Party Like It's 1932

Dominic Sandbrook of the UK's Daily Mail Online posted a chilling article comparing 2012 to 1932.

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.

Here in Britain, many economists believe that by the end of 2012 we could well have slipped into a second devastating recession. The Coalition remains delicately poised; it would take only one or two resignations to provoke a wider schism and a general election.

But the real dangers lie overseas. In the Middle East, the excitement of the Arab Spring has long since curdled into sectarian tension and fears of Islamic fundamentalism. And with so many of the world’s oil supplies concentrated in the Persian Gulf, British families will be keeping an anxious eye on events in the Arab world.

Meanwhile, as the eurozone slides towards disaster, the prospects for Europe have rarely been bleaker. Already the European elite have installed compliant technocratic governments in Greece and Italy, and with the markets now putting pressure on France, few observers can be optimistic that the Continent can avoid a total meltdown.

As commentators often remark, the world picture has not been grimmer since the dark days of the mid-Seventies, when the OPEC oil shock, the rise of stagflation and the surge of nationalist terrorism cast a heavy shadow over the Western world.

For the most chilling parallel, though, we should look back exactly 80 years, to the cold wintry days when 1931 gave way to 1932.

 Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Instapundit

A Marine's Christmas Song

This is for all my brothers and sisters in arms.  He may not have the voice of an American Idol contestant, but it's from the heart--and that's what's important.

Being overseas in some dung hole is hard, but it's harder on the families.  You know that you're okay, but your families wonder every moment that you're gone whether or not you're unharmed, and if you're going to come back home in one piece.

Those who raise their right hand and swear to defend our nation comprise less than one percent of our population. They are the thin line between those who would do us harm and our families.  They are the very best of us.  And in this Christmas season, God bless our troops is more than just a saying.It is a prayer that all of our warriors return home safely to their families, that someday we can beat our swords into plowshares, and not have to study war any more.

Merry Christmas, warriors.

Kim Jong-il Would Have Been So Proud...

U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Pays Homage to Obama—But Not Jesus:

(CNSNews.com) - The 63-foot Sierra White Fir lighted at the U.S. Capitol Grounds on Dec. 6 as the official 2011 Capitol Christmas Tree includes a prominently displayed ornament paying homage to President Barack Obama, but includes no ornament readily visible to a person standing near the tree's base that uses the word “Christmas,” or includes an image of the Nativity, or bears the name or image of Jesus Christ.

From teaching small school children to sing songs praising him to Christmas trees adoring him, leftists and the Democrat Party (but I repeat myself) are doing their best to imitate the worst cult practices of tyrannical regimes around the world (see China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, etc.).

How sad.

A Sudden Flare-up In The Fires of Hell

Kim Jong-Il has finally snuffed it.  I'm sure the millions of North Koreans starved to death and murdered by his regime observed from Heaven that the fires of Hell surged mightily at his arrival.

Well, well, well, if it isn't KJI! We've been waiting a long time for you!

Hat tip: Long suffering humanity

The United States of Europe?

Europe is becoming more and more a warning sign for the U.S.:

There are all kinds of scenarios for how the crisis will play out, and none of them end well. Last week’s agreement may not see the light of day in its present form — several governments are consulting their parliaments and some, such as Ireland, have indicated that they may put the deal to a referendum. (This is flirting with danger: Greek Prime Minster George Papandreou was forced out by “Merkozy” and the technocrats for threatening to put the latest bailout plan for his country to the people. It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the days when Europe’s leaders at least allowed referendums to take place, and simply ignored the result if it didn’t go their way.) Governments and leaders are likely to fall, whether kicked out by their austerity-weary electorates or, as in Italy and Greece, led away by the men in white coats from Brussels.

 Whatever the outcome, millions of Europeans, particularly in the southern states, are being condemned to decades of high taxes and high unemployment, while having to work longer than they’d expected for reduced pensions and enduring swinging cuts to public services. But all the while the elites will keep pressing for ever-closer union — assuring their citizens that however bad things seem now, they’d be worse off outside the eurozone. British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s warning, made when he opposition leader back in 1998, that a European single currency area would become “a burning building with no exits,” has been thoroughly vindicated.

In the U.S., meanwhile, there’s growing concern both over the level of banks’ exposure to European debt, and the prospect of a default or another credit rating downgrade on the continent causing a new credit crunch and plunging the country back into recession. But whatever the immediate consequences, the crisis engulfing Europe might at least help to persuade Americans that they need to step back from the edge of the statist abyss to which President Obama has led them.  The crisis engulfing Europe is the supreme indictment of the centralized, big government, welfare state model.

And yet this is precisely the direction in which Barack Obama, should he win a second term, wants to take America (a bailout for California, anyone?). While looking to the U.S. as an approximate organizational model, the European elites would like their United States of Europe to have rather less democracy and accountability than currently prevails on the other side of the Atlantic. But if Obama gets his way, the U.S. of A. could in a few years be indistinguishable from the U.S. of E.  ~ Mike McNally

 Major hat tip to Doug Ross@Journal

Walken In A Winter Wonderland

 

He knows who's naughty or nice... he just doesn't give a rat's ass.

Hat tip: Stephanie Chambers

The Christmas (Noun)

Larry Correia continues his Christmas tradition: The Christmas Noun 3d The Gritty Reboot.  If you're not reading Larry's blog, you're missing a lot of fun.

Finishing the Job

President Obama told donors that he needs another term to 'finish the job.'

 

Really?  I think he's done enough, don't you?

