Tuesday Morning Golf Tips

Care of Theo Sparks, who is apparently having a going out of business sale.



Now go out and hit the links.

I played my second round of golf this year, thanks to my younger brother Mark. We didn't really keep score, which is a good thing.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Just What It Says On The Label" ready at The Other McCain to fulfill any Rule 5 needs I might have missed.

Midnite Music - "We're Not the Jet Set"

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Just What It Says On The Label" ready at The Other McCain to fulfill any Rule 5 needs I might have missed.

Hogan Proposes Chesapeake Bay Pollution Cap and Trade

Hogan proposes Chesapeake pollution trading plan

The Hogan administration announced Friday a renewed effort to devise a "pollution trading" system in Maryland, which proponents contend could speed cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay by lowering the cost.

Environmentalists reacted cautiously, saying the idea has potential but could worsen pollution if not done carefully.

Environmentalists are generally cold towards cap and trade systems because it subsitutes market forces (whoever is willing and able to pay more gets to pollute more) rather than social value and social justice judgements, which they expect to control. Given the choice between pollution from cities and power plants, they would unhesitatingly chose cities, even though cities are the main source of the requirement for power.

The state departments of the environment and agriculture jointly released a set of principles for how pollution trading would be done, and pledged to draft guidelines with the help of stakeholders that could permit trading to begin "at the earliest possible moment."

Proponents say trading could significantly reduce the projected $15 billion cost to Maryland of curtailing nutrient pollution fouling the bay. Communities facing expensive mandates to upgrade sewage plants or reduce stormwater pollution, for instance, might be able to meet their requirements by paying farmers far less to reduce runoff of fertilizer from their fields.

"Enhancing, preserving and restoring the Chesapeake Bay is an expensive proposition," Natural Resources Secretary Mark Belton said. Trading, which brings market forces to bear, is "sound science and strategy, and will help us meet our Chesapeake Bay goals."

The O'Malley administration attempted to craft a trading program but abandoned the effort after failing to get consensus among all parties with a stake in the issue.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this proposal go the same way. The underlying political dynamics in Maryland have not shifted much since the replacement of the hard left Marty O'Malley with the soft right  Larry Hogan in the governor's palace.

The Sum of All Clinton.com Fears

After the reasoned analysis of the sHillsters Benghazi Committe appearance, the emotional reactions start to appear.

Hillary: Public enemy No. 1

. . . That's right, folks, the woman who wants to be president of all Americans made sure to let us know that she considers members of the other main political party in this two party system "enemies." And it's fairly clear from her past pronouncements that it's not just registered Republicans who make her stomach turn and her trigger finger itchy. Hillary hates all conservatives, charter members of the vast right-wing conspiracy that forced her husband to be serviced in the Oval Office and then lie about it.

Hillary's supporters dismiss the whole "Bill Had Sex and Hillary Looked the Other Way" argument as ancient history, and it kind of is. In fact, Bill has rebranded himself as a lovable elder statesman who can reach across the aisle (which he does quite well since he has a lot of experience reaching for things).

But Hillary is an angry woman, scarred by past criticism and with a taste for vengeance that makes Michael Corleone look like Pope Francis. She does not forget even the slightest offense, and stores it away in that ENIAC mind of hers until it can be downloaded and used to take out the enemy. And believe me, the opposition carries the same passport that she does.

Basically, it amounts to anyone who stands in her way to the White House. Hillary and her minions, wandering in the electoral desert these last eight years (after having snatched defeat from the jaws of Hope and Change) have had a lot of time to figure out a comeback strategy. Becoming secretary of state, one who presided over the murder of an ambassador and four Americans who tried to save him, was an unfortunate yet insignificant detour in the master plan. As I watched her respond to questioning from members of the congressional committee investigating Benghazi, she seemed almost annoyed that people were still interested in the death of Ambassador Stevens. You could see the thought bubble appear above her head: "Really, don't you people have some Planned Parenthood clinics you need to bomb?" . . .

Add one more to the ‘hill’ of lies

The postmortems on the Benghazi hearing note the emergence of one significant fresh item. It involves Hillary Clinton’s immediate view of the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like [sic] group,” she wrote to daughter Chelsea that same night, according to an e-mail Republicans released. Other released documents show she drew the same conclusions to a Libyan official and to an Egyptian official the next day.

Yet publicly, Clinton joined the White House chorus claiming the attack was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video.

Technically, the new evidence doesn’t break new ground. It merely confirms she is a liar who will say anything to advance her career.

We already knew that, didn’t we?

The Sum of All Fears:  I Hate to Say This But... Hillary Will Be Our Next President

. . . After watching Hillary’s Oscar winning performance last Thursday before The House Select Committee On Benghazi, I’m now completely convinced that Hillary could stand naked on the smoldering carcass of Chris Stevens while smoking a fat Bob Marley-sized joint, as she screamed aloud the contents of Mein Kampf, and the Left would hail her a Warrior Poet. She’s the new Lizard King … she can do anything.

Matter of fact, if I were Satan, I’d start sweating my crimson butt off because The Hildebeest made the Serpent of Old look like a clunky, overly honest used-car salesmen. Our Faust is female, y’all.

Not one person and not one question rattled Hillary. As in no one. As in nada, nothing, zilch, zero, zippo got under her wrinkled, Bill-averse flesh. Bow and kiss the ring, peeps, and meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Hillary’s flawless and skillful execution wasn't because she was telling the truth -- because she wasn’t. She knew she was peddling lies and everyone and their iguana knew that she was stretching the truth through her Frito Pie-hole. But it didn’t/doesn’t matter because she did it with such amazing precision. And that’s all that matters in our unfortunate day; namely, an adept ability to con abecedarian Americans. . . .

