Thick ground fog blankets the northern California coast this early Wednesday, the second day in a row for such antics and yesterday I thought the deep mist would make the air warmer — wrong!
Cold as shit yesterday, and the bite felt way-frigid mainly because of the unseasonably warm temperatures we’d had the previous week, a bit of summer in winter.
This current warm dry weather is caused by a high-pressure ridge which has stalled off the California coast, now for 13 months and appears ready to go nowhere — blocking winter storms and packing them off north and eastward. California climatologist Mike Anderson: This offshore ridge is very stable, he says, adding, “this is good news if you want nice weather, but if you want precipitation it is not.”
(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Tete d’homme du XVIIeme siecle,’ found here).
Drought city here we stay. Meanwhile, back east winter is still in full-blown. The latest storm might shut down DC (which may not be a bad thing) with nearly a foot of snow and Arctic-like temperatures:
New York and Boston commuters may face 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow as the sun rises and the storm heads north, said Gary Best, a meteorologist with Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, New Hampshire.
The forecast wind chill reading for 7 a.m. New York time is minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.
“The snow is gone and the cold is here,” Best said by telephone. “That is basically the theme.”
The Weather Channel, for reasons apparently all their own, have named this storm, “Janus” — a fickle, weird ancient Roman god, usually depicted with two faces, one looking back, the other peeking at the future.
Beyond the nearly-all-encompassing weather, Eddie Snowdon probably needs a Janus face after some “absurd” shit was thrown at him this week.
Snowden is seeking more Russian security after some of his old buddies at the NSA reportedly want to shoot him dead, or pull a KGB take-down.
Via UPI:
Two officials — one from the Pentagon and the other a National Security Agency analyst — were quoted by BuzzFeed as saying they wanted to kill Snowden personally.
“We are concerned with the situation around Edward. We see statements made by some U.S. officials containing potential and implicit threats to his life,” Anatoly Kucherena told reporters in Moscow.
The Pentagon official, who was previously a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, was quoted in the BuzzFeed article Thursday as saying, “I would love to put a bullet in his head.”
“I do not take pleasure in taking another human being’s life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history,” the official was quoted as saying.
The article, titled “America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead,” said U.S. intelligence operators bristle at the thought of Snowden.
“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” an NSA analyst told the website.
“A lot of people share this sentiment,” the analyst said.
“Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung — forget the trial and just hang him,” a U.S. defense contractor said.
An Army intelligence officer was quoted by BuzzFeed as describing how Snowden could be killed swiftly yet subtly.
“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said.
“Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries.
Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby.
He thinks nothing of it at the time, starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water.
“He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower,” the officer said.
These people are way-way worse than anything Snowden has done — in fact, President Obama gave Snowden an indirect pat on the back during his so-called NSA reform speech last Friday, though, he’d probably like to kill Eddie, too. The Guardian:
“The way in which these disclosures happened has been damaging to the United States and damaging to our intelligence capabilities,” he (Obama) said.
“I think that there was a way for us to have this conversation without that damage. As important and as necessary as this debate has been, it’s important to keep in mind this has done unnecessary damage.”
The president would not comment on a suggestion at the weekend by Richard Ledgett, the NSA official investigating the Snowden leaks, that amnesty might be appropriate in exchange for the return of the data Snowden took from the agency.
Obama said he could not comment specifically because Snowden was “under indictment,” something not previously disclosed.
While the Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Snowden on espionage-related charges in June, there has been no public subsequent indictment, although it is possible one exists under gag order.
No possible way in shit any of these “disclosures” would have made the light of day if Snowden hadn’t first disclosed them. Obama is an asshole even suggesting such a dumb-ass idea — despite “an important conversation we needed to have,” without little Eddie the NSA would now be doing all its horror under-wraps.
Obama, too, is as two-faced as they come.
The whole US government along side — asshole Republican Mike Rogers blubbered this weekend that Snowden had to have Russian assistance in making his document get-away last spring. Rogers is nit-twit head of the House Intelligence Committee (no intelligence needed to be seated there).
Snowden responds via the New Yorker magazine:
Snowden, in a rare interview that he conducted by encrypted means from Moscow, denied the allegations outright, stressing that he “clearly and unambiguously acted alone, with no assistance from anyone, much less a government.”
He added, “It won’t stick…. Because it’s clearly false, and the American people are smarter than politicians think they are.”
If he was a Russian spy, Snowden asked, “Why Hong Kong?”
And why, then, was he “stuck in the airport forever” when he reached Moscow? (He spent forty days in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport.) “Spies get treated better than that.”
In the nine months since Snowden first surfaced, there has been intense speculation about his motives and methods. But “a senior F.B.I. official said on Sunday that it was still the bureau’s conclusion that Mr. Snowden acted alone,” the New York Times reported this weekend, adding that the agency has not publicly revealed any evidence that he was working in conjunction with any foreign intelligence agency or government. The issue is key to shaping the public’s perceptions of Snowden.
…
It’s not the smears that mystify me,” Snowden told me. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.” Snowden went on to poke fun at the range of allegations that have been made against him in the media without intelligence officials providing some kind of factual basis: “?‘We don’t know if he had help from aliens.’ ‘You know, I have serious questions about whether he really exists.’?”
Snowden went on, “It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this.
I mean these are pretty serious allegations, you know?”
He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.”
The magazine also had this: Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Congressman Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.
All of them, from Obama on downward, are two-faced assholes.