Tuesday, January 17, 2017

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.

Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies’ bathroom. Progress.

Mark Steyn on the death of John Glenn

[expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/01/16/last-moonwalker-dies/96641846/

Gene Cernan, last man to walk on moon, dies http://www.usatoday.com Retired astronaut Eugene “Gene” Cernan died Monday at age 82.

~Stephanie Osborn, “The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

I always knew I would live to see the first man on the moon. I never thought I would outlive the last one.

The farce continues, with professional politicians explaining that Mr. Trump won the election only because the Russians interfered. They did not hack the voting machines; they influenced the voters, not by telling lies, but by revealing information that the voters should not have, although it was not asserted that the information was false.. When that was finally recognized as absurd the stories changed again. I’ve stopped listening to them.

My Surface Pro automatically updated, and now when I open Outlook it asks me if I want to open a mail account. It has forgotten that it has quite a large one. The outlook files all appear to be there, but if so, the latest version of Outlook doesn’t seem to be able to open them; the program acts as if Outlook has never been installed. I haven’t time to fool with it today, but my advice to users is DO NOT be part of the experimental program on a Surface Pro unless you are prepared to use a lot of time restoring things. None of my desktop machines including this one have problems. I love the Microsoft Surface Pro when it works properly, but my experience has been that it doesn’t work properly a significant part of the time.

I remember I once took my HP Compaq tablet/desktop to Comdex, or maybe CES, and although I also had another full laptop, I was able to get through everything including filing daily reports, with the tablet. Indeed, I found myself stuck in a motel without high speed Internet and was able to connect to Peterborough by modem, and thus to file my daily show report. I don’t think the Surface Pro would have lasted that long. Of course it has no modem, but nowadays you don’t need one. Of course the Press Room always has high speed Internet, and nowadays most all motels do.

The HP Compaq tablet was wonderful, but it could be fussy, and slow compared to modern equipment like the Surface Pro; but the software was far more reliable. You could get work done with it without fearing that an automatic update would cripple a vital program and leave you helpless. I do wish Microsoft would get its mud together.

 

I’ve got the back and jip problems under control although it does take about half an hour of stretching exercises in the morning, and repeated stretches (short, a few seconds) every time I stand up.

Lindy Sisk has extracted all the relevant entries on my brain cancer experience in 2008; there’s about 15,000 words which I will flesh out with introduction and comments, add how far I had come in December, 2014 when I had the stroke, and bring it all up to the present. I did not make anything like the detailed daily commentary in 2015 as I did back in 2008, but I think it is worth publishing; I’m not sure how. It will be about 20,000 words, probably more, and I think there are some good observations of interest to anyone over 70 on how to deal with major disabling events. I’ll be working in this for a couple of months; it should have been published earlier.

I’ve got the hip problems under control with the Anderson Stretching exercises, so I’m back to work, and I’m about over my cold so I have the energy to get some work done, Deo Gratria.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Stretching-30th-Anniversary-Bob-Anderson/dp/0936070463

NSA Hacked DNC? & Obama Intel Thoughts

Jerry,

Congressman Peter King, House Intel Committee, is now saying that the CIA has never said a word to the Committee about Russia favoring one candidate over the other.

Given last week’s leak of that alleged CIA position to the Washington Post, and this week’s extraordinary CIA refusal to brief the Intel Committee on the matter, he goes on to say

“It’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the President-elect of the United States.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/14/rep_peter_king_almost_like_cia_is_carrying_out_a_disinformation_campaign_against_donald_trump.html

It begins to sound very much like I’m right that it’s Hillaryite bitter-enders at CIA behind this story. (I speculate that current CIA management isn’t quite ready either to repudiate or to publicly back this claim, and thus refused this short-notice Intel Committee briefing to buy time to get their story sorted out.)

I’ve mentioned privately to you more than once that, if he wants to get anything useful done, Trump will first need to go through the bureaucracies with fire and sword to root out the many burrowed-in militant progs.

Between this and the recent DOE refusal to answer Trump transition-team questions (I won’t even mention DOJ or the IRS) it sounds to me as if the politicized bureaucrats are doing their unintentional best to get Congress to back the new President in that.

More on the DOE matter, including the actual quite reasonable list of questions asked, over at

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/the-doe-vs-ugly-reality/

Porkypine

health care

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I found your comments on health care very much worth reading, and I’d like to continue the discussion. Not with any notion that I have an answer; but there are some things I’d like to probe.
I’d begin with your comment “speculation on what’s fair begs the main question: how did my health concerns become your problem? “

That’s a legitimate question; but I don’t see much likelihood of an a priori answer. “Fair” is, in any event, a shaky word: it often means only “the biggest piece of cake is MINE!” For that matter, I’m not sure “justice” and “rights” can be defined without some reference to absolutes, such as the will of God. (It relates, I think, to the earlier question “do all people value the same things?”)
For example: we assert an inalienable right to life and liberty; and I affirm that, and would defend it. But on what basis are these rights “inalienable?” We do not, in fact, act as if they are; they can be, and are, suspended by the judgment of a jury of our peers. So this claim seems to me to be not so much a provable conclusion from first principles, but an assertion about the sort of society we want to live in.
Moving closer to health care: it’s my understanding that under the Roman Republic, while the courts would pass judgment on a civil suit, it was entirely the plaintiff’s responsibility to enforce that judgment. Modern “law enforcement” is a very recent, and historically idiosyncratic, development. One might ask: how did your loss of property become my problem? The only answer I see a way to defend is: it becomes my problem, and I will support a police force with my taxes, because that’s the sort of society we want to live in.

Which leads to the question: who is “we”? The last few years have made it clear that not every community in the United States is convinced the police are there to protect them; and yet we are all of us taxed to support law enforcement. Our position seems to be: we claim the right, as a society, both to maintain a law enforcement system and to insist that everybody has a duty to help pay for it. Societies could be managed differently; I wouldn’t want to live in them.

Another parallel, from the ’60s; I don’t remember that people who believed the Vietnam War was immoral and refused to support it with their taxes had much success with the argument.
Now, bring this round to health care. I don’t think I could defend an a priori right to, or entitlement to, health care. And, for that matter, as medicine becomes both more effective and more expensive I don’t think any society can in practice provide all the care that would be desirable. Neither private wealth, private insurance, nor public health care will change that. We hit limits.
But that leaves the question: what sort of society do I want to live in? And do enough of us agree with me that we can make a community decision?
I’d be prepared to defend public health care as a public policy decision. Consider reports that drug-resistant tuberculosis is breeding in inner city slums. That does NONE of us any favors. Nor is it helpful to leave uninsured people with no recourse but expensive emergency rooms. But that’s a different set of arguments. The question I’d propose at this point is: is it in fact useful to pose this as a question either of fairness or entitlement? I’m not convinced it is. But I would argue that a society which finds ways to offer at least basic health care to all its citizens has much the same values as a society which supports a community police force. We could rely on private guards. I don’t want to.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

But we never debate on those terms, and the Constitution does not precisely do so. In guarantees the states a republican form of government and forbids titles of nobility, but doesn’t say much more. Given that and the amendment that says all powers not granted to the Federal government remain with the states would suggest that it is a matter for the states; meaning that California cannot compel Iowa to pay for health care for aged California immigrants…

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
It occurs to me that much of my approach to health care (as well as other issues) may come from spending much of my life in Midwestern farm country. It isn’t what it was; the days of communal barn-raisings are long gone, and co-ops drift toward behaving like ordinary businesses. But it is still assumed that if a farmer falls sick during planting or harvest, the neighbors WILL pitch in. And if someone in the community suffers catastrophic illness, there WILL be fundraisers. These are communities which have assumed that I am indeed my brother’s keeper.
That’s not government. It’s probably something rather better. But it’s also not “I am responsible for myself, and that’s it.”
From this perspective, much of the last half century seems to me like a story of slow corruption. Co-ops turn into businesses, small operations are bought out by “bottom line” conglomerates, religious and community hospitals are bought up by for-profit organizations which insist that doctors see an ever-increasing number of patients per hour, religious fraternal organizations mutate into garden variety insurance companies… Grump. So speaks the curmudgeon.
Is turning things over to government my first choice? Hardly. But in this century, that seems to be how we organize community enterprises. That, or let corporate oligarchs run riot.
So: how does this relate to health care? An assumption that we OUGHT to be on our own, and that the community we live in has no involvement, is simply not the America I thought I knew. Working in the church, I’ve spent rather a lot of time over the last decades trying to encourage community. As a culture, we seem to be drifting away from that. Not business-like enough, I suppose. Well, if government involvement is the way in which we choose to accept responsibility for each other, then that may be the best we are able to do just now.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

