October 29, 2015

Why has government ordered 1.5 Billion rounds of hollow-point ammo?

Unless you're familiar with guns you probably don't know what a "hollow-point bullet" is.

Start here: international agreement bans their use in war.  Think about that for a second.

Okay, hollow-points are designed not just to make a hole in whatever they hit, but to open up when they hit flesh.  They're designed to make large, jagged, tearing wounds, meaning that someone who is unfortunate enough to be hit with such a round, even in a place that wouldn't normally be fatal, is likely to bleed to death from the larger wound.  So...really nasty things.

A year or so ago the emperor's henchmen ordered 1.5 BILLION rounds of...hollow-point ammo.

Even the damn Social Security administration has ordered 174,000 rounds of the stuff.

By way of comparison, at the height of the Iraq war U.S. armed forces used 70 million rounds.  One and a half Billion rounds would sustain that level of combat for over 20 years.

Who are they planning to shoot?

"Oh," my moronic liberal acquaintances say, "that story has to be bullshit--just another right-wing rumor.  Our wonderful government would never do such a thing!"

Or they say it's a clerical error, that they really meant to order regular practice rounds but keyed in the wrong stock number or something.

Yeah, cupcake, dat's it.  If that's what you're goin' with, ask yourself if the emperor's lackeys cancelled the order after it was called to their attention.

Here's a clue:  They didn't.  But do keep making whatever excuses you need to stay comfortable.
  
Who are they planning to shoot?
 

October 27, 2015

Half of Americans don't seem bothered by criminal behavior by their "leaders"

Having lived in the U.S. for decades it seems to me that most Americans are hard-working and hate injustice.  But given the support for Hillary--and for the current emperor, who has repeatedly violated laws by decree--I'm beginning to re-think that. 

After all, the careers of both Hillary and Obama have been absolutely filled with lies and deception, yet neither has ever been held accountable.  For example, when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, Hillary reported a profit of $100,000 in a single year from...trading cattle futures.  Hilly had never traded cattle futures before, but nevertheless, in an astonishing run of...uh, luck...every one of her trades made money. 

Yep, the record showed she ostensibly never had a single losing position in an entire year.

Of course the old hands were pretty sure right away what was really going on:  the profits from her statistically impossible "success" in cattle futures were simply a way to funnel payments to her husband, the governor.

Now, I'm not naive:  I realize that bribing politicians is fairly common.  Hell, I'd guess that a quarter of all pols in the U.S.--both fed and state--have taken money in exchange for a vote or favor of some sort.  She (and Bill) got away with it, and can't be called to account.  Not one of her supporters is the least bit upset about that.  My only observation is that you'd think rational Americans wouldn't want to *promote* a known crooked pol to the nation's highest office.

But of course no one under 40 has the slightest idea of Hillary's past.  The only folks who could enlighten voters under 40--the mainstream media--support liberal Democrats so would support Hillary even if they had proof she'd lied under oath, or underpaid her taxes by millions--or had been using diplomatic cover to help the CIA deliver shoulder-fired missiles to Syrian jihadists through the CIA annex in Benghazi.

No law seems to touch this woman.  With the help of the mainstream media she seems to be able to ignore all the laws that the rest of us must obey--and to do so without consequence.  It's almost as though she's being protected by some supernatural force.

Ah well, as Her Evilness herself said--when testifying before a congressional committee about the killing of four Americans at Benghazi, "What difference, at this point, can it possibly make?"

October 22, 2015

Government agencies are reporting higher temperatures than actually recorded

For the past decade or so liberals, Democrats, socialists and communists have been pushing the idea that
      1) Earth's climate is warming at a dangerously high ("catastrophic") rate;
      2) that the this warming has been caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air;
      3) that this increased CO2 is generated almost entirely by human activity; and finally,
      4) that the solution to this alleged "crisis" is for government to impose a "carbon tax" that would make it far more expensive for you to drive, and would make your utility bills skyrocket.

You may have heard something about this "crisis," since not a day passes without some news broadcast or article screaming about it.


Think for a second:  What do you recall hearing on TV or reading in the papers about this issue?  You've almost certainly heard some buzz-phrases.  How about "The science is settled"? 

How about the endlessly-repeated claim that "All reputable scientists agree" that human activity is the cause of global warming? (They don't, BTW.)

You might have seen the pic at right, of a polar bear standing on a tiny chunk of ice.  Did you feel sad for the 'poor trapped bear'?
"Help me!  I can't get down!"

