There is something that bothers me about 'Women and Children First" militia strategy.

It just has to be said. If such a scenario transpired, I would not be surprised if a random shooting here or there would occur to blame the government and cause the nation alarm. It is just the way the militants in The West are. I don't think they'd kill any of their own, but, who knows?

Just to clarify, the actions of the agents on the scene were more than restrained while still being effective to protect the lives of citizens. The scene at the white dump truck could have been very bad if they weren't there.

It was obvious the militias have no respect for authority. They were a mob with military style weapons. Does anyone realize what would have happened to those agents? 

Debra J. Saunders
Published 5:26 pm, Monday, April 14, 2014 

...Sandoval (click here) issued a statement before the BLM backed down in which he argued, "No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation" that he placed on BLM's doorstep. 

That sentiment ought to apply to Bundy as well. The rancher says he does not recognize the authority of federal courts. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws," Breitbart Texas reports that the scion told talk radio. "But, I don't recognize the United States government as even existing."

He was willing to start a "range war" and risk the lives of his supporters in order to retrieve some cows. He doesn't feel he has to recognize a government elected by his fellow citizens. 

The BLM clearly can be accused of overreach, but who elected Bundy to be judge, jury and sheriff?

Bundy could have fought the government at the ballot box by trying to elect members of Congress who want to de-fang the BLM. (It's strange when you realize that for all their anti-Washington sentiments, Nevada voters have sent Harry Reid to the Senate repeatedly since 1986.) That's the American way. Threatening to shoot law enforcement officers who simply are carrying out court orders is not.

If there is any question about the federal lands in Nevada, one only needs to do an assessment of military installations. 

Aug. 23, 2010 at 4:09 PM
 
...The Nevada Test Site, (click here) 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was used in the early days of the nuclear age to test nuclear weapons. More than 900 detonations were announced between 1951 and 1992, most of which were underground blasts....

So much for range fed beef.

This isn't enough.

Posted: Apr 15, 2014 6:04 PM EST  
Updated: Apr 15, 2014 6:04 PM EST

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Half of the members (click here) of Albuquerque's Police Oversight Commission have resigned, citing a lack of independence and inability to provide any real citizen oversight of the troubled department.

The resignations Tuesday by three members of the civilian review board comes less than a week after the Department of Justice issued a scathing report on what it called excessive force and a culture of abuse and aggression at the department. Albuquerque officers have shot at 37 men since 2010, killing 23.

The report also criticized the city's oversight system and limited powers in investigating cases of questionable police conduct.

Oversight commission members Jennifer Barela, Jonathan Siegel and Richard Shine sent their letters of resignation to Mayor Richard Berry Tuesday. That leaves just three members on the nine-member panel, which had three vacancies.

Today the US Justice Department condemned fliers that were anti-police. That is all fine and good, but, those fliers reveal a profound fear of the authorities and the police. When are those that have committed murder going to be arrested and tried? The obvious evidence isn't enough?

By Radley Balko 
April 14 at 4:52 pm

...In 1998 the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico (click here) brought in Jerry Galvin to take over the police department after a series of questionable shootings and SWAT incidents moved the city to commission an outside investigation. In one incident that made national news, one SWAT officer said to his colleagues, “Let’s go get the bad guy,” just before the team went to confront 33-year-old Larry Walker. The “bad guy” wasn’t a terrorist, killer, or even a drug dealer, but depressed man whose family had called the police because they feared he might be contemplating suicide. The SWAT team showed up in full battle attire, including assault rifles and flash grenades. They found Walker “cowering under a juniper tree,” the New York Times later reported, then shot him dead from 43 feet away....

1998 to present is a long time to kill people without reason and simply because it is the best sport in town.

Poor Phyllis is always so confused.

...Today, (click here) the Christian Post published an op-ed from Schlafly that argues that if women made the same amount of money as men, marriage as we know it would vanish, and that's a bad thing. Maybe the worst thing....

 

It would appear she still has her head in the sand, because, the the 'marriage as 'we' (she) knows it ended a long time ago. Women and their children are living in poverty. So, if women are working for less today, then where are all the well paid men wanting to marry them? Because, you see, those that either live together or are married are primarily the working poor these days. It would appear Phyllis has compromised the values of marriage a long time ago by weakening women's ability to contribute to the best outcomes of their family.

 

Her advice has victimized women, hence, their families.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.3 million

 
The number of single mothers living with children younger than 18 in 2012, up from 3.4 million in 1970.