= = =

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
It occurs to me that much of my approach to health care (as well as other issues) may come from spending much of my life in Midwestern farm country. It isn’t what it was; the days of communal barn-raisings are long gone, and co-ops drift toward behaving like ordinary businesses. But it is still assumed that if a farmer falls sick during planting or harvest, the neighbors WILL pitch in. And if someone in the community suffers catastrophic illness, there WILL be fundraisers. These are communities which have assumed that I am indeed my brother’s keeper.
That’s not government. It’s probably something rather better. But it’s also not “I am responsible for myself, and that’s it.”
From this perspective, much of the last half century seems to me like a story of slow corruption. Co-ops turn into businesses, small operations are bought out by “bottom line” conglomerates, religious and community hospitals are bought up by for-profit organizations which insist that doctors see an ever-increasing number of patients per hour, religious fraternal organizations mutate into garden variety insurance companies… Grump. So speaks the curmudgeon.
Is turning things over to government my first choice? Hardly. But in this century, that seems to be how we organize community enterprises. That, or let corporate oligarchs run riot.
So: how does this relate to health care? An assumption that we OUGHT to be on our own, and that the community we live in has no involvement, is simply not the America I thought I knew. Working in the church, I’ve spent rather a lot of time over the last decades trying to encourage community. As a culture, we seem to be drifting away from that. Not business-like enough, I suppose. Well, if government involvement is the way in which we choose to accept responsibility for each other, then that may be the best we are able to do just now.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

You address the real problem; we must decide such things. But the Constitution may give the States the power to make the people in general responsible for paying for the needs of each citizen, but I find nowhere in my studies of the Philadelphia Convention any notion of positive entitlements from Congress; quite the opposite. The Constitution limited what Congress – i.e. the Feds – could do. If California wants to bankrupt itself paying for health care – as the state of Washington once did adopting the Townsend Plan – then let it do so; and let it negotiate what it san save from the wreckage. At least it will have bankrupted only itself… I may well have a moral obligation to be charitable, but I have no armed agents to require you to be so; nor should I have.

 

Health Care

Dr. Pournelle,
I read with interest your examination of ObamaCare and/or its possible replacements (1/15/17). I agree with most of your analysis; however I think you are missing something in your discussion of the obligation of entitlements. Yes, entitlements confer a disproportionate power to the recipients and a corresponding burden upon the taxpayers. But this argument is to place far too specific a lens over the issue of health care at the cost of ignoring involuntary support of a multitude of adventures of dubious value to the country at large.
I suspect that most taxpayers, given the option, would far rather their tax dollars went to creating universal health care for all citizens of the “greatest country in the history of the world” rather than to spend trillions in pursuit of never-ending military actions which further no real national benefit but which do much to enrich the bottom lines of multi-national corporations and co-laterally the war chests of the political parties.
Anecdotes follow: Both I and my wife owe our lives to the combination of Medicare and Tricare for Life. Medicare we have as an earned benefit of 50+ years in the workforce. Tricare for Life (a Medicare supplement) was accrued as a by-product of spending the cold-war years in a missile system on mountainsides in Germany with freezing rain running down my neck. Those were the years when my peers were getting degrees, building careers, buying homes¦ the opportunity costs of serving my country were high. Now at this point in our lives I worry that political whim could pull the rug out from under us. Would we then be undeserving of medical care? I played by the rules and I expect the rules to pay off for us¦ but I can appreciate that they could change. What then?
Give me the option and I will bring all the troops home, terminate the United Nations, demand that all NATO signatories pay their fair share and see our tax dollars spent on Americans first and foremost. Obama Care is an abomination, but that doesn’t mean it is the only one the taxpayers are saddled with.
Thanks,
John Thomas

It is obvious we have created obligations that must be met; I do not think the coming President doubts that for a moment.

 

 

The Ancient Foreign Policy

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/the-ancient-foreign-policy/

Victor Davis Hanson

Nations are collections of human beings, and human nature has not changed, despite Obama’s pleadings.

For the last eight years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice have sought to rewrite the traditional approach to foreign policy. In various ways, they have warned us about the dangers that a reactionary Trump presidency would pose, on the assumption that their new world order now operates more along the lines of an Ivy League conference than according to the machinations and self-interests of the dog-eat-dog Manhattan real-estate cosmos.

It would be nice if the international order had safe spaces, prohibitions against micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings that warn of hurtful speech, but is the world really one big Harvard or Stanford that runs on loud assertions of sensitivity, guilt, apologies, or even the cynical progressive pieties found in WikiLeaks? [snip]

This is how Professor Hanson begins an essay on modern foreign policy. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the matter. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it…

It is full of wise observations. Here are a few:

[Snip] Ancient American foreign policy that got us from the ruin of World War II to the most prosperous age in the history of civilization was once guided by an appreciation of human nature’s constancy across time and space. Diplomacy hinged on seeing foreign leaders as roughly predictable — guided as much by Thucydidean emotions such as honor, fear, and perceived self-interest as by cold reason. In other words, sometimes nations did things that seemed to be stupid; in retrospect their actions looked irrational, but at the time, they served the needs of national honor or assuaged fears.

Vladimir Putin, for example, in his effort to restore Russian power and regional hegemony, is guided by his desire to recapture the glories of the Soviet Union, not just its Stalinist authoritarianism or geographical expanse. He also seeks to restore the respect that long ago greeted Russian diplomats, generals, and leaders when sent abroad as proud emissaries of a world-class power.

In that context, talking down to a Putin serves no purpose other than to humiliate a proud leader whose guiding principle is that he will never allow himself to be publicly shamed. But Obama did exactly that when he scolded Putin to “cut it out” with the cyber attacks (as if, presto, Putin would follow his orders), and when he suggested that Putin’s tough-guy antics were sort of a macho shtick intended only to please Russians, and when he mocked a sullen Putin as a veritable class cut-up at photo-ops (as if the magisterial Obama had to discipline an unruly adolescent).

Worse still, when such gratuitous humiliations are not backed by the presence of overwhelming power, deft statecraft, and national will, opportunists such as Putin are only emboldened to become irritants to the U.S. and its former so-called global order. We should not discount the idea that leaders become hostile as much out of spite as out of conflicting national interests.[Snip]

[Snip] From Vegetius’s Si vis pacem, para bellum to Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength,” the common wisdom was to be ready for war and thereby, and only by that way, avoid war, not to talk bellicosely and to act pacifistically. Our rewrite, Si vis bellum, para pacem (“if you want a war, then prepare for peace”), is not leading to a calm world.

[snip]

“If you want peace, be prepared for war” has been relevant advice since Appius Claudius the Blind said it to the Senate of Rome.

There is more, and you should read it. If Mr. Trump has not, you may be sure that many of his advisors have.

 

music to your ears

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/17/betsy-devos-steer-clear-common-core-confirmation-opening-statement/

One paragraph:

“I share President-elect Trump’s view that it’s time to shift the debate from what the system thinks is best for kids to what moms and dads want, expect and deserve,” she plans to say, adding that she is “a firm believer that parents should be empowered to choose the learning environment that’s best for their individual children.”

Finally….

Phil

 

more on DeVos

The nominee is also expected to say not all students should pursue a four-year college education.

“President-elect Trump and I agree we need to support all post-secondary avenues, including trade and vocational schools, and community colleges,” she plans to say, adding, “Of course, on every one of these issues, Congress will play a vital role.”

Phil

 

 

and even more on Devos

President-elect Trump and I know it won’t be Washington, D.C. that unlocks our nation’s potential, nor a bigger bureaucracy, tougher mandates or a federal agency. The answer is local control and listening to parents, students and teachers.

—

Phil Tharp

No comment needed.

Aha. Found the JPL news release. (I didn’t find it by hunting on their site, but by clicking on the link in a USAToday report on it. It’s apparently buried deep on the JPL site.)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4742

I also note that that press release contains NO predictions whatsover. They are using some historic quakes around LA to refine a model of the fault systems and ground movement in the area. 

But that link gave me a link to the actual article in the journal Earth and Space Science. 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015EA000113/full

It’s also worth noting that this article was originally published in September 2015, so it’s hardly new news.
…This…is getting interesting. It…guys, if I’m reading this journal article correctly, they may have ALREADY PREDICTED a couple of quakes. Not in terms of timing; I don’t think that’s where they’re going with this at all. Rather, they seem to be attempting to identify the deformations that lead to quakes, and associate them with the structures causing them.

And here is the predictive paragraph:
“The Gutenberg-Richter relation for a 100 km radius circle around the La Habra earthquake epicenter for events beginning just after the 1994 M6.7 Northridge earthquake shows a deficiency of earthquakes M > 5 (Figure 5), which is consistent with our analysis of the geodetic data. The deficit of earthquakes having ~ M5 and larger can be seen relative to the scaling line. The B value shown here is consistent with B values for Southern California determined by Mori and Abercrombie [1997] for earthquakes > 9 km depth. For the Gutenberg-Richter relation to be completed, this deficit must eventually be filled with large earthquakes, up to M6.2, which is consistent with the above analysis. We assign a probability to these large earthquakes using a Weibull distribution [Weibull, 1951] and the assumption that over long times and large regions the Gutenberg-Richter magnitude-frequency relation is linear [Rundle et al., 2012; Holliday et al., 2014; Rundle et al., 2016]. The calculated probability for a M ≥ 6 earthquake within a circle of radius 100 km, and over the 3 years following 1 April 2015, is 35%. For a M ≥ 5 earthquake within a circle of radius 100 km, and over the 3 years following 1 April 2015, the probability is 99.9%.”

