More Gun Lies the Establishment is Telling You

By L. Reichard White

To start with, as per the Standard Anti-Self-Defense Handbook — and using the so-far unexplained Las Vegas shooting spree as the latest platform — the usual Second Amendment scoff-laws still prominently include firearm suicides in their gun-death tally.

Thank goodness folks deprived of guns won’t use overdoses, tranquilizers-plus-booze, carbon monoxide, razor blades, poison, etc. — and bridges, tall buildings, and open windows for jumping — if they can’t get guns!

Or are the usual Congressional victim-disarmers misleading us again?
Suicide by any means, while regrettable, is a voluntary act, and those determined, gun or no gun, nearly always succeed. With that in mind, let’s put things in perspective:

The 19,392 gun suicides in the U.S. in 2010, a typical year, swamped the 11,078 firearm homicides. That is, firearm suicides amount to a whopping ~two-thirds of reported gun deaths, dwarfing all other categories combined.

So by lumping voluntary suicides in with homicides to inflate the anti-gun bogeyman — and scare the kids — the gun-grabbers are indeed trying to mislead us again.

Another interesting epicycle: A new study — not by the “Authorities” who, in the interest of self-preservation try to duck it — shows that in 2015 U.S. cops killed at least 1,152 people, usually with firearms. This is the first time that statistic has been available because the FBI, etc. have refused to collect that data. For some reason.

That 1,152 deaths-by-cop is very close to 10% of the 11,078 homicides reported in 2010. Are those killings-by-cop included in the official homicide figures? Someone else will have to answer that one. Either way, that would mean cops are responsible for about 10% of U.S. gun homicides.

It’s also highly relevant that, as documented in Arm Yourself With The Facts, civilians shoot almost twice as many criminals as cops do, and their error rate — killing an innocent by mistake approximately 2% of the time — makes the cops kill-rate of 11% innocents killed seem down-right criminal.

And while we’re looking at things the misguided anti-gun folks like to coverup and/or ignore, even government studies by hostile researchers admit at least 108,000 defensive uses of firearms per year with other authoritative estimates as high as 2.5 million.

And then there are those “assault rifles.”

As far as crime goes, statistics — and common sense — both show, so-called “assault weapons” are non-starters, not to mention mis-named. Despite Hollywood, carrying an AR-15, AK-47 or other military-looking long gun concealed under your long black “duster” — or using one in close quarters, as in a robbery or mugging perhaps — just isn’t practical and rarely happens. Even The New York Times calls it “The Assault Weapon Myth.”

In defending your home from an outside assault, however, such weapons are very practical. So maybe it would be more accurate to call them “anti-assault weapons.”
And it isn’t always guns – – –

24 Injured In Stabbing At Franklin Regional High School « CBS Pittsburgh

And, if you’re worried about terrorism, firearms aren’t the most deadly or easiest weapon to use, although they may stop such a weapon – – –

…Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a rented, refrigerated truck weighing about 20 tons into crowds along a roughly 2-kilometer stretch of Promenade des Anglais on Thursday night, killing 84 people — including 10 children and adolescents — and injuring 202 others…. Attack in Nice – CNN

And then there’s the prominent role drugs play in mass-murders. No, not stupidly outlawed “illegal” drugs, establishment drugs. For example, most school shooters were on prescribed anti-depressants like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc. And of course, U.S. schools themselves were another common factor.

Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooter Paddock was taking Valium which can lead to aggressive behavior.

Our last misleader — Obama — also fertilized the lie that, with our guns, we Americans are an extremely violent people. Despite that hate-speech from the Propagandist-in-Chief, when compared to other countries, the U.S. isn’t all that violent. About average, in fact.

Except, of course, Americans overseas. You know, those unfortunates in the military who are forced to invade countries under false pretenses, blow up wedding parties, funerals and hospitals with B-52s, drones and Hellfire Missiles, etc. And are thus creating enemies for our kids, grand kids and the yet unborn for generations to come.

In that overseas arena, however, as polls show, folks indeed think the United States — that is, the U.S. Government — is extremely violent and poses the greatest threat to world peace.

If the Congressional oath-breakers were sincere about reducing violence here “in the freest country in the world,” instead of illegitimately using “Executive Orders“ to further tinker with the U.S. Constitution, the chronic oath-breakers would immediately decriminalize “illegal” drugs.

But of course, they’re not sincere.

Judging by the composition of the all-time world record U.S. prison population, decriminalization would eliminate approximately two-thirds of the robbery, burglary, mugging etc. since that would crash the price and eliminate the need for folks to steal to support their drug habit.
Well, at least to support their non-establishment drug habit – – –

Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight – The New York Times

But forget political new-speak, the real reason our unpopular elected pervaricators are again attempting to disarm us is likely the real reason the Second Amendment exists. And is second only to the First Amendment. Which is also under attack.

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.
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Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Is Iran Malign?

Malign: adj 1. Evil or harmful in nature or effect:

By Michael S. Rozeff

Is Iran malign? Yes, insofar as any state is per se malign; yes, as malign as any other state that wants to secure its borders; yes, as malign as any state with ambitions to expand its influence beyond its borders; and as malign as any state that seeks to export its system of government; and as malign as any state that seeks to consolidate and retain its domestic power; and as malign as any state that seeks military power to ward off other states that are inimical to it; and as malign as any state that builds covert aggressive operations that misleadingly are called “intelligence”.
In short, Iran is as malign as any other state operating in a system of international anarchy that has these kinds of aims; and most do.

Iran is as malign as any state that now includes or in the past has included one or more of the above enumerated properties, such as the U.S. The U.S. at its inception harbored extensive ambitions to expand over the continent. The U.S. targeted not only what are now the lower 48 states, but also Canada, Mexico, Central America, Cuba and Hawaii. It declared the entirety of South America as a region of its influence and potential intervention. In the last century, the U.S. has sought to export its form of government worldwide. It has accumulated military power that both defends America and attacks other states. It has created economic systems that extend its influence to many other countries. Its military alliances and presence span the globe. Iran’s expansion of relations with Latin American countries are mainly economic in nature. They are no more malign than those that the U.S. has with Asian countries. Indeed, the U.S. has forged political and military ties with many such countries that dwarf any similar activities by Iran beyond its borders. The U.S. is far more an aggressive power than Iran.


