90 Miles From Tyranny : 2017-12-03

Portrait of Hillary Clinton set off security dogs, briefly shutting down Art Miami tent

When two security dogs reacted to a suspicious crate before an Art Miami tent opening early Saturday morning, Miami police officers briefly shut down the area for a few hours to investigate the possible threat.

But when they opened up the offending crate, officers found something else instead: a punky portrait of Hillary Clinton in a studded jacket and shaggy pink haircut, in a neon picture frame to match.

Fair director Nick Korniloff said that the two dogs reacted to the crate during a pre-show check shortly after 8 a.m., prompting organizers to clear the site. Both the Art Miami tent and a tent for Context, connected by a tunnel, were closed off. The package was then searched and the painting of the former Democratic presidential candidate was found...

Study: a ‘statistically significant downward trend since 1950 exists’ in hurricane landfalls

This is going to rattle some cages, while at the same time vindicating Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. A new study in Geophysical research Letters studies hurricane activity in the Atlantic concludes that a “statistically significant downward trend since 1950 exists”.

An Energetic Perspective on United States Tropical Cyclone Landfall Droughts
Authors Ryan E. Truchelut, Erica M. Staehling

Abstract

The extremely active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season concluded an extended period of quiescent continental United States tropical cyclone landfall activity that began in 2006, commonly referred to as the landfall drought. We introduce an extended climatology of U.S. tropical cyclone activity based on accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and use this data set to investigate variability and trends in landfall activity. The drought years between 2006 and 2016 recorded an average value of total annual ACE over the U.S. that was less than 60% of the 1900–2017 average. Scaling this landfall activity metric by basin-wide activity reveals a statistically significant downward trend since 1950, with the percentage of total Atlantic ACE expended over the continental U.S. at a series minimum during the recent drought period.

Plain Language Summary

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has been extremely active both in terms of the strength of the tropical cyclones that have developed and the amount of storm activity that has occurred near the United States. This is even more notable as it comes at the end of an extended period of below normal U.S. hurricane activity, as no major (category 3 or higher) hurricanes made landfall from 2006 through 2016. Our study examines how rare the recent “landfall drought” actually was using a record of the estimated total energy of storms over the U.S., rather than prior methods of counting hurricanes making U.S. landfall. Using this technique, we found that 2006–2015 was in the least active 10% of 10 year periods in terms of U.S. tropical cyclone energy but that several less active periods had occurred in the last 50 years. The 2006–2016 drought years did record the lowest percentage of ...

18 Questions CNN Needs To Answer After Getting Busted For Fake News

Early on Friday, CNN promoted its latest breathless report purporting to show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. CNN has been extremely invested in the narrative of collusion for the last year.

In June, CNN was forced to pull one of its Russia-Trump conspiracy stories that “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.” The discredited story was based on a single anonymous source who connected Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent ally of President Trump, to a Russian investment fund managed by a Kremlin-controlled bank. Three journalists who worked on the story were fired.

But many of the other stories CNN pushed had serious problems, including one that claimed fired FBI head Jim Comey would testify he never told President Trump three times that he was not under FBI investigation. That’s precisely what he testified the next morning after the story ran. Still other stories are headlined explosively and presented on-air breathlessly while being quite anodyne. Earlier this week, was a piece headlined, “Exclusive: Previously undisclosed emails show follow-up after Trump Tower meeting.” The piece quietly revealed that Trump Jr. didn’t receive the follow-up and the “follow-up” was in no way incriminating or suggesting treasonous collusion to steal an election. Such stories have been par for the course for the Russia-Trump collusion narrative.

Friday morning’s report — which got the usual suspects extremely excited — was one such story. Broadcast widely on air and online, it intimated that Donald Trump, Jr. was given an advance notice about documents hacked or phished from Democrats before they were publicly available. The story didn’t include any evidence that the random dude who emailed Trump, Jr. was correct, that his email had been opened, that he was connected to Russia, or anything else to justify the excitement that those all-in on the collusion narrative had in response to it.

But more than that, it turned out that CNN completely botched the story. Instead of advance notice that this random dude sent in to Trump affiliates, it was late notice that this random dude sent in. The Washington Post obtained the email and reported that CNN had completely messed up the story, claiming a September 4 date to an email that was actually sent on September 14, a day after the documents were publicly available.

Despite the story being completely meaningless as revised, CNN merely posted a correction instead of a retraction. And CNN’s PR team tweeted out:




CNN has not released any other information. Here are some questions for CNN to answer to restore trust between the reporters on the story, editors on the story, the news organization itself, and viewers and readers.

