Category Archives: View

Sunday, March 26, 2017

The map is not the thing mapped.

Eric Temple Bell

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

Saturday, March 25, 2017

I bought QuickBooks at Fry’s. It is from Intuit and apparently they have no human beings working there, and their robots are insane. They demand my email address to set up an account, then reject that as a user ID because, they say, I already have an account. Attempts to reset the password for this account – which I do not believe I know of –  get a telephone call giving a code number over the phone. It is an accented voice, and I am a bit deaf, but Kim listened to it and wrote down the number. When entered it is rejected, and attempts to repeat this get the message that they already sent it. They reject it. I cannot reset my password – I doubt I ever had one – and I cannot use QuickBooks. My time installing it was wasted. There is no way to talk to any human. I suppose I could complain to Fry’s but I haven’t the time, so I will not get my money back.

Intuit QuickBooks is complex to install, and then doesn’t install, and the only way to get your money back will take more time than the product is worth. They have protected their product nicely, and they have my money.

Has anyone a recommendation for a simple book keeping program? I wrote one long ago and used it for years, but it was in CBASIC and that 16 bit program doesn’t work after 25 years. It was clumsy anyway. I use TurboTax and that installed and works fine, so QuickBooks also by Intuit seemed the right way to go. It may be, but their system of protection and their population of robots has defeated me.

Intuit is a big company and TurboTax works fine; but QuickBooks must be a different division and is staffed differently.

Interesting. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but that is precisely what I did with Intuit QuickBooks; I kept trying to reset the password, they kept telling me they had sent a magic number. Then they rejected it or absolutely nothing would happen. I kept trying, and suddenly it worked. This generates no great confidence in their software, but I am now actually in QuickBooks and entering information to try to set up books for this year. We’ll see.

The moral of this story is that you have to keep trying; but of course that won’t always work. It did with Intuit, who I presume has an intelligent robot that sometimes intervenes if the same person tries the same thing over and over. Perhaps that’s not it. Anyway we’ll see.

I am hoping this has not bolloxed up things with TurboTax, but we’ll just have to see.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

TurboTax seems to be working just fine. All the nonsense about QuickBooks seems no to have affected it a bit. Now I just have to collect all the crazy scraps of paper. Sigh. The good news is that at brunch after church I had several flashes of insight, and actual scenes for the Starborn and Godsons novel. It fits into the structure nicely, and explains a few things. If I’m as creative on Mamelukes as on this book, I’ll get it done soon enough. First, though, I have an asteroid mining near future story with some significant thoughts about AI that I’m doing with John De Chancie. We have about 80,000 very good words, and another 30,000 will do it. Maybe a few more, but Mr. Heinlein taught me a longtime ago to finish a book and then cut it by 10%. You can’t do it as you go, because you need the whole book to gauge pacing, and to see what’s needed by the plot and what’s just amusing scenes that were easy to write and don’t much add to the story…

The mainstream press is overjoyed that President Trump got a black eye from the foofaraw about Repeal and Replace Obamacare, but I don’t see it that way. The President showed he was willing to sign anything that would bring down premiums and ameliorate the shipwreck that Obamacare is showing itself to me, but nobody would compromise.

Democrats won’t even discuss it: it’s the Obamacare they passed or nothing. No compromises. No changes, as to what has to be in any health care package you can buy. Or what you have to pay for it, or whether or not you have to buy it: take what’s offered or pay a fine; but it turns out that the fine isn’t big enough to make you eat that thing the Democrats are shoving down your throat; and of course premiums are rising because “insurance” against something that has already happened (“prior conditions”) isn’t insurance at all.

So the Freedom Caucus in the House can’t vote for the compromise and call it “Obamacare lite”; the Democrats can’t vote for the compromise because it changes things and their leadership is adamant, eat the whole package and no options; the thoughtful Republican moderates see that some people will lose their new coverage (such as it is); the Country Club Republicans want to be back in the opposition where they don’t have to take the blame for anything since they didn’t do anything, and it sure is good to be in the establishment; and Ryan couldn’t put it together.

The President can truthfully say he tried. He’s not a dictator. OK, we didn’t get that; let’s turn to promises we can keep. Lord knows there are plenty of things to fix. When Obamacare really explodes, we’ll try to pick up the pieces, but remember, it’s Obamacare. I didn’t do it, and under the Constitution I can’t do it; and remember I swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. Let’s talk about tax reform. And get my Supreme Court Justice approved. Wasn’t he great in the hearings?

Scott Adams has additional views worth contemplating: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158812654486/trump-and-healthcare

I’m hard at work on fiction, Rick Hellewell is hard at work getting Mrs. Roberta Pournelle’s Reading Program back on the market. And the mail keeps flowing in. Every now and then I get references to links I ought to look at, and for some of them I am either not sure what to say as comment, or no comment is needed but they don’t fit with that day’s rambling, or maybe I just forget in a fit of absence of mind; happens more often as I get older. Anyway, here are some links to places I am not sorry I went to. That doesn’t mean I endorse the notion, or that I think you ought to believe it, as will be obvious in some cases. I do think you’ll not regret the moment it takes to have a look.

https://www.strategypage.com/on_point/20170325263.aspx And the Kims go on…

This from Ed. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170326.html Weird. Very.

