Saturday, December 17, 2016

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

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

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

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

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

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Well, if it’s not one thing it’s another.

First, I couldn’t hear. I got COSTCO to look at my hearing aids, but they didn’t do much, and I still couldn’t hear. Next I got my son Phillip, who has just retired from the Navy and who’s visiting for the week, to take me out to Kaiser urgent care, where a nurse spent half an hour flushing wax out of my ears. The left ear was so blocked that I heard nothing at all in it, and the right wasn’t a lot better. Now the left hears with the hearing aid about as well as it ever did, so the wax buildup was definitely responsible; but the right, normally my good ear, hears more without the hearing aid than with it. That’s good news, since I hear things about as well as I did before the hearing aids, and getting them was great; so if they can’t fix this one, I’ll buy new ones.

I expect they’re out of warranty, but they have lasted over three years, so the annual cost is $600 a year, and believe me, hearing is worth that. So Monday I’ll get Mike Galloway to drive me out to COSTCO and see what they can do; and I’ll pay a lot more heed to wax buildups in future.

Today Eugene, my main machine, had a small and unannounced upgrade of the operating system. It was unexpected; I thought Firefox was acting very slow, and decided to restart, which seemed to go well although it did take longer than I expected. When it came up there was some kind of very brief announcement in the lower right hand corner of the screen to the effect that we just had an upgrade. The screen lock display was what I expected to see. I hit RETURN and the screen went black, but there was the little window demanding the password. I gave it and there was what we used to call the tray, now called the taskbar, and the desktop icons, but the screen was black; no picture. Just a black screen with icons on it. No wallpaper.

I punched in ‘wallpaper’ and was told to go to ‘change the picture on your lock screen’, which of course did nothing. The main screen was still black. Eventually I figured it out. Microsoft no longer recognizes ‘wallpaper’; it’s now the ‘background screen’. If you ask for that you get the right place in the settings. Mine was set to ‘black’. Now I have never set my wallpaper or background screen to black, so the minor upgrade must have done it for me. And there are no more ‘apply’ and ’ok’ buttons on that settings screen; you close it with the x in the upper right hand corner and apparently it knows to apply changes you made in the settings. That did it. An hour wasted, with an upgrade I hadn’t asked for making settings changes I didn’t want.

At which point I still couldn’t just sit down and work. We have a couple, Ryan and Kelly, who have moved in upstairs and take care of Roberta who isn’t recovering from her stroke as fast as I managed to; and of course I am still mostly in a walker, so while she could manage without 24 hour a day help taking care of me, I can’t do that for her. But they need some time off, so we have a health care agency send out a helper for the weekend to give them a break; only today the agency girl’s sister was in a car accident, and Alex had to drive her to the hospital and arrange to get someone else while Phillip and I looked after Roberta. All’s well, but if it’s not one thing it’s another…

So that got settled and now I could work; but I looked away from the screen and when I looked back Eugene had shut down and there was this blue screen telling me not to turn my computer off, it was updating, 18% done… All in all, another half hour or so. I never told it to restart, it just did. Eventfully it was done, and I typed in the password and up came “Hi” and the rest of that, and a couple of minutes later I could use Eugene. Both the lock screen and the background screen were what I expected to see, and all was well, but by then it was near dinnertime, and the new Agency girl was here.

So now it’s after dinner, Eugene works well, I have a new build, my settings were not changed, and all’s well. Oh. Sometime in the last month the spell checker started offering me words with definitions as alternatives to what Word thinks are misspelled words, as opposed to a simple list of words it thinks I might have meant. I never asked for that and don’t want it, but I wasn’t told it was coming and of course I don’t know how to turn it off and go back to the old ways. One more thing to use up my time; Microsoft wants to slow productivity.

And the ‘low battery’ alarm just went off in one of my hearing aids. If it’s not one thing it’s another…

The furor over the Russian hacks continues, and President Obama says he holds Mr. Putin responsible because at least one member of the intelligence community says it must have been Putin’s responsibility. I don’t recall Mr. Clapper saying that, and Clapper is by law the only one authorized to speak for the ‘intelligence community’, but I suppose the President is above that law. Mr. Obama says he will retaliate ate a time and place of his choosing. President Eisenhower used to say that during the Cold War, but he meant it, and has SAC to carry it out; not sure the United States has escalation dominance at all levels any more.

Eisenhower meant nuclear war if the Red Army crossed into West Germany. He did not intervene in the Russian suppression of Hungary. We left that land to its cruel masters, as we left the Czechs. And the Hungarians acted like Poles, the Poles acted like Czechs, and the Czechs acted like swine in 1956, while the US suppressed the Anglo-French-Israeli operation to seize the Suez Canal; peace was bought with bitter fruit in those days.

I don’t know what Mr. Obama has I mind, but he does not have long to do it.

I met Gary Kasparov in Moscow in 1989, and we had dinner twice. He was very young then, younger than I thought he was, but I was impressed with the breadth and depth of his understanding. He has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal:

The U.S.S.R. Fell—and the World Fell Asleep

Twenty-five years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, plenty of repressive regimes live on. Today, the free world no longer cares.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-r-felland-the-world-fell-asleep-1481930888

By

Garry Kasparov

A quarter-century ago, on Dec. 25, 1991, as the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned after a final attempt to keep the Communist state alive, I was so optimistic for the future. That year and the years leading up to that moment were a period when anything felt possible. The ideals of freedom and democracy seemed within the reach of the people of the Soviet Union.

I remember the December evening in 1988 when I was having dinner with friends and my mother in Paris. My family and I still lived in Baku, capital of the then-Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, where I was raised, but I had become accustomed to unusual freedoms since becoming the world chess champion in 1985. I was no longer accompanied by KGB minders everywhere I went, although my whereabouts were always tracked. Foreign travel still required special approval, which served to remind every Soviet citizen that this privilege could be withdrawn at any time.

My status protected me from many of the privations of life in the Soviet Union, but it did not tint my vision rose. Instead, my visits to Western Europe confirmed my suspicions that it was in the U.S.S.R. where life was distorted, as in a funhouse mirror.

That night in Paris was a special one, and we were joined by the Czech-American director Miloš Forman via a mutual friend, the Czech-American grandmaster Lubomir Kavalek. We were discussing politics, of course, and I was being optimistic as usual. I was sure that the Soviet Union would be forced to liberalize socially and economically to survive.

Mr. Forman played the elder voice of reason to my youthful exuberance. I was only 25, while he had lived through what he saw as a comparable moment in history. He cautioned that he had seen similar signs of a thaw after reformer Alexander Dubček had become president in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Eight months after Dubček’s election, his reforms ended abruptly as the U.S.S.R. sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and occupied the country. Many prominent Czechs, like Messrs. Forman and Kavalek, fled abroad.

“Gorbachev’s perestroika is another fake,” Mr. Forman warned us about the Soviet leader’s loosening of state controls, “and it will end up getting more hopeful people killed.” I insisted that Mr. Gorbachev would not be able to control the forces he was unleashing. Mr. Forman pressed me for specifics: “But how will it end, Garry?”

I replied—specifics not being my strong suit—that “one day, Miloš, you will wake up, open your window, and they’ll be gone.”[snip]

In Moscow I saw no handlers or people following us, but Garry made it clear that there probably were some. We talked of the coming changes in the USSR, and in those times all hoped for Mr. Gorbachev’s reforms; none of us knew that the Soviet Union itself would be gone on the third Christmas yet.

I lost track of Garry during the years after the collapse of the USSR, as did a lot of Cold Warriors. Liberals and NeoCons saw farther into the future, or thought they did. It would be the end of history, the final triumph of liberal democracy, and it would happen soon.

[snip]

A year after that 1988 dinner in Paris, Miloš Forman called me from Prague. He said, “Garry, you were right. I opened the window one morning and they were gone.”

Within two years, the U.S.S.R. would also vanish beneath my feet. Yet 25 years later, the thugs and despots are flourishing once again. They still reject liberal democracy and the free market—not because of a competing ideology like communism, but because they understand that those things are a threat to their power.

The internet was going to connect every living soul and shine a light into the dark corners of the world. Instead, the light has reflected back to illuminate the hypocrisy and apathy of the most powerful nations in the world. Crimea is annexed, Ukraine is invaded, ISIS is rallying, Aleppo is laid waste, and not a one of us can say that we did not know. We can say only that we did not care.

Globalization has made it easy for the enemies of the free world to spread their influence in ways the Soviet leadership couldn’t have imagined, while the West has lost the will to defend itself and its values. It’s enough to make you afraid to open the window.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-r-felland-the-world-fell-asleep-1481930888

The Cold War ended, and we had won. I like to think we Cold Warriors did our part. But Garry thinks the West no longer cares.

I do not see how this weakened United States, this weakened NATO, this Western Civilization that has lost its nerve, its resolve, and its self confidence can do more. But I can still hear Garry, speaking slowly but in a strong voice, in that Moscow restaurant in 1989, still in the USSR.. He is still worth listening to.

    But first we must rebuild the West, and to do that we need to make America strong again.  Without American strength, little is possible.