Hat tip: The Gateway Pundit

Marxism - Another Name for 'Occupy Wall Street'

I find Marxism to be a vapid and ultimately, infantile, view of the world that has one sole interest – to invest a self-selected nomeklatura with the means to ideologically and morally justify the creation of a prison state. To stamp out individual volition and embrace the culture of the ant and the bee. To ensure that harmony is struck no matter what the human cost. Absent violence and mass privation, Marxism in the world of humanity simply does not ring true to both its ambitions and the fruit of its practice. Marxism is, at bottom, a death cult. ~ Bill Bupert

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

1,821 Dead, 14,733 Wounded

Mullah Omar posted on the Taliban website this weekend that the impending U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is proof of our defeat:

For ten years now, our courageous Mujahideen have been engaging in Jihad against a cruel and incursive enemy for a noble cause and are presenting countless sacrifices in this path everyday. They have pushed the most materially advanced and arrogant power of the world to the verge of collapse with Allah’s Divine Help. Thousands of their troops have been killed and maimed while others face permanent disabilities and mental disorders, compelling their people to rise up in opposition and take to the streets. The American and Western people have no further taste for extending the Afghan war and seeing their soldiers return in coffins!!  It is only the Bounty and Grace of Allah Almighty that He chose us for the service of our country and Islam in this crucial and sensitive period and suppressed the greatest enemy of Islam with our hands. 

Mujahid Brothers! You know very well that our enemy is facing an unambiguous defeat. The ongoing Badre military operation tasked for the current year has quelled all of their conspiracies and designs. The enemy has suffered immense human and material losses in all parts of the country, including in the capital Kabul. In view of these prevailing sensitive conditions, all in authority and subjects should consolidate their unity because the enemy is now attempting to divide their ranks under various names. It is trying to attribute the perplexing and glorious operations, military advancements and achievements of Islamic Emirate to foreigners so to hide their shameful defeat and create artificial rationales for permanent presence in Afghanistan by falsely indicting the neighboring countries. But the enemy must realize that their purchased Jirgas and permanent bases have and will be strongly opposed by us and will on no account be permitted to materialize.

This is what the brilliant diplomacy of the current Administration has brought us.  It's no wonder that Hamid Karzai is sucking up to Iran and Pakistan.  All of the lives lost will have been for naught as the Taliban prepares to roll back into Afghanistan after we leave to fulfill a political campaign promise.

The lesson being taught to the world once again is that when you are in conflict with the United States, all you have to do is wait until the Democrat Party gains power in Washington.  Sadly, the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman demonstrates once again that since the 1960s the concept of victory in war is anathema to them--and that should permanently disqualify them from leading our nation.

Hat tip:  Ahmad Majidyar at National Review Online

History Is Important

The embedded video demonstrates how propaganda and the lack of an ethical mainstream media skews our understanding of important issues confronting our nation.  "Everyone knows" that the Republican Party is the party of rich white racists intent on keeping people down, while the Democratic Party is the party of the little guy and responsible for keeping evil racists in check.  Watch the video and decide for yourself.  And then ask yourself what other things that "everyone knows" that aren't what they seem (e.g., the Tea Party versus OccupyWallStreet), and why one side always seems to get hammered while the other always seems to skate.

Yet Another Indication That The United Nations Should Be Disbanded

In addition to spending most of their time wasting incredible sums of money propping up anti-Western regimes and providing a home for incompetent Third World bureaucrats, the UN lends its veneer of officialdom to blatant efforts to run the world the way fascist, anarchist, leftist, Marxist, feminist, enviro-Nazi activists (but I repeat myself) want it run.  Case in point: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

IPCC reports on climate change have been constantly cited as the basis for those of us in the civilized world to give up modern energy sources and go back to living in huts because our actions are causing global warming... er, climate change.  Peter Foster of the Financial Post writes about Donna Laframboise’s book, The Delinquent Teenager Who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

In her expose of the IPCC, Ms. Laframboise discovers that the IPCC reports are not even worth the paper they're printed on, much less for setting government and societal policies. As Mr. Foster writes:

In a meticulously referenced and deservedly praised page-turner, Ms. Laframboise, an accomplished journalist who turned to the skeptical blogosphere, demonstrates how the IPCC is a thoroughly political organization. Far from objectively weighing the best available science, it cherry-picks egregiously to support its main objective: to serve its government masters. Its lead authors are not the world’s leading scientists but frequently wet-behind-the-ears graduates, and/or ardent activists. They are also selected on the basis of gender and country “diversity” rather than expertise. The organization, Ms. Laframboise demonstrates, has also been thoroughly infiltrated by environmental NGOs, in particular the World Wildlife Fund.

The book elucidates how the panel’s much-vaunted “peer review” amounts to a “circular, incestuous process. Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature. They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.” IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s claim that all the “Climate Bible’s” science is peer reviewed is, in any case, bunk. With a body of volunteers, Ms. Laframboise went through the 2007 report and found that more than 5,000 references — over a third — were from less-than-reliable sources. The most egregious such “grey” reference led to the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were to disappear by 2035. This terrifying assertion was traced back to the top of a non-expert’s head.

But, but... they're scientists, man!  How can such fraudulent activities occur?  Sadly, very easily, because our mainstream media is not about to call them out on it as it would (a) require work and research on their part, and (b) goes against the meme that global warming skeptics are evil conservatives against the planet because they hate polar bears and won't give up their guns, gas guzzling SUVs, and money.  Speaking of skeptics:

She introduces us to numerous well-credentialed skeptics, including Jason Johnston, an expert in environmental law, who set out to verify whether the ­IPCC reports in fact “conformed with the peer-reviewed climate science literature.” His conclusion: “on virtually every major issue in climate change science,” IPCC reports “systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties.”

The Delinquent Teenager reveals how inconvenient science has been buried and sums up: “The IPCC ignores the consensus among hurricane experts that there is no discernable link to global warning. It ignores the consensus among those who study natural disasters that there is no relationship between human greenhouse gas emissions and the rising cost of these disasters. It ignores the consensus among bona fide malaria experts that global warming has not caused malaria to spread. In each case the IPCC substitutes its own version of reality. In each case that version of reality makes global warming appear more frightening than genuine experts believe the available evidence indicates.”

 So, if you're busy hiding or ignoring science that disproves your positions, then there has to be other motivations.  You know, motivations like forcing the wealthy countries of the West to fork over all of their money and power to right thinking bureaucrats and activists to run the planet through treaties and other political bindings... because that's always worked so well in the past, right?

