Category Archives: General Interest

Lunatics running the asylum

The Obama transformation continues –  he nominates first openly gay Secretary of the Army, which means his sexuality played a role in his selection – otherwise why mention it?  The Army has about a third of its combat brigades combat ready and this administration focuses on its diversity social-engineering goals???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-nominate-first-openly-gay-service-secretary-to-lead-the-army/2015/09/18/d4b1aafe-5e30-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html

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A long rant about LIARS

“Let us erect a standard to which the wise and honest may repair.”
– George Washington

Since 2003, America’s political left has led the rallying cry, from foaming mouths, roars loud and furious, “Bush lied, people died!”  The political right coined the phrase Bush derangement syndrome to explain the malady.  The mainstream media has made cornering politicians seeking higher office and demanding a denunciation and apology for supporting President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to topple Iraqi dictator and serial human rights abuser, Saddam Hussein, a right of passage.

Jeb Bush, trying to rev up a Presidential run this year, has stumbled over how to navigate the question, while the punditry class evaluates his performance, finding anything other than a complete renunciation of his brother’s Iraq decision and begging for absolution acceptable.  The media, left-leaning, but even more so holding to a belief that, as journalists, they serve as the pure of heart, the truth-seekers for a world desperately in need of the bright light of the TRUTH.  The anger and righteousness over the Iraq war decision rest on a belief that President Bush and his administration used cherry-picked or outright fabricated intelligence information to sell invading Iraq to Congress and the American people.

Thus we enter the world of cherry-picking intelligence or even outright fabricated intelligence – the many shades of lying to promote a political agenda.  On September 16, 2015 CENTCOM commander, General Lloyd Austin III, appeared before the Senates Armed Services committee to report on progress in the fight against the Islamic State.  Headlines blare about the failure of the US military to get a $500 million program to train and equip “Syrian moderates” rebels to fight the Islamic State inside of Syria running successfully.  General Austin reported that only 4 or 5 US-trained Syrian fighters are in Syria, with the initial 54 fighters sent in back in July being captured or killed by Al-Qaeda aligned affiliates.  I suspect they might not have been “moderates” to start with and walked off, after receiving training and weapons.

In Iraq our effort to defeat the Islamic State lies in disarray too.  Recently, reports emerged of more than 50 US intelligence analysts in Iraq lodging complaints to the IG’s office, alleging that higher up in CENTCOM their intelligence reports are being altered to present a rosier picture of how the war against the Islamic State is progressing.

At the lead of the arming “Syrian moderates” cheerleaders, one can always find Senator John McCain, the most vocal true-believer in the arming “Syrian moderates” project.  McCain frequently uses the failure to arm “Syrian moderates” a few years ago to sanctimoniously berate  President Obama’s dismal handling of the Islamic State threat.

However, the truth to reemerge recently, which McCain and Secretary of State, John Kerry ignored back in 2013 , when the drumbeat for US intervention in Syria reached crescendo pitch, is that from the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the radical jihadists and Islamists played an outsized role, not moderates.  Several questions need to be answered, first, if Kerry and McCain weren’t relying on US intelligence information, whose information were they relying on and why?  Or were they just cherry-picking intelligence to advance their political agenda?

Once again I’m going to bring up Elizabeth O’Bagy, Syria subject matter expert, who blazed a trail across America’s cable news channels back in 2013, as the font of all knowledge on the rebel forces in Syria.  The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) obviously skimped on vetting her, because as O’Bagy’s connection, working as the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) became known, the ISW fired O’Bagy for lying on her resumé.  O’Bagy had claimed a doctorate degree, which she did not possess.  After a few days of media sensationalism, O’Bagy disappeared from the headlines and settled into a nice cozy job working as a legislative assistant for John McCain.  Yes, in 2013 he hired a woman with connections to some group with close ties to the rebels in Syria and a just outed liar.  No worries, right?

In 2013, McCain, Kerry and the White House relied on information from the SETF and O’Bagy rather than vetted intelligence from our government.  There were reports that the State Department was funding O’Bagy’s Syria research.  Both Kerry and McCain cited O’Bagy’s Wall Street Journal op-ed as a definitive accurate source.  (my posts in the archives at the right for 2013 contain numerous links on the Syrian moderate lies)

Let’s move to another scandal plaguing Washington – Hillary Clinton and her private email server in her home.  There she was running this private server and no one in the Kerry State Department did a thing to secure that server or those emails once they found out about it, instead they’ve run interference for Hillary Clinton.   In her usual covering her butt mode, Clinton hired some small IT firm to manage her server only after Sidney Blumenthal’s email had been hacked by a Romanian hacker, Guccifer.  With the recent State Department release of the emails that Hillary did turn over to them, we know she relied on unvetted information from Blumenthal rather than actual vetted intelligence from our intelligence agencies.