 

Free Trade

P.M. Lawrence seeks to make my arguments for free trade “circular” by smuggling in and attributing a premise to me that I did not assume or state, and will not concede: namely, that redistributionism and federal government interference in the economy are or can ever be moral, or that they are at least a necessary evil.
It is true, unfortunately, that tariffs have been part of the American landscape since colonial times, and were authorized by the Constitution, a holdover from the misguided mercantilist period, and that this compromised free trade in this country from the beginning. But the early American economy, much like the modern economy, was soon creating, exporting, and importing new products faster than the government could interfere with their commerce, and but for that we would never have attained the preeminence that we did by the mid-twentieth century. Rather than turning to government to protect obsolescent and no longer viable industries, while provoking economically devastating retaliation, and ultimately war, it would have been far better to remedy this flaw in the Constitution by passing an amendment getting the government out of the business of protectionism altogether – a business that has nothing to do with promoting industry or the economic well-being of the people at large, and everything to do with the influence peddling rackets that are the principal business of the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, and that serve only to promote the well-heeled special interests that can afford the necessary bribes.
I unequivocally reject the presumption that it is either moral or necessary to use government coercion to force anyone to contribute to the welfare of others whom they don’t even know, and may not wish to help even if they knew them. And it is certainly illegal (because unconstitutional) to do this at the federal level. We had none of this welfare claptrap in this country before FDR’s “New Deal”, which he pushed through with demagoguery as a necessary antidote to the supposed failure of capitalism, when the 1920s stock market bubble (much like the many financial bubbles of our era) was caused by the federal government itself, specifically by the Federal Reserve (established in 1913) exceeding its legal mandate as a last resort liquidity provider by providing unconstitutional credits to foreigners to promote domestic industry that needed no promotion beyond its own excellence, which counterfeit money flowed instead into the US stock market, causing the bubble (the exact same game is being played today, and it will have the same outcome by and by). We were then set up for an indefinite depression by another branch of government: the passage in 1930 of the highly protectionism Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which predictably, led to further economic misery for the average American, and ultimately to war.
How any of this can be considered moral, or even justified by the most liberal interpretation of the general welfare clause, I fail to see.
During the first 150 years of the US, when it rose from Third World status to parity in the early 20th century with the most prosperous nations of the world, there was no welfare crisis and no jobs crisis, except in the “reconstructed” South – and that too was an economic disaster caused by an overweening federal government. Not only did no one starve, not only was their work for anyone who wanted it, but the US was able to welcome and accommodate an enormous population of immigrants, and even benefit from those immigrants, all without government welfare programs.
Americans have always been the most generous people, and even today, in an economy crushed by taxation and regulation, there are plenty of private charities and initiatives to help those in need. And without government appropriating and mostly wasting more than half of all our incomes through taxation at various levels, and inflation that has been averaging better than 5%/year for the last 20 years regardless of what the heavily doctored CPI index says, we would be able to be far more generous, not only with our money, but with our time. As it is, since the 1970s, when taxation and inflation became so onerous that wives as well as husbands had to go to work to make ends meet, we have seen a massive rise in social pathology, especially in disadvantaged black communities whose economic circumstances had been improving faster than those of whites during the 1940s and 1950s before Johnson’s disastrous “Great Society” programs began preempted private self-help efforts.
The social welfare externalities that P.M. Lawrence thinks I’m not taking into consideration are the direct consequence of the costs of government redistributionism – high taxes, inflation, regulation, and yes, protectionism. The abolition of all forms of protectionism, and an open invitation to “dumping” would be one of the best things that could be done for those Americans who are struggling the most to make ends meet – stretching their Wal-Mart dollars further – and, if accompanied by less regulation and lowered taxes on small businesses and startups, ultimately by opening up higher paying jobs to many of them in the many kinds of new personal service businesses that are crying to be created.
John B. Robb

I am sure Dr. Friedman would agree with most of what you say. Still, will there not be many who simply cannot contribute? A true proletariat: a class that contributes only its prodigy?

Russia’s role in political hacks: What’s the debate?

https://www.cnet.com/news/russias-role-in-political-hacks-whats-the-debate/?ftag=CAD090e536&bhid=21042754377865639731827326151938

The US is wrestling with what we really know about hacks during the presidential campaigns. Here’s why it’s so hard to pin down — and why it matters.

Never mind voters. In the 2016 US presidential election, the biggest force for change may have been hackers.

At least, that’s the way things are shaping up as we learn more details about the hacks, which focused on publicly releasing emails and other strategy documents reportedly written by key Democrats and party officials, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Everyone, from the US’s leading spy agencies and politicians to the public at large, is caught up in disagreement about who the hackers are and what they wanted to accomplish.

The past two weeks have brought five separate calls from Congress for investigations to learn how much the hacks really influenced the elections. Add to that public comments this week by the White House, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of State on who knew Russia was involved and when. What’s more, stories from the New York Times and Washington Post hint at disagreements between the CIA and the FBI over why Russia conducted the hacks.

To round it all off, one notable public figure is arguing we don’t know for sure that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, were behind the hacks: President-elect Donald Trump. He maintains that opinion, even though the US intelligence community and the forensic experts who first examined the hacked systems are highly confident Russia is the bad guy here. NBC News reported Wednesday that US intelligence officials believe “with a high level of confidence” that Putin was personally involved in the effort to interfere in the election.

President Barack Obama has little doubt the Russians were behind the hacks. And in an interview with NPR published Friday, he said that the US would respond.

“When any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action,” Obama said. “And we will — at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”

The Russian government, in turn, has called the US accusations groundless. “They should either stop talking about that or produce some proof at last,” said a spokesman for Putin, according to CNN, citing Russian state news agency Tass.

The debate has now shifted from what happened to why, with questions over how much a foreign power might have influenced this year’s divisive and controversial presidential election. The thing is, we never learn all the details.

“There’s no sign in a computer saying, ‘Haha, we’re the Russians — we did it!'” said Sumit Argawal, a former senior adviser for cyber innovation in the US Department of Defense. Argawal now serves as vice president of product at cybersecurity company Shape Security. “There has to be an interpretation and a judgment rendered by experts.”

But, as I understand it, there are “signs” indicating that the Russians were there. The question becomes, why? Surely the Russians do not have to leave signs; yet someone did. If the Russians, why? Why would they want us to know they had hacked into DNC computers, or Hillary’s basement server? And if they did not want us to know, was that sheer incompetence on their part? Hard to believe. It is easier to believe in false flags than blind international incompetence.

Russian hacking

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I think you may be dismissing Russian hacking too quickly. Set the U.S. election aside: one of my news sources is the (London) Times, which I read partly because as far as I can tell it’s outside any of our U.S. echo chambers. For some months now I’ve been reading news from the U.K. about Russian attempts to undermine confidence in Western representative governments. Apart from hacking, Russian “news” outlets in the U.K. frequently float fake news casting doubt on things like British elections, trusting that some of it will be picked up under the “people are saying” category and enter the legitimate news stream.
This has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. It has to do with whether Western citizens have any confidence in their own system, and whether other world cultures see Western representative government as worth emulating.
I’m also reading, in the Times, reports that Germany is concerned about Russian attempts to mess with German elections. This is not just about us; we are not necessarily the center of the universe. It is about a government which prefers autocracy, and would like to restore the Russian empire; and which sees us as an impediment.
In this context, I take reports of Russian hacking rather seriously. Obviously, since anything like this is clandestine, it’s going to be hard to document conclusively. But I’m quite confident that governments which *can* engage in internet subversion probably *will*; remember the episode of the Iranian centrifuges. As you know, Putin has a rather long history, rooted in the KGB. I see no reason to believe his protestations of innocence.
And quite apart from Putin: in the long run, the interests of the Russian state are not ours, and some of this is zero-sum. Yes, I know it’s in the interests of the Democratic Party to find excuses for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. (Personally, I suspect the Democrats’ abandonment of the labor movement is the biggest factor.) But that’s not particularly relevant. It would, I believe, be a dangerous error to see the reports of hacking through a partisan lens. I suspect we are under attack. And it would be unwise to close our eyes.
Yours,
Allen

After Reading the Mail

After reading the mail, I found one article interesting and a few lines — if true — make it possible for us to put this Russian hacking inquest to rest:

<.>

An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

“ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent,” said one of the three U.S. officials. “Of course they can’t, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA’s analysis – a deductive assessment of the available intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said.

</>

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-intelligence-idUSKBN14204E?il=0

ODNI failed to comment, but some other official has an opinion. So let’s ignore that opinion and move on to the FBI saying that it won’t accept the case because it won’t stand up in court. Well, that being the case, it probably isn’t any good to use domestically is it? It’s not as if CIA is operating overseas where American legal standards are not necessarily employed. Basically, CIA’s assessment does not meet American legal standards according to FBI and now ODNI. ODNI stood behind other intelligence assessments but will not comment on this one beyond saying they cannot agree with CIA. That’s about as much distance as you’re going to see between ODNI and CIA, publicly, under most conditions.

And the basis of CIA’s belief that Russia hacked the DNC and RNC?

<.>

The CIA conclusion was a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked,” one of the three officials said on Monday.

“(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” the official added.

</>

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-intelligence-idUSKBN14204E?il=0

CIA thinks that Russia doesn’t like Clinton very much and must be part of that vast conspiracy against her that we heard about during her campaign. And this is being used to influence the electoral college?

Something is not right here..

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Comey Says No Russian Influence

The Intelligence Community has a consensus on Russia hacking the election, somehow. We’re not told how; we’re not given evidence.

It’s the bogeyman, we are told. FBI Director Comey is in charge of the Intelligence Branch, which is one of the 16 entities under ODNI that constitute the IC. What does he think?

<.>

In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the emails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

</>

https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/comey-fbi-russia-trump/2016/12/14/id/764008/

So, we have no consensus because here is one less than 16. And, let’s consider FBI is in charge of counterintelligence and operates domestically. So, if they are not seeing any Russian interference, who else is doing domestic intelligence?

CIA is not supposed to be doing domestic intelligence according to NSC

2/1 and related directives. However, according to EO13470, CIA now has responsibility for counterintelligence. This is an interesting shift. So, CIA’s opinion is valid in this matter — I just found this out today. I wasn’t aware of EO 13470.