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

Great Post at Powerline

A unified theory of left-wing causes

Steven Den Beste comments on Steve Hayward’s population bomb post:

Isn’t it interesting that no matter what the current global crisis is, according to leftists, the solution is always the same: a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite, and mass transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations.
That’s what they want to do about global warming. It’s what they wanted to do about overpopulation. It’s what they wanted to do about endangered species.

Yeah, I think Jonah Goldberg wrote a good book with this thesis.

JOHN adds: Bear in mind, too, that the remedy for global cooling, when that was feared during the 1970s, was the same as for global warming, overpopulation, etc.

Big ol' hat tip to Powerline

Why Do They Keep Lying? Because They're Scientists, Dammit!

Last week scientists from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project (BEST) at Berkeley, California (where else, of course), published their study claiming that once again the science was all settled--global warming is real, the planet has warmed one degree centigrade since 1950, and that warming is continuing. 

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree  centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually. Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

In other words, all of you unbelieving climate skeptics need to shut the hell up and get out of the way of right minded people trying to save the planet.

Of course, what they didn't mention is that one of the study's co-authors threw the bullshit flag and said that's not what the study showed.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no  scientific basis.  Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

It seems that Prof Muller published the studies before they were peer reviewed, and the graph he submitted with his press release was inaccurate, hiding the fact that global temperatures have not increased for 13 years despite rising CO2 levels.

Prof Muller defended his  behaviour yesterday, saying that all he was doing was ‘returning to traditional peer review’, issuing draft papers to give the whole ‘climate community’ a chance to comment.  As for the press release, he claimed he was ‘not seeking  publicity’, adding: ‘This is simply a way of getting the media to report this more accurately.’  He said his decision to publish was completely unrelated to the forthcoming United Nations  climate conference.  This, he said, was ‘irrelevant’, insisting that nothing could have been further from his mind than trying to influence it.

 Oh really? Nothing could have been further from your mind while you sabotaged the peer review process and published a misleading graph conveniently leaving out the halt in global warming?  Why should anyone complain--you were only emulating the lying con men at East Anglia University who conveniently lost all of the data behind their claims to keep others from duplicating their analysis because it was all for the morally superior crusade against man-caused global warming.  (And no one has yet to explain why global warming is a bad thing--think of all the new agricultural growing areas we'd gain in Siberia and Canada... maybe we could even grow grapes again in Greenland like they did several hundred years ago.)

Thank God there are still scientists out there with the integrity of Prof Curry.  The rest should be treated like the con men they are.

Hat tip: Small Dead Animals

Just As Successful As The Soviet Union...

As this chart from the Fed shows, all of the central planning efforts of the Obama Administration have made things much worse, not better.  You would think that three years of data such as the above would be enough to convince them that their methods/courses of action are wrong and that it's time to change.  To date, that has not happened--and thus one is compelled to wonder why.  For a potential explanation, click the link below.

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

The Ultimate Game

 

Hat tip: xkcd

It's Confirmed -- The Universe Is Unfair!

Gleefully swiped from Ethan Siegel on Facebook.

Hat tip: The ever beautiful Bill the Viking, soldier of fortune at Ordo Aurum Malum

Remember, It's For The Children.... Naw, Just Kidding...It's For The Unions

Mark Steyn had yet another brilliant piece on NRO about the amount of money the U.S. spends on education as compared to other countries:

Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland — and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil — or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit — and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.

But that’s no reason not to waste even more! So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively.

That's the reason our taxes are going sky high to keep the education mafia going.  We don't dare say a word about it because the Marxist/Leninist Left, Democrat Party, teacher's unions, and mainstream media (but I repeat myself) will scream that we hate children--and that the only solution to our poor performance in education is to throw even more money at it (which, by the way, goes to the teacher unions who then spend it on buying politicians to keep feeding the education maw).

Sadly, all we are doing is paying for more administrators, union goons, and subsidizing curricula that have turned our children into uneducated idiots who feel really good about themselves.  Instead of being taught how to think and reason, our children are instead being fed pablum and Al Gore movies.  And now we see the full flowering of that indoctrination in the Occupy Wall Street/Wherever demonstrators demanding that we overturn the laws of economics and transform the U.S. into socialism/communism/anarchism because, even though it's failed in every other society in which it's been tried, they are so much smarter and can make it work here.

Well, welcome to the real world where the free market declared that your graduate degree in drumming just isn't worth the $100K you racked up in debt. And the fault for that can be laid directly at the feet of the 'professional' educators who refused to teach you how to reason because that's harder than having you cut out pictures of baby seals and learn all about evil corporations (and, if they taught you how to think and reason, you'd ask way to many embarrassing questions about the crap they've been feeding you all those years).

Arrogant, spoiled assclowns. And you want to spend even more of my tax money to cover your lack of judgement...

Hat tip: National Review Online

The Real 99%

 

 Hat tip: The Troglopundit

The Only Thing They Have To Fear Is... Freedom

Once again, adherents of Islam demonstrate that they have no faith in their faith.  'Extremists' in Somalia beheaded a 17 year old Christian boy.  If you get your news from the mainstream media, you wouldn't know of the continuing slaughter of non-Muslims by Muslims around the world--with the possible exception of the destruction of Christian Copts by our new buddies running Egypt (but that's mostly a by-product of them being there already covering the glorious 'Arab Spring'.)

How sad that Islamists are so uncertain of the durability of their faith that they resort to killing anyone who is not a Muslim--and especially killing anyone who leaves Islam for another religion.  No, rather than compete on the basis of ideas and concepts, they prefer to subjugate the world with the sword.

How insecure one must feel to have to kill anyone who doesn't follow their religion?  How insecure must they feel to keep females in slavery, treating them as property rather than human beings, murdering them at will for the concept of honor?  No wonder they struggle so hard to bring sharia to the West, for they need the shackles of the 14th Century to prevent Western culture and civilization from bringing Islam into the 21st century of tolerance and moderation.  For example, the Maldives passed the Protection of Religious Unity Act in 1994.