Step back further to Benghazi and there’s the White House weaving a false narrative blaming the attack on that US embassy outpost in Benghazi on incitement over some obscure film from some Coptic filmmaker in America.  This White House took the Clinton propaganda “spin machine” and turned it into a full-fledged fiction-writing effort, which they refer to as “the narrative”.

So, looking back at the “Syrian moderate”lie and the Obama administration lie over the sarin attack in Syria in 2013 – there again, another lie – President Obama blamed Assad before the UN investigation was even complete.  Intelligence information indicated  Syrian rebels possessed WMD capability too, but it ‘s easier to go with blaming Assad the Butcher to advance the policy for US involvement in the conflict.  Yes, Assad has committed atrocities too, but to pretend jihadist nuts are “moderates” and arm them is insanity!

McCain still pushes for arming them and still has O’Bagy whispering sweet “Syrian moderate” lies in his ears – to the tune of  a government salary of over $80,000 a year.  Not bad for a young woman who lied about her academic credentials.  He is the go to invite on all the cable news shows as the Republican senior statesman and expert on foreign policy .

So, we now have those  50 intelligence analysts complaining about CENTCOM officials altering intelligence reports to fit the Obama narrative, a DIA chief forced to retire last year, because he refused to cook the books on intelligence, a Republican “war hero” Senator, who believes some young woman aligned to a Syrian rebel lobbying group over official vetted intelligence and one can only wonder why no one in the press is connecting all these dots.

We, being the American people, but most especially our military, who put their lives on the line to carry out these misguided foreign policies, have been left with nothing but a shell of  a constitutional Republic.  This isn’t about a partisan divide in Washington, it’s about wholesale corruption.  The folks the media turns to as senior statesmen, like John McCain and John Kerry, are at best clueless nincompoops, but they are dangerous liars and dangerously reckless to rely on some lobbying group filled with young Syrian rebel sympathizers (or Islamist sympathizers – hard to tell) rather than carefully vetted information from our own intelligence agencies, especially when that information from the two sources differed so dramatically.

Late night shows recently started inviting Hillary Clinton on and they’re writing scripts to turn her email scandal into nothing more than a right-wing partisan joke.  Yes, they are aiding her in burnishing her lies and criminal conduct into little more than just little bad decisions and a laughing matter.

Last year I contacted several reporters, even that big kahuna of cable news, Bill O’Reilly, and I couldn’t get a single reporter to even talk to me or ask me for details.   I had offered them the real names to the people mentioned in my story.  Not a single taker, yet they fight over interviews with Hillary Clinton, toss her softball questions, debate over how many lies she told and yet most of them would still vote for her.  Bill O’Reilly falls all over himself blabbering on about how he wants to be “fair” to Hillary Clinton and I wonder why he and his crack staff didn’t even bother to ask me for names and details – no response whatsoever.

I shouldn’t be surprised at our lazy journalists – they missed O’Bagy and didn’t bother to check out her background, in fact, I still want to know her entire background and whether she underwent a formal security background check or if McCain waived that.  Hillary has had Huma Abedin, with direct connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, by her side for years and Abedin was handling top secret information.  Again, did Abedin ever undergo a formal security background check?

Reporters don’t even bother to challenge John McCain on his foreign policy “expertise” and in this latest CENTCOM testimony by General Austin,  there’s an Obama-appointed general, carrying out a fool’s mission hunting for “Syrian moderates” to train, and the cable news pundits invite McCain on to rail about the CENTCOM commander and Obama administration failure…  There have been mostly radical jihadists among the Syrian rebels from the beginning and McCain should know that. He’s the chairman of the Senate of Armed Services Committee, so assuredly he gets intelligence information from the US military.

The acceptance of lying by our government officials coincides with the  acceptance of lying in our culture.  Having spent every day since the Impeachment Scandal in 98-99 wondering how I could be attacked in my own home over posting comments on the Excite message boards (Messages of mhere tabbed on my home page) and not having any power or way to prove what happened, all I can say is at some point Americans need to face the truth – they have allowed their government to be taken over by corrupt liars, venal power-hungry sociopaths and foreign influence peddlers and agents.

