SAR #15253

Anyone who speaks for God, lies.

Rose Colored Glasses: More than 50 DIA intelligence analysts working for Central Command have formally complained that senior officers have changed reports to show that the US is winning the battle against ISIS when in fact it is not.

Rhymes: Jeb's plan to “unleash 4% growth” in American isn't exactly the same as his brother's failed attempt, but it seems reminiscent: cut taxes on the rich and corporations and let the good times roll. Plus a war or two. And starve the poor, that's always the key, starve the poor.

Succinctly: Goldman beats another fraud rap.

Confirmation: God bless bureaucracy. British government clerks carefully recorded meetings and communications between the Blair government and oil giants BP and Shell as they clamored for their place at the trough – the trough being Iraqi oil fields. More than a year before Blair agreed with Bush to annex Iraq, and in direct contravention of the Blair government's dissembling, the UK agreed to seek significant access to Iraqi oilfields after the US/UK invasion. In the event, the Blair government told the US that it was “anxious that political deals should not deny [BP and Shell] the opportunity" to loot Iraq. The 20-year contracts Iraq was forced to sign are the largest ever negotiated, covering half of Iraq's petroleum reserves. Just what China did to earn the huge contracts the China National Petroleum Company received is still a secret.

Furiously Fast: DEA agents pretending to be from the Texas Medical Board are plowing through hundreds of private medical records in search of Texas doctors to prosecute for... for whatever they can scrape up. No warrants were harmed in this blatantly illegal fishing expedition.

Silent Treatment: Israel's President Rivlin says he and PM Netanyahu have not spoken in over three months and “have said everything that can be said.”

Just Say No: A Bush-era federal judge has said Republican's in Congress can sue to stop the government from paying ACA health insurance subsidies, wrest the money (and insurance) from those who have benefited, and essentially kill medical insurance for several million poor people. It was unclear if those who had been helped would have to go back to being sick.

Clip and Save: Adjusted for demographic factors – another way of saying we're all getting older – there has been no “skyrocketing increase” in disability claims. They've gone from just below 4% of workers to just over 4% of workers. It's not fraud, it's the damned pain in my knees...

Warm And Fuzzy: Kindly Warren Buffett explains the gap between the have and the have-nots this way: “You want everybody educated to their potential. You want people to reach their potential. … There's just some people don't fit well into a highly skilled market-based economy. They're perfectly decent citizens. We'll send them off to Afghanistan, but they are not going to command a big price."

Progress Report: Harvard University notes that 37.9% of its incoming freshman are atheists or agnostics. They accept only the brightest of the bright.

Door Number Three: To the threat of intolerable global warming and massive flooding from melting ice caps, add this: There are giant viruses in the frozen wastelands of Siberia just waiting to be thawed out and set free. Worse than Children of the Corn.

Enigma: Since equipping their police with body cameras, Birmingham, AL has seen a 71% drop in citizen complaints and a 38% drop in use of force by officers. Protecting and serving.

Pocket Lint: For every ounce of physical gold available on the Comex gold exchange, 207 people have paper claims to it. Think of it a musical chairs and wait for the music to stop.

Porn O'Graph: It's oily days.