Guilty or Not, Don't Expect Hillary Indictment

If you believe the Justice Department will file charges against any Democrat for anything, then I would like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn. I'm not just talking about Lois Lerner here, who skates after obviously using the IRS to target Tea Party groups. Lerner didn't get charged with anything. How about Jon Corzine, who managed commodity brokerage MF Global into bankruptcy? Corzine was a big fund raiser for Obama and a former Democratic Governor and Senator from New Jersey. He ordered $700 million of customer funds to be used to cover corporate debts. His excuse, in sworn testimony before Congress, was that his accounting systems were so bad he didn't know what he was doing. First, using customer money for corporate purposes is the biggest no-no in the brokerage business. Second, under Sarbanes Oxley, CEO Jon Corzine was responsible for the condition of his accounting and ignorance is not a defense. He was not indicted either. As we say in Chicago, the fix is in. There is no alternative to Hillary for a liberal presidential candidate, so there will be no indictment of Hillary, NO MATTER WHAT HILLARY DOES OR DID.

Leif Ericson Says Global Warming is Malarkey

My problem with the whole argument for man-made global warming is the narrowness of the time frame of observations being used. Just look up the Wikipedia entry on paleoclimatology and look at the temperature graph over millions of years. There are some really wide swings and long periods of time when Earth was a lot hotter than it is now. 
 
I think the 135 year time span of the primary detailed observations leaves a lot of room for reasonable doubt, particularly since the satellite record for the last 36 years shows almost no change. The obvious political motivations of the people behind the global warming movement, who seek unchecked absolute power through the control of all energy use, makes me believe they have both the motive and opportunity for falsifying the data. The fact that Michael Mann's famous hockey stick did not show the Medieval Warming Period at all should make everyone think that something is fishy. The Medieval Warming Period is why Leif Ericson was able to discover America sometime around 980 AD. The following Little Ice Age is why there were no Viking settlements when Christopher Columbus got here in 1492. The existence of both the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age really are accepted scientific and historical facts. 
 
I know some legitimate scientists take this very seriously. But I believe that the planet is a very big place with a huge amount of water that is going to buffer whatever man does in the short run. I think AGW is a political movement disguised as science. I don't think AGW has met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson

Liberals' Contempt for Truth, Law and Responsibility

This week Liberals demonstrated their total contempt for truth and the rule of law.  Liberals also demonstrated domestic politics and personal convenience are much more important to them than national security.  The only thing Liberals are really good at is avoiding responsibility for any of their decisions and getting their supporters in the press to justify whatever the outcomes are as brilliant, unavoidable or Bush’s fault.

First, on the facts leading up to the Benghazi attack, it’s clear that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was responsible for the protection of State Department personnel in Benghazi.

The 16 member Army Special Forces team assigned to protect State Department personnel in Libya plus a six-member State Department elite force called a Mobile Security Deployment team followed orders and left Libya in August, 2012. This was about a month before the attack. The embassy in Tripoli, Libya, asked repeatedly to retain them, and asked repeatedly for more security after they left, but the State Department denied all of the requests.  The nobody in the Obama Administration has ever explained who ordered the extra security teams home and why the order was given.  However, it’s clear from a military point of view that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was responsible.

Military commanders who fatally weaken their defenses before a successful enemy attack do not get promoted. Hillary is asking to be promoted to Commander in Chief.

The House Committee’s political motives for investigating the Benghazi attacks don't change these facts.  Here are the links on the security teams’ withdrawal:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444799904578048344154761294

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article24738427.html

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/may/19/ron-johnson/hillary-clintons-state-department-reduced-security/

Hillary Clinton’s 11 hours of testimony before the Benghazi Committee is very easy to summarize.  “I lied, so what.”  All of the nit picking excuses in the world, and Hillary and her defenders have tried to come up with all of them, don’t change the fact that the entire Obama Administration knowingly said that the Benghazi attack was tied to an internet video when they knew that it was a planned terrorist attack by Ansar Al Sharia, an Al Qaeda affiliate.  Getting all emotional about all those Republican men verbally beating up on a poor little old grandmother is a smoke screen.  People died, then Hillary lied.

At this point Liberals start talking about attacks on American Embassies during Republican presidential terms.   The difference between previous attacks on American Embassies and the Benghazi attack is that the Republican Administrations didn't try to cover up who made the attacks and why they were made. Just like in Watergate, the cover up is the big problem here.

Moving on to Hillary’s email server, the talking points here are that none of the information on the server was marked as classified.  The information is classified whether it has the secret stamp on it or not. The law does not say it has to be stamped to be classified. Information that describes intelligence sources and methods, for example, is something that everyone except the completely clueless knows is classified at least secret and more likely top secret. Everyone also knows that ignorance is not a defense, and I don't think any Hillary supporter would want to claim she was ignorant of the law anyway, or would they? 

