Global Warming? Now we have too many polar bears?

Via Daily Timewaster

Exciting news about polar bears in eastern Canada: A peer-reviewed paper on the Davis Strait subpopulation study has finally been published in the Journal of Wildlife Management. It concludes that despite sea ice having declined since the 1970s, polar bear numbers in Davis Strait have not only increased to a greater density (bears per 1,000 km2) than other seasonal-ice subpopulations (like Western Hudson Bay), but may now have reached its carrying capacity.

This is great news. But where is the shouting from the roof-tops? The study was published online in February and in print in April.  No press release was issued that I could find and, consequently, there was no news coverage.

Funny, that. There was a bit of shouting back in 2007 when the study ended and the preliminary population count was released. Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist at Lakehead University in Ontario, was quoted in the Telegraph: “There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears.” There was also a CBC news item in January, 2007. But the story then focused only on preliminary information about population increase. The newly-published study — by Lily Peacock of the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, and three other colleagues including Mr. Taylor of Lakehead University — reveals that the story in Davis Strait is about more than simple population growth.

The study compared data from mark-recapture studies done in 1974-1979 to those undertaken in 2005- 2007.  The authors state that in Davis Strait,  ”the overall amount of sea ice declined and breakup has become progressively earlier” since the 1970s. However, in spite of this decline in sea ice, they estimated the number of bears at about 2,158, a substantial increase over the estimate of about 1,400 bears in 1993.

More @ Financial Post

3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so

Via WRSA

 

 

In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.

When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.

For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.

To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.

Today, they feel vindicated.

They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. They say those revelations only hint at the programs' reach.

On Friday, USA TODAY brought Drake, Binney and Wiebe together for the first time since the story broke to discuss the NSA revelations. With their lawyer, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, they weighed their implications and their repercussions. They disputed the administration's claim of the impact of the disclosures on national security — and President Obama's argument that Congress and the courts are providing effective oversight.

And they have warnings for Snowden on what he should expect next.

More @ USA Today

Six Primitive Traps For Catching Food In The Woods

Via The Lonely Libertarian

 

More @ The Prepper Journal

Some goodies from Ol' Remus

 Ol' Remus

This will not be a gradual recovery from this disaster that we have. We are not going to elect enough people and have enough courage to vote the right way; there is too much demagoguing and too much misunderstanding... What amazes me is that it holds together. So I think monetizing debt and spending and deficit is going to get much, much worse until the world rejects the dollar. And there will be a rejection here at home, and prices will soar, and eventually interest rates will break loose and they will start rising.
Former Rep. Ron Paul, via Adam Taggart at peakprosperity.com

  The Santa Monica college shooting reveals an Inconvenient truth or two; the first awkward fact is evident in police refusing to describe this as a 'college campus shooting', the second is that both the authorities and the Liberal media have have attempted to conceal the shooter, John Zawahri, is of Middle Eastern birth or origin and was probably Muslim, there's a strong possibility this shooting was motivated by Islamist fundamentalism, says Graham Noble in this article at the Guardian Express.

 I was fascinated by Cheetahs as a young boy.

102 km per hour - Cheetahs are not built to be able to turn at their highest speed. In an artificial setting, which astronauts and fighter pilots are put into for training, the force felt by a cheetah trying to turn around at top speed could knock it unconscious. Instead, they use their ability to slow down and their ridged footpads and claws to grip the ground well enough to turn quickly.
Akshat Rathi at arstechnica.com 

102 km per hour - Cheetahs are not built to be able to turn at their highest speed. In an artificial setting, which astronauts and fighter pilots are put into for training, the force felt by a cheetah trying to turn around at top speed could knock it unconscious. Instead, they use their ability to slow down and their ridged footpads and claws to grip the ground well enough to turn quickly.
Akshat Rathi at arstechnica.com 

More idiocy. 

