage, Yi wrote in an article in China Finance magazine, a People’s Bank of China publication. He is revisiting the Tobin tax idea after mentioning it more than a year ago.

His comments suggest the PBOC take greater control of the currency at a time when China is looking to satisfy the International Monetary Fund’s condition that the yuan be more freely usable before it can be admitted into the agency’s Special Drawing Rights basket. While the nation is opening up the interbank bond and currency markets to foreign central banks, it has introduced measures against bets on yuan declines after a surprise devaluation in August triggered the biggest monthly slide since 1994.

Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin first proposed the levy in 1972 after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s decision to abandon the dollar’s peg with gold pushed up global volatility. The tax has in the past been rejected by economies from Europe to South Korea because of the risk investors will simply take their business elsewhere.

That last bit is false, of course.

The British financial center, the City of London, has been a major financial center even though it has a ½% transaction tax.

This suggestion is largely a statement of self interest:  China is experiencing, or will soon experience, a downturn, and when that happens they would be whipsawed by destructive capital flows.

Setting this up before a panic would be beneficial.

Setting this up now and forever, on all financial transactions to discourage unproductive speculation would be a very good thing.

Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

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Barack Obama’s educational privatizer in chief, Arne Duncan, has announced that he is stepping down at the end of the year:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to step down from his Cabinet position by the end of the year, leaving the Obama administration more than a year before the president’s term will end.

 “He’s done more to bring our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century than anyone else,” President Obama said as he announced Duncan’s resignation at the White House on Friday afternoon. “America will be better off for what he has done.”

OK, as is made clear by Obama’s statements, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

As anti-public education and anti-teacher as he has been, it is clear that he has been executing a pro-Wall Street, anti-Teacher, and anti-Student* agenda at Obama’s behest.

Still, I am sure that he will get a 7 figure jackpot at the end of the rainbow.

*As I have asked many times, “Is there anything that big finance can’t make destructive and evil?”†
†If the goal is to involve Wall Street in a public service, the effect will harm that service. QED.

My Bad, Frank was Gaslighted

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On Wednesday, I suggested that Pope Francis’s audience with anti-gay bigot Kim Davis was a natural byproduct of the historical imperatives of the Catholic Church, specifically with regard to their position on gay marriage.

It turns out that Charlie Pierce had this sussed out by Thursday, and ascribed this to this to the natural byproduct of over a millennia of no holds barred political machinations:

………Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church’s permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he’s done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratf%$#ing on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.) So, if you’re one of these people, and you’re looking to ratf%$# the pope’s visit to the United States, and to his agenda in general, you’d be looking to put him in a box. So, how would you do that?

We are now seeing more and more signs that conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up these meetings, set up the pope:

Ever since it became public that Pope Francis met in Washington with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the questions have been swirling: Why did he meet with her, and was it meant as a political statement?

 As it turns out, the Vatican said on Friday, the pope did not mean to endorse Ms. Davis’s views. It also said he gave her no more than a typical brief greeting, despite what her lawyer described.

 Instead, the Vatican said that Francis gave only one “real audience”: to someone later identified as one of his former students, Yayo Grassi, a gay man in Washington who says he brought his partner of 19 years to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington for a reunion. They even shot video.

 The disclosure, after the Vatican’s unusual attempt to correct the impressions left by Francis’ meeting with Ms. Davis, added to days of speculation about whether Francis intended to send a message on the place of gays in the church, or conscientious objection, and whether his advisers had fully briefed him on Ms. Davis, or had their own agenda.

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 Earlier on Friday, the Vatican said that Archbishop Viganò had arranged the pope’s meetings in Washington, including the one with Ms. Davis.

 The news of the meeting with Ms. Davis was disclosed late Tuesday night by Ms. Davis’s lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, at the same time it was reported on the website of Inside the Vatican, a conservative publication edited by an American who has covered the Vatican for years.