And not one, but two contributions from Smitty at The Other McCain!: Her Majesty Addresseth The Rancid Peasantry In The Royal Quotidian Mode

Hinderaker over at PowerLine seems to confuse Her Majesty’s non-command of reasonable, accurate speech with lying.

Let’s take [Her Royal declamation in Alexandria] apart:

The NRA basically represents manufactures and the sellers.

No, the NRA represents firearm owners and others who want to preserve our constitutional rights. And, by the way, the NRA’s approval rating is 50% higher than Hillary’s.

One of the most outrageous votes that I ever had to take when I was in the Senate was an NRA bill to give immunity to gun manufacturers and sellers for just about everything.

She is talking about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It doesn’t give immunity to gun manufacturers for “just about everything,” but rather, subject to various exceptions, for “the criminal or unlawful misuse of a [firearm].” So if a criminal shoots you with a Ruger pistol, you can’t sue Ruger.

It was unique. No other industry in America has anything like it.

Liberals haven’t threatened to bankrupt any other industry by bringing frivolous lawsuits. If someone hits you with a baseball bat, you can’t sue Louisville Slugger. If you try, you will be laughed out of court. The law with respect to guns is the same as with regard to other products: if a gun is defective and you are injured as a result, you can sue.

Read in full. And understand that next year, we’re past all discussion of whether “this is the most important election of your lifetime”. If Her Majesty achieves the Full Coronation, it’s not clear whether there will beanother election.

and Important #Benghazi Clarification

Is Man the Boxing Ape?

I saw this the other day: Human fist evolved to punch, new study says

Were human hands built for punching? A new study of cadaver arms suggests this may be the case.

By using the arms to hit a dumbbell three different ways, scientists determined that a clenched fist makes it much safer to serve someone a knuckle sandwich.

The findings, published this week in the Journal of Experimental Biology, bolster a controversial theory that ties human physiology to a violent past.

Compared with primates such as chimpanzees, humans have developed a very different hand structure that features a shorter palm, shorter fingers and a relatively longer thumb. The conventional wisdom holds that our hands evolved for more dexterity, allowing our ancestors to wield and manipulate tools.

“There’s every reason to believe that,” said David Carrier, a comparative physiologist at the University of Utah.

However, Carrier and his colleagues have put forth another, perhaps complementary, idea. They posit that as the human hand was becoming more delicate, it may have evolved into just the right shape to fit into a fist — all the better for punching opponents without accidentally breaking one’s bones.

And I remembered this, which I failed to blog back in 2014:  Male faces 'buttressed against punches' by evolution

A new theory suggests that our male ancestors evolved beefy facial features as a defence against fist fights.

The bones most commonly broken in human punch-ups also gained the most strength in early "hominin" evolution.

They are also the bones that show most divergence between males and females.

The paper, in the journal Biological Reviews, argues that the reinforcements evolved amid fighting over females and resources, suggesting that violence drove key evolutionary changes.

Fossil records show that the australopiths, immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, had strikingly robust facial structures.

For many years, this extra strength was seen as an adaptation to a tough diet including nuts, seeds and grasses. But more recent findings, examining the wear pattern and carbon isotopes in australopith teeth, have cast some doubt on this "feeding hypothesis".

"In fact, [the australopith] boisei, the 'nutcracker man', was probably eating fruit," said Prof David Carrier, the new theory's lead author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah.

"Jaws are one of the most frequent bones to break - and it's not the end of the world now, because we have surgeons, we have modern medicine," Prof Carrier explained. "But four million years ago, if you broke your jaw, it was probably a fatal injury. You wouldn't be able to chew food... You'd just starve to death."

The jaw, cheek, eye and nose structures that most commonly come to grief in modern fist fights were also the most protected by evolutionary changes seen in the australopiths.
Furthermore, these are the bones that show the most differences between men and women, as well as between our male and female forebears. That is how you would expect defensive armour to evolve, Prof Carrier points out.

My guess is that tool using, which in some primitive form is still used by Chimpanzees, put a lot of selective pressure on hands, making them stronger and more able as "smashing" weapons, which in turn, encouraged their use and subjected them to more evolutionary pressure to perfect them as bare weapons (which is not to say primitive people wouldn't use weapons at hand on their fellows). This, in turn, put on evolutionary pressure to make the face more robust.

But we're all just bullshitting about this. . .

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Just What It Says On The Label" ready at The Other McCain to fulfill any Rule 5 needs I might have missed.

Stuff Alex Sends

Alex hasn't put out much music on video for a while; he's been too busy working in his store and teaching guitar. However, he did make this musical advertisement for some guitars he sells in his shop, and it's got some pretty finger picking, so I thought I'd share it:

Can the Redskins Maroon the Buccaneers?

The 2-4 Washington Redskins take on the 2-3 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The game just started, with the Buccaneers having first possession. And they have a touchdown on a Winston 40 yd pass to Evans at about 11:30 in the first quarter. Kick is good. 7-0 Buccaneers.

To be continued . . .

Mendacity at Clinton.com

Only one day's worth:

Hillary’s Breathtaking Mendacity

"We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

Those words, depraved words, were spoken by then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton, with President Obama by her side, on September 14, 2012. This was at Joint Base Andrews, during the most sacred of rites: the return of the remains of Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, all slain in the line of duty in Benghazi.

And all slain, it must never be forgotten, by jihadists carrying out what Clinton, Obama, and high-ranking national-security officials throughout the United States government knew full well was a planned terrorist attack, not a “protest” run amok and incited by “an awful Internet video.” That obvious fact is now explicit after Mrs. Clinton’s galling testimony on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the Benghazi massacre.
. . .
The lies about “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with” were dictated by the bipartisan Beltway policy of Islamist empowerment that Obama and Clinton championed. Indeed, at the time it occurred, the terrorist attack was just the latest in a series of jihadist threats and strikes in Benghazi. The policy of strategically and materially supporting Islamists made such attacks inevitable.

