COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The wealthy, our masters and rulers, who mostly run the United States cannot abide the freedom of the internet

Internet Liberty at Stake in Obama World Wide Web Policy

By Juan Cole
President Barack Obama on Monday called on the Federal Communications Commission to treat Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) as common carriers, sort of like television networks such as NBC or CBS. The relevant law is called “Title II.”
As the world wide web was originally conceived by framers such as Tim Berners-Lee, it was characterized by a key, amazing feature. Everybody on the internet was the same distance from everyone else. Thus, whether you are reading this blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where my computer connects to the Web, or in Cairo or Jakarta, you have the same access to it. It loads just as fast for you, wherever you are. My blog is just as easy for you to browse as the internet portal of Fox Cable News, owned by billionaire press lord Rupert Murdoch.
This situation has two disadvantages for the wealthy who mostly run the United States. The first is that Internet Service Providers can’t make easy money by charging some publishers more than others, and setting up tiers of service. Thus, they could make it so it would take 60 seconds for my blog to load, since I can’t pay them very much. But then Rupert’s so-called “news” site could load immediately because he could give them millions and not even notice it. Studies have shown that readers won’t wait 60 seconds for a site to load, so this “tiered” service would destroy citizen journalism and leave us with only corporate news on the world wide web.
The second disadvantage for the wealthy of net neutrality is that they cannot use gate keepers like newspaper editors to control the free circulation of views and information on the World Wide Web. Everyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can publish, and publish for a mass audience. In the early 20th century there was a quip that anyone could own a newspaper, all you needed was a million dollars. Factory workers could publish cyclostyled (don’t ask) newsletters. But large-circulation newspapers were the province of the wealthy, and then information could be presented to the public from the point of view of the wealthy. (The wealthy don’t all agree with one another, so of course you still had liberal and conservative newspapers, but in the US you had few large-circulation socialist ones. The lines of acceptable viewpoints were drawn so as to position the public to the right of center, even though it wasn’t and isn’t if left to its own devices).
A tiered world wide web would restore some of the lost ability of the wealthy to control the spin put on news. We know what that spin typically is. There are no labor reporters at any major metropolitan newspaper. Major labor actions are often not reported on at any length. Nor are union workers much featured in the mass media such as television. Wars benefiting munitions corporations are reported on positively. The dangers of fossil fuel consumption are discounted. In a business-class world, it is people with capital who matter and on whom reporters are told to concentrate. We’ve all heard of Donald Trump or the Koch brothers. Richard L. Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson of the AFL CIO are, let us say, less prominent. Even less prominent are climate scientists like Michael Mann. And, of course, northern Europeans are generally more newsworthy than people originating in other parts of the world. Race and class are not evenly distributed in the informational world of US corporate media.
A lot of you have said how much you benefited from my own analyses of the Iraq War during the Bush administration. But in the 20th century I might not have been able to present that analysis to the public. I had trouble getting my op-eds published in newspapers in the old days. I wasn’t mainstream. This blog would not have existed without net neutrality, and if net neutrality ever goes away, probably so will the blog.
President Obama’s support of net neutrality is welcome, but there are many problems with it. He can’t order the FCC around, since it is an independent agency. Its head comes to us from the world of ISPs and we are suspicious of him. Title II would not necessarily in and of itself prevent a tiered web, though it might impede and constrain the degree of it. And, whatever Obama accomplishes by mere administrative regulation can be undone by the next president. Presumably he is hoping to create such a weight of bureaucratic practice and tradition that it will be difficult to overturn.
In the American system, the best guarantor of liberty of access to the internet and liberty of accessible publication on it is the rise of powerful economic interests that benefit from it. Thus, the guy in a white hat here is Netflix. In contrast, Comcast and other ISPs shot themselves in the foot by throttling Netflix and shaking it down, creating an ally for bloggers and civil libertarians. Senator Al Franken, with his ties to the entertainment industry (I remember when he was a comedian on Saturday Night Live), likewise has taken a powerful stand in favor of net neutrality.
Here’s a toast to Netflix, in hopes that it can bring sufficient pressure to bear to see Obama’s vision realized. The good lord knows that the bloggers are unlikely to be able to.
Related video:

190 comments:

  1. The wealthy run the country?

    Surely you jest.