5.9 million

Number of custodial mothers who were owed child support in 2009.

36%

Percentage of births in the past 12 months that were to women age 15 to 50 who were unmarried (including divorced, widowed and never married women).

Any pandemic begins with one individual.

...In the decades after the fall of the Third Reich, (click here) Nazism was a discredited political philosophy. Few could envision its revival. Fewer still could conceive of a neo-Nazi presence in the United States. Yet, by 1959, only 14 years after the Allies crushed the last remnants of German Nazism in Berlin, an American war veteran from a prominent New England family who served as a Navy pilot in the Pacific theater donned an Americanized Nazi uniform and spoke bluntly about the tragic mistake the United States made in World War II by siding with the Allies instead of with Nazi Germany. George Lincoln Rockwell openly vilified Jews in language lifted right from Mein Kampf. He praised Adolf Hitler as a visionary leader and introduced a new generation of Americans to Nazi theories of racial purity and biological determinism....

Now what was that the Leftists in the USA are always stereotyped to be pledging their loyalties? Ahhhhh.........Oh, yeah, "The Communist Manifesto." 

Right.

By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Published April 15, 2014, issue of April 25, 2014

Just hours (click here) after a white supremacist allegedly murdered three people at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home outside Kansas City, the local police chief insisted that nothing could have been done to stop the shootings.

 “This was, unfortunately, totally unexpected,” Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass told a news conference. “If we had the slightest hint it was going to happen, we would have done everything we could to stop it.”
Yet the arrest came as less than a shock for anti-extremist investigators who have tracked Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, since the 1970s....

I tell you what. Mr. Miller or Cross whichever is his identity at the moment is 74 years old. The way I see it, is that Miller-Cross needed to 'get it right with god' before he dies. Is he ill? Or. Is he still mentally ill? Or. Has his guilt for tuning in his buddies finally manifest in penance before he dies?

Just to clear up the difference between "Mein Kampf" and "The Communist Manifesto:"

Hitler was a fascist, right winger. He would not be caught dead reading the Communist Manifesto which is considered a leftist ideology.

Yep.

You know something? If I were a right winger I'd align with Israel to hide the real racism that lies within the ideology, wouldn't you? There is evidence to that. The right wing recognizes the fundamentalists of the Jewish faith. The Orthodox. But, the Reformed and Conservative, whom practice more progressive social values (more modern day, including women's right to make their own decisions) are not really included in the right wing ideology. Seriously. Don't believe me? Do a compare and contrast.

Boston ! (click here)

Russia shoots itself in the foot.

This is the falling value of the Russian Ruble over the past year; 2013 - 2014.

The most dramatic damage Russia performed on it's own currency started with the discovery of it's faux face.

As years went by and Russia appeared to be one of the best emerging markets among the BRIC nations, FAITH and PREDICTABILITY added to the interest in the country. But, when it did an about face and returned to it's 'default' setting in regard to Ukraine, it only served to create skepticism about Russia's ability to maintain it's assurances in investments.

It is more than obvious Russia is concerned about it's own internal stability. There has been movements within Russia to change the social values and create a far better political environment that would promote growth. Any change in a country promotes growth. That was the focus of the investors. Change and openness welcomes benevolence and healthy environments for business. 

There is no reassurances at this point that Russia will even contain it's own borders. Nationalism is a symptom. It is a symptom of a country facing stress that could threaten it's own sovereignty. Bush/Cheney created nationalism in the USA post September 11, 2001 to harness cohesiveness for the political paradigm change we are still regretting as a country, ie: The Patriot Act, NSA leading to assaults against individual constitutional rights. Those laws would never have been tolerated without a culture of fear and the sense of nationalism in the USA.

Russia appears to be using nationalism to create a faux sense of a cohesive Russia. United if you will. The movement back to communism whereby invasion and expansionism as illustrated with Ukraine only goes to prove Russia has to go to extremes to maintain it's status. Regression is an overt expression of lack of confidence. Regression under Bush/Cheney was everywhere. Insecurity breeds regression and regression along with nationalism is a method of controlling the populous to insure 'certain' outcomes.

Oh, well.

If Russia continues these aggressions, propaganda and a high degree of unpredictability, the global community only needs to watch as deterioration takes it's toll.

The journalist Thomas Friedman had a segment clearly illustrating the perils of the climate crisis spelled out by the USA military.