* * *

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170316/12401436934/ebook-pirates-tend-to-be-older-well-off-which-means-they-pirate-because-human-intuition-economics.shtml Another interesting to writers; I detest piracy, but I would be hard put to demonstrate that it has cost me much money

More about Railroad Tycoon than you really wanted to know: http://www.filfre.net/2017/03/railroad-tycoon/

A blast from the past. What we thought about a decade ago:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail473.html#flatearth

There is of course much discussion of the bill that isn’t.

http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/03/24/mo-brooks-obamacare-2-0-republican-welfare-program-worst-bill-ever-faced/

They really detest Obamacare lite. Understandable.

What no one wants to say aloud is that any program that insures against something that has already happened, or is very likely to happen is not insurance; it is an entitlement. Obamacare is an enormous entitlement, coupled with enormous taxes on the healthy, who are forced to pay “insurance premiums” for those with “prior conditions”, when their own insurance premiums would be quite small in comparison to what they must pay. There is no help for this. If we are determined that every person must be given blue ribbon health insurance, the cost will be enormous – unless we enslave doctors, nurses, and health workers in general. If they are to be paid, but must provide service to those who cannot pay but are most likely to be in need of their services, the result should be predictable to anyone who gives the situation much thought.

Ryancare bill

Jerry:

It seems to me that the Ryancare bill didn’t really solve any of the problems with Obamacare, so all that it would have done would have been to put Republican fingerprints on the crime weapon.

Keith

No: it would have alleviated some of the disasters that Obamacare will inevitably cause. The Ills of Obamacare lite would inevitably have been ascribed to Ryan, Trump, and the Republicans. Of course the media will inexorably blame Trump when Obamacare causes its inevitable fiscal disaster and the nation suffers even more.

Condemned to repeat

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

Forty years ago this month, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, after a long and vicious campaign by elements of the British ‘Deeo State:, called it quits. This article, from the thirtieth anniversary of Wilson’s resignation, details how a plot by rogue elements of the intelligence services destabilized his government and led to the resignation of an elected leader.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1

“As Peter Wright confirmed in his book Spycatcher, Wilson was the victim of a protracted, illegal campaign of destabilization by a rogue element in the security services. Prompted by CIA fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent – put in place after the KGB had, the spooks believed, poisoned Hugh Gaitskell, the previous Labour leader – these MI5 men burgled the homes of the prime minister’s aides, bugged their phones and spread black, anti-Wilson propaganda throughout the media. They tried to pin all kinds of nonsense on him: that his devoted political secretary, Marcia Williams, posed a threat to national security; that he was a closet IRA sympathiser”

Santayana certainly had a point, eh?

Of course, it can’t happen here…

Petronius

Well, when it does happen, as it has many times in the past, we will not know it happened before.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

We are a nation of assimilated immigrants.

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Microsoft updates things that don’t need updating, and neglects things like LiveWriter which clearly need it. LiveWriter is full of obvious bugs, but it hasn’t been supported for years. I suppose I need a new editing program for this journal; I was happy with my old program, (FrontPage)  but was persuaded to change to this one with its supposedly better data base management. I forget what other inducements there were. Anyway the change was a big deal, and getting to the old journal – which is still up, and full of pretty good stuff – like How To Get My Job – and more serious essays, poetry, space music I can’t listen to without chills, and many essays.

Some of the links are broken now, and I don’t seem to be able to edit the old FrontPage entries, and I guess it was time to change editors when I went to LiveWriter some years ago, but it’s pretty clearly time to change again. I’m willing to learn something new, but only one; the days when I used to learn everything and write about the differences are truncated now. Perhaps I will revive some of that when I finish Starborn and Godsons, the current book Niven, Barnes, and I are working on (98,000 words so far), but not until then.

So I am open to suggestions. My present procedure is to write the opening stuff of this journal – I suppose it is a blog, but I still find that an ugly word – in Microsoft Word – whatever the current version is when they update Office – then cut and paste to LiveWriter. The spell check as you type feature of LiveWriter is pretty well broken, but it does a creditable job when I invoke it last thing before publishing, and thanks to long suffering Rick Hellewell I have a template that puts the little gold bubble section dividers in. LiveWriter lacks some of the features FrontPage had, and pasting in images is harder now, but it gets the job done; but it’s getting harder to use as everything else gets improved, and my typing skills are not.

That is: I am slowly training Word to ignore some of my most frequent typos (hitting two keys at once is the most frequent cause) but I can’t teach those tricks to LiveWriter. Probably the best solution is to learn how to use Word itself to publish this journal, but my first attempts at this were such a disaster that I have hesitated trying it again; and there are supposedly better programs to publish journals – well, blogs – with.

I invite discussion. I have to change editors.

Re: The Stray Underlining You Can’t Delete

Jerry,

In your post dated yesterday (which I found this morning), you mention:

“Note: I cannot make LiveWriter remove the underlining here. You’ll just have to live with it.”

It seems that the offending text has somehow been set as a link. Luckily, it’s a link to The Legacy of Heorot (Heorot series Book 1) on Amazon.com. ☺

This is the actual link that Chrome copies from the link-text:

 

Personally, it’s always the simplest seeming issues that take me the longest to figure out, maddeningly seeming obvious once I finally know the answer. It’s a relief to know I have good company!