Heard the term "greenhouse gas"?  It's almost certain that you know the name of the allegedly "bad" gas that's supposedly causing the alleged disaster.  Of course you do.  Every American over the age of ten or so knows the cause of this alleged "catastrophic global warming."

Oh wait, make that "climate change"--because after a string of record-breaking low winter temperatures in the U.S, the folks pushing this idea on you realized that freezing Americans were about to conclude that "global warming" was bullshit.  So the folks pushing this simply changed the name of the alleged disaster, from "catastrophic global warming" to "climate change."

Still catastrophic, of course.  Even if they dropped "catastrophic" from the new name.

It was a switch George Orwell (author of the chilling novel "1984") would have envied: One day the problem was described as global warming, until it became too obvious that that was crap, so they simply renamed the alleged "crisis" to "climate change."

Hard to argue with that one, eh?  Cuz if the climate got either warmer or cooler, either way they could claim it was your fault!

Too little rain where you live?  Climate change!

Too much rain?  Same answer.

Winter colder than usual?  Same answer.

It was the perfect hook for people looking for someone to blame for...well, for anything at all.  And of course the main target of blame was...you--because you're an American, and we use a lot of energy.  That use makes us productive--as it does everywhere it's used.

After the brazen re-naming of the alleged horrible, urgent, "catastrophic" problem--from "global warming" to "climate change"--you'd think virtually every rational adult would have realized this was nothing but a giant scam.  But of course liberals and socialists didn't bat an eye--they were total believers both before and after the name change.

They're the same folks who think the U.S. is responsible for virtually all the bad things in the world today.

Oh, and they think there are far too many Americans--while simultaneously opening our borders to 30 million illegal aliens.  But don't expect consistency from liberals.

They see you as a neanderthal who's killing the planet because you drive a gas-fueled car instead of a Prius, while they happily fly to Geneva or Paris or Copenhagen a few times a year to attend Important Conferences on climate change, generating more CO2 emissions in 8 hours than an SUV does in a year.  But that's okay because... well, they're special.  And Special People don't need to be consistent.

That's all background.  Here's the kicker:

Turns out that about ten years ago government agencies that stood to reap billions in extra budget appropriations from climate programs began changing the actual *measured* temperatures--deliberately--to make it seem like the planet was warming at a much faster rate.

They did this both by raising recent measured temps--the real temperatures--to make the present look much warmer, and by lowering measured temps from decades earlier, to make the past appear cooler than it really was.  Both of these changes made it appear that the planet was warming at a far scarier rate.  (The actual measured surface temps, and satellite temp measurements, show no global warming for 17 years now.)

In addition, one agency has simply been making up temperatures for stations that have been removed from service.  And--surprise!--every one of the fabricated temperatures alleged to have been measured by the "phantom" stations is hotter than the temps actually measured by nearby real stations.

Imagine that! 

This, purely and simply, is fraud--on a scale so huge that the average American finds it almost impossible to believe it's really happening.  And yet the record of actual *measured* temperatures versus those reported (and published) by the government agencies totally supports this conclusion.

Before we take a look at the evidence, consider this:  The people pushing this fraud have a huge motivation to do it, since it results in their getting grants that let them do fun research instead of mundane, boring things like teaching.  Most of these grants allow them to fly to conventions or seminars all over the world to present the results of their research.

But there's another motive at work too, and it's much stronger:  The folks pushing the notion of "catastrophic global warming" caused by your use of fossil fuels have stridently supported this theory for decades.  How would their egos and reputation fare if the theory they've so aggressively supported for all these years were shown to be false?

Some people hate to be wrong so intensely that they're willing to do anything to not be seen to be wrong.


So now for the evidence:  The agencies call the changes they make to the actual measured temperatures "adjustments," and claim the actual measured temps need to be adjusted because, well, they're just not *accurate enough* for such important work.  And the agencies are quite open about this.

For example, the graph below shows the changes made by one NASA office to actual measured temps in the past 15 years.  They've changed temps going back to 1920 or so, and note the trend of the changes:  They've made the past cooler and the present hotter.


















The plot at right shows how our merry fraudsters adjusted Illinois temperatures
CHANGES TO MEASURED ILLINOIS TEMPERATURES
from 1960.  Again, note how the actual measured temps have been changed to make the past look cooler, and the present warmer.














