July 9, 2016

Canadian-led battle group will deploy to Latvia, part of NATO move to deter Russia

Source: CBC (Canada)

By Murray Brewster, CBC News Posted: Jul 08, 2016 4:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 08, 2016 5:36 PM ET

Canada will send a battle group of soldiers to Latvia by early 2017 as part of a NATO plan to counter fears of Russian aggression in eastern Europe, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Friday.

The roughly 450 Canadians will form the nucleus of a robust multi-national combat battalion, part of a brigade to provide credible deterrence against further Russian expansionism in the region.

That number could fluctuate depending upon negotiations with other allies who are expected to help fill out the ranks for an open-ended mission, which Canada's chief of defence staff says raises the stakes for any nation thinking of interfering in the Baltics.
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In addition, the Liberal government renewed a commitment to provide six CF-18 fighter jets for air policing duties over the Baltic states, a mission the air force last conducted in 2014.

The deployment of a navy frigate as part of NATO's standing task force — something that was first ordered by the former Conservative government — will continue as well.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cananda-nato-baltic-troops-1.3669952

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Deploying troops and weapons? Well that's not very polite, eh!

July 9, 2016

Navy lowers medal count for SEAL Chris Kyle

Source: USA Today

Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY 5:28 p.m. EDT July 8, 2016

WASHINGTON — Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the late famed “American Sniper,” overstated the number of medals he was awarded for heroism, according to a Navy investigation released Friday.

The Navy personnel form that Kyle signed and initialed when he left the Navy in 2009 credited him with two Silver Star and six Bronze Star medals with “V” device for valor, according to the document. Kyle, whose best-selling book American Sniper was later made into a Hollywood blockbuster, wrote that he had been awarded two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars. He was killed in 2013 by a veteran he had mentored.

However, the Navy’s investigation of Kyle’s record, which began in 2012, determined that Kyle had commendations for one Silver Star and four Bronze Star medals with “V” devices. The service issued a revised form, known as the DD 214, on June 14. The Silver Star is the military’s third-highest award; the Medal of Honor and Service Cross are the first and second.

Kyle had made other, unverifiable claims, including his account of shooting dozens of rioters in New Orleans in the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina. He also wrote that he had punched a man later identified as Jesse Ventura, the former Minnesota governor. A jury awarded Ventura $1.8 million in a defamation lawsuit against Kyle’s estate.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/07/08/navy-lowers-medal-count-seal-chris-kyle/86468402/

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I wonder what else was "overstated."

July 9, 2016

Philando Castile's Fiancee Breaks Down Over Dallas Shootings

July 9, 2016

Prosecutor: Philandro Castile Case a Priority

Can Minnesota do what New York didn't?

July 9, 2016

Clinton: 'Something Wrong with Our Country'

July 9, 2016

US slams Russia for attack on diplomat

Source: CNN

By Elise Labott, CNN
Updated 7:03 PM ET, Fri July 8, 2016

Washington (CNN)The State Department condemned Russian security services Friday for an attack on an American diplomat, the latest incident in what U.S. officials said is increasing intimidation of its personnel.

The U.S. diplomat "was attacked by a Russian policeman" while attempting to enter the American embassy last month in Moscow, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, speaking just days after a video of the altercation was broadcast on Russian TV.

"The action was unprovoked and endangered the safety of our employee," he added.

Kirby said that Russian officials' claims that the policeman was attempting to protect the embassy were "simply untrue."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/politics/russia-attack-us-diplomat/index.html

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There's even a GIF of the attack at the link.

July 8, 2016

For my 538th Post, I Give You 538

Who will win the presidency?

Updated 15 hours ago:

Hillary Clinton: 77.6%
Donald Trump: 22.4%

(And if I knew how to do a screengrab---which I sadly don't---I'd show you 538's Electoral Map.)