 ………

 Mr. Staver, for his part, said he had been briefly introduced to Archbishop Viganò in April, when he spoke at a large rally in Washington against same-sex marriage, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

So, we know that Viganò was present at an anti-gay marriage rally, and the Times has some background on Viganò:

………

 The archbishop, who was exiled to the United States in 2011 after losing a high-altitude Vatican power struggle that became public in an infamous leaks scandal, now finds himself at the center of another papal controversy. This time, the Vatican is suggesting that Archbishop Viganò is responsible for giving papal face time to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk whose refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has made her a heroine to social conservatives.

 ………

 Mr. Staver said a conservative deacon, Keith Fournier, introduced him to Archbishop Viganò back in April before speaking at a National Organization for Marriage rally on the Washington Mall in opposition to same-sex marriage. As Mr. Staver descended from the stage, Archbishop Viganò made a point to “thank me for my message,” the lawyer said.

 Archbishop Viganò, a cultural conservative born into a wealthy family in Varese, received the title of archbishop from John Paul II in 1992. He later joined the church’s diplomatic corps, which is one of the traditional sources of power in the Vatican, and in 2009 was installed by Pope Benedict XVI as secretary of the governorate of Vatican City State, a position not unlike the mayor of Vatican City.

(emphasis mine)

Even if Francis wanted to endorse Kim Davis’s repulsive views and actions, it is highly unlikely that he would have done so in private.

The evidence points to a Roger Stone style fat-f%$#ing orchestrated by Staver and Viganò.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Saturday)

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Hometown National Bank, Longview, WA
  2. The Bank of Georgia, Peachtree City, GA

First Activity in 2½ month.  I’m not sure if it means anything, but when juxtaposed with recent anemic job growth, it’s another marker that our already anemic recovery is slowing down.

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Trinidad Scorpion Peppers 1 : Charles Saroff 0

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Am I a bad parent for taping this?

We went to the Reisterstown Farmers Market, and Max’s Heat was there hawking their spice mixes.

Charlie wanted something hot, so he was offered, with appropriate warnings, a sample of 4th Degree Burn, a spice mix made of Trinidad Scorpion Peppers (1.2 million Scovilles) and pink Himalayan Salt.

I whipped out my camera to record the coming conflagration.

BTW, the URLs for Max’s Heat are here and here.

Note that I have received nothing of value, beyond this really funny video, from Max’s Heat for posting this.

Also, their curry mix was kick ass.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Cow Overlords

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It appears that the Cows have begun their guerrilla campaign to take over the world:

The way to catch a cow is through its stomach – at least that’s what New Hartford police are hoping.

 On Monday, the department set a trap for the rogue cow that continues to make appearances along Route 840. Police previously told the O-D the cow weighs about 1,500 pounds and has been on the loose for several months. Efforts to identify its owner have been unsuccessful.

 “Currently we’re trying to feed it and trap it at the same time,” police Chief Michael Inserra said. “Clinton Tractor has been gracious enough to loan us what is called a headlock feeder … and as (the cow is) feeding on it, a spring-loading locking mechanism will trap the cow in the feeder by its head.”

 Headlock feeders are regularly used by farmers and trap cows in a way similar to how a child’s head could become trapped in a banister.

 Inserra said police placed the trap Monday and are checking on it hourly. If the cow is successfully trapped, a local farmer has agreed to take it, he said.

 “We’re assuming it’s going to take a few days for the cow hopefully to approach this trap,” Inserra said. “It’s a very skittish animal.”

 Stephanie Kelly and her friends spotted the rogue cow on Route 8 on Thursday, while she and other members of the Sauquoit Valley Garden Club were on their way back from a trip to Old Forge.

 Kelly said the cow appeared to be scared, and was running down the road for several miles – holding up southbound traffic – before it ran off into the brush shortly before the Washington Mills exit.

It’s like the beginning of Planet of the Apes.

This is not an isolated incident. This is the beginning of a bovine insurrection!*

*Yes, this is actually an isolated incident. Some cow jumped the fence, and is now out smarting local authorities. It is absurd to suggest that cows are plotting to take over the world.†

†Because cats have already taken over the world.

Is this Even News?

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I have to use this cartoon Way too often

Another day, another mass shooting in America:

A rural community college became the site of America’s latest mass shooting on Thursday as a lone gunman burst into classrooms during the school day and mowed down terrified students before being shot dead in a firefight with police, authorities said.

