Stella Turns Three! Woolsey Should Be Listened To! Are America's Police About To Be Lynched?

Beautiful Stella, turns 3 accompanied by her parents at school!

Grandpa/ma David and Anica were also there as was Aunt Patti and her first cousin.

Alas we could not make it but will celebrate at Tybee in July.

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From the inane to the profound!

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I have written and posted articles about this threat time and again.  I was initially persuaded by former CIA Director  James Woolsey, this is something to be very concerned about.  Connectivity has it pluses and minuses.  (See 1 below.)
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This from a fellow memo reader and a dear, long standing, politically well connected, friend. (See 2 below.)

I asked my learned friend to give me his thoughts about the 2016 election and this was his response:

"all guesses but I like this ticket - Walker/Rubio.

The Democrat Nominee will not be Hillary-- I am rolling the dice on Andrew Cuomo​."

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I was asked last night, by a friend and neighbor, what I thought of Atty. Gen. Lynch and I said she could not be worse than Holder.  Now it seems, according to Jack Dunphy, she could be.

He makes a persuasive argument.  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

The Threat to Melt the Electric Grid

An electromagnetic-pulse attack from North Korea or another U.S. enemy would cause staggering devastation.

ENLARGE

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

By

HENRY F. COOPER And

PETER VINCENT PRY

April 30, 2015 7:33 p.m. ET

189 COMMENTS

The Pentagon is moving the headquarters for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) back into Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo., a decade after having largely vacated the site.

Why the return? Because the enormous bunker in the hollowed-out mountain, built to survive a Cold War-era nuclear conflict, can also resist an electromagnetic-pulse attack, or EMP. America’s military planners recognize the growing threat from an EMP attack by bad actors around the world, in particular North Korea and Iran.

An EMP strike, most likely from the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space, would destroy unprotected military and civilian electronics nationwide, blacking out the electric grid and other critical infrastructure for months or years. The staggering human cost of such a catastrophic attack is not difficult to imagine.

The primary headquarters for Norad, which provides early warning and command and control for the defense of the U.S. against nuclear attack, has for a decade been at nearby Peterson Air Force Base. Critical Norad operations are being moved back into Cheyenne Mountain, and the Pentagon recently awarded a $700 million contract to Raytheon to upgrade electronics through 2020.

At an April 7 Pentagon news conference, Norad Commander Adm. William Gortney noted that Norad is going back underground “because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain’s built. It’s EMP-hardened.” He explained that North Korea now has mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, the KN-08, armed with nuclear warheads, that can strike the U.S. While the KN-08 is inaccurate, it could be used to launch a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack.

Adm. Gortney reassured those at the news conference that the U.S. can defend itself from a nuclear-missile threat from North Korea—or from Iran “if we get our assessment wrong,” he said, referring to the current nuclear negotiations. U.S. missile defense, he said, is “able to defend the nation against both those particular threats today.”

That is true as far as it goes—but only if an attack on the U.S. comes from the northern skies. Former senior Reagan administration officials warn that the U.S. is unprepared to cope with nuclear EMP strikes from North Korea and Iran if their missiles’ trajectory takes a southern route.

We are among those former Reagan officials. We joined William Graham (President Reagan’s science adviser and subsequent chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission) and Fritz Ermarth (a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council) in warning in Newsmax in February that Iran should be regarded as already having nuclear missiles capable of making an EMP attack against the U.S. Iran and North Korea have successfully orbited satellites on south-polar trajectories that appear to practice evading U.S. missile defenses, and at optimum altitudes to make a surprise EMP attack.

The U.S. has no ballistic-missile early-warning radars or ground-based interceptors facing south and would be blind to a nuclear warhead orbited as a satellite from a southern trajectory. The missile defense plans were oriented during the Cold War for a northern strike from the Soviet Union, and they have not been adapted for the changing threats.

The Pentagon was wise to move Norad communications back into Cheyenne Mountain and to take measures elsewhere to survive an EMP attack. But how are the American people to survive? In the event of a yearlong nationwide blackout, tens of millions of Americans would perish from starvation and societal chaos, according to members of the Congressional EMP Commission, which published its last unclassified report in 2008.

Yet President Obama has not acted on the EMP Commission’s draft executive order to protect national infrastructure that is essential to provide for the common defense. Hardening the national electric grid would cost a few billion dollars, a trivial amount compared with the loss of electricity and lives following an EMP attack. The U.S. also should deploy one of its existing transportable radars in the Philippines to help the ground-based interceptors at California’s Vandenberg Air Force defend the country against an attack from the south.

Congress also has failed to act on the plans of its own EMP commission to protect the electric grid and other civilian infrastructure that depends on a viable electric grid—such as communications, transportation, banking—that are essential to the economy. In recent years, the GRID Act, the Shield Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act have gained bipartisan and even unanimous support in the House, yet they died in the Senate.

States are not waiting for Washington to act. Maine and Virginia have enacted legislation and undertaken serious studies to consider how to deal with an EMP attack. Florida’s governor and emergency manager are considering executive action to harden their portion of the grid. Colorado legislators are holding hearings on legislation to protect their citizens. Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Idaho and New York have initiatives in various stages to deal with an EMP attack.

When ancient Rome could no longer protect its empire from barbarians, cities tried to protect themselves by building walls. Now Washington, unable or unwilling to protect its people, is making it necessary for states to build their own defenses against the electromagnetic-pulse barbarians of the 21st century.