As I said the other day, most of the other entities have nothing to do with counterintelligence, electronic intelligence, or signals intelligence and would have no professional opinion. That FBI does not see something here and CIA does is significant. Someone is wrong and someone needs to adjust.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Trump & Putin

Trump is “making friends” w/Putin because Russia is all but a basket case, economically, in addition to being in a demographic death spiral. If there’s any kind of clear signal coming from Trump’s nominee picks so far, it’s that energy will be a major focus. When Trump unleashes America’s energy economy, it will bankrupt Russia. Trump is pulling an anti-Nixon – getting closer to the lesser threat (Russia vice China) in order to counter-balance the now greater threat (China vice Russia).

Vlad would be wiser to start worrying about Chinese moving north across that ill-defined Siberian boundary.

Hoping all trends are positive w/you & yours,

Icepilot
Port Ludlow, WA

And China continues its threats in the seas off the Philippines

World’s first SF novel

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I saw this in the Smithsonian:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/intergalactic-battle-ancient-rome-180961416/#Z7P9upgXbhhqj9Rs.01

”

The Intergalactic Battle of Ancient Rome

Hundreds of years before audiences fell in love with Star Wars, one writer dreamt of battles in space

image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/aa/41/aa4163fc-5858-4be8-8023-ded44b977eb8/spiders-in-space-wr.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg

Lucian’s space travelers witness a battle between the forces of the Sun and the Moon, which includes outlandish creatures like three-headed vultures and space spiders. (Lucian’s True History, Illustrated by Willian Strang, J. B. Clark and Aubrey Beardsley. A.H.

Bullen, 1894)

By Lorraine Boissoneault

SMITHSONIAN.COM

DECEMBER 14, 2016

82 19 2 6 9 4 282

8219692282

A long time ago, in a world not so far away, a young man who longed for adventure was swept up in a galactic war. Forced to choose between two sides in the deadly battle, he befriended a group of scrappy fighters who captained… three-headed vultures, giant fleas and space spiders?

Nearly 2,000 years before George Lucas created his epic space opera Star Wars, Lucian of Samosata (a province in modern-day Turkey) wrote the world’s first novel featuring space travel and interplanetary battles. True History was published around 175 CE during the height of the Roman Empire. Lucian’s space adventure features a group of travelers who leave Earth when their ship is thrown into the sky by a ferocious whirlwind. After seven days of sailing through the air they arrive on the Moon, only to learn its inhabitants are at war with the people of the Sun. Both parties are fighting for control of a colony on the Morning Star (the planet we today call Venus). The warriors for the Sun and Moon armies travel through space on winged acorns and giant gnats and horses as big as ships, armed with outlandish weapons like slingshots that used enormous turnips as ammunition. Thousands die during the battle, and blood “[falls] upon the clouds, which made them look of a red color; as sometimes they appear to us about sun-setting,”

So one part Gulliver’s travels (complete with political satire), one part Odyssey, one part imaginative romp. It’s a pity he lived before there were Hugo awards.

The Smithsonian happily included a link to the English translation.

https://archive.org/details/lucianstruehisto00luciiala

Respectfully,

Brian P.

There goes Mary Shelley’s record…

I had heard of the writer, but not this work.

 

 

Police: NYC Muslim woman’s claim of attack by Trump supporters was false

A Muslim woman who reported that three men taunted her aboard a New York City subway train, yelling “Donald Trump” and calling her a terrorist, has apparently made it all up. Police say 18-year-old Yasmin Seweid was arrested Wednesday on charges of filing a false report and obstructing governmental administration.

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

On 12/13/2016 8:17 AM, Porkypine wrote:

> Jerry,

> 

> In the realm of drawing logical conclusions from sparse facts, where I

> occasionally have my moments…

> 

> RE:

> 

>> Napolitano: NSA hacked Clinton emails after revelation of secrets

>> 

>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZWkjQn5oo

>> 

>> Take with whatever size grain of salt you prefer.

> 

> I had this as my second most likely explanation months ago, but I

> lacked confirmation from any “30-year NSA official.” Judge Napolitano

> is now a media figure, to a considerable degree provocative by

> profession, but not previously prone to simply making such things up.

> I may now have to bump this theory up to number one. (Albeit still a

> ways from proven, as one “30-year NSA official” could easily have his

> own axes to grind, or simply be mistaken.)

> 

> FWIW, my previous leading likely explanation was that a deeply angered

> Sanders supporter might have contracted out the DNC hack. (In the

> nature of such things it would then be entirely possible the

> contractor would be Russian-connected.)

> 

> On a related subject, it strikes me that Trump’s recently expressed

> disdain for his daily intel briefings as overly repetitious quite

> likely relates to Obama’s reported campaign to influence Trump to

> overturn as little as possible of O’s “legacy”.

> 

> The tell: As part of saying Trump really should swallow his daily

> briefings like a good boy, Obama just (apparently gratuitously)

> asserted straight-faced that intel has been kept utterly separate from

> politics these last eight years.

> 

> Oh, really? I assume you saw the numerous reports from mid-level

> intel types a few months back of word coming down the chain of command

> not to contradict the preferred narrative in Iraq and Afghanistan.

> 

> I take Obama’s gratuitous and massively disingenuous claim that intel

> is NOT being politicized as a strong hint he’s politicizing Trump’s

> daily briefings for all he’s worth. Else, why say that? Trump has

> not said a thing about tendentious politicization of those briefings,

> just that they’re somewhat repetitious. (If I’m right, this was

> remarkably diplomatic of him.)

> 

> Viewed in this context, both the CIA’s (alleged) well-beyond-the-facts

> position that Russia actively intended to elect Trump and the leak of

> it also look like a direct bureaucratic challenge to him. General

> Flynn is already on public record that the CIA is overly politicized.

> Conventional wisdom is that nobody wins, alligator-wrestling the CIA.

> We may soon get to see if that’s true.

> 

> Porkypine

 

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

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

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

James Burnham

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

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

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

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

I wish I could return all my Apple devices for refunds. Actually, that isn’t true; I like my Apple iPhone 6, and I’ll keep it; but the iPad is far more trouble than it’s worth, and the MacBook Pro, while useful, suffers from the same security mania that makes the iPad useless. I can’t even install free apps on the iPad. I tell it to install; it asks for my Apple account password; I go find that and mistype it, but eventually I get it right; whereupon it tells ,me it has sent a security number to a trusted device. I go looking for trusted devices. Naturally they have to be Apple. Eventually I remember that the iPhone is an Apple device and I trust it, and lo! I find there is a message with a code number. I type that into the iPad. It is rejected. I try again. Still rejected.

I give up. I have an iPad with almost no apps because it takes all afternoon and another Apple device to get an app for it, and that doesn’t work because – I don’t know why. It took me a while to figure out that the trusted device was the iPhone; could the delay be it.? I suppose I will have to go to the Apple Store and see if anyone can fix this, but at this season that’s not a practical thing to do, and I’m not really all that mobile at my age anyway.

I thought the Surface Pro was a fussbudget and it is, but it’s got to be better than having to own two Apple devices before you can use one of them, and then having them send you a security number that doesn’t work, with no instruction as to what to do next. Congratulations. My iPad is now so secure I can’t use it, and I don’t know what to do next.

I like the MacBook Pro. I like the keyboard. But the security paranoia with the need for two devices to do the most trivial tasks like installing a free app is too much for me. And the message with the code seems to have vanished from the iPhone now; it’s neither in mail nor in messages. I suppose I must have dreamed it?

Roland tells me

Steve Sailer cites you in Taki’s Magazine.

<http://takimag.com/article/bordering_on_success_steve_sailer/print>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I didn’t find the reference in my first look, but then I got

Dr Pournelle,

You were mentioned in an article by Steve Sailor in Takimag today, referencing your 

“At the end of the 1990s, as the Clinton administration gave the green light to American firms to shut down their plants and subcontract with China, I became intrigued by sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle’s compromise suggestion that Congress simply impose a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports. This might be enough to make corporations at least think twice about laying Americans off. And a flat tariff would reduce the kind of political corruption that traditionally accompanied setting tariffs.”
http://takimag.com/article/bordering_on_success_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4SqbIjVSu

Matt Kirchner

I wrote that in quick response to Walmart’s efforts to get their suppliers to go manufacture stuff in Mexico because it would be cheaper to make there and import it; that way Walmart could charge lower prices, and the government could pick up all the costs associated with lost jobs, welfare, unemployment, and the rest of it. I also stopped going to Walmart, which I suspect they never noticed. It does seem a quick and dirty solution to many of the Free Trade problems. It is very likely that some kind of unrestricted Free Trade will result in lower consumer prices, at the cost of higher unemployment, a larger welfare burden, some social problem, and community disruption. Precisely how those costs balance out I can’t say, but a 10% tariff on all imports of any kind would seem a good first step. Of course it will never happen. Lobbyists will seek exceptions, and pretty soon we’ll have an enormous tome describing the customs and import fees; but perhaps we could try?

Which brings us to:

Your recent post https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/modern-times and other protectionism issues

I have researched the area for a monograph someone commissioned, and I have been trying to boil down something readable from that to send you, now that you have been covering the area. Meanwhile, I can give you some things relating to John B. Robb’s points at https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/modern-times.

The points he calls fallacious, in Keegan’s and Lincoln’s earlier stuff, aren’t so much fallacious as only complete and accurate in special cases – special cases that don’t obtain as, when and if the conditions for free trade theory hold. But he can’t use that to rebut Keegan and Lincoln because that builds in a hidden circular argument, i.e. that the conditions for free trade theory do hold now, whether here in Australia or where you are in the U.S.A., and that is the very thing that is at issue. It isn’t “settled science” after all. As it happens, many of the conditions for Lincoln to be right did apply in his time and place, though it would be wrong to take his position as universally applicable. (I can’t substantiate much if any of this here and now, for reasons of length; it will have to wait for my fuller

material.)