 Black felons: DC washes their sins away

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - A federal agency filed a lawsuit against BMW Manufacturing, alleging the company discriminated against African-Americans in the hiring and firing process because of criminal background checks... 88 logistics employees were eventually fired and denied a job, 70 of whom were black and disproportionately disqualified from a job.
Casey Vaughn at foxcarolina.com

Dollar General Corp. was sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for conditioning job offers for store clerks on criminal background checks. The illegal practice has had a negative impact on black applicants since the company started doing it in 2004.
Andrew Harris at bloomberg.com

Surveillance - It's become the theater of the absurd—secret judges give secret orders for secret missions making them "legal".
tango, comment 3643651 at zerohedge.com 

Demographics and IQ - People are surely better off with the truth. Oddly enough, everyone agrees with this when it comes to the arts. Sophisticated people sneer at feel-good comedies and saccharine romances in which everyone lives happily ever after. But when it comes to science, these same people say, "Give us schmaltz!" They expect the science of human beings to be a source of emotional uplift and inspirational sermonizing.
Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, via Steve Sailer at isteve.com 

ObamaCare - The ones who don't sign up are the young guys and gals who feel that they are healthy and if they get sick, they just go to the emergency room. Under ObamaCare, people who were worried about getting stuck without insurance can still go to the emergency room for free and no longer have the incentive of catastrophic illness to sign up for insurance. So the incentives to sign up for the plan just disappeared.
Andy Puzder, CKE Restaurants, to Aallysia Finley at online.wsj.com 

Yeah, right - You can’t just listen to the phone call in Russia; you need a special order from court. This is how this should be done in civilized society while tackling terrorism with the use of any technical means. If it is in the framework of the law, then it’s ok. If not it is unacceptable.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia via Margarita Simonyan at rt.com

1913 - The average life expectancy if you made it to twenty was not much lower than ours is now. Aside from antibiotics, and some public health measures, the modern medical-industrial complex is, as a societal enterprise, of only marginal benefit.  Insitutional Healthcare, Insurers and Big Pharma are high tribute to the post-modern West's intense fear of death.
August, comment 3661477 at zerohedge.com

NC: Major General Bryan Grimes Plantation Tour Update

Major General Bryan Grimes' Plantation

**************************************

 Jackie Haddock

Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013

Compatriots

 

As many of you know we had to cancel last weeks tour due to the summer storm, it has been rescheduled for this Thursday the 20th. If  you plan to attend would you be so kind as to RSVP me, so I may have some idea of those planning to be in attendance for our guide.

Thanks,

 

Jackie Haddock

Camp 1488Greenville, N.C.

The Tar Heel
First, Farthest, Foremost

More than 70% Oppose Arming Syrian Rebels

Via avordvet

 

Six-in-Ten Say Opposition May Be No Better than Current Government

Overview

Broad majorities continue to oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria. Last Thursday’s announcement that the U.S. would aid the rebels has not increased public support for action, and majorities of all partisan groups are opposed.

Overall, 70% oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria; just 20% favor this. Opinion is little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).

More @ People Press

NC: Eyewitnesses describe the terror of DWI checkpoint shooting

Via NC Links

40 gun shots and they are still alive?  Idiots.

WECT TV6-WECT.com:News, weather

Jared and Rose Cleerdin found themselves right in the middle of a shootout at what should have been a routine DWI checkpoint.  Days after the dramatic shootout in Brunswick County, they are still shaken by what they saw.

"Every cop turned around and started unloading like super trigger happy as if their training was coming into full effect and they were being able to utilize it," said Cleerdin. "Everybody was just blasting this car to pieces. It was absolutely terrifying."

They were stunned with what was happening, as officers reportedly shot dozens of rounds - in the direction on-coming traffic.

"Cops are shooting from the front of the car, back into the rest of the on-coming traffic to the check point, into the rest of the innocent civilians down the road," said Cleerdin.

Cleerdin says he believes the officers acted with no regard for public safety.

"It was way beyond reckless," said Cleerdin. "I couldn't believe it. These are professional people, professional officers, and they're training, they're highly trained and they're not supposed to do stuff like that."

