ancianita
ancianita's JournalDU Democrats, please SEE.
Don't see crowd size. Do See strongman alliance building.
Don't see Tucker Carlson. Do See strongman disinformation building.
Don't see cheaters. Do See legal domestic terrorists using elections to subvert democratic elections.
Don't see the optics. Do See the autocratic model in action.
Don't see hicks. Do See Americans blindly promote strongmen.
Don't see fear messaging. Do See strongman domestic violence building.
Don't see politics. Do See strongman messaging to build an insurgency to end democracy from within.
Sheldon Whitehouse #17 "Scheme" Presentation of The Now Captured Supreme Court
Keepin' up with the MVP of the Senate! 
Presentation #17 on The Scheme to establish the now captured Supreme Court, now bought with $580,000,000 by a web of front groups that, as a two-clawed creature, bought SCOTUS.
Beware of oligarchs using the same model to target state judiciaries and statehouses over voter suppression, bring lawsuits, argue for new laws, whip people up about CRT and boards of education.
He asks, "Who in real life DOES this, to make it look like something real is happening when it's really a phony front," where people in for-profits get paid by hidden fictitious funders.
Whitehouse asks, "Do you think the Founders had in mind something as creepy and complex as this?"
Why all the shells, the hiding, if you're not up to no good.
The bottom line is they are up to no good.
They create this multi-faced corporate creature to run the SCOTUS.
Happy birthday, James Baldwin!
He would be 98 today.Forever politically astute about manhood, extremism and white Christianity.
Forever one of the greatest writers in American Literature.
In 2022, ants win, grasshoppers lose
We might now and in the future be experiencing the climate effects of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai
“On 15 January, Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted under the sea, rocking the South Pacific nation [Pacific island midway between Bora Bora and Australia] and sending tsunamis racing around the world. The eruption was the most powerful ever recorded, causing an atmospheric shock wave that circled the globe four times, and sending a plume of debris more than 50 kilometers into the atmosphere. But it didn’t stop there.
The ash and gasses punching into the sky also shot billions of kilograms of water into the atmosphere, a new study concludes. That water will likely remain there for years, where it could eat away at the ozone layer and perhaps even warm Earth.
“The idea that an eruption could directly inject a large amount of water vapor into the stratosphere has not to my knowledge been directly observed, at least not to this magnitude,” says Matthew Toohey, a physicist who focuses on climate modeling and the effects of volcanic eruptions at the University of Saskatchewan and was not involved with the work. “We are really surprised by this eruption in many different ways.”
The study comes thanks to the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard NASA’s Aura satellite. The instrument, which became operational in 2004, measures a variety of compounds in Earth’s atmosphere at heights up to about 100 kilometers. Of particular interest to scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including study co-author and JPL atmospheric scientist Luis Millán, were the water and sulfur dioxide released by the eruption, because those compounds can affect climate. With repeated observations from the MLS on both the day of the eruption and the days afterward, the researchers were able to watch the plume, and its water content, grow and disperse around the globe.
In all, the plume shot approximately 146 billion kilograms of water into Earth’s stratosphere, an arid layer of the atmosphere that begins several miles above sea level, the authors report this month in Geophysical Research Letters. That’s equivalent to about 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, or about 10% of the entire water content of the stratosphere, Millán says.
Other volcanoes have added measurable amounts of water vapor to Earth’s atmosphere, he says, but the scale this time was unprecedented. That’s likely because of the eruption’s magnitude and underwater location, he says. The water will probably remain in the stratosphere for half a decade or more, he says.
Big volcanic eruptions often cool the climate, because the sulfur dioxide they release forms compounds that reflect incoming sunlight. But with so much water vapor flung aloft, the Tonga eruption could have a different impact.
Water absorbs incoming energy from the Sun, making it a potent greenhouse gas. And the sulfur dioxide will dissipate in just a few years whereas the water will likely stick around for at least 5 years—and potentially longer Millán thinks.
That could make Earth warmer for years and accelerate the warming from greenhouse gasses, Toohey says. “We’ll kind of just jump forward by a few years.”
But the actual effects on climate will likely take time to understand, says Allegra LeGrande, a physical research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who was not involved with the work. “I don’t think there is a consensus about what the overall impact will be.”
