Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Thursday, October 20, 2016
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
“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Immigration without assimilation is invasion.
Chaos continued all week. I will omit details, except one mystery. The sound stopped on my main machine. I don’t hear well, and it developed yesterday but I didn’t really notice; but this morning I discovered that the CAPS LOCK key no longer beeps when pushed
Thursday, October 20, 2016
I broke off there, and later got the problem fixed. The whole sound system was set wrong. It was a distraction which consumed more time than I Like. I am sort of working on regaining some typing skills; that consumes time. Then last night we had to go to the Emergency Room after we watched the debate – no connection between the events – and that was mostly time consuming, no real consequences, but I slept in a bit. Apologies. I did get some fiction done and I am working on using the home keys and multiple fingers – I find that my left hand knows where its keys are, but I have to stare at the keyboard and my right hand still does not know which fingers to use. But I am making progress. I now use my right thumb to do the spacebar instead of my left index finger, so I don’t hit alt-spacebar at all, and I am getting more and more proficient as I go along. Takes time, and I can type faster with two fingers, but I make fewer errors, and the overall effect seems to be an increase in speed. We’ll see.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
The Debate
Well, Trump won on points, but Hillary got the headlines as if she were the voice of reason when Trump refused to say in advance that he would accept the results of the election. He did not bother to say what he meant by accept the results, and Mrs. Clinton was clever enough not to ask, but she talked in generalities as if Mr. Trump was going to raise the standard of rebellion. Now I don’t know what Mr. trump means by not accepting, but if it means that he would not challenge the election results as many have, I wouldn’t agree to do it either. Remember hanging chards? In 1960 John Kennedy got more votes in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) than there were registered voters, but General Eisenhower wouldn’t let Nixon challenge the results lest that lead to something worse; but President Eisenhower was old school, as was Nixon in those days.
If Hillary meant would Trump call for revolt – but she can’t believe that. Trump’s no general. I wonder, does a House resolution of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors – say ignoring a Congressional subpoena, or willful violation of the official secrets and Freedom of Information Laws – constitute a rejection of the election results? Or Congressional investigation of election law violations? For that matter didn’t John Kerry reject the election results?
So the headlines didn’t talk about the emails, or the unauthorized server in her basement which got hammered into oblivion to protect – just what we don’t know – but they do talk about Trump’s possible rejection of the election results.
But we did see the actual issues made clearer. Abortion including day-before-birth abortion (otherwise known as killing a live baby after induced birth, a crime if the birth is natural); more government or less government; immigration; pay to play in the State Department; those got aired a bit, Mrs. Clinton was reduced to reciting a memorized speech, or in one case rambling nonsense, certainly not rational replies. If you take the key issues one by one, most Americans would prefer Mr. Trump’s position. And he did well in asking where are we after eight years of hope and change. Do we like the change? The Regulatory State? If so, Mrs. Clinton offers more of it. At least that was clear. And she’ll finance more free stuff for the voters by soaking the rich. Hasn’t that been tried elsewhere?
Shortly after World War II we had a faltering economy and a huge national debt. We recovered, and then Kennedy cut taxes and we had a long period of economic growth. That sort of hope and change showed we can grow out of debts. Maybe we can do it again. Mrs. Clinton says no. We’ll raise taxes on the investment class and increase entitlements. “You’re Entitle” was a popular book once; it raised expectations for many. And we’ll soak the rich, who wouldn’t flee or pay to play to protect their fortunes.
Trump has surprised us many times in the last year. We’ll see if he surprises us again. Meanwhile read Victor Davis Hanson (below.)
Read this, those of you who haven’t been thrown out of National Review Conservatives (as I was by the egregious Frum)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441126/donald-trump-conservatives-should-vote-president
It’s by Victor Davis Hanson, whom I have always admired and respected, and worth your time. It came out just before the debate.
A President Trump might shake up U.S. foreign policy in controversial and not always polite ways. In far calmer fashion, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton already has revolutionized America’s role overseas — from the Iraq pullout to the foundations of the Iran deal to lead-from-behind Libyan bombing to tiptoeing around “violent extremism” and “workplace violence” to empowering Chinese expansionism to increasing distance from allies and proximity to enemies. Obama reminded us that approval from abroad is usually synonymous with thanks for weakening America and making us more like them than them us. Should we be more terrified that the socialist and largely pacifist European Union is afraid of Trump, or that it welcomes even more of Barack Obama’s type of leadership? Is not the present course of projecting weakness while insulting Vladimir Putin — the Russian reset of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — the inverse of speaking softly while carrying a big stick? The ancient idea of tragic irony can sometimes be described as an outcome unfortunately contrary to what should have been expected. Many of us did not vote in the primaries for Trump, because we did not believe that he was sufficiently conservative or, given his polarizing demeanor, that he could win the presidency even if he were. The irony is now upon us that Trump may have been the most conservative Republican candidate who still could beat Hillary Clinton — and that if he were to win, he might usher in the most conservative Congress, presidency, and Supreme Court in nearly a century.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441126/donald-trump-conservatives-should-vote-president
Hope and change has brought us to this:
Army in Trouble
I’d say the US Army is on hard times when it claims a heart attack on active duty was not a result of duty! You might as well say that someone could have been shot while hunting in the woods, therefore the Army is not responsible to pay your medical bills if you get shot in a war!