But it was election season. Obama and Clinton needed camouflage for the catastrophic failure of their policy. Thus: Clinton’s fustian about “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

In point of fact, Clinton and Obama had everything to do with the anti-Islamic video trailer, Innocence of Muslims. Virtually no one would have known of it had they not tirelessly publicized it in the international media and in official American government statements that were studiously linked to the Benghazi massacre.

Hillary Clinton's 5 Biggest Lies in Her Benghazi Testimony

Hillary Cared Deeply About the Human Cost.

Hillary kept claiming that she cared deeply about her good friend Chris Stevens. . . .

Hillary admitted in her testimony on Thursday that her good friend Chris Stevens did not have her private email address, and that she could recall no conversations with him after he became ambassador to Libya. The night of his death, she wrote an email with the subject line: “Chris Smith,” conflating his death with that of diplomat Sean Smith. She didn’t bother speaking with survivors of the attacks until days later.

Hillary Thought The Attacks Had Something to Do With a YouTube Video.

We've already seen how transparent a lie that was. That horse is dead.

Hillary Didn’t Use Sidney Blumenthal As an Advisor.
. . .
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) shot that idiocy down easily: “You wrote to him, ‘Thanks and please keep them coming,’ ‘Greetings from Kabul and thanks for keeping this stuff coming, any other info about it?’ ‘What are you hearing now?’” Hillary then tried to amend her statement by saying they began as unsolicited emails. Hillary used Blumenthal as an advisor, and she routinely corresponded with him. Any implication to the contrary is absolutely false.

Hillary Was Transparent About Her Emails.
. . .
The hearings did provide some perspective into just why Hillary might have deleted 30,000 emails, however, she claimed that her correspondence about Libya, which dropped dramatically from 2011 to 2012, was not because she cared less about the country—it was because she had people shuttling documents to her in suitcases. In fact, she said, she didn’t even have a computer in her office. A State Department email address could have confirmed whether any of that was true. Now we will presumably never know.

Chris Stevens Was Responsible for His Own Death.

The most despicable lie of the day came from Hillary’s defense of her own conduct via ripping Chris Stevens, the dead ambassador. She spent virtually the entire day suggesting that Stevens knew the risks of his job, that he accepted those risks, and that he died knowing those risks. She even said that Stevens “felt comfortable” on the ground. If that is true, it’s certainly odd that the State Department team in Libya asked for more security over 600 times. Hillary said she didn’t receive any of those requests and blamed her security team for not granting more security—all the while saying she took responsibility for what had happened.

Then, the capper: Hillary said that when Stevens wrote an email asking about whether the Benghazi compound would be closed, he was just being a sly jokester. She said, “One of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor, and I just see him smiling as he’s typing this because it’s clearly in response to the email down below talking about picking up a few ‘fire sale items from the Brits.’” When told that those “fire sale items” were security barricades, Hillary answered, “Well, I thought it showed their entrepreneurial spirit.” Disgusting.

When in trouble or in doubt, blame the dead guy. Hey, he can't argue back. Hillary Laugh Button

Benghazi Victim’s Father on Hillary Clinton: ‘She’s a ‘Scumbag’

The father of slain former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi, Libya terrorist attack has strong words for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her handling of Benghazi.

“She’s a scumbag, in my opinion,” said Ben Doherty in an interview with NECN published to coincide with Clinton’s testimony on Thursday before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

And this interesting bit of news that gay partners of federal workers get better benefits than the families of CIA contractors:

The Doherty family is working to close a loophole that mandates single federal contractors carry insurance but does not pay out death benefits if the contractor has no children or spouse, reported the Boston Globe.

“As an independent contractor who was unmarried and without children, Doherty was ineligible to receive death benefits afforded to military personnel under the Defense Base Act of 1941, although he was employed by the CIA, she said.
“The family is working with Congressman Stephen F. Lynch to craft a law that would remove those barriers.
“On Jan. 26, Lynch introduced The Glen Anthony Doherty Overseas Security Personnel Fairness Act.
““It is unacceptable that the Defense Base Act requires federal workers to take out an insurance policy before they are deployed overseas and accepts the payment of insurance premiums from those workers, but fails to provide death benefits to their families or estate solely based on marital and child status,” Lynch stated on his website.”

Sadly true: Krauthammer: "We're Living In An Age Where What You Say And Its Relation With The Facts Is Completely Irrelevant"



Why Hillary's Emails Matter

Writing at Colby College's The Colby Echo, Ian Mansfield offers an outstanding summary for those voters who haven't been paying attention to the swirl of rumors, innuendo, falsehoods, and facts surrounding Hillary Clinton's private email server.

...her actions represent the first time a Secretary of State has used a private email server to conduct official business. Colin Powell, for example, used a private email address for personal matters, but he also used a government email to fulfill his duties as Secretary of State. This transgression on the part of Clinton poses a whole host of problems for the United States. For one, this leaves a gaping hole in the information surrounding Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

Why does this matter for someone considering voting for Hillary Clinton?

...she was able to systematically delete any incriminating information regarding her time in office with complete discretion. This becomes especially important when we consider how she is the first Secretary of State since 1979 to have an ambassador killed under her watch. That tragic event in 1979 occurred months after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, as opposed to our own invasion in Libya that effectively left the country in chaos, which is what happened in 2011 under Clinton.

Manfield also points out that Hillary's use of a private email server, which -- according to former officials in the Obama administration -- was almost certainly hacked by three or more foreign intelligence agencies.

A Secretary of State naturally handles highly classified information, which is the precise reason why they are required to use a government secured email for official business. Indeed, there is an ongoing FBI investigation into the matter that has concluded that some of the documents on the email contained classified information. Now, the main objective of the investigation has shifted to consider whether or not her private email server was breached, an act that could have far reaching consequences. We saw how detrimental the Snowden leaks were to US interests, diplomatic relationships, and most importantly, to the safety of US officials abroad.