Below Illinois is the same data for Indiana.  Note that the actual measured temps show a slight cooling, but after the "adjustments" by the NCDC, the adjusted temperatures--which are the ones published by the agency as the "official" ones--show warming.

And it's always the same story:  the actual measured temps show flat or a slight cooling trend, but the "adjusted" values--which are published as if actual--always show what seems to be a warming.



Always the same outcome.  Amazing, huh?






Below the Indiana graph is a plot of the changes made by the same government agency for the entire country.  Again, the measured temperatures have been changed ("adjusted") to make the past look much cooler than the measured temps.




Now it may surprise you to hear that the actual *measured* temps aren't considered accurate, and instead are in need of "adjusting."  In any other field of science this might reasonably be called "fabricating data."  So a reasonable question to ask every adjusting agency would be,
What computer algorithm does your agency use to determine whether a particular measured temperature 'needs' to be adjusted?  And how does that algorithm compute the adjustment?"

As of a year or so ago the answer these government agencies gave was quite brief:  "We refuse to show you.  It's, um...*proprietary*!  Yeh, dat's it.  We own it, so we don't have ta show ya.  So there."

Then some ordinary taxpayer/blogger pointed out that IF such an algorithm existed, it had to have been developed with tax dollars...and that unless the government claimed a national security exception, a government agency couldn't conceal the result by claiming to "own" it.  This resulted in lots of court battles between taxpaying American citizens who knew a lot about statistics and suspected a con, and the Special Elites who wanted to keep the water as muddy as possible for as long as possible.

Last time I checked, not one of the gummint agencies had released their precious, super-secret algorithm.

They won't disclose/release their algorithms because they know it's all bullshit...because all the changes made to recent temperatures have been to make 'em warmer than the actual measurements, while virtually all the changes to earlier years have been negative--i.e. they make the past look cooler.  There's no reasonable rationale for doing that.

Think about it:  Why would the agencies refuse to reveal the correction algorithm if they didn't have something to hide?  Real science doesn't have to hide behind bullshit excuses.

Again, the actual measured temps show a cooling, but those "officially published" by every government agency (i.e. after "adjusting") show a warming.  How...interesting.

Changing *any* actual measured data point is brazen enough, but it's particularly interesting that our merry fraudsters have been able to go back and adjust actual measured temperatures from 90 years ago!  You need to know that temps in the 1930's were record highs.  Since this was before humans started using huge volumes of fossil fuels (including from driving), it seriously damaged the theory that the climate was fabulous until you dumb Americans started driving--gasp!--*cars* and putting us all in deadly danger!

Since the existence of hotter decades before WW2 damaged the "global warming" fable, our global-warming pushers adjusted the OLD temps downward to get rid of the unhelpful record heat of the 1930's.  And cooler not just some of the time, but in every month and every year. 

Pretty neat, huh?

But wait, it gets *still better*!  In the last few years, as the earth's actual climate cooled slightly and it got harder to change the measured temps enough to make the climate look like it was warming without prompting questions that could have blown the scheme wide open, our merry fraudsters started using a new trick:

From time to time, a few weather stations are closed for various reasons.  The new trick was to simply make up a temperature for the phantom station and report it as if it were an actual measurement.

One is hard pressed to find a sound reason for doing this, since there's no way fabricated data could possibly be more accurate than measured data, but remember we're talking about climate "science" here, so normal rules don't apply.

The plot at right shows how the temps for the "phantom stations" compared with the actual measured temps.  Hmmm.....

If a scientist in any other field simply made up data--which conveniently happened to support his hypothesis!--the guy would lose all credibility.  But because pushing global warming (or climate change, or whatever) is so critical to Democrats and socialists, the people who simply make up temperatures and treat them as if they were real measurements get rewarded, not punished.

You're probably asking, "How can this guy claim the temperatures attributed to the phantom stations are an attempt at fraud?"  It's because *all* of the fabricated temps were considerably higher than all of the temps surrounding them.  What possible logic could support this odd result? 

The folks who authored this fraud never believed anyone would catch them, for many reasons.  One is that there are literally tens of millions of recorded historical temps over the years in the U.S. alone.  With such a huge dataset our merry fraudsters believed they could fudge a few thousand here and there--enough to change the average by a mere 0.1 degree--and no one would be likely to detect their tampering.  It'd be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

What made it possible to expose the fraud was computers and the internet.  Our fraudsters couldn't erase all the original data--some of which was already on the Net.  And since each reporting station was specifically identified by location, a group of folks who knew a lot about statistics, working on ordinary desktop computers, could compare ten million original, measured temps with the "adjusted" (published, supposedly "official") records--and spot every instance where an agency changed the actual measured temperature.