The Act outlaws promotion of anything that represents a religion other than Islam or any opinion that disagrees with Islamic scholars. It also prohibits use of any website, blog, newspaper, or magazine that contradicts Islam. Any violation under the Act is punishable by an imprisonment of between two and five years, banishment or house arrest. Foreigners who are found proselytizing are to be deported, it says.

But that's not enough for the current government, which published new regulations to ensure that Maldivans wouldn't be exposed to any new ideas.

The new set of regulations maintains a longtime ban on propagation, display and expression of any religion other than Islam. It also prohibits translation of books with such content into the local language, Dhivehi.

Islamists are scared 13-year-olds with weapons, demanding that we submit to their 'Lord of the Flies' reality.  They fear any competition based on ideals and ideas, because they subconsciously fear that they will lose.  Thus they murder their daughters and wives for the crime of wanting to be free.  Thus they slaughter followers of the 'Prince of Peace' because they obviously must believe that their 'Prophet of the Sword' cannot compete in the open market--and thus hide their fears behind cries of 'blasphemy.'  And their fear continues to burn the bridges between cultures and civilizations for all Muslims.

Islamic intolerance is building across the planet.  Pockets of sanity remain, but they are growing fewer and fewer.  If an Islamic Reformation, led from within by Muslims who want a better way for their faith and their families, does not happen, then I fear it will all come to a very bad end--for all of us.

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

And the Pattern Contined to Repeat Itself After the Election

Doug Ross has a great post about how the Obama campaign purposely enabled illegal contributions.  Of course, the mainstream media refused to cover this blatant disregard for U.S. law because it was their candidate doing it.  It also was the harbinger of future actions in which the law was ignored by the winners when it suited them (e.g., voter intimidation, Fast and Furious, vote fraud).

Read the whole piece and remember this is what it will look like in the political trenches of the 2012 election.  Get a helmet.

Occupy Wall Street - More Than Just Hippy Whining

Andrew Breitbart has been on the cutting edge of demonstrating why the mainstream media is no longer a purveyor of news but a provider of cover for the Left and the Democrat Party.  Don't believe me (or Andrew)? Then ask yourself why the MSM has refused to cover the Solyndra scandal in which half a billion taxpayer dollars were funneled to a failing 'green' company, or the 'Fast and Furious' scandal in which taxpayer money was used in at least one case to fund the purchase of arms and transfer to Mexican drug cartels--resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and two U.S. federal agents (and yet the MSM has no interest in following up on Attorney General Holder's changing responses over time to the questions of what did he know and when did he know it).

It's no  different with the 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators.  Breitbart has come into the possession of thousands of emails and documents showing that the 'spontaneous' answer to the Tea Party from the Left was planned for some time.

Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:

Further, the purpose seems to be more than just bitching about student loans and how big business screws the people:

The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”

 Note how the organizers are already planning on distancing themselves from the Democrat Party so as not to damage them.

So here's your chance to do a little 'crowd sourcing.'  Follow this link to the email archive and see for yourself.  If the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) had no problem with crowd sourcing all of Sarah Palin's emails, then they shouldn't have a problem with you looking over theirs.

Hat Tip: Big Government

Liberate Wall Street - If Protest Signs Reflected Reality

 

Hat Tip:  The ever righteous The People's Cube

"Flea Party vs. Tea Party"

The Bear is off on vacation, so blogging has been the last thing on his mind; however, others are blogging away saying marvelous things.  Take, for example, Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International and other great books.

Larry has a great piece in his personal blog about the Occupy Whatever bunch and the Tea Party.

So Tea Party, doesn’t advocate violence, doesn’t make a mess, is polite, has a simple platform, and then goes back to work the next day = RACIST EXTREMIST VIOLENT NAZI WHACKJOBS!!!

Occupy Wall Street has thousands arrested, makes a mess, wants to guillotine rich folks, has a platform that reads like a less literate version of the Communist Manifesto, and camps out for weeks because they’ve not got anything better to do = REFRESHING VOICE FOR CHANGE.

Sure, nasty disease ridden hippie orgies are fun and all, but let’s take a look at what they’re protesting… For the first few weeks I thought it was that they were against “Greed”.  Wow.  That’s a bold statement. Take that Pro-Greed forces. Okay, specifically, they were against the bailouts. Cool. So was I. Funny, so was the Tea Party. You know what’s ironic though? You know who WASN’T against the bailouts? The guy I’m willing to bet most of the Occupiers voted for last time and will probably vote for again.

So the Tea Party and the Occupiers agree that government bailing out big corporations is bad. The difference between these two protestor groups (besides personal hygiene, coherence, the amount of taxes they’ve paid, and the ability to pass a drug screening) is their answer. The Tea Party wants to make the government smaller so they can’t do stuff like this. The Occupiers want to reward the guilty party and make it bigger and more powerful, because… Hell… I can’t figure it out.

The Tea Party answer goes back to Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. The Occupier’s answer reads like a bunch of Communist dogma, after its been eaten, digested, and then shat out by a unicorn tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Go read his whole entry.  You'll learn a lot (and that Larry is funny as hell as a political commentator as well as a fiction writer). Oh, and go buy and read all of his books--you'll thank me later.

Hat Tip: Monster Hunter Nation

Cookies!!!!!!!

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

Yes, We Are That F*cking Stupid

You just can't make this up:

Since the inception of the war in Afghanistan, the United States has lost more than 1,500 lives and spent over $400 billion — much of which devoted to reconstruction, aid, and other forms of direct support.

So when the U.S. government announced last year that Afghanistan may have over $1 trillion in mineral wealth, one might have assumed that it would work with U.S. companies, and companies from other coalition countries, to help them participate in the development of these resources.