And here is their full conclusion:
“Our results indicate that significant ground deformation and infrastructure damage can occur beyond the epicentral region of a moderate earthquake near Los Angeles. Identifying specific structures most likely to be responsible for future earthquakes is difficult for this intricate network of active faults and presence of weak slip planes. The observed widespread and largely aseismic slip may be because the Puente Hills thrust and related faults are structurally immature [Dolan and Haravitch, 2014]. Geodetic imaging of active structures, however, can be used to identify the full extent of slip and provide a time-independent means of estimating a lower bound of future earthquake potential. In the La Habra and Puente Hills area observed here, the lower bound for a potential earthquake is M6.1–6.3.”

Offhand I see nothing wrong with their methodology, and they just might be on to something. Unfortunately it sounds as if the news media has rather blown things all out of proportion, as they are wont to do. One guy in the USGS seems to be dissing it because he is claiming that he doesn’t see any methodology in the article for arriving at the prediction. However, the methodologies are outlined in the referenced articles.

I’m backing off my earlier criticism, and taking a “wait and see” attitude. After all, that kind of prediction is easy to prove or disprove — if something happens between now and the end of 2018, then they were right. If not, they were wrong. If it happens, but occurs after the end of 2018, then they may need to adjust their model.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Intelligence Operations Against Trump

The intelligence operations against Trump continue. Well, of course, since it’s happening in this country I’m a conspiracy theorist. If it were in Egypt, I’d be a geopolitical analyst. Anyway, here is my

evidence:

1. Continued statistical biases in the corporate media, which acts as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/new-abc-wapo-poll-shows-drop-trump-favorabilty-through-aggressive-oversamples

2. Someone is renting protesters at 2,500 per month to agitate during the month of Trump’s inauguration; this rent-a-mob approach is something we do when we overthrow small countries, the unions also did it during that Occupy Wall Street charade. I saw it on video but that’s old news:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/17/ads-two-dozen-cities-offer-protesters-2500-agitate/

It doesn’t really matter who does it; what matters is that it happens and will persist and we must be more clear in our thinking and less accepting in what were told by public people who say we can trust them. What this does is undermine American trust in the media; it undermines national power. Once more the Democrats attack US national power in the name of their misguided, infantile idealism.

Full disclosure: I am an independent voter.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

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

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Thursday, January 12, 2017

If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts, we will fight them tooth and nail.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

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

James Burnham

It has rained bucketsful in the last couple of days, and I have been embroiled in trivia, interspersed with fiction and working on integrating some new plot elements into the book with Niven and Barnes. As well as coming down with a mild but distracting cold.

I say all that, but in fact I’ve also been a bit cloggled by what’s going on in Washington. There are still elements of the Left who hope to stop Mr. Trump’s inauguration; and this is not treated as an act of rebellion. It is one thing to assert one’s right of free speech. It is certainly the right of citizens to say I didn’t vote for him, and I don’t like him. It is another thing to plan disruptions of the inauguration. Preventing the swearing in of the President and asking for support in doing that seems to me an act of actual rebellion.

And blaming it all on Russia – their hacks revealed things about Hillary and the Democratic National Committee that caused people all over the country to change their vote, thus giving Trump the office –therefore this was not a real election — But I can’t go on with this, I believe in rational discussion, but there isn’t any here.

Was it Russian propaganda that turned voters against Hillary? But we have been inundated with foreign propaganda from the earliest days of Independence, and even before. And the Russian hacking – if it was the Russians, since everyone including Boy Scout troops hacked Hillary’s basement server – resulted in revelations to the voters that caused them to change their minds.

Were the revelations untrue? Well, no, not really. So if the Washington Post had hacked Trump’s server and published revelations it would be all right? They might even get a Pulitzer Prize? Well, but this was the Russians! And it was against Hillary! Don’t you see?

I wish I was making that up, but it’s not all that inaccurate as a summary of a dialogue with a reader. Leaving me nonplussed and discouraged.

Republicans now must try to revamp Obamacare into a health care scheme that works. The problem is that there isn’t one for an equalitarian democratic society.

Start from first principles. People get sick, or are born with defects that must be remedied. This cost s money. Most people can afford to pay for most of their health problems, but some problems are simply overwhelming. Insurance was invented for that. Insurance boils down to this: you bet that you will get one or another catastrophic health problem. Insurance companies bet you will not. You win if you get the disease, and the insurer pays. If you don’t get the problem, you lose your bet: what you pay paid is expended, you get nothing for it, and you and the insurance company are quits. If you die from some other cause, they owe you nothing, you owe them nothing, all’s square.

Life insurance is like unto it: you bet you will die before you have paid more in premiums than the policy pays when you die. It’s complicated because if you live long enough, you own the policy and can stop paying, but it still boils down to you bet you die before you’ve paid that much.

When I first went to work for Boeing, the first policy offered to me was insurance against specified “dread diseases”. I don’t recall them all, but they included cancer, leprosy, and other such. The policy was pretty simple: if you got one of those, somebody else paid for it. The insurance didn’t cost much, and I think Boeing paid for part of it. Then came other offers, most of which were variants on co-payment schemes: I paid a premium which was never refunded whether I got sick or not. If I did get sick, I paid a certain maximum amount and above that they paid; there may have been some upper limit on the amount they were liable for, but that depended on the size of the premium. There were other options, but since I was a young guy in good health, the company was liable for most work-place incident problem, and I had no reason to expect disasters. It all looked fine to me.

Over the years, things changed a bit. Health issues that had been invariably fatal were found to be curable or preventable. Sometimes the prevention was difficult. I grew up in a time when smoking was nearly universal – there were cigarettes in the rations issued to the troops – but over time it was shown that smoking really caused health problems. There was a lot of controversy over “freedom to smoke” and the rising costs of health care, but after a while smokers paid a higher premium, and this was probably a great factor in reducing the number of smokers. I quit because the evidence was overwhelming that smoking cost about ten years of productive life, and you can accomplish a lot in ten years. About then I got a chance to join Kaiser health care, and my problems got simpler. Pay Kaiser a reasonable amount every month, and Roberta and I and the four boys were essentially taken care of for a rather nominal per visit fee. End of problem for me.

But that was me. I had a decent income, I could afford the dues or membership fees or whatever you call them. What about those who couldn’t afford it? Who couldn’t afford anything? Who lived off food stamps or begging? Those out of work, some through no fault of their own, some because they couldn’t keep a job no matter how trivial, some because they had more kids than they could raise and no one in the family was making any money; etc. They depended on charity. But in came government and the Great Society. “Don’t you worry, vote for us and we’ll give you your rights. You’re entitled.”

And that’s where we are now. “I’m entitled to any medical care you can have. If there’s a cure, no matter how expensive it is, if you can get it I’m entitled to it too. As to who’s going to pay for it, I don’t know, but I don’t have to care. I’m entitled.”

Actually, not many people would say or think that. It’s more like some intellectual taking about other people. A tenured professor who gets Kaiser or Blue Cross as an employment benefit talking about the chap who shakes a cup outside the campus gate. Or politicians. In any event, the notion of entitlement entered the picture: government exists to protect your right to free stuff, and never you mind who’s to pay for it. You’re entitled.

And that’s where we are now. You are entitled to health care insurance with no restrictions on pre-existing conditions, which means you can wait until you’re diagnosed with lung cancer before you place a bet that you’ll have lung cancer; and you won’t have to pay any more for this insurance than anyone else even though he’s been paying for thirty years.

“I need car insurance. I just had a wreck. Insure my car, and don’t talk to me about pre-existing conditions, I get to pay the same amount as you pay, Mr. Smug Guy. And I can’t afford it anyway, I don’t have a job. So when do I get my check for my wrecked car? It’s just down the street where I hit the telephone pole.”

No one – yet – expects to get car insurance against a collision after the collision. But they do expect Congress to continue providing them with insurance against health problems and to pay no more than anyone else if they have pre-existing conditions. Obamacare gave them that and you Republicans can’t take it away.

And as long as we keep that “entitlement”, we’re going to have a problem. The insurance industry might have absorbed a requirement to let people keep their health insurance after changing employers, even though they had developed a condition at some point. Indeed, you can make a good case for saying that losing one’s job (and therefore employer provided health insurance) should not be a reason for losing the health insurance; you ought to be able to retain it somehow. If you had insurance and developed the conditions, they were not pre-existing: you bet that you’d get something. You got it but didn’t know it. Your employer went out of business: you ought to be able to continue your insurance without a new examination that might discover a condition you didn’t know you had.