John B. Robb is getting distracted when he responds to “Shylock Holmes’s argument that free trade is contrary to the interests of many individuals”, that you linked to. It’s perfectly correct, as Robb points out, that the same is true of any business that does less well or any person who doesn’t make the best of things, and that none of this leads to any of those deserving being bailed out.

But there are two things he has slid past without noticing:-

– There isn’t just a moral case for welfare, there’s also a pragmatic one, the same one that brought in the Elizabethan Poor Laws and Bismarck’s welfarism (I think I touched on this area in earlier economics material I sent you). If you don’t buy off trouble that way, you get trouble a different way as crime of necessity goes up, the whole “nine meals away from anarchy” thing that is nearly proverbial.

So if you don’t buy off trouble you have to pay for policing or put up with even more damaging kinds of crime. Bearing that in mind, one important question isn’t so much whether protectionism is less efficient than free trade without the cost of welfare as whether it is more efficient than free trade with the cost of welfare, if you are going to be keeping people out of dire poverty one way or another anyway (or paying anyway, for not doing that).

– There’s a circular argument hidden in his own argument there too.

Yes, none of the losers under free trade deserve compensation in the same way that they would if they had things they owned taken. But the very fact that they don’t own the resources is part of what is damaged, if there is damage. It is what socialises the losses in the first place – yet his argument assumes a properly functioning market, so that there can be no such damage. Not only is that “bad” in a pragmatic sense, by allowing net losses through the externalities involved, from some perspectives it is unethical too, i.e. it is wrong that there isn’t that ownership; in fact, that is just precisely where Distributists are coming from (and I know you know something about them). Adam Smith’s first use of his “hidden hand” phrase was in arguing that the self interest of businessmen wouldn’t let them offshore their business as they wouldn’t be able to oversee it properly if they did (there wasn’t so much “corporate veil” then, which ties in to this whole issue of alienation of individuals from ownership – but, again, I have to leave that for the fuller material).

Shylock Holmes himself did observe that compensation often isn’t provided, but he is slightly in error in thinking that it can be in principle if free trade delivers. He is looking at a situation involving just two countries, and things get a lot weirder when three or more are involved, particularly when financial structures stop it being plain barter and/or there are absentee ownership mechanisms (and there are). In particular, a country might not have the option of free trade with compensating welfare after all, if it can’t access the gainers in other countries to get them to pay for it (think “Mexico will pay for the [fill in the blank]”). But again, that needs that fuller treatment I mentioned…

May I close by wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and improvements in health? I’ve just had a few health problems of my own, so I do sympathise.

Yours sincerely,

P.M.Lawrence

There is considerable food for thought in this, including a revival of thinking about distributism. The first thing to understand about distributism is that it is not another excuse for confiscation and reward for the confiscators. The goal is not to enrich the recipients, but to distribute the means by which they can become independent of the wage system. This is a complex subject, and one we don’t have time and space for here. One example: widely distributed – available at low or no cost – education is a form of distributism, but as it is usually carried out it produces yet one more center of power, ships that exist to serve their crews, and bureaucracy. I for one would like to see education distributed back to local school districts run by the people whose children go to the schools and the taxpayers who support them. This would require ending Federal Aid to Education and the whole national education apparatus; not because it never does any good, because of course you can find examples to refute that, but because it has created a system of education indistinguishable from an act of war against the American people. Local school districts would undoubtedly produce some truly horrible school systems, and once did; but it will also produce some splendid school systems, such as the California public school system in the early part of the 20^th Century – see the California Sixth Grade Reader of that era, and compare with your child’s present eighth grade reader.

Which takes us a long way from Free Trade. And I still think a 10% – 15% universal tariff on imported goods would be the simplest way of preserving jobs without imposing too much needless interference with the economy.

I will continue to worry about the assault on the election until the Congress, in January, formally certifies the results of the Electoral College voting and Trump becomes not just President-Designate as he is now, and the actual President Elect of the United States. Porkypine has more to say on that:

Electoral College Fix Attempt?

Jerry,

The “Moscow hacked the DNC to elect Trump” story is a nothingburger if you dig. Russian-origin hacking code was allegedly used against the DNC, which if you know anything about these things proves precisely nothing.

Among the non-Kremlin possibilities that covers: Russian merc hackers hired by third parties, non-Russian hackers who recycled the code from the wild, or for that matter a false-flag op by any one of the large number of non-Russian groups with reason to spoke Hillary’s wheels.

(Some of the possibilities on that last list aren’t even foreign, if you think about who might be that mad over what the DNC did to Bernie, or about what Hillary did to US classified document safeguards in general.)

The CIA officially seems to have very little to say about this. The “story” is apparently based on anonymous CIA leaks. At which point I’d assign it no more credibility than all the other traumatized Hillaryite eruptions we’re seeing. (I’ve had an old and dear and otherwise rational friend explain straightfaced to me that it’s 1933 all over again and he’s rededicating his life to fighting this second coming of the NSDAP. This seems a common delusion just now; I doubt CIA-employed Hillaryite Dems are immune.)

Yet the MSM is riding this for all it’s worth, lack of facts be damned.

And now John Podesta, Chairman of the Clinton Campaign, is calling for the Electoral College to be briefed on “President-elect Donald Trump’s ties with Russia” before they vote a week from now.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/309981-clinton-campaign-supports-demand-for-intelligence-briefing

This strikes me as no longer funny – indeed, way over the line.

Reality-impacted progressives in overshared-denial mode have been good for quite a bit of cheap amusement. But now we have the losing campaign manager publicly calling for Federal interference with the Electoral College before it votes, backed by a fact-challenged media frenzy. This is AT BEST irresponsible. It needs to be watched closely. In the current climate it could very rapidly cease being funny.

Porkypine

And

Jerry,

In the realm of drawing logical conclusions from sparse facts, where I occasionally have my moments…

RE:

> Napolitano: NSA hacked Clinton emails after revelation of secrets

> 

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZWkjQn5oo

> 

> Take with whatever size grain of salt you prefer.

I had this as my second most likely explanation months ago, but I lacked confirmation from any “30-year NSA official.” Judge Napolitano is now a media figure, to a considerable degree provocative by profession, but not previously prone to simply making such things up. I may now have to bump this theory up to number one. (Albeit still a ways from proven, as one “30-year NSA official” could easily have his own axes to grind, or simply be mistaken.)

FWIW, my previous leading likely explanation was that a deeply angered Sanders supporter might have contracted out the DNC hack. (In the nature of such things it would then be entirely possible the contractor would be Russian-connected.)

On a related subject, it strikes me that Trump’s recently expressed disdain for his daily intel briefings as overly repetitious quite likely relates to Obama’s reported campaign to influence Trump to overturn as little as possible of O’s “legacy”.

The tell: As part of saying Trump really should swallow his daily briefings like a good boy, Obama just (apparently gratuitously) asserted straight-faced that intel has been kept utterly separate from politics these last eight years.

Oh, really? I assume you saw the numerous reports from mid-level intel types a few months back of word coming down the chain of command not to contradict the preferred narrative in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I take Obama’s gratuitous and massively disingenuous claim that intel is NOT being politicized as a strong hint he’s politicizing Trump’s daily briefings for all he’s worth. Else, why say that? Trump has not said a thing about tendentious politicization of those briefings, just that they’re somewhat repetitious. (If I’m right, this was remarkably diplomatic of him.)

Viewed in this context, both the CIA’s (alleged) well-beyond-the-facts position that Russia actively intended to elect Trump and the leak of it also look like a direct bureaucratic challenge to him. General Flynn is already on public record that the CIA is overly politicized.

Conventional wisdom is that nobody wins, alligator-wrestling the CIA.

We may soon get to see if that’s true.

Porkypine

IT IS ALSO WORTHWHILE AIRING THESE:

Russians and the election 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Here is an article which seems to me to be fairly level headed.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/12/13/a_brief_guide_to_russian_hacking_of_the_us_election_132556.html

So here are the conclusions I am drawing, based on my reading:

1) The Russians attempted to influence the election by hacking into servers, then releasing any damaging information publicly.

1A) The Clinton Email server was a ridiculously soft target.

2) These leaks were exclusively targeting Clinton, not Trump.

2A) I infer this is because Trump has not expressed any interest in opposing Russia’s ambitions, while Clinton was responsible for Kosovo.

I’m sure Putin hasn’t forgotten that. She would also be an activist

president, opposing Russian ambitions around the world. Thus, he

acted in Russia’s great power interest.

3) The impact of the leaks was minimal. Very little truly

embarrassing information was leaked. While I don’t know how many

votes were flipped on the basis of wikileaks revelations, I suspect the number is quite small. How many voters in Michigan accessed the wikileaks site themselves? Wouldn’t they get most of their information predigested from news media such as CNN?

So I am willing to agree that Russia attempted to influence our election, and perhaps even succeeded to a marginal degree. But I don’t believe Clinton would have won absent their tampering.

These are my thoughts and conclusions. Do you believe I am wrong at any point? If so, I would appreciate your feedback.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

HERE’S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC – IT’S NOT ENOUGH

Re: HERE’S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC – IT’S NOT ENOUGH

Jerry,

I saw that photo on your site of Roberta at home! ☺

She looks good. Hoping for her continued strong recovery.

Here is an article from The Intercept that I think present a more reasoned analysis than the rabid and transparent “Hillary-got-robbed” meme that is storming through the media presently. Title and plain text link follow.