Not so. In the most recent installment of “we pay, China plays,” the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will soon be awarded a 20-year lease on several oil fields in Northern Afghanistan. This follows the other major resource tender in Afghanistan, in 2007, in which the government of Afghanistan awarded a 30-year lease on the country’s largest copper mine to the China Metallurgical Group.

Amazingly, the process that will result in the award to CNPC has been designed and managed by a U.S. Defense Department task force, which is also footing the bill for the international lawyers and consultants who are advising the Afghan government on the tender. The task force set up the process to award the resource to the bidder offering the highest percentage of its revenues from operations to the Afghan government as a royalty — which skews the tender in favor of state-owned Chinese companies more concerned with capturing valuable resources than achieving an attractive return on their investment. The process failed to take into meaningful consideration the bidders’ respective track records on technology, the environment, and local employment, among others, all of which would have played to the strengths of Western companies.

So we spend American lives and treasure so others can profit from our sacrifice because to do otherwise wouldn't be 'fair.'

It makes you want to track down some of the moronic bureaucrats who devised this system and rip their lungs out with a rusty fork. Sigh.  Read the whole disgusting thing at the Corner on NRO.

Christ on a crutch.

Yoda Pie Chart

 

Hat tip: garr.posterous

"Why China Won't Conquer The World"

Ran across an interesting article about a former resident of China's view regarding whether or not China would become a world power.  

If China is to dominate the creative industries as it has manufacturing, it needs to borrow a line from Apple’s marketing department: “Think different”. Liu Jun, a businessman recently crowned one of the “50 most creative individuals in China”, says it’s an uphill struggle.
“The reason the Chinese don’t have global companies is that we don’t have a global vision,” he said recently. “Chinese designers only think about what pleasures them, not the customer. It’s a huge problem.” Chinese corporate structures remain very rigid, and, according to Daniel Altman, a consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, original ideas “have to percolate through so many layers of hierarchy that most won’t survive to the top. China has a long way to go before it will be anything like the US in its ability to foster entrepreneurship.”

The challenges aren't limited to the lack of vision.

And what of the generation the one-child policy has spawned? Children from the biggest 40 cities are living in the three-screen world (television, computer and mobile), wearing global designer brands, travelling first class, and buying houses and cars for their one or two years’ study overseas. For these young “super-rich”, price has become no object, some even flying to and from Hong Kong for a day’s shopping.

 It’s hard to conceive of them becoming China’s next generation of entrepreneurs, when, unlike their parents and grandparents, many have never touched a cooker and barely know how to make their own beds. They may have had superior schooling but many critics believe China’s education system – with its obsession with test-taking and rote memorisation – stifles rather than encourages creativity. Indeed, today’s entry exam for China’s universities, the “gaokao”, has its origins in a recruitment test devised by the imperial government in the sixth century, and, according to Jiang Xueqin, a Yale-educated school administrator in Beijing, rewards “very strong memory; very strong logical and analytical ability; little imagination; little desire to question authority”. China could be seen as a brilliant imitator but a poor innovator – its talents for replicating anything the Western world has to offer evidenced by the recent uncovering of 22 fake Apple stores across Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in south-west China. So convincing were the stores that even staff members believed they were working for Apple. Genius, in a way. But misdirected genius.

We are at the point of seeing China the way we saw Japan back in the 1980s--a industrial and financial juggernaut that was in the process of becoming the dominant power.  And, as then, the truth is somewhat different than the "current wisdom."  People are too quick to downplay the ability of the United States to adapt, overcome, and persevere.  And beginning in November 2012, we will relight the fires of competitiveness again.

On The Road Again

Told you I was a traveling bear.  See you in a week or so.

Enough with the "CO2 Causes Global Warming" Bullshit!

I am so tired of leftists and environmentalists (but I repeat myself) doing their 'morally superior' dance about how they are so much more concerned about saving the planet from global warming, and that all we have to do is impoverish ourselves and go back to the good old days of living in mud huts in order to save the planet.  That the media continues to abdicate its responsibility to fact check these assclowns would seem to me to indicate that (a) they are too stupid or incapable of understanding the science involved, or (b) are leftists/socialists/environmentalists themselves who use the media to advance their fellow travelers' morally superior outlook.

Does no one do research anymore?

In the last 600 million years of Earth's history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.

 Or how about this gem?

The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm.

I do not give one polished turd what my carbon footprint is, or how much CO2 my car emits.  What I do care about is that extremist ideologues at the EPA are going to use the power of the government to change our lifestyles and nation because of their devotion to junk science. Texas is about to shut down two coal powered power plants and lose 500 jobs because of EPA devotion to unmitigated bullshit.

Hat tip: Powerline

The View From Our Neighbors to the North

Canadian commentator Rex Murphy notes in the National Post that the American media abandoned its responsibilities with regard to President Obama.

As a result, the press gave the great American republic an untried, unknown and, it is becoming more and more frighteningly clear, incompetent figure as President. Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

To the degree the press neglected its function as watchdog and turned cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod, it is a partner in the flaws and failures of what is turning out to be one of the most miserable performances in the modern history of the American presidency.

Read the full article--the media certainly won't.  In a normal business environment, their incompetence and outright bias would have driven them out of business long ago.  Fortunate for them, isn't it, that they monopolize the majority of the news coverage most Americans see (and don't see... NB: 'Fast and Furious,' Solyndra).  Unfortunately for us, as a consequence today's youth see mental midgets like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher as believable sources of information. Thus, they will be subject to direct and painful bitch slapping by life's reality.  Too bad the rest of us are being dragged along with them.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades

The Real Reason Behind 'Fast and Furious?'

According to the Los Angeles Times, the apparent goal of Operation Fast and Furious was:

"...to allow straw purchasers to illegally buy weapons in the U.S. so agents could learn the traffickers’ routes into Mexico. The agents were then supposed to intervene before the guns were sold to drug cartels. But agents lost track of roughly 1,700 weapons, and hundreds soon began showing up at homicide scenes in Mexico."