Lastly, we are reminded of the real reason that Hillary Clinton operated her own email server:

Let me do this one. Hillary was part of the Watergate investigation. She knows that if Nixon had not yielded the tapes he would have served out his second term. She learned the lesson; never let information on you get out of your control. If you must yield it, delete any damaging info well ahead of time, along with enough innocuous material to make semi-plausible deniability. Treat it like a cancer, cut it out with a wide margin. To wit:

GRAPHIC ADMISSION: Hillary's Attorney Concedes Criminal Behavior -- Months of Official Emails Are "Missing"

An attorney For Clinton admitted that she did not turn over any emails from her first two months as Secretary of State: "An attorney for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this month that efforts to obtain lost email records from early in her tenure have been unsuccessful. The 30,000 emails turned over to the State Department last year didn't include any emails from her first two months as secretary of state due to technical issues in setting up Mrs. Clinton's personal email server." (Byron Tau, "Bid To Find Early Clinton State Department Emails Unsuccessful, Lawyer Says," The Wall Street Journal , 10/22/15)

An Email Exchange Between Clinton And Gen. David Petraeus Confirms That Clinton Sent Emails During That Period.: "[Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy] indicated his latest inquiry was prompted by State's discovery that one or more other officials exchanged emails with Clinton between January and March 2009, even though she produced no email records before March 18, 2009. State has confirmed that it now has an exchange Clinton had with Gen. David Petraeus during that period in part on her private clintonemail.com address." (Josh Gerstein, "Lawyer: Clinton 'Unable To Obtain' Emails From First Week As Secretary," Politico , 10/22/15)

BUT, BUT, BUT... Clinton Claimed That She Has "Fully Complied With Every Rule" Regarding Her Emails

Clinton, On Turning Over Her Emails: "I Fully Complied With Every Rule That I Was Governed By."QUESTION: "Why did you wait two months? Why -- why did you wait two months to turn those emails over? The rules say you have to turn them over... "(CROSSTALK) HILLARY CLINTON: "I don't think -- I'd be happy to have somebody talk to you about the rules. I fully complied with every rule that I was governed by." (Hillary Clinton, Remarks At The United Nations , New York, NY, 3/10/15)

RIP: Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O’Hara, Actress of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dies at 95

I guess everybody was in love with Maureen O’Hara,” Clint Eastwood said of Maureen O’Hara at the 2014 Governors Awards. An Irish-born actress and one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1940s and 50s, Maureen O’Hara passed away today at the age of 95, per a statement from her family.

“Maureen was our loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend,” the statement read. “She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life listening to music from her favorite movie, The Quiet Man.”

The Dublin-born O’Hara first broke into motion pictures in 1939, with roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn and as Esmerelda, opposite Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Over her celebrated career, O’Hara worked with the greats of her time, including John Ford (most notably on the 1941 Best Picture winner How Green Was My Valley) and John Wayne, with whom she made five films, including 1952’s The Quiet Man. She is, perhaps, most widely remembered for her roles in two family films, The Parent Trap and Miracle on 34th Street.

She had a remarkable story:

O'Hara was born as Maureen FitzSimons on Beechwood Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh and attended school in Milltown, Dublin. She was the second oldest of the six children of Charles Stewart Parnell FitzSimons and Marguerita (nėe Lilburn) FitzSimons. Her father was in the clothing business and also bought into Shamrock Rovers Football Club, a team O'Hara supported from childhood. Her mother, a former operatic contralto, was a successful women's clothier.

 O'Hara's father was a very practical man and did not entirely support her theatrical aspirations. He insisted that she learn a skill so that she would have something to fall back on to earn a living with in case her experience in the performing arts was not successful. She enrolled in a business school and became a proficient bookkeeper and typist. Those skills proved helpful many years later when she was able to take and transcribe production notes dictated by John Ford for the screen adaptation of Maurice Walsh's short story The Quiet Man.

 She did well in her Abbey training and was given an opportunity for a screen test in London. The studio adorned her in a "gold lamé dress with flapping sleeves like wings" and heavy makeup with an ornate hair style. Reportedly, her thoughts concerning the incident were, "If this is the movies, I want nothing to do with them!" The screen test was deemed to be far from satisfactory; however, actor Charles Laughton later saw the test and, despite the overdone makeup and costume, was intrigued, paying particular notice to her large and expressive eyes.

Much acting followed. . .

 An icon of Hollywood's Golden Age, at the height of her career O'Hara was considered one of the world's most beautiful women. She is often remembered for her onscreen chemistry with John Wayne. They made five films together between 1948 and 1972: Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, McLintock! and Big Jake.

She married her third husband, Charles F. Blair, Jr., on 12 March 1968. Blair was a pioneer of transatlantic aviation, a former brigadier general of the US Air Force, a former chief pilot at Pan Am, and founder and head of the U.S. Virgin Islands airline Antilles Air Boats. A few years after her marriage to Blair, O'Hara for the most part retired from acting (in the special features section to the DVD release of The Quiet Man, a story is recounted that O'Hara retired after longtime collaborators John Wayne and John Ford teased her about being married but not being a good, stay-at-home housewife). Blair died in 1978 while flying a Grumman Goose for his airline from St. Croix to St. Thomas, crashing after an engine failure. O'Hara was elected CEO and president of the airline, with the added distinction of becoming the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the U.S. Later she sold the airline with the permission of the shareholders

In 2014, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected O'Hara to receive the Academy's Honorary Oscar, to be presented at the annual Governor's Awards in November. O'Hara becomes only the second actress, after Myrna Loy in 1991, to receive an Honorary Oscar without having previously been nominated for an Oscar in a competitive category.