HERE’S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC – IT’S NOT ENOUGH

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/

Basically, the evidence presented by private firms is wholly inadequate. The “Intelligence Community” is, through one political appointee, allegedly saying “just trust us”. We know that’s a bad idea. Always verify. And there is doubt that the “Intelligence Community” actually holds the opinion claimed, as I think you have already noted. Title and plain text link follow.

Exclusive: Top U.S. spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking – sources

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-intelligence-idUSKBN14204E?il=0

Regards,

George

And from a person I respect:

Russian Hacking Subject

I take the subject of national security seriously. The Russians did their best to make sure Trump would be elected.
1. Trump is a useful puppet. Putin wants to use him to destabilize Europe and to weaken NATO severely enough to take over the Baltic States, Ukraine and Belarus. He won’t stop there if he can get away with the first. He’s already playing footsie with Viktor Orban in Hungary.
2. He hates democracy in general and will do anything and everything to discredit it at every turn.
3. Putin hates Hillary because he believes that she sparked the demonstrations in Moscow against his re-election and the revolution in Ukraine. He cannot accept the fact that outside assistance is not really necessary for people to protest. He sees a meddling hand behind everything; after all, that’s what he would do.

—

Which is the view of some senior career people in one of the branches of the “Intelligence Community”; I put that in quotes for reasons explained in yesterday’s post. Note that by law the only person authorized to speak for the “intelligence community” is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

In a statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

The emails were posted on the well-known WikiLeaks site and two newer sites, DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0, identified as being associated with Russian intelligence.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.

Continue reading the main story

Less often mentioned are US citizens attempting to interfere in Russian elections, including those of Mrs. Clinton opposing Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin is both proud and volatile, and has a long memory.

Russian hacking

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I found your comments on intelligence gathering helpful and informative. Thank you. I would, however, suggest a different perspective.
What I’ve read lately from Mr. Trump includes: Saturday Night Live isn’t funny; “Hamilton” is overrated; the New York Times is failing; Russia will not invade Ukraine; the hacking might have been some guy in New Jersey; he’s really smart, and doesn’t need intelligence briefings; and, actually, he won the popular vote.
Some of these assertions, taken one by one, might be defensible. But do you see a pattern? And what, would you say, is the predictable fate of leaders who cannot hear bad news?
Mr. Trump does not need people telling him he’s right. If he is surrounded by flatterers, this will not be a successful presidency. What he *needs*, is people like General Mattis, who are able to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear, but say it in a way that he can hear it.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

I know for a fact that Mr. Trump always has people around him who will tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, and that he takes the information seriously, although sometimes his public position does not acknowledge that.

As to intelligence briefings, there is only so much time in a day.

Russian Hacking

Jerry,
This, in an article by the New York Times, reported via MSN:
“While there’s no way to be certain of the ultimate impact of the hack, this much is clear: A low-cost, high-impact weapon that Russia had test-fired in elections from Ukraine to Europe was trained on the United States, with devastating effectiveness.” (How Moscow Aimed a Perfect Weapon at the U.S. Election, http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-moscow-aimed-a-perfect-weapon-at-the-us-election/ar-AAlvU8U?li=BBnb7Kz).
How can the same sentence claim that there is no way to be certain of the impact of the hack, and then claim that it was devastatingly effective? I am also astonished that no one is claiming that the Russians spoofed up false documents to taint the election — that would be manipulation. All they did was make public the truth about what the DNC was doing. Can it be considered a manipulation of our election that the electorate was told the truth about one of the political parties involved and the candidate it was supporting? Is it not even more ironic that the truth we were told detailed how the DNC and Clinton colluded to manipulate the democratic process during the Democratic primary?
I do not support hacking or any other cyber-crime. But the people of the United States are missing the real story here, hidden behind all the hand-wringing and finger pointing over the hacking.

If an American newspaper had published the various emails hacked by WikiLeaks and possibly the Russians would it be a crime? Would we insist that the Electoral College be briefed? Is it contended that those were not actually emails on the DNC server?

wrong century? and political statements

Dr. Pournelle,
I took your point, but you wrote “the disaster that befell the Democrats in 1916…” I frequently still type in the wrong century, perhaps indicating some sort of un-writeable muscle memory at work.
I note that some leaders of the “intelligence community” were quite vocal in their opposition to Trump back around the time of the republican convention, and that it was the FBI director and not any Russian group who most influenced the election. Admittedly, it was by the same method: the FBI and “the Russians” both exposed Democrat Party internal electronic documents to scrutiny by the electorate. The current effort is directed to leverage an unlikely but vaguely discussed Electoral College revolt on the outside chance the Democrat party can do what “the Russians” have failed to do — discredit the election. Which is incidentally the opposite of what Mrs. Clinton pledged when she promised to accept the results of the election.
-d

 

General Eisenhower ordered Nixon to stand down even though it was nearly certain that the election of 1960 was seriously affected by fraud. President Eisenhower’s reasoning was that no good could come from encouraging dispute of an election. Of course the establishment is desperate.

Europe: Illegal to Criticize Islam

by Judith Bergman  •  December 12, 2016 at 5:00 am

• While Geert Wilders was being prosecuted in the Netherlands for talking about “fewer Moroccans” during an election campaign, a state-funded watchdog group says that threatening homosexuals with burning, decapitation and slaughter is just fine, so long as it is Muslims who are making those threats, as the Quran tells them that such behavior is mandated.
• “I am still of the view that declaring statistical facts or even sharing an opinion is not a crime if someone doesn’t like it.” – Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, fined 450 euros for writing of a “culture and law based on a violent, intolerant and oppressive religion.”
• In Finland, since the court’s decision, citizens are now required to make a distinction, entirely fictitious, between “Islam” and “radical Islam,” or else they may find themselves prosecuted and fined for “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.”
• As Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” There are extremist Muslims and non-extremist Muslims, but there is only one Islam.

APOD: 2016 December 11 – The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi, 

Jerry

Big spiral out there. Check it out here:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161211.html

This reminded me of the spiral I saw in 1997 when we hiked through the snow to our observatory to see Comet Hale Bopp in our club’s 16-inch Cave Newtonian. The spiral structure we saw that night blew me away. It even impressed my daughter, who was seven years old back then. The spiral structure of IRAS 23166+1655 caused that 20-year-old memory to come shooting up. The only thing is, because of the asymmetric sunlight striking the comet we saw only a fragment of the spiral. It was unique, though. A treasured memory!

PS – about Hale Bopp: http://www.badastronomy.com/bitesize/hbhoods.html

Ed

If you have not seen this, I urge you to look: I can’t explain it.

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

Monday, December 12, 2016

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

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

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

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

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

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

The squabble over who hacked who, and did the Russians try to influence our elections, and who’s going to investigate who seems to be boiling, but there’s very little there. Actually, there’s a lot to worry about, but none of the serious stuff is being talked about at all.

First, there’s the question of who, precisely, is this “Intelligence Community” which may or may not have a consensus about the Russians and their activities and intentions. As far as I know, that “community” doesn’t exist; it certainly didn’t exist back in the days when I was an intelligence consumer. The Army had its intelligence people, the State Department had some, the Navy had its share, and while the Air Forces came late to the game, they managed to come up with Intelligence people as well. The three Service Intelligence organizations were sort of supervised by the Defense Intelligence Agency, headed by a three-star General – the late General Dan Graham was once that general – who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense, and sometimes to the President. It has both humint (spies) and sigint (electronic intercepts) and usually acts as if it doesn’t want anyone to know it exists.

DIA was supposed to work with but not exactly be subordinate to the Central Intelligence Agency, which grew out of the Office of Strategic Services formed during World War II to be a civilian military intelligence and black ops organization. Because it had responsibility for behind the lines resistance people, it learned to work through the case officer/ informant/client/ model, and still does that. In theory it has no jurisdiction over the Caribbean, which Hoover insisted belonged to the FBI along with the United States and all its Territories, but that distinction has been fading. The CIA was supposed to be the primary source of Intelligence for the President, and to have the last word on what the President was told, but it couldn’t always enforce that; the Director of Central Intelligence does not have the authority to forbid anyone from meeting the President, either alone or in an invited group; although some CIA heads are rumored to have tried.

Then there was the NSA, sometimes known as “No Such Agency”, which was formed by Harry Truman from the old Army/Navy codebreaking group of the Army Signal Corps that existed long before either DOD, DIA, or CIA were dreamed of. By law it deals only in Sigint, and does not have any case officers or black ops operatives despite popular TV shows portraying both.

There are others, but this should be enough to make it questionable just how such a diverse group of rivals can be called a community. The Director of Central Intelligence was supposed to calm their squabbles and produce a National Intelligence Estimate, but after the 9/11 disaster, something had to be done.

The something was the creation of the Director of National Intelligence who by law was the head of the Intelligence Community. By law he cannot be either the Director of Central Intelligence – who still runs the CIA but now reports to the DNI – or the DIA or any other intelligence organization. He shares this power with a deputy.

It gets more complex, but that, by law, is the way the “Intelligence Community” comes into being, and the DNI, who has (at least in theory) no spies or hackers or case officers or black ops agents under his direct control is supposed to keep the Community in line and deliver the real poop to the President. Those of you who wonder how anyone possessed of his senses thought that adding another layer at the top could form a community out of a group of rival organizations with radically different origins are permitted to do so. I quote from Wikipedia

 

“Critics say compromises during the bill’s crafting led to the establishment of a DNI whose powers are too weak to adequately lead, manage and improve the performance of the US Intelligence Community.^[6] In particular, the law left the United States Department of Defense in charge of the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). (The limited DNI role in leading the US Intelligence Community is discussed on the Intelligence Community page.)”