Amb. Cooper is the former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Pry is executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

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2)A number of medical bodies have weighed in on the latest discussions for health care proposals.

The Allergists voted to scratch it; but the

Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves.

The Gastroenterologists had a sort of a gut feeling about it, but the

Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.

The Obstetricians felt they were all labouring under a misconception.

Ophthalmologists considered the idea short-sighted.

Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the

Paediatricians said, "Oh, Grow up."

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the

Radiologists could see right through it.

The Surgeons were fed up with the cuts and decided to wash their hands of the whole thing.

The Ear Nose and Throat specialists didn't swallow it, and just wouldn't hear of it.

The Pharmacists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the

Plastic Surgeons said, "This puts a whole new face on the matter...."

The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the

Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea.

The Anaesthetists thought the whole idea was a gas, but the

Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.

In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the assholes in Washington.

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Could Loretta Lynch Be a Worse Attorney General than Eric Holder? For America’s police, there’s little to smile about in Ms. Lynch’s Justice Department installation save for Holder’s exit. by Jack Dunphy

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Mr. Obama meets with new appointed Attorney General Lynch in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 27, 2015. (AP Photos/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Last Thursday, the day Loretta Lynch was (lamentably) confirmed by the Senate as the new attorney general, the Los Angeles Times speculated on the relationships she might come to have with the various entities in American law enforcement, and whether she would inherit the “baggage” left by her predecessor, Eric Holder.  The Times quoted James Cole, who until recently was a deputy attorney general under Holder.  “She is in a good position,” he said, “because she has earned credibility with the law enforcement community to begin with.”

This is the sort of thing one would expect to hear from a Holder underling: a non-committal, vaguely optimistic assertion that everything will be just swell under Ms. Lynch because she has “credibility.”  No doubt Mr. Cole feels 

For America’s police officers, there is little to celebrate in Ms. Lynch’s installation at the Justice Department save for the fact that it accompanies Eric Holder’s exit.  Things couldn’t possibly get any worse, it would seem.  But then, this is the Obama administration we’re talking about, so perhaps I shouldn’t make such a bold assertion.  It would be naïve to think that Ms. Lynch is any less committed to the president’s agenda than Mr. Holder was.  If she were, she wouldn’t have been considered for the post in the first place.  For the next two years or so, things can indeed get worse and, now that I’ve thought about it for a moment, probably will.

One of the advantages of growing older is gaining a better perspective on the swings of the societal pendulum.  When I became a police officer in the early 1980s, crime in America was on the upswing, reaching its zenith in the early ‘90s.  In Los Angeles, for example, the number of violent crimes reported to police in 1979 was 43,644.  By 1992 the number had more than doubled to 88,911.  In most cities across the country you would find a similar trend over the same period.

The crime wave brought calls for legislative action such as “three-strikes” laws that sought to punish criminal behavior more severely.  This in turn brought about lower crime rates, but at the cost of crowded and often dysfunctional prisons.  And now, with crime at what is widely perceived to be tolerable levels, laws are being enacted to ease some of the punishments so widely demanded just 20 years ago.  In California, the passage of Proposition 47 and AB 109 (discussed in a previous column here) have allowed thousands of convicted felons to be turned loose on their unsuspecting and unprepared neighbors.

And now the pendulum, having achieved the height of its arc, begins its reversal.  Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and therefore home to the greater share of its criminals, has seen violent crime increase by 28 percent over last year.  Robberies in the city are up by 19 percent, and aggravated assaults are up by 39 percent.  “And what are the cops going to do about it?” the people ask.  LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has vowed to address this increase by doubling the size of the elite Metropolitan Division, whose officers are deployed to those parts of the city where crime is highest.

But here’s the rub: deploying these extra cops to areas with lots of crime — and expecting them to do something about it — will of course bring them into contact with the people committing the crimes, and some of those contacts will turn violent.  And most of these criminals — trigger warning: frank discussion of race and crime ahead! — are black and Hispanic.  In 2014, over half of the murders in Los Angeles were committed in the four patrol divisions that cover the heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, an area whose population is only 17 percent of the city’s as a whole.

To its credit, the L.A. Times continues to publish its Homicide Report, which provides at least some details of every homicide committed in Los Angeles County, of which there have been 508 in the last 12 months.  Included in these details is the racial breakdown of the crimes, which are inconvenient for (and therefore ignored by) the Black Lives Matter movement. Forty-one percent of the victims have been black, 43 percent have been Hispanic, 13 percent have been white, and 3 percent have been Asian.  As homicide is almost entirely intra-racial, we may conclude that the perpetrators of these crimes break down along the same lines.  But looking at the county’s population, we see that it’s 71 percent white (which for the Census Bureau’s purposes includes the 48 percent who identify as Hispanic), 15 percent Asian, and 9 percent black, demonstrating that some ethnic groups are killing each other at a far greater rate than others.  Black lives matter, but only those taken by police officers.

This is not news, not in the literal sense and not in the sense that it’s deemed newsworthy by the local media.  Indeed, but for the modest attention given in the Homicide Report, few of these crimes have received any media attention at all.  These are facts not likely to be discussed at the Justice Department under Loretta Lynch, or under anyone else, for that matter, Democrat or Republican.