Iran is as malign as Israel, a state that in its own ways has operated along similar lines: secure its borders; expand its territory; retain domestic control by its ruling class; expand its military power and use it both defensively and offensively; develop an organization (Mossad) to conduct covert operations; maintain domestic control by a ruling class.

Iran has influence and presence in neighboring Syria, Iraq and Lebanon through state-to-state relations, economic relations, and through Hezbollah, Shia militias, and the IRG. In this respect, Iran is as malign as any other state that has now or in the past has had similar kinds of relations and influence with nearby border states: The Russian Federation, the U.S., Brazil and Israel, to name a few current ones, never mind seeking out the extensive historical examples.

The U.S. wants to suppress or contain Iran’s ambitions, and so it paints Iran as malign and a threat to the U.S. The charge that Iran is evil, a synonym for malign, is meaningless in a comparative context. Iran doesn’t significantly deviate from the behavior of many states, past and present. The charge that Iran threatens the U.S. is false. Iran is no military threat to America.

Iran competes with Israel for regional dominance. The U.S. takes Israel’s side. Because of the political and financial heft of Israel among American voters and the Congress, which the U.S. government does not want openly to acknowledge, the U.S. resorts to all sorts of fanciful rationales to explain why the U.S. looks upon Israel as an “interest” or as a protectorate or as a 51st state. It resorts to characterizing Iran as evil for doing the same kinds of things that many states, including the U.S., are doing or have done.

If Iran had submarines that could launch nuclear-tipped missiles at America, it would be a threat; but only if its own assured destruction by our own bombs didn’t deter it. A madman at the helm or in control of the nuclear buttons is a risk that arises within any country, including our own, Israel, Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, the U.K., France and Russia. That’s the world we live in; and that’s the biggest reason for seeking peaceful relations with every country and seeking ways to prevent nuclear war. This includes creating systems that can be monitored that prevent madmen or seemingly rational men from having sole power to launch nuclear weapons. It includes systems that prevent accidents. It includes nuclear disarmament.

In the present system of states, peace cannot be secured unless states secure it. This requires that the state’s officials have peace as an overriding aim. The danger in the current system of states is that representatives in key governments across the world do not represent what may be and might be the peaceable aims of their peoples. They support their own aims and those of the state. They support views, aims and ambitions of their shadow governments, deep states and interest groups. They teach their peoples to fear enemies, to suppress actual and conceivable threats of foreign countries, to hate foreigners, to hate foreign leaders, to regard foreigners with suspicion, and to support the domestic state’s ambitions, powers and expansion aims.

If states are not securing the peace to the degree that we the people want; if they are actively propagandizing us for war aims; and if they continue to foment aggression, then we must secure the peace ourselves. We have to recognize peace as our interest and make it an important aim.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Leftist "Logic": Prudence=Crime

By Tom Woods

I can’t keep up with the left-libertarian world anymore. The nuttiness is coming out faster than I can smash it.

The latest entry: Sarah Skwire, in Newsweek.

“Who Hates Women Most? Pence, Trump, or Weinstein?”
You can already see where this is going (Skwire in italics):
Vice President Mike Pence won’t meet alone with women.
Meanwhile, guys like Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein won’t keep their hands off them.

Almost the same thing, obviously!

Pence’s camp would have women kept in some sort of professional purdah, where important avenues to public influence and power are cut off because it is just too morally dangerous to interact with women on equal terms.

Trump and Weinstein would have women brought front and center—as long as they’re showing off a lot of cleavage and getting groped—but only as signals of their masculine power and success.

Not dining alone with women who are not his wife — not a completely insane policy on both sides, you’d think — doesn’t seem to most people to involve cutting women off from positions of influence and power. It’s almost as if feminism is driven by hysteria and irrationality, but we shall return to that topic another day.

Meanwhile, the normal-person population still probably clings to the idea that (1) not dining alone with women, and (2) molesting them, are distinct enough courses of action that there’s no neat little lesson to be drawn by considering them together.

Those who think women must be secluded from men because they offer too many dangerous temptations or too much potential for rumor, and those who think that women are just great as long as they can be treated like amusement parks may appear to be treating women differently.
They may appear to be treating them differently, you see.

But they’re not treating them differently, according to our author. A guy who brutalizes women and forces them into sexual situations against their will is really doing the same thing that Pence does: “treating women as ancillary to men.”

(This is straight out of the SJW playbook — where, for instance, speech and violence are really the same thing. Oh, really? Get your teeth kicked in sometime and tell me that’s really the same thing as being called a name.)
Perhaps the article was posted before the rape accusations against Weinstein surfaced. I’m willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt.
But what we knew about Weinstein even before the rape charges was grotesque enough.

As the father of five girls, I think it’s safe to say a normal person would consider them safer in Pence’s company than in Weinstein’s. (I have no doubt Skwire agrees.)

What’s hard to fathom is that news about an outright predator would surface, and someone would think: let’s draw a parallel to — of all people! — Mike Pence.

I’m no Mike Pence fan, as you all know. But what kind of bizarre motivation is at work here, that you’d hear about Weinstein and immediately think: get Pence! (I shall leave this to you, dear reader, as an exercise.)

It really is the transvaluation of all values. Pence’s policy is now to be rendered odious — so much so that he belongs in the same analysis with a molester.

We do, at last, get this grudging concession:
It matters, of course, that guys like Weinstein are sexually predatory, while guys like Pence are just exclusionary. One is illegal. The other is merely obnoxious.

The fact that sexual predation is illegal seems hardly to be its most salient feature. How about traumatizing, invasive, or evil?

Can’t go there, I guess, because then it would be even more preposterous to try to draw a common lesson that would include both Weinstein and Pence.

A pop libertarian commentator posted this article on Facebook and added, “Skwire nails it here.”
The response was widespread disgust — nearly every comment has been one of utter disbelief.

Skwire is the same person who once said a humorous article by the popular and capable Julie Borowski made her embarrassed to be a libertarian.

Now we know how you felt, Sarah.

Reprinted from the Tom Woods Letter.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

With "Friends" Like These...

