One of the main rebel forces in Aleppo has collapsed — but not in a fight with Assad’s army. Here’s the report:

[Sheikh] Omar’s group, Ghurabaa al-Sham, wasn’t defeated by the government. It was dismantled by a rival band of revolutionaries – hardline Islamists.

The Islamists moved against them at the beginning of May. After three days of sporadic clashes Omar’s more moderate fighters, accused by the Islamists of looting, caved in and dispersed, according to local residents. Omar said the end came swiftly.

The Islamists confiscated the brigade’s weapons, ammunition and cars, Omar said. “They considered this war loot. Maybe they think we are competitors,” he said. “We have no idea about their goals. What we have built in two years disappeared in a single day.”

The group was effectively marginalized in the struggle to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Around 100 fighters are all that remain of his force, Omar said.

This is how things will “end” in Afghanistan, too — peace treaty or not.

From Jake Tapper on CNN:

William Binney takes issue with “virtually everything” Obama said about the NSA programs in the PBS interview.

Binney worked at the NSA for almost 40 years. He retired in 2001 after his criticism of an NSA program. Over the years, he has disclosed surveillance programs used by the government.

Binney said all e-mails are already being collected, and stored, even if they are not being read.

“Director (Robert) Mueller of the FBI said in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 30, 2011, he said I’ve gotten together with the DOD where we’ve put together this technology database where I can go in, and I can, with one query, I can get all past and all future e-mails from a person,” said Binney. “That says he’s looking at U.S. citizen e-mail, past and future, as they come in.”

Former senior executive at the NSA Thomas Drake said the surveillance programs go beyond metadata.

Again, this isn’t a Democrat or a Republican thing. This is big government doing what big government loves to do: Collecting and warehousing any and everything it can get its digital fingers on.

There’s a similar problem in the Pentagon, with peacetime procurement. Everything costs too much. Everything is over-designed. Everything takes forever to get to the troops who actually use it. Then a war comes along and everything speeds up and costs go down. (Never enough, but better than in peacetime.)

The reason is, peacetime encourages ass-covering. That new jet might turn out to need a built-in Keurig brewer, and General Prissypants isn’t going to be the one caught eliminating some “vital” necessity from the new weapons system. So word goes down and plans are redrawn and resubmitted and the cost-plus billing gets refiled and re-approved and whatnot, all with various general and colonels and majors putting their own little seals of approval on every little step, and the contractors charging overtime.

This is what the NSA does with data. They might someday need the contents of your email from your wife with the cute puppy picture, on the off chance there’s a coded message in there about TPing the Washington Monument with ricin-infused toilet paper. It may never happen, but Bureaucrat Bob isn’t going to be the one stuck with that particular hot potato on the day the TP Jihadis strike.

Is evil really banal like that? You bet it is. Right until some smart politician figures out some smart way to use those warehouses of data to cement his power. The IRS scandal showed a small-scale version of how to do just that, simply by using the complexities and intricacies of our corrupt tax code. The real danger however lies in those mountains of data being collected each and every day by Bureaucrat Bob.

Because Fascist Frank is looking over his shoulder.

Drunk on Bernanke Bucks, that is:

U.S. equities pushed higher on Tuesday as investors grew more confident that the Federal Reserve would temper its recent statements on the future reduction of U.S. monetary support, while still pointing to economic improvement.

Stocks went up because investors think Bernanke is going to keep giving them hits of the good stuff.

I old enough — just old enough — to remember when investors looked at things like profit and loses, instead of trying to read the tea leaves stuck in the Fed chairman’s beard.

Trifecta: What just happened to Antonin Scalia?

Apple Insider has the full story. But it’s mostly a whole lot of nothing. For starters, $199 is a sucker price, because the Surface just isn’t usable without a keyboard and a trackpad. It’s unique in being the only touch tablet without a fully touch-friendly operating system.

Oh, and there aren’t any apps for it, either. And the screen sucks compared to iPad and even many Android devices.

The problem with RT isn’t the price; it’s all the other stuff I just mentioned.

