Valdimir DeCaprio?

Actually, DeCaprio's batshit politics are probably closer to Lenin's philosophies. He's a Buddhist-Catholic or a Catholic-Buddhist. He'd embrace a totalitarian government if it would save the environment. In any event, the very mention of his name has managed to piss off a bunch of wigged out commies in the former Commie Land.

From the UK Telegraph:

Communists in Russia have said they will blockade the country’s oldest film studios if it goes ahead with its plan to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Lenin.

DiCaprio, whose maternal grandmother was Russian, and who bears a striking childhood resemblance to the Russian leader, spoke last week of his fascination with the country’s history and figures.

“I think there should be more films about Russian history because it has many stories worthy of Shakespeare,” he told German newspaper Die Welt.

Exactly. Shakespeare wrote a fascinating play about the murder of 20 million people in his, "A Midsummer Night's Slaughter."

“That is fascinating for an actor. Putin would be very, very, very interesting. I would like to play him.

“Lenin also would be an interesting role. I would like also to star as Rasputin."

A St Petersburg state-owned film studio, Lenfilm, immediately offered the 41-year-old Oscar favourite the role.

I guess DeCaprio has got a major jones for murderers. Perhaps he could wrangle a role in "Stalin: 50 Shades of Death."

More Bad News For Hilary

In another blow to Hilary Clinton's presidential bid, Fox News today announced that US intelligence officials have stated that some of the emails kept on her private, unsecured DoS server were top secret special access programs materials - also informally classified as GRABASSTIC documents.

This informal classification signifies that if the information contained in the document is released or is in any manner made available to unauthorized persons, the originating agency is warned to grab their asses and squeeze real tight because they're going to shit themselves.

All kidding aside, this is not a funny matter. This insane hag has compromised national security in a manner not seen in decades. Of at least since her husband gave away classified ballistic missile technology to the ChiComs.

The actual FNC release is as follows:

EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has now deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton's personal server.

Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from "special access programs," or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.” A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that "several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels."

Trump v. Cruz

Other bloggers have been digging into Ted Cruz' personality and his ethics.
Both are found to be wanting.

Some interesting material found in The Last Refuge. Particularly informative in the "ethics" section is the documentation showing Cruz' participation in possible fraud in the 2014 Missouri Republican Senate primary between Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel.

Cruz' personality -

Forget about trying to graph, measure or quantify how sharp Donald Trump’s political instincts are, he’s just off the charts. However, his decision to spotlight Ted Cruz’s greatest weakness, “the personality of Cruz“, the “in-authenticity”, is beyond brilliant.

Not only did Donald Trump win the seventh GOP debate by not showing up; and not only did Trump avoid the best laid ambush plans of the Fox News team; and not only did Donald Trump raise well over $6 million for American veterans; but by removing himself from the debate stage – Trump’s absence forced Ted Cruz out of the shadows and into the brightest possible sunlight.

Candidate Trump previously stated: “Ted Cruz is just a nasty person” – and by all accounts the pontificating arrogance and personality of Ted Cruz was not only captured by the broadcast, but for the first time Iowans who tuned-in saw first hand WHY Ted Cruz is the loneliest man in Washington DC.

His ethics -

The original Tea Party patriots, grassroots, supported Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Many people in the past several months have asked when we discovered that Cruz was a fraud. We have repeatedly outlined a very specific time frame when Ted Cruz’s “pivot point” was identified.

In this video (prompted to @03:10) you hear Glenn Beck mention when and why he gave up on Rand Paul. Beck claims he became disgusted with the Senator when he made a deal with Mitch McConnell. You only need to see about 30 seconds of it to understand.

[...]Glenn Beck then goes on to say the deal with Mitch is why he dropped support for Rand Paul and yet supports Ted Cruz.

Here’s the problem….

Actually, here’s the lie…

Senator Rand Paul and Senator Ted Cruz made the same deal, together, at exactly the same time.

Stop – Repeat !

“The deal”, as Beck describes it, was actually real – and did actually take place. The deal was to go along with Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell’s overall objectives, electoral objectives AND legislative objectives, as the GOP entered into the 2014 mid-term election cycle.

Trump is now coming under fire for posting a likely photoshopped picture of Meghan Kelly and some Saudi prince. I doubt Trump has ever photoshopped anything, probably a rabid underling got this going. I am much more interested in Cruz' participation in undermining a fellow Republican.

Trump No Show On Fox

Rush Limbaugh has an interesting take on why Trump shot down the Fox network. It boils down to this: why supply the bullet, load the gun and hand it to someone so they can shoot you?

The Donald

Trump is so far outside the formula that has been established for American politics that people who are inside the formula can't comprehend it. They don't understand why somebody would want to venture so far outside it, because it is what it is, and there's a ladder of success that you have to climb. And somebody challenging it like this in more ways than one, as Trump is doing, has just got everybody experiencing every kind of emotion you can: They're angry, they are flabbergasted, they're shocked, they're stunned -- and all of it because he's leading.