By Ol' Remus

Now the NRA is looking to help promote "gunstock control" even knowing gun control laws are written over-broadly and enforced even more broadly. All laws, including the proposed "gunstock control" law, make criminals where there weren't any. And that's all they do. They don't prevent crime, they create it. More laws, more criminals. It can't be any other way. To gun control activists, gun owners are criminals, and there aren't yet enough laws to prosecute them all.

The whole purpose of the second amendment is to keep our right of self defense off the table. How is it different with bump stocks? It isn't. It's more infringement, plain and simple. It gets filed with the rest of the gun control laws, because that's what it is. Bump stocks are pointless novelties to most, but it doesn't matter, if a citizen wants one that's his decision to make. Not DC's. Certainly not the NRA's, if you're entrusted and funded to defend a principle, you defend it, and all that flows from it. Not just the popular parts. Not just the parts easiest to defend.

The NRA is apparently unaware they're throwing in, as a sweetener, the credibility they've earned since 1968. Neither their members or the gun control lobby will respect them for this. The NRA is supposed to stand against mindless stampedes, not join them. They should know the gun control crowd goes berserk when it smells blood. Watch their "bump fire act" run to a thousand pages. And even this won't be the end of it. It never is.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

"Hail Mary" Financial Policy

By Shaun Bradley

For those who believe in the virtue of central bank economic stimulus, the moment of truth has finally arrived. Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen announced late last month that the Fed plans to start shrinking its balance sheet for the first time since it expanded from less than $900 billion in 2008 to an unprecedented $4.5 trillion today. The initial wave of selling will start gradually next month with only $6 billion of Treasuries and $4 billion of mortgages, but the compounding effect over the coming months may shake investors’ confidence.

This kind of unwind has never been attempted before in history, and even the experts are extremely polarized about what might happen next.

Not many people care to understand the potential implications of programs like quantitative easing, which has been implemented most aggressively by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan since the depths of the Great Recession. The policy essentially involves pumping trillions of newly created dollars, euros, and yen into the financial system to ensure there’s always enough credit available for markets to function. Central banks buy up government treasuries, mortgages, and even shares of companies at prices that couldn’t possibly be supported in a freely traded system. This manipulated environment allows central planners to keep interest rates near zero and push money into certain asset classes.

These low rates have helped drive credit card debt, student loans, and auto loans to more than a trillion dollars each. People’s short memories and naive trust in the current system has led many to blindly follow the crowd into near debt enslavement. Low interest rates not only incentivize consumers to borrow and spend but also force investors to chase higher returns by putting their money in risky places like the stock market instead of safer positions like money market and savings accounts.

When central banks merge with government powers to bail out corrupt and bankrupt institutions, rest assured the public will always be the one to suffer the fallout. Debt-dependent governments like the United States are the prime beneficiaries of this unholy alliance. Without the restraint of higher interest rates, the State can accumulate even larger amounts of debt without having to about having to shift any immediate burden to the taxpayer.

At what felt like the worst period of the 2009 financial crisis, this supposed ‘QE fix’ gained instant popularity with politicians and financial pundits alike. Talking heads were desperate to broadcast any hope or plan for a brighter future. It not only alleviated the mounting pressure on elected representatives to take action, but it also began a huge wealth transfer from savers and those on fixed incomes to the wealthiest holders of financial assets.

As this monumental scheme comes to a close, it will become clearer that the divided political environment, record high stock and bond valuations, and impending debt ceiling may create a recipe for the real threat — a loss of confidence. The central banks have been propping up the world’s financial systems for so long that people have forgotten how quickly things can change.

Federal Reserve economists and officials have traditionally displayed a united front to the outside world when it comes to their monetary policy decisions. Any slight deviation in opinion can have a tremendous impact on the public’s trust in the current centralized fiat system. Lately, however, there have been signs of dissent from within their own ranks.
St. Louis Fed economist Stephen D. Williamson has expressed his doubts about quantitative easing several times but most recently wrote:
“Evaluating the effects of monetary policy is difficult, even in the case of conventional interest rate policy….With respect to QE, there are good reasons to be skeptical that it works as advertised, and some economists have made a good case that QE is actually detrimental.”

In 2015, Williamson also stated similar uncertainty about the success of the program:
“There is no work, to my knowledge, that establishes a link from QE to the ultimate goals of the Fed—inflation and real economic activity.“

If QE hasn’t worked as advertised and has failed to create real economic activity, then this whole recovery may have been an artificial boom unlike anything we’ve seen before. Unfortunately, central banks have fully convinced the public of their near supernatural power over the economy. Although many still can’t imagine a financial model without government control or central banks, the individuals who see the writing on the wall have already started to adapt.

Blockchain technology and potential asset-backed currencies have finally created competition against fiat money. Although the infrastructure is still in its infancy, the ability to decentralize finance will force the established institutions to respond. The regulatory and taxation powers that have been held by unaccountable agencies for centuries are now being disrupted by real innovation. The future of wealth generation lies in the digital marketplace and real assets that are shielded from the decisions of bureaucrats and bankers.

The Federal Reserve led the entire global financial system down a rabbit hole that nobody is sure how to get out of. The credibility of a system in place for over a century is on the line, and everyone should pay close attention to the actions taken from now on. Nothing has been fundamentally resolved, and the incompetence of central planners shows they will never break from their ideology. If the stock markets do sell off in response to this historic change in monetary policy, expect Janet Yellen and central banks around the world to ramp up their printing presses yet again.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Can the Government Keep Us Safe?

By Judge Andrew Napolitano

Here we go again. The United States has been rattled to the core by an unspeakable act of evil perpetrated by a hater of humanity. A quiet, wealthy loner rented a hotel suite in Las Vegas, armed it with shooting platforms and automatic weapons, knocked out two of the windows, and shot at innocents 32 floors below. Fifty-nine people were murdered, and 527 were injured.

The killer used rifles that he purchased legally and altered illegally. He effectively transformed several rifles that emit one round per trigger pull and present the next round in the barrel for immediate use (semiautomatics) into rifles that emit rounds continuously when the trigger is pulled — hundreds of rounds per minute (automatics). Though some automatic rifles that were manufactured before 1986 can lawfully be purchased today with an onerous federal permit, automatic weapons generally have been unlawful in the United States since 1934. Even the police and the military are not permitted to use them here.