    If the wealthy run the country why are all things taxed and the taxes so high?

    No one runs the country.

    Not even Lester Crown.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rather, surely Juan Cole jests.............

      Delete
    2. Taxes on the 'wealthy' are exceedingly low, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson.

      Delete
  2. Maybe we'd be better off without the Internet at all..............

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You do not have to partake, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson.

      Delete
    2. Labor is taxed, wealth is not.
      But these 'simple' truths do seem to escape you.

      Delete
    3. At this point, the top 0.1 percent of all Americans have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined.

      Delete
  3. ha Ha HA

    Charlie Rangel, my favorite Congressional Crook of all time -


    Charlie Rangel: If you white tea-party crackers were offended by my choice of words, I apologize
    posted at 1:21 pm on November 11, 2014 by Allahpundit


    Well, okay. But I … can’t shake the feeling that he’s not really sorry.

    Via the Daily Caller, the key bit runs from 14:50 to 16:45. I remembered him sneering at conservative “crackers” last year but I’d forgotten how explicit he was in equating tea partiers with violent Jim Crow-era segregationists. In case he wasn’t clear the first time:

    “A guy from Lennox Avenue who’s in the Congress calls mean-spirited people, that bomb and kill people, set dogs on them, lynch people, and still refuse to admit that we’re suffering the pain from this, and they can say, ‘That guy makes a lot of sense, but he had no business calling us a white cracker.’”

    So there you go. He’s in his mid-80s, has spent more than half his life in Congress, received the first formal censure from the House in 27 years for his ethics violations, compared George Bush to Bull Connor and dismisses the party that just won a national landslide as run by de facto Klansmen — and was just reelected to the House for his 23rdd consecutive term with 87 percent of the vote. God bless America.


    video of Charlie in action


    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/11/charlie-rangel-if-you-white-tea-party-crackers-were-offended-by-my-choice-of-words-i-apologize/

    'God Bless America'

    And, God Bless Charlie Rangel too.......

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mind Control Is Real

    http://www.realclearscience.com/lists/3_methods_of_mind_control/

    Three methods of mind control.

    Never mind the bacteria in the gut and brain.

    What's scary here is the technique - a technique of which Quirk was Master - of 'anchoring'.

    Thankfully once one realizes that, and how, one is being toyed with one's chances of hanging onto one's autonomy increase.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Horror of horrors -

    Palestinians Being Evicted in Gaza
    November 10, 2014 by Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn

    The authors are members of the board of the Religious Zionists of America.

    eviction-notice

    Once more, Gaza’s border is in flames.

    Civilians are being evicted from their homes, a curfew has been imposed, and a crossing that enables Gazans to leave has been closed. Yet the world is silent. Isn’t that strange?

    Hundreds of residents along one of Gaza’s borders have suddenly been ordered to evacuate, on just two days’ notice. Their homes are to be demolished. There is no talk of compensation. Why isn’t the United Nations Security Council denouncing this outrage?

    Because it is Egypt, and not Israel, that is doing the evicting. (See the New York Times, October 28 edition.)

    The Egyptians have decided they need a buffer zone along their border with Gaza. They don’t trust the Hamas regime, which they say has been assisting terrorists who have been attacking Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. Apparently Cairo does not accept the Obama Administration scripted fiction that the new Hamas-PA government is run by “technocrats.” Egypt understands that a Hamas-appointed “technocrat” is, first and foremost, a functionary of Hamas.

    So the bulldozers are rumbling in Rafah. As a result of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979, the city of Rafah was split in half. Part of it is on the Gaza side of the border. Residents in the “Egyptian” part of town are now being evicted willy-nilly, in order to make room for a buffer zone that will be nine miles long, and with water-filled trenches that will be more than 500 yards wide — that’s half a kilometer, or five football fields.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yet nary a word of protest from the White House, nor any suggestion of delaying any U.S. arms deliveries to Egypt.

