Thread’s open.
Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 30 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car
The de Blasio Line.
Complaints of “soiled” subways are piling up, with skeeved straphangers reporting more cars caked with garbage, food spills and human waste so far in 2019 than in all of 2017, according to MTA data.
Having already blown past the 1,504 reports logged in 2017, this year’s 1,623 complaints as of the end of August are on pace to obliterate 2018’s year-end tally of 2,058, the agency said — to the surprise of absolutely no New Yorkers.
Suddenly Liberals Don’t Care About Obstruction of Justice
It’s almost like the issue only matters if they can use it to attack someone else.
Shutting down the House of Commons committee can be dismissed as partisan politics. Denying the ethics commissioner full access to witnesses and documents was wrong and petulant.
But blocking the RCMP is Putinesque.
2019 Federal Election: Open Thread
Let’s get started.
2019 Election Prediction Contest
Let’s see how smart you really are: Make your 2019 seat distribution prediction now.
Parliament at dissolution:
To simplify the process, please use this template.
Liberal:
Conservative:
NDP:
Bloc:
Green:
Other:
Please use the open thread for supplementary commentary/discussion. The reader who comes nearest to the final outcome will receive their choice of a free book, from the SDA Free Book Library.
Go, Already
September 11, 2019: Reader Tips
Hard to believe it’s been 18 years, and how so much was changed.
Thread’s open for tips.
The Libranos: SNC Lavalin
ProTip: Next time the RCMP come calling with questions, cite ‘cabinet confidentiality’.
The RCMP has been looking into potential obstruction of justice in the handling of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., but its examination has been stymied by the federal government’s refusal to lift cabinet confidentiality for all witnesses, The Globe and Mail has learned.
This means individuals involved in the matter cannot discuss events or share documents with police that have not been exempted from the rule of cabinet confidentiality, according to sources, who The Globe agreed not to identify so they could discuss the RCMP inquiries.
In Canada, the principle of cabinet confidentiality is intended to allow ministers to debate decisions freely in private. As a result, discussions involving cabinet matters must be kept secret unless a waiver is granted. In the SNC matter, the Liberals say that the Clerk of the Privy Council, who heads the bureaucratic agency that serves the Prime Minister’s Office, made the decision not to offer a broad waiver to either the RCMP or to the Ethics Commissioner, and that the PMO played no role.
A source who was recently interviewed by the RCMP told The Globe that investigators indicated they are looking into possible obstruction of justice. The Criminal Code says obstruction of justice occurs when an effort is made to “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice in a judicial proceeding.”
The national police force will pause the operation because of the coming election campaign. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to go to Rideau Hall Wednesday to ask the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and call the vote for Oct. 21, and the RCMP has a policy to suspend politically sensitive operations during campaigns.
And on the eve of an election call. (They’ll question the timing)
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Hear my prayer: A new law signed by Gavin Newsom bans schools from suspending disruptive kids
Manitoba Provincial Election Open Thread
Prognostications, punditry and projections here.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
A Story of 2 Probes and the FBI
The documents, quietly released as part of the FBI’s case files for the “Midyear Exam,” its code name for the Clinton email investigation, revive a lingering mystery from Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s chief diplomat: Why did Sidney Blumenthal, the former journalist and Bill Clinton White House aide, send her a series of detailed memos and reports about Libya beginning in 2011?
The documents offer an answer. They allege that Blumenthal sent the emails as a “quid pro quo” to free up classified State Department financial intelligence to help Libya recover as much as $66 billion spirited offshore by slain strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
Out of that, Blumenthal and associates stood to gain a brokers’ cut of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.
The private Libya inquiry leaves important issues unsettled. The documents do not include emails or other original source material to support the allegations within. While claiming to possess evidence that Blumenthal and his associates had contracts and offshore accounts to repatriate the money, the documents say “no concrete evidence” was found suggesting Clinton acted to support the effort.
Yet if verified, the files might shed light on why Clinton kept her emails, tens of thousands of which have gone missing, out of normal government communication channels.
It’s long, grab a coffee.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Abstract:
The reliability of general circulation climate model (GCM) global air
temperature projections is evaluated for the first time, by way of
propagation of model calibration error. An extensive series of
demonstrations show that GCM air temperature projections are just linear
extrapolations of fractional greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. Linear
projections are subject to linear propagation of error. A directly relevant
GCM calibration metric is the annual average ±12.1% error in global annual
average cloud fraction produced within CMIP5 climate models. This error is
strongly pair-wise correlated across models, implying a source in deficient
theory. The resulting long-wave cloud forcing (LWCF) error introduces an
annual average ±4 Wm–2 uncertainty into the simulated tropospheric thermal
energy flux. This annual ±4 Wm–2 simulation uncertainty is ±114 × larger
than the annual average ∼0.035 Wm–2 change in tropospheric thermal energy
flux produced by increasing GHG forcing since 1979. Tropospheric thermal
energy flux is the determinant of global air temperature. Uncertainty in
simulated tropospheric thermal energy flux imposes uncertainty on projected
air temperature. Propagation of LWCF thermal energy flux error through the
historically relevant 1988 projections of GISS Model II scenarios A, B, and
C, the IPCC SRES scenarios CCC, B1, A1B, and A2, and the RCP scenarios of
the 2013 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, uncovers a ±15 C uncertainty in air
temperature at the end of a centennial-scale projection. Analogously large
but previously unrecognized uncertainties must therefore exist in all the
past and present air temperature projections and hindcasts of even advanced
climate models. The unavoidable conclusion is that an anthropogenic air
temperature signal cannot have been, nor presently can be, evidenced in
climate observables.
Full article is at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
(h/t to Dean)
And How Was Your Day?
September 10, 2019: Reader Tips
Thread’s up.
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
A vegan activist claims she was chased & shot at by angry farmers after she entered a property & took rabbits in a "rescue attempt." @SarahHarris: "This should be a lesson to those other militant vegans… Don't be stupid." #Studio10 pic.twitter.com/wd6jCRsb41
— Studio 10 (@Studio10au) September 5, 2019
They Love All the Basic Dictatorships
Liberal candidate praises Castro just like Trudeau did.
“Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation,” Trudeau said in an official statement.
I mean sure, Castro oppressed the people of Cuba for more than 50 years, he jailed his opponents, banned religious practice for much of his time in office, closed down dissenting media and executed thousands — including gays and lesbians — but look at the schools and those speeches!
We Are All Treaty People
Teach your children well: PAY UP, RACIST.
Y2Kyoto: DON’T EAT THE CANNED MEAT
Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe. 7 crew remains on board, waiting for Coast Guard ship assistance.
Something is very wrong with Arctic ice, instead of melting as ordered by UN/IPCC, it captured the ship with Climate Change Warriors.
Greta The Magical Retard
You don’t say: Behind the schoolgirl climate warrior lies a shadowy cabal of lobbyists, investors and energy companies seeking to profit from a green bonanza.
I Want A New Country
The Conservative Party’s obsession with winning seats in Quebec despite an abundance of evidence suggesting it is neither plausible nor necessary, is one of the great handicaps of Canadian politics. https://t.co/mn9zVCYc2a
— J.J. McCullough (@JJ_McCullough) September 9, 2019