I present this brief summary of the recent tragedy and the implicated gun laws to address the issue of whether the government can keep us safe.

Those who fought the Revolution and wrote the Constitution knew that the government cannot keep us safe. Because they used violence against the king and his soldiers to secede from Great Britain, they recognized that all people have a natural right to use a weapon of contemporary technological capabilities to protect themselves and their liberty and property. They sought to assure the exercise of this right by enacting the now well-known Second Amendment, which prohibits the government from infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms.

When the Supreme Court interpreted this right in 2008 and 2010, it referred to the right to keep and bear arms as pre-political. “Pre-political” means that the right pre-existed the government. It is a secular term for a fundamental, or natural, right. A natural right is one that stems from our humanity — such as freedom of thought, speech, religion, self-defense, privacy, travel, etc. It does not come from the government, and it exists in the absence of government.

The recognition of a right as fundamental or natural or pre-political is not a mere academic exercise. This is so because rights in this category cannot be abrogated by the popular will. Stated differently, just as your right to think as you wish and say what you think cannot be interfered with or taken away in America by legislation, so, too, your right to own, carry and use arms of the same sophistication as are generally available to bad guys and to government officials cannot be interfered with or taken away by legislation. That is at least the modern theory of the Second Amendment.

Notwithstanding the oath that all in government have taken to uphold the Constitution, many in government reject the Second Amendment. Their enjoyment of power and love of office rank higher in their hearts and minds than does their constitutionally required fidelity to the protection of personal freedoms. They think the government can right any wrong and protect us from any evil and acquire for us any good just to keep us safe, even if constitutional norms are violated in doing so.

Can the government keep us safe? In a word, no.

This is not a novel or arcane observation but rather a rational conclusion from knowing history and everyday life. In Europe, where the right to keep and bear arms is nearly nonexistent for those outside government, killers strike with bombs and knives and trucks. In America, killers use guns and only stop when they are killed by law-abiding civilians or by the police.

The answer to government failure is a candid recognition that in a free society — one in which we are all free to come and go as we see fit without government inquiry or interference — we must be prepared for these tragedies.

We must keep ourselves safe, as well as those whom we invite onto our properties.

Surely, if the president of the United States were to have appeared at the concert venue in Las Vegas to address the crowd, the Las Vegas killer would never have succeeded in bringing his arsenal to his hotel room. Government always protects its own. Shouldn’t landowners who invite the public to their properties do the same? The Freedom Answer Boo... Andrew P. Napolitano Best Price: $3.17 Buy New $3.58 (as of 03:26 EDT - Details)

Add to government’s incompetence its useless intrusive omnipresence. In present-day America, the National Security Agency — the federal government’s domestic spying agency — captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message, as well as all data sent over fiber-optic cables everywhere in the U.S. Thus, whatever electronic communications the Las Vegas killer participated in prior to his murders are in the possession of the federal government.

Mass surveillance is expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, but the government does it nevertheless. It claims it does so to keep us safe. Yet this exquisite constitutional violation results in too much information for the feds to examine in a timely manner. That’s why the evidence of these massacres — from Sandy Hook to Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino to Las Vegas — is always discovered too late. At this writing, the government has yet to reveal what it knew about the Las Vegas killer’s plans before he executed them and executed innocents.

This leaves us in a very precarious position today. The government cannot keep us safe, but it claims that it can. It wants to interfere with our natural rights to self-defense and to privacy, but whenever it does so, it keeps us less safe. And in whatever arena it keeps us less safe and falsely fosters the impression that we are safe, we become less free.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

"Chinese Fire Drill" on the strip in Las vegas

Via The Daily Mail dot com

TIMELINE OF TERROR IN VEGAS: 

Country music star Jason Aldean was performing on stage at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival when lone gunman Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on the 22,000 people gathered.

About 10pm: Paddock smashes out two windows on the 32nd floor with a hammer-like implement and opens fire with his arsenal of at least 19 weapons - including fully automatic weapons.

10.08pm: First phone call to police that shots had been fired at the festival outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

10:18pm: Officers ask the hotel to shut down the elevator so the suspect can't flee.

10:19pm: A team of four officers begin to make their way into the Mandalay Bay, moving up towards the 32nd floor.

10:21pm: An officer, whose location is unclear, calls over the radio: 'Gunshot wounds to the chest and head. We need immediate medical!'

Another officer says police and revelers on the ground are still taking fire.

10.23pm: False reports come in of multiple shootings at multiple other locations. Response teams are sent out to investigate.

10:24pm: One of the four officers inside the Mandalay calls dispatch to report that they are in the stairwell on the 32nd floor and can still hear gunshots coming from room 135.

Dispatch responds by calling for backup from SWAT to help prepare to bust into the suspect's room.

10:25pm: Radio transmissions indicate Paddock may have stopped firing into the crowd at this moment.

10:28pm: Police officers gathered at the Mandalay Bay report that Paddock has shot at a security guard in the hallway of the floor outside his room. They call for backup.

10:37pm: SWAT officers report they are now moving up to the 32nd floor to help the police officers.

10:38pm: Cops say they haven't heard gunfire in about 10 minutes. Police radio transmissions reveal there is still some confusion over which floor the gunman is on, and whether there could be multiple shooters.

10.44pm: On the ground, terrified festival goers begin stealing empty police cars to flee from gunfire.

10.54pm: Officers report they've cleared many areas in the hotel and casino.

10:55pm: An officer said he was on floor 32 and was readying to make entry.

But he [is]warned to be 'careful' on police radio transmissions by control, who asked 'Are you with the SWAT guy?' When the officer replied he was not, he was told to wait for them.

  

10:57pm: An officer reports they had locked down the hallway outside the gunman's room, telling dispatch they had 'multiple rifles and plenty of officers'.

But there was then a 24 minute delay while they appeared to wait for the SWAT team to arrive.

11.08pm: Las Vegas police confirm they have shut down a portion of The Strip

 

11.21pm: SWAT teams storm the 32nd floor room that Stephen Paddock was firing from. They gained entry using flashbangs designed to stun the shooter. Paddock fired through the door as SWAT teams were trying to breach the room. By the time they entered the room, he had shot himself dead. Seventy-two minutes elapsed from the first 911 call to Paddock being found dead.