Not a bad run.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Just What It Says On The Label" ready at The Other McCain to fulfill any Rule 5 needs I might have missed.

I Ain't Scaret

West Hollywood House of Horrors: Radical Lesbian Feminists From Hell

Halloween approaches, and a coven of Canadian witches have brought their dark and ungodly evil to sunny Southern California:

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives has organized “KillJoy’s Kastle,” a “Lesbian Feminist haunted house.” ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is a part of the University of Southern California’s Libraries.
“Lesbian Rule. Forget the dead this Halloween. Feel the pulsing throb of something larger than life in KillJoy’s Kastle,” reads USC’s website.
KillJoy’s Kastle will be a “sex positive, trans inclusive, queer lesbian-feminist-fear-fighting celebration,” put together byToronto based-artists Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchelland organized by “ONE Archives in West Hollywood.”

“This haunted house of freaky feminist skill sharing and paranormal consciousness-raising reanimates the archive of lesbian herstory with all its wonders and thorny complications,” they explain. “Expect horror.”
“Dare to be scared by gender-queer apparitions,” it continues, “ball-busting butches, and never-married, happy-as-hell spinsters.. . . . Each evening of nightmarishly non-assimilated lesbian mayhem will include multiple live performances from a spirited group of international and local weirdos.”

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

This is what feminism means in 2015, sponsored by an elite private university (annual tuition at USC is $50,210) and promoted by those “mainstream” feminists at Huffington Post:

A large part of the performer-driven space is audience interaction. In other contexts, this might mean having teenagers in monster masks snarling at you for a cheap scare, but at KillJoy’s Kastle, you participate in myriad ways — from the physical to the more cerebral.
You might punch a bag emblazoned with the word “capitalism” on it. Or you might take a shot of liquor from a witch’s fake penis.

Wow, punching a bag labeled "capitalism"; how transgressive (yawn). Kids these days.  Where's Dean Wormer when you really need him?

Purpose for Millennials Confirmed!

Back in May, 2014 we saw how research indicated that some factor in blood from young donors could slow or reverse aging in older individuals. At least in rats and mice. . .

Now Hahvahd confirms: Antiaging protein is the real deal, Harvard team claims

Back in the 1950s in a weird, vampiric experiment, scientists first showed that connecting the circulatory systems of old and young mice seems to rejuvenate the more elderly animals. A handful of labs have recently been racing to find factors in young blood that may explain this effect. Now, a Harvard University group that claims to have found one such antiaging protein has published a study countering critics who dismissed the work on the molecule as flawed.

Harvard stem cell biologist Amy Wagers, cardiologist Richard Lee of the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and their colleagues claim that a specific protein, GDF11, may explain young blood’s beneficial effects. They have reported that blood levels of GDF11 drop in mice as the animals get older and that injecting old mice with GDF11 can partially reverse age-related thickening of the heart. In two papers last year in Science, Wagers and collaborators also reported that GDF11 can rejuvenate the rodents’ muscles and brains.

Following that is some discussion about confusion in initial results from an immunoassay that was not specific enough, but it concludes:

To back up their earlier results, Wagers and collaborators again show in the new paper that daily GDF11 injections can shrink heart muscle in both old and new mice. But this time they note another observation: The mice also lost weight. “We don’t have much insight into that right now, but we’re looking into it,” Wagers says. She says the findings suggest that as with other hormones, GDF11 may have “a therapeutic window” for beneficial effects—too much may cause harm.

And get rid of middle aged spread too? So when do we start taking mandatory blood donations from 18 year old kids to extract the GDF11 for the rest of us? Or I suppose, we could just figure out how to mass produce GDF11 from raw amino acids. But what's the fun in that?

Linked at #9  in Pirate's Cove's "The Fine 15" in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Thanks, Teach!

Post-Hearing Clinton.com

OK, I've let this lie too long again, and a great mass of Clinton.com material has come out in the last couple of days since I summarized it last, particularly Clinton's testimony to the Benghazi committee and the inevitable clash between two sides of the media trying to make points out of it, on the left hand, liberals trying to put out the message that Hillary had a "drop the mic" moment, settling once and for all that Benghazi was nothing but a  foreign policy triumph that conservatives have used to falsely attack their hero, and on the right hand, conservatives trying to point out the lies and contradictions in her testimony.

Although I didn't watch the proceedings (I have a life, albeit a quiet one), it appears that Trey Gowdy was as good as his word on keeping the Republicans focused on Benghazi and not on the email issue. Democrats, of course, were free to focus on their efforts to lionize the presumptive nominee of their party.

Foremost among the questions the panel tried to address was when did Hillary know it was a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous demonstration, and why did she continue to push the video as an excuse?

Hillary Email to Chelsea On the Night of the Benghazi Attack: You Know, It Was an Al Qaeda-Like Terrorist Group Who Attacked Us - Hillary to Egypt's PM: Attack Had Nothing to do With Video

This email sent by Hillary even as the Administration was coagulating behind her "YouTube Video" lie.

Hillary Clinton sent an email to her daughter, Chelsea, on Sept. 11, 2012 in which she asserted that an al-Qaida-like group was responsible for the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, it was revealed on Thursday during the former secretary of state's testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
...
In the email cited by Jordan, Clinton responded to daughter Chelsea, who emailed under the pseudonym Diane Reynolds.
"Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like [sic] group," Clinton wrote.

By the way -- why is Chelsea using pseudonyms? Likely for the same reason EPA heads use them -- to defeat FOIA requests and court-issued subpoenas.

Like mother like daughter.

That's not all -- Hillary also sent an email to the PM of Egypt stating "We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest."

She sent that within 24 hours of the attack -- and yet five days later, she had Susan Rice go out and peddle her YouTube video lie.

Video and transcript of the exchange of the second link.

So Hillary knew, when she was blaming the attack on the video when she told the victim's families that she was going to get the video producer  prosecuted, the one thing she made good on.