One reason for all the complexity comes from the Cold War days: the predecessor of the National Security Agency broke some of the Soviet codes used by Soviet agents in the United States and shared that data with the FBI. Hoover knew that many of the old OSS and State Department Intelligence operatives were communist sympathizers, and did not tell anyone at State or the OSS (which was becoming the CIA) lest the Soviets suspect we were reading their spy reports (which identified some of the Soviet agents in the US.) The knowledge that the old code breakers had actually (partially) broken some of the Soviet unbreakable codes was not made public until the 60’s, and Eisenhower was probably the first President to know about it; Truman was explicitly not told because the Truman White House was thought to be a leaky operation, and any hint that Venona existed would end its usefulness. That’s another and complex story. But it helps explain the mutual distrusts within the Intelligence Community.

We can also add the relatively recent Department of Homeland Security which is trusted by almost none of the traditional intelligence workers, some of whom believe it to be outright incompetent.

Finally, we add that over eight years nearly all the senior people within the “Intelligence Community” have been appointed by the current President, and many of the career people within those agencies do not respect their appointed bosses.

With that background, which is known to anyone who cares to look, we can now look at the claim that the Russians have hacked various electronic sources within the United States. The question is absurd. Of course the Russians listen to any electronic source they can find, as to the Brits, the French, the Swiss, the Chinese, the Nigerians, the Danes, various Arabs, the Israelis, and nearly everyone else including Boy Scout Troops. Some are more successful than others. I can’t comment on the security of government communications between government servers which are said to use security measures comparable to those used by banks to transfer huge sums of money; I can comment on private servers used by government officials for various reasons mostly of convenience – really secure systems are cumbersome – and which are routinely hacked – listened to – by teenage pranksters who buy a script for a few bucks on the dark net and go fishing.

I don’t know personally what scripts were available for the server that sat in the Clinton family home basement; but I am told that several were for sale at various prices; so I would be astonished if there were anyone who seriously wanted to know about the Secretary of State’s emails was denied that knowledge; and from my acquaintance with various members of subsets of the Intelligence Community I’m pretty sure that that server was examined by experts with malicious intents. Certainly anyone in the KGB or GRU who worked for me would have a junior officer whose job was the scan the printouts daily once the first classified document showed up.

One tenet of the intelligence game – at least when I was involved – is that you can rarely get decent intelligence of intentions, so you have to gather everything you can about capabilities, which is the basis of all threat analysis: while intelligence would like to know what you want to do to me, it first needs to know what you can do to me. Of course each of the various rival groups within the nonexistent intelligence community has its own notion about what are the most important threats.

And you don’t have infinite resources. You allocate what you have to do you the most good. Now we can be pretty sure that the Clinton basement server was hacked, after which the hard drive was destroyed, preventing even NSA from discovering just who had got into it; despite the TV wizards at NCIS, shamming the hard drive with a hammer pretty well makes it impossible to recover much from it. In a TV script there would be one little scrap that you can build a plot from, but in actuality it isn’t very likely.

Signals from one server to another san often be recorded as they go by. With enough effort some of that can be read. Is that hacking? The Russian Intelligence Community is itself divided, between the successors of the State Security Committee (KGB) and the military intelligence organization (GRU). Both still exist but I think under different names; the KGB was successor to the ministry if the Interior, and went by MVD, NKVD, and a other names; there was also a party intelligence agency under the Soviets; I believe its assets were mostly absorbed by the KGB, which itself divided into an internal and an external agency, like the British MI 5 and MI5. Of course there are the remains of the old spy nets in the US and Canada; they are officially disbanded, and you can believe as much of that as you want to.

What they don’t have is infinite resources. They have enough to go after the low hanging fruit like a private server used by the Secretary of State, but hacking the Democratic National Committee with a goal of influencing an American election?

Hillary would like an explanation of the disaster that befell the Democrats in 1916 – one other than her candidacy. She hinted at stolen elections in key states, since she won the popular vote. Mr. Trump said a few words about investigating illegal alien voting in Democratic strongholds, and that talk died fast. Then came

Russian Hackers Acted to Aid Trump in Election, U.S. Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-hack.html

From the United States newspaper of record.

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

In the months before the election, it was largely documents from Democratic Party systems that were leaked to the public. Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks.

Republicans have a different explanation for why no documents from their networks were ever released. Over the past several months, officials from the Republican committee have consistently said that their networks were not compromised, asserting that only the accounts of individual Republicans were attacked. On Friday, a senior committee official said he had no comment.[snip]

Of course it is possible that there were no Republican documents worth publishing on the RNC servers? Maybe there were no Republican Congressmen whose wives were senior Trump advisors sending out pictures of their private parts to underage girls? The Director of the FBI concluded that Hillary had put classified information on her basement server – i.e. published to anyone who seriously wanted it – but since she acted without malice it wasn’t really a crime. Then Weiner wagged his photographs, and hacked documents were in the news again, and the head of the FBI – of that part of the Intelligence Community – said he needed another look. I have no idea of why; perhaps Weiner’s wagging had nothing to do with it. Then he decided she wasn’t to be prosecuted after all, but it was too late. Now she lost Pennsylvania. And it was all the Russians’ fault.

Meanwhile, the recounts demanded either were not conducted or were slightly in favor of Trump, but CNN reported

“[snip] While there is no evidence of large-scale voting machine hacking, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia targeted Clinton in a series of cyber attacks on Democratic Party groups. Trump has questioned those reports.[snip]”

But just who are these US Intelligence agencies? The New York Times says it’s the US Intelligence Community.

U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections

The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and prominent individuals, immediately raising the issue of whether President Obama would seek sanctions or other retaliation.

In a statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/us-formally-accuses-russia-of-stealing-dnc-emails.html

Since by law the Director of National Intelligence speaks for the “Intelligence community” the Times is correct in saying this is the opinion of the “Intelligence Community” and the career operatives have no right to say different.

“[snip] The official accusation against Russia comes after anonymous American intelligence officials told The New York Times in July that they had “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the hack of the D.N.C., which led to the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat, as committee chairwoman, amid evidence that the committee was favoring Mrs. Clinton over her competitor for the party nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.[snip]”

Mr. Obama, we are told by the Times, announces this now, because to say it later might be interpreted as political.

Mr. Trump was elected to drain the swamp. Does anyone wonder that he is appointing experienced managers without much political experience to head agencies that seem to be very much in need of attention and who complain of inexperienced managers?

Phillip is in from Washington for a visit, and it is bed time.

Fake News

Remember CIA wasn’t onboard with the other 16 agencies just before the election.

Look who’s pushing the Russian narrative with no evidence and look what news organizations support the operation and witness the effectiveness:

@thehill: Electors demand intelligence briefing on Russian interference before Electoral College vote http://hill.cm/PFwgx6w https://twitter.com/thehill/status/808367846954831872/photo/1

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

 

Subject: CIA Fake News BS

Why is CIA allegedly — and I say allegedly because “the news” tells me so — saying Russia hacked the US election with no evidence?

If CIA is doing this, CIA is wrong for one of two reasons: CIA is wrong because they know — based on their history e.g. Church Hearings, MKULTRA — they cannot say anything and expect to be believed without evidence. Other examples exist to support my argument of poor audience analysis, public speaking skills, and presentation skills. Or CIA is wrong because they are lying.

But, let’s suppose CIA actually said this and it’s not just some nonsense fake news narrative led by the liar Brian Williams [the irony] and the corporate media, desperate to maintain market share and job security. And, let’s suppose CIA is correct in saying this. If all true:

The Obama Administration brought us Operation Gunwalker, Snowden as “the hacker”, ISIS as the “JV team, the six month intermission to develop “an ISIS strategy”, and every other failure we’ve commented on for the last eight years failed again. According to the Obama narrative, this administration allowed Russia to influence an election and failed to protect America — again. In fact, we have accusations the Department of Homeland Security tried to hack an election site, but nothing about Russia except from this administration and “the news”. So, Russia felt this administration and it’s party were failing so badly that even Russia didn’t want them in power, is that the narrative? It’s either that or this administration and it’s media shills are lying.

Let us hope CIA are incompetent and POTUS failed. After all, despair is a sin and the beat will continue until everything dies…. And people wonder why Trump got elected; it was a desperate move by a desperate people if you ask me..

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Among the political appointees to the various and sundry intelligence agencies I suspect you can find any anonymous opinion you like. Only one person by law may speak for the intelligence Community, but since that community does not really exist…

Maureen Dowd
Did Dowd really write this? It seems incomprehensible, but it shows that sometimes even liberals can be embarrassed.
Bob

Maureen Dowd
Election Therapy From My Basket of Deplorables
The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.
The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that they were not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.
Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.
The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of “Hamilton” and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.
Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.
If any of my sons had told me they were too distraught over a national election to take an exam, I would have brought them home the next day, fearful of the instruction they were receiving. Not one of the top 50 colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should rethink that.
Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other “ists.” I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown — embodied by Rachel Maddow explaining to viewers that they were not having a “terrible, terrible dream” and that they had not died and “gone to hell.”
The media’s criticism of Trump’s high-level picks as “not diverse enough” or “too white and male” — a day before he named two women and offered a cabinet position to an African-American — magnified this fact.
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie “48 Hrs.”: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” And he is going to be here for 1,461 days. Merry Christmas.

Well, Snopes says no: http://www.snopes.com/maureen-dowd-election-therapy/

The original column is http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/election-therapy-from-my-basket-of-deplorables.html and Ms. Dowd has not changed her opinions much.

 

 

Trump could not give any tax breaks to Carrier, not now, not after he is inaugurated. The only taxes he might influence with more than the “bully pulpit” would be federal income or payroll taxes, and that not without Congress and IRS approval. I suspect the tax breaks were from state and local taxes, which the VP-elect could influence, since he is still governor of that state. State and local tax breaks are common when trying to lure companies into a state; why not when trying to keep one already there. 