11.24pm: Officer tells dispatch: 'We have one suspect down.'

11:28pm: 'We have one suspect down. Multiple firearms,' an officer confirmed again, adding it was definitely the suspect who was 'firing into the crowd.'

11.32pm: McCarran International Airport announced it was diverting flights destined for the city.

11.34pm: Interstate 15 in and out of Las Vegas was shut down for a time.

11.56pm: Hospitals in Las Vegas said that at least two people were dead and 24 were injured of which 12 were critical.

12.01am: Almost two hours after the first emergency call police confirmed that one suspect was 'down'.

1.06am: The Southern California police department say that one of their officers is among the injured.

1.34am: At this point the death toll dramatic rises to 20 people dead and 100 injured.

1.54am: Police in Las Vegas says that two of their officers who were off-duty were among the dead.

2.13am: Investigators say that they are looking for the 'roommate' of the shooter - Marilou Danley and describe her as a person of interest.

3.30am: Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo announces that the death toll is now at least 50 dead and 200 injured - making this the deadliest shooting in US history

6.30am: Investigators say they have located Marilou Danley and say that she is overseas and is not longer a person of interest.

9.30am: Sheriff provides another update and says that the death toll is now in excess of 59 and that 527 people are injured.

But there is an unexplained 24 minute delay as armed and ready officers were forced to wait outside the suspect's hotel room door.

Eventually, at 11.21pm, SWAT teams used an explosive device to break into the gunman's room and found he had killed himself a few moments before.

'Breach, breach, breach!' an officer was heard yelling over police scanner radio, as they entered the room after the explosion, before another officer told dispatch: 'We have one suspect down.'

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department declined to comment about the delay to the DailyMail.com.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4945322/Vet-wants-know-cops-took-long-stop-shooter.html#ixzz4uYkVSKFw

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The Myth of "Democracy"

By Butler Shaffer

The state-violence visited upon Catalan voters by the Spanish government confirms Emma Goldman’s observation: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  The American power-structure is equally fearful of the boobeoisie controlling the apparatus of the state via the polling booth, refusing to accept the outcome of last November’s preferences for Trump over Hillary. The “rabble,” as 18^th century  British authorities  called those who objected to their rule, have become the modern establishment’s class of “deplorables.”  Ahhh, but if CNN and politicians of both major parties  can convince “Joe Six-pack” that Trump’s election wasn’t an expression of democratic preferences, but was an “act of war” perpetrated by the Russian government, not only might the establishment’s desire to delegitimize Trump’s victory be accomplished, but might also provide a “justification” for going to war with Russia.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Real vs Fake "War on Terrorism"

By Stephen Lendman

Russia’s military intervention in Syria at the request of its government began two years ago today – September 30.

It dramatically changed the dynamic on the ground, turning sure defeat into eventual triumph.
Thousands of square miles of Syrian territory were liberated from the scourge of US-supported terrorists, defeating Washington’s imperial aims, wanting regime change, the country transformed into another vassal state.
Tass reviewed Russian operations over the past two years, saying “victory over terrorism is near.” Its efforts transformed armed opposition conflicting groups into “a common front in the struggle against terrorists.”
What began two years ago today “is entering its final phase,” Russian air power enabling Syrian and allied forces to regain control over “85% of the country’s territory,” a remarkable turnaround from conditions before Moscow’s involvement.
Washington didn’t expect it, intending to eliminate Assad the way it ruthlessly killed Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
Things didn’t go as planned. Russia foiled US objectives, achieving them highly unlikely, a significant body blow to its regional aims, a step closer to defeating them worldwide.
In Syria, Aleppo was liberated late last year, the country’s pre-war commercial hub. Historic Palmyra was freed twice, hopefully for good after the second time.
The campaign to liberate Zeir Ezzor province entirely from US-supported terrorists continues, ISIS’ last stronghold in the country. Its three-year-long siege of the city was broken, security sweeps underway to eliminate its remnants in residential and other areas.

“Official forecasts regarding the chances of a successful completion of the anti-terrorist operation sound ever more optimistic,” said Tass.

Ahead of the Deir Ezzor campaign, Akerbat was liberated, “a major transport hub and command center (and stronghold) of the terrorists in the east of Hama province,” Tass explained.

“With the loss of the city the terrorists were no longer able to regroup forces, receive ammunition and supplies, while the Syrian government army gained access to Deir Ezzor.”

During 24 months of combat, 38 Russian military personnel perished, including General Valery Asapov, the coordinates of his location almost certainly provided ISIS by US forces. Washington bears responsibility for his death.

Russian and American objectives in Syria are world’s apart – Moscow combating terrorism, Washington supporting it. Bilateral relations are dismal on virtually everything except cooperation in non-military space activities.

Astana peace talks spearheaded by Russia continue making progress – without significant breakthroughs so far because Washington wants endless war and regime change, waging a losing battle, pursuing it anyway.


According to Russia’s reconciliation center, 2,200 localities joined the ceasefire agreement. More than 230 armed groups agreed to observe it.

Reconstruction in some areas began, restoring power, water and other essential infrastructure a vital first step, along with supplying humanitarian aid – Russia, Iran and Damascus alone providing it.

Nothing from America. Nothing from the EU. Nothing from regional Arab countries. Nothing from Israel, of course. Woefully inadequate UN help, Syrians on their own, dependent on their government and allies.

Moscow remains firmly committed to Syrian sovereign independence, its territorial integrity, and right of its people alone to choose their leadership, free from foreign interference.

“Both Russian and Syrian military commanders stress the intention to push ahead with the operation until the elimination of the last terrorist” nationwide, said Tass.

Reprinted with permission from Stephen Lendman

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ  H/T Lew Rockwell

By Porter

Briefly tonight: A new study reveals that illegal migrants in America cost $135 billion in upkeep while paying in a scant $19 billion in taxes. This resulting in a $116 billion dollar net drain. But everyone knows having nice things isn’t cheap. So what nice things are we getting for that $116 billion? Hey, look at the time.

Though it is necessary to make a few points on this topic. And since you won’t see those points made in the media, you’ll have to resign yourself to reading here.