As many before me have pointed out, this goal really doesn't make sense, especially given how there was no formal effort to track the weapons after they left the sellers.  Perhaps Pajamas Media has come across the real reason: Cloward-Piven.

If the current Administration were trying to destabilize governments to the South in order to drive refugees into the United States, thereby overloading the social services within the U.S. to cause a breakdown, they could do a lot worse than 'Fast and Furious.'  From multiple failed stimulus packages to animosity towards our traditional allies to setting up our economy to fail, ideology seems to be the best answer for why facts fail to make a dent in the focus and trajectory of our leadership.

A Look Behind the Curtain

Why is nuclear proliferation difficult to deter?  Because that's where the money is.  Pakistan, our 'ally' in the war against terror, spent decades spreading nuclear technology and expertise for money.  And who were the beneficiaries of these deals?  Well, if you picked the usual suspects (China, North Korea, Iran, and Libya), you would be right.  You couldn't swing a dead jihadi around without hitting someone from one of these countries involved in rubbing the lamp containing the nuclear genie.  Thanks to A.Q. Kahn, we will be dealing with the second and third order effects of this proliferation for years to come.  If a portion of the United States goes up in nuclear fire, he will most likely have our blood on his hands.

Another Short Hiatus

Well, I'm a traveling bear again.  Will be out of the loop for about a week.  see you then.

Manmade Global Warming -- Just as Real As Malthus/DDT/Take Your Pick

  

What happens when you use the scientific method on the "science" of anthropomorphic global warming (i.e., it's all our fault!)?  Why, you discover that manmade global warming has just as much chance of being right as all the other scare stories of the past.  Remember how DDT was supposed to cause cancer and be harmful to animals, so we needed to ban it worldwide?  Well, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was based on ludicrous speculations with no scientific basis, and resulted in DDT being banned around the world.  To date, no studies have linked DDT to cancer, but on the bright side millions have died from malaria.

Scholars Kesten Green (International Graduate School of Business, University of South Australia) and J. Scott Armstrong (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) studied forecasts of human-caused environmental disasters (e.g., Malthus, timber famine, ozone hole, salmonella in eggs, etc.).  They found 26 forecasts analogous to today's manmade global warming hysteria, and concluded:

None of the 26 alarming forecasts that we examined was accurate. Based on analyses to date, 19 of the forecasts were categorically wrong (the direction of the effect was opposite to the alarming forecast), and the remaining 7 of the forecast effects were wrong in degree (no effect or only minor effects actually occurred).

Not only that, but:

For example, the Administrator of the EPA banned DDT in the U.S. in 1972. The U.N. and W.H.O. withheld financial aid from developing countries to force them to stop using DDT. There has been no evidence found of any link between DDT and cancer in people but—without DDT and with substitute insecticides being more toxic and less effective—insect-borne diseases have increased leading to millions of additional deaths and widespread sickness. Government policies have, as a consequence, been very expensive without any benefits accruing. Some restrictions and bans on DDT-use continue to this day (Persistence = 1). This description draws heavily on Edwards (2004).

The calls for action were followed by the implementation of government policies intended to address the alarm in 23 of the analogous situations. Among the analogous situations in which government action was taken, our initial assessment is that harm was caused by the government policies in 20 (as with DDT, the cost of the policies exceeded benefits) or policies were ineffective or the net effect was uncertain in 3. In none of the analogous situations were the policies clearly effective.

Both Green and Armstrong have begged for peer review of their work--thus far no takers. Wonder why that is?

The problem is, people want to save the world.  They want to feel like they are contributing something beyond their daily lives.  Unfortunately, too many of them are sanctimonious twits who think they know better than the rest of us how to run our lives and are morally superior to the rest of us because they're saving the planet!

If it's not DDT it's global warming, or it's being forced to use CFL lightbulbs instead of incandescent lights, or giving up oil as an energy source (or not using nuclear) because, damn it, they ARE morally superior to us proles and must use the power of government to force us to act the way THEY think we should.  So what does it matter that their idiotic crusades cost us billions in money and millions in lost lives, or that scientists fake their data or apply 'corrections' to get the results they want, or ignore scientific studies that prove the sun controls the Earth's climate and not man. It's the intent that's important.  After all, it's for the children, right?

Hat tip:  doubleplusundead

Doing The Job The Mainstream Media Won't Do

Unless you read blogs to the right of the mainstream media, you probably don't know that the Department of Justice raided the Gibson guitar making company last Wednesday (24 August).  Why, pray tell, did a DOJ SWAT team raid the Gibson factory with automatic weapons and confiscate over half million dollars worth of guitar making materials?  Because they claimed the company was violating Indian environmental law (for which Gibson has documentation that it hasn't, and the Indian government said there was no violation).

Funny thing--C.F. Martin Guitar uses the same materials but wasn't raided.  The only difference between the two companies is that the CEO of Gibson contributes to Republican candidates while the Martin CEO contributes big to Democratic candidates (and especially Barack Obama).  This appears to be another case of this Administration using the power of the federal government against political opponents. (Remember all of the Chrysler and GM dealerships which were forced to shut down after the Administration used taxpayer money to bail out said companies?  Funny thing there, too--the majority of the dealerships shut down were owned by people who contributed to Republican candidates.)

This personally sucks for me as I love and play C.F. Martin guitars, but also love Gibsons.  And now I have to think hard about purchasing GE products because their CEO is such a butt snorkler of Obama.  I hate it when politics intertwines with commerce--but when a particular political party uses the power of government to reward contributors by attacking their competitors, it goes beyond the benefits of lobbying that all organizations engage in.  It's sending the message that, if you contribute to our political adversaries, we will come for you and crush you--so think twice about donating to the Republican Party.

So that's why a guitar company was raided by machine gun toting law enforcement personnel from the Department of Justice... it was sending a message to all other companies out there that donating money to the Republicans will be hazardous to your health.