      That’s not all. In response to the recent attacks in Sinai, the Egyptians have imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew all along the Egypt-Gaza border. In other words, no resident of Rafah can leave his or her home after dark, for any reason.

      Yet Thomas Friedman has not written any columns in the New York Times with heart-rending stories about Rafah women being forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions because they can’t travel to the local hospital after sundown.

      Egypt has also shut down the only crossing along the Egyptian side of the Gaza border. With the passageway closed, no Gazan can get out.

      So where are the snarky political cartoonists depicting Gaza as a Holocaust-era ghetto? Nor is Secretary of State John Kerry warning of Egypt becoming ostracized and isolated in the world. Western academics are not threatening to boycott their Egyptian counterparts. J Street is not lobbying for U.S. intervention against this new assault on Arab civilians.

      Could the hypocrisy of the international community be any more blatant?

      Evidently, if they genuinely cared about the well-being of the residents of Rafah, the White House would be holding up arms to Egypt — exactly as it held up Hellfire missiles to Israel. If he were sincerely concerned about Arab lives, Thomas Friedman would be blasting the Egyptians on the op-ed page of the New York Times. If they truly wanted to help the evacuees, J Street’s lobbyists would be working overtime to get the Obama Administration to intervene against Cairo.

      But the truth is that they don’t really care about the welfare of Arab civilians at all, unless there is an opportunity to bash Israel. When Arabs are mistreated by their fellow-Arabs, the State Department and the pundits and the “peace camp” fall silent.

      So let’s all learn an important lesson from this experience. Israel and its supporters should stop worrying about the latest Thomas Friedman diatribe or the latest J Street conference or the latest unfriendly remarks by the Obama White House and the State Department. They will go on blaming Israel — and excusing Egypt and other Arab countries — no matter what. Nothing Israel does will ever satisfy them — so there’s no point in trying.

      http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/palestinians-being-evicted-in-gaza/

      Delete
    2. Bob,

      WiO's assessment is spot on: There is one law for Israel and one law for everyone else.

      Delete
    3. 6:06 PM

      AshTue Nov 11, 02:30:00 PM EST

      allen,

      I looked through that article you linked I could not find any mention of churches or the quote you put up:

      ""The Palestinians 'will defend Al-Aqsa and the churches against the settlers and extremists,' he pledged..."

      to which you asked:

      What "churches" are threatened by "settlers and extremists"?"


      Where did that quote come from?


      Of course the response by allen ...
      Nonexistent.

      A lot like the "Quote"

      Delete
    4. .

      Egypt has more to worry about from IS than they do from a Fatah-Hamas PA.

      If there is any cooperation or coordination amongst the militant groups of the ME, the arrangement is opportunistic and temporary. Most dislike each other as much or more than they dislike their chief antagonists.

      .

      Delete
    5. Isis in Sinai, Hamas in Gaza and assorted other dozen or so "groups" are basically all the same people.

      They change alliances as we change travel baseball teams....

      New shirt and Cap? New Name..

      Same coach, same fields, same rules, same parents, same game...

      Delete
  6. God Bless America, Charlie Rangel, and the Egyptian military.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When "America" called on you, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, you ran the other way.

      Delete
    2. Ah, Jack 'Killer' Hawkins - "I am a professional asshole" desert rat - is up and at 'em real early today.

      "America" never called me, Jack.

      But you already know that.

      Delete
    3. Then were you lying to us, on 22June2014?

      Delete
    4. Jack, when you said you spoke with your friend INSIDE the AZ FBI about the criminal complaint I sent them, then told us about it...

      You said I was under investigation as national security issue and that the complaint against you was being laughed at.

      So were you telling the truth that you got leaked information from the AZ FBI? Or were you lying...

      You bragged about having "sources" inside the AZFBI and that "leaks" were par for the douse since you were a "news professional"...

      So you passed on information about an ongoing FBI investigation on to the internet...

      Are you lying about that? Or did you actually break Federal Law?

      Delete
  7. ISIS is powered by Red Bull, Fox News just reported.