<.>
“As we were doing the push-ups I got 15 in, and I noticed that it was a lot harder for me to do push-ups than it has ever been,” Shane said.
“So he hooked me up to the EKG and said ‘I’m 99.9 percent certain you’re having a heart attack.’”
One artery was completely blocked, but there was another problem, the Army determined the heart attack did not happen in the line of duty, so its been withholding medical payments.
“You have a heart attack during a forced, a mandated PT test and then you tell him it’s his fault that he could have had it at home, but he didn’t have it at home he had it, while he was doing push-ups,” Jaime said.
The Army cited an earlier blood test.
</>
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/10/19/army-heart-attack-medical-bills-shane-morgan/
This is more than the US Army skimping on its bills; this is about a lack of awareness, a lack of accountability, and a failure of leadership at several echelons in the chain of command. If the army was aware of the blood test before the PT test, why was this soldier put under conditions that could create a heart attack? If the army was not aware of this test until after the heart attack, why wasn’t the army making sure it’s soldiers are deployable? In short, one wonders why this soldier was not chaptered out of the United States Army before testing.
This is either an unacceptable state of readiness or an unacceptable way of leading soldiers.
Bottom line: a soldier who “could have had a heart attack at home” or anywhere else, could certainly have had it while deployed. This would reduce the combat effectiveness of this soldier’s unit. This would be a disservice to the soldier, his unit, and the United States Army. If this is pervasive army policy then we’re in more trouble than I realized.
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
A Wikileaks Anvil Lands On John Podesta’s Toes
Dear Jerry:
This may be the most interesting White House Memo leaked to date-
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/10/ad-john-podesta-ex-masters-of-disaster.html
In 2014, former White House Chief of Staff and ThinkProgress founder John Podesta delegated Obama’s Grand Strategy for the Climate Wars to The Master of Disaster himself, Chris Lehane.
—
Russell Seitz
Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University
Senior Research Fellow, The Climate Institute
Unsurprising but fascinating.
The new Clinton administration will put paid to this:
FBI in Revolt
It’s interesting to see that others have concerns over at the FBI…
<.>
“I know that inside the FBI there is a revolt,” Joseph diGenova tells The American Spectator. “There is a revolt against the director. The people inside the bureau believe the director is a dirty cop. They believe that he threw the [Hillary Clinton email] case. They do not know what he was promised in return. But the people inside the bureau who were involved in the case and who knew about the case are talking to former FBI people expressing their disgust at the conduct of the director.”
The loss of faith in the bureau chief stems in part from a dishonest rendering of the decision not to indict Mrs. Clinton as unanimous rather than unilateral and in part from the bureau’s decision to destroy evidence in the case and grant blanket immunity to Clinton underlings for no possible prosecutorial purpose.
“There is a consensus among the employees that the director has lost all credibility and that he cannot lead the bureau,” diGenova explains. “They are comparing him to L. Patrick Gray, the disgraced former FBI director who threw Watergate papers into the Potomac River.
The resistance to the director has made the agency incapable of action. It has been described to me as a depression within the agency unlike anything that anyone has ever seen within the bureau. The director’s public explanation for the unorthodox investigation are viewed by people in the bureau as sophomoric and embarrassing.”
</>
http://spectator.org/former-u-s-attorney-agents-see-fbi-chief-comey-as-a-dirty-cop/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Trump: “We’re going to have Common Core ended. We’re going to bring education local.”
<http://time.com/4530515/donald-trump-sexual-assault-accusations-transcript/>
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Roland Dobbins
In the debate, Trump quietly said that reversing Roe v Wade would put it back to the States, where the entire abortion issue belongs anyway. No one noticed. Are the pro-choice people afraid that state legislatures would outlaw abortion? They certainly would regulate it. Congress would have the last word over the District of Columbia. He is on record many times for saying that matters not relegated to the Federal Government ought to remain with the states; a principle that I believe comes closer to meeting the consent of the governed from which all just powers derive…
Subject: Trump and bankruptcy
Jerry, you quote Mr. Mike Ranson writing that “Trump went bankrupt 13 times!” I realize that by the rest of his email Mr. Ranson is British, but even so, a quick look at Mr. Trump’s Wikipedia page reveals that six of the hotels and casinos that he’s owned have declared bankruptcy but that he has never filed for personal bankruptcy.