More @ WECT

History from the Moneychanger

 The Moneychanger

Today was not a great day in history. On 17 June 1789 the French Third Estate declared itself a national assembly and began working on a constitution which would eventually drain the blood of France and kill millions by war and internal Terror.

On 17 June 1856 the Republican Party opened its first convention in Philadelphia. They loosed an ideological war on the South looting, raping, robbing, killing, & burning, & I can't see how they've changed much since. The Democratic Party, which in 1856 differed greatly, today is indistinguishable from the Republicans. Both are unanimous in their hatred of individual liberty and local self-government.

Finally, on 17 June 1864 President Jefferson Davis made one of his biggest mistakes of the war, replacing Genl. Joe Johnston with John B Hood, who would eventually destroy the noble Army of Tennessee that Johnston has used so successfully. He was a delayer, but that was his job.

Illustrating Chicago Values

Via Mike 

More @ Hey Jackass

Status Report on the Immigration Amnesty Bill: Many reasons why gun owners should be concerned

As you probably know, the immigration amnesty bill is on the Senate floor.

This is a status report on where we are, and we will attempt to give you regular follow-ups over the next two weeks.

For starters, why should gun owners care about immigration amnesty?

First:  It will add up to a net 8.4 million anti-gun voters in the next 13 years or so.  This could make comprehensive gun control and confiscation inevitable within our lifetimes.

Second:  Victory feeds on itself; but so does defeat.  If anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer passes this bill out of the Senate with a strong bipartisan majority, he has already said he intends to bring gun control back by the end of the summer.  Obama would emerge from the fight reenergized to take away your guns.

Third:  If people get used to having to have the government's permission to get a job -- even to clean your house or mow your lawn -- it will be a lot harder to fight universal background checks and gun registries.

 

Fourth:  There is the concern that the bill will create a de facto National ID card.  In a Saturday New York Times article entitled, “Fears of National ID with Immigration Bill,” some in Congress have openly worried about the “potential for another sprawling data network that could ultimately be the equivalent of a national ID system.” Gun Owners of America has long opposed anything that smacks of this because of the danger that such data collection poses to gun owners’ privacy.

Here's where we are:

Most Republicans -- in our opinion, foolishly -- "threw the vote" on the motion to proceed to the bill.  It would have been better to have an early show of force, but this is not the end
of the world.

For the last week, the Senate has been debating Grassley and Cornyn amendments which would require border security before illegal aliens could get legal residence and/or a green card.

Why is this important?

In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty bill.  The supposed trade-off was that illegal aliens would be granted amnesty, but illegal immigration would be stopped.

Illegal aliens were, in fact, granted amnesty.  But, fueled by this first round of amnesty, 11.5-20 million more illegals flooded into the country.  The border was never secured.

Now, Chuck Schumer is telling Marco Rubio, that this new bill will grant amnesty, but, in return, secure the border.  But when Grassley and Cornyn offer amendments to require border security before amnesty, what does Schumer say?  In effect, "border security is unachievable, so Schumer's supposed wonderful amnesty program would never happen under that condition."

Huh?  Isn't this tantamount to saying that Schumer is lying to Rubio?  Besides, as the IRS and NSA scandals suggest, Obama cannot be trusted to obey the law, once he's gotten his 8.4 new anti-gun voters. 

But there will be follow-up votes on more anemic "border security" measures which will supposedly be the "candy" to pick up the votes necessary to send this bill from the Senate with 70 or more votes.  If that happens, it will be harder to stop in the House.

Supposedly, these "poison candy" amendments are being considered by Senators like Tom Coburn and Bob Corker.

ACTION:  Click here to contact your Senators.  Tell them the anti-gun amnesty bill needs to be plucked up by the roots without trying to sweeten it with phony "border security" measures.

Beaches, produce, crops, frog legs and moonshine.

 

My 4th daughter who recently moved here from California comments on Southern Living.

If some of you didn't know, we just moved from California to North Carolina. I am not much of a city person but when it comes to anywhere in the world I could find beauty or something interesting about it . It's funny how all the states in the US can be so different.

You would think it's a different country. I posted some pictures of things I am not used to but absolutely love all the same!