    Islamic State soldiers are importing Red Bull energy drink from Turkey

    www.mirror.co.uk


    Wing and a prayer: ISIS terrorists neck truck loads of RED BULL to help them during battles

    Nov 10, 2014 11:08
    By Ian Sparks

    Hundreds of cans of the high-caffeine energy drink are being taken across the border by Turkish lorries to keep extremists alert in war-torn Syria


    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wing-prayer-isis-terrorists-neck-4602796


    "Red Bull - The Drink Of Jihadis"

    ReplyDelete
  8. Usually around here there is a 'rat free zone' between about 1:30 am and 4:30 or 5:00 am.

    Crapper is up early today.

    And, since I have a big day ahead, I shall take my leave.

    Keep the liar, killer, slanderer and mentally deficient Jack Hawkins under the lid today, folks.

    Cheers !

    (I wonder if Jack is powered by Red Bull - something keeps him going nearly 24 hours a day)

    Have a good day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On Time - On Target.

      Will you confirm or deny, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, that you lied to us on 22 June 2014?

      Delete
    2. Didn’t you mean Draft Dodger, Tin Soldier. What was your unit in Central America, Stolen Valor?

      :-)

      Delete
    3. ... sorry for the typo ...

      Didn’t you mean Draft Dodger, Tin Soldier. What was your unit in Central America, Stolen Valor?

      :-)

      Delete
    4. No, I said what I meant and meant what I said.

      Delete
    5. As to the other question, a link was provided ...
      If you did not follow it then, I do not care, now.

      Delete
    6. You really should put in the "marks" on "Draft Dodger", allen, when discussing Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, whether or not you make the letters Bold.

      But then, you are inept, most of the time.

      Delete
    7. Jack, when you said you spoke with your friend INSIDE the AZ FBI about the criminal complaint I sent them, then told us about it...

      You said I was under investigation as national security issue and that the complaint against you was being laughed at.

      So were you telling the truth that you got leaked information from the AZ FBI? Or were you lying...

      You bragged about having "sources" inside the AZFBI and that "leaks" were par for the douse since you were a "news professional"...

      So you passed on information about an ongoing FBI investigation on to the internet...

      Are you lying about that? Or did you actually break Federal Law?

      Delete
  9. I still have not seen a response to ...

    AshTue Nov 11, 02:30:00 PM EST

    allen,

    I looked through that article you linked I could not find any mention of churches or the quote you put up:

    ""The Palestinians 'will defend Al-Aqsa and the churches against the settlers and extremists,' he pledged..."

    to which you asked:

    What "churches" are threatened by "settlers and extremists"?"


    Where did that quote come from?



    Of course the response by allen ...
    Nonexistent.

    A lot like the "Quote"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jack, when you said you spoke with your friend INSIDE the AZ FBI about the criminal complaint I sent them, then told us about it...

      You said I was under investigation as national security issue and that the complaint against you was being laughed at.

      So were you telling the truth that you got leaked information from the AZ FBI? Or were you lying...

      You bragged about having "sources" inside the AZFBI and that "leaks" were par for the douse since you were a "news professional"...

      So you passed on information about an ongoing FBI investigation on to the internet...

      Are you lying about that? Or did you actually break Federal Law?

      Delete
  10. Kurds block an Islamic State supply route to Syria's Kobani

    BEIRUT - Kurdish forces blocked a road Islamic State militants use to resupply their forces in a Syrian town on the Turkish border, a town official and a monitoring group said on Wednesday, the first major gain against the jihadists after weeks of violence.
    ...
    Idris Nassan, a local official in Kobani, said by telephone that anti-IS forces had taken the strategic hill of Mistanour and the road which runs along the side of the hill.

    "ISIS was using this road for ammunition and fighters," he said, using a former name for Islamic State. He added that peshmerga forces had been focusing artillery strikes on IS positions on the outskirts of Kobani like Mistanour over the past week, to halt IS shelling on the town.

    ReplyDelete
  11. .

    Have you completed that assignment I gave you, rat?

    If not, you better scurry off and do it.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No rats here, Legionnaire Q.