Regards,

George

 

Thanks. I’ll get around to editing that later; I’m just about to head up to the monk’s cell to work on fiction. I should have thought of that, I suppose. The interesting thing is if I leave that link to Amazon in your mail, the rest of this post underlines and becomes a link to it.  Somehow that link is poison. I fixed it by removing it; haven’t time for more investigation.

I find I’ve already said what I wanted to say about schools and education:

Jensen’s original studies were intended to identify children who needed “training” as opposed to “education”. He did not start off trying to identify racial IQ characteristics. The problem is that if you use IQ tests, you WILL have more blacks in the “train rather than educate” track, and since this is unacceptable, the alternative is to attempt to educate everyone. As Frederick the Great observed, he who defends everything defends nothing. We may also observe that those who try to educate everyone generally educate no one.

Tracking and IQ have been outlawed in these United States. The result is that no child can get ahead; and of course that is the real meaning of No Child Left Behind.

The first move we must make is to abolish the Department of Education,  root and branch; fire them all and close down their programs. The few laws that make sense, like extra funding for “impacted” areas where local schools are responsible for educating federal employees and military dependents, can be taken over by General Services.

We should then work to abolish the Supreme Court’s legislation — it was not a judicial decision — removing local taxation as the main means of funding schools. That usurpation — there is no other word — by the Court, imposing a requirement on the states and not even Congress could have imposed — delivered control of the schools to bureaucrats far away, and turned most of the schools into prisons more concerned with maintaining attendance than doing their jobs. I know there are still some good schools. There are fewer all the time.

This is far more important than the war in Iraq. The United States is losing in this educational war.

From Jerry Pournelle, View, 2007

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress… Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”

“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

James Madison

 

ISP Eavesdropping

Hi Jerry,

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/23/senate_votes_to_let_isps_sell_browser_histories/

I’m a conservative, and work professionally as a security architect. I’m all for rolling back regulations, but in this case, it’s a bridge too far.  The vast majority of American’s have a single, or perhaps two (usually one is vastly inferior) choices for a wireline ISP.  These companies, contrary to the arguments made by the rollback sponsors, are nowhere near the same as Google, Facebook, Amazon or Bing.  For each of those, I can easily choose to use alternatives.  My ISP is a monopoly (Comcast – the alternative is very poor DSL service from CenturyLink), and as such I have no options.

ISP’s are in a unique position to monitor every piece of internet activity we perform.  They know where all our email addresses are, every site we visit, and if it’s not an encryption connection, the content of those pages.  They are big brother.  Allowing them, without user notification or consent, to monitor, collect, and sell browsing history to third parties is unacceptable.  The republicans voting for this have truly turned their backs on the individual citizen – bought and paid for by big telco.  This is corny capitalism, and the buying and selling of influence at it’s worst.

If you agree, please post a note to your readers.  The bill will come up for a vote in the house, so we have a chance to preserve the rules requiring opt-in consent.  It’s time to write in.

Cheers,

Doug

 

Jerry,
Back in 2002 you made my third novel, Escape from Heaven, Chaos Manor Book of the month. You wrote, “Just plain fun … J. Neil Schulman’s Escape From Heaven is a romp, an attempt to rewrite C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, with the theology removed. It’s fair to say that Schulman, behind the pure fun he’s having, has the serious Miltonic purpose of justifying God’s ways to man. Milton would have thought him a heretic, and I suspect C.S. Lewis would have said Schulman (like Heinlein in Job) missed the point; but for all that it’s a good read, and if the assumptions annoy you that might make you rethink your own: no bad thing … I found I kept reading to the end.”
On Saturday February 18th, and for a few days following, the new Kindle edition of Escape from Heaven — and the Kindle edition of its autobiographical companion The Heartmost Desire — are both free to purchase on Amazon — price $0.00.

 

 

happy 3/23 day!

 

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 

 

I mentioned Candidate Trump’s plan for this before the election:

Pence confirms plans to reestablish the National Space Council – SpaceNews.com

http://spacenews.com/pence-confirms-plans-to-reestablish-the-national-space-council/?utm_source=Today%27s+Deep+Space+Extra%2C+Wednesday%2C+March+22%2C+2017&utm_campaign=dailycsextra&utm_medium=email

 

School Discipline

Hello, Dr. Pournelle –
In 1979, I got a job as a school bus driver. It was a well-paying job – about min wage + $2 – and meshed well with my school schedule.
On my first day, I picked up one of my first stops and this 7th-grade student stopped in the door well, looked straight at me and said, “You’re over 18 and I’m under 18. I can do anything I want and you can’t do anything about it.”
What a way to start the year.
Cam Kirmser

 