[...]But folks, one other thing about this. If I heard it once last night, I've heard it a thousand times since, that Trump is afraid of Megyn Kelly or afraid of Fox News. That is not what this is. There isn't any fear. What is there is here -- in my opinion -- is a desire to control this and a purposeful decision to not put himself in a circumstance where other people want to make him look bad.

In his mind, that's a dumb thing to do. You don't put yourself in a circumstance where a whole bunch of other people are gonna be able to make you look bad while you're there. If they do it when you're not around, that's another thing, you can counterprogram it, you can do whatever, but you don't have to put yourself in a circumstance where you have to personally deal with it as a sign of disrespect or somebody else trying to notch their belt. It really isn't any more complicated than that.

Now, Trump's out there talking about how they're desperate to have him because high ratings means a lot of advertising revenue. Lower ratings means lower advertising revenue because Fox has to charge less. They were hoping to get $750,000 a minute, I heard, and they may be down to $150,000 a minute if Trump isn't there. I mean, these are samples of the kind of things going around.

The NY Magazine also has something to say about the internal squabble going on at Fox right now over Trump's no show.

 FOX News Roger Ailes

As the war between Fox News and Donald Trump ratchets up, Roger Ailes is fighting off criticism from his senior executives over his handling of the crisis. According to one highly placed source, last night, Ailes sent out the now-famous statement mocking Trump as being scared to meet with the “Ayatollah” and “Putin” if he became president. “That was Roger 100 percent,” the source explained. “A lot of people on the second floor” — where top Fox executives work — “didn’t think it was a good idea.”
Fox executives are also troubled that Ailes’s principal adviser right now is his longtime personal lawyer and Fox & Friends contributor Peter Johnson Jr. “He wrote the statement with Peter,” the source explained. “Peter is running the war room,” another Ailes friend told me. Fox executives are worried that Ailes is relying on an attorney with scant communications experience as the network is reeling from the biggest PR crisis in recent memory.

Men Of Honor

Unfortunately there appears to be few men and women of honor in high government positions today. The National Review points to FBI Director, James Comey, as a possible, even likely, exception. And he would be a rather large exception at that; he stands at 6'8".

 James B. Comey Jr.

There is talk that Comey would resign in the event that the DoJ tries to derail the Hilary Clinton email impeachment train.

Could the Hillary Clinton e-mail saga end with FBI Director James Comey resigning in protest?

[...]Not many people remember that Comey almost resigned a high-profile law-enforcement job once before, upset because he thought White House politics were overruling the law. Back in 2004, Comey was Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top deputy.

Used to be, people of honor would resign, or slit their guts, at the drop of a hat if their position was compromised by their superiors of if they screwed up. Now they blame global warming, right wing conspiracies and gender bias when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Battle Of The Billionaires

First we have Trump and now Bloomberg may throw his hat into the ring.

Sources: Bloomberg Willing To Spend $1B On Possible Presidential Bid

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking a look at the 2016 presidential landscape, and putting the pieces in place for a possible presidential run, sources close to Bloomberg said.

“What he said is if I didn’t get the nomination he might consider it,” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said. “Well I’m gonna relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn’t have to.”

This scenario has been bandied about before. But with this renewed trial balloon, perhaps Bloomberg smells an indictment in the wind?

Snow Queen

As I said in a previous post, last week we moved our daughter from the snowiest city in the USA down to NYC, which promptly experienced its biggest snow storm since Hannibal crossed the Alps. I'm wondering if there is a connection. Did it follow her down? Can she be the Snow Queen?

In any event, on Friday her sister took a train to NYC to visit for a few days and now they're both  there. We're hoping she can return tonight.

Doritos ... Yeah, That Much

The Deep State

This essay, "Anatomy of the Deep State," was written almost two years ago but it is still a very interesting read. The Deep State is defined as follows:

In British author John le Carré’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as “… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.”

In America the essay posits that the Deep State exists outside the normal channels of government but pervades it and exerts influence over key members. It is a vast network of financial, military and industrial operators - the puppet masters if you will - that preserves a political circus side show for the public/electorate but plots the course of our nation for their own purposes.

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

[...]Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.

How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, “the deciders.”

I don't agree with all of this essay, certainly not the voter identification laws that are pending in several states, and the issue of Congressional deadlock; as a NY judge wrote in an 1866 court opinion, "No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session."

Also, you may want to spend some time reading the comments  section to this essay, some are very well written.

The RNC Tells NBC To Pound Sand

The Republican National Committee finally grew a pair.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) officially voted on Monday afternoon to sever its business relationship with NBC News for the previously-scheduled Feb. 26, 2016, GOP presidential primary debate, Breitbart News has learned.

This is quite a slap in the face and will cost NBC big time in lost revenue. I wouldn't let NBC, or any of the major nets for that matter, moderate a junior high school gay slap fest.