High above Earth, the water will likely react with other chemicals, potentially degrading the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet light, and even changing the circulation of air currents that govern weather patterns.
As the climatic impacts unfold, scientists are eagerly awaiting even more new insights from a volcanic eruption that’s proved to be unlike any other they’ve seen....
https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-undersea-eruption-filled-atmosphere-water?fbclid=IwAR2apgshheJ9n7ya9zewokAflEn8_aIfzHEC7buKvCZ_RwdmXrpV4b6jAdg
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano smoldering in December 2021. The volcano erupted on 15 January, sending shock waves around the globe and sending aloft a plume of water vapor that injected billions of kilograms of water into the stratosphere. (Maxar via Getty Images)
One scientist's insight and excitement is another population's disaster and suffering.
Add all of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai's water vapor to this news from NASA:
Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth's Greenhouse Effect
By Alan Buis,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2512/
On the Internet Front, Anonymous is winning its cyberwar outside and inside Russia.
Anonymous has claimed to have hacked over 2,500 Russian and Belarusian sites, said Fowler. In some instances, stolen data was leaked online, he said, in amounts so large it will take years to review. "The biggest development would be the overall massive number of records taken, encrypted or dumped online," said Fowler. Shmuel Gihon, a security researcher at the threat intelligence company Cyberint, agreed that amount of leaked data is "massive."
"We currently don't even know what to do with all this information, because it's something that we haven't expected to have in such a short period of time," he said....
The more immediate outcome of the hacks, Fowler and Gihon agreed, is that Russia's cybersecurity defenses have been revealed as being far weaker than previously thought.
Fowler's report argues that Anonymous has "rewritten the rules of how a crowdsourced modern cyberwar is conducted" — with the group also offering penetration testing to Ukraine, "finding vulnerabilities before Russia could exploit them." But in addition, Fowler writes, Anonymous's efforts have also "transformed into a larger operation that spread far beyond the Russian government, companies, or organizations, and included an information campaign aimed at Russian citizens."
Some examples:
Hacking Printers — Russian censorship has blocked many inside the country from knowing the true scale of the war and Russian losses. Anonymous hacked printers across Russia and printed uncensored facts or anti-propaganda and pro-ukrainian messages. The group claims to have printed over 100,000 documents. This also includes barcode printers at grocery stores where prices were changed and product names were changed to anti-war or pro-Ukrainian slogans...
RoboDial, SMS, and Email Spam — Almost everyone on earth has received some form of spam in the form of a phone call, text, or email message. These usually try to sell a service or scam victims out of money.
Now this same technology has been used to bypass Russian censorship and inform citizens of news and messages they are forbidden to learn on state sponsored propaganda channels. Anonymous affiliated Squad303 claimed to have sent over 100 million messages to Russian devices.
https://it.slashdot.org/story/22/07/31/0415216/anonymous-hacktivists-breach-russian-databases-leak-massive-amounts-of-data
It's not so bad.
After midnight, sometimes, I'm feelin' this.
My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why I
Got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'll all be gray
Put your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad
It's not so bad
The Secret Service is a Hot Mess
What follows is my attempt to help us know more about what’s likely behind the TV and Internet news we get in days and weeks to come.
The Secret Service has ALWAYS been a hot mess, and media have only shown Americans what the SS hasn’t managed to bury. (The Washington Post’s Carol T. Leonnig is recognized as the best SS beat reporter.)
The Secret Service hot mess isn't a recent problem. It's a complex one that resists temporary fixes. It needs immediate and constant overhaul, prioritized by higher quality and quantity of personnel, better budget accounting, total internal culture and operations reform, monitoring through a reformed IG office of DHS, and quarterly budget, personnel operations, decisions and changes reporting.
Also know that there has always been plenty of blame to go around — the SS's and DHS's hidden partisanship, and our partisanship ignorance and misplaced trust -- and Americans don't need to be further divided about who can best solve their security position.
Another thing to disabuse ourselves of: the SS’s status as “Elite” has always been aspirational, presented to the public as a reality, when since its beginning, the SS has been anything but “elite.”
It has used its created “elite" cache to place itself outside of oversight and transparency, outside of reporting, accountability — an ego foundation that has corrupted and compounded its structural problems and its internal culture.
This is the gist of what I’ve learned, mostly written as notes taken from the first book listed. I consider the first and last books as most important.