More @ Beautiful Mermaids

Barack O’Farmer

 

 

SECRET Service spooks are disguising themselves as FARMERS to protect Barack Obama from terrorist threats at the G8 summit.

They have even bought a fleet of TRACTORS ahead of the US President’s arrival in Northern Ireland tomorrow for the two-day meeting.

The agents’ plan is to pose as local farmers in the sprawling fields around the five-star lakeside hotel complex hosting the huge event.

More @ The Sun

WW I Reenacting

 

More @ Onepamop

No, the FBI isn’t investigating the IRS. They’re on the same team.

Via avordvet

 

FBI Director Robert Mueller seems to have quite the talent for forgetting when it comes to the various scandals that his law enforcement organization is supposed to be investigating. For example, when he was question by Congress yesterday, he knew nothing about the alleged investigation into the IRS's abuse of power.

I'm going to remind you of a simple fact: When Tea Party group founder Catherine Engelbrecht was harassed by agents of the Obama Administration, it was the FBI that took the lead in her harrassment. She was questioned by the FBI six times, was audited by the IRS four times, the BATF twice, and OSHA once.

More @ Bob Owens

The Rise of Nullification

Via Ryan

Most Likely to Secede: What the Vermont Independence Movement Can Teach Us About Reclaiming Community and Creating a Human-Scale Vision for the 21st Century, Ron Miller and Rob Williams, eds., Chelsea Greeen. 272 pages

I presume to review this book, even though I am a contributor to it, because it is a fine representation of an increasing tendency across this land of resistance to a federal government grown inept, corrupt, overreaching, overlarge, and overintrusive. That tendency may be labeled, for convenience: nullification.

It doesn’t matter that the word does not appear in this volume, for its spirit does. The volume is called Most Likely to Secede, and it grows out of a secession movement in Vermont that has been active, off and on, for a decade now. But I don’t think secession really is in the immediate future. Instead the subtitle comes closest to what this book is all about—state independence. It is a collection of essays from a magazine called Vermont Commons, which started publishing in 2005, and they deal with every aspect of what it takes for a state to assume unto itself all the processes that have been ceded to (or seized by) the federal government over the years: money, business regulation, energy, health, education, democracy, food safety, information, the commons, and social policies such as abortion and marriage.

Obviously, every attempt to increase or establish independence on the state level will eventually run up against laws and regulations on the federal level.

More @ The American Conservative

Kirkpatrick Sale is director of the Middlebury Institute and the author of a dozen books, most recently Emancipation Hell: The Tragedy Wrought by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation 150 Years Ago.

Supreme Court invalidates Arizona voter registration law

Via LH

 

Hopeless.

he Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona state law that requires people registering to vote in federal elections to show proof of citizenship.

In a 7-2 vote, the court said the voter registration provision of the 2004 state law, known as Proposition 200, was trumped by a federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

The federal law requires prospective voters to provide one of several possible forms of identification, such as a driver's license or a passport, but no proof of citizenship is needed. Would-be voters simply sign a statement saying they are citizens.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the state law was preempted by language in the federal statute saying that states must "accept and use" a federal registration form.

More @ Reuters

Copperhead: Words That Got a U.S. Congressman Deported

Via LH

Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham (D-Ohio) was the original American "whistleblower." Serving as a member of Congress from Dayton, Ohio during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, his criticisms of the Lincoln regime earned him the reputation as the leader of the Democratic opposition. The Republican Party smeared him (and all other opponents as a "copperhead" (a.k.a. snake in the grass). On May 5, 1863, sixty-seven heavily-armed soldiers broke into his home in the middle of the night and dragged him off to a military prison. This was done without any due process, as Lincoln had long ago illegally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. He was said to be guilty of "discouraging enlistments" in the army with his criticisms of the Lincoln regime. A military order issued in the state of Ohio declared all such speech to be illegal, and military officers were to have dictatorial powers in deciding what kind of speech would be permitted there. All of this was of course done at the direction of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln apparently wanted Northerners to believe that all such critics were spies and traitors, so Congressman Vallandigham was deported to the state of Tennessee and placed in the hands of a Confederate Army commander. The Confederates considered him to be an "enemy alien" and imprisoned him in Wilmington, North Carolina for a short time. Vallandigham was released and made his way via blockade runner to Canada, where he spent the rest of the war.