Precise Measurement Dear Jerry –
You have repeatedly stated that you do not see how coarse-grained temperature measurements (at, let’s say, 1 degree increments) can provide accurate results at greater resolution (for instance .01 degrees). The answer is non-intuitive but simple – as long as the individual measurements are individually, but not systematically, inaccurate, there is no problem.
Let’s take as a gedanken experiment a body of water with a temperature of 17.7 degrees, being measured with a thermometer which can only be read to 1 degree. Assume the standard rounding level (0.5 degrees) applies. Then 10 readings will all give 18 degrees, and no amount of averaging will improve the accuracy. This, I assume, is your objection to the larger question of climate measurement accuracy.
Your objection is entirely correct, but only (and I stress this) if the thermometer is perfectly accurate. Let’s say the thermometer is itself only accurate to +/- 0.5 degrees (with uniform error distribution within that interval) for any given reading, but the long-term accuracy is perfect. Then the 10 readings can be modeled as 17.25, 17.35, 17.45, 17.55, 17.65, 17.75, 17.85, 17.95, 18.05, and 18.15 degrees. Of the 10 readings, 3 will be rounded to 17 degrees and 7 to 18 degrees. The average of these 10 readings will be 17.7.
This effect is widely used in the DSP community, which routinely samples signals with A/D converters whose fixed resolution produces what is called quantization noise. By adding a small AC signal to the analog input of the A/D converter, the quantization noise gets “smeared out” over a wide frequency range and the effective signal to peak noise ratio can be dramatically improved. The process is generically called dithering.
In the case of temperature measurements, the sources of inaccuracy are legion. Any batch of thermometers, for instance, will display slightly different accuracies. Any assortment of measurers will read their thermometers slightly differently, particularly under bad conditions. While these effects degrade the accuracy of any given measurement, collectively they improve the accuracy of the overall average. There are only two requirements: first, that the errors are independent – that is, that some thermometers read high while some read low, for instance. The other requirement is that the spread of errors be greater than the resolution of the measurements. As an example, in the case of the 17.7 degree water, if the measurement error interval is 0.1 degree rather than 1.0 degrees, the improvement does not appear – all measurements remain at 18 degrees.
So, your reservations about temperature measurements are valid in isolation, but taken together the two effects (individual inaccuracy and coarse resolution) cancel each other out, at least in principle. This does require that the error spread be greater than measurement resolution interval, but this does not seem an unreasonable assumption. Given this assumption, there is no apparent reason to reject the notion of high-resolution, high-accuracy averages being derived from low-resolution data.
And even then, systematic errors are not a problem in determining trends as long as the error biases remain fixed. The temperature trends in climate research are always computed referenced to a base period’s measurements rather than an absolute temperature. And in fact you might remember a rather elegant bit of analysis several years back, concerning ocean temperatures with were not rising as expected. An analysis of the data found there were two different types of water temperature sensors on ships, internal and external, and the internal sensors consistently gave lower readings than the external sensors. Over time, the proportion of internal to external sensors had risen, causing the average to shift in a way which compensated for the real long-term rise in temperature. (While this was an elegant bit of analysis, it did raise the question of how many other such effects are going on in the climate community which are not being ferreted out because the results are not viewed as anomalous. But I digress.)
Regards,
Jim Martin

 

Using averages of imprecise data to increase accuracy of estimates requires a number of mathematical tricks based on assumptions about the nature of the raw data; I have apparently missed this discussion in the climate debates.

 

What the news does not tell you….

Anti-Islam note leaves Des Moines community shaken https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/7d0b0abe-2fdd-3eee-8144-4dc783b516bf/ss_anti-islam-note-leaves-des.html

The article leads with the note. Read it. The first couple lines read, “You Muslims are a vile and filthy people. Your mothers are whores and your fathers are dogs.” What American calls people names that way? Bastards, yes. Dogs, no.

In the US dogs are generally good. It’s rather clear this “anti-Islam note” was hand written by a Muslim using Muslim phrasing from the Qur’an where it refers to infidels. You would think it would be the job of the media to inform you of this little detail. Alas, it is not. Our media lies to us daily. AND we let them do it without calling them on it.

Maybe, just maybe, we should rethink the ideas of special freedom of speech rights for news media vs you and I. Why should there be an elite who are allowed to get away with holding sources secret and other special protections they have, when the rest of us don’t have them? Or are we ALL allowed to make a blog post of our “news” and call ourselves journalists as we wish so we can enjoy the special treatment accorded to media? I am not sure erasing the difference is a GOOD idea. I am sure it is an idea that needs open debate.

{^_^}

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Microsoft has a big slough of updates, and they affected different computers differently for some reason. My laptops seem to have done most of it in their sleep, but Eugene, my main system, never warned me he needed an update. He was slower that usual and Firefox, which has memory leaks and periodically needs resetting was particularly slow; I decided to reset everything, so I closed all applications; when I went to reset I noticed that one option, not usually there, was “upgrade and reset”. That worked, but it warned me this was going to take a while.

I went to Grasshopper, a USUS 15” laptop, to look at the mail, and of course to check if it needed upgrading. Upgrade it did not need – then – and everything worked fine. Checked mail, some important needing immediate answers. The 15” screen is only barely large enough for me to work with; Grasshopper does not have a big screen attached, and I didn’t think Eugene’s upgrade would take all that long, so I answered my agent’s message and a couple of others, and noticed that Eugene was still trundling. No time estimate of how long this would take was displayed, and I sure wasn’t going to interrupt anything. It trundled on, and I decided I’d go to the back room and make sure Swan, a big desktop in the back room, was also updated if needed. Turned out he had updated himself overnight, and came up with the “Everything is exactly” message Microsoft usually gives when it has updated things, and which is often not quite correct. There was also an update to Firefox, but this was no problem and restored last night’s session just fine.

Firefox wanted a reset after I opened it: no explanation, but I did that, and up it came with the proper saved session, and of course a window asking me to donate money. I closed that. I pay my dues to Firefox (what I consider my dues, anyway). Firefox worked fine.