Long ago, I used to believe that the rule of law protected every American citizen.  Thinking about all the lies and cherry-picked and fabricated intelligence making headlines brought me full-circle to my own situation. I think about,  if the power of the Presidency was used to silence, me, a homemaker who challenged the Clinton spinmeisters during impeachment – on a stupid online message board, then is any citizen really safe?

I wonder how safe I will be if that lying, conniving woman is elected President in her own right and doesn’t have to borrow power from her husband.   Once again I will state that my Messages of mhere story is the TRUTH.  Long ago when I was in the Army, I held a “Secret security clearance”, after an official security background check,  and since then, my record is-  I was a homemaker, a devoted volunteer, don’t have even a speeding ticket on my record and I like to do needlework, cook, and read a lot.  I challenge any journalist to vet my information and dig into what happened to me – of course, the retired general who was sent to attack me was fed lies about me obviously, otherwise he would not have taken on the mission of  silencing me – my best guess is I was cast as an internet terrorist or part of some right-wing militia (those were popular in the 90s) and assuredly he would lie to salvage his reputation too.  Every time I see that lying witch on TV, laughing and making light of her LIES, I get disgusted.  She really is thatwitch2016!  I want to expose what happened to me in the Fall of ’98 and early ’99.  So sick of LIARS!!!

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Short take on the debate

A day to think about last night’s Republican debate and the thing I liked the best was the Reagan plane in the background.  The format served the candidates and the moderators poorly – too many candidates and not enough time for them to really showcase themselves.  Some disappeared into the Trump/Bush/Fiorina contrails.  Three hours felt like torture to me.

If you were scoring for substance and being well-prepared, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio won on that score.  Ted Cruz can talk for hours authoritatively, but in both debates, it seemed like the moderators shut him up quickly.  Trump offered the same talking points, with no added substance to his grandiose promises, but the polls reflect kindly on him.  The rest of the pack did okay – no real stand out moments.

The real stand out moment for me was Trump rambling on about somebody’s kid whom he knows who became autistic after vaccines.  In that moment I decided his true calling is not politics, but a permanent seat on The View (they can bring back Jenny McCarthy, so Trump and she can compare anecdotal stories on autism)…   Really, people are following this man, like he’s some sage…. scary times in America!

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Liars and damned liars!

To keep the pieces of information together – remember the report late last month about the intelligence higher ups within the Pentagon cooking the books on our effort (of lack therof) to defeat the Islamic State. On August 26, 2015, The New York Times reported on an IG investigation:

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

By September 9, 2015, that “one analyst”  turned into more than 50 intelligence analysts complained, which The Daily Beast reported:

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.

Along with that happy pile of crap, we’ve been regaled with this training Syrian moderates to fight the Islamic State in Syria since 2013.  On September 3, 2013, I wrote about everyone, from John McCain to John Kerry in the State Department, relying on Elizabeth O’Bagy’s assessment of the situation on the ground in Syria.  O’Bagy ran an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, replete with her map, which looked like the map John Kerry adopted.  I wrote about O’Bagy also being the political director of a lobbying group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force.  I mentioned this on a popular blog, Diplomad 2.0, in the comments section and provided the link to my blog.  Our government was relying on this young woman’s assessment on the “Syrian moderates” in Syria.

On September 15, 2013, I wrote a short blog post stating:

The UK Telegraph ran a report today from IHS Jane’s, stating that nearly half of the rebel fighters in Syria are hardline Islamists/jihadis (report here).  According to Charles Lister, the author of the report, the idea that the insurgency is mostly secular in nature, just isn’t borne out by the facts.  Just a reminder that a week and a half ago  John Kerry was still quoting Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy, former senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, with her lowball estimates of radical Syrian rebels (Reuters report here).   My how “facts” change so quickly ……..

On August 13, 2015, McClatchyDC reported:

“In the first week of September 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before congressional hearings in hopes of drumming up support for the Obama administration’s plan to retaliate militarily for the Syrian government’s deadly use of chemical weapons outside Damascus.”

the article continues:

“At another hearing that week, Kerry responded to a lawmaker’s skepticism about the existence of moderate rebels by saying that only a fraction of the fighters were “al Qaida and the bad guys.” Maybe 15 to 25 percent, he estimated.
“There is a real moderate opposition that exists,” Kerry said.

If the skeptical lawmaker was reassured, professional Syria watchers were not. Many were aghast at what sounded to them like either dangerous naivete or an outright lie, given that the U.S. government’s own internal assessments had found from very early in the conflict that al Qaida-style extremists were playing an outsized role in the rebel fight.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article31018362.html#storylink=cpy

Just whose intelligence information was John Kerry relying on?