Not likely, I hope, that a “Bury My Heart at Lake Oahe” disgrace takes place. 

Pipelines in the states… 

Charles Brumbelow

McCain, Graham join Schumer in accusations of Russian hacking

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=18216?omhide=true

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back against President-elect Donald Trump’s dismissal of a CIA assessment that Russian hackers tried to tilt the election in his favor, setting up a potential battle between Trump and Congress.

“I think they’re probably popping champagne bottles at the Kremlin over the tension between the incoming executive branch and the Congress,” said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution.

Related Story: Obama mocked Romney over Russia, but now he blames Russia for Trump

Yesterday, U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and incoming Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for congressional investigations, saying in a statement that “interference in our election should alarm every American.”

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Trump told Fox News’ Chris Wallace of the CIA’s conclusion, instead blaming Democrats for “putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country.”

“I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it.”

Related Story: Divisions between CIA, FBI surface in debate over Russian motives in election hacks

The CIA has accused Russian hackers of giving embarrassing Clinton campaign emails to WikiLeaks in an effort to sway the election. A statement from Trump’s transition team dismissed intelligence officials as “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” an assertion Pifer said is misinformed.

“The intelligence community has tightened its standard since then,” Pifer said.

Asked about Trump’s dismissals in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCain said: “The facts are there about Russian behavior, and Russian, not just hacking into the United States in the 2016 election campaign, but throughout the world.

McCain said he will push for the formation of a select committee to probe the hacking.

Trump blamed Democrats for pushing the narrative of Russian involvement, and said the intelligence officials he’ll appoint would be better than those laying the blame on Russians.

Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress specializing in national security strategy, said that assertion demonstrates “an ignorance of political intelligence organizations which should be concerning.”

“The number of political appointees in intelligence agencies is relatively small,” Katulis said.

Trump also dismissed criticism of his consideration of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for the post of secretary of state, given his Russian business ties.

“To me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players. And he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia,” Trump said, adding that Tillerson is under consideration along with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

 

And Mr. Trump continues to consider his cabinet.

 

Napolitano: NSA hacked Clinton emails after revelation of secrets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZWkjQn5oo

Take with whatever size grain of salt you prefer.

 

Subj: Fwd: OBAMA AT THE BAT

This really IS good.

OBAMA AT THE BAT – REALLY CLEVER

SOMEONE HAS SPENT A LOT OF TIME ON THIS…Turn on the speakers!

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/obama_at_bat.html

Twenty years ago, if I felt like this, I’d go to my Dr.  Now, I consider it a “good day”.

 

It amused me. 

Free trade reducto redux 

Dr Pournelle 

RE: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/modern-times/

Jim’s observations on free trade spurred a memory. 

Roman merchants encountered trade problems with foreigners. Specifically, 1) whose law applied to whom and 2) how were contracts enforced? Were goods exchanged for other goods or for an agreeable coin, the deal was done in an instant, and the need for law faded to insignificance. But if the transaction required future performance, how could a Roman bind a Syrian by oaths that held no meaning for the Syrian? 

The Roman solution was religion. If the Syrian’s religion would outlaw him if he broke an oath, then the Roman could contract with him. Such a religion — one that supported outlawry — was call a good faith, bona fides. 

And that’s the origin of the term in contract law. 

Live long and prosper 

h lynn keith

 

 

peek into the Trump Transition

people at the DOE were angry about some questions the transition team asked, so they leaked the questions and they got published
a transcription (+ commentary) of the questions is at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/the-doe-vs-ugly-reality/
If all of the agencies are getting similar questions, things seem poised for some rather significant shake-ups under the new leadership.
David Lang

When fighting the alligators it is sometimes difficult to remember that the mission was draining the swamp…

AAAA batteries

There are now lithium 9v batteries. I don’t know how much better they are for longevity, but they’re marketed as being for hard-to-reach applications.
I once had a secondhand laptop whose battery had evidently died and was too costly to buy another… so some clever previous owner had replaced the battery’s original innards with a couple dozen neatly soldered-in rechargeable AA batteries. Worked fine!

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

Saturday, December 10, 2016

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

It’s always something. Yesterday at 12:41 PM I stopped getting mail, except that if I sent text messages to myself they would eventually arrive in my mailbox. Messages sent to others got out, some of them, but replies did not come back to me. A check with my SPAM folders revealed that nothing was coming in.

Meanwhile other interruptions continued. I did manage to get in a walk, and that turned out well as I hobbled with my walker down a few blocks, and discovered I was out at the time when the neighbors turned out en masse to walk their kids home from school. When I bought this house in 1968, Studio City was a village, and a 1928 house was not very expensive. It did have the advantage of being near a reasonably good school, but even so, it was not considered an upper middle class district; decidedly not. The postman lived down the street, and my next-door neighbors kept a hair salon cum plant shop, and struggled to maintain their house repairs. A former movie star lived in the house up the hill across the street, but the flats weren’t thought all that fashionable.

Then they started a massive program to bus in kids from downtown districts (the incoming busses always had more kids than they carried away in the afternoons. My kids went to Catholic schools a mile or so away, and the area was safe enough for those old enough to bicycle.

Came Lucifer’s Hammer and we built a swimming pool, which served us well. But over time bussing went out of fashion – why anyone supposed that spending two or more hours a day on a school bus so they could sit next to Studio City kids in grade school would improve the bussed kids’ education is not comprehensible to me – and the local school kept improving while most of the other schools in the monstrous bureaucracy that calls itself the LA Unified School District got intolerably worse, and Studio City became a place with a rare good school that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. I didn’t notice because I made enough money to afford St. Francis elementary and Notre Dame high school for my four boys, but I did see there were a lot more kids around than there were when we moved in.

Anyway, on my walk I saw an amazing number of well dressed – some expensively so – young women in very good physical condition, all with good manners and very polite to the old geezer with his walker. Since this was about 1400 and a bit later I presumed there must be a lot of stay at home moms here; they were far too well dressed and groomed for any large part of that horde to be nannies (although there were some obvious nannies), which says something about the times.

When I was growing up, women’s liberation meant not having to work outside the home – in the Depression the only work many could find was not enough to support a family and the wife had to work as well, and during World War II defense jobs opened up for women; but many wanted to go back home and be mothers. Times have changed now, but I note that Studio City has many young women with children in school who can show up, well dressed and well groomed, at two PM to walk their children home when they get out at 2:30. They looked happy with that.

Of course, this being Studio City, I know that some of them are actresses and models, looking for parts and some with parts – I could recognize one or two, and the girl next door is a regular character in one of Tim Allen’s sitcoms, Last Man Standing. Of course Amanda has no kids – well, on the show she does, she’s the daughter with a son, but in real life she isn’t married. I suppose some might be script writers who work at home, but there were few to no men. And models, possibly just back from a shoot, or hoping to be called to one. In any event it was a pleasant experience, to go for a walk and see a fashion show…

 

Kirk Douglas Turns 100

https://twitter.com/search?q=Kirk+Douglas+turns+100&ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch

B-

And by accident a copy of his autobiography fell into my hands just the other day and I read some of the early chapters before putting it down, I can’t remember where. Not a bad read, actually.

https://www.amazon.com/Kirk-Douglas-Ragmans-Son-Autobiography/dp/B000HF8YFQ?tag=chaosmanor-20

US Regulations Overseas

Jerry
Regarding the impact of US regulations in other countries, I was once many years ago on a consulting team sent to a Swedish manufacturing plant in a town remote enough that on the road north of town was a sign reading “Santa Claus, this way.” The reason was that FDA auditors had visited their plant and found violations, such as assembly operators using hand-written notes for instructions rather that properly reviewed and approved company Work Instructions. The FDA auditors had actually stripped the hand-written instructions from the walls and other places where they were taped — whereupon the workforce was unable to assemble the devices at all. We were recommended to help them put together a proper manual of instructions, a task at which we succeeded. The point is that even then, the long arm of US regulatory agencies could reach up to Santa Claus’ doorstep. If a medical device was exported to the USA, its manufacture was subject to spot audits from the FDA.
I also learned that when the German engineers met with the Swedish manufacturing people, they had to use English because they did not speak each other’s language.
Mike Flynn

And of course the devices were subject to the special medical device tax that helps finance Obamacare, although of course they probably were not at the time of this story. It took brains and big greed to tax crutches and wheelchairs. I hadn’t realized that the assembly process inspections were part of “Free Trade”; or for that matter anyone would be fool enough to put up with that. If you can’t tell it’s incorrectly assembled from the finished product…

How AI is revolutionising the role of the literary critic | Aeon Essays

As a software guy I find this pretty interesting. Parsing books for ideas and info using algorithms gets a lot more interesting when we can leverage AI in the process. 

What’s really interesting is that maybe this could lead to AI driven code refactoring for modernizing large applications. 

Who knows…maybe in a few decades the NYT literary critic will be an AI.

https://aeon.co/essays/how-ai-is-revolutionising-the-role-of-the-literary-critic?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f6dfcc6f84-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-f6dfcc6f84-68739925

John Harlow

I have mixed emotions about this. I read reviews for informed opinions, and I have trouble understanding how an AI has opinions at all; but perhaps sp. After all, AI’s in my stories definitely have opinions based on a primary table of preferences…

Free trade reducto

Jerry,

A couple of observations on free trade.

a) Free trade used to mean “A buyer in Country A could contract to purchase commodities from a seller in Country B, with no government involvement (with the possible exception of civil or criminal court actions in cases of default on the terms of contract).

Whatever you call a trade agreement to which governments are party, “free” trade is not an accurate description.

b) In the event you have a product liability case against a foreign manufacturer and cannot pursue it, you should be able to pursue your claim using tort law against the importer. (For some reason, I’ve never heard of anyone attempting a product liability case against Chinese manufacture.) 

