Posts from — December 2016

At 4:44 AM CST the winter solstice occurs marking the longest night of the year. If everyone has been good, the days start getting longer tomorrow. Locally, the sun will rise at 6:39AM and set at 4:39PM for a total of 10 hours and 10 minutes of daylight, but tomorrow will be a whole 1 second longer.

This also marks HogsWatch, so don’t forget to put out the turnips.

Some people are obviously unaware that this season is about ‘peace on earth to men of good will’: (that translation is not a mistake)

Shooting in Turkey – “Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, has been shot and killed in Ankara.” The perpetrator was an off-duty Turkish policeman who was killed by officers responding to the killing. The shooter referenced Aleppo and Syria.

At a Berlin Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) on the Breitscheidplatz in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church a semi drove into the crowd and killed at least 9 people. The similarity to the attack on Bastille Day in Nice is on the minds of the investigators. One person has been arrested.

He is at it again: “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!”

He may think that $150K is negligible, but that drone has data on conditions in the South China Sea which could go ballistic at any time. If you want to slip in a sub unnoticed or are looking for subs, the data on that drone is important. If he attended a few intelligence briefings, he might understand what is happening.

“Boldly going

where no man has gone before.”

The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Drumpf is going to be heartbroken that he wasn’t the only recipient of election assistance from Vlad’s ‘hybrid warfare’. Putin has been targeting western European politics for months .

‘Chaos’ is deep denial over Putin.

The BBC reports that Toronto ‘guerrilla’ archivists to help preserve US climate data. Essentially the climate science community is interested in preserving access to the data currently available from US government web sites of the EPA, Energy Department, etc. These data are important to the long term study of climate change. The concern is that the data may become unavailable after ‘Chaos’ is inaugurated.

This is Saint Lucia’s Day for Scandinavians.

It features special treats that are handed out by a girl wearing a crown of candles, Lucia coming from the Latin for light, LUX.

Saint Lucia was an early Christian martyr from Syracuse on Sicily, but her official feast day, December 13, fit perfectly with the local pagan celebration of the Lussi on December 13, which was the Winter Solstice at the time. Yep, more cover to continue the fun mid-winter celebrations by pretending they are associated with Christianity to get the Church off everyone’s case.

He’s not even officially elected yet and he is causing dyspepsia around the world. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin have suffered stock market losses when ‘Chaos’ made veiled threats about the cost of the aircraft they are building for the government. Here’s a hint: the aircraft are bespoke/customized for the government’s purposes. There is no ‘Walmart’ for aircraft.

‘Chaos’ thinks that the CIA is involved in a scheme to excuse the Clinton loss, apparently because his his buddy Vlad said he didn’t do it. He thinks the report on Russian hacking is ‘fake news’.

‘Chaos’ thinks that the Presidential Daily Intelligence Briefings are too repetitive, so Pence is getting the daily briefings while Drumpf has a weekly roundup. He says they should only brief him if something important happens – standard CEO exception reporting.

He rescheduled his press conference on his business interests until January. He needs time to review ‘protocols’. No idea what in hell that means.

First US orbital mission
20 February 1962

Oldest person in space
29 October 1998

John Herschel Glenn Jr. , Colonel, USMC retired (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016)

Combat as a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, military test pilot, first cross-country flight at supersonic speed, last of the Mercury astronauts, US Senator.

NASA remembers him.

Time magazine has named Drumpf its ‘Person of the Year’. Previous winners include Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin (twice), and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The seventy-fifth anniversary of “a date which will live in infamy…”

The official US Navy site on the Pearl Harbor attack.

There will be a memorial service aboard NAS Pensacola that normally features local survivors of the attack. Obviously there are fewer of them every year.

Yes, it is the day that kindly old Saint Nicholas fills the footware of good little girls and boys with treats [or his assistants beat the evil out of bad children, depending on the local customs – they didn’t just leave the sticks – in some places they use them.] Don’t forget the carrot if he rides a horse in your area.

He is the patron saint of Russian merchants and pawnbrokers (three gold balls are one of the symbols associated with him).

Because some of the people who believe lies act on them:

A man who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place has fired an assault rifle inside the Washington restaurant injuring no-one, police and news reports said.

So who is going to accept responsibility for this? This guy could have just as easily killed everyone in the place, but the people who created this lie would feel no remorse for getting people killed.

A lot of politicians outside of the US have decided to ‘get out while the getting’s good’.

Italian PM Matteo Renzi just lost a referendum – badly. That was his clue that there was no point in hanging around.

New Zealand PM John Key is quitting to actually spend more time with his family – really. The only noticeable problem he has had was his attempt to get a new flag. This might be tied to Trump as Key was a major supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership that Trump has already called ‘toast’.

In Iceland the job of forming a new government has been given to the Pirate Party. The Pirates came in third in the recent election, but neither of the top parties were able to form a coalition.