The server did not meet federal standards for handling classified material. The server was not even set up to meet commercial standards of preserving privacy and preventing hacking. A subcontractor was backing up the data both on site and in a cloud.  Hillary's folks didn't even know it was happening. We are talking extreme, perhaps criminal, negligence here. 

Taking or receiving classified material at home and putting it on your own private email server is a slam dunk prosecution for mishandling classified material, a felony with a potential 10 year prison sentence. As someone with over 40 years in IT, it's my professional opinion that any foreign intelligence service that wanted the information could have stolen it from Hillary's private email server easily, leaving very little trace of their intrusion. If a Republican federal office holder at any elected or appointed level did this, they would be indicted and awaiting trial right now. The Pravda Press would be screaming for their blood. Since it's Hillary, the whole investigation is politically motivated and there's nothing worth investigating. The corruption of the mainstream media is monumentally disgusting. They are willing to tolerate a candidate for president who put her personal convenience above national security.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/08/14/if-your-name-isnt-hillary-the-hammer-for-mishandling-secrets

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/hillary-clinton-email-server-fbi-platte-river-214521

Finally we get to the veto of the National Defense Authorization Act.  This veto is another example of how Liberals put partisan politics ahead of national security.  President Obama is holding the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force as hostages so he can extort more domestic spending from Congress.  President Obama doesn't care how many people ISIS kills in Syria, as long as he can spend as much as he wants domestically to buy votes for Democrats.  Just so you know, the bill Obama vetoed did not spend any money.  It did prohibit closing Guantanamo prison where 116 Jihadist killers are still being held.  It also changed some other regulations and increased pay scales if the money was authorized to fund it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp

Is Syria Putin's Real Goal?

Vladimir Putin believes (probably correctly) that a fall from power will mean his death. Putin came to power after the 1998 oil price crash forced a Russian bond default, drove inflation to 80% and pushed Boris Yeltsin out of office. The price of oil has crashed again. Putin needs a higher price of oil or a significant military victory to stay in power.

Putin's military support of Bashir al Assad is designed to raise the price of oil by fomenting chaos in the Middle East. The price of oil has increased from about $45 a barrel to almost $50 a barrel for Brent crude since Putin's intervention started, nice but insufficient.

Putin has other reasons for optimism on oil prices. The Iran Nuclear deal guarantees a Middle East war in the next 6 months. It both permits unlimited Iranian oil sales and gives Iran access to $150 billion in formerly frozen assets. Iran's oil revenue last year was about $55 billion. This is big money for the Mad Mullahs to spend on weapons and training militias and terrorists.

I don't think the Israelis, Saudis and Egyptians are going to wait peacefully while the Iranians to make enough nuclear weapons to wipe them out. I expect them to attack Iran's two big economic vulnerabilities. Over 90% of Iran's oil exports flow through the Kharg Island oil terminal, 16 miles offshore. All of Iran's gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel is imported. They have no refineries. If Iran's enemies bomb Kharg Island and mine their harbors from the air, it puts Iran out of business economically. Iran would probably try to close the Strait of Hormuz to retaliate. Most of the Persian Gulf oil exports move through the Strait of Hormuz. Even if the Iranians are unsuccessful, the threat of attack may be enough. If the strait is a war zone, oil tanker ships moving through it will have no insurance. A significant amount of oil will not reach the international market.

I come to believe that Putin's Middle East moves may be a feint. If he’s going the military route, his target is most likely one of the three former Soviet Republics that are now NATO members. It's Putin's choice of Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. I think Lithuania is a logical choice because taking it would give Russia land access to the Russian enclave of Kalingrad, formerly East Prussia. Putin has recently firmed up a deal with Belarus for a big Russian air base within striking distance of the Baltic States. This will be the first Russian military base in Belarus since it became an independent country.  The agreement didn’t get much coverage in the press.  I think even a massive Russian buildup on Lithuania’s border would not get much press either.

Barry the Brilliant has made polite gestures towards defending the Baltic countries, but nothing that would actually be effective. Our Smartest President Ever refuses to have more than a few hundred American soldiers in any of these countries, and they are just passing through. Obama also refuses to establish NATO air bases in any former Eastern Block counties because there's a treaty with Russia that promises we won't do that. Russia already broke that treaty, but we're still living up to it. If any NATO country falls to Russia, the failure of NATO to defend an ally effectively would destroy the alliance. Putin is desperate enough to try it. Given the Middle East chaos distracting world leaders, the general weakness of NATO and the specific weakness of the defenses in the Baltic countries, Putin has a decent chance of getting away with it.