Mother of Benghazi Victim Erupts at Hillary Clinton: ‘She’s Lying!’



Sore loser.

I'll let The Daily Caller sum it up: Lying Is America’s Biggest Political — And Media — Problem

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was bluntly exposed during Thursday’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing, so where did these headlines come from?

“Clinton emerges unscathed from high-stakes Benghazi hearing.” — The Washington Post
“Clinton largely unscathed by GOP Benghazi hearing.” — The Hill
“Hillary Clinton defends actions in Benghazi hearing.” — The Wall Street Journal
“Clinton seeks high ground during Benghazi panel’s 11-hour grilling.” — The Los Angeles Times
“Benghazi hearing concludes: Dems say panel uncovered ‘nothing new'” — USA Today

The digital front page examples above from the Post, Times and The Hill are actually editorial statements masquerading as news headlines. The Journal headline is accurate, but boring. The USA Today headline parrots the Democrats’ talking points. Unfortunately, these headlines capture the mainstream media’s dominant conclusion about Clinton and the Benghazi hearing.

The reality is that something new and quite significant was learned at the hearing: Within hours of the attack on the U.S. facility, Clinton told the Egyptian prime minister “we know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.”

But two days later, while standing before the flag-draped coffins of the four Americans killed in the attack, grieving members of their families and millions of Americans watching on TV, Clinton attributed the tragedy to protests of “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

I’m sorry, folks, but that circle cannot be squared. If “it was a planned attack, not a protest” and “had nothing to do with the film,” it could not have been caused by “an awful Internet video.” Yet Clinton — and President Obama, his spokesman Jay Carney, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and others in the White House — repeated the video lie over and over again for days thereafter.

Four Americans died, then Clinton, Obama, Rice, et. al. lied. And we wonder why nobody believes anything said by the government these days, and why the mainstream media has a profound credibility problem. Americans in flyover country know that liars cannot be trusted.

Happy fun times: Hillary fondly remembers Chris Stevens’s sense of humor in trying not to be murdered



Hillary: My Team and I had a 'Great Time' at my House after Benghazi hearing:

Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that she and her team had a “great” time “eating Indian food, and drinking wine and beer” at her house after her testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee in an interview broadcast on Friday’s “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.

When asked what she did after the hearing, Hillary said, “Well, I had my whole team come over to my house, and we sat around eating Indian food, and drinking wine and beer. That’s what we did. … We were all talking about sports, TV shows. It was great, just to have that chance to, number one thank them, because they did a terrific job, kind of being there behind me, and getting me ready, and then just talk about what we’re going to do next.”

Hillary: I Didn't Know The Spymaster on My Payroll Was Providing Me With the Intelligence I Was Paying Him to Get

Here is the background.

Tyler Drumheller, former CIA clandestine service head of Europe, was providing intel for a private intelligence service called "The Osprey Group."

He was feeding Sydney Blumenthal intelligence.

Blumenthal passed this intelligence on to Hillary.

Hillary then passed this on to other people, who were not cleared to receive the intelligence.

Crucially, some of this intel was about the actual names of CIA assets in Libya-- information of the highest classification level.

Drumheller had gotten the names -- illegally, as he was not cleared to have the names either -- from unidentified (Democrat leaning, I'm sure) CIA sources.

Then Hillary passed these names on.

If you could prove that Hillary knew she was passing highly classified information, she'd be guilty of knowingly violating the Espionage Act.

That's why, I think, she's making the (to me, ludicrous) claim that she didn't know that Sydney Blumenthal's information was coming from Tyler Drumheller (and his information, in turn, came from current CIA officers). Because she wants to claim she thought this information just came from some friend/journalist, so she's claiming she did not know the actual origination of the information, so she didn't know, I guess, that it was "marked as classified."

So we now have Hillary denying what seems undeniable -- that she knew where Syd Blumenthal's top-secret/SCI classified tips were coming from.

I don't know if she'll get away with this. Obviously, with the Clintons, they always claim they didn't know that crucial thing that would make their actions illegal; their defense is always that they didn't knowingly know what they doingly did.

The New York Times actually does a credible job of comparing Hillary's initial responses to the email issue with the "final", or at least current results. One example:

INITIAL STATEMENT

March 10, 2015“There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements.” — Hillary Rodham Clinton

LATER COMMENTS

July 2015The F.B.I. had determined that Mrs. Clinton had received “Secret” information in her account, the second highest classification of government intelligence. In response to that disclosure, her campaign said that sensitive national security information was sometimes upgraded to classified at a later date if the State Department or another agency believed its inadvertent release “could potentially harm national security or diplomatic relations.” The campaign insisted that none of the materials were classified at the time she received them. — Clinton campaign statement

The only thing new is the New York Times bundling the truth.

More CEOs donate to Clinton than to any GOP candidate

The GOP is often considered the party of business — but it looks like the nation's CEOs may not agree.

Hillary Clinton has received more donations from CEOs than any Republican candidate so far this year, according to a Big Crunch analysis of the last complete batch of individual Federal Election Commission records.

More than 760 people have given to Clinton's campaign and identified their occupations as "CEO" or a variation of "chief executive" — that's about as many CEO backers as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz combined.

Clinton Library Funded by Offshore Tax Haven

Hillary Clinton is repeating the Democrat trope about “offshore tax havens” that immorally divert profits from workers and the taxman. Closing these is a central plank of her promised agenda as President, she explains in an op-ed laying out her economic agenda.

Setting aside the economic merits of her plan, the proposal is a little rich coming from Hillary Clinton.

Just ten years ago, when she and Bill were building the Clinton Presidential Library, they received a critical short-term loan from a supporter’s “offshore tax haven.” Like most everything else with the Clinton family, the rules and policies they promote are for other people.

