I've looked at life from both sides now

"Militant in Islamic State video believed to be British bouncy castle salesman"

Jihadi John 2

The masked militant in an Islamic State video showing the killing of five men accused by the group of being Western spies is believed to be a Londoner known as Sid who once sold inflatable bouncy castles. 

Siddhartha Dhar, who left Britain for Syria while on police bail after his arrest on suspicion of belonging to a banned group and encouraging terrorism, has been identified by media as the spokesman in the militant organization's latest film.

Bill again

Him again. Some people don't die, it seems. It seems to someone who's seen others much younger and, frankly, better than himself die. I sense Bill Clinton would just as soon not be dragged out but doesn't mind that much that he is. He can handle it. There's a lot to like, actually, if you can compartmentalize.

Kurt Schlichter asked somebody to Photoshop Bill Clinton in Bill Cosby's "Friend" sweater, the primary color children's thing he wore everywhere that looks very creepy in retrospect, and just like that somebody did. Not me. Turns out funny as you can imagine. Hasn't caught on though as a meme yet. [bill clinton, friend] Nothing. Except a lot of really good Bill Clinton photos. It's a fine photoset, but no Cosby sweater. Maybe I should make another and start a proper meme.

I woke up at a ridiculous hour, the television on, I un-muted and heard political analysts discussing the fairness, mostly unfairness, of Trump attacking Bill Clinton (by mentioning there's a good deal of room to work with there) and their concerns, their considerations, the questions they asked were so ridiculous they cannot even be recalled exactly any more than fog can be recalled.

I am struck by their insistence on having confusion, making confusion on purpose. When one bothers to listen and process, as I do when waking up and vulnerable, they're saying, "Let's you and I get lost in the weeds together."

But no. I'm waking up and have more sense than that. Let's not. There is a set of undeniable universally recognized salient facts bearing hard on the subject at hand, and no need at all for allowing distracting entries. They come pre-culled to essentials with non-essentials rejected.

The facts sit there collected as if fenced in. A set. They can be observed and considered and spoken about directly and with no intervening agency. There is no reason to mount a rocket and observe the corral from space. No reason to dig under the corral and describe the view of it from center of the earth. No reason to wear comic book x-ray glasses.  No reason to set up funhouse mirrors around the corral and analyze and then discuss the warped images that come off them as these men do. No need for kaleidoscope, so knock it off.

* Bill Clinton is a serial sexual abuser
* Hillary Clinton enabled this brutal activity viciously over decades
* Attitudes about all this have changed dramatically in the intervening years
* Presently the general attitude is pretty close to zero tolerance
* Hillary is presently campaigning for  president of United States and adds women's protection to her platform.
* Hillary attacked Trump for a tendency to attack women.

If there's more, there isn't much more that is salient, you can if you want to confuse it, but then be confused. There's a lot more details, a ton of ammunition. I must say, it's been delightful seeing this arise and seeing Trump squash it in an instant and then see that squashing analyzed agonizingly for days from every angle imaginable except straightforwardly.

That's the job of journalism regarding political matters, I guess, to get and keep people confused.

Could Trump be doing this? Could Trump be doing that? Does Trump have a leg to stand on when ... Could it be that Hillary thinks...? Should  Bill just .... ? The reporters, journalists, analysts, pundits, whatever, mouths flapping, turned themselves inside out tunneling around to avoid facing the obvious corralled plain facts.

They're too ugly. The facts are wholly uncomfortable, cannot be stared down, so, fog. Such a flopping losing thing. There is not enough fog in the world to obfuscate what these two creeps have already done and recorded for history, and it's not just me thinking this, not my opinion, as proof for yourself just google (images) "bill clinton, friend."

"New Clues Why Women Get Broken-Heart Syndrome"

"Study comes to surprising conclusion about mysterious malady’s causes, suggests possible remedies"

Experts say broken-heart syndrome, which most often affects women in their 60s or older, can be brought on by strong emotions, such as grief, anger and anxiety, or by physical stress. A common trigger is a loved one’s illness or death, while for some patients there is no clear-cut cause for an attack. “It is a romantic notion, but you really can get this from heartache,” says Dr. Reynolds, whose study was published online in November in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Roberta Silver, who participated in Dr. Reynolds’s study, recalls driving in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2007 when she suddenly felt her heart pounding. She pulled over to a cafe, where she became intensely ill. An ambulance took her to a hospital, and she was told she had suffered a heart attack. But a series of tests, including an angiogram, all turned up negative, she says.

“I had no blockage, nothing,” recalls Ms. Silver, who was visiting California from her home in New Jersey. After several days in the hospital, doctors concluded she had suffered broken-heart syndrome. Ms. Silver, who is 70, still isn’t sure what caused the event, and she hasn’t had a repeat episode. But she was ill with an upper respiratory infection and under stress at the time: A cousin she had been close to had died and Ms. Silver was planning to attend his funeral in San Francisco. And preparations for her son’s wedding were proving upsetting.