Now we have the CENTCOM commander, General Lloyd Austin, reporting to Congress this lame crap about how the training Syrian moderates is going and instead of ditching this failed program – they’re revamping it…  All at the American taxpayer’s expense.  Enough already, this isn’t working and this commander should be relieved immediately!!!  And before the press lets Senator John McCain do his usual grandstanding – he has been instrumental in selling bad information to the American public on the “Syrian moderates” and when Elizabeth O’Bagy was fired from the Institute for the Study of War, back in 2013, for lying about her credentials, John McCain hired her to be on his staff.  This “Syrian moderate” delusion is not just an Obama failure, it’s a bipartisan failure.  And maybe, someone can actually tell us who exactly is Elizabeth O’Bagy, who are her contacts in Syria, who is her family, who introduced her to John McCain, and don’t forget McCain’s trip to Syria in early 2013 with the Syrian Emergency Task Force as his guide.  Let’s answer the questions about who all those people he posed with in those Syria trip photos are.  Time to come clean about the whole mess!

When we get the answers to all that, let’s zero in on Huma Abedin and her connections and handlers in the Muslim Brotherhood.  Let’s look at her influence on Madame Secretary during the not-so-glorious Arab Spring. We have been betrayed by witless fools in our own government!

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Austin: Only ‘Four or Five’ US-Trained Rebel Fighters Remain in Syria

Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Lloyd Austin III testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed

Source: Austin: Only ‘Four or Five’ US-Trained Rebel Fighters Remain in Syria

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Government Cracks Down on Little Free Libraries

Thank goodness the government is here to save us from… little libraries?

Source: Government Cracks Down on Little Free Libraries

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Next will be quotas

After writing about my skepticism regarding the female Ranger School graduates, I wondered if I might be wrong and what if they completed every task just like the men.  Well, here’s the truth of the matter, it’s not about them at all, it’s about a political agenda the President ordered and these females serve as propaganda tools – nothing more.  Their propaganda value mattered enough that he took time out from his golfing to attend their graduation.

Likewise, the careful test conducted by the Marine Corps doesn’t matter either, for the same reason – this is about a political agenda.

From watching this many times over the years, here is how this progresses from getting a female poster girl out there (Ms 1st at whatever), the agenda moves to getting more women into those male-only fields.  That means quotas and careful monitoring on how the integration is progressing.  Once the politicization moves to this stage, that’s where the standards end up being quietly altered (lowered where decisions are made to eliminate or lower requirements that women can’t meet) or standards just get ignored to pass women and a double standard emerges in practice , which always erodes not only actual job performance, but also unit cohesiveness and morale.

All failures are tossed at the feet of the male culture in the military and both women and men end up poorly served.

The end result is always a weaker, less effective team. In the real world weaker teams end up costing lives and losing wars, which rests as a high cost to pay to promote a political agenda

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Revisiting the “best opportunity to succeed”

“Having been a guinea pig in the feminization of the American military plan for a very short time decades ago, I’ll share with you how this goes.  The political factions within the Pentagon will begin tinkering with new ways to make it appear that women can do these heavy-lifting, grueling combat tasks by eliminating as many of the tasks from the physical standards as necessary to get women into these positions.  The physical standards for men will lower and all sorts of concessions will be made to soften the ride for women to succeed in these jobs.  They’ll desperately seek a few über herculean gruntettes to become the face of the new Amazon band of sisters for the full court press, to “prove” women are just as strong as men.”

– libertybelle

In January 2015, I wrote the above quote in a blog post, “the best opportunity to succeed (code for lower standards)”, which was my cynical take on a statement from a Marine Corps spokeswoman in a USA Today article, “Marines delay female fitness plan after half fail”:

“Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos wants training officials to “continue to gather data and ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed,” Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, said Thursday.”

The Marine Corps embarked on a careful evaluation of female performance in combat skills this past year and their report submitted to the Secretary of the Navy rained on the parade of the feminist hoopla over the two female US Army officers who recently completed the US Army Ranger School .  The Marine Corps report is available online and the highlights lead to huge questions about not only throwing open the doors to all combat jobs to women, but in my mind, it raises the question of whether slack was cut to the two female Army officers to get some females through the US Ranger School for political propaganda purposes. President Obama showed up for their graduation, which further suggests a political agenda at play and raises the specter that once again military brass might have compromised the truth to support Obama administration narratives.