But speculation on what’s fair begs the main question: how did my health concerns become your problem? If my kids get sick, why is it your obligation to pay? If I get AIDS, why do you have to pay for the expensive drug cocktail needed to keep me alive? And ironically, that cocktail was discovered through the expenditure of tax money, some of which you paid, and now its discovery lays on you the obligation to buy it for me. Why? Where did you get this obligation to save me? You didn’t have that obligation until you paid for its discovery; now my life depends on it, I can’t pay for it, so you must buy it for me; and if you don’t, well, the tax collector can call armed men, and you better not resist them. Or you could join with others to lay the obligation on the rich; all the same to me so long as I get my drug cocktail.

Of course few AIDS victims think this way and none talk this way, but that’s how entitlements work: you’re obligated to pay for them, and you’ve no choice in the matter. You got the obligation because lawmakers say you have it, and none of this nonsense about religion, either. You have it because we say you have it, and we’ll hire people to make you pay, don’t doubt that.

Obamacare said we’ll take in all the uninsured, regardless of pre-conditions. Insurance companies said that’s madness: who’d insure against something if they could buy it after they get it? If we know they’ve got it, we have to charge at least what it will cost as premium, and if they can afford to pay that, they don’t need the insurance. The Obamacare intellectuals said, “You can’t do that. You can’t charge more just because they had pre-existing conditions.” At which point the insurance companies told them, “We won’t do it. We can’t do it. We’d be broke in no time.”

The Obamacare intellectuals brooded a bit, and said, “Tell you what. We’ll make everyone buy an insurance policy. You set your own prices, but one thing: everyone pays the same price.”

“And what happens if they don’t buy it?”

“We’ll fine them.”

“And if they can’t afford it, or the fines?”

“Oh, we’ll pay them subsidies so that can pay you your blasted premiums. You’ll get your profits, never you fear.”

Now, Obamacare was more complicated than that – immensely more so, thousand pages of complex legalese – but it basically boiled down to that. Everyone paid the same price, existing conditions or not, which was high enough to cover all the medical costs of those enrolled in the various Plans. It was repeatedly pointed out that it would, by its very nature, have to cost more than a plan that excluded pre-existing conditions, or charged those who had them higher crates, but Obamacare passed.

It has certainly reduced the number of persons not covered by any health care insurance. It has done so at a cost that we cannot afford. And while there is waste and fraud in the system – there always is – I’ve seen no evidence of enough to compensate for those costs. Proponents of a “single payer” scheme – socialized medicine, universal government provided health care, whatever you want to call it – love to point this out. You’ve put so many restrictions on the insurance system in order to enforce equality that there’s no way we can afford anything but single payer insurance like Britain, so just give up and go with that.

Meanwhile the tuition costs of college goes up, while we plot to make the new medical school graduates indentured servants working for the government.

And it always adds up the same way: those who make a living working are obligated to pay for those who don’t, at least in health care. Where this obligation came from is never discussed, but it certainly must extend to aiding immigrants, both legal and illegal.

I’m glad I’m not a member of Congress.

Of course nature may take care of the problem for us.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/01/13/nevada-woman-dies-superbug-resistant-to-every-available-antibiotic-in-us.html

Polarization

I was listening to some leftist and my eyes glazed over at two questions:

<.>

Why should people in Africa get the short end of the stick and go without water and a warm meal on a daily basis?

Why should something as free and basic as education be denied to people?

</>

These questions are asked by many people, even in the media. So these matters have some relevance to the rest of us.

First, this guy has never been to Africa and so has no idea what he is talking about beyond some internalized, elements he gleaned from the mass media and the culture industry.

Second, at what point did I become part of some collective? And at what point did that collective suddenly have responsibility for people in some other collective, somewhere else? Why must I pick up my cross and fight his battles in the Dark Continent? Don’t we have people around us that can’t eat and drink to take care of first? Aren’t the people in this collective he seems to think he’s part of when he wants to complain about something worth his time and effort?

Then the matter of education being “free and basic”. Education is advanced, it requires written and spoken language and those aren’t basic and neither is anything that follows. More importantly, someone has to do the training or the educating. Is that person expected to get up every day out of the kindness of his or her heart to perform these “free and basic” services? Or will the have-nots suddenly have whips to compel them to do what is “good and right for the group”?

History answers this question.

I’m starting to think the left can be seen as the Borg and the right can be seen as the Romulans or the Vulcans — depending on how disciplined they are…… I think you can easily agree with me on Romulans and Vulcans.

The Borg are clearly collectivists. The Borg chase “perfection”

(idealism?). Voltaire commented that behind perfectionism is fear.

Perhaps the Borg Queen fears reality and must achieve perfection by assimilating reality until it conforms with the Will. This is rather like the apparent Christian approach to life, which is corrective.

The Romulans take a similar approach but prefer to accept or reject reality through conquest or destruction, respectively, rather than change reality as the Borg. This is similar with the apparent Shivaist acceptance of life and the apparent Buddhist rejection of it.

The Vulcans do the same but they do not conquer and destroy. They simply protect and isolate themselves, preferring to work through consent and contract while maintaining incredible power to enforce those agreements.

The Vulcans and Romulans are both action and inaction; they are both the eye of the hurricane. The Borg just follow a program….the Borg are the bureaucrats of the universe; they’re they type that always take over the organization and always make the rules under which the organization functions.

Is the universe not trying to avoid Borg invasion as Star Trek progresses? If the left ever become transhumuan… You know, I’m not sure if that would be an anti-utopian novel or a spoof, but it would a funny piece of writing to have a bunch of leftist transhumanists who completely screw everything up and cause the collapse of the entire planet in some ridiculous timeframe like a decade because their technology is great at what it does but the left doesn’t know how to use it — perhaps the Borg don’t know either? This digression seems a good place to end, abruptly.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It will be all right. Just pay your taxes and work a little harder.

Steve Sailer on Immigration

Dr. Pournelle,
Steve Sailer wrote an interesting article that I saw over at Takimag:
http://takimag.com/article/the_wave_that_wont_break_steve_sailer/print#axzz4VNODTSGT
Money quote: “Mass immigration tends to work politically like a doomsday machine, a juggernaut progressively cutting down the ability to call off immigration due to diminishing marginal returns. As a Western nation imports more individuals from the self-destructive parts of the world, the demands to admit their extended family members grow as well.”
I don’t have a realistic answer that doesn’t involve weapons of mass destruction. I’m getting to the point where I’m willing to consider their use, but I cannot reconcile my faith with what may need to be done. Right now, for me at least, my faith is losing ground…
Regards,
Don Parker

Don’t you want more diversity?

A thank you

Long ago when you had your brain tumor problem and even before that you had been noting that Kaiser Permanente had been very good for you. That led me to suggest Loren latch on to KP when he had a chance. And as soon as I could I latched on.

God Bless you for that. They have saved Loren’s life from sleep apnea and more recently a pituitary tumor. And they are making my aging life much easier to handle. They are good folks. And I’m glad I read than on your site.

Thank you.

{^_^}

We still have Kaiser. It hasn’t changed. If you like your health plan you can keep it. Haven’t we that solemn promise? Of course they have to change their membership standards a bit, and take everyone who asks, and can’t charge new members more than they charge anyone else meaning they have to raise prices for everyone, and…

So far they have evaded that, and we’re all safe together.

4chan Claims It Invented the Trump Golden Showers Story

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/10/4chan-claims-they-invented-the-trump-golden-showers-story.html

Rush has been warning the inside crowd won’t go quietly, but this is pretty stupid behavior.

Phil

Stay Tuned.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/china-starts-freight-train-to-london-as-xi-promotes-trade-ties?cmpid=socialflow-facebook-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Czech government tells its citizens how to fight terrorists: Shoot them yourselves – MSN News

Whether or not EU law overrides member nations’ laws is a point of some contention.

The European Court of Justice came up with a “primacy of EU law” doctrine which says that anything passed by the EU overrides anything conflicting in member states’ laws, including those states’ constitutions. Various national courts, per Wikipedia, “disagree with this extreme interpretation and reserve the right, in principle, to review the constitutionality of European law under national constitutional law.”

I’d take the Post’s reference there as being similar to the usual mainstream media take on the US Constitution’s “supremacy clause.” They report it as “of course, federal law trumps state law,” when the terms of the clause are in fact qualified/constrained.

And of course the Czech Republic has an army (the EU does not) and a somewhat armed citizenry. The Czechs are probably going to do what they damn well please.

Do you think the Wehrmacht can govern a Czech Protectorate? Perhaps EU can appoint a Protector of Bohemia.

Off we go…

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/567957/NASA-s-Voyager-2-sets-course-for-star-Sirius-by-time-it-arrives-human-race-will-be-dead

“Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus.  