      Still waiting to read the first installment of that 'bear' of an editing job you assigned yourself

      Delete
    2. Besides, your hubris, in thinking you could 'assign' anyone a mission, a task or homework positively...
      Obamaesque

      Delete
    3. Jack we are waiting...

      DO your homework...

      Jack, when you said you spoke with your friend INSIDE the AZ FBI about the criminal complaint I sent them, then told us about it...

      You said I was under investigation as national security issue and that the complaint against you was being laughed at.

      So were you telling the truth that you got leaked information from the AZ FBI? Or were you lying...

      You bragged about having "sources" inside the AZFBI and that "leaks" were par for the douse since you were a "news professional"...

      So you passed on information about an ongoing FBI investigation on to the internet...

      Are you lying about that? Or did you actually break Federal Law?

      Delete
    4. Post the quote "O"rdure, and I will diagram it for you.

      {;-)

      Delete
    5. .

      .

      You waste your time, WiO.

      The rat demands proof yet when you give it to him he either 'refuses to read it' or he ignores it and then a short while later he continues with the same lies.

      I haven't been around much over the last few days but during the time I was here I seem to recall him putting up the same lie he has posted here a dozen times before, the now infamous (boring?) contrived, out of context, truncated post positing that you said 'Israel lost' in Gaza.

      The boy won't change. He is a flimflam man, and a sick one at that.

      .

      Delete
    6. This 'rat' you continue to refer to, it dominates your mindWed Nov 12, 11:11:00 AM EST

      There are quotes provided on this end, but not by anyone else.

      Seems like there are two standards in play.
      One for the truth teller, and then another for the rest of you.

      Delete
    7. But what else should we really expect from the Obamaesque.
      Hubris and then denial when, like the Emperor, they are revealed by the naked truth.

      Delete
    8. .

      Then he launches into a monologue that only a long-term resident of rat-world or perhaps the clinically addled could hope to riddle through.

      .

      Delete
    9. .

      As for the rat, I choose to use the original posting, to maintain continuity.

      .

      Delete
    10. Pease, Legionnaire Q, you were going to provide a post with the alledged 'legion' of lies ...
      It would be a 'bear' for you to edit ...

      We await the first installment, it has been weeks, now.
      Are your editing skills lacking, or is the self evident truth of the matter becoming ever more clear ...
      That there is nothing for Legionnaire Q to edit.

      Delete
    11. .

      You know the rules, rat. You refused to read the initial post that started out the discussion on your lies, malapropos, distortions, etc. No dessert without eating your vegetables first.

      You have been given an assignment. Now, be a good boy and run off do it.

      Do it now, grasshopper.

      Skedaddle.

      .

      Delete
    12. The post was read until there was a point of contention, a lie, was found
      At that point the reading halted and the rebuttal began.

      If you have more to say, say it again.

      Delete
    13. There is no reason to wade through your lies, refuting each one, Legionnaire Q.

      We'll go through them, one by one, as they are posted.
      First up, first answered, all the others that follow become mute, just unread trash.

      Delete
    14. .

      Whoops, I should have said, 'malapropos malaprops'.

      .

      Delete
    15. I do recall that Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson read the entire post and was sure that Legionnaire Q was going to fire up a new blog. An interesting hypothesis, but one that has not come to pass, either.

      There was no legion of lies, there was no bear to wrestle, in the editing of the nonexistent content ...
      and there is no new blog.

      Whatever you 'really' wrote, seems you have let the primary reader down.
      "Bob" is just so disappointed.
      Crestfallen by your Obamaesque behavior.
      Promises seemingly made, but never delivered upon.

      Delete
    16. .

      If you have more to say, say it again.

      But that would be redundant, rat, and I wouldn't want to be accused of being rat-like. Besides I wouldn't want to step on your forte.

      There is no reason to wade through your lies, refuting each one, Legionnaire Q.

      We'll go through them, one by one, as they are posted.
      First up, first answered, all the others that follow become mute, just unread trash.


      Finally, you offer up a reasonable point. Therefore, I go back to the example mentioned above.

