What a tragedy. Progressives stabbed McCrystal in the back. Progressives stabbed the people of Afghanistan in the back. Progressives stabbed our uniformed men and women in the back. And they're currently destroying our nation from within and without. As Andrew [Breitbart] said to the Trumka-Obama hordes in Madison: "Go to Hell."
California has changed not due to race but due to culture, most prominently because the recent generation of immigrants from Latin America did not — as in the past, for the most part — come legally in manageable numbers and integrate under the host’s assimilationist paradigm. Instead, in the last three decades huge arrivals of illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America saw Democrats as the party of multiculturalism, separatism, entitlements, open borders, non-enforcement of immigration laws, and eventually plentiful state employment.RTWT.
Given the numbers, the multicultural paradigm of the salad bowl that focused on “diversity” rather than unity, and the massive new government assistance, how could the old American tonic of assimilation, intermarriage, and integration keep up with the new influxes? It could not.
The best forces fighting Assad are the radical Islamists, organized in such groups as Jabhat al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar al-Sham. The Saudis and Qataris would be pleased to see them take power in Syria. They are backing them partly because Syria’s civil war is also a conflict between the Sunni Gulf monarchies and Shia Iran; each has Syrian proxies. But the United States should have no use for these groups and others of their ilk. Indeed, among the reasons the Obama administration wants to supply the resistance is to change the balance of forces within the opposition between the hard line Islamists and other groups, who are said to be secular, moderate, democratic and other good things besides. But sending arms into the complicated, confusing Syrian battlefield requires (or certainly should) that there be a high degree of confidence that the weapons will only get into the hands of those deemed to be good guys, and will stay there. The mechanisms by which this can be ensured are unclear.Well, it can't be ensured.
We need federal legislation that provides strong penalties for any misuse of data obtained through national security programs. We also need more public accountability and public debate on these issues—which is why NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whatever his motives and morals, has performed a valuable service.The key there on Snowden is "whatever his motives and morals," because obviously those attributes are deeply in doubt.
The libertarian critique provides an essential check on the surveillance state. But liberty cannot survive unless a free society can be defended. And, if libertarians downplay the threat posed by our enemies, they undercut their credibility in opposing the threat posed by the intrusive state.
More at the link.
Since the 19th century, all official Navy communications have been written that way, a legacy of primitive technology combined with the service's love of tradition.
But in the modern age, young sailors more accustomed to texting on their phones consider TYPING IN ALL CAPS akin to shouting. Typographers, meanwhile, have long maintained that all-caps text is hard on the eyes.
So the Navy, amid a modernization of its communications system, decided it would make its official messages more readable—and potentially less rude.
In an April order delivered in all capital letters, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command announced sailors were "AUTHORIZED TO USE STANDARD, MIXED-CASE CHARACTERS IN THE BODY OF NAVY ORGANIZATIONAL MESSAGES."
It noted, however, that sailors shouldn't go crazy. Standard mixed-case sentences were only appropriate for the body of the text.
"RECOMMEND CONTINUE TO USE UPPER CASE IN LINES BEFORE REMARKS," the order said.
Because of legacy systems that use the old all-caps Teletype language, the Navy could only make the shift after adopting a new messaging system it is moving to this year. The system has the added benefit of using fewer computer servers and costing $15 million less a year to operate.
The Navy was not unconcerned about the tender feelings of young sailors.
"If an ancillary benefit is that sailors reading message traffic no longer feel they're being screamed at…that is a good thing too," said a Navy official. The official insisted the move was not an example of the service going soft.
Vice Adm. Herbert F. Leary wrote in June 1942 to Adm. Chester Nimitz after the latter's victory at the Battle of Midway: "ALL HANDS HERE WATCH GRAND SHOW NEAR MIDWAY AND SEND ADMIRING BEST WISHES AND CONGRATULATIONS X KEEP EM SINKING." It might not have looked as jubilant if Adm. Leary had written instead, "keep em sinking."