So did Outlook. When I closed everything on Swan for a reset, it would not close Outlook: there were two unsent messages, did I want to send them first. Looked at them in the outbox, and both were forwards of old emails I received a while ago and had not acted on: I do that, forwarding to myself, as a reminder sometimes. Probably not the best system, but it’s what I do. Decided they weren’t really important and tried to delete them. Would not delete. Tried to look at them. Would not open. Told Outlook to close, and got the message about unsent messages, and told it to close anyway, which it did. Had some trouble closing other stuff, called up program manager, and nuked everything that was still open. Reset. Came up promptly, not even the “everything is where you left it” message. Looked in the power menu, and no “upgrade and reset” option; only reset. Opened Outlook and the two messages I could neither delete nor open were gone, and later discovered they had been sent, received, and placed in the right folders on all the machines. All’s well with Swan, who seems completely normal and healthy.

So Swan was all right; back to Eugene. He had stopped trundling and was open in Windows, and now wanted my password. No problems there, but then more delays: “don’t turn off” message, and more trundling. Finally up he came. There was an open Microsoft Edge – what they used to call Explorer – window proclaiming my good fortune at the marvels that came with the update. I figured I could look at those another time.

Firefox works fine, Outlook works fine and has the messages that were “stuck” in Swan, and the new revised Windows and Edge work quite well. No problems at all. Office has a number of revisions, one making it easier for several simultaneously to edit the same document, meaning that Steve, Larry, and I can all work on the book when we feel like it. Agent hated the “Cthulhu” title, and I don’t blame her; the new working title is Starborn and Godsons, which will remind readers of  

Anyway it’s my turn to take a pass; previously if two of us tried to work through the Internet on the same copy at once, things could get a little irritating, at least for me; this new version of Office seems to make that easier. I’ve noticed no other significant differences, but we’ll see.

I have to say that despite my complaining about unrequested “improvements”. Windows 10 is the best Windows yet; many of the problems with older games are now solved but running them in a mode compatible with an older Windows, and with newer computers they run at least as fast as they did on the old machines they were built for. I still find some of the improvements useless for me, and I wish they’d leave some things alone or at least leave the old commands in, but I have to say, my productivity is improving; perhaps that’s just recovery from brain cancer and the stroke, but some is due to the Microsoft team. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop criticizing them, but this time they have an attaboy coming.

 

 Upward Mobility

An Obama Decree Continues to Make Public Schools Lawless

By Jason L. Riley

To improve education, allow teachers to administer discipline regardless of race.

In 2012 the Education Department released a national study showing that black students are suspended from school at a higher rate than whites, and the findings fueled a predictable debate over whether school discipline policies are racist. Two years later, the department sent a letter to school districts warning them to do something about the disparity—in effect, to stop suspending so many disruptive black students or risk becoming the subject of a federal civil-rights investigation—and the results have been just as predictable.

The title alone of a new report on the fallout, “School Discipline Reform and Disorder,” might tell you all you need to know. The author, Max Eden of the Manhattan Institute, notes that 27 states and more than 50 of the country’s largest school districts have moved to reduce suspensions in recent years, often to the dismay of those on the front lines. A Chicago teacher said her school became “lawless” after the new discipline policy was implemented. A teacher in Oklahoma City said “we were told that referrals would not require suspension unless there was blood.” A Buffalo teacher who was kicked in the head by a student said his charges are well aware of the new policy. “The kids walk around and say ‘We can’t get suspended—we don’t care what you say.’ ”

 

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

 

That was in 1983. Things are not improving, and the Obama decree makes it all worse. Presumably President Trump could cancel that executive order, if someone would tell him about it; perhaps this article will do that.

Space Aliens & Talking Monkeys.

Read the whole thing:

<http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=9885>

R

A wiretapping Morton’s Fork, via Lew Rockwell’s site

I was already wondering how there could have been any competent U.S.

investigation of Trump’s links to Russia unless it was thorough enough to use wiretapping on Trump’s resources, if only to confirm that there was nothing to tap. Any such investigation’s methods and remit must have been known or should have been known to Obama on the principle of “the buck stops here”, and so authorized by him on the same principle however indirectly. Now I find Patrick Buchanan thinking along similar lines at https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/03/patrick-j-buchanan/backfire-left:-

‘How could DNI Director Clapper and CIA Director Morell say that no connection had been established between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, without there having been an investigation? And how could such an investigation be conclusive in exonerating Trump’s associates — without some use of electronic surveillance? … were Attorney General Loretta Lynch, White House aides or President Obama made aware of any such surveillance? Did any give the go-ahead to surveil the Trump associates? Comey would neither confirm nor deny that they did.

So, if Obama were aware of an investigation into the Trump campaign, using intel sources and methods, Trump would not be entirely wrong in his claims, and Obama would have some ‘splainin’ to do… Indeed, if there was no surveillance of Trump of any kind, where did all these [media] stories come from, which their reporters attributed to “intelligence sources”?’

Martin Armstrong touches on this at

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/03/martin-armstrong/ny-times-first-reported-trump-wiretapped

as well.

Yours sincerely,

P.M.Lawrence

 

We still need to know: how did Sallie Yates know what General Flynn told the Vice president about his phone call from the Trump Tower to the Russian Ambassador? There was some source of information about Candidate Trump and his staff that very likely came from a wiretap of Trump Tower; how did Obama people get it?

 

Why President Trump Believes his phone was tapped during the campaign.