Books:
Gary J. Byrne & Grant Schmidt, Secrets of the Secret Service(2017)
—— Crisis of Character
Dan Emmett, Within Arm’s Length
Robert W. McBride, Lincoln’s Body Guard: The Union Light Guard
Frank Wilson, Special Agent: A Quarter-Century with the Treasury Dept & the Secret Service
Ronald Kessler, In the President’s Secret Service (2009)
Oversight Reports:
2014 — SS Self Report from "The United States Secret Service Protective Mission Panel"
2015 — House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report,
"United States Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis" (437 pp)
Videos:
Tons on YouTube; just be aware that over half are SS promotion vids
— one informational SS documentary of many on YouTube (just a taste of how little inside territory that documentaries cover about the SS), National Geographic’s "Secret Service Files: Protecting the President”
Acronyms most used in Secret Service contexts:
TSA — Transportation Security Administration
FAMS — Federal Air Marshal Service
DHS — Department of Homeland Security
UD — Uniformed Division agents
ERT — Emergency Response Team (specialized training out of Fort Carson, CO) for WH president and VP protectees
FLETC — Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (Glencoe, GA), first leg of all training
— brief overall history (wikipedia tl;dr)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service
Hierarchy map of SS and its place in DHS
These graphs are only official lay of the land, a visual review.
They show nothing of what’s termed the “made men” culture built on the “Peter Principle” of placing those who don’t buck corruptions and coverups, placed in middleman positions, so that their job is to “capture and kill” possible agent reports and to brutally retaliate against all agent and officer whistleblowers.
DHS
SS
https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2020-09/USSS-Office-Org-Chart-2020.pdf
CHRONIC Secret Service Problems
— undertrained — less gun training than police or citizens licensing
— underfunded
-- from the SS own Panel Report: lack of complete date bc the ss doe not have systems in place to make the most prudent budgeting choices… the SS for years has looked at its base budget and tried to ballpark how much more it might get through the OMB. No one has really calculated how much the mission, done right actually costs; our most important recommendation is that a new director start witha zero-based budget and forget what the SS has asked for in the past. The SS still has no budget accountant. Recommendations echoes the Warren Commission Report, solutions from which were never implemented.
-- from the congressional oversight report: the SS had fewer total personnel in 2015 than in 2014 (year of SS own Panel Report) ; it also found rampant buses of misconduct at the middle mgmt level; low morale and exodus to other agencies; the DHS Office of IG panel was staffed almost exclusively by former SS agents despite prior recs to diversify the Panel; the SS had a corrupt habit of keeping made men on the payroll while investigations into their misconduct went on indefinitely until the agent could retire with full benefits; the SS has had a continuing hiring crisis, & that "congress should ensure sufficient funds to restore staffing at required levels, and USSS should ensure it has systems in place eto achieve these goals.” With few recommendations for the above, legislatively the only thing Congress forced the SS to do about its wrongdoing at the expense of presidential security was to take more money.
— underpaid: $42,236, and so forced to work overtime, which leads to chronic exhaustion, thus poor vigilance and slow reaction
https://www.zippia.com/u-s-secret-service-careers-173102/
— understaffed
particularly since their mass exodus to other agencies within DHS after 9/11
https://www.zippia.com/u-s-secret-service-careers-173102/
— due to higher pay, and the ability to keep pensions, 300 UD (Uniformed Division) left for TSA and FAMS in one year, w/ training center instructors and counter sniper teams esp hard hit
— no armored cars until they used Al Capone’s with FDR, now 12 armored limos
— spontaneous moves, and ridiculous side demands, by former presidents — constant visits to mistresses, constant departures from dais exits to mingle with crowds that created a “fatal funnel” for the SS
— personnel relationships between "made men" leadership and honest, motivated professionals
— congressional budgeting & oversight
Type of external attack dangers the SS always was and still is dealing with —
— every crime’s four factors: means, motives, opportunity, intent; SS advance team always tries to prep concentric circles of scannable coverage. If and when those circles are non-existent or have a gap due to changes in situational factors of crowd admission, or ground/air/building security, “opportunity” is always THE main point of attack.