“In about 296,000 years Voyager 2 will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.”

“Doomsday scenarios for the human race abound, from climate change to nuclear war, asteroids, and out of control Artificial Intelligence. But what they share in common is a MUCH shorter timeframe than 296,000 years.”

Quite a good brief history and documentation of the Voyagers, including illustrations and videos. 

Charles Brumbelow

Time to Die?

So this is how empires die?

<.>

“We’re broke.” In essence, that’s the message Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work delivered to Defense-Secretary-in-Waiting James Mattis at the December 5 Future Strategy Forum.

Mr. Work admitted that DoD has breathtaking liabilities—as much as $88 billion a year—that ought to be addressed before procuring a single additional plane, ship or tank. Unfortunately, the situation is even worse than that.

<\>

http://www.realcleardefense.com/2017/01/08/america039s_military_has_a_big_problem_it039s_dead_broke_289216.html

I haven’t written lately because everything I see and analyze just confirms certain milder doom and gloom scenarios and I don’t need to be the voice of darkness.  But this article is so chilling that I simply must forward it. 

I have have grave doubts regarding our national security from about 2018 through at least 2030.  It seems to me the third world war could start or started in Syria and articles like this diminish my faith.

I read a Rand Corporation study that said we would likely not be able to defeat the Chinese in what would become a long and protracted war and they likely would not be able to defeat us either until they can expand their naval power.  I see no sense in fighting that war. 

We’ve been in steady decline since World War II and this may be the end of the road. Let all who live though this know, the Boomers did it and when enough of them die that their lobby weakens, I’ll have no sympathy. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

Nuclear Triad?

I’ve been trying to suss the state of the “cold war”, particularly as it is expressed through the philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction. I’ve made little progress. I think I have a pretty good handle on the desire for world domination that motivated Lenin and Stalin, but particularly in the media frenzy accompanying the run-up to the Trump inauguration, I find myself floundering, trying to come to an understanding of just who “them” is.
What brought this question starkly into focus was an article published by the American Enterprise Institute (http://www.aei.org/publication/navys-deterrence-fund-is-just-another-washington-budget-gimmick/) concerning the perennial scramble for DoD dollars. In light of oh so many things, such as the Air Force’s A-10 future plans and the secrecy surrounding the X-37 program, the question begs to be answered: Just who’s in charge and what is the policy?
Any thoughts?

A long time ago I wrote a paper for the Air Council (USAF) on “Stability”, pointing out that a stabilizing power needs escalation dominance, particularly at the highest conflict levels. Escalation dominance means roughly that the higher the level of conflict, the more dominant you are with respect to this particular opponent. If you are going to impose stability on the world, you need escalation dominance with respect to everyone in the world; if you don’t have that, you had better be careful what conflicts you get into.

MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – as a strategy gets pretty sticky in a multi-power world. “I can’t kill you but I can make you vulnerable to THEM so give me what I want or we both die – is a scenario with many variants. “If you depose me, we all die.” Is another.

I have no clearances and no particular knowledge of our forces, but I know Obama ordered reductions in the nuclear force, the B-52’s are generally older than their crews and are best described as a bunch of parts flying in close formation, and SAC is no longer the elite force it once was. Certainly Trump knows this and so do any number of the people he has nominated to the cabinet. I also know that restoring top level escalation dominance will be expensive. Of course if you are not trying to impose stability on all parts of the world, there are other options.

Ringling Bros. closing ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ after 146 years

“Attendance has been dropping for 10 years, said Juliette Feld, but when the elephants left, there was a “dramatic drop” in ticket sales. While many said they didn’t want big animals to perform in circuses, many others refused to attend a circus without them.”

I can’t find any relevant old emails, but I’m fairly confident I remember predicting this to at least a couple of people…

Subj: Ringling Bros. closing ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ after 146 years | New York Post

http://nypost.com/2017/01/14/the-greatest-show-on-earth-will-shut-down-after-146-year-run/

I recall a large flurry of messages predicting this result. I got to go backstage at the circus when I was a kid – my father managed WHBQ which is how he afforded that stupid farm I grew up on – and I thought the elephants, who did a lot of the work setting up the circus, enjoyed the parades and the attention although they resented being used as tractors. I know they hated being entirely idle with nothing to do. So do I.

Fascinating Baseball History – WW II History

Largely substantiated by the Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg

The only point of dispute is that, according to Wikipedia, Moe Berg was freelancing during the trip to Japan (though there are some discrepancies in the story that may make the interpretation below more credible, and it’s not otherwise clear why he would have been selected for the trip) when he shot the footage described – but he did show it to the Pentagon after Pearl Harbor.

---

Subj: Fascinating Baseball History – WW II History

Really interesting

---

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included. Although he played with five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre ball player. But Moe was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time. In fact Casey Stengel once said: “That is the strangest man ever to play baseball”. When all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many people wondered why he went with “the team” Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of today’s CIA). Moe spoke 15 languages – including Japanese. And he had two loves: baseball and spying. In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital – the tallest building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc. Eight years later , General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.. His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers every day. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton – having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris , and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian – 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects. While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit. Tito’s Partisans During World War II, Moe was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito’s forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic’s Serbians. The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy-water plant – part of the Nazis’ effort to build an atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy that plant. The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg. There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code name “Remus”) was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill. If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him – and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel. Werner Heisenberg – He blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb. Moe Berg’s report was distributed to Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: “Give my regards to the catcher.” Most of Germany’s leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States. After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom – America ‘s highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept it because he couldn’t tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown. Presidential Medal of Freedom: The highest award given to civilians during wartime. Moe Berg’s baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

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

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

On matters of foreign policy, Trump is not a realist, isolationist, or neoconservative, although at times he can sound like all that and more. Instead, he is a Jacksonian who wants a huge club at the Department of Defense largely to ensure that he’ll never have to use it. And if he is pushed to swing it, he wants to flatten any who would hurt the U.S.

Victor Davis Hanson

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Phil Tharp calls attention to this article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443667/trumpism-tradition-populism-american-greatness-strong-military

Although I was a subscriber to National Review from the 1950’s, I have lately given up reading it; but this is by Victor Davis Hanson who is both a Professor of History and a Central California Valley farmer, and his insights are always worth paying attention to. This time he has exceeded himself: nothing original, but he patiently explains the meaning of Trump and his populism. How can a billionaire be a populist? Read Hanson’s article. It explains it all very well. You must remember that populism is not equalitarianism, nor is it plebiscitary democracy. Populists expect to earn what they get; but they also expect to keep what they earn, and to play hard on a level playing field.

[snip] Making Stuff

Trumpism is a pragmatist in another way: his unapologetic deference to 19th-century muscular labor and those who employ and organize it. Though we are well into the 21st-century informational age, Trump apparently believes that the age-old industries — steel, drilling, construction, farming, mining, logging — are still noble and necessary pursuits. Using one’s hands or one’s mind to create something concrete and real is valuable in and of itself, and a much-needed antidote to the Pajama Boy–Ivy League culture of abstraction. Silicon Valley, the marquee universities, and progressive ideologues might dismiss these producers as polluting dinosaurs, but all of them also rely on forgotten others to fuel their Priuses, bring them their kitchen counters, their hardwood floors, and their evening cabernet and arugula and, 12 hours later, their morning yogurt and granola. The producers acknowledge the equal importance of Apple and Google in a way that is never quite reciprocated by Silicon Valley. In other words, expect Trumpism to champion fracking, logging, Keystone, “clean” coal, highway construction, the return of contracted irrigation water to its farmers, the retention of federal grazing lands for cattlemen — not just because in Trump’s view these industries are valuable sources of material wealth for the nation but also because they empower the sort of people who are the antidote to what American is becoming.[snip]

There’s more, and it’s all pretty clear; I might have written much of it. I mean that in the sense that I found little to disagree with; I don’t mean to take anything away from Professor Hanson. Read the article. You’ll understand Trump better, agree with Trumpism or not.

It has been slow at Chaos Manor. I’m doing a lot more exercising during the day; I have to. My backaches and joint problems are creeping up on me, and lots of stretching is really the only thing that helps.

I suppose I need a new hip, but my observation of what happens to people who get artificial hips does not encourage me to try it. I’ve forgone the Tibetan Rites until I get the back problem under control. I’ve also had problems with hearing – mostly mine. I seem to grow more wax than bees do. Aggressive cleaning with a syringe is indicated, but I guess I was too vigorous because I managed a mild earache. Nothing serious, and it is subsiding, but it has been annoying. And of course there are still books to write.

 

President Obama gave his farewell speech. He did not mention one of his great legacies;

President Obama Increases U.S. Regulatory State by 12% in one Month

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/12/26/president-obama-increases-u-s-regulatory-state-12-one-month/

Actually that’s quite a record.