Trifecta: Join us as we go In Search Of… the President’s foreign policy on Syria.

I won’t give anything away, but it’s where you least expect it.

So this happening:

Senior US officials said on Tuesday that representatives will begin formal talks with the Taliban “within a few” days at a new office in Doha, Qatar.

The Afghan Taliban opened the office to help restart talks on ending the 12-year-old war, saying it wanted a political solution that would bring about a just government and end foreign occupation.

Senior Barack Obama administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the record, described the office opening to AP as a stepping stone to full Taliban renouncement of al Qaeda.

What I want to know is: Why? Why are we trying to make peace with the Taliban? Does anyone expect that peace to hold once we’ve exited the country? No, this will be Vietnam all over again, where the bad guys resume war just about the time our last soldier leaves the country. The Afghan National Army is riddled with Taliban and al Qaeda, too, so it’s a pretty sure bet who will win in the end.

Is Obama opening talks just to save face, to show the world he’s made a good-faith effort? How much face will he have left, when his purported peace partners make a mockery of his efforts as soon as his back is turned?

We should have either kept a small footprint and continued to wage a low-intensity anti-terror fight, or bugged out completely. Instead, we had this phony surge in order to force a phony peace. But I suppose there will be a brief moment of glory, when the diplomats and the leaders can all come together and smile for the cameras and give awards to each other and remind us of how wonderful they all are.

Or maybe I’m just not being cynical enough.

More showers expected this afternoon, and the Black Forest Fire is already — “already?” seems like forever — 75% contained. Best of all, another huge chunk of the mandatory evacuation area has been upgraded to pre-evac.

The bad news is that the count of homes lost has increased to 502, making this by far the most destructive fire in Colorado history.

What hath science wrought today? Weather control? No. Flying car? Keep dreaming. Robot cat? You bet! Read:

Dubbed the “cheetah-cub robot,” scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne modeled it after a common housecat, with strings replacing the tendons in its legs. Flexible knees allow it to bound over steps and other small obstacles.

The robot can run at speeds of up to 3.1 miles per hour. Each second, it can travel seven times the length of its body, and it’s the fastest four-legged robot ever created that weighs less than 65 pounds.

Finally.

Now see it in action.

The Angry Drunk (no relation) has had a week to think about Apple’s WWDC keynote and says

If there is one word that could be used to characterize the performances given by Tim Cook, Phill Schiller, and Craig Federighi on stage it would have to be “relaxed”. Instead of the focused intensity of a Jobsian event we had executive cracking-wise about “green felt” and “innovation my ass”. This was a presentation delivered not by an authoritarian leader, but by a collaborative team. I’m heartened to see Tim Cook realize that his strengths are not Steve’s. Much has been made of the changes that Tim Cook has made in the last year to Apple’s product management structure. I think it’s obvious from Monday’s event that a Cookian structure of collaborators can work just as well, if not better, than a collection of independent fiefdoms.

This was the first Apple event since any of Jobs’s absences where I wasn’t wondering, “What would Steve do?”

It’s Tim Cook’s company now, and it looks like it’s kicking ass.

President Obama on his decision to ship and/or not ship weapons or not to rebels in Syria who are definitely not affiliated with al Qaeda unless they are:

Charlie Rose last night asked President Obama his new Syria policy. The president first objected to it being called a new policy. “I’m not sure you can characterize this as a new policy. This is consistent with the policy that I’ve had throughout,” he said.

OK then. That clears that up. Thank you, Mr. President.

How’s that Windows Phone app marketplace coming along? Don’t ask:

Microsoft is paying developers up to $100,000 to get their applications over to the Windows Phone 8 platform, according to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek. This is in addition to a promotion the company is running where it will pay any developer to get their app into the Windows Store ASAP in an effort to catch up to the iOS and Android app stores.

Microsoft first instated the broad $100 Visa card reward in March, offering the bounty to any developer or studio that managed to get its app in by June 30. The rewards were capped at $2,000 per developer.