 

Subject: REDUX: NSA Surveillance on Trump

Two days ago, I saw details that allegedly came from an NSA database.

This was allegedly submitted to Infowars by a former commander of the Cold Case Posse. Having no way to verify the data, I didn’t think it was time to say anything to you about it. I realize I’m more forward leaning, but this is a serious matter and I wanted to exercise measures of discretion and discrimination. However, that time has past and now:

<.>

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that the U.S.

intelligence community collected multiple conversations involving members of Donald Trump’s transition team after he won the election last year.

After making his disclosure at the Capitol, Nunes headed to the White House to brief the president on what he had learned. Trump then told reporters gathered for an unrelated event that “I somewhat do” feel vindicated by the latest development. “I very much appreciate the fact that they found what they found.”

</>

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-22/nunes-says-trump-team-communications-caught-in-u-s-surveillance

SURPRISE! The FBI is NOT cooperating!

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

https://news.grabien.com/story-nunes-fbi-not-cooperating-our-investigation-trump-camp-surve

Comey is now J. Edgar Hoover?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-22/comey-is-now-the-most-powerful-person-in-washington

And if you want the original data offered by Infowars, which covers surveillance on Trump and Alex Jones:

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

https://www.infowars.com/nsa-documents-prove-surveillance-on-donald-trump-and-alex-jones/

And let’s not forget, the FBI is now probing far-right media sites to see if they’re involved in this conspiracy to prove that NSA was in fact spying on Trump when FBI would prefer you to think they were not… Comey don’t play that!

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

 

The FBI is by charter supposed to have a monopoly on counter intelligence in the United States and the Caribbean. This means wiretaps and other surveillance of various foreign nationals, including officials of both friendly and potentially hostile nations.  They also monitor calls to the foreign nationals’ home countries, and when possible, decode coded diplomatic cables. Often foreign diplomats and agents mention American citizens.

Under the FISA rules, when American citizens are named in these transmissions even in conversations between foreigners, the citizen’s name is to be redacted from any documents conveying this information to anyone else. It is a felony to do otherwise.  It is now known that during the Trump campaign, many Trump officials were in such reports, even including then Candidate Trump himself.

Much of this was leaked. That included conversations between Trump and a foreigner who was under surveillance. Candidate Trump’s name was leaked.  The leak is a felony, possibly by an FBI official, who gave it to someone he should not have given it to. The actual leaker may have been a civilian or relative of a careless FBI official; eventually  someone then leaked it to the press, or to the Democratic Party operatives, or both. Note that this was a felony.

Leakers in the Democrat Hq. told Mr. Trump’s people. Mr. Trump concluded – with pretty good reason – that he was wiretapped.

Possibly he was not, but details of his telephone conversations with people under surveillance did get out, leading Mr. Trump to conclude his phone was tapped; and since these leaks circulated freely in the Obama White House, the inference that his phone was tapped by agents of Mr. Obama is very strong; and since Mr. Obama presumably could have ordered that stopped and it was not stopped, it may have been rash for Mr. Trump to say that Mr. Obama tapped his telephone during the campaign, but it is certainly understandable.

The actual leakers to the Obama White House may very well not be FBI agents; but the ultimate source of the leaks must be the FBI because by law and charter they are responsible for all counterintelligence operations in the US and Caribbean. A few FBI agents are given the authority to name a US citizen named in a surveillance of a foreigner when there is a national security threat, but that would have to be reported and approved by their superiors, or a high Justice Department official.  We do not know the names of those authorized to approve this release, but we can assume they include the Attorney General and immediate subordinates.

We do not know whether the FBI Director is privy to the names of Americans in those surveillance reports. Perhaps he is. In any case, there is some question whether the Director should now be involved in the investigation of those leaks.

 

In any event, I  believe this is why President Trump believed that his tapped by President Obama.

 

 

Condemned to repeat

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

Forty years ago this month, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, after a long and vicious campaign by elements of the British ‘Deep State:, called it quits. This article, from the thirtieth anniversary of Wilson’s resignation, details how a plot by rogue elements of the intelligence services destabilized his government and led to the resignation of an elected leader.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1

“As Peter Wright confirmed in his book Spycatcher, Wilson was the victim of a protracted, illegal campaign of destabilisation by a rogue element in the security services. Prompted by CIA fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent – put in place after the KGB had, the spooks believed, poisoned Hugh Gaitskell, the previous Labour leader – these MI5 men burgled the homes of the prime minister’s aides, bugged their phones and spread black, anti-Wilson propaganda throughout the media. They tried to pin all kinds of nonsense on him: that his devoted political secretary, Marcia Williams, posed a threat to national security; that he was a closet IRA sympathiser”

Santayana certainly had a point, eh?

Of course, it can’t happen here…

Petronius

re. Military Suicide

Dear Jerry,

“The entire linked article is worth reading, particularly the two sections on national suicide (Political Suicide and Foreign Policy Suicide). Note I am recommending this for reading and contemplation, and perhaps discussion.”

This piece by ‘The Saker’ is certainly entertaining polemics.  And already holding many of the same views about the ultimate outcome of these trends, I can say I largely ‘agree’.  But the discussion is always in the details, right?  I could entertain myself and perhaps others by an informed quibbling of details of the AH-1 vs. AH-64, or the potential tactical situation up in the Cheorwon Valley.  Just to take two examples of first hand experience.  But this seems not very useful now.