Officials said nine people were killed, plus the gunman, and seven injured during the traumatic events at Umpqua Community College, about three hours south of Portland.

A U.S. law enforcement official identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer of Winchester, Ore. He was described as wearing a dark shirt and jeans while spewing bullets from what appeared to be three pistols and possibly a semiautomatic rifle.

Let’s be clear here: This is no longer news.

We have a shooting like this, albeit typically on a slightly smaller scale, on an almost daily basis in this nation.

It’s Official, Elon Musk Is Now a Bond Villain

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On Colbert last night, Elon Musk, internet tycoon turned electronic car manufacturer turned space entrepreneur wants to colonize Mars, unleashed a literal bombshell:

The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors appeared on the second episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show last night (Sept. 9) to discuss his various business ventures. Colbert asked him about his plan to send people to Mars, which Musk described as a “fixer-up” of a planet. That led to this exchange:

“Eventually you can transform Mars into an Earthlike planet,” Musk said. “By warming it up.”

“With a blanket?” Colbert asked.

No, Stephen, not with a blanket. With a great number of thermonuclear bombs:

Musk has publicly supported this idea for a long time, but we’d wager it’s the first time anyone’s suggested it on a late-night talk show. The idea is that the nukes would melt the Mars’ polar ice caps and kickstart a greenhouse effect—similar to the one we’re currently experiencing on Earth—that would quickly make the planet warmer.

I will make a couple of points here:

  • First, you can get the same sort of effect, sans radiation, by dispersing a few tons of carbon black on the poles.  The increased albedo does the rest.
  • Second, this really is Bond villain nuts. Batsh%$ insane

Nestle Launches Mission to Mars

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No, Nestle is not actually flying to Mars. That’s just a snarky reference to Nestle’s sucking water out of California in orderto bottle it.

When juxtaposed with some of Nestle’s earlier behavior, the news that NASA’s discovery that there are current water flows on Mars, it is an obvious bit of humor:

Spectroscopic data from NASA

’s 10-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have confirmed years of scientific suspicion that periodic dark streaks appearing on Martian slopes are the result of liquid water flowing on the planet’s surface.

The dark features, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), have been observed for years by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and have appeared on dozens of sites at Mars. This imagery was later correlated with mineral mapping by another instrument, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), which determined that the dark streaks are hydrated minerals — i.e., thin patches of damp soil. The salt lowers the freezing point of the water, allowing it to persist longer in Mars’ thin, cold atmosphere.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science and a former space shuttle astronaut, during a Sept. 28 press conference. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars.”

This is actually rather significant.

Where there is water, on Earth at least, there is life.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the picture.

TransCanada Loses Again

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They just gave up on a lawsuit in Nebraska over their attempt to assert extraordinary eminent domain rights:

TransCanada announced on Tuesday that the company will pull out of the lawsuit filed by over 100 Nebraska landowners challenging their right to use eminent domain to seize land for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Facing mounting legal expenses and a likely loss in court, the company will instead go through the Public Service Commission (PSC) review process it had originally hoped to avoid.

“We believe that going through the PSC process is the clearest path to achieving route certainty for the Keystone XL Project in Nebraska. It ultimately saves time, reduces conflict with those who oppose the project and sets clear rules for approval of the route,” said a representative of the company in a statement.

The PSC process will take at least a year, and cannot move forward if and when President Obama rejects the federal permit for the pipeline.

………

“TransCanada realizes that LB 1161 is unconstitutional,” added Art Tanderup, a farmer whose land is on the proposed pipeline route. “This is a victory for landowners standing up to prevent a foreign corporation from taking their land for corporate greed through eminent domain. TransCanada pushed LB1161 through the legislature to avoid using the Public Service Commission procedure that they now want to follow. We believe that the PSC will not allow Keystone XL to be placed in the Sand Hills or over the Ogallala Aquifer but are confident President Obama will reject the pipeline before the PSC even has a chance to conduct a review.”