First, because Washington fires mountains of money into the abyss like an ongoing terrestrial gamma burst, $116 net billion may not sound so unwieldy. But it’s a more egregious sum than you may imagine. For context, consider that what we pay illegals to squat here exceeds the annual state budgets of Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.

Second, the above calculation of revenues and outlays related to illegal immigration is so rare to see because it’s so useful to read. In contrast, more duplicitous commenters perpetually alight upon GDP as their metric of choice when appealing for the importation of Pakistan. They do this because gross GDP is worthless in measuring the alleged benefits of immigration.

A slug leaving its mucus trail across the wall can conceivably add a dollar to GDP. But that tells you nothing whatsoever of whether its presence represents an economic boost or burden to the host society. And that absence of actual insight is precisely why liberal economists find GDP so useful.

Third, a first world society requires far more than mere break-even participants. Imagine if illegals were so productive as to be just that–they’d still represent an enormous deficit. Because maintaining the social commons of a modern Western welfare state requires huge numbers of highly positive contributors to make up for the broad cohort who are not. Perhaps this fact hasn’t yet been revealed to left-wing columnists, but migrants will eventually grow old, just like the legacy Americans they come to call racist. If we received only break-even contributors, what surplus wealth would pay for papa Paco’s Da Vinci machine and dialysis? No one ever seems to ask.

Fourth, I am far more concerned about importing swarms of hostile aliens who will attack my traditions, nullify my vote, and crow about taking my children’s national inheritance, than I am how much money they kick into the till. If George Soros were here illegally, would tax contributions alone cause us to feel grateful for his malice? A nation isn’t an economy. And sharing a country isn’t sharing a future.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Military "Social Justice"

After years of promoting "social" experimentation in various branches of the US military, the Navy at least has finally discovered that competence trumps politically mandated social policies.

More sleep and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors. Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels. And ships whose crews lack basic seamanship certification will probably stay in port until the problems are fixed.

All seemingly obvious standards, military officials say, except that the Navy only now is rushing the remedies into effect after two collisions in two months left 17 sailors dead, despite repeated warnings about the looming problems from congressional watchdogs and the Navy’s own experts dating to 2010.

“Many of the issues we’re discussing today have been known to Navy leaders for years. How do we explain that, Admiral?” Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, demanded of Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, at a hearing last week.

“Senator, there is no explanation,” Admiral Richardson said.

 This humble blogster hastens to disagree. With the skyrocketing instances of shipboard pregnancies and the general lowering of competency standards due to affirmative action it is no surprise that avoidable incidents are proliferating.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Who Knew?

By Martin Armstrong

Politicians have been confronted with the real cost of their support for global warming. France has suddenly come out in support of diesel because of the jobs that could be lost. The diesel crisis may have started in Germany, but there are more diesel car owners in Europe as a whole.
Suddenly, when confronted with the loss of jobs, the politicians are turning against global warming and revealing that the scientists have been WRONG on their timing. The actual study claims we will need another 30 years to reach a level of carbon to raise the temperature by 1.5 degrees C. It still only addresses the level of carbon in the air to raise the temperature and does not address that carbon has been significantly higher historically before cars. It simply employs linear analysis and assumes whatever trend is in motion will remain in motion. They ignore even the laws of thermodynamics.

Indeed, the politicians were eager to jump on the global warming theory because they have been able to raise taxes without providing a corresponding cost. The estimated cost to the private sector for global warming has reached about $1 trillion globally. The price of everything from electricity to gasoline has risen due to global warming taxes. Not to mention, it is driving the cost of meat and dairy products higher with claims that cows, the second-leading culprit behind cars, produce damaging gas to the environment. Look at the taxes on air travel. On average, 50% of the price goes toward taxes.

We are starting to now see more and more articles in the major press exposing that global warming is a fraud (see Sun; Independent; Australian; National Geographic)

Posted byΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Shoe on The Other Foot?

By Thomas DiLorenzo

Black Gunman Opens Fire in Predominantly White Nashville Church killing one person and injuring others, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice is considering opening a civil rights case over the incident.  Will they find pictures of the dude with Black Lives Matter flags?  Will it be immediately assumed that the flags motivated the killer and caused the murder?  If so, will the Southern Poverty Law Center call for the banning of those “hate flags” too?  Will all future Sudanese immigrants like this shooter be banned from the country and the ones who are already here deported?

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Down the Rabbit Hole

By Daniel MacAdams

Ponder this for a minute: [Syrian President] Assad has just defeated ISIS in Deir Ezzor [Syria]. [Defeating] ISIS is the reason the US has invaded Syrian sovereignty and initiated military action. Yet according to Nikki Haley Assad’s reward for wiping out ISIS is that he must be deposed — presumably in favor of US-backed rebels who have been in bed with ISIS for six years!

Is [US Ambassador to the UN] Nikki Haley pro-ISIS? Is she pro-al-Qaeda? Is she evil or just stupid?

You decide.

But if she is not removed from office soon, she will be leading perhaps a million people to their graves.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

This is What Really Killed Khadafi...

...as well as Saddam Hussein!

Via Dollar Collapse:

"For what seems like decades, other countries have been tiptoeing away from their dependence on the US dollar. China, Russia, and India have cut deals in which they agree to accept each others’ currencies for bi-lateral trade while Europe, obviously, designed the euro to be a reserve asset and international medium of exchange.
These were challenges to the dollar’s dominance, but they weren’t mortal threats.
What’s happening lately, however, is a lot more serious. It even has an ominous-sounding name: de-dollarization. Here’s an excerpt from a much longer article by “strategic risk consultant” F. William Engdahl:

Gold, Oil and De-Dollarization? Russia and China’s Extensive Gold Reserves, China Yuan Oil Market