 

 

Vinland

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/05/new-ruins-of-viking-village-near-the-hudson-river-seriously-question-where-were-the-borders-of-the-legendary-vinland/2

J M Davis

Interesting. Of course the Vikings always believed Vinland was closer to Greenland, but that could be misinterpretation.

DNC Hack –

Hi Jerry,

Attribution of attacks is a major problem.  

https://clockworklantern.com/2017/01/01/the-problem-of-attribution/

Let me describe a situation, and see if you can guess what I’m referring to:

A high-profile hack occurred, including data disclosure, and has been attributed to a foreign government.   The original source for that attribution was a leak to the press, followed by statements from the executive branch.  Later, the intelligence community released a report that’s woefully thin on details, and have yet to provide a classified briefing to the congressional oversight committee with full information.  No joint statement from the select committee has been released.

I’m sure you immediately thought of the recent hack of the Democratic National Committee, but it easily could also reference the Sony hack last year.  In both cases we have an assertion of responsibility to a nation state, with no substantive details.  What’s interesting to me is how some in the security community responded to those two assertions.  One was widely dismissed, pointing out the difficulty of attribution, while the other – by the same security experts – was generally accepted.   Let me come back to that.

First, let’s look at the broader problem of attribution.

Primarily it involves indicators of compromise (things left from the hack) and human sources of information (things from people).  Hacker toolkits and techniques are designed to minimize the IOC’s as much as possible.  Everything from wiping logs, to hopping multiple compromised servers and using proxies to disguise the originating machine are bread and butter to the sophisticated adversary.

In some cases, malware code is left behind, which can provide a vital clue, but that only goes so far.  This week, there’s been a number of breathless news stories that Russian malware has been found on a computer at an American utility.  To paraphrase the greatest movie of all time, “I’m Shocked, Shocked! that there is malware from Russia going on here. (Insert a scene of a junior hacker running up and saying ‘hello sir, here’s the attack tool kit we bought off the dark web’).”

Seriously, a substantial percentage of the malware in circulation today relies on toolkits built by Russian hackers – they’re very good at it.  But the source code is almost all available for sale, so the original author (and remember, Russian hacker doesn’t mean Russian government) is rarely the one perpetuating the attack.   More to the point, it’s no surprise to anyone in the security profession that there’s Russian, North Korean, or Chinese on any particular machine in America – any more than it’s a surprise for Iran, Russia, China, or North Korea to find that there’s American, British, or Israeli malware on their systems.  Everybody hacks.  But unless the hacker makes a mistake, successful prosecution and reliable attribution from IOC’s alone is very challenging.

That’s where the people side of the investigation comes in.   Most hacking involves money, and following financial trails is something law enforcement is very good at.  The majority of the remainder involves intellectual property theft, which can also be traced – often when knockoff products appear, though by then it’s too late to do anything about.  Pure activism hacking is the hardest, but in all three cases people talk, either in exchange for protection from prosecution, venting on a forum, or social media bragging rights, and law enforcement finds out.   Lastly, for some attacks there’s both signals and human intelligence that can be brought to bear, but much of that will never be revealed (and rightly so) as it would compromise sources and methods.

So we’re back full circle.   For the hacks I referenced above, we must remember there are geo and domestic political motivations to attribute those to a particular nation state.  I treat any such assertion (from either party) as suspect, particularly when it’s ‘leaked’ to the press.  My own experience with folks in the intelligence community is that the ones who really know, don’t talk, and the ones who don’t know, well, they talk too much.

Wikileaks claims that they didn’t get the information from the Russian government, rather that it was delivered in a Washington park by an insider.  Given the complete lack of details in the report issued this week, the timing of the attribution, the refusal to brief the select committee, and the petulance of the outgoing administration, I’m skeptical of the asserted story.  I don’t dismiss it, but I am skeptical.  I’m also skeptical of the Sony Hack attribution, and still skeptical of much of Snowden’s story as well.   We have assertions and very limited real information on all three – we pretty much know “what” happened, but the who and why remain unclear.

It’s very human to take what facts we do have and try to make a coherent story out of them.  That’s my job actually – to recognize the pattern and story in what my clients are saying, and then capture and articulate it back as a security architecture and strategy. Of course, I have far more information to work with than we’ve been given on these attacks, and can go back and ask questions to make sure I fully understand the situation.

But that’s where the analogy breaks down.   I work for a company that sells security software and services.  Both my own integrity and our company values, require that I work in the best interest of my client.  That’s why part of my job is to integrate with competing solutions and services.  Of course, when our products and services meet the requirements and provide good value, I’ll recommend what I sell – that’s my job, and no one expects me to do anything different.

Attribution is different.  As professionals, we must set a common yardstick and apply it equally and fairly to regardless of target, source, or impact.  Rarely will we know with certainty.   Ethically we must disclose the speculative nature, alternate explanations and probabilities involved.

For the DNC and Sony attacks, because there are nation state issues, we’re never going to have all the facts, and will have to rely on a trusted third-party who does.  You can stop laughing now, because you’re right – that doesn’t exist;  I don’t trust either administration on this one.  The best that we could do is a joint statement by both the majority and minority leaders of the house select committee on intelligence, after a full classified briefing by the entire intelligence community, that provides attribution and some level of IOC’s.   Until then, I remain skeptical.

D

As you say. Certainty of attribution is an extraordinary claim. As to voting integrity:

In One Detroit Precinct 52 Ballots Yielded 307 Votes

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=18271?omhide=true

A scientific consensus that does not include Freeman Dyson is no consensus at all.

http://www.noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman_dyson.php

Well worth your reading.

“Russian” hack redux

The KrebsonSecurity article, linked by Tracy, is very informative. However it, like nearly every other article on the subject, ignores the most important piece of information in all this. Julian Assange — you know, the founder/head of Wikileaks, who actually released the “hacked” emails to the public — has assured us that he got the material from a DNC insider.

Should we trust Assange? Should we trust Clapper? Hmmm . . . Tough choice.

They could both be telling us “the truth”. There is abundant evidence that the Russians — or someone pretending to be Russians — penetrated both the DNC and the RNC. But should we believe that they were the only ones? Probably so did the British, the French, the Dutch, the Israelis, the Bangladeshis and a couple score of script kiddies working from their parents’ basements.

It may be that Clapper is being truthful (for an arbitrary value of “truthful”), in telling us that the Russians (or someone pretending to be clumsy Russians) penetrated those systems, but he simply cannot know who gave the goods to Wikileaks.

Occam’s Razor suggests that Assange is telling us the truth about that.

Richard White

Del Valle, Texas

The point being that we simply do not know, but saying that we do is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. We have seen little.

Jerry,

The most alarming facet of the on going circus surrounding the DNC Hack and document dump is how politicized our National Intelligence Agencies have become.

This is, perhaps, the swamp that needs to be drained first. The Department of Education’s demise is important, but its abolishment should be much easier.

Bob Holmes

But the DoED is much harder to control; we have a unique opportunity to undo the mistake made after Sputnik. We should take it. Intelligence services we will always have with us, and that swamp will always need periodic draining.

This will seem to ramble a bit, but there’s a lot of background, to be able to appreciate the punch line.

Over the Christmas holidays, as part of a combination “escape from Huntsville/last-minute mileage run”, I took up a new hobby.

I’m learning to fly the Boeing 737NG, in simulation, on a Pacific Simulators (http://www.pacificsimulators.com/) PS3.5, a state-of-the-science Advanced Aviation Training Device.  This is a flight simulator without a motion base: the pilot gets his motion cues from a high-quality visual scene.

Their customers are usually people who want to get a taste of airliner flying, or (usually) give their children a taste.  I went in, explained that I wanted to learn the 737, stick-and-rudder flying, really learn it.  They looked at me and basically said “We can do that.”

I have 1 1/2 hours of “orientation”-type rides, and 8 hours of hard working time.  I flew every day for six days: 4 days of 1-hour sessions, 2 days of 2-hour sessions.  I have learned a surprising amount, made memories that will last a lifetime, and I’m just getting started.

Thirty years ago, during lunch hour one day, I had the opportunity to fly the Research and Engineering Simulator at General Dynamics / Fort Worth Division.  It was a fixed-base sim, with visual scene.  It required five (later reconfigured to need “only” three) Harris superminicomputers to run, and used an Evans & Sutherland light valve (I think that was the term for the projector system).

The PS3.5 is nicer than the R&E sim was.

And now I finally get to the point:

After a particularly instructive session (you really don’t want to know), I discovered that the simulator was running on Microsoft Windows computers and Lockheed-Martin’s Prepar3d.  (http://www.prepar3d.com/)  Prepar3d is what used to be the professional version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.  When Microsoft discontinued it, Lockheed-Martin bought the rights and has continued to develop it, for non-entertainment purposes.

Windows.  PCs.  PC graphics cards.  Commercial projectors.

We are definitely not in Kansas any more, Toto.

–John R. Strohm

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

A little late, as the information was put out at a news conference in 2015, but NASA confirmed the presence of liquid water in multiple locations just below the Martian surface and in large amounts.