Yes, there I said it, I am skeptical about whether some standards were lowered to accommodate women during this highly publicized and politicized US Army Ranger School effort to sell opening all combat jobs to women.  I wonder about upper body strength skills, in particular.  Having observed this sleight of hand in standards many times over the years, the Army brass often plays to the feminists within the Pentagon pushing female integration. No one ever admits to the standards being lowered, because for male leaders in the military to speak up is career suicide. In May, 2015 all 5 of the remaining females in the Army Ranger training had dropped out. They were then given a third chance to retry and graduated in August 2015. The feminists will argue their completion of the course vindicates opening all combat jobs to women.

The press cheered for the two female Army officers, but then along comes this report from the Marine Corps careful study and here are the key highlights:

Combat Effectiveness

Overall: All-male squads, teams and crews demonstrated higher performance levels on 69% of tasks evaluated (93 of 134) as compared to gender-integrated squads, teams and crews. Gender-integrated teams performed better than their all-male counterparts on (2) events.

All-male squads, regardless of infantry MOS, were faster than the gender-integrated squads in each tactical movement. The differences were more pronounced in infantry crew-served weapons specialties that carried the assault load plus the additional weight of crew-served weapons and ammunition.

Lethality:

All-male 0311 (rifleman) infantry squads had better accuracy compared to gender-integrated squads. There was a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system (i.e. M4, M27, and M203) within the 0311 squads, except for the probability of hit & near miss with the M4.

Male provisional infantry (those with no formal 03xx school training) had higher hit percentages than the 0311 (school trained) females: M4: 44% vs 28%, M27: 38% vs 25%, M16A4w/M203: 26% vs 15%.

All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated infantry crew-served weapons teams, with the exception of M2 accuracy.

All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty).

Health and Welfare of Marines

In addition to performance, evidence of higher injury rates for females when compared to males performing the same tactical tasks was noted. The well documented comparative disadvantage in upper and lower-body strength resulted in higher fatigue levels of most women, which contributed to greater incidents of overuse injuries such as stress fractures. Research from various U.S. and allied military studies reveal that the two primary factors associated with success in the task of movement under load are 1) lean body mass and 2) absolute VO2 Max. Findings from the physiological assessment of GCEITF males and females conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s
Neuromuscular Research Laboratory include:

Body composition: Males averaged 178 lbs, with 20% body fat: females averaged 142 lbs, with 24% body fat

Anaerobic Power: Females possessed 15% less power than males; the female top 25th percentile overlaps with the bottom 25th percentile for males

Anaerobic Capacity: Females possessed 15% less capacity; the female top 10th percentile overlaps with the bottom 50th percentile of males

Aerobic Capacity (VO2Max): Females had 10% lower capacity; the female top 10th percentile overlaps with bottom 50th percentile of males

Within the research at the Infantry Training Battalion, females undergoing that entry-level training were injured at more than six-times the rate of their male counterparts

27% of female injuries were attributed to the task of movement under load, compared to 13% for their male counterparts, carrying a similar load.

During the GCEITF assessment, musculoskeletal injury rates were 40.5% for females, compared to 18.8% for males

Of the 21 time-loss injuries incurred by female Marines, 19 were lower extremity injuries and 16 occurred during a movement under load task

The Army produced the required female poster gruntettes needed for propaganda, as I predicted, but the Marine Corps produced a careful study on combat performance.  Sadly, all soldiers will suffer if we play along with the feminist Amazon mythology.  The truth is females are biologically weaker than males and here’s the blunt truth, to quote this Marine Corps report:

“A military unit at maximum combat effectiveness is a military unit least likely to suffer casualties. Winning in war is often only a matter of inches, and unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.”

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US will take 10,000 Syrian Refugees

And so it begins: “BREAKING: Despite Terrorism Concerns, U.S. To Accept 10,000 Syrian Refugees”.

Remember the other day when Democratic presidential candidate, Martin O’Malley, urged for the US to take 65,000 Syrian refugees?  Well, that number didn’t come out of thin air – that is the number the UN wants the US to take.  Don’t be surprised if the Obama administration drastically increases this number, after they set the “narrative” in motion to sell this to the American public.   Expect more heart-wrenching stories of women and children in desperate situations, which won’t be hard to find.  There really are desperate refugees fleeing from Syria, but there are plenty from all over the region who have now become “Syrian” to gain entry into Europe.

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Yep, he’s a badass weatherman

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