Using ordinary tools like Excel, these guys logged every change they found.  And the pattern was clear:  In every case, all the changes made recent years look hotter than they really were, while the old records were lowered to make the 1930s look quite a bit cooler than the actual, measured temps showed.

Interesting.

But Wait, you say:  Haven't scientists shown that arctic sea ice is vanishing, summer high temps are getting hotter, snow cover in the U.S. is getting smaller every year and a dozen other things that absolutely, totally, unequivocally PROVE that the planet is getting hotter? 

SO glad you asked.  Let's take a look at all those claims.  For instance, here's a graph the area covered by snow in North America going back 46 years.  See a trend?

Sure:  Snow cover is slightly up.

Does this support the idea that the planet is warming?



"Well...uh...this has to be just a fluke!  Remember, you stupid denialists, that even if some places on the globe may be cooling, the planet is getting hotter overall!  Really!  For example, Everyone Knows that lots more acreage is burning every year because it's a lot hotter and drier than ever!"



Really, snowflake?  Here's a plot of the number of acres burned by fire in the U.S. over the last 12 years.  See a trend?

Sure:  Down.

(And yes, it'll go up a chunk because of the California fires this year.)






Well how about average measured summertime temperatures over the entire U.S?  Everyone Knows it's getting hotter, so surely that data will show a pronounced warming...



ACTUAL MEASURED TEMPERATURES
Oooh, SO close!  Here's the plot of actual measured summer high temps going back to 1920.  As you see, the trend is...down.



How about arctic sea ice coverage?

Al Gore told the whole world that the arctic would be totally ice-free by now.  Turns out that prediction was...ooh, so close.

Wait, it's not close at all:  After decreasing for several years, Arctic ice coverage is up over the last two years.  Sure, it's less than normal, but if the planet was continuously warming, would you expect the ice area to recover at all?


One dataset the "warmies" don't say a word about is the satellite data.  Since the late 1970s the U.S. has had satellites measuring the Earth's temperature--and not just at a few selected stations that are subject to air-conditioner exhaust or the "urban heat island" effect, but the entire planet.  They take tens of thousands of measurements per day.  AGW believers believed the satellite record would absolutely prove that the earth is warming--at least since the late 70's. 

Okay, so what do the satellites show?

No "statistically significant" warming for the past 18 years.

So now the government agencies are trying to find an excuse to "adjust" this data as well.  Cuz, you know, the 1970's was decades ago, and way back then the warmies will try to convince you that no one knew how to make accurate thermometers!  Or something like that.  Because old science is only reliable if it supports the Narrative.

Wait, it gets better:  As more people began to notice the discrepancy between the satellite data, the measured temps and the ones reported by the agencies, more Americans were beginning to think maybe AGW wasn't real.  The AGW crowd had to find some way to counterattack.

One of the agencies that has changed actual measured temperatures the most is the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), one of the myriad offices of NOAA.  It's headed by a guy named Thomas Karl.  This past June Karl counterattacked, submitting a short paper claiming that despite the satellite data and actual measured surface temps showing no warming for 18 years (the "pause"), the truth was that the planet was not only still warming, but might be doing so at even a faster rate than previously thought!

Here's the abstract:
Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.

The paper was immediately published by the National Academy of Science, which is totally dedicated to the idea that warming is "catastrophic" and caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

An hour after the paper was published, NOAA issued this press release:

Science publishes new NOAA analysis: Data show no recent slowdown in global warming"

A new study published online today in the journal Science finds that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century. The study refutes the notion that there has been a slowdown or "hiatus" in the rate of global warming in recent years.

The study is the work of a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information* (NCEI) using the latest global surface temperature data.

"Adding in the last two years of global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record provide evidence that contradict the notion of a hiatus in recent global warming trends," said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. "Our new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century."

The apparent observed slowing or decrease in the upward rate of global surface temperature warming has been nicknamed the "hiatus." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, released in stages between September 2013 and November 2014, concluded that the upward global surface temperature trend from 1998­­-2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951-2012.