So, TransCanada, the company that ignores regulations, and leans on lawmakers to exempt them from regulations, and then has their pipelines blow up, has decided that their latest attempt to subvert the regulatory prices isn’t going to work.

They lose, and the rest of us win.

I can live with that.

Stop Whining, Bitches

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I am referring, of course to House of Saud:

Saudi Arabia has called on Bashar al-Assad to give up power or be removed by force, raising the global stakes at a time when the Russians are shipping troops and military hardware to Syria in an effort to prop up its beleaguered leader.

The threat was made on Tuesday by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir.

“There is no future for Assad in Syria,” Jubeir told journalists at the UN general assembly. “There are two options for a settlement in Syria. One option is a political process where there would be a transitional council. The other option is a military option, which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power.”

“This could be a more lengthy process and a more destructive process but the choice is entirely that of Bashar al-Assad.” The foreign minister did not specify how Assad would be forcibly removed, but pointed out that Saudi Arabia is already backing “moderate rebels” in the civil war.

The Saudi intervention fuelled an already heated row at the UN over Syria’s future, where the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, issued a forthright defence of the Syrian regime, describing it as fighting a lonely and “valiant” battle against Islamic State extremists.

You know, I know that you have all kinds of butthurt over the fact that the secular* Arab government in Damascus is still standing, even after they created ISIS to attempt to create another Sunni dominated sectarian state.

You are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.

The fact that you are unable to accomplish your agenda in that part of the world is a good thing.

*And murderous. The regime is murderous too, but the House of Saud has no problem with murderously genocidal regimes, see Bahrain as an example.

American Clusterf%$#

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Not Syria this time, Afghanistan:

Afghanistan was plunged deeper into crisis a day after the Taliban seized the northern city of Kunduz, as the insurgents on Tuesday kept assaulting the reeling Afghan security forces and the government struggled to mount a credible response.

Not only did a promised government counteroffensive on Kunduz not make headway during heavy fighting on Tuesday, but the day ended with yet another aggressive Taliban advance, with insurgents surrounding the airport to which hundreds of Afghan forces and at least as many civilians had retreated, thinking it would be safe.

After more than a day of relative silence as the situation worsened around Kunduz, the American military showed the first signs of increased involvement in what the Pentagon called “a setback,” conducting at least two airstrikes, and reportedly more as attacks continued at the airport late Tuesday.

Beyond the Taliban’s gains in Kunduz, there was evidence that the insurgents were also pushing a broader offensive in northern Afghanistan, officials said. One particular point of concern was Takhar Province, just east of Kunduz, where the insurgents were said to be heavily assaulting military checkpoints and government facilities in several districts over the past two days.

The generals in Washington are beginning to look like ……… The Washington Generals.*

Seriously, can anyone remember the last time our military adventures have come even close to success?

*Until recently, the Washington Generals were the team that played, and lost, by design, to the Harlem Globetrotters thousands of time, and won once.

It Appears that a Bear does Indeed Sh%$ in the Woods

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Because the Pope was just outed doing something amazingly Catholic, and I do not mean that as a complement:

Pope Francis met privately in Washington last week with Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who defied a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, adding a new element to an American tour that saw Francis attract huge crowds and articulate left-leaning positions on poverty, immigration, the environment and inequality.

Vatican officials initially would not confirm that the meeting occurred, finally doing so on Wednesday afternoon, while refusing to discuss any details.

Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., has been at the center of a nationwide controversy over whether government employees and private businesses have a legal right to refuse to serve same-sex couples. She spent five days in jail for disobeying a federal court order to issue the licenses.

On Tuesday night, her lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, said that Ms. Davis and her husband, Joe, were sneaked into the Vatican Embassy by car on Thursday afternoon. Francis gave her rosaries and told her to “stay strong,” the lawyer said. The couple met for about 15 minutes with the pope, who was accompanied by security guards, aides and photographers.

Notwithstanding the affection recently shown by progressive elements inside and outside of the Catholic Church, the Pope is, at the end of the day, Catholic, which means that he will continue to be antediluvian on issues like birth control and gay rights.

I am disappointed, but not surprised.