Sundays at 10 PM. (click here)

The Showtime documentary series (click here) that began airing last night, “Years of Living Dangerously,” is a powerful reminder of why we need to act now to address climate change. More hurricanes, floods, droughts, intense storms, food scarcity—it’s all there in detail.  Expertly done, with graphic images and insightful commentary, the episode makes an impression and hopefully will prompt people to take this crisis more seriously, and to action to reduce the carbon pollution that’s causing the problem.

But being honest here, research has shown that when people are presented with a whole bunch of seriously bad news on a massive scale, they can shut down. What this series is missing so far is an equal emphasis on the things we can do to help right this wrong.

That's why it was somewhat heartening to read some relatively good news in the morning papers. Yesterday the world's most authoritative body on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued a very influential report, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change." And while there's a bunch of bad news in there, there's also some cause for optimism. "Many Pathways to Substantial Emissions Reductions are Available," one of the press release headlines reads...

"Drought Called a Factor in Syria's Unrising" (click here) 

David Arnold
August 20, 2014

Two-and-a-half years ago, a group of children in the Syrian city of Dara’a triggered one of the bloodiest conflicts in the 21^st century when they painted some anti-government graffiti on a school wall in the ancient farming community.

The children were quickly detained and tortured, leading to widespread protests in the city that were met with harsh repression.  The government’s brutal response led to a nationwide revolt that has now stagnated into a bloody stalemate with no end in sight.

Dara’a is a mostly agricultural community in a region that has suffered an unrelenting drought since 2001. Some experts say it’s no accident that Syria’s civil war began there.....

Drip-trickle irrigation is the only effective form of moving water directly to the plant. The sprinkler systems actually waste a lot of water. The pipes need to be filled and then the actual water reaching the roots is diminished. The sprinklers waste water into water vapor as well as depositing most of the water on leaves and not the ground. It takes far more water from sprinkler systems to achieve the same effect as drip-trickle which delivers the water at the level of the ground where it is shaded by plant leaves and available to root systems.
  
...Each of us (click here) drinks 3 to 4 liters of water a day in one form or another, but it takes nearly 2,000 liters of water to produce the food we consume each day. 40 percent of the worlds grain harvest is grown on irrigated land and agriculture is responsible for between 70 and 78 percent of global water consumption. Irrigation systems often perform poorly, wasting up to 60 percent of the water, and they diminish surface water because of evaporation and plant transpiration....

An illustration of a 'drip' system. The water once it enters the delivery system immediately is distributed to the plants throughout it's length. Drip systems conserve water and requires less energy. The pressure into the system to deliver the water is far less because it does not have to be pushed to any height be it one foot or six.

A drip system could bring function back to the farmland currently too parched. That cow could be on pasture right now. In returning water to the land once parched has to be slow otherwise it will remove the top soil and create very deep quick sand or better said, mud flats.

The League of Conservation Voters is teaming up with the NDRC to strengthen it's positions.

Issued by LCV - League of Conservation Voters

April 14, 2014

 

WASHINGTON, DC (click here) - League of Conservation Voters and the NRDC Action Fund announced today that they are drawing on their collective strengths to create LeadingGreen, a powerful new alliance in the environmental and political communities. 

 

LeadingGreen will create focused, collaborative power brokers in both advocacy and elections - a team that can target exactly the right pressure points to grow the environmental majority across party lines. It will unite top donors and influencers at the intersection of policy and politics to maximize their policy engagement and political leverage on climate change....

So, what occured yesterday in the local bays of Lake Michigan?

It was solid ice when I first went out to assess the bays at 10:30 AM, by 5 PM the bays looked as though it was open water. There were ice structures sticking up through the water. They weren't floating. So, it was surface melting. 

The snow flurries lasted all day in diminishing amounts across that time period. The surface water didn't have waves. The only movement of water were the wind ripples. So, the bays were still frozen and the outlets into the lake were still closed. The temperature dropped progressively through the day.
 
When I got to the southern tip of the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay there were straight line winds. No wind gusts. Consistent winds without change. 

The weather equipment in Traverse City was recording 21 mph winds, however, at that particular place, the southern tip of the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay, the wind was higher. It was difficult walking against the wind. The official temperature was 27 F. But, at that place the wind chill was severe. I could not stand in the wind without covering my face. Skin would not have held up well in a short period of time.

So, what was going on?

Those winds were warm, however, as it raced across the ice it melted it releasing the cold within the ice. So, as the surface ice was melting the air temperatures fell. That is the only thing that explains that level of cold in a local area.
 
It is called global warming. Ice gives up it's cold temperatures as it melts otherwise it wouldn't melt.