Hat tip: Big Government

Rotating Blades -- Meet Guano

The lid may be about to come off the European debt crisis.  Angela Merkel no longer has the votes in the Bundestag to back the rescue packages for the Euro.  Thus, Germany may be heading to a Constitutional crisis, and the Euro may be headed for a fall.

Mrs Merkel has cancelled a high-profile trip to Russia on September 7, the crucial day when the package goes to the Bundestag and the country's constitutional court rules on the legality of the EU's bail-out machinery.

If the court rules that the €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) breaches Treaty law or undermines German fiscal sovereignty, it risks setting off an instant brushfire across monetary union.

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe's debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. "Hysteria is sweeping Germany " said Klaus Regling, the EFSF's director.

Europe is about a month away from it all coming apart and the Euro being reduced to a few specific countries (if it survives at all).  This should have the effect of driving investors to the US dollar as a safe haven--unless our Chinese creditors convince the world that the yuan is the new international currency (which, considering their overheating economy, may be their plan all along to obtain the investments required to keep the lid on their own bubbling pot).

As I noted earlier, it's time to harden up and batten down the hatches, because our current Administration will not have clue one in how to deal with the coming storm.

Hat tip: Reuters, the Telegraph

Dirt Nap

Upper management positions in Al-Qaida continue to be hazardous to the occupants (as well as being in Pakistan).  And, once again, it looks like we have the U.S. Air Force to thank:

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says al-Rahman was killed Aug. 22 in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. That's the same day a US drone strike in Waziristan.

So why is it critical to keep taking out senior leadership in terrorist groups?  Becuase they are the ones most capable of planning and directing terrorist events.  Sadly, there is no lack of morons who will wear explosives and kill themselves for the cause--it's the ones who are capable of planning the operations and logistics to carry out such attacks that are more difficult to come by.  Hence, every time Hell welcomes a new member, it makes Al-Qaida's (and every other gathering of terrorist  ass clowns) attempts to kill Americans and our Allies that much more difficult.

It still doesn't get to the root cause of Islamic extremism, but it does blunt the effect. Remember, unless there is a Reformation in Islam, it will not end well for anyone--there are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, and if only 10% of them are extremists, that means there are 130 million people who want to enslave or kill the rest of us. (A Pew poll on Islam conducted in June 2010 found that, depending on the country surveyed, between 11% to 59% of Muslims surveyed identified with fundamentalists.)

Al-Qaida? We have an express lane set up just for you!

Apologies Again

As usual, work has kept me on the road and away from posting.  Expect blog entries over the next couple months to be light and sporadic as I will be racking up humongous amounts of frequent traveler air miles.  So, apologies now and for the future.  To compensate, here's a beautiful woman to gaze upon:

What can I say: I'm a bear, I'm male, and I'm straight.

So Easy A Caveman Can Do It

A recent scientific study indicates that human sexual encounters with Neanderthals resulted in  increased genetic abilities to fight off disease and illness.  This addition to our genetic structure occurred thousands of years ago.

Neanderthals died off about 30,000 years ago. They and the Denisovans shared a common ancestor with modern humans about 400,000 years ago.

Modern humans eclipsed these ancient cousins when our contemporaries began expanding into Asia and Europe from Africa about 65,000 years ago.

The human body has undergone many changes and modifications in response to environmental pressures (people born today still bear the antibodies of the survivors of the plagues which decimated Europe in the 1300s).  The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this study is to engage in sex as often as possible and with as many different people as possible.  Your future progeny surviving medical apocalypses depends upon it.

Who knew that science could be so much fun.

Difficult Times Are Coming

Unemployment is still up, housing values are still decreasing, union thugs are shooting non-unionized business owners, The State Department is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (as well as Egypt), rioters destroy parts of London and other English cities, black flash mobs are stealing from stores and attacking whites with impunity, Mexican drug cartels moving into the US... the next few years are going to test our resolve, and will not be kind to the weak.

The Riots WIll Continue Until Morale Improves

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is reportedly coonsulting with former LAPD Chief William Bratton on how to handle the riot situation in England.  What was one of Bratton's suggestions?  That the British police practice racial diversity in hiring police officers.


Chief Bratton has reportedly done excellent work in the past in cities he's policed, but the idea that you have to be "diverse" to me continues to drive a wedge between people by implying that they are incapable of understanding what is legal and what isn't unless someone of their color/race/ethnicity/religion/etc. tells them so.  Thus we resort to the cop-out of having someone of the same color/ethnicity/religion/etc. arrest them so no one can claim we're being racist for hauling someone's ass to jail for committing a crime. 

In an ideal world, it shouldn't matter what color you are, if you're breaking the law you should be arrested and subjected to the judicial process.  A brick thrown through a storefront window to commit a robbery is still a crime whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, green Christian, Muslim, Hindu, whatever.

Unfortunately, western society curls up into a fetal position when someone plays the race card and claims you're violating their rights when you arrest them for brick throwing because of their color/ethnicity/religion/etc.  No one ever seems to play the card back to them, and asks, "Why do we have to bend our society to your beliefs and culture when you have so little respect for ours?" 

Sadly for Great Britain, hiring more 'Asians' on the police force is not going to solve their riot problems;  dealing with their welfare problem would go a lot further.

As in the United States, perhaps people would be less likely to engage in random violence if they were too busy working for a living.

The New Pravda

In the Soviet Union, the Communist Party's propaganda organ was called "Pravda."  Pravda is Russian for 'truth.'  (In fact, Pravda is still published even today.)  Why do I bring up this old relic of the Evil Empire?  Because the majority of the mainstream media behaves as if it is the propaganda organ of today's Democrat Party.  Rather than dig for the pravda, they see it as their task to protect the Party and it's leader, Barack Obama.  For example, after adding trillions in debt, refusing to cut government spending, and taking our nation to the brink of insolvency, who does the Democrat Party blame?  Why, the very people who have been demanding that the spending stop and the nation's financial house be put in order. 