Since the release of the IPCC report, NOAA scientists have made significant improvements in the calculation of trends and now use a global surface temperature record that includes the most recent two years of data, 2013 and 2014--the hottest year on record. The calculations also use improved versions of both sea surface temperature and land surface air temperature datasets. One of the most substantial improvements is a correction that accounts for the difference in data collected from buoys and ship-based data.
You need to know that "improvements" in the data is their translation of "We changed the data in a way that helps our position."  The phrase "improvements in the calculation of trends" is similarly puzzling, as there don't seem to be any trend calculations more puzzling than simple linear regression, and there's nothing to suggest they "improved" that long-known technique.  This seems to be bullshit, designed to make the paper appear to have a sound theoretical basis, when in reality all they did was change the data.

Prior to the mid-1970s, ships were the predominant way to measure sea surface temperatures, and since then buoys have been used in increasing numbers. Compared to ships, buoys provide measurements of significantly greater accuracy. "In regards to sea surface temperature, scientists have shown that across the board, data collected from buoys are cooler than ship-based data," said Dr. Thomas C. Peterson, principal scientist at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information and one of the study's authors. "In order to accurately compare ship measurements and buoy measurements over the long-term, they need to be compatible. Scientists have developed a method to correct the difference between ship and buoy measurements, and we are using this in our trend analysis."

In addition, more detailed information has been obtained regarding each ship's observation method. This information was also used to provide improved corrections for changes in the mix of observing methods."   

For their supporters in the MSM who may not have grasped the nuance, the press release included the helpful graphic on the right.  Note that the arrows for trends under "New Analysis" are larger than for the "Old analysis."

Science, baby.
Global temperature trends.

Serious scientists immediately noticed some glaring flaws:  The authors noted that the most accurate measurements of ocean temperatures were made by automated buoys, which presumably rarely made mistakes.  But before the buoys, temps were measured by ships, either by lifting a bucket of water to the deck and sticking a thermometer in it or by reading "engine intake" water temp--gauges which weren't very sensitive.  Both sources consistently gave slightly higher readings than the buoys.


But rather than investigate whether some part of the procedure accounted for the difference, Karl and his co-author simply subtracted the difference from all the old records--which had the obvious (and certainly known) effect of cooling the past.

Most troubling, though, was that the "confidence interval" is reported to have been just ten percent, whereas the standard for most scientific papers to reasonably claim an alleged effect is 90 percent.  [This seems unlikely even for the "warmie" fraudsters, so I'm trying to get a copy of the actual paper.]

In light of such a profound disagreement in dueling datasets, the chair of the House committee on Science and Technology asked NOAA to provide the data supporting the report, and copies of all "communications" by the authors regarding the paper.

NOAA sent the committee *some* information--a copy of the encyclopedia and the Manhattan phonebook, perhaps? (kidding, of course)--but refused to provide the actual data the committee asked for, and particularly the communications, citing the desire to allow "scientists" to exchange ideas without having those ideas divulged.

Problem: No feature of the law allows government agencies to do that.  NOAA just pulled that out of their ass.  And why?  Well think for a second: if the data and "communications" supported the report's conclusions, would they have hesitated to release either?  Of course not.  They're trying to hide the fact that the only way the "report" can be supported is by altering the actual measured data.

And I suspect that if the "communications" are ever divulged they'll reveal that some NOAA employee mentioned this somewhere along the line and was told to shut up.

But until that happens we're left with the fact that a taxpayer-funded federal agency is defying a congressional subpoena.  But hey, no skullduggery here, eh?

People should be going to jail over this, just as Lois Lerner (the IRS division chief who used that agency to harrass conservative political groups and delay/deny issuance of tax-exempt status) should have gone to jail.  But of course Lerner has was allowed to retire, with full pension--because she was doing the emperor's bidding.

No one in the emperor's regime has gone to jail, or been fined or otherwise punished.  And won't, as long as they do the emperor's bidding.

In the emperor's regime, lying and lawbreaking to further regime goals are *always* rewarded, never punished. 

Gee, wonder if watching this happen will have any effect on young, impressionable youth?

Nah, who could imagine such a thing?  Young people don't pay attention to such things, right?

We are no longer a nation of laws, but a nation of all-powerful members of the nomenklatura who do as their superiors order, regardless of legality--knowing there won't be any consequences.

A coda to this from Pat Michaels, commenting at the blog
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/28/ncdcnceis-karl-and-peterson-refuse-congressional-subpoena-on-flawed-pausebuster-paper/
[Tom] Karl was the chief of the science team for the first (2001) National Assessment. That team considered nine global climate models and chose two.  One, the Canadian climate model, produced more warming than any other model. The other, the UKMO model, produced the greatest precipitation changes.
     I tested them both on historical 20th century 10 year running means, and the residual error was larger than the standard error of the raw data--a seemingly impossible example of a model actually supplying negative knowledge.

