monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

We recognize President Obama is the commander-in-chief and that throughout history presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate. Turnover in the military ranks is normal, and in these times of sequestration and budget cuts the numbers are expected to tick up as force levels shrink and missions change.

Yet what has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.

oralloy wrote:

We used our nukes responsibly, in lawful self defense. We have no bad Karma over that.

Is this the perception of all other countries or is this your personal perception?

It is likely that there are some countries out there who do not perceive facts and reality

As I noted the other day (referencing/linking the NASA climate literature) some 3% of scientists deny global warming and man's role in it. Obviously, the 3% are right because the courage to stand up against a reigning consensus is the real evidence of scientific excellence (even when that 3% are mostly being funded by the petroleum industry).

The IPCC's Latest Report Deliberately Excludes And Misrepresents Important Climate Science

This week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is releasing its latest report, the “Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report.” Like its past reports, this one predicts apocalyptic consequences if mankind fails to give the UN the power to tax and regulate fossil fuels and subsidize and mandate the use of alternative fuels.

We know the authors of the IPCC’s reports have financial conflicts of interest, since the government bureaucracies that select them and the UN that oversees and edits the final reports stand to profit from public alarm over the possibility that global warming will be harmful.

It is frequently said of the global warming debate that it comes down to who you believe rather than what you know. Many climate scientists say they “believe in man-made global warming” even though their own research contradicts key points in the arguments advanced in support of that hypothesis.

But happily, an international group of scientists has conducted an independent review of IPCC’s past and new reports, along with the climate science they deliberately exclude or misrepresent. The authors of the NIPCC series have no such conflicts. The series is funded by three private family foundations without any financial interest in the outcome of the global warming debate.

How could two teams of scientists come to such obviously contradictory conclusions on seemingly every point that matters in the debate over global warming? What is a non-scientist to make of these dueling reports? Indeed, what is a scientist to make of this?

The NIPCC reports were conceived and written to offer a way out of this conundrum. They are written in a style that laymen without special training can understand, provide explanations of how research was conducted and summarizing the actual findings, often quoting at length from original scholarly sources. Chapters often present research chronologically, in the order in which the studies were published, so readers can understand how the debate has changed over time.

The NIPCC reports are hefty – the first volume in the Climate Change Reconsidered series was 850 pages long, and the latest volume is more than 1,000 pages – but executive summaries and “key findings” at the beginning of each chapter make them easy to navigate and fascinating to browse. They are all available for free online at www.climatechangereconsidered.org.

So is man-made global warming a crisis? Don’t just wonder about it, understand it yourself. Read one or a few chapters of one of the NIPCC reports, and ask if what you read is logical, factual, and relevant to the debate. See if the UN or its many apologists take into account the science and evidence NIPCC summarizes, and then decide whether its predictions of “of death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods” is science or fiction.

There are actually two lists that have been going around, one of nine officers and the other of over 200 supposedly fired by President Obama during his entire presidency. Any list of 200 people falls squarely in the Gish Gallop category, so we’re going to put that aside for now and just focus on the list of nine. Contrary to the allegations that the firings were covered up, I easily found information on each one from a mainstream news site.

Major General Michael Carey – As commander of the US land-based nuclear missile program, Carey was responsible for three units of ICBMs. He was relieved in October 2013 for his conduct on a July trip to Moscow, where he went on what news reports called a “drunken bender,” fraternized with local women and made inappropriate comments disparaging the Russian military. As a result, he was reassigned and made Special Assistant to the Commander of Air Force Space Command in Colorado.

Vice Admiral Tim Giardina – Giardina served as chief of staff of the US Pacific Fleet and was the number 2 officer of US Strategic Command (StratCom) until being relieved of duty in September 2013, following an investigation into his use of fake casino chips in a poker game. This is a class D felony in Iowa, where StratCom is located. He was already due to leave StratCom, and his bio currently lists him as “assigned to the staff of the vice chief of naval operations.”

Lieutenant General David Holmes Huntoon, Jr. – Huntoon was serving as the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy in West Point until June 2013, when a report of an Inspector General’s office investigation was released, which found that he had misused his position and forced subordinate officers to perform personal tasks. Huntoon was given a letter of reprimand, allowed to resign from his post and took his mandatory retirement the next month.