  1. Did CNN ever see the email before running the story on it
  2. Does CNN believe it’s ethical to write about a document and not let readers and viewers know up front that reporters and editors haven’t seen the document?
  3. If CNN didn’t see the email, who told CNN about it?
  4. Why did CNN believe these sources?
  5. Were they Democratic Members of Congress on the House Select Committee on Intelligence leaking information from this week’s testimony?
  6. Were they staff of these members?
  7. Are these sources independent or in the same office or otherwise related to each other?
  8. What other stories have these individuals sourced for CNN and what dates were they published?
  9. What is being done to...

European Court to Decide if Islamic Sharia Law Can Override a Nation's Civil Law

Can Islamic religious sharia law override a country's domestic law in Europe? That's a question the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights is weighing.

The Court heard a case this week that involves applying sharia law to a disagreement between citizens of Greece who are Muslims.

The non-profit organization based in London, Christian Concern, intervened in the case, "because of the importance of the case in European law and its implications for countries across Europe, including the UK," according to a news release from the organization.

"We intervened in the case in order to make clear that sharia law is fundamentally incompatible with human rights," wrote Tim Dieppe, head of public policy of Christian Concern, on the organization's website. "We hope and pray that the judges will see this and act accordingly."

Christian Concern describes sharia law as "discriminatory" and says its intervention in this case brings to light different problems stemming from the use of sharia law in the UK.

Dieppe said an estimated 85 sharia courts operate in the UK.

"The use of Sharia has led to the promotion of parallel societies within the United Kingdom," he told CBN News in a statement. "Sharia itself has disproportionately (a)ffected women and gives no legal rights to non-Muslims."

"The United Kingdom has also become the European hub for Islamic finance," he continued. "Any Grand Chamber ruling promoting the use of Sharia would only further give weight to the growing segregation of the Muslim community in England and its disassociation with democratic and British values."

The case, Molla Sali v. Greece, deals with a dispute over an inheritance. After her husband died, Sali inherited his entire estate under his will written according to Greek law.

However, two sisters of the husband say sharia law should govern how the inheritance is divvied up because the man was a member of the Muslim community in Thrace, and the mufti should oversee...

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #100


You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 
from the beautiful to the repugnant, 
from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 
you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 
You have been warned.

Sweden: Muslim migrants responsible for 300% increase in HIV cases

What did you think would be the state of public health in the new post-hijrah Sweden? With New Year’s Eve mass rapes, music festivals sex attacks, women attacked in open markets, and more, it was inevitable that Sweden would become a cesspool of sexually transmitted diseases and all the attendant misery. With Swedish authorities doing nothing to stop the rape jihad, the HIV rate is only going to go higher, and higher, and higher. Before too long, Sweden’s HIV rate will resemble that of the African states from which these Muslim migrants have come. Its crime rate will resemble theirs as well, but after that will follow the peace of sharia, and women who are raped will simply be honor-murdered. The HIV rate will go down then.

“Sweden: Migration responsible for 300% increase in HIV cases,” Voice of Europe, December 5, 2017:
The number of HIV-related illness in Sweden has grown from 1,684 in 2006 to 6,273 in 2016. That’s an increase of almost 300%.

According to Anders Tegnell of the Public Health Authority, this can be explained by migrant flows from countries where HIV is a major problem.

“There are more and more people living with HIV, because...

ILLEGAL ALIEN CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED MURDER IN NORTH CAROLINA

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (Star News) – A New Hanover County man is charged with attempted murder in a shooting Sunday that left one man seriously injured.

New Hanover County Sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Brewer said Juan Sanchez Rebodello, 37, was arrested in Pender County on Monday in the shooting of Manuel DeJesus Silva-Bonilla, 39.

Silva was hit in the arm and mouth in the 3 p.m. shooting at Rebodello’s home at 222 Flemington Road, Brewer said. He was taken to New Hanover Regional Medical Center where he underwent emergency surgery.

The two men each have a child with the same woman, Brewer said. Rebodello was arrested Monday by Pender County Sheriff’s Office deputies after they stopped his...

I Am More Bothered By What This Family Has Done, Than By What Trump Has Said...


He Said, He Would Elect Conservative Judges, Build The Wall, Move The U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem, I like What He Says A Lot!

Rosenstein 'Satisfied' with Mueller Witch Hunt

In an interview with a local D.C. TV station, Rod Rosenstein admired the monster he created, who now runs an alleged investigation into supposed Russia-Trump collusion but which quickly morphed into what amounts to a silent coup against a sitting President of the United States:


The U.S. Department of Justice official who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election said he is satisfied with the special counsel’s work….

