North Slope Slush

Tillerson is viewed as an unconventional pick who would bring dealmaking skills to the job.

Certainly, You might also say

"...Exxon Mobil has operations in more than 50 countries and boasts that it explores for oil and natural gas on six continents. In 2011, Exxon Mobil signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson his nation’s Order of Friendship. But U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea cost Exxon Mobil dearly, forcing it to scrap some projects and costing it at least $1 billion in losses. Tillerson has been a vocal critic of the sanctions."

Exxon first.

It's Morning in America

The Koch network, which says it spent about $250m this election cycle on politics and policy efforts, is comprised of several hundred donors who help underwrite numerous free market, small government advocacy groups.

You know. Like the John Birch Society.

The Reptilian Agenda:

"...The incoming vice-president, Mike Pence, has acknowledged the support of David Koch. Myron Ebell, the chair of the Koch-backed Cooler Heads Coalition, which questions “global warming alarmism”, will lead Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. Another Trump appointment to that team, David Schnare, is a former member of the Heartland Institute, which denies the scientific evidence for man-made climate change and is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), another organisation funded by the Kochs.

Meanwhile Thomas Pyle, of the Koch-backed American Energy Alliance, is off to the energy department, while Doug Domenech of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has received millions in Koch funds, is joining the Department of the Interior..."

Framing the Answers

"...I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016 and found one of the underground springs that has been quietly nurturing it. It’s been there all the time, of course. Just a few keystrokes away… on our laptops, our tablets, our phones. This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight..."

Same Old Story

"... You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do." The Left have a pretty good understanding, but only because we've heard these lies before."

a nod is as good as a wink to a Trojan horse

...Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of the Workers’ Rights Project at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”

“The LGBT issues were a Trojan horse,” added Erika Wilson, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who co-directs a legal clinic for low-income plaintiffs with job and housing discrimination claims. The broader change hasn’t received much attention, she said, because “people were so caught up in [the LGBT] part of the law that this snuck under the radar.”

Eye on the Catbird Seat

Hardly what you'd call disinterested observers.

All Coins Roll to the Iron Banks

What happens when their faceless men face off each other? They make a big deal of Putin and the Chinese hegemons in the current exposition, but Mossack-Fonseca is only the fourth largest of the offshore banks in the scrum. One wonders if the leakers work for one or more of the top three.

Natural $election

In a series of interviews with party insiders, operatives and elected officials, the party’s predicament is clear – Trump is on the verge of completing a hostile takeover – but as top Republican consultant John Brabender said: “Everybody may have a small piece of the answer, but I’m not sure if anyone has the answer.”

First, you have to be able to ask the question.

slippin' back to my same old used-to-be

Is is just me or is this $election starting to feel like deja vu all over again?

Except more interesting, in a pathological incitement to street violence kind of way.

I think it's time to brush off the old html-speak and start posting again.

Game of Phones

The funniest part of this story is the assertation that this is "...an unusual arrangement undercutting Keith Alexander’s assurances he will not profit from his connections to the secretive, technologically sophisticated agency."

It happens all the time in government, and is the main reason why "government" has no business with your business. Because it's not about national security, it's about people with power exploiting you for more power and money.

Lunatic fringe

hiding out in the open.

No Such Problem

The NSA does not ask Courts about data mining.



If there's a code, and they want it, these people will unscramble it or steal it. They will pretend to be locked out just for appearances. They don't call it the No Such Agency for nothing.

ask a silly question

He would answer these questions, but every time he pauses to reconsider escalation, the Secret Service "accidently" screws up again. It's enough to make you wonder if somebody's moonlighting for Raytheon, Lockheed, or General Dynamics. It's like whenever they need to sell the Pentagon another million dollar cruise missile, somebody stops watching the camera on the White House lawn.

The Prisoner

In order for evil to succeed, it is only needful for the right people to stand aside. For the right plausible deniability at the right time to get the right result for the right people that is.

Hugo Chavez would not be surprised at the priorities of a prisoner trying to appease his jailors.

Strategery

Strategy is figuring out a way for the private contractors that own the Pentagon to make a few billion more before Xmas.

bats in the belfry

"...current developments in biology may soon lead to the replacement of H sapiens by completely different beings, enjoying godlike qualities and abilities"..."

Ah, the old God obsessions and fears. Frankly, I intend to use my powers to create a Federation of Planets and ultimately a Culture to protect the galaxy. Because the old gods are still out there, and as far as I can tell the only thing they've ever been concerned about is lounging on Olympus and treating the world like a brothel.

it ain't over until the last Tartan unravels

So many irons in this fire.

I am sure the Russians are totally disinterested electoral monitors.

I am sure the Queen really loves her some single malt Tartan. And not just for all that oil under their North Sea either. Because, you know, unlike what the Yes rabble believes, the British government line is there isn't any to speak of, which is why they are breathing easier now, since their entire economy is based on that oil which they want the Scots to think is gone already.

Which is why Russia was so interested, why there were North Korean levels of electoral turnout, and why the "No" results are said to be Unequivocal. It's as plain and honest as an election in Ohio.

And as settled as the ghost of William Wallace.

Revisionist CounterIntuitive Climatology

I wonder if said Yale professor has a nice grant from the Koch brothers or a subsidiary?

...Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature...

Which climate scientists are we talking about? The ones supported by British Petroleum?

maybe just a little peek now and then

I'm sure.