Although nominally written from a conservative-nationalist ‘American’ vantage I think  ‘The Saker ultimately offers just another belt-way centric view. 

The difficulty in discussing such an article lies here where ‘The Saker’ writes:

“I could list many more types of suicides including an economic suicide, a social suicide, an educational suicide, a cultural suicide and, of course, a moral suicide.”

In other words, the totality of what’s going on ‘domestically’ in Flyover Country.  The Saker seems not to have much intimate contact with this region and therefore doesn’t discuss it.  His expressed view reminds me of mid-19th Century European and American maps of Africa.  The continental outlines were precisely charted but the interior south of the Sahara was merely marked with pictures of elephants, lions, grassy savannas and jungles.

From the standpoint of Flyover Country the national security complex dysfunctions identified by The Saker are indeed true.  But perhaps they aren’t ‘dysfunctions’ at all from the standpoint of the ‘Anglo-Zionist elites’ who The Saker rightly diagnoses here:

“but the ultimate unmasking of the viciously evil true face of that 1% must be credited to Hillary with her truly historical confession in which she openly declared that those who oppose her were a “basket of deplorables”. We already knew, thanks to Victoria Nuland, what the AngloZionist leaders thought of the people of Europe, now we know what they think of the people of the USA: exactly the same thing.” 

This also I heartily endorse and agree with.  It could have formed the basis for an informed discussion of “economic suicide, a social suicide, an educational suicide, a cultural suicide and, of course, a moral suicide.”  Viewed in perspective, these Anglo-Zionist elites appear to regard themselves as much at war with Flyover Country as with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.  Probably far more so.  Its difficult to imagine real ‘regime change’ emanating from the four external sources, although the Anglo-Zionist elites clearly fear Putin’s Russia in this regard.  Its not difficult at all to imagine it emerging from western Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and potentially Minnesota in the near future.

Stripped of the threadbare moral cant the political, social and economic policies these alienated elites impose on the rest of the USA are intentionally hostile.

I think the real ‘suicide’ whose results are swiftly manifesting themselves consists of the dichotomy of perpetually waging internal social, political and economic war on the very sources one relies on for troops, an industrial base, weapons and the ‘strength’ to conduct external policy.

In my opinion those readers who seek to identify their real enemies might find some clarity of thought in these passages, which you’ve recommended in the past:

 

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods?

-From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome

 

I do not see that Russia, Iran or North Korea offer any threat at all to me and mine.  About China I have grave doubts.  Enough to want to keep my ICBMs, nuclear bombers and Pacific Fleet on DEFCON 2 fully cocked on ready alert.  But about the Anglo-Zionist Empire I have no doubts;  it is the irredeemable and incorrigible enemy who threatens ‘the ashes of my fathers and the temples of my gods’.

Best Wishes,

Mark

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

Military suicide: the US military was never a very impressive one, certainly not when compared to the British, Russian or German ones. But it did have a couple of very strong points including the ability to produce a lot of technical innovations which made it possible to produce new, sometimes quite revolutionary, weapons. And if the US track record on ground operations was rather modest, the US did prove to be a most capable adversary in naval and aerial warfare. I don’t think that it can be denied that for most of the years following WWII the US had the most powerful and sophisticated navy and airforce in the world. Then, gradually, things started getting worse and worse as the costs of the very expensive ships and aircraft shot through the roof while the quality of the produced systems appeared to be gradually degrading. Weapons systems which looked nothing short of awesome in the lab and test grounds proved to be almost useless once they to to their end user on the battlefield. What happened? How did a country which produced the UH-1 Huey or the F-16 suddenly start producing Apaches and F-35s?! The explanation is painfully simple: corruption.

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-empire-should-be-placed-on-suicide-watch/

The entire linked article is worth reading, particularly the two sections on national suicide (Political Suicide and Foreign Policy Suicide). Note I am recommending this for reading and contemplation, and perhaps discussion. This is not a blanket endorsement, particularly of his criticism of Generals Petraeus and Mathis. The politicization of the nation’s military leadership is manifest, but it too needs discussion at another timed; and of course we may look forward to considerable reform. Mr. Trump was not known for appointment of incompetent political cronies to run portions of his financial empire. Draining the swamp is not going to be simple nor will it be quick given the world situation.

President Trump has gone all out for passage of the health care bill; he made a promise that he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better. The current bill does not appear to be “conservative” enough, and the Freedom Caucus is willing to stick us with Obamacare until we get near perfection. Their reasoning is that we will never get more than we ask for, and this bill is nowhere near perfect; get a perfect bill through the House, let the Senate reject it, and the Democrats now own Obamacare just in time for the 2018 elections with waves of Democratic Senators up for reelection in Red states.

President Trump is apparently working a different strategy; since this bill will fail in the Senate, the Democrats will own Obamacare anyway. Obamacare is a disaster, and will be repealed, leaving us with the situation we had before the midnight lame duck passage of Obamacare. And that – well, at this point I find myself saying beedee, beedee, beedee…

It is pointless to comment on this now, because the “news” changes every hour and nothing is certain. I continue to believe that President Trump is a very competent man, and if he is crazy he is crazy like a fox.

sc:bubbles]

Justice Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-warned-white-house-that-flynn-could-be-vulnerable-to-russian-blackmail-officials-say/2017/02/13/fc5dab88-f228-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?utm_term=.093f89ca8cc8

By Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker February 13

The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that ­Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the ­Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the ­information.