Or, it’s possible that the Clintons focus their policies on particular abuses and unethical actions because, having benefited from them, they have a unique perspective on how these actions work. . . 

End game: Gallup poll shows NRA is 50% more popular than… Hillary Clinton

We’ve been hearing a lot about this subject in the last few weeks. Among the list of the “enemies” that Hillary Clinton is most proud of having made, the National Rifle Association is right near the top of the list. This led one of her prominent supporters to declare that the demise of the organization was not only at hand, but it was inevitable. But before they begin ordering funeral wreaths for the NRA they might want to take a quick peek at how the rest of the nation is feeling about it. (Fox News)

A new poll shows The National Rifle Association is more popular than the Democratic party’s two most prominent members, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
According to the Gallup Poll, 58 percent of Americans surveyed said they have a favorable view of the gun rights group, while 35 percent said they have an unfavorable view.
“In a year plagued with mass shootings, including a recent tragedy at a community college in Oregon, there has been a national debate as to whether the NRA, with its ardent support for gun rights, is somehow complicit in these shootings,” Gallup points out.
“Gallup’s survey shows that, even after shootings nationwide, Americans overall still have a favorable opinion of the NRA, as they typically have, suggesting that the public may not be specifically blaming the organization for the crimes of those who commit mass shootings.”

Even the media seems to be a bit confused about this. Suggesting? Is it really so shocking to think that rank and file citizens don’t blame a gun rights and gun safety training organization for the actions of a handful of madmen? Here’s a quick clue for the strategists in Hillary’s camp. The NRA broke the five million member mark in 2013 and that was after the Newtown shooting. And even people who aren’t paid members see the group in a favorable light.

Rule 5 Saturday - The Fish Chick - Brooke Thomas

Something a little different for Rule 5 Saturday this week. Not a model, not an actress, but a professional fisher, uh, woman; a girl not afraid to kiss a fish. She showed up in my Facebook feed a few months back, thanks to numerous friends who also fish. Brooke Thomas is a native Floridian, who is turning her lifetime passion for fishing into a career, advertising for Huk fishing gear, Nomad Outdoor and Native Eyewear.

Looking good and catching fish, what a tough job! I have trouble with the first part.

 Brooke started her fishing career at a very young age with her grandparents.

“They used to take me fishing on a few local lakes here in Florida…and also Costa Rica where they had a ranch” she said. “That’s where my love of the water began.”

From that point on, Brooke’s career began to take off. She’s been featured in Big Bass Monthly, GAFF Magazine, and multiple fishing and bowfishing calendars.

Here is her Facebook page and her Instagram.

I notice a distinct lack of Striped Bass in her photos. I'd be happy to show her some places around here to catch them.

This week for GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE's 213th Issue, everything you wanted to know about Elvira, "Mistress of the Dark", (Cassandra Peterson) but were afraid to ask. Plus some weird tales concerning Joe Biden and Captain America.

Linked at Pirate's Cove's  in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Thanks, Teach! Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Pre-Halloween Pinups" and "FMJRA 2.0: The Million Dollar Piano" up at The Other McCain.

Now included in the Canonical List of Rule 5 Posts.

New Maryland Record Snakehead?

Maryland Man Sets State Record for Biggest Snakehead Caught

An Upper Marlboro man has set a record in Maryland after catching a 17-pound northern snakehead fish.

Michael Meade caught the fish with a bow and arrow in the marshes of Mattawoman Creek on Oct. 16. Meade says he weighed the fish on a bathroom scale when he got home and discovered it was over 17 pounds.

“It was about 10:30 at night when I brought it onboard, and it was the biggest snakehead I had ever seen,” Meade told the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “When I got home, I stepped on a bathroom scale with the fish, and it was over 17 pounds. So, I put it in a bucket of ice water and went looking for a certified scale.”

The next day, he took it to the Gray Brothers Market Store in Marbury where he had its weight confirmed by a certified scale.

According to the DNR, the 17.49-pounder set a state sport fish record. . .

However, my snakehead fishing buddy Capt. Mike Starrett claims to have caught two larger in Maryland waters, 17.5 and 18.3 lbs on hook and line, which were "released by accident."

DOJ Lets Lerner Off the Hook

Are you surprised? I'm not.

No IRS official would face criminal charges arising from the political controversy over the processing of applications for tax-exempt status, the Justice Department announced Friday.

In a letter to members of Congress, the department said that while investigators had found "mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia," there was no evidence of a crime.

"We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution," the letter stated.

The department also announced that Lois Lerner, who headed the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status at the time, would not face any charges.

DOJ has become a totally political agency under Eric Holder and now Loretta Lynch.

Baltimore County Prepares to Dump "Rain Tax"

Baltimore County Council seeks to eliminate 'rain tax'

The stormwater remediation fee, known to many critics as the "rain tax," could soon be eliminated in Baltimore County.

The County Council on Monday introduced legislation that would phase out the fee over the next two years. According to the bill, the fee would be reduced in next summer's property tax bill before being eliminated the year after that.

The bill has unanimous support among the seven-member County Council, making it veto-proof against a possible rejection by County Executive Kevin Kamenetz.

"The council and I share the desire to lower fees but without compromising environmental protection. I intend to meet with the council to discuss next steps," Kamenetz said in a statement.
. . .
Baltimore County first established the fees in 2013. The General Assembly passed legislation the previous year that required the 10 largest jurisdictions in the state to collect the fees, which must be spent on projects designed to reduce runoff and control pollution in the area.

The mandate for the fees was lifted this year when the state legislature changed the law, ensuring that jurisdictions needed to show only that they were funding such projects and didn't need to create a new dedicated fee to pay for them. The shift was a top priority of Gov. Larry Hogan.