Broken-heart syndrome can at times be brought on by intense joy and excitement. Vera Compagnino, 53, who also participated in the recent study, remembers how elated she felt one October day 10 years ago watching her son playing football. “It was such an exciting game,” recalls Ms. Compagnino, a teacher’s assistant in Staten Island, N.Y. In her exuberance, she began chanting some cheer songs from her high school days and vowed to do a cartwheel if her son’s team scored a touchdown.

Suddenly, Ms. Compagnino started feeling an intense pain in her chest “like an elephant was sitting on me,” she recalled. Yet at the hospital, doctors found nothing on her angiogram that was amiss --- no sign of clogged arteries. She became a patient of Dr. Reynolds, who believes anxiety played a role in bringing on the attack and has tried to guide her in the hope of preventing future episodes.

There were 6,230 cases of people in the U.S. hospitalized with broken-heart syndrome in 2012, according to a recent study. Patients usually heal within days or weeks without residual damage to the heart. But complications can occur, as well as fatalities.

Obama: Gun Salesman of the Decade

Gun sales soared after President Obama called for new restrictions https://t.co/XQwIwBmnNW pic.twitter.com/Y9W5RM0x1a

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 4, 2016

"Domino’s Pizza Delivery Man Stabs Customer"

KTLA5: Michael Charles Parker, 31, stabbed the 20-year-old customer around 11:35 p.m. Saturday in the 600 block of Mangrove Avenue, according to a Covina Police Department news release. The victim was stabbed in the neck and wrist areas during the altercation, which stemmed from the pizza’s late arrival, police said.

The customer tipped Parker about $3 — the pizza cost about $45 — and the delivery man stayed in the doorway, refusing to leave, Sgt. Gregg Peterson said. An argument then ensued, and escalated into a physical altercation that moved to the home’s driveway.

"How Liberals Are the New Autocrats"

"Progressives may preach the joys of localism, but the trend in government is all the other way in everything from climate change to the economic complexion of your neighborhood."

This could be how our experiment with grassroots democracy finally ends. World leaders—the super-rich, their pet nonprofits, their media boosters, and their allies in the global apparat—gather in Paris to hammer out a deal to transform the planet, and our lives. No one asks much about what the states and the communities, the electorate, or even Congress, thinks of the arrangement. The executive now presumes to rule on these issues.

For many of the world’s leading countries—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia—such top-down edicts are fine and dandy, particularly since their supreme leaders won’t have to adhere to them if inconvenienced. But the desire for centralized control is also spreading among the shrinking remnant of actual democracies, where political give and take is baked into the system.

The will to power is unmistakable.California Gov. Jerry Brown, now posturing as the aged philosopher-prince fresh from Paris, hails the “coercive power of the state” to make people live properly by his lights. California’s high electricity prices, regulation-driven spikes in home values, and the highest energy prices in the continental United States, may be a bane for middle- and working-class families, but are sold as a wonderful achievement among our presumptive masters.

Under President Obama, rule by decree has become commonplace, with federal edicts dictating policies on everything from immigration and labor laws to climate change. No modern leader since Nixon has been so bold in trying to consolidate power. But the current president is also building on a trend: Since 1910 the federal government has doubled its share of government spending to 60 percent. Its share of GDP has now grown to the highest level since World War II.

Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example, helping Jerry Brown find his inner Duce. But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist. (read more)

Via Instapundit

"Petition to Pardon Making a Murderer Subject Gets 100,000 Signatures"

Time: Tens of thousands of people are petitioning for the president to pardon Steven Avery, the subject of Netflix’s documentary series Making a Murderer, who is serving life in prison after a 2005 murder arrest.

So far, more than 100,000 have signed a Change.org petition and more than 18,000 have signed a White House petition asking for a presidential pardon for Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey. If the government petition collects 100,000 signatures by January 16, then the White House has to respond publicly.

Making a Murderer explores how Avery was convicted for murder in Wisconsin. He had been released from prison in 2003 because DNA evidence had exonerated him in rape charges. Netflix released the popular 10-part series on Dec. 18.

The documentary series comes after other popular true crime stories, such as HBO’s The Jinx and the Serial podcast. But unlike Serial, in which Sarah Koenig couldn’t come to a conclusion about Adnan Syed’s guilt, and The Jinx, which the filmmakers ended with Robert Durst’s seeming confession,reviewers say Making a Murderer comes down on the side of Avery’s innocence. Prosecutor Ken Kratz says the series leaves out pertinent information that proves Avery is guilty.

Saudi Arabia's hell

David Goldman, who according to Wikipedia looks like the photo below, an American economist, music critic and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler, provides an impressive sweeping geopolitical overview of the present situation in the Middle East and with remarkable clarity, of the forces bearing upon the place. 

Asia Times, Saudi Arabia stews in policy hell.

Goldman writes, the mass executions of last week are the tell that Saudi Arabia is experiencing panic at the highest level. They've executed a lot of people all at once before, but that was immediately after jihadists attacked the Grand Mosque whereas this time the prisoners they killed had languished for up to a decade and this time included a prominent Shia cleric.

Goldman assumes readers have at least a beginner's understanding of internal Islamic tension.

But let's say that I don't. And let's say a mnemonic device could be helpful, however clumsy or inept. His discussion is about Saudi Arabian hell. I'm waving my arm saying, the other Islamic power center, Iran, is their own hell too. It's Sunni VS Shia sometime written Shiite, so then translated for memory help, Sunnys VS Shits. 