From David Axelrod to John Kerry (who served in Viet Nam, by the way), the new mind virus being propagated through the mainstream media is that the Tea Party is responsible for the Standard and Poor's downgrade of the United States' credit rating.  Not the demented assclowns like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd who passed legislation forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people who couldn't pay them back (and which lending practices George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress tried to halt--but were stopped by the Democrats because it's racist to not give money to poor people who can't pay it back), nor Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who passed Obamacare and the near trillion dollar 'stimulus' package which failed to keep the unemployment rate from rising as promised, nor Barack Obama whose administration has added almost $4 trillion dollars to our national debt, more than all of the administrations before his combined... no, it's the people who demanded that the insanity stop and the credit cards be cut up.


And how has all of that government spending worked out for us in the past?  Take the "War on Poverty" begun by Democrat President Lyndon Johnson:

Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, government has spent $15.9 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dol­lars) on means-tested welfare. In comparison, the cost of all other wars in U.S. history was $6.4 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars).

Nice gesture on the government's part--no one wants to see people suffer.  You would think we had won by now.  Too bad that, after spending almost $16 trillion dollars, the poverty rate in the United States hasn't changed.

Blaming the Tea Party for the credit rating downgrade is like the rapist blaming the rape victim for what happened.  And instead of reminding people as to who really got them into this mess in the first place, the mainstream media does its best to bury the truth and and then turn its shovels to spreading manure.  It's those damned Republicans driven by Tea Party extremists demanding that spending be cut rather than raising taxes to keep feeding the vote-buying machine built by the Democrat Party. 

So what's next?  Will the Washington Post or New York Times start engaging in airbrushing inconvenient people out of photographs once they're no longer useful, like the Soviets did to failed cosmonauts in their space program?

 

Will we see Tim Geithner disappear from the cover of Newsweak?   At least Pravda was honest about its purpose, and didn't hide behind the veil of 'impartiality' and 'unbiased' reporting.

Photo Hat Tip: Wired

Arab Spring - More Unintended Consequences

Turkey's senior military leadership resigned en masse last week in protest of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policies.  Turkey's military, the second largest military force in NATO, has long been the protector of the secular state created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.  It has conducted three coups since 1960, and pressured an Islamist-led government to resign in 1997.

Having learned from these prior examples, Erdogan took on the military early in his term, jailing many senior officers for plotting against the civilian, Islamist government (over 250 senior officers have been indicted and are awaiting trial).  This tactic put the military on the defensive and inhibited their ability to keep Islamic extremists in check.

As with Egypt and other Islamic countries in turmoil this past year, the rise of fundamentalist Islam will significantly change the Middle East--and not for the better.  The difference with Turkey is that we now have a nation with a capable modern military which will become increasingly more hostile to western beliefs and values.  Elections do not necessarily equate to freedom--as we will discover in Egypt later this year.

Most. Ethical. Administration. Evah!

It appears that the United States government is responsible for providing the means of murdering a yet unknown number of people in Mexico.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious was so out of control by November 2009 that it was singlehandedly arming the Sinaloa Cartel.

At one point, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say guns sold under the program took just 24 hours to travel from a gun store in Phoenix to a crime scene in Mexico. ATF agents there pleaded for help but were told nothing about Fast and Furious, which was intended to let guns "walk" in order to track them to higher-profile traffickers.

 According to the Congressional Report, 

In late 2009, ATF officials stationed in Mexico began to notice a large volume of guns appearing there that were traced to the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division. These weapons were increasingly recovered in great numbers from violent crime scenes. ATF intelligence analysts alerted Darren Gil, Attaché to Mexico, and Carlos Canino, Deputy Attaché, about the abnormal number of weapons. Gil and Canino communicated their worries to leadership in Phoenix and Washington, D.C., only to be brushed aside. Furthermore, ATF personnel in Arizona denied ATF personnel in Mexico access to crucial information about the case, even though the operation directly involved their job duties and affected their host country.

Rather than share information, senior leadership within both ATF and the Department of Justice (DOJ) assured their representatives in Mexico that everything was “under control.” The growing number of weapons recovered in Mexico, however, indicated otherwise. Two recoveries of large numbers of weapons in November and December 2009 definitively demonstrated that Operation Fast and Furious weapons were heading to Mexico. In fact, to date, there have been 48 different recoveries of weapons in Mexico linked to Operation Fast and Furious.

ATF officials in Mexico continued to raise the alarm over the burgeoning number of weapons. By October 2010, the amount of seized and recovered weapons had “maxed out” space in the Phoenix Field Division evidence vault.1 Nevertheless, ATF and DOJ failed to share crucial details of Operation Fast and Furious with either their own employees stationed in Mexico or representatives of the Government of Mexico. ATF senior leadership allegedly feared that any such disclosure would compromise their investigation. Instead, ATF and DOJ leadership’s reluctance to share information may have only prolonged the flow of weapons from this straw purchasing ring into Mexico.

ATF leadership finally informed the Mexican office that the investigation would be shut down as early as July 2010. Operation Fast and Furious, however, continued through the rest of 2010. It ended only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010 with weapons linked to this investigation. Only then did the ATF officials in Mexico discover the true nature of Operation Fast and Furious. Unfortunately, Mexico and the United States will have to live with the consequences of this program for years to come.

According to Fox News, ATF officials confirmed the murder of Mario Gonzales Rodriguez, brother of the Chihuahua attorney general, was with a gun obtained through the Fast and Furious program. (Thank goodness for that biased, right-wing, fascist, news organization Fox, as no other main stream media is covering this story. Makes you wonder what else they're not covering in the defense of their chosen one.  Remember this when you ask yourself how we could have gotten to the point of the economic disaster we're still experiencing--maybe if we had a media that actually worked instead of planting its lips fully around the sexual organs of the Democratic Party we might have been able to do something beforehand. But that's grist for another rant at another time.)

One of the ATF agents lied to during the operation by his ATF and DOJ superiors termed it "... the perfect storm of idiocy."  I call it just one more piece of evidence for the eventual impeachment trial--if this were a just world.

Hat tip:  Ace of Spades