I wrote up my results as a part of the review and commentary process on the draft, and I also sent a copy to Tom. He wrote back that they had run a similar test and found the same thing.

And the report was published anyway. So you see, they knowingly violate rules of normative science in service of their careers and their political masters.
It'll be interesting to see if the chair of the House committee presses the subpoena or drops it.  No Republican so far has pressed Obama on anything--they always fold.  Maybe this rep will be different.  One thing certain: because an adverse court decision on this could cost Obama political power, Karl and his bosses at NOAA wouldn't have defied a congressional subpoena unless they'd been assured that's exactly what Obama wanted them to do.

Interesting times.

Iran tests ballistic missile capable of nuke--ten days before start of Obozo's deal

Your president--a man whose entire career has been built on bluff, bluster and altering his record to polish his image--has insisted on "making a deal" with the terrorist-sponsoring mullahs of Iran. 

Ooooh, a deal!   Like, a diplomatic agreement, such as one might expect of a guy who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize a week after he took office--and won it, based on zero accomplishments.  But he's got a D after his name, so that's all that matters in New America.

This "deal" released roughly $150 Billion in bank accounts owned by Iran, in exchange for a solemn promise by the mullahs to...do exactly the same thing they've been doing for years.

Man, that's some sharp deal by Barky and John F'n Kerry, eh?

Virtually every adult who isn't a liberal/Democrat warned that this "deal" was an illusion, a piece of theater that would give the mullahs a green light to develop an atomic bomb.  It was obvious from the outset, because the "deal" doesn't provide for any no-notice inspections.  So let's say the CIA had a spy in an Iranian lab who sent 'em pics of a atomic bomb being assembled in a secret lab in Iran.  By the provisions of this wonderful "deal" we'd have to give the mullahs 28 days notice before inspecting.

And even then, "we" couldn't inspect.  That task is farmed out to the IAEA.  But you trust them, right?

Does this requirement to give 28 days notice before inspection strike you as a good deal?

The 'inception date' of this POS was last Sunday.  Here's what happened about a week earlier:
The United States, Britain, France and Germany called on Wednesday for the United Nations Security Council's Iran sanctions committee to take action over a missile test by Tehran that they said violated a U.N. ban.
In a letter containing details on the launch, they said the ballistic missile was "inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon." 
The letter, seen by Reuters, was sent to the committee after the United States raised the issue in the 15-member Security Council. 
"We trust that this information will assist the Committee in its responsibility to examine and take appropriate action in response to violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions," they wrote. 
Iran said earlier this month that it had tested a new precision-guided ballistic missile.
Diplomats have said it was possible for the sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities if it determined that the missile launch had breached the U.N. ban. However, they said Russia and China, which have opposed the sanctions on Iran's missile program, might block any such moves. 
"The United States will continue to press the Security Council to respond effectively to any future violations ... Full and robust enforcement of all relevant U.N. measures is and will remain critical," U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said in a statement on Wednesday. 
Iran has disputed the Western assessment that the missile was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. 
"None of the Islamic Republic of Iran's missiles has been designed for a nuclear capability," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA. 
Ballistic missile tests by Iran are banned under a 2010 Security Council resolution that remains valid until a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers is implemented.
Under that deal, reached on July 14, most sanctions on Iran will be lifted in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Once it takes effect, Iran will still be "called upon" to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years. 
The deal allows for supply of ballistic missile technology to Tehran with Security Council approval, but the United States has pledged to veto any such requests. 
U.S. officials have said the missile test is not a violation of the nuclear deal. 
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday conditionally approved the nuclear deal but warned it would be violated if any of the six world powers imposed any sanctions on any level and under any pretext.

Didja get that?  The supreme shit-stain of Iran "warned" that the deal would be "violated"--meaning by the western nations--if any western nation reimposed sanctions "under any pretext."  In other words he's saying "No matter what we [Iranians] do, you can't penalize us without killing this wonderful, brilliant, clever deal."  And of course no western pol wants to be the one to kill the wonderful deal.  So...the Iranians have a free hand to do...anything.

Sweet deal for them.  So what benefits does the deal contain for the U.S.?

Zero.  Zip, zilch, nada.

But Barky got the deal HE wanted.  And in bizarro-world that's all that ever mattered.