(Global Research) – China, increasingly backed by Russia—the two great Eurasian nations—are taking decisive steps to create a very viable alternative to the tyranny of the US dollar over world trade and finance. Wall Street and Washington are not amused, but they are powerless to stop it. So long as Washington dirty tricks and Wall Street machinations were able to create a crisis such as they did in the Eurozone in 2010 through Greece, world trading surplus countries like China, Japan and then Russia, had no practical alternative but to buy more US Government debt—Treasury securities—with the bulk of their surplus trade dollars. Washington and Wall Street could print endless volumes of dollars backed by nothing more valuable than F-16s and Abrams tanks. China, Russia and other dollar bond holders in truth financed the US wars that were aimed at them, by buying US debt. Then they had few viable alternative options.
Viable Alternative Emerges
Now, ironically, two of the foreign economies that allowed the dollar an artificial life extension beyond 1989—Russia and China—are carefully unveiling that most feared alternative, a viable, gold-backed international currency and potentially, several similar currencies that can displace the unjust hegemonic role of the dollar today.
For several years both the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China have been buying huge volumes of gold, largely to add to their central bank currency reserves which otherwise are typically in dollars or euro currencies. Until recently it was not clear quite why.
For several years it’s been known in gold markets that the largest buyers of physical gold were the central banks of China and of Russia. What was not so clear was how deep a strategy they had beyond simply creating trust in the currencies amid increasing economic sanctions and bellicose words of trade war out of Washington.
Now it’s clear why.
China and Russia, joined most likely by their major trading partner countries in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), as well as by their Eurasian partner countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are about to complete the working architecture of a new monetary alternative to a dollar world.
Currently, in addition to founding members China and Russia, the SCO full members include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and most recently India and Pakistan. This is a population of well over 3 billion people, some 42% of the entire world population, coming together in a coherent, planned, peaceful economic and political cooperation.
Gold-Backed Silk Road
It’s clear that the economic diplomacy of China, as of Russia and her Eurasian Economic Union group of countries, is very much about realization of advanced high-speed rail, ports, energy infrastructure weaving together a vast new market that, within less than a decade at present pace, will overshadow any economic potentials in the debt-bloated economically stagnant OECD countries of the EU and North America.
What until now was vitally needed, but not clear, was a strategy to get the nations of Eurasia free from the dollar and from their vulnerability to further US Treasury sanctions and financial warfare based on their dollar dependence. This is now about to happen.
At the September 5 annual BRICS Summit in Xiamen, China, Russian President Putin made a simple and very clear statement of the Russian view of the present economic world. He stated,
“Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”
To my knowledge he has never been so explicit about currencies. Put this in context of the latest financial architecture unveiled by Beijing, and it becomes clear the world is about to enjoy new degrees of economic freedom.
China Yuan Oil Futures
According to a report in the Japan Nikkei Asian Review, China is about to launch a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan that will be convertible into gold. This, when coupled with other moves over the past two years by China to become a viable alternative to London and New York to Shanghai, becomes really interesting.
China is the world’s largest importer of oil, the vast majority of it still paid in US dollars. If the new Yuan oil futures contract gains wide acceptance, it could become the most important Asia-based crude oil benchmark, given that China is the world’s biggest oil importer. That would challenge the two Wall Street-dominated oil benchmark contracts in North Sea Brent and West Texas Intermediate oil futures that until now has given Wall Street huge hidden advantages.
That would be one more huge manipulation lever eliminated by China and its oil partners, including very specially Russia. Introduction of an oil futures contract traded in Shanghai in Yuan, which recently gained membership in the select IMF SDR group of currencies, oil futures especially when convertible into gold, could change the geopolitical balance of power dramatically away from the Atlantic world to Eurasia.
In April 2016 China made a major move to become the new center for gold exchange and the world center of gold trade, physical gold. China today is the world’s largest gold producer, far ahead of fellow BRICS member South Africa, with Russia number two.
Now to add the new oil futures contract traded in China in Yuan with the gold backing will lead to a dramatic shift by key OPEC members, even in the Middle East, to prefer gold-backed Yuan for their oil over inflated US dollars that carry a geopolitical risk as Qatar experienced following the Trump visit to Riyadh some months ago. Notably, Russian state oil giant, Rosneft just announced that Chinese state oil company, CEFC China Energy Company Ltd. Just bought a 14% share of Rosneft from Qatar. It’s all beginning to fit together into a very coherent strategy.

Meanwhile, in Latin America:

De-Dollarization Spikes – Venezuela Stops Accepting Dollars For Oil Payments

(Zero Hedge) – Did the doomsday clock on the petrodollar (and implicitly US hegemony) just tick one more minute closer to midnight? Apparently confirming what President Maduro had warned following the recent US sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reports that Venezuela has officially stopped accepting US Dollars as payment for its crude oil exports.
As we previously noted, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said last Thursday that Venezuela will be looking to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week. According to Reuters,
“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a multi-hour address to a new legislative “superbody.” He reportedly did not provide details of this new proposal.
Maduro hinted further that the South American country would look to using the yuan instead, among other currencies.
“If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro also said.
The state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PdVSA, has told its private joint venture partners to open accounts in euros and to convert existing cash holdings into Europe’s main currency, said one project partner.

This first step towards one or more gold-backed Eurasian currencies certainly looks like a viable and — for a lot of big players out there — welcome addition to the global money stock.
Venezuela, meanwhile illustrates the growing perception of US weakness. It used to be that a small country refusing to take dollars could expect regime change in short order. Now, maybe not so much.
Combine the above with the emergence of bitcoin and its kin as the preferred monetary asset of techies and libertarians, and the monetary world suddenly looks downright multi-polar."

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

College Graduate IQ In Freefall

By Professor Doom

     One of the weird things about higher education is how the smart people are fleeing it. Now, that’s at the grad school level, and I noticed it seemed to start just about the time I was done with graduate school: my most talented friends were getting their Ph.D.s, seeing what higher education had to offer, and decided an academic career was a terrible idea. They headed to the “real world” never to do anything for education or research. It takes brilliance and character to conceive “the four years spent getting a Ph.D. was a waste, and I need to do something different,” and walk away from all that hard work. I acknowledge my error here.

     That’s my anecdotal evidence regarding the really smart people (although I’m not alone in seeing it), but what of the rank and file college student? What’s been happening there? A helpful chart answers the question:

      It may only seem like a few points every decade, but in terms of statistics, there’s much to be said about this chart.

     First, a minor digression.

     In the olden days, companies would give “aptitude tests” to people they might possibly hire. This was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as the company would invest considerable resources into training an employee. Thus they were quite motivated to make sure the employee was “apt,” able to learn the skills the company needs.

