Paul Sperry, in the New York Post, points out that Bernie Sanders is not a “liberal,” not a “progressive.” He’s a lifelong, diehard, dyed-in-the-wool Communist.

As polls tighten and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders looks more like a serious contender than a novelty candidate for president, the liberal media elite have suddenly stopped calling him socialist. He’s now cleaned up as a “progressive” or “pragmatist.”

But he’s not even a socialist. He’s a communist.

Mainstreaming Sanders requires whitewashing his radical pro-communist past. It won’t be easy to do.

If Sanders were vying for a Cabinet post, he’d never pass an FBI background check. There’d be too many subversive red flags popping up in his file. He was a communist collaborator during the height of the Cold War.

Read the whole thing.

Debate Result

Abbey of Sainte Foy, Conques, France, c. 1050.

Daily Mail:

A group of hipster gin makers came close to creating chaos after they accidentally made mustard gas while trying to concoct a new flavour.

Workers from Sipsmith distillery, in Chiswick, west London, were attempting to create a mustard-flavoured drink but instead made the dangerous chemical agent, famous for its devastating use in World War One.

The firm, founded by Fairfax Hall, Sam Galsworthy and Jared Brown in 2009, evacuated its plant as soon as the blunder had been detected.

Kit Clancy, assistant distiller at Sipsmith, said: ‘There was a near disaster. What the guys actually produced was in effect mustard gas. The distillery was evacuated. That one wasn’t made again.’

The Asylum

(photo by Viki Ross)

British eventer Alice Pearson took a tremendous fall out with the Ledbury Hunt at Murrells End on January 15th latest, winding up under her struggling horse. Meanwhile, other members of the field poured over the same hedge, landing on both sides of the fallen horse and rider. This is the kind of thing the Irish refer to as “a crucifying fall.”

The ground must have been soft that day because both Alice & Chocky survived without serious injury.

If you can follow the link to Facebook, you can see the whole nearly disastrous sequence.

How is it that Beethoven, who is celebrated as one of the most significant composers of all time, wrote many of his most beloved songs while going deaf? The answer lies in the math behind his music. Using the “Moonlight Sonata”, we can begin to understand the way Beethoven was able to convey emotion and creativity using the certainty of mathematics.

The standard piano octave consists of 13 keys, each separated by a half step. A standard major or minor scale uses 8 of these keys with 5 whole step intervals and 2 half step ones.

The first half of measure 50 of “Moonlight Sonata” consists of three notes in D major, separated by intervals called thirds that skip over the next note in the scale. By stacking the notes first, third, and fifth notes – D, F sharp, and A – we get a harmonic pattern known as a triad.

But, these aren’t just arbitrary magic numbers. Rather, they represent the mathematical relationship between the pitch frequencies of different notes, which form a geometric series. The stacking of these three frequencies creates ‘consonance’, which sounds naturally pleasant to our ears. Examining Beethoven’s use of both consonance and dissonance can help us begin to understand how he added the unquantifiable elements of emotion and creativity to the certainty of mathematics.

Animation by Qa’ed Mai

Via Ratak Monodosico.

Posted at Gates of Vienna:

I think that the take-down happened in international waters. The Iranians would have known to the minute when the boats were leaving Kuwait, and their probable course to Bahrain, so an intercept would be simple. They know our ROE would be “Do not shoot EVER unless you are fired upon first. PERIOD!!!”

So, if the Iranians jam our boats so they cannot communicate, and then swoop in close, it’s almost a guaranteed outcome. They KNOW we won’t shoot first! So by coming in closer and closer with weapons aimed at our sailors, overwhelming them with numbers at point-blank, then on loudspeaker they say, “Step away from your weapons or we will slaughter you!” At that point, it’s a fait accompli. Once our sailors step back from their guns, it’s over. Next, “Take off your jackets and weapons” etc, until they are in t-shirts only. Then “Kneel down!”

Step by step they get their way, based on a deep understanding of our ROE and our responses at every stage. Once they have control of our boats, they can drive them to Farsi Island, and remove every single GPS device, radar, cell phone etc. Then, there can be no proof of where the attack happened. And worst of all, Obama and Kerry are happy to go along with the lie, in order not to upset the nuclear deal applecart.

Matthew Bracken comments on a Rick Moran American Thinker post:

I rarely pull out my dusty old trident, but in this case, here goes. I was a Navy SEAL officer in the 1980s, and this kind of operation (transiting small boats in foreign waters) was our bread and butter. Today, these boats both not only had radar, but multiple GPS devices, including chart plotters that place your boat’s icon right on the chart. The claim by Iran that the USN boats “strayed into Iranian waters” is complete bull$#it.

For an open-water transit between nations, the course is studied and planned in advance by the leaders of the Riverine Squadron, with specific attention given to staying wide and clear of any hostile nation’s claimed territorial waters. The boats are given a complete mechanical check before departure, and they have sufficient fuel to accomplish their mission plus extra. If, for some unexplainable and rare circumstance one boat broke down, the other would tow it, that’s why two boats go on these trips and not one! It’s called “self-rescue” and it’s SOP.

This entire situation is in my area of expertise. I can state with complete confidence that both Iran and our own State Department are lying. The boats did not enter Iranian waters. They were overtaken in international waters by Iranian patrol boats that were so superior in both speed and firepower that it became a “hands up!” situation, with automatic cannons in the 40mm to 76mm range pointed at them point-blank. Surrender, hands up, or be blown out of the water. I assume that the Iranians had an English speaker on a loudspeaker to make the demand. This takedown was no accident or coincidence, it was a planned slap across America’s face.

Just watch. The released sailors will be ordered not to say a word about the incident, and the Iranians will have taken every GPS device, chart-plotter etc off the boats, so that we will not be able to prove where our boats were taken.

The “strayed into Iranian waters” story being put out by Iran and our groveling and appeasing State Dept. is utter and complete BS from one end to the other.