The "Rain Tax" was a brainchild of former Baltimore (City) Mayor, and then former Governor O'Malley, who is currently running for the democratic nomination. The "rain tax" was widely hated in the state, and is generally regarded as the reason Gov. Larry Hogan (R) beat O'Malley's hand picked would be successor, Lt. Gov. Anthony (Tony) Brown, which may have cast a shadow on O'Malley's presidential aspirations as well.

Hogan sponsored and signed legislation to repeal the mandate, allowing the jurisdictions affected to choose their own method of funding storm water control. Baltimore County is the first such jurisdiction to dump the "rain tax."

Just as information, Baltimore County is separate from Baltimore City, so this does not affect the city, yet.

Is 55 the Perfect Temperature?

Sweeping study claims that rising temperatures will sharply cut economic productivity

In a sweeping new study published Wednesday in Nature, a team of researchers say there is a strong relationship between a region’s average temperature and its economic productivity — adding another potential cost to a warming climate.

I suppose sweeping in this case means we are supposed to take a little data and make massive, unwarranted conclusions.

Culling together economic and temperature data for over 100 wealthy and poorer countries alike over 50 years, the researchers assert that the optimum temperature for human productivity is seems to be around 13 degrees Celsius or roughly 55 degrees Fahrenheit, as an annual average for a particular place. Once things get a lot hotter than that, the researchers add, economic productivity declines “strongly.”

“The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries,” write the authors, led by Marshall Burke of Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science, who call their study “the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate.” Burke published the study with Solomon Hsiang and Edward Miguel, economists at the University of California, Berkeley.

So, this data only applies over the last 50 years. I was wondering how they were going to rationalize how most of the world's great civilizations, Egypt, Rome, Greece, China, and Mesoamerica all started in relatively warm climates. They got around it by ignoring it.

If the findings are correct, they add, that means that unmitigated global warming could lead to a more than 20 percent decline in incomes around the world, compared with a world that does not feature climate change. And this would also mean growing global inequality, since poorer countries will be hit by worse temperature increases — simply because “hot, poor countries will probably suffer the largest reduction in growth.” Indeed, some already wealthier countries with cold weather, like Canada or Sweden, will benefit greatly based on the study, moving closer to the climatic optimum.

“If you’re in a country where the average temperature is cooler than 13 degrees C, a little bit of warming could actually be beneficial,” says Burke. “On the other hand, if you’re already at 13 degrees C, a little extra warming is going to hurt you.”

Assuming this relationship between temperature and productivity is correct, that naturally leads to deep questions about its cause. The researchers locate them in two chief places: agriculture and people. In relation to rising temperature, Burke says, “We see that agricultural productivity declines, labor productivity declines, kids do worse on tests, and we see more violence.”

There is also recent research suggesting global warming will reduce wheat yields, one of many major projected effects on agriculture. In other words, there is a body of existing research that’s consistent with the new, more sweeping conclusion of the Nature paper.

Of course, there's no evidence that wheat yields are actually declining, so this is merely a case of models supporting models and not actually following the data.

However, the new work has already drawn criticism — University of Sussex economist Richard Tol called it “hugely problematic” in an email to the Post — so it remains to be seen what other researchers make of the work.

At the center of the new paper is a historical, economic analysis that culls data from 166 countries over half a century, analyzing GDP per capita against temperature fluctuations that the countries experienced.

Importantly, the researchers did not compare countries with one another — an approach that would have been beset with many confounding factors. Rather, they compared each country “to itself in years when it is exposed to warmer- versus cooler-than-average temperatures due to naturally occurring stochastic atmospheric changes.”

Shocking, Countries that are cold and adapted to cold that get a slight warm up had good years. Countries that were warm, and adapted for warm years did slightly worse in hot years.

“An economy observed during a cool year is the ‘control’ for that same society observed during a warmer ‘treatment’ year,” the authors write.

The second half of the study then projected the toll of a steadily warming trend, based on these relationships. “In 2100, we estimate that unmitigated climate change will make 77% of countries poorer in per capita terms than they would be without climate change,” the paper says.

I'm sure they were taking at least the mean if not the maximum warming predicted by the IPCC as their prediction for 2100. The IPCC has been over-predicting temperature increases world wide for years now, in it's quest to gain control over the world. In reality, temperatures haven't increased significantly in about 20 years according to the satellite data:

However, it is important to note that this is based on a scenario in which the world does nothing to curtail global warming — a scenario that is becoming increasingly difficult to believe. This was one of Tol’s criticisms — “they extrapolate from modest warming between 1960 and 2015 to massive warming between 2015 and 2100,” he objected, among a number of other technical criticisms.

So how does your state stack up on their scale: Average Annual Temperature for Each US State

According to this chart, the "ideal" temperature slants across the USA from New Jersey to New Mexico. I'm a little surprised at New Mexico, but I guess having a lot of mountains makes up for being in the desert Southwest. According to this Florida and Hawaii (#1 and #2) should be horrible places and people should be emigrating in droves and Texas should not be the most productive state.

Save Money, Shower with a Friend

That thoughtless ecomonster Kate Upton, showering alone. Shame on her...



Linked at Pirate's Cove's  in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Thanks, Teach! Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Pre-Halloween Pinups" up at The Other McCain.

Midnite Music - "Breathe"

Went Fishing Again!

Trevor and I got together about 3 PM to see what was hanging around the local area. We tried any number of things before resorting to jigging in the fast water at "Location X". But that's where the fish were. First Trevor got this 21 inch (they need to be 20 to keep) Striped Bass.

 Then I got this nice Bluefish. I didn't measure it since they only need to be 9 inches.

 Then I got this 22 inch Striper (it felt bigger...). We managed another two legal Stripers before. . .

 Sunset.

 Looking to the south away from the sun.

On our way home, we found a few birds picking over a few breaking fish. We quickly determined they were a smaller class of fish, and moved on, but not before I captured this sunset.