This reeks of desperation. This is the lifts in Tom Cruise’s boots. This is Bob Dole’s 1996 promise to go back to Kansas. This is having one last shot of cheap whiskey before stumbling over to the bored-looking chick at last call.

Pee-yew.

Historically there’s been great tension in China between the rural areas and the richer, urban (coastal) regions. That’s true in most any country, but it’s been a particular sore spot for China. When the city dwellers get to big for their britches, the peasant-based army comes in to put them down.

That’s the reason why, during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Beijing-based 38th Army failed to restore order. And why other armies were brought in from the sticks to do the actual shooting.

That’s what I thought of when I caught an Ann Althouse bit via Glenn. From the original NYT report:

China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.

The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

Looks like the smart city kids figured out a solution to their problem: Outlaw the boonies.

Oops.

The difference between iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S4 is, iPhone sales are way up year-over-year.

The collapse in Apple’s share price while breaking sales volume records while maintaining average selling prices is due to one thing and one thing only: Wall Street is drunk.

Each one of those red flags represents a home listed as a total loss to the Black Forest Fire.

Once the evacuation order is lifted and the roads are open again, I’ll take a little tour, camera in hand.

Meanwhile, back near my old stomping grounds:

Dangerous dogs are becoming more of a problem in parts of north St. Louis County.

It’s so bad, some people say they’re afraid to go out for a morning jog.

Resident Carolyn Immer says she was attack and now has a hole in her leg.

“I felt like I was out in the middle of nowhere and there was nobody around to help,” Immer says. “I was screaming for a long time – it seemed like a long time lets put it that way.”

When I saw the headline, I just assumed that they meant this was going on in the city of St. Louis. The City and the County divorced ages ago, and are completely separate and distinct political entities. The City has been depopulating for decades, so I kind of expected maybe packs of wild dogs roaming around, Detroit-style

But North County? It’s unexciting in a comfortably suburban way.

So what the hell is up with the attack dogs?

Trifecta: California got a $300,000 federal grant to study a single wold that wandered in from Oregon, then wandered back out.

Apple released a statement today regarding its involvement with PRISM. They’ve received up to 5,000 requests from “US law enforcement” just since December, but they add:

Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

There’s some comfort in that.

We had a really good rain yesterday — followed by far too much wind for comfort. As a result, containment is “only” at 65%. But no more homes have been reported destroyed or damaged, and lots more red mandatory evacuation zones have been changed to yellow — which means lots more people getting to go back home. More rain is expected today and tomorrow.

Insurance fraud seems to be all the rage with the DNC:

The Democratic National Convention may be long over, but its organizers have not forgotten the almost half a million dollars worth of electronics they seem to have lost.

Organizers of the Charlotte, N.C., convention have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics, some of which they appear to have valued at as much as 62 times the listed market prices.

A reportedly stolen 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop? $75,537. The price listed on the Apple website is $1,199. A lost iPhone? $30,503. A lost Blackberry? $54,250.

The party of Other People’s Money has a cavalier attitude towards other people’s money?

Dog bits man story here, folks.

Looks like I’m switching to Verizon.

As of this morning, big chunks of evacuation and pre-evacuation have been lifted, including all of Elbert County and everything in El Paso County west of Highway 83. The total number of home lost is now 473, or more than one hundred more than were lost last year to Waldo.

But overall, yesterday was a very good day for fighting fires. Wish the crews equal luck today.

UPDATE: Sheriff Marketa tweets that the fire is now 45% contained.

MORE GOOD NEWS: Most of the area between County Line Rd and Walker Rd has been downgraded from Mandatary to Precautionary.

Nothing was ever more fun than late-’70s New Wave. Where else would you find a girl band called Suburban Lawns performing song called “Gidget Goes To Hell” about a rich-bitch surfer getting eaten by a shark?

To top it off: A low-budget, Annette Funicello beach-movie inspired video — first aired on Saturday Night Live, back when they still cared about doing something slightly cutting edge now and then.