The Navy acknowledges not everyone is happy with the change. "Some of the fleets were stuck in their ways and really wanted to keep the all-caps," said James McCarty, the Naval messaging program manager at Fleet Cyber command. "But it was inevitable. It had to happen."
Some senior officers believe once the ALL CAPS disappear, any number of strange characters might enter Navy orders, such as @, % or even—gasp—emoticons.
Mr. McCarty says he doesn't think emoticons will appear in official Navy communications. "Someone could put a smiley face or a heart in there. It may very well happen," he said. "But it would be the last thing that person ever does."
In a USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll, most Americans say the NSA leaker should be prosecuted, but two-thirds don't like the idea the U.S. government is collecting their own communication records.Well, he's a traitor.
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans say the person responsible for leaking top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance of phone and Internet records should be criminally prosecuted, a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds, even as views are closely divided about the wisdom of the programs themselves.
The poll, taken Wednesday through Sunday, shows a nation riven by cross-currents about the unauthorized disclosures by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, of sweeping surveillance programs that can collect information about millions of Americans and foreigners.
By 54%-38%, those surveyed say he should be prosecuted. Most Americans say the programs have helped prevent terrorist attacks, by 53%-41%, a point pressed by top administration officials including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
There is an almost even split on the most fundamental question. By 48%-47%, Americans divide over whether they approve or disapprove of the programs as part of the effort to fight terrorism. By another narrow margin, 49%-44%, they say the release of classified information serves rather than harms the public interest.
The mix of views, some of them conflicting, underscores the complications of public opinion on the issue. Previous polls have shown divergent results when asked about the programs. That may help explain why both President Obama and Snowden publicly were making their arguments for and against the programs in interviews published and aired Monday.
"The more people learn about this, it could affect their final judgment on whether the government was right or wrong to do what it's been doing," says Michael Dimmock, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. "What I think you're seeing in a lot of the surveys is that the public isn't particularly happy about this program, particularly in the realm of civil liberties and privacy, but a lot of people are willing to give the government a certain amount of leeway in fighting against. terrorism."
The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides.Continue reading.
No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in Mexico for selling lethal semi-automatic weapons to drug cartels. But so far, the only identifiable purveyor of illegal weaponry is the president’s own attorney general, whose subordinates in the Fast and Furious operation sold hundreds of guns illegally to Mexican drug lords.
Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross assumes does.
If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.
The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. The FBI is said to be carefully avoiding monitoring mosques, although all of the above terrorists were known by many fellow Muslim worshipers to be either disturbed or extremist or both. In contrast, the NSA monitors, we are told, nearly everyone’s communications rather than focusing on Middle Eastern male Muslims, even though Middle Eastern male Muslims have been involved in the vast majority of post-9/11 terrorist plots. The NSA is the electronic version of the TSA, which feels it is noble and liberal to stop an octogenarian in a wheel chair for special frisking as proper compensation for every focused look at a West Bank resident or Pakistani visitor on his way into the United States.
The words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in a non-profit’s name would more likely earn a negative appraisal from the IRS than would “Islam” or “Muslim.” One wonders how Lois Lerner’s IRS division would treat a hypothetical “Sarah Palin Foundation” versus “The Dr. Zawahiri Charity.”
@AmPowerBlog Oh, that twerp again. He started attacking me back during the Kimberlin stuff, IIRC.
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 5, 2013
.@rsmccain Figures. He's a troll rights harasser of the first order!
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 5, 2013
I almost feel sorry for that guy. Oh and if he's reading this, he should know that he may not comment at my blog unless he registers as a known troll & pays the toll.Ha! Widdle Walter Weppy, the "known troll." That's perfect!
Persistently ignoring the wrongs he has committed, he makes accusations of wrongdoing against others as justifying further sadistic harassment of his chosen enemies.Yes, because he's a victim!
If I had the opportunity to squeeze Nigella Lawson, her throat wouldn't be my first choice.
— Nick Griffin MEP (@nickgriffinmep) June 17, 2013
My mom brought some Mirror Pond Pale Ale for #FathersDay. Tasty. #Beer. pic.twitter.com/OEvTKlGepZ
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 17, 2013