Major General C.M.M. Gurganus – This was one of two generals asked to retire early by the Commandant of the Marine Corps after a September 2012 Taliban surprise attack on a Marine airbase. Gurganus was found to have “not taken adequate force protection measures” at Camp Bastion, which led to the death of two Marines and the destruction of six Harrier jet fighters.

Major General Gregg A. Sturdevant – Sturdevant was the other general asked to retire in the wake of the Camp Bastion attack.

Brigadier General Bryan Roberts – The former commanding officer of Fort Jackson, the largest training post in the US Army, Roberts was suspended in May 2013 after an investigation into adultery and a physical altercation with a woman described as his mistress. Adultery in the military is punishable as an action that can bring discredit upon the armed forces.

Major General Ralph Baker – Baker was removed from his post as commanding officer of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, as well as fined, after an administrative hearing into alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct charges in April 2013.

Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette – Gaouette held the position of commanding officer of Carrier Strike Group Three until a reprimand from the US Navy led to his removal. He was found to have used profanity in public and made several racially insensitive remarks. The origin of the complaint might have come from the captain of the aircraft carrier assigned to the Strike Group, who alleged Gaouette had humiliated him in public.

General Carter F. Ham – The commander of US Command Africa, Ham retired in the wake of the September 2011 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Though the attack itself generated enormous controversy and blame on the Obama administration, Ham himself was never reprimanded and served the entirety of his two-year posting in Africa, retiring as scheduled at age 62, after a 40 year career.

Obviously, the context of these nine “firings” puts the entire validity of the list into question...

Last week’s 12th annual International Conference on Climate Change, held by the Heartland Institute, confirmed that such dissent is no longer the outlier position where government policy is concerned. The theme of this year’s two-day conference, held in Washington, D.C., was “Resetting U.S. Climate Policy.” Attended by about 300 people, the meeting included panels and plenary sessions offering views on climate science that go against consensus views, the economic benefits of fossil fuels, climate politics and policy, and the cost of alternative fuels, among other divisive issues.

“In the science community, we recognize that the human impact [on the environment] is small, hard to predict and probably not worth trying to stop. I think the American people understand that. I think we’ve essentially won the public opinion battle. What remains to be done is the political battle. That means repealing a lot of laws, regulations, taxes and subsidies passed over the last eight, even 12 years.”

U.S. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), said:“Americans are tired of scare tactics and misleading information. We should focus on good science rather than politically correct science.… Regulations should be based on sound science, not science fiction."

Craig Idso, chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change focused on the economic benefit of carbon dioxide-induced growth. “The financial benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on global food production is numerous,” he said, adding that the annual monetary value of carbon dioxide, calculated through yields of the 45 most common crops, had increased from $18.5 billion in 1961 to more than $140 billion in 2011. “The total benefit of rising carbon dioxide on global food production since 1961 amounts to $3.2 trillion,” Idso said.

32,000 scientists dissent from global-warming “consensus”
August 22, 2016

At a press conference on May 19, Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., announced the release of the names of 32,000 scientists who have signed a strongly worded petition dissenting from the alarmist assertions of Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Fears of catastrophic human-caused global warming, requiring draconian energy rationing, are the basis for policies supported by all three leading Presidential candidates: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain.

“In Ph.D. scientist signers alone, the project already includes 15-times more scientists than are seriously involved in the United Nations IPCC project. The very large number of petition signers demonstrates that, if there is a consensus among American scientists, it is in opposition to the human-caused global warming hypothesis rather than in favor of it,” states Robinson. Signers include more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. Most signatures were obtained by mailing to lists of university professors and a compendium that constitutes a “Who’s Who” of American scientists.

“Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because ‘increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.’”

“Proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries,” Robinson writes in the Frequently Asked Questions on a website that posts the Petition, a description of the Project, the list of signatories, and their qualifications.

Retired four-star general and Fox News analyst Jack Keane, architect of the Iraq surge that produced the victory Obama threw away, recently spoke on Kilmeade and Friends about Obama's ongoing purge of the military of officers who oppose his isolationist and defeatist policies:

Quote:

It's also a fact that a number of our general officers, not all of them but a number of them, were asked to leave before what would normally be accepted as the routine tenure for that particular position, and General Mattis is a case in point who had very strong views on Iran. Most of us agree with those views but I know the administration did not agree with them. General Flynn, who you know very well and had on your show, was an outspoken proponent for understand radical Islam, how dangerous this particular threat was and was trying to communicate that, he was not able to server out his full tenure. So yes, that's another fact that we can substantiate, that there were generals who did leave earlier than what their tenure would be and the characteristic they all shared together is they did disagree with the administration on various points.