How large?

One of these locations, in Valles Marineris, as a bare minimum to explain the observations, would have to contain 10^5 cubic meters of water. That’s one hundred million liters in one of these wet spots, which have a long name that NASA abbreviates to “RSL”.

Here is the original news conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og67Xe5quEY

Aside from the implications for possible life on Mars, this means human colonization is now proven much more feasible. Mars is known now to have the minerals in the soil, CO2 and Nitrogen in the atmosphere and water to grow food in “greenhouses”. Simple nineteenth century chemical engineering, a la Robert Zubrin, allows you to turn water and CO2 into oxygen and methane, which makes a nice rocket fuel. The perchlorates in the soil that are what seem to make this solid water possible by expanding the temperature range of liquid water on Mars from the narrow zero Celsius to ten Celsius of pure H2O to something around nine times wider are also very useful chemicals. Solid fuel rockets can be made from aluminum perchlorate.

These wet points have so far only been observed at the driest time of the day on Mars, and only in the roughly five per cent of the Martian surface that has been mapped at hi-res by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. There is in all likelihood a LOT of water on Mars, and not hard to get at, nor frozen.

Petronius

Elon Musk envisions colonizing Mars, with thousands of ships.

Space Access Conference Announcement 1/8/17

Sunday, 01/08/17 – There will not be a Space Access Conference this April in Phoenix. Our long-time Conference Manager is retiring from that role. Proposals are now being accepted to organize and run the next Space Access Conference, date and location TBD.

Details at http://space-access.org/updates/SAAnnouncement.html

Congressional Black Caucus Rehangs Painting Depicting Cops as Pigs Day After Black Cop Shot Dead

 

A high school student’s painting that portrays the events in Ferguson, Missouri, is back on the wall on Capitol Hill. Democratic congressman William Lacy Clay rehung the painting on Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker had removed it because he found it offensive.

 

 

Half of young people have so many ’emotional problems’ they cannot focus at school, study finds

Jerry

This is mostly about how at-sea kids feel today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/10/half-young-people-have-many-emotional-problems-cannot-focus/

One is struck by how much they feel they will not have jobs. This is understandable. So why not provide jobs for everyone? Ditch welfare – we can’t afford it anyway. Pay people to do things we can’t afford to pay for today because we are too busy paying for welfare.

Ed

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

Monday, January 9, 2017

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

In 1953, the Office of Education, a very minor Bureau in the Federal Security Agency which was, I believe, in the Department of the Interior was upgraded to become part of the cabinet level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Education was a small part of that, because it is not mentioned in the Constitution and thus was considered the task of the States. The GI Bill after WW II changed higher education by making it possible for nearly every veteran of the war to go to college; the Korean Bill gave a smaller, but less restrictive, grant of $33/week to Korean vets who chose to go to college full time. Neither of these revolutions in higher education had much effect on primary and high school education, nor were they intended to.

During the 1950’sthere was considerable agitation for a stronger federal role in the public school system. The opposition against Federal Aid to Education – a favorite debate topic in both high school and college debates – was chiefly that federal aid would mean federal control, and would mean the bureaucratization of all state schools, and thus would hamper education all over the country. Proponents spoke of what wonders could be accomplished for a fraction of the cost of a warship or bomber, and how deplorable some schools were.

The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 was decisive.

[snip]The Soviet space success and well-publicized American space failures induced a climate of national crisis. Critics pointed to the deficiencies of American students in mathematics and science. The Sputnik crisis sparked national legislation to support training, equipment, and programs in fields vital to defense. The scientific community including university scholars and curriculum specialists are often called upon to reconstruct subject-matter content, especially on the high school level. [snip] https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/fedaid.html

[For more details see file:///C:/Users/JerryP/Downloads/Kaestle_Article_FutureFedRole_020101.pdf ]

There was great pressure for Education to have a ministry – a cabinet level Department – of its own, but this was successfully resisted until Jimmy Carter in 1979. Note that Federal Aid to Education had been in effect since 1958, and had grown in size and control over local education systems every year. Now it was a Department, and growth accelerated. In 1983 a blue ribbon National Commission on Education headed by Nobel Prize winning nuclear scientist Glenn T. Seaborg published a report called “A Nation at Risk” that concluded “If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.” Most studies conclude that education has deteriorated since that report. Republicans have attempted to abolish both the Education Department and Federal Aid to Education (to be terminated with a diminishing series of block grants) but failed.

Today the very liberal Los Angeles Times published:

For better schools, abolish the politicized Department of Education and give local districts more control

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-meredith-paige-abolish-education-department-20170106-story.html

Bruce Meredith, Mark Paige

Republicans opposed the Department of Education from its beginning and regularly threaten to abolish it now, arguing that educational policy should be reserved to the states. Two respected Democrats also objected to the department’s creation almost 40 years ago. New York Sen. Daniel Moynihan warned that it would become a partisan sword. New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm worried about divorcing education from other policy areas vital to student success, such as making sure they had decent housing and enough to eat.

History has proved the critics right. It’s time for the department to be dismantled. It has done some good, especially in pointing out education inequity. But more often it has served political, not educational, interests.

In fact, the Department of Education was created by President Carter in part as a gift to the National Education Assn., for the union’s early support of his candidacy. Politics was the department’s original sin, and that reality has gotten only worse.[snip]

The article is worth reading; but its conclusion is vital. Federal Aid to Education has generated, among other horrors, “No Child Left Behind”, which, through aggressive enforcement and regulations, produces the result of No Child Gets Ahead, which is the only way to assure that statistically no child will be left behind. The Congress should end DoED and Federal Aid to Education – by a series of diminishing block grants to the states to be administered by the Department of the Interior after the instant abolition of DoED, all its employees being declared redundant.

If the Federal Government wants to show the States how to have great primary and secondary schools, it has the undisputed Constitutional right to do so by establishing those schools in the District of Columbia. It should easily be able to do so (if the experts actually know how) with the savings from the elimination of the former Department of Education; if they do not attract copiers by their excellence of results, perhaps they ought not to have been imposing methods on all the schools in the nation.

I had another back attack this morning and have spent much of the day exercising and stretching. It’s fairly clear I will have to do a lot more of that in the next couple of weeks. See previous post on details of that.

Wall Street Journal: “The smart line from the beginning would have been to denounce the hack, acknowledge that Russia has been acting in ways that harm the U.S., and say that Mr. Putin should stop or face consequences once Mr. Trump is President. Mr. Trump could also say that if Mr. Obama had retaliated sooner against Russia, the election hacks might not have happened. Instead, Mr. Trump’s denial of Russian reality makes him look like a sap for Mr. Putin.”

Mr. Trump: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad!” he tweeted on Saturday. He added: “We have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now.”

Wall Street Journal: “Let’s hope so, but it isn’t “stupid” to mistrust Mr. Putin. After his sheltering of Edward Snowden, his invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, intervention in Syria, sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and massacre of civilians in Aleppo, only a fool would imagine that Mr. Putin can be trusted beyond the cold logic of military and economic balance of power.”

But if only a fool would trust Mr. Putin, does it make for a better negotiating position for Mr. Trump to say so? To publicly denounce Mr. Putin in order to provide the media with headlines? May we not assume that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin pretty well know what they are doing, and this includes a pretty good idea of the actual interests each seeks to protect? And that each pretty well knows this, and each knows a lot about what the other desires, needs, and is thinking? So why do we need to impose sanctions on Russia for doing what we have always done, namely tried to influence public opinion in each others’ nation? When Reagan talked of the evil empire, he was denounced by the press; now Trump is denounced for not speaking ill of Russia and Mr. Putin, and he is not yet President.

Apparently the Wall Street Journal is concerned that the New York Times will think ill of it. Or perhaps it simply wanted to say something even if it makes little sense. Memo to WSJ: Mr. Trump is no fool, and betting that he is a fool is a very bad bet.

Pompey the Great was Julius Caesar’s son-in-law and so long as Caesar’s daughter Julia was alive they had strong mutual interests and got along splendidly.

             Sunday, 01/08/17 – There will not be a Space Access Conference this April in Phoenix. Our long-time Conference Manager is retiring from that role. Proposals are now being accepted to organize and run the next Space Access Conference, date and location TBD.

Details at http://space-access.org/updates/SAAnnouncement.html

Daesh

Terrorists are organizing scavenger hunts where pre-teens are killing bound prisoners in abandoned buildings. They even have a pre-schooler shooting someone in the face and a seven year-old kid beheading someone and more.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/01/08/isis-shows-preschooler-killing-victim-tied-to-carnival-ball-pit/

Yeah, we can’t do anything about this. We need to cry about Russian hacking. This is an embarrassment, the Democratic party is an embarrassment, and I’m nearly embarrassed to call myself American in 2017. This is disgusting. Some “JV Team”, eh, Groveler in Chief?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Come now. We can defeat ISIS, although not with a CinC who thinks they are the Junior Varsity.