This makes Mr. Ranson’s statement both false and misleading. False because the number of bankruptcies he claims is double the correct number and misleading because a brief and uncritical reading of it gives the impression that Mr. Trump has, in fact, gone through numerous personal bankruptcies when in fact he hasn’t. This being so, I find no reason to give any credence to anything else in that email because I see no reason to think that the rest of his writing bears any more relation to the truth than the quoted sentence. He may, of course, be correct in his opinions, but unless he’s willing to take a few seconds to check his claims against the public record, what he writes is nothing more than political blather masquerading as fact.
Joe
Well there’s no scarcity of that.
A New Weapon in Russia’s Arsenal, and It’s Inflatable
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
The New York Times – The New York Times – 4:00 AM
The Russian military is using life-size decoy tanks, jets and missile launchers for disguise and deception.
http://a.msn.com/r/2/BBxjWPQ?a=1&m=en-us
D
“A gigantic technological race is in progress between interception and penetration and each time capacity for interception makes progress it is answered by a new advance in capacity for penetration. Thus a new form of strategy is developing in peacetime, a strategy of which the phrase ‘arms race’ used prior to the old great conflicts is hardly more than a faint reflection.
There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed ‘logistic strategy’. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him an enormous expenditure….
A silent and apparently peaceful war is therefore in progress, but it could well be a war which of itself could be decisive.”
–General d’Armee Andre BeaufreTHE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY: Winning the Technological War
by
Stefan T. Possony, Ph.D.; Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D. and
Francis X. Kane, Ph.D. (Col., USAF Ret.)
We have pretty well abandoned the Strategy of Technology in the past eight years; we cannot assume local supremacy against technological powers like Russia, nor can we have great confidence that we lead China.
Hi, Dr. Pournelle, I was wondering where the Yemenis get their missiles. I found this site which seems to be a pretty detailed analysis of the missile situation in Yemen. Iran is the likely source. No surprise there.
—
Cheers, Joe
Science fiction is at it again – becoming real
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/smart-cars-cyber-afterlife-82311?
“As a memorial to Roman Mazurenko, and as a way to keep his spirit alive, Eugenia Kudya came up with the idea to combine all the text messages she had received from him with all the text messages that their circle of friends could muster, and ran them through a neural net. Then she developed a way to interact with the output of the neural net.
“The chatbot-type interface gives her and her friends a way to interact with their lost comrade after death in a way that feels very real. The neural net learned the quirky way the friend would respond to texts, so it does more than repeat his actual words back. The net responds in an unpredictable-but-authentic way, making it seem as if the dead friend was responding from beyond the grave.”
“Think about all the people that you primarily deal with digitally — i.e. all the people you only contact via email, text or social media, often for years without seeing them face-to-face. Is it not possible that an artificially intelligent representation of your humanity could stand in for you – and stand up to scrutiny? We are such creatures of habit, and respond to stimuli so predictably, that the artificial human is probably not a whole lot different than the actual human at a distance.”
“The idea of cars connected by and communicating with a giant network might seem like science fiction. A few years ago it was. Now it’s coming. It will bring convenience and safer cars. It will also bring a huge new business opportunity most investors still can’t fathom.”
Charles Brumbelow
The government will take care of it all.
FYI: Russia Moves Million Ton Iceberg
http://maritime-executive.com/article/russia-moves-million-ton-iceberg
Your comments on the Caliphate neglected this:
<.>
“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” Clinton wrote.
</>
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/10/hillary-in-leaked-email-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-are-funding-isis/
How does this change things? If this communication is authentic, this goes beyond data and inference. This has to be taken seriously if so.
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
sc:bubbles]
Opinion on HSV-2 Swift.
Sir,
Through Phillip Pournelle or your other friends I suspect you of having interesting thoughts on the damage to the former USN ship HSV-2. Do you have the liberty or inclination to share them?
Yours,
David Bullis
This is another example of resting on our laurels. The Navy will (and ought to) contend that with a US Navy crew and our ship defense technology they’d never have hit her with the missiles fired, but then we didn’t expect missiles to be fired by rebels in 2016. Technology spreads fast. Winning the technology war is the most vital thing we can do, but we are not making the proper effort under the Obama administration, and there is no reason to believe Clinton II will be much different.
“Exposure to the space environment has permanent effects we simply do not fully understand.”
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/space-travel-permanent-effects-astronaut-scott-kelly/story?id=39884104>
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Roland Dobbins
I have always argued that we need a moon base to study survival in the space environment. I still do.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
