Chaos Manor View, Friday, November 20, 2015
Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Caliphate. The Caliphate – ISIS, Daesh – is growing, and each addition strengthens its claim to be the legitimate ruler of the world, and the only true adherents to the Prophet. More than a year ago I said that it would take no more than a division – the 82nd airborne would do – and some of the A-10’s to eradicate the Caliphate. In fact, a regiment would do, but it if you need a regiment to do a job, it will be done quicker and more thoroughly and with fewer casualties with a division. We had divisions that could be deployed in weeks; the campaign would be over in a year. Daesh would cease to exist.
Last summer I said it would take two divisions, and all the A-10’s. We are now up to three divisions – a corps — all the A-10 Thunderbolts, and a respectable number of air superiority assets to protect the Warthogs from SAMs. It could be done with less, but the costs would be higher, the casualties greater, and the success of the operation (including pursuit) much lower. Since ISIS is at war with us – on their own declaration – it must sooner or later be engaged. No one else is going to destroy them for us.
Every operation they undertake adds to the strength of their claim of legitimacy and the will of Allah. Defeat is the only remedy.
Today’s attack was in Mali; that is because there were Americans there, and Daesh can get to Mali. It was not in the United States because it is harder to get their assets here. It is not for want of trying, and a glance at the news will tell you. Bringing in Syrian refugees will remedy that. If we want to help refugees, give them new homes in territories taken from Daesh. That is not Obama’s plan, as he ignores the Congress and the Governors of more than half the states. He does not need the consent of the governed for his actions.
There were two editorial columns, not formally linked, in today’s Wall Street Journal that, taken together, make a fairly profound story. The first
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sweet-gig-of-being-a-bureaucrat-1447978181?alg=y
The Sweet Gig of Being a Bureaucrat
The average federal worker’s compensation is worth $119,934, nearly 80% higher than the average in the private economy.
By
Mac Zimmerman
Nov. 19, 2015 7:09 p.m. ET
Here’s a story that is emblematic of life in Washington, D.C.: The Department of Veterans Affairs—a well-known sinkhole of mismanagement—handed out more than $142 million in bonuses last year. Taxpayers stumbling across this news might have been surprised by these rewards for bureaucratic incompetence, and perhaps they also got the sense that working for the federal government is a sweet gig. They’re right.
A review of the nation’s capital turns up ample evidence: In a report released last month, Cato Institute budget analyst Chris Edwards calculated that the average federal employee earned $84,153 in 2014—roughly 50% more than the average worker in the private economy. When you include benefits like health care and pensions, the average federal worker’s compensation rises to $119,934—nearly 80% higher than everyone else. “The federal government has become an elite island of secure and high-paid employment,” Mr. Edwards wrote, “separated from the ocean of average Americans competing in the economy.”
Pay for federal employees has grown significantly faster than for private employees. The percentage difference between the two has doubled in the past 25 years. Federal work is more lucrative than the average jobs in finance, information and professional fields.
Moreover, the number of federal employees salaried at more than $100,000 has grown by nearly 10% in the past five years, to more than 300,000. The 1,000 best-paid federal workers make a minimum of $216,000, with most of the highest echelon working at Veterans Affairs. Employees of little-known agencies such as the National Credit Union Administration and the Farm Credit Administration also top the list. [clip]
There is a great deal more. The United States has made getting a job on the civil service payroll the best career path for Americans. Of course civil servants are paid by money earned by those not in the civil service. The purpose of government is in part to collect that money, and of course employs highly paid civil servants to do that. Their taxes also go to bonuses for civil servants.
Salve, sclave.
The other article today goes with it.
Hounded Out of Business by Regulators
The company LabMD finally won its six-year battle with the FTC, but vindication came too late.
By
Dan Epstein
Nov. 19, 2015 7:11 p.m. ET
Sometimes winning is still losing. That is certainly true for companies that find themselves caught in the cross hairs of the federal government. Since 2013, my organization has defended one such company, the cancer-screening LabMD, against meritless allegations from the Federal Trade Commission. Last Friday, the FTC’s chief administrative-law judge dismissed the agency’s complaint. But it was too late. The reputational damage and expense of a six-year federal investigation forced LabMD to close last year. [clip]
We are now ruled; India is hampered by its “permit raj”; the United states ids developing one which is more effective.
Total War Against ISIS! (Well, sorta)
I heard today that U.S. warplanes had, until very recently, been forbidden to hit ISIS tanker trucks because the civilian drivers might be killed.
That Rule of Engagement has apparently been changed and we now can bomb them — after 45 minutes warning.
Is this any way to fight a war???
https://pjmedia.com/blog/frustrated-pilots-vent-about-obamas-ineffective-air-war-against-isis-video
Lee
Hi Jerry –
A great post by Larry Correia about Paris, etc.:
George
: ISIS and the end of the Schism
Jerry,
I wonder how long it will take for the Sunni and Shia Sects as well as all of the rest of Islam to realize that ISIS is an enemy to them all?
If the World is lucky ISIS may be the catalyst that unites all the rest of Islam into a religion of peace and tranquility after ISIS is wiped from the face of the Earth.
Perhaps Obama’s grand strategy to allow ISIS to grow large enough and powerful enough to force the rest of Islam to unite and assist in the extermination. If it is, it would be the first time Obama had a real strategy that might actually work.