The words that got Congressman Vallandigham deported are found in Speeches, Arguments, Addresses and Letters of Clement L. Vallandigham, first published in 1864 and reprinted and for sale today at Amazon.com. Vallandigham’s first salvo against the Lincoln administration was a July 10, 1861 speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives entitled "Executive Usurpation." In the speech he condemned Lincoln for "the wicked and hazardous experiment of calling thirty millions of people into arms among themselves, without the counsel and authority of Congress." 

More @ WND

Hooked on Swing

Via Cousin Colby

CNN Poll: Majority Doesn't Trust Obama, Approval Rating Suffers Severe Drop

The zombies have finally awoken.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month -- one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency, according to a new CNN poll released early Monday morning.

For the first time in Obama's time in office,  more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.

Specifically, Obama's approval rating stands at 45 percent, down from 53 percent in mid-May, CNN reported. A shocking 54 percent of respondents told pollsters they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job. That was up 9 points in just a month.

More @ Newsmax

Virginia Pork Festival

Via Cousin John  "Just got back. Had a great time!"

Two Arrested After Allegedly Firing At St. Louis Cop In Violent Ambush During Special Patrol

 

Missed this before.

After a particularly bloody night on Monday -- with eighteen people injured during seven separate incidents of crime in St. Louis -- the metro police department vowed to increase patrols the following night throughout the city in an effort to curb the violence. 

The extra help was apparently very much needed.

As we reported yesterday, a 52-year-old officer, who we now know was on special patrol Tuesday night, faced a violent ambush from a shooter who he says looked him straight in the eye -- and began firing bullets.

Police officials announced late last night that they had charged two men in connection with this shooting, after another crime-filled day in the city that put many cops in danger.

More @ Riverfront Times

When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the “Great March”

 

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial

“The Official Website of the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission”

“Women and Children Face the Invader”  

More @ NCWBTS

“Fighting for Existence”

March 6 [1865] – “The feeling which comes over me at the thought of seeing [Yankees] again is indescribable…..[their] presence and manner is an insult – they are so low, so incapable of appreciating courage in man or woman. They delight in making terrible threats and the gloat over our misery.

Yesterday a captain was here who pretended to be all kindness and sympathy. He was comparatively polite and did not enter the house. Perhaps he knew it was not worth while after the foragers.  When he began to talk he proved almost worse than any of the others; he said he has vowed never to take a Rebel prisoner, and that he would delight in cutting one down, and often did it!  My disgust was intense, but I tried very hard to keep cool. 

He asked, “Do you know what you are fighting for?” 

I answered “Existence.”

He said: “We wont let you have it.”

With a fearful grin he went on, “in four months we’ll have the Confederacy on its knees.”

I answered, “You must kill every man, woman and child first.”

He said, “We’ll do it, too. At the beginning of this war I didn’t care a cent about a nigger, but I’d rather enlist for ten years longer than let the South have its independence.”

Then, with a chuckle, he exclaimed, “We’ll starve you out! Not in one place that we have visited have we left three meals.” 

At something D. said he exclaimed, “Oh, I know what you mean; you mean the Almighty, but the Almighty has nothing to do with this war!” Such blasphemy silenced me completely.  I felt it was wrong, or at the least imprudent, to talk to such a creature. 

We hear of unrestrained plunder and direction in every direction. The poor Negroes suffer also, and I fear we are all destined to feel the pangs of hunger.  But after hearing that man talk I had rather do anything, suffer anything, than submit. 

But to think of the noble, glorious men we lose by the hands of such wretches! Though everything looks black around I feel that we must succeed. I pray it is not presumption.”

(When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the “Great March,” Katherine M. Jones, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964, pp. 254-255)