“The Office of Special Counsel, as you know, has a degree of autonomy from the Department of Justice. But there is appropriate oversight by the department. That includes budget. But it also includes certain other details of the office. It is part of the Department of Justice. And we’re accountable for it.”

Rosenstein has much to be accountable for. Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt. Robert Mueller III was appointed special counsel after his friend, the vindictive former FBI Director James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo which was a government record to the press. Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clinton’s Department of Justice. He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and even a senior advisor to Eric Holder. Objective professionals all.

Thanks to Rosenstein, Mueller is in fact colluding with Comey and Clinton moles to enact revenge on President Trump for Comey’s firing, something which even Comey said Trump was constitutionally entitled to do. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It is not obstruction of justice for a President to exercise his legal and constitutional authority.


The facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime. As Professor Alan Dershowitz writes in the Washington Examiner:
Special counsel Robert Mueller was commissioned to investigate not only crime but the entire Russian "matter." That is an ominous development that endangers the civil liberties of all Americans.

Federal prosecutors generally begin by identifying specific crimes that may have been committed -- in this case, violation of federal statutes. But no one has yet identified the specific statute or statutes that constrain Mueller's investigation of the Russian matter. It is not a violation of any federal law for a campaign to have collaborated with a foreign government to help elect their candidate….

One does not have to go back to the Soviet Union and Lavrentiy Beria's infamous boast to Stalin, "Show me the man and I will show you the crime," in order to be concerned about the expansion of elastic criminal statutes. There are enough examples of abuse in our own history.

From McCarthyism to the failed prosecutions of Sen. Ted Stevens, Rep. Thomas DeLay, Gov. Rick Perry and others, we have seen vague criminal statutes stretched in an effort to criminalize political differences.

I
ndeed, now we here reports that Mueller’s investigation will range anywhere from Jared Kutchner’s finances to perhaps any unpaid parking tickets Sean Spicer may have.

Rosenstein is apparently satisfied with what amount to moles from Team Clinton being involved in both the sham collusion investigation and the Comey coverup of Hillary Clinton’s crimes with the head mole being one Peter Strzok. As Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner:
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller's investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI's human resources office -- an obvious demotion -- in July.

Strzok was everywhere, throwing sand into the wheels of justice at every opportunity to protect Hillary Clinton and her operatives:

Strzok was one of the leaders of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, and he participated in interviews with a number of Clinton’s top aides, including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, as well as Clinton’s own interview with the FBI.

The longtime FBI investigator also reportedly edited a draft of former FBI Director Jim Comey’s statement on the probe into Clinton’s email use, changing the phrase “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”

Strzok was present at the FBI interview of Hillary Clinton, the one where she was not put under oath and for which no notes were taken. She was not put under oath deliberately because ...

ILLEGAL ALIEN KILLED 14-MONTH-OLD GIRL IN HEAD-ON CRASH

CHARLOTTE, NC (The Charlotte Observer) – A Honduran woman who was driving in Charlotte without a license is facing an involuntary manslaughter charge after she was involved in a head-on crash that killed a 14-month-old girl.

Dora Del Carmen Sosa, 33, was released from Carolinas Medical Center and taken to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, where she was served warrants for involuntary manslaughter, felony child abuse and driving with no operators license. The baby girl was a passenger in Sosa’s car, but it was not made clear by police if they are related. Media outlets reported Sosa was the child’s aunt.

Sosa is a Honduran national and is in the country illegally, federal officials said. Undocumented immigrants are not allowed to have a driver’s license in North Carolina. The city of Charlotte has been criticized in the past few years because city police will not ask the citizenship status of people caught driving in the city without a license. They are issued tickets but not arrested.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday that Sosa was ordered to be removed from the United States by a federal immigration judge in September 2005.

ICE agents took custody of Sosa on Tuesday. She will be deported once...

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #99


You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 
from the beautiful to the repugnant, 
from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 
you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 
You have been warned.

18 Of The Most Nostalgic Photos Of Florida At Christmastime





Young women celebrate Christmas with Santa Claus, Saint Petersburg, 1952




Floating Christmas tree in a swimming pool, Fort Lauderdale, 1957




Christmas parade, Saint Augustine, 1951


Our nation's oldest city is always a good source for nostalgia.


Children caroling on Christmas Eve in Miami, 1935




Young women posing with Christmas tree on Pensacola Beach, 1962


We can still dream of a white Christmas, just with powdery sand instead of snow.



More Pictures!

Killer Queen: Meet Queen Elfrida – The Original Wicked Stepmother

History has seen some incredible, cut-throat politics and lurid scandals, including the reign of Queen Elgiva: a teenage Saxon princess who was caught enjoying a threesome (along with her mother!), in the bed of King Eadwig, on the day of his coronation and at a time when he should have been discussing affairs of state with his noblemen and courtiers.