Apologies. Whatever adheres, heh. Arabs are Sunny and Irani Persians are Shits, and presently the Sunnies are having the shit beat out of them, their sphere and their future is shrinking frighteningly, and  both power centers are straight up paranoid to begin with. That's not a casual assessment either, you can see for yourself well enough and fun enough too by opening Google Earth. It's fascinating. Iran doesn't want you to see anything, they're that paranoid, so no street views for us. Bummer. So we rely instead on photographs that visitors pinned, their special places of interest. These are not spies. They're people who love the place. My point is however hellish for Saudi Arabia, Iran is always its own hell.

Yosemite Valley

Link to source

Click to enlarge

comments to "put on a fake Italian accent" article

It is another "Honey I finished the Internet" entry at Small Dead Animals. Comments to Kate's link are more interesting than the link itself that is written instructions on how to fake Italian, not even a video. Comments at that link are dull. Kate's commenters tell their own word-related Italian joke. Here are five Italian word-related jokes from Canada. Possibly four, one is instruction.

John Hinderaker

At Powerline titles his piece The Middle East Couldn't Possibly Get Worse, Could It? A thing of such beauty I read it twice. Or the déjà vu thing happened again because the link quoted the best part. I won't do that. It's too beautiful. Instead I'll describe it.

It has a ruminant quality to it, I suspect bourbon, where a set of circumstances piles up and bugs somebody so much they mull it over until sorted into one continuous diatribe and delivered burnished.

My dad showed me this. One time he came home late lit and vocalized his ruminations. I asked him, "Dad, is this what you're doing, drinking all night thinking about all the things that make you miserable?" He looked up wearily and said, "I'm going to bed."

The rumination(s) remain in the light of day. The misery still there. Sets of them. Rumination for specific miseries, very well sorted and available for delivery at the drop of a cue. When viewed disinterestedly they're hilarious. They really are very well thought out comedy routines. My dad could have been a comedy writer, his cynicism with bourbon is completed and when delivered at once flawless as John Hinderaker is. Reading it you go, pow, Dude, you've keeping all that bottled up inside?

The tell that the burnished rumination at the end is a separate object of art by itself, considered separately and in a different state, the next concluding sentence, a separate paragraph by itself,  telescopes out of the bar to the clear light of day to give a jab to the ribs with parochial bathos that, frankly, brings down the whole piece. Better to have stayed drunk.

I'm always wrong. Someone's going to say he's teetotaler. And that's okay. This is how it seemed to me as  I read it and enjoyed it immensely for reminding me of Dad.

Executive Privilege

The German word Hinrichtung caught my eye the other day. Hinrichtung means "execution" and you can guess why it's in the news. Our word "execution" is Norman and bland; it actually comes from fusing the Latin ex + sequi in the sense of "follows from." In the consequent fusion, one of the sounds "x" or "s" was put to death, making exe-que.  Our related words "chief executive" and "executive branch" could be thought of as the "follow-fromers" of the law. The governmental sense of the word came first while the business sense of the word was apparently a 20th century one. This got me to thinking of who best in American politics has "executive experience."

Back to Hinrichtung. I often look to German for insight into word meanings. The Germans are sometimes brutally honest in their metaphors. In this case, Hinrichtung is best understood as the verb: hinrichten is a melding of hin + richten with hin* meaning "away from" and richten meaning "to judge" (Der Richter means the judge). So putting them together, hinrichten means "to put away by judgement."
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* Old and Middle English were full of germanic directional adverbs like hin. Think hither, thither, whither, whence, thence, and henceforth. Legalese preserves these fossils.

Boy asks Hillary about "plan to connect mental health problems and guns"

ANOTHER PLANT?

Last week, a young boy asked Hillary Clinton about pay equity between men and women and the campaign was accused of planting the question.

This time, another boy in New Hampshire read a question to the candidate, wanting to know what she would do about guns to keep him and his friends “safe.”

Trump is a little more up front about it.

Religion Neutral Bathroom

"Storm of controversy over sign banning Muslim staff from washing their feet in city office public toilet before their daily prayers"

An anonymous building worker has sparked outrage by placing a sign on the men's toilet of a Sydney city office block in an attempt to ban Muslims from washing their feet in the sink before their daily prayers.

The sign, which has a cartoon of a man with one of his feet in a sink and surrounded by a circle with a slash through it, was placed on the door of the men's toilet of an office block on Pitt Street, in Sydney's business district.

The sign is believed to have gone up on Wednesday, just days after a building worker queried one of the shop workers who use the toilet.

The 26-year-old Pakistan native, who is studying in Australia to fulfill his late mother's dream, said earlier this week he went as usual to the first floor men's room to do his pre-prayer ablutions prior to Dhuhr, the prayer just before midday which currently falls at 11.52am.

He said that, as was the custom, he washed his hands, his mouth, his head and his neck, as well as his arms, and then placed his feet one at a time into one of the men's rooms' two sinks.

Via last night's trending Twitter hashtag #FactsAreNotRacist