The one thing we are certain of is that revealing that if a government agency taps a non-citizen’s telephone, and that phone is used in a conversation with a US Citizen, the situation changes instantly; the conversation, especially including the identity of the Citizen, becomes highly classified, and access to that identity and conversation is greatly restricted; consequently there must be a record of who told Ms. Yates and the as yet unidentified senior career national security official must know who told them the details of the conversation and the identity of t. General Flynn. There is also the question of who told them what Flynn told the Vice President about the conversation? They were, they say, concerned that Lt. Gen. Flynn might be blackmailed because he had not told the Vice President about the sanctions that then President Obama imposed on Russia the day before the phone call. The Russian Ambassador did not ask Lt. Gen Flynn, then the National Security Advisor designate for President Elect Trump how Mr. Trump, as President, would react to a Russian counter-sanction deporting 31 American diplomatic families in retaliation? Or he did but Lt. Gen. Flynn did not tell the Vice President this? Really? But Ms. Yates had a transcript of the call, and inferred that Flynn could be blackmailed, and the President ought to know.

And no one is asking her who told her the details, not only about the admittedly tapped telephone from Trump Tower to the Russian Ambassador, but also the conversation between Flynn and the Vice President. How did she know what Flynn told the VP? No Congressperson seems to have asked that question. Do they already know, or have they been hit with a stupid stick?

Very odd. Very Odd indeed.

I just saw this:

The Flynn leak

“if a warranted tap of a non-US Citizen’s phone discloses and records a conversation with a US Citizen – which of course Lt. Gen. Flynn is – then special rules apply to dissemination of any information, specifically including the identity of the citizen. “
When does a leak become a leak? Can the guy (or gal) who actually recorded the conversation discuss this with his or her bosses? Does it become a felony as soon as this is mentioned to anyone else within the agency. Or does it remain OK as long as the ID of the caller and the content remain confined to people with high security clearances, and they treat that information as if it were confidential, and not to be widely shared? Does the Acting Attorney General of the US have a high enough security clearance to be briefed on the matter (or does the law specifically prohibit that kind of notification)?
Perhaps they need to start by looking at who within the Trump administration was notified. Do we know for certain that this leak wasn’t done by one of Trump’s own people, someone jockeying for position within the new administration? Some of those folks might not be quite as familiar with government policy in this area, and might not have understood the gravity of leaking information to take out a potential rival.

Craig

Since we know nothing, I have no answer. Sally Yates was an Obama holdover and instantly went to work as a Democrat political operative on being fired as Acting Attorney General. Somehow she knew what Lt. Gen. Flynn discussed with the Russian Ambassador in that call from thee Trump Tower just after President Obama deported 31 Russian diplomats and families, and also that Flynn did not tell the VP about the discussion of Obama’s sanctions or Putin’s lack of retaliation; how she knew what Flynn told the VP is not known to anyone I know; but I find it unbelievable that no one in Trump Tower knew all about that phone call, since it was known there that Flynn was making it.

 

Here is all I know:

 

Husband of fired AG top donor to Dems, Obama

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/husband-of-fired-ag-top-donor-to-dems-obama/article/2613466

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/deputy-attorney-general-sally-q-yates-delivers-remarks-new-york-city-bar-association

https://www.palmerreport.com/politics/sally-yates-testify-trump-russia-house-intel/1828/

 

Ms. Yates was said to be on the witness list for the Congressional investigation back in February, but I find no record that she did. I’d have thought she’d be the first person called, but I’m not in Congress. Those inside the Beltway think differently from the rest of us.

Wiretapping “Investigation”

Hello again, Dr. Pournelle –
In your Chaos Manor of Mar 20 you said of wiretapgate – to coin a phrase – “That’s the interesting investigation. Have we any agents with the competence to conduct it?”
I think you used the wrong “c” word.
Not “competence” but “cojones.”
Keep well!
Cam Kirmser

re- Doctors that kill and B-‘s dad.

Jerry

I had B’s experience in mind when I asked my question: “Do you want to die?” I really expected, given what the wife and the doctors said, the patient would nod his head Yes. But he was like my own dad and indicated NO. People like B’s dad really should make out living wills in addition to healthcare proxies. What I really like about the story was that doctor who noted that he had seen a miraculous response. He slowed down the action until he knew which way the guy would go, then advised B and his mom. Fine story. Deftly illustrates that end of life care is an art, and relies on the experience of human beings. Cut and dry rules don’t cover it.

Ed

How Leonardo DiCaprio Can Persuade Me on Climate… buffy willow

Jerry

This, from Scott Adams’ blog:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158549646496/how-leonardo-dicaprio-can-persuade-me-on-climate

“ . . . If you want to convince me that climate change is real, the best approach is to abandon the current method that packages climate models in a fashion that is identical to well-known scams. (Or hoaxes, if you prefer.) . . . By the way, my educational background is in economics and business. And for years, my corporate jobs involved making complex financial projections about budgets. In other words, I was perpetuating financial fraud within the company, by order of my boss. He told me to pretend my financial projections were real, and I did. But they were not real. My predictions were in line with whatever my boss told me they would be. I “tuned” my assumptions until I got my boss’s answer.”

Thought the perspective is interesting.

Ed

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.