Elgiva faded from the pages of history just four years later when King Eadwig conveniently died (he was probably murdered) and was replaced by his brother Edgar.


King Eadwig 
Known as King Edgar the Peaceable (or Peaceful), he went on to rule for 20 years and, according to one historian, enjoyed a reign “singularly devoid of recorded incident.” This is not exactly true, as according to legend there was one very dark secret in Edgar’s life that was to have disastrous consequences for the Kingdom of England!

Eadwig’s brother, Edgar became King
The King’s Dark Secret

Edgar, in common with most Saxon kings of this era, practiced what we’d now call “serial monogamy.” Kings would only have one wife or mistress/concubine at a time, but they would be discarded – the consanguinity rules (viz that they were too closely related) were a popular way of ending no longer convenient marriages – and sent to a nunnery when the monarch took a fancy to another woman.

So, for example, Edgar had a relationship with a woman called Aethelflaed (Ethel) by whom he had a son Eadweard (Edward). Then he had a relationship with Wulfthryth (Wifrida) by whom he had a daughter Eadgyth (Edith). And then along came Aelfthryth (Elfrida) by whom he had two more sons: Edmund, who died while still an infant, and Aethelraed (Ethelred).

Edgar’s dark secret relates to how he first met and wooed Elfrida. The king had heard that an ealdorman (earl) called Ordgar, in what is now Devon, had a beautiful daughter whose mother was a member of the royal family of Wessex. As he was looking for a queen, Edgar commissioned an East Anglian thegn (thane/nobleman) called Aethelwold to visit her and offer her a royal marriage—if she really was as beautiful as everyone said.

She was as beautiful as everyone said but, concealing his true mission from both her and her parents, Aethelwold wooed and married the girl himself, reporting back to Edgar that Elfrida was a “vulgar and common-looking” and “unworthy of a royal marriage”.

Double-Cross

Initially Edgar accepted this explanation, but as he continued to hear reports of her beauty, he decided to visit the happy couple himself. News of the pending royal visit threw Aethelwold into a panic and, while begging Elfrida to make herself as unattractive as possible and wear her plainest clothes, he inadvertently revealed how he had deceived both her and the king.

Related: Exploring the True Origins of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

As all contemporary reports suggest Elfrida was an ambitious woman, the realization she had missed out on becoming queen did not go down at all well. Repaying Aethelwold’s deceit in kind, she agreed to appear dowdy, but she actually went in the opposite direction and was presented to the king wearing the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of hair extensions, spray tan, and a gown that showed plenty of cleavage and was split to the....

GOP Lawmakers Press for Investigation of FBI’s ‘Special Treatment’ of Hillary Clinton Probe

Conservatives are calling for an investigation of what they say was the FBI’s “special treatment” of Hillary Clinton ahead of the Dec. 7 testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I am proud to be joined by my fellow conservatives in the House to call for an investigation into the FBI’s procedures that allowed Hillary Clinton to receive special treatment,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said at a press conference Wednesday. “We’ll also investigate the unprecedented bias against President [Donald] Trump that exists when we allow people who hate the president to participate in the investigations against him.”

Gaetz, who was joined at the press conference by Reps. Jody Hice, R-Ga.; Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.; Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Mark Meadows, R-N.C., called for an investigation into the FBI’s treatment of Clinton’s email use. The FBI investigation was deemed as “special,” according to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

“Each day, we learn more information that reflects the double standard that, unfortunately, seems to be pervasive at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,” Gaetz said. A “small team” at FBI headquarters was assigned to conduct the Clinton investigation, according to emails released from McCabe, he noted.

On Nov. 15, documents were released that show McCabe “wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given ‘special’ status,” The Hill reported.

During Clinton’s tenure at the State Department from 2009 to 2013, she used a private email account and server while conducting State Department business.

“For me, this question is why,” Perry said at the press conference. “Why are there two different standards of justice? Why doesn’t the FBI and the Justice Department have to comply with subpoenas by the Congress for...

IS THE DEEP STATE ATTEMPTING A COUP?

That is a question I never thought I would need to ask. But, via InstaPundit, law professor Randy Barnett makes an alarming point:
Barnett was responding to this tweet:

Administrative employees are nominally subject to the control of those appointed by politicians who have won elections, but Democrats embedded in the federal bureaucracy have proclaimed themselves part of the “resistance” to President Trump, and are using their positions to undermine his administration. Bureaucrats thus frustrate the will of the voters. President Trump has been...