      Farmer RobTue Aug 26, 06:48:00 PM EDT
      "O"rdure set the Standard, now he wants to run away from it


      What is "Occupation"Mon Jul 21, 09:33:00 PM EDT
      If there is one Hamas member still alive and spitting? Israel lost...


      You claim to be an author yet you ignore context, truncate quotes, dissemble, and misrepresent. There are lies of omission as well of those of commission. You sir are a liar. This is the same as your most recent and is one of your most oft-quoted lies. You have been corrected on the post numerous times yet continue repeat the lie. One can only conclude that you are an habitual liar. It appears to be a major factor in your pathologies.

      As you pointed out,

      There is no reason to wade through your lies, refuting each one, rat...

      First up, first answered, all the others that follow become mute, just unread trash.


      .


      Delete
    17. .

      Whatever you 'really' wrote, seems you have let the primary reader down.

      I suppose so, rat, since you have been my primary reader on this subject. You seem to have been wetting your pants in anticipation. You know the rules, rat. Go do your reading assignment.

      Do it now.

      .

      Delete
  12. Looks like the ol' "caliphate" has run into a muddy patch. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Something is falling from the sky and messin' with Israel's preferred rulers of Syria.

      Delete
    2. Ebola's done got its ass whupped in the United States, and Daesh is mired in the mud (awaiting justice from above.)

      :)

      Not a good time to be an enemy of the United States (not with the commie, Kenyan in charge.)

      :)

      Delete
    3. .

      I have to admit you might be right about them being a bunch of psychopaths.

      I was looking at a map put up on one of the TV programs yesterday showing the area were IS is located. They are in Iraq, Syria, Egypt (the most prominent militant group there stated they would put themselves under IS command), and now control a town in northwest Libya not all that far from Cyprus. Reports are they have cells operating in Yemen and Somalia.

      They may be attracting a lot of new recruits but they were stretched thin before and they still keep expanding. Soon they will have every country in the ME, North Africa, the EU, and the US allied against them.

      .

      Delete
    4. “The Unfolding of Yinon’s ‘Zionist Plan for the Middle East’:

      The Crisis in Iraq and the Centrality of the National Interest of Israel,” illustrates how the ethno-sectarian fragmentation and internecine warfare between Shiites and Sunnis is in line with the Yinon plan to enhance Israel’s security and was ignited by the neocon-inspired US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

      Netanyahu and the neocons currently view Iran as a greater threat in the Middle East than ISIS, and while they advocate US military intervention, they emphasize that such intervention should not empower Iran, notes Stephen Sniegoski.

      http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/07/the-unfolding-of-yinons-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east-the-crisis-in-iraq-and-the-centrality-of-the-national-interest-of-israel/

      Delete
  13. Former US lawmaker Ron Paul says he expects the current political climate in the United States will hardly change as a result of last week’s midterm elections.

    US Congress ‘controlled by corporations’
    ‘Kerry statements, political posturing’
    Former US congressman and two-time Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul, has warned that last week’s midterm elections in the United States will not change the country’s political climate.

    Paul, who is also a physician and an author, said on Monday that the November 4 elections mean “very little” despite the fact that it resulted in Republicans taking control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

    “Yes, power shifted,” Paul said. “But the philosophy on Capitol Hill changed very little.”

    ReplyDelete
  14. http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Arafats-widow-Armed-struggle-will-only-lead-to-Palestinians-being-crushed-381610
    Arafat's widow: Armed struggle will only lead to Palestinians being crushed

    "Suha said that history would determine whether Arafat was right to start the second intifada in 2000, but added, 'Armed struggle today will not lead to anything more. We will only end up being crushed . The forces are unequal. We have to continue negotiations, proving, if anything, that it is Israel that does not want peace.'"

    BINGO! Get the lady a cigar and a Scotch!!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Re: 'malapropos malaprops'

    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  16. Jack HawkinsWed Nov 12, 11:31:00 AM EST
    We await the first installment, it has been weeks, now.