This is the song that came to mind when Funicello passed away a couple months ago, but playing it seemed “Too soon!” until now.

Enjoy the campy goodness.

Well:

A long-running conflict between the Teamsters and the Santa Barbara News-Press has resulted in the National Labor Relations Board sanctioning the newspaper for firing employees who were involved in organizing. The paper contended they were fired because they violated editorial policy. The NLRB’s sanction comes despite the fact that an Appeals Court earlier ruled that doing so would violate the paper’s First Amendment rights.

Under this Administration, the rule of law is for suckers. This will end badly.

I wish I were joking, but no:

The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year — it’s also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers’ digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it’s never gone before.

The IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget quagmire by chasing down an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to evasions and errors each year, will start using “robo-audits” of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this so-called “tax gap.” But the agency reveals little about how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers.

You’re not paranoid. They really are watching everything.

A big, fat mess is what you call it. Or the new normal as the devolution of the Middle East continues, now across the increasingly meaningless Iraqi-Syrian border:

Combat-hardened Iraqi fighters, meanwhile, are crisscrossing the frontier. Al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants are cooperating with hard-line Islamists among the Syrian rebels, while Iraqi Shiite fighters are joining militiamen from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to fight alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Iranian-backed regime. U.S. officials believe Iranian arms are still being shuttled to Damascus through Iraqi airspace.

“What is going on in Syria has a big, clear impact on us … especially since there are attempts to move the battle to Iraq,” said Ali al-Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It’s happening as the deadly drumbeat of violence is growing louder across Iraq. Nearly 2,000 lives have been violently snuffed out across the country since the start of April.

What I find interesting about this piece is that reporter Adam Schreck chose to use the word “frontier.” Using that word to describe international borders went out of style after the horrors of the First World War. A frontier is something be crossed; a border hems one in.

Schreck knows something our State Department dare not admit.

10:25AM: I’m feeling confident enough now to make this post non-sticky, but I’ll continue to update as needed.

9:19AM: Division A covers the fire’s closest approach to Highway 83, just east of yesterday’s expanded mandatory evacuation zone. That’s where today’s big effort will concentrate. “Everywhere it’s grass, we’re winning,” up in the north. There are a couple hot spots on the eastern edge near Meridian, but the line has held. They don’t sound worried at all. There’s still heat in the Shoup area and the now-famous School of the Wood, but that’s also the place yesterday they were willing to call contained.

Cooler air and — for now — lighter winds. “Aviation assets are still strong,” with no losses. The mood is cautious-but-confident.

I can’t even begin to tell you what a difference a year has made in Colorado’s ability to respond to these fires.

9:08AM: “In general I am feeling more confident today.” That’s Sheriff Marketa, who says they gained some “tremendous ground” yesterday. More to come.

7:06AM: Number of evacuees now up to 41,000. That includes 3,000 from inside the city limits of Colorado Springs. The most encouraging sign I’ve seen so far is that the sheriff’s office is at least considering allowing some evacuees back into their homes.

FRIDAY, 6:49AM: Woke up twenty minutes ago and the first thing I did was check the evacuation zones and burn area maps. No additional evacuations overnight, which is good. But the winds were strong and steady all night, so it looks like we have a lot more fires within a slightly enlarged burn area.

The real danger looks to be the same as yesterday, to the south of Shoup Road and to the east past Meridian. I’m to the north and west, but if we didn’t have to evacuate yesterday — and I was deeply convinced we would — then there’s a good chance we won’t have to today either.

Yesterday the Air Force and National Guard showed up like the Eighth Air Force over Germany in 1943. There were private planes and copters involved, too. Combined with over 700 firemen, the fought the breakout in the east-west running Shoup-Hodgen corridor damn near to standstill. Because if the fire were going to burn its way into the heart of Colorado Springs, that’s where it was going to happen. Sheriff Marketa described the effort as something close to a victory. But today there are many new fires south of Shoup, so last night must have been tough. The weather forecast for today is cooler, cloudier, and most importantly, less windy.

The next press conference is scheduled for 9AM.