99.9% of attackers are armed
— types of attackers on the protectees:
— approachers (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, RFK, Reagan,)
— gate crashers, including fence climbers literally getting into the WH (FDR, Truman, Obama)
— crowds (Eisenhower, Carter, VP Pence)
— snipers (JFK)
— bombers (VP Harris)
— near misses and violence near president protectees:
Kennedy, Johnson — James J. Rowley officially told Kennedy that the SS could not guarantee his safety in Dallas, TX; Rowley rejected the recomendations of the Warren Commission Report;
Nixon — (SS Dir. J.J. Rowley); the SS (Technical Services Division) had installed and maintained Nixon’s recording equipment in the Oval Office (swapping out old tapes for new ones) long before the Watergate hearings found out.
Carter— “ “
Reagan — (SS Dir. John R. Simpson) After what was usually a routine speech at the nearby DC Hilton, agents had usually prepared outside of a 20 ft radius for Reagan's 12-foot walk from the Hilton door to his limo;
SS was not able to stop the passerby traffic on the sidewalk closest to Reagan, within that radius, and so the armed approacher, Hinkley
Clinton — (Lewis C. Merletti ) walked right out across the DMV bridge into N. Korea, when SS had severely warned him not to move beyond their protection zone; also many mistresses; during his tenure, 6 SS dead and their entire OK City Field Office destroyed in OK City bombing of the Murray Building
Bush — (Mark J. Sullivan) On 9/ll he was in Sarasota, FL, then flew out at maximum climb with no “fighter escort, to avoid a “decapitation” by air. His Air Force One hopped from one military base to another to reach Ground Zero, where he later made his galvanizing speech. the Secret Service had lost 72 NYC agents in their new field office in Bldg 7 (besides the 2,800 civilians killed). SS had still not prepared for airborne threats from 1941, two 1974 attacks, the CH-53 marine helicopter incident, and the 1994 Cessna crash into the White House; on 9/ll at 10:23 am, the SS was still evacuating WH people when the very late-departing Flight 93 crashed at Shanksville, PA.
New airspace policies were put in place around DC and Potomac region, with representatives from SS, FAA and other forming the OFfice of National Capital Region Coordination (ONCRC) as part of the new Secret Service Airspace Security Branch (ASB).
Obama — (Joseph Clancy) inherits the Secret Service at its historically worst moment. There was a good reason he knew to have his friend, Reggie Love, watching the watchers.
Post 9/11, Bush's DHS has absorbed the SS and 21 other agencies, with all SS employees becoming employees of DHS. Then begins SS officer/agent mass exodus to more lucrative positions in the other DHS agencies, including IG positions.
Trump — (Randolph Alles, and James M. Murray) liked them, let them alone, appointed an alleged outsider in Randolpy Alles, but made sure all SS near him were totally loyal.
Type of internal culture dangers SS has always had:
— 24/7 long hours away from families,
and so tension release with alcohol, prostitutes
— exhaustion, and so lack of vigilance and reaction time; agents made to stay overtime
— no accounting office
— made men and omerta
— no mental health services but “tough love” management after OK and 9/11
— intentional coverups, denial of transparency
— severe internal retaliation of whistleblowers or the non-loyal truthtellers
America's Secret Service, 2022, with an estimated 7,000 total employees
https://www.secretservice.gov/about/leadership
Tentatively Up Next: Solutions Offered By Gary Byrne
Though we might see a host of recommendations coming ahead, a Secret Service insider’s extensive list might still serve as an authoritative reference to help us be judicious when/if we hear in Congress or elsewhere, those who make such recommendations.
In the third largest country on the planet, the Secret Service has wrongly been assigned, then expected to handle what is entirely too much to handle, whether it's the thousands of assassins poorly or well on their watch, or counterfeiting and infrastructure safety. Any next solutions will have to rebuild back better, both structure and personnel.
So much easier said, even written, than done.
Jon Tester Slams the Senate on the PACT Act -- American Young People Are Watching
Senator Chuck Schumer voted against the bill?? whaa??
Message to the Gun Machine
Ah, love wakin' up to some RATM & Denzel Curry in the morning. 
(excerpt)
Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
Line up to the mind cemetery now
What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells
Rally 'round the family with a pocket full of shells
They rally 'round the family with a pocket full of shells
They rally 'round the family with a pocket full of shells
They rally 'round the family with a pocket full of shells
Bulls on parade
Come wit' it now
Come wit' it now
Bulls on parade
Bulls on parade
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,132