She's Now In Brooklyn

Yesterday my wife (Mummsie) and I moved our youngest daughter to the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. I haven't driven in lower Manhattan in decades (1980?) and haven't been in Brooklyn since I was a teen, about 55 years ago. Pieces of old memories kept drifting in and out of my mind making it hard to concentrate on the Garmin and my daughter's instructions from the back seat. I had forgotten what a PITA it is to drive in NYC.

The Mapquest instructions had me drive through Newark to get to Brooklyn. I could swear I saw Dante with a copy of his Inferno tucked under one arm begging for a hand out on one of the intersections. What a depressing city.

Still, driving through Jersey City and heading for the Holland Tunnel and seeing the Manhattan skyline is quite a site.  I don't see how the cops can get anywhere in Manhattan, what a traffic zoo. Lower Manhattan is quite narrow but it still took about twenty minutes to drive to the Manhattan Bridge  and cross over to Brooklyn. Got on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (much better traffic) and drove into Bushwick. Incredibly enough, we were able to find a parking space right in front of her building.

It was a glorious day in Brooklyn, a balmy fifty degrees. Her room is on the third floor - about the size of a big walk-in closet. She shares two bathrooms and a kitchen with four other people, all young professionals. It's not for me. For what she's paying I could almost rent a house in central NY. We were there for a few hours, said our good-byes and left.

Mummsie was rather depressed. We had just moved our youngest chick and now the hen house is empty. There were five females at one time here and now she's the only one. There are only faint echoes of the waves of estrogen that used to waft through our home.

The ride home was uneventful with just a touch of rain and snow. We got a call from our girl who was also feeling depressed and lonely. Mummsie bucked her up a bit.

Upon returning to Syracuse, I managed to catch the last twenty minutes of the Chiefs/Patriots game. I watched all but the last three minutes of the Packers/Cardinals game but couldn't keep my eyes open after all that driving. Kissed Mummsie good night and toddled off to bed.

Of course this morning she couldn't wait to tell me what a great ending I missed.

Rats.

It Lives

The Colt .45 has new life. 

From the American Rifleman:

Like everything else in today’s complex military establishment, the new gun has a designation. It is the M45A1 Close Quarters Battle Pistol (CQBP). Several makers submitted their versions of the gun, which were built to specifications developed by the Marine Corps. It was Colt’s Mfg. Co. that won the right to build 4,036 pistols and spare parts. Interestingly, the contract is written to be extendable in both numbers and time. There may turn out to be as many as 12,000 M45 pistols.

Words Of Wisdom

Guns, Guns, Guns

Here's some reference sites:

Firearms laws of the world

In Europe, Serbia, Bosnia and Switzerland rule the roost. In Asia, Pakistan has the most liberal gun laws; most Asian counties have very strict gun laws or allow no guns at all except for military and police.

Firearm ownership of the world
USA - we're #1!!!
Thanks to the 2nd Amendment, Americans have 113 guns per 100 population (more guns than people) followed by Serbia (70), Yemen (55) and Switzerland (46). Switzerland counts military weapons kept at home by soldiers so they are really closer to 25.

Murder by firearms for the world
 We're #18. The top five are Honduras, Venezuela, Swaziland, Jamaica, and Guatemala.

Largest US Cities Responsible for Two Thirds of Gun Homicides
Of course most of these cities are run by liberal Democrats in predominantly democrat controlled states. According to the FBI, in 2014 there were 14,249 homicides. If the 2/3 estimate holds true, about 9,500 took place where Democrats reign supreme and where gun control is the tightest.

God's Chosen

At least in one fashion, the Jews are one of God's gifts to man. No other ethnic/religious group has received as many Nobel prizes as the Jews. 

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, since the Nobel was first awarded in 1901 approximately 193 of the 855 honorees have been Jewish (22%). Jews make up less than 0.2% of the global population.

This year (2013) 6 of 12 laureates were Jewish. The 13th laureate, for the Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded to an organization and not an individual.

And the accolades continue to grow as new research is developed by the children of Abraham.
From the American Thinker:

One in six American men will develop prostate cancer. It is the most common cancer after skin cancer, and the second biggest cancer killer for men. Two Israeli scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel promise an almost miraculous cure, now in clinical trials at New York’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It is the culmination of 20 years of basic research by plant scientist Avigdor Scherz and cancer researcher Yoram Saloman.

Several have speculated on why this is so.

Richard Dawkins:

Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam.

American Thinker:

Jews undoubtedly have genetic gifts, but much of their cultural flowering is from Judaism itself, a religion that fosters reading, thinking, and debating – in other words, individualism and freedom.

And now the most intellectually productive component of western society is being hounded out of Europe by hordes of barbarians. Can you guess where they are headed?

And the Europeans ain't putting up much of a fuss.

God is gathering His own.
You can't see the End Times from here; no one can.
But you can smell them.