       There were complaints that these aptitude tests were RACIST, and so companies that used them opened themselves up to huge lawsuits from a government with infinitely deep pockets to pay for the lawyers to file such lawsuits. Companies not wanting to fight such an impossible battle got rid of the tests.

       The government forced aptitude tests to disappear but companies still wanted some way to tell if a person would be able to learn the work they were going to train for. What to do? Well, the government generously allowed companies to restrict hiring to “college graduates,” i.e., hiring to only people who had a government-granted certification of aptness.

      Say, does anyone else see a conflict of interest in government forcing people to not use anything but government to determine something? Let’s see how the Law of Unintended Consequences works out here.

I majored in Computer Science at college. I programmed every day. I went to graduate school for computer science. I programmed every day.

My first job: I was a computer programmer at HBO.

I was so bad that they had to send me to REMEDIAL school for two months to learn enough about computer programming to be as good as their WORST programmer.

--seriously.

     Thus it came to pass that having a college degree became a “gateway” into the middle class, unlike in the past where simple talent and skills were enough. The funny thing is, a college degree as it is today doesn’t really help companies much. Even if you have a very specific skills degree like “Computer Programming,” if a company hires you, you’ll likely still have months of training in how to actually program in a way that the company will find useful. The collegiate version of programming focuses on computer languages and skills which went obsolete a decade or more ago (because it takes at least 10 years to set up a college degree program, and anyone who deals with computers knows a decade may as well be 1,000 years for computers…).

      While I blame the student loan scam for the immense growth in the size of our campuses, the loans just pay for the degrees…the demand comes because many companies have no other way to restrict their hires beyond requiring a college degree, and the kids are told this nearly every day in school.

     Now, let’s look at that chart more carefully, by first considering the variation from each decade, for the first four decades:

60s to 70s	-3.2
70s to 80s	-3.1
80s to 90s	-2.1
90s to 2000s	-1

     You can dispute the validity of intelligence tests in general but you can’t dispute the trend in the above. Certainly you expect to see variation from decade to decade, but when the variation is always in one direction (down), you must suspect it’s not random.

      It may look like there’s a bit of convergence, namely that the drop is going to zero, but this is just how probability works—the proportion of people with IQ between, say 109.1 and 112.2 is roughly the same as the proportion between 102.9 and 103.9 even if the latter is a smaller range of numbers.

      More simply said, in terms of proportion, every decade we lose about same amount of intelligence in our college graduates. Ok, that still might not be simple enough, but the gist should be clear to the layman: a college degree means way less than it used to in terms of intelligence.

       Now, let’s consider the most recent decade, where the drop in IQ is now 2.9. This is a relatively huge drop compared to the previous decade, about 4 times as much in terms of proportion.

       In short, we’ve gone from a disturbing but relatively constant drop in the IQ of our college graduates to a very sharp drop.

      Today, in terms of intelligence, a college graduate now is simply average. How useful is such a government certification? The price of the degree has gone up dramatically while the usefulness of that degree to employers has dropped even more so, to effectively zero. You could just get a random guy off the street and expect average intelligence, after all.

      I’m saddened by the loss of our most intelligent people in graduate school: we’re losing our best and brightest because they’re smart enough to see quickly that higher education is a dying system that would merely exploit them…this does not bode well for humanity, as this will impact the advancement of human knowledge.

     Alas, the issues are even bigger than what’s happened in graduate school:

To say we're well into the territory of diminishing returns is to understate the problem--we're past the point of negative returns. Most Americans in college today are not benefiting from being there. They're foregoing work to accrue debt for degrees that, if they increase earning power at all, do so only marginally and they're picking up an unhelpful sense of entitlement in the process.

     While there is truth in the above, I’m more concerned by the suddenly accelerating drop in IQ of our college graduates in the last decade. At this pace, it’s reasonable to conjecture that very soon a college graduate will have below average intelligence. It’ll be perfectly clear then that the smart people aren’t just leaving graduate school, they’re fleeing college in general.

     It’s a big problem for humanity that our scholars will no longer represent the smartest people humanity has to offer. It’s a bigger problem for humans that having a college degree will soon mean that you’re of below average intelligence.

     If the trend continues, and all evidence says it will, by next decade having a college degree will be telling your employer: “I was stupid enough to get a degree and you should not hire me.”

     Once again, we see the Law of Unintended Consequences in action, as turning higher education into a government program to determine who is qualified to have a good job will instead determine who is unqualified.

      That our kids are going in debt for a certification of incompetence is insult to the injury. End the student loan scam.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Computer Modeling as "Science"

 By Thomas DiLorenzo

Hurricane Irma destroyed many parts of the Caribbean, including much of the beautiful Island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  The hysterical media projected the same for Florida, but nothing at all like that occurred.  As for their “forecasting expertise,” when I went to bed on Saturday night at my home in Delray Beach, Florida, on the east coast, they were all saying that their “models” — the same ones used to forecast global temperatures 50-100 years from now to hysterically warn us of a global warming human catastrophe  — were forecasting a direct hit of a possible Category 5 hurricane on the east coast.

Models, schmodels.  By morning, it was apparent that the brunt of the storm would be on the west coast, which it was.  And it was not “the storm of the century,” although it did do quite a bit of damage.  An elderly relative of mine in Sarasota on the west coast went to a shelter, expecting that her home would simply not be there after the storm after watching television non-stop for the previous several days.  When she woke up Monday morning she asked, “Where is the storm?  Has it arrived yet?” Her home was exactly the same as when she left.

Yes, there are a lot of downed trees and tree branches and, thanks to the ineptitude of the state-enforced power monopoly, Florida Power and Light (FPL), the power is still out in many places.  (Like other state-enforced electric power monopolists, FPL threads its wires through forests of tree branches, and whenever a single branch breaks in a storm, the power is out.  They eventually get around to fixing it, and the costs are all simiply passed on, 100%, to the customers because, hey, they’re a state-enforced monopoly.  What do they care about over-pricing?).

Weather and climate “forecasting” is a lot like economic “forecasting”/fortune telling.  The forecasts are almost always wrong, and then once the event occurs the forecasters pretend that they were right all along.  In reality, they have only “forecasted” something that had already happened.  The public quickly forgets the folly of these witch doctors, and then falls for all their baloney again and again and again.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