    "We"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, "we".

      editorial we
      n.
      The first-person plural pronoun used by an editorialist in expressing an opinion or point of view.

      Delete
    2. Really, desk co-ordinator, your 'language skills are not what they should be.
      It is of little wonder, then, that Bibi's Social Media Commando is held in such disrespect..

      Delete
    3. I respect you Allen….

      As for Jack? I don't respect him

      Delete
  17. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/11/abbas-says-israel-igniting-religious-war-20141111133911922.html
    Abbas says Israel igniting 'religious war'
    Palestinian president condemns surge in visits to holy site by Jewish worshippers as Israeli soldiers kill demonstrator.


    ... from my favorite site, Al Jazz ... The problem Ash and you have is the inability to see what does not comport with your bigotry.

    The Palestinians "will defend Al-Aqsa and the churches against the settlers and extremists", Abbas said.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I simply asked for the reference to something you quoted. I'm not sure why you see that as evidence of bigotry.

      Delete
    2. It is the knee jerk reaction of a jerk.

      Delete
    3. Quoting a nonexistent quote, typical of a False Flag flying Zionist.
      Then claiming that it is your bigotry that caused him to lie, par for the Israeli course of action.

      Delete
    4. Jack HawkinsWed Nov 12, 02:28:00 PM EST
      Quoting a nonexistent quote, typical of a False Flag flying Zionist.

      Sport, the quote is from Al Jazeera. You are a moron.

      Delete
  18. .

    Have you ever known a person who indulged in check kiting, or perhaps a better example, one who was constantly using one overextended credit card in order to make payments on another? It appears the FED and its various member banks are doing the same thing when it comes to QE.

    This increase in US Treasury holdings reflects another easy money element of our federally subsidized banking system. Banks take deposits from individuals for which they pay close to zero in interest, in fact, charge customers fees for keeping their money (courtesy of the Fed’s Zero-Interest-Rate policy.) They can turn that around to make a cool risk-free 2.3% by parking the money in 10-year US Treasuries. Why lend to Joe the Plumber, when the US government is providing such a great deal?

    But, the recent timing here is key. Banks only started buying US Treasuries in earnest when the Fed announced its tapering plans. Thus, not only are they participants in the ZIRP game as recipients of cheap money, they are complicit in effecting monetary policy. As the data analyzed so expertly by Bill Moreland at www.BankRegData.com makes clear, there has been no taper. Thus, the publicized reason for tapering – better job and economic growth – is also bogus.

    During the third quarter, Wells Fargo and Bank of America matched Fed purchases of US Treasuries, keeping the total amount of US Treasuries in QE land neutral. With such orchestration to keep rates down and the prices of US Treasury securities up, all the talk about whether the labor force is strengthening or inflation exists or not is mere show. Banks haven’t even propped up the labor market in their own industry. They chopped 11,400 jobs last quarter. In the past two years, they cut 57,236 jobs.

    No sucessful candidate in either political party mentioned any of this during the mid-term elections. Yet, our political-financial system has gone from the dysfunctional to the failed to the surreal. Speculation, once left to individuals and investors, is now federally sponsored, subsidized and institutionalized. When this sham finally buckles and the next shoe falls and rates do eventually rise, the stock market will tank, liquidity will die, and the broader economy will plunge into a worse Depression than before. We are not there yet because of these coordinated moves and the political force behind them. But we are on a precarious path to that inevitability.


    http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2014/11/10/qe-isnt-dying-its-morphing.html

    The FED through its policies throughout the current downturn has failed at one of its mandated tasks, maximizing employment. If one were to compare its stated target price of 2% inflation with its ongoing 0% interest rates one could question its success on the second . As to the other mandates that the FED has arbitrarily taken on by itself, inflating the stock market and assuring liquidity in the banking system, neither has done much for forwarding the FED's official mandates.

    One might ask why would the FED continue along this path when it has had such a poor record of success. The first thing a cynical person might look at is the Federal Debt. The current national debt (minus intergovernmental exchanges) is around $12 trillion. It is easy to imagine the effect on budgets, the interest obligations as a percentage debt, debt as a percentage of