I don’t think that it would be prudent to allow ISIS to grow large enough for such a strategy to bear fruit. My personal call would be to use whatever methods are required to completely eliminate the threat ASAP.
Bob Holmes
The Caliphate proclaims that it is the only legitimate ruler of the world, and as proof offers its success at ruling under strict Muslim law. That success in conquest is its validation. The various Muslim kingdoms and republics know this, but they are not strong enough to accomplish it; if they were strong enough they would be subject to the question: why don’t you impose the law of the Koran?
Why call it Daesh rather than ISIS or ISIL?
https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/
[quote]
And so if the word is basically ‘ISIS’, but in Arabic, why are the people it describes in such a fury about it? Because they hear it, quite rightly, as a challenge to their legitimacy: a dismissal of their aspirations to define Islamic practice, to be ‘a state for all Muslims’
and – crucially – as a refusal to acknowledge and address them as such.
They want to be addressed as exactly what they claim to be, by people so in awe of them that they use the pompous, long and delusional name created by the group, not some funny-sounding made-up word. And here is the very simple key point that has been overlooked in all the anglophone press coverage I’ve seen: in Arabic, acronyms are not anything like as widely used as they are in English, and so arabophones are not as used to hearing them as anglophones are. Thus, the creation and use of a title that stands out as a nonsense neologism for an organisation like this one is inherently funny, disrespectful, and ultimately threatening of the organisation’s status. Khaled al-Haj Salih, the Syrian activist who coined the term back in 2013, says that initially even many of his fellow activists, resisting Daesh alongside him, were shocked by the idea of an Arabic acronym, and he had to justify it to them by referencing the tradition of acronyms being used as names by Palestinian organisations (such as Fatah). So saturated in acronyms are we in English that we struggle to imagine this, but it’s true.
All of this means that the name lends itself well to satire, and for the arabophones trying to resist Daesh, humour and satire are essential weapons in their nightmarish struggle. But the satirical weight of the word as a weapon, in the hands of the Syrian activists who have hewn it from the rock of their nightmare reality, does not just consist of the weirdness of acronyms. As well as being an acronym, it is also only one letter different from the word ‘daes داعس’ , meaning someone or something that crushes or tramples. Of course that doesn’t mean, as many articles have claimed, that ‘daesh’ is ‘another conjugation’ of the verb ‘to crush or trample’, nor that that is ‘a rough translation of one of the words in the acronym’ – it’s simply one letter different from this other word. Imagine if the acronym of ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’
spelt out ‘S.H.I.D’ in English: activists and critics would certainly seize the opportunity to refer to the organisation as ‘shit’ – but I think it’s safe to say that no serious foreign media outlet would claim that ‘shit’ was another conjugation of the verb ‘shid’, nor a rough translation of it. Of course, that analogy is an unfair one, given the hegemonic global linguistic position of English, not to mention the heightened currency of scatological words; but there is a serious point to be made here about the anglophone media’s tendency to give up before it’s begun understanding non-European languages.
[end quote]
I do not disrespect the Caliphate; they are an enemy, but they have been honest from the beginning. They do not wage undeclared war. They are open enemies; but enemies they are.
How cracking explains underwater volcanoes and the Hawaiian bend
“There has been speculation among geoscientists for decades that some underwater volcanoes form because of fracturing,” said Professor Dietmar Muller, from the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences and an author on the research findings published in Nature Geoscience today.
“But this is the first comprehensive analysis of the rocks that form in this setting that confirms their origins.”
http://www.geologyin.com/2015/04/how-cracking-explains-underwater.html
Makes sense.
Stephanie Osborn“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
Christmas Bells
I came across this the other day. It seems appropriate somehow.
This is the backstory –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJQ2ajszyhU
and this is the music –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1erCcsT5mc
I sent this to some friends. One asked, “Am I missing something? What does Christmas have to do with the suicidal self denial of secular humanism and Isis (Isil, et al.)?”
I replied, “Christmas doesn’t, as such, but the last, seldom sung verses do. It was a rough time, for the nation and for Longfellow personally, and it was easy to fall into despair. To most Christians despair is a sin. 2,000 years ago John wrote that the essence of Christianity is faith, hope (optimism) and love, and the greatest of these is love. He could well have added joy, happiness and appreciation for life and what it offers and it is these characteristics that most often appear in Christian song, story and poetry.
Longfellow pulled himself out of despair when he realized that it accomplished nothing and, in fact, it kept him from accomplishing anything. That simple little song says a lot.
These are “interesting times” – again. We’ve been there before, and ultimately emerged the stronger. And we will again unless we allow ourselves to sink into despair. That is what history tells me. And that is why I thought the story and song was appropriate.”
Whatever our enemies think they are doing they are really worshipping death, for every disagreement, for every problem the response is to kill and ultimately to die themselves. I can see why considering that they set themselves up to live pretty miserable lives. That is, I think, the root cause of the conflict, we cannot co-exist with such people, not because of what we want, but because of what they want.
Ralph DeCamp
I find the backstory inspiring, and the performance spectacular
The Right To Milk Bears
Dear Jerry:
Vermont’s foremost Ice Cream Collective seems to be sending mixed messages about the California drought
So much for Senator Sanders constituency- I am surprised California is is not retaliating against ISIS with a pistachio embargo.
Russell Seitz
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