Jim

The Chinese method is to ship a satisfactory product, then gradually reduce the quality of components and the skill of the assemblers until the purchaser complains. Adjustments are quickly made until the buyer is once again satisfied, then the process starts all over again. American importers – some of them – are learning that. Others don’t until it’s too late.

I doubt you’ll win any cases in a Chinese court…

Facts and Theory

First, continued best wishes to you and Roberta hoping that you are both able to enjoy the holiday season with family and friends.
Your correspondent Mike Flynn had some very cogent thoughts on fact and theory, but I think he got ahead of himself when he said, “Similarly, the Evolution of species is a fact, and Natural Selection is one theory put forward to explain it. Sexual selection, neutral selection, natural genetic engineering, et al. are other theories.”

The Existence of species is an incontrovertible fact. Evolution belongs on the other side of his equation. Evolution is a man-made attempt to impose order on a system whose mechanisms we can only speculate. Evolution is no more settled science than climate change and inspires similar religious fervor.
Thanks,
John Thomas

I think I will let others argue that one. It is clear that some species evolved from others – or are these species? Take dogs and wolves; are they different species? Is it Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris? Is this a subspecies – race – breed – of wolf, or a new species? It is certain that species exist, and races within species. It is certain that dogs descend from wolves (and can interbreed with them). It seems reasonable to assume that horses and donkeys have a common ancestor, but their crossbreed offspring (mules) are generally infertile. A mule is the offspring of a jackass and a mare. I once saw an animal that looked like a mule and was said to be born of a female mule and a stallion, but I do not know that to be the case.

Going further, we know of species that cannot interbreed, but which are sufficiently similar to allow us to deduce with some certainty that they must have had a common ancestor, even if that ancestor no longer exists.

Those who find this discussion interesting may find Fred’s speculations amusing. http://www.fredoneverything.net/LastDarwin.shtml While Fred writes more for humor than persuasion, he produces some powerful arguments in the evolutionary debates. Of course questioning Darwinian Evolution will probably get a tenured professor fired as either stupid or mad or both in most universities, and speculation on the origin of species generally cannot stray far from the modern modifications of Darwin; certainly cannot include the notion of design. Yet questions remain for some few…

blast and damnation

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/last-true-national-hero-john-glenn-dead-95-n693391

John Glenn, America’s New Frontiersman, Dead at 95 http://www.nbcnews.com Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth and later served four terms in the U.S. Senate. As a Marine fighter pilot, while flying 149 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War, he received praise for his ability to draw enemy fire and keep the plane flying with huge holes blown into its exterior. Most Americans remember Glenn for taking to space in 1962. Dubbed Friendship 7, Glenn’s space capsule circled the Earth and put the United States on equal footing with the Soviet Union in the space race.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

This is of course only one of a great many on this subject. I met John Glenn in the late 50’s as part of the space suit tests; I also designed and conducted some stress tests, and several of the original astronauts, including Glenn, were among my test subjects. He was more immune to distraction than anyone else I have ever met.

Free Trade

Jerry,
With respect to Mr. Keegan’s “Lincoln’s Epigram & the Cost of Trade”, both of his (and Lincoln’s) points are fallacious as justifications for protectionism.
“The first point Lincoln was making is simple: if the United States was to grow its wealth, we needed to purchase from each other and export to foreigners. By purchasing from each other, we keep our wealth at home, while exporting to foreigners brings their wealth to us.”
No matter who is the purchaser of goods or services produced in the United States, the seller receives the same wealth for his efforts, and if he is a successful businessman, he covers his costs and earns the same profit, which he is then free to spend and/or to invest, and he is of course most likely to invest some of that surplus in growing his own business. And if he has the whole world to sell to and not just domestic markets, which may not value his products more highly than any other place in the world, even with no transportation costs (which are nominal today), he earns a higher profit and thus has more to spend or invest in the domestic economy.
“The second point is more subtle. If we export the cotton to make one shirt to England, we will bring some British wealth to the United States. If we then purchase a British shirt, we send even more wealth to England than we received for our cotton. Raw materials are a low value commodity.”
Again, there may not be much demand in a raw material exporting economy for high value added transformations, and the costs of industrialization may be entirely beyond the capacity of a less developed economy. However, in such a case, if there is abundant local cheap labor it’s likely to attract foreign capital to make optimal (because local) use of it, which is the whole story of what’s been happening in recent decades with developing countries and emerging markets. The US during the colonial period was a Third World raw commodities exporter, and was kept in that position deliberately by the mercantilist policies of England – not because there was any natural impediment to development – nor, when we threw off the colonial yoke, was there any need for protectionism to allow US industries to emerge and flourish, in spite of British protectionism. Our merchants and manufactures simply traded with other countries that were less intent on preserving trade monopolies for their governments and crony capitalist buddies.
As for Shylock Holmes’s argument that free trade is contrary to the interests of many individuals, if not to the interests of society, and its economy, as a whole, I say: So what? That’s true of any economic transaction. If I purchase a toaster manufactured by Corporation A, from Merchant X, rather than a different model made by Corporation B, and sold by Merchant Y, A and X benefit at the expense of B and Y, yet we don’t (unless we are communists) say that the latter ought to be compensated by “transfer payments” – a euphemism for government extortion. And the principle’s the same whether I’m selling my labor services or something I own. The mere fact that I think that my labor or my goods are undervalued in the market doesn’t give me a right to steal from others in compensation. If I feel sorry for Corporation B or Merchant Y because they’re not doing as well as their competitors, I am perfectly free to patronize them on that account, or if I feel sorry for their workers who are laid off in consequence, I could offer to compensate them directly, either personally or through a voluntary charity. That is the way free, responsible people in a free society address such problems, and it was the American Way until our governments became the coercive agents of special interests.
Holmes also argues, without citing any persuasive evidence, that people need jobs to give their lives a sense of meaning (that leisure past a certain point is deleterious to happiness), and that modern social pathologies are especially rampant and a consequence of this, but I would argue instead, that moderns have been so spoiled and cossetted in our decadent society that they’ve never learned that each of us existentially has to learn to create our own meanings and values in life, and that the best way to do that is to figure out what we like to do (whether we are compensated for it or not), and put our heart and soul into that activity. If we are lucky, by getting good at something we may be able to find someone to pay us for our activities; otherwise, we will have to fall back on our leisure time, and the more of it, the better.
I would argue instead that “work” is something you need to be “compensated” for, precisely because it is not the way one would chose to make use of the time devoted to it, and that insofar as a job provides social activities, it isn’t work – it’s time stolen from the employer, no different morally from appropriating office supplies for one’s personal use. If the main value of a job is provide an outlet for one’s social impulses, that tells me that the work itself is perceived as less than enjoyable, or meaningful. I also note that in Soviet Russia, everyone had a job, but that substance abuse was the norm, not the exception, because the work was correctly perceived as meaningful or valuable. I would also argue that most white collar jobs in America today are make work bureaucratic jobs, in effect created by the government through gratuitous and counterproductive regulation. Most of the real white collar work that people engaged in in my own youth (the 1950s and 1960s) has long since been automated, and most of the time on the job today consists of sitting in useless wheel-spinning meetings, and in generating paper work for others to process. No wonder that modern college “educated” Americans are bored and turning to substance abuse, promiscuity, and the like.
The way out of this dilemma is not more government intervention, it is less intervention – massively less. Government subsidies for idleness need to be phased out; all tariffs and protectionist devices need to be scrapped; all government regulation of business per se needs to be terminated; and along with that the double taxation of business profits needs to be ended (profits are now taxed first at the corporate level, then again when what remains is distributed as income to the owners of the business). These changes would kick start annual growth in this country to at least 10% per year, and whole categories of rewarding and meaningful personal service jobs for Americans would emerge, with the internet as the great facilitator of that process. By personal service jobs, I mean the provision of specialized information, entertainment, social interaction, counseling, design services – you name it – and most of these jobs would remain American because only entrepreneurs and would-be employees who have grown up in America would understand what there might be a market for in our country, and have the cultural and interactional skills to provide it.
John B. Robb

For a man to love his country, that country ought to be lovely; and only the deserving poor should receive subsidies. Of course many would disagree with either of those statements.

We could all use personal servants, who so far would be much more useful than the best robots, and some might even care. But when enough of the population contributes nothing but their progeny to the public good, can democracy last? For now we can get the economy going again by reducing regulations.

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

An idea on taxes.

In tax incentive deals for businesses, it is often pointed out that the taxes not levied on the corporation are offset by the taxes on the income of the employees of the corporation, which either are new revenue in the case of a corporation moving one of its’ operations into a tax region, or are tax revenue not lost in the case of keeping an existing corporate operation from moving from a tax region.

Taking a page from the operation manual of such tax havens as the Cayman Islands, what if the Federal government, or a state, just decided not to tax corporations. A corporation may earn as much as it can, and not pay tax on income. The moment corporate money passes into any other “hands”, it becomes taxable, but so long as the corporation keeps it or invests it, it is non-taxable. This would mean personal tax rates would go order to replace the loss of corporate tax revenue,,, but would that increase not be offset by a huge boost in business activity, increased hiring, a more competitive job market with consequent rising wages/salaries, and everyone is better off.

Yes, it’s a variant of “trickle down economics”, but I’ve always thought the reason liberals hate that concept is that it doesn’t give them a way of making people do things against their will, which is a large part of what makes a “liberal” heart go pitty-pat.

Of course, there is something for that Liberal mentality in my idea:

they can indulge their love for Righteous Outrage. Why, that is almost as big a rush as “Do This, Or Else!!!”

Petronius

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