The Russian Bear

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
From today’s (London) Times, a quote from Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe:
“In reality, Russia has set itself on a collision course with the West. It is far more dangerous than Isis and is now our strategic adversary, having built up its military capability and thrown away the rule book on which post-Cold War security was based. … The invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was a turning point in history and demonstrated unequivocally that Russia was our enemy now and that the situation had fundamentally changed. They’d been planning this all along, while pretending openness. Again, Putin got away with it, but it provided the wake-up call we needed.”

I agree that Russia has a long-standing interest in Slavic populations, and that Estonia is close to St. Petersburg. But I also remember the Sudetenland, and the story of the farmer who said “I’m not greedy. I only want whatever land is next to mine.”

It would indeed be unwise to twist the bear’s tail. But, as an old backwoods camper, neither would I want to feed it or pose for selfies. So far we seem to be shouting and making noise; which sometimes works.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

There’s only one rifle in this camp, and another camper has it. I will have it in a couple of weeks. I think it would not be wise to go out looking for the bear to taunt it; but even less wise to do so while someone else has the rifle.

Russian Email Hacking
Personally, I trust Assange more than I do the US main stream media or *anything* that may come from the corruption that is the Obama Administration. But, concerning the assertions that Putin and the Russians were behind the email hacks the response, I am, nonetheless, reminded of a quote from The Usual Suspects that was based upon the following quote from Charles Baudelaire’s “The Generous Gambler”;
“My dear brethren, do not ever forget … that the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!”
That being said, supposedly, these masterminds of intrigue broke through the layers of defense built to protect these servers – presumably – yet was amateurish enough to leave behind enough evidence of the break-in to provide certainty of those responsible.
Yeah. And, I have some prime ocean front property in Arizona for sale.
Even if the Russians *were* behind the break-in, just what was the result?
Did they invent anything? Are the documents released fraudulent in any manner?
Best I can tell is that all that was exposed was the TRUTH. It seems to me that, if the claims of Obama et al are correct, that Putin and the Russians were behind the hacks, then a Pulitzer or two might need to be handed out to the Russians for uncovering the scandal of what was done to Bernie Sanders by Hillary’s campaign and the DNC. Would not that rise to the level of Watergate?
So, I don’t believe the Russians were behind the hack, if for nothing else than they are experienced enough to not leave behind any evidence, certainly not the bumbling ineptitude necessary to provide the level of detail Obama and his cronies assert exist.
But, there’s still Baudelaire’s quote…
Cam Kirmser

Hello Jerry,

At the time I bought my computers the anti-virus program most highly recommended by Best Buy was Kaspersky. According to Consumer Search it continues to be highly rated but according to their latest review was narrowly beaten out by Bitdefender.

Kaspersky is a Russian product and is supposedly very good at performing as advertised.

Would anyone be shocked to learn that a software product produced by the Russians, distributed all over the world, and intentionally bought and installed on a large percentage of the world’s government, business, and personal computers by their owners had a few ‘undocumented’ features that may be more valuable to the Russians than the sales revenue?

Mind you that I am not saying that Kaspersky HAS any such undocumented features; I am only expressing surprise that millions of folks apparently have a high degree of confidence that the Russians produced and distributed such software WITHOUT including them.

Bob Ludwick

Cyberwarfare for Sale

An article about “ethical” hacking tools – and how they can be abused by governments and private concerns.

Cyberwarfare for sale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/magazine/cyberwar-for-sale.html?_r=0

Clapper is Incredible

I read the View today and saw this line from Clapper:

<.>

Whether or not that constitutes an act of war I think is a very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make. But it’s certainly — would carry in my view great gravity.

</>

As DNI he knows, or should know, better. Covert action straddles the line between diplomacy and warfare. Anyone who knows anything about statecraft or intelligence knows this. Who does he think he’s fooling? They’re totally trying to sensationalize this. And of course you cannot measure the impact of intelligence operations, in most cases we cannot even prove they were effective it’s called “the paradox of intelligence”. What I read was merely shameless pandering to the ignorant, all of it; not just the part I quoted in this email.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

Oxymoron…

I remember when “military intelligence” was jokingly(?) called an oxymoron. 

Now that the United States has decreed that all intelligence bureaus throughout the federal government shall freely share information working under a super intelligence chief – currently Clapper – it is probably true that in the United States national intelligence is an oxymoron. No joking this time. 

Charles Brumbelow

Jerry,

   Here’s one of the best comments I’ve seen on the current state of the DNC hack I’ve seen, by one of the best security researchers I know:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/the-download-on-the-dnc-hack/

Tracy

   

Russian Hacking Narrative

Jerry,

The Dems, the current (Dem partisan) intel bureaucratic leadership, and the MSM are all enthusiastically pushing this “Russia hacked the election” narrative for the obvious reason, an attempt to cripple this new administration from the start.

Does it even need to be said that what the Russians did was of a piece with what they (and the Chinese, and half the rest of the world) have been doing to us (during our elections and otherwise) for years now?

Nor was it clearly distinguishable from what our former SecState did to the Russian elections a few years back. Why the left-prog establishment is finally, now, suddenly noisily horrified is left as an exercise for the reader.

I note this morning however that Senators McCain and Graham are on one of the Sunday talk shows, chiming in. I can see why they’re doing this

– they hope to pressure the President-elect into adopting more of their actively anti-Russian stance.

As you know I even sympathize with the two Senators on that point; I too think firm support for Balts and Ukrainians and Georgians should take precedence over rapprochement with Russia, at least till Russia dials the international aggression back down a bit from 11. (Mind, I’m beginning to think it’s at least arguable that Trump’s approach may have better odds of achieving that dialing-down. But that’s a different letter.)

Regardless, I think McCain and Graham are making a grave error in tactically allying with the Dem/Bureaucrat/MSM axis on this. It is very unlikely that they can accomplish just their limited goal of altering Trump’s apparent Russia accommodationism, then step aside unscathed, when their ad hoc allies are going all-out to cripple the new Presidency from the start (with what currently looks like some chance of success.)

Porkypine

 

On 12/19/2016 12:26 PM, Porkypine wrote:

Jerry,

Byron York has a great deal more on the CIA’s – actually, on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s – defiance of the House Intel Committee, tying it into an overall effort to delegitimize the President-Elect as “Russian-backed.”

On December 9th, “President Obama… ordered the Intelligence Community to finish a review of allegations of Russian election hacking by the time Obama leaves office on Jan. 20.”

Then “on Dec. 12, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saying, in effect: Why didn’t you tell us? Why do we have to learn about this in the media? Nunes demanded the DNI brief the Intel Committee on the Russia situation no later than Dec. 16.”

“It didn’t happen. First, DNI flatly refused Nunes’ request. And then, included in an announcement that it would not brief the Electoral College, the DNI also announced it would offer no more briefings to lawmakers until after the Obama-ordered report is finished next year.”

The piece then goes into considerable detail on why “the bottom line is many Republicans who follow intelligence issues closely are convinced the White House is going to drop an intensely political document in January, the intended effect of which will be to delegitimize the election of Trump.”

My view: It’s a preemptive strike on Trump by partisan Dem intel bureaucrats, aimed at beating him right at the start of the fight to redirect their agencies to support the new Administration’s policies.

(After all, that worked so well for Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor!)

I’ve said before that Trump will need to go through the agencies with fire and sword to root out Dem partisan activists before he can get anything much done.

Now these people seem to be doing their best to persuade him he has no other choice. Smart? Not if they don’t win decisively at the start. If they get him mad and it turns into a prolonged war of attrition… Just ask Admiral Yamamoto how well that worked out.

Read the whole thing. It’s at

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-intel-report-wont-end-russia-hacking-fight/article/2609959

Porkypine

Paul Krugman is now a Deficit Hawk

Jerry,

Things have changed a lot in 2 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days. Paul Krugman is now a Deficit Hawk! — It’s a miracle!

The Tea Party can now proudly hold the banner: “We love Paul Krugman!”

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Time to Borrow, Paul Krugman AUG. 8, 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/time-to-borrow.html>

“….Right now there is an overwhelming case for more government borrowing…..”

Debt, Diversion, Distraction, Paul Krugman, October 22, 2016 <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/debt-diversion-distraction/?_r=0>

“…. So, about that supposed debt crisis: right now we have a more or less stable ratio of debt to GDP, and no hint of a financing problem. So claims that we are facing something terrible rest on the presumption that the budget situation will worsen dramatically over time. How sure are we about that? Less than you may imagine…..”

Deficits Matter Again, Paul Krugman JAN. 9, 2017 < http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/opinion/deficits-matter-again.html>

“…. Those apocalyptic warnings are still foolish: America, which borrows in its own currency and therefore can’t run out of cash, isn’t at all like Greece. But running big deficits is no longer harmless, let alone desirable…..”

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