More Hurricane Stuff: Today's News for September 13th

The Daily Caller:

Hurricane Telethon Gets Political Right At The Start

Singer Stevie Wonder kicked off Tuesday’s star studded Hand In Hand telethon to raise money for hurricane recovery by getting political. Wonder started the show by saying, “Anyone who believes that there’s no such thing as global warming must be blind or unintelligent.”

The Hand In Hand telethon was run on every broadcast network to benefit victims of hurricanes Harvey, which devastated the Houston area, and Irma, which slammed Florida over the weekend. The event mirrors past telethons for natural disasters.

And that was just the beginning:

Wonder wasn’t the only participant who got political during the telethon. Singer Beyoncé contributed a video that started, “During a time when it’s impossible to watch the news without seeing violence or racism in this country. Just when you think it couldn’t possibly be worse, natural disasters take precious life, do massive damage, and forever change lives.”

Continuing, Beyoncé said, “The effects of climate change are playing out around the world everyday.” She then implied that climate change was behind the hurricanes, a monsoon in India and the recent earthquake in Mexico.

The only reason to mention climate change at all is the implicit assumption that we can do something about it. This ignores the simple fact that the Earth's climate has been constantly changing since before mankind walked the Earth, and will continue to constantly change long after we leave.

Why is climate change important to Leftists? Because it is an excuse to claim more political power. Fear is a wonderful motivator to getting more political power.

And what will they do when they get that power?

Washington Times:

Calls to punish skeptics rise with links to climate change, hurricanes

Calls to punish global warming skepticism as a criminal offense have surged in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but it hasn’t discouraged climate scientists like Judith Curry.

A retired Georgia Tech professor, she argued on her Climate Etc. website that Irma, which hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday, was fueled in large part by “very weak” wind shear and that the hurricane intensified despite Atlantic Ocean temperatures that weren’t unusually warm.

That is the kind of talk that could get policymakers who heed her research hauled before the justice system, if some of those in the climate change movement have their way.

“Climate change denial should be a crime,” declared the Sept. 1 headline in the Outline. Mark Hertsgaard argued in a Sept. 7 article in the Nation, titled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” that “murder is murder” and “we should punish it as such.”

The suggestion that those who run afoul of the climate change consensus, in particular government officials, should face charges comes with temperatures flaring over the link between hurricanes and greenhouse gas emissions.

The TRUTH is that this is NOT about climate change denial, but rather about ALL political opposition. The climate change topic is merely a means to an end. Once you can silence dissent on any one topic, what is to stop you from going after other topics? Even if you think or believe that mankind can impact climate change, are you willing to risk your freedom of speech to get others to quit opposing the theory of anthropogenic climate change?

In other news...

Fox News:

Clinton State Department silenced them on Benghazi security lapses, contractors say

Security at the State Department's Benghazi compound was so dire that another contractor was brought in to clean up the mess just two weeks before the 2012 terror attack – and was later pressured to keep quiet by a government bureaucrat under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to two men from the American security company.  

Brad Owens and Jerry Torres, of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, say they faced pressure to stay silent and get on the same page with the State Department with regard to the security lapses that led to the deaths of four Americans.

Jerry Torres remains haunted by the fact specific bureaucrats and policies remain in the State Department after the Benghazi attack despite the change in administrations. "A U.S. ambassador is dead and nobody is held accountable for it. And three guys … all died trying to defend him," said Torres, the company’s CEO and a former Green Beret.

Asked if there was a specific effort by a senior State Department contracting officer to silence them, Torres said, "Absolutely, absolutely."

Owens, a former Army intelligence officer, echoed his colleague, saying those “who made the poor choices that actually, I would say, were more responsible for the Benghazi attacks than anyone else, they're still in the same positions, making security choices for our embassies overseas now." 

This sounds really bad, but then you need to consider this too:

Owens, who had personally visited the Benghazi compound to assess security, was shocked. "Blue Mountain U.K. is a teeny, tiny, little security company registered in Wales that had never had a diplomatic security contract, had never done any high threat contracts anywhere else in the world that we've been able to find, much less in high threat areas for the U.S. government. They had a few guys on the ground," he said.

According to Torres, the Blue Mountain Group came in 4 percent lower than their bid – and they challenged the decision, claiming the American company should have been preferred over the foreign one.

Torres said State Department contracting officer Jan Visintainer responded that the State Department had the “latitude to apply” that preference or not.

And there was more: The Blue Mountain Group hired guards through another company who were not armed.

Problems soon arose. One month before the attack -- in August 2012, with The Blue Mountain Group still in charge of compound security -- Ambassador Stevens and his team alerted the State Department via diplomatic cable that radical Islamic groups were everywhere and that the temporary mission compound could not withstand a "coordinated attack." The classified cable was first reported by Fox News.

By Aug. 31, 2012, the situation had deteriorated to the point that Owens and Torres said the State Department asked them to intervene – as Owens put it, an "admission of the mistake of choosing the wrong company."

"They came back to us and said, ‘Can you guys come in and take over security?’ Owens said. “So we were ready.”

But Torres emphasized that time was against them, saying it would have taken two-to-three weeks to get set up.

Twelve days later, the ambassador was killed.  

So they needed "two-to-three weeks" and the ambassador was killed in 12 days, JUST under the amount of time Torres needed. Can you say "CYA"?

Mind you, there was plenty of incompetence to go around. Even if you blame Torres, who hired him?

In other news analysis...

Newsweek:

Putin Loses Power in Election, but Did He Plan It?

Russian President Vladimir Putin suffered a major blow in Sunday’s nationwide elections—or did he?

Russia's United Democrats—a liberal party that stands in opposition to the Kremlin—saw several shocking upset victories in central Moscow, though Putin's ruling party, United Russia, won all of the municipal elections held outside of Moscow and 75 percent of district council seats in the Russian capital.

Observers say the Kremlin's puppet master may have provided his opposition party a seat at the table in districts across central Moscow in what actually amounts to an effort to strengthen his grip on Russia's election processes just ahead of the 2018 presidential campaign season.

Putin may have provided the opposition a chance to run in the elections as an experiment, experts suspect, while barring its most capable candidates from the ballots—setting up the party for failure once its candidates take their seats in the local councils.

"They cleared the entire field," Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman, an official often considered a maverick in Russian politics—and who was denied registration as a candidate for a gubernatorial race—said in an August interview. The mayor also claimed Putin's regime denied candidate registration to the opposition's most qualified candidates: "There’s not a single strong challenger. Not a single strong candidate was even allowed to get close."

If this is true, this is a dangerous game Putin is playing. If the Trump election taught him nothing, it shows that sometimes ANY opposition candidate is acceptable to voters looking for a change.