General Mattis is an old-school warrior known for his colorful rhetoric and his commitment both to his men and to his mission. He, along with other generals like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, did have a problem with Obama's quest for a substitute for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the New York Post reported:

Quote:

Lost in the inaugural hullabaloo was Tuesday's news that President Obama has relieved Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, the colorful and highly decorated Marine who's been in charge of the crucial US Central Command, which oversees the various wars in the Middle East, since 2010[.] ...

But why? Could it be that, as Obama prepares to cede Afghanistan back to the Taliban, the last thing he needs is an obstreperous general gumming up the surrender?

For an administration whose relationship with the military is, to put it mildly, fraught with tension, Mattis is yet another wall trophy, to go alongside the heads of Gen. Stanley McChrystal (fired in 2010 as the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan) and David Petraeus, who left CentCom to be buried alive at the CIA (and later resigned over the Paula Broadwell sex scandal).

Officially, the administration offers a nothing-to-see-here explanation for Mattis' departure, noting that his tenure in the crucial job was about average for the post.

Maybe. But politics is at play here as well. The brusque Mattis apparently fell afoul of National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, an Obama apparatchik. Why? Because Mattis says things the Obama team doesn't want to hear, especially about what might well become the next theater of operations – Iran.

Retired U.S. Army major general Paul Vallely, also a Fox News analyst, shares the view that President Obama has actively purged the military of "hawks" willing to give him contrary advice:

Quote:

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, notes how the White House fails to take action or investigate its own officials but finds it easy to fire military commanders "who have given their lives for their country." Vallely thinks he knows why this purge is happening.

"Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama's ideology," Vallely said. "The White House protects their own. That's why they stalled on the investigation into Fast and Furious, Benghazi and ObamaCare. He's intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged."

Army major general Bob Scales, who noted the hypocrisy of President Obama's tribute to Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg at the 2014 State of the Union address:

Quote:

Gen. Bob Scales, a retired U.S. Army major general and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College who is now a military analyst for Fox News, told Greta Van Susteren the day after the State of the Union of the sad state of U.S. military preparedness and expressed a fear it would lead to more Cory Remsburgs.

"Yeah, it broke my heart," Scales said. "This great guy, Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, think of this, Greta: 10 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in 10 years. What does that say about the overcommitment of our Army? And here is a president who uses him as an icon for the State of the Union.

"And yet the very service that he comes from, the Army, has 85% of its brigades not combat-ready. It does not have one single developmental program for a combat system at all. Zero."

Nothing like a bunch of rubes on the internet trying wax intellectual about something which they're barely qualified to guess

So let's see, it's something like.. Dem dur sciencers was wrong sometimes, so dem'ns must be wrong whenever I feels like eet.. right?

I admit I don't know shite about CC – aside from the ridiculously large consensus in the science community, so you won't see me making any stink about it one way or another. But I do get a chuckle out of observing others bending over backwards to jam their heads in the sand

Hey look bernie! Another apple polisher has joined your class.

Hey look bernie! Another apple polisher has joined your class.

Voynich was immensely excited by all this. His knowledge of the court of Rudolf II was not very deep, and largely derived from a popular history of scientific and alchemical studies at the Prague court published in 1904 by Henry Carrington Bolton, an American chemist, bibliographer, and historian of science. Bolton’s book, The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolf II, 1576–1612, gave a prominent place to the English magician and alchemist John Dee, who with his assistant and “scryer,” Edward Kelley, spent years attempting to communicate with angels, in order to learn the universal language spoken by Adam in Paradise before the Fall.

Once again. Bias isn't the key problem. Bias is universal and it is a feature of the mental life of all of us. It is not avoidable. But it does not follow from this fact that therefore any commentary is equal to any other commentary or that any opinion is equal to another opinion.

Your link goes to Tim Kane writing at the Atlantic. He notes that disaffection with the military leadership pre-dates Obama's tenure.

Your quotes all come from Fox broadcasts except one from the NY Post. Bias itself is not the problem with either outlet. Something far more egregious is their failing. You won't accept that because it's the world you live in and because your media studies are paltry and your critical skills untutored.

That there are military people who despise Obama or who despise liberalism or would like to go punch a hippy or whatever is not news. And that they are parroting a RW story is not news either.