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

July 8, 2016

The Drudge Report's Headline About the Dallas Shooting Is Even Grosser Than You'd Expect

Source: Slate

By Jordan Weissmann



There are still many questions about Thursday night's horrendous shooting of Dallas police officers at a Black Lives Matter protest. As I'm writing this post, we know little to nothing about the shooters, or their motives. Nonetheless, Matt Drudge has seen it fit to dispense with his typical racial dog whistles, and instead run this fog horn of a headline.
drudge

What a cretinous human being.


Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/08/the_drudge_report_on_dallas_shooting_black_lives_kill.html

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Short piece: nothing more at link. And I can think of WAY more appropriate words for this boil on the ass of our species than "cretinous."

July 8, 2016

The Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Was Totally Overblown

Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate:

The fuss over Hillary Clinton’s email has now proved to be one of the most overhyped news stories of this overhyped news season. Look at Tuesday’s statement by FBI Director James Comey. Ignore his self-righteous, scolding tone. Read the facts he’s uncovered, place them in context, and the conclusion is inescapable: As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, California, there’s no there there.

Let’s review the numbers: Examining the 30,000 emails that Clinton turned over, the FBI agents found 110—the back and forth of 52 email chains—that contained classified information. Of these, just eight had material that she should have known was “top secret”; 36 of them had “secret” information; and eight more had stuff that she should have known was “confidential.”

The agents also scrounged through the bits and pieces of 30,000 more emails that she didn’t turn over and found three—three!—that contained classified information: one secret and two confidential.

About those first 30,000 emails, the ones Clinton turned over, the FBI handed them out to auditors at other agencies that might have an interest in the matter, and after months of review they “up-classified” 2,000 emails to confidential. In other words, when Clinton wrote or received those 2,000 emails, she and her correspondents would have had no reason to suspect they were jotting down classified facts. But the reviewers have declared them classified retroactively. Your taxpayer dollars at work.

As anyone who’s ever had a security clearance will tell you, the labels secret and confidential mean next to nothing. When I worked on Capitol Hill in the late 1970s, the government gave me a secret clearance on my first day of work, pending the investigation into my worthiness to hold a top secret badge. As far as anyone knew, I might have been a Soviet spy, carting out confidential and secret documents every night and making copies for my handler. But they also knew the risk was low because there was nothing in those documents that the Soviets would have paid a dime for. The same is true of our various adversaries and stuff marked secret today.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/07/hillary_s_email_scandal_was_overhyped.html

There's no "there" there!

July 7, 2016

Trump’s Uphill Fight: The States Where The White Population Has Declined The Most

From FiveThirtyEight.com.....

Jul 7, 2016 at 6:33 AM
By David Wasserman

It could be said that the 2016 presidential election is once again a question of economics versus demographics. On one hand, wage stagnation and a narrow economic recovery have contributed to the anxiety that fueled Donald Trump’s rise. But if he wants to beat Hillary Clinton, he’ll need to swim against a powerful demographic tide that continues to aid Democrats in the race for 270 electoral votes.

On June 23, the Census Bureau unveiled its latest population estimates for states and counties by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin. According to the data, the non-Hispanic white share of the nation’s voting age population fell from 66.6 percent to 64.6 percent over the past four years.



Technically, this data covers the period from July 1, 2011, to July 1, 2015, but that’s as good a metric as we have for gauging the changing complexion of the electorate between the 2012 and 2016 elections. (It’s also important to note that these estimates include non-citizens, who are ineligible to vote. But according to separate Census data, the non-Hispanic white share of voting-age citizens fell from 71.1 percent to 69.9 percent from 2012 to 2014, a two-year period – closely tracking the other estimates).

In 2012, President Obama carried the national popular vote by 3.9 percentage points. The exact white share of the 2012 electorate is still in dispute, but 2012’s exit polls pointed toward Obama carrying 81 percent of non-whites and 39 percent of whites. Hypothetically, if 2012 rates of turnout and support by group were to remain constant, Democrats’ popular vote advantage would swell to 5.1 percentage points in 2016 thanks to demographic shifts alone.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-uphill-fight-the-states-where-the-white-population-has-declined-the-most/

Uphill Fight? I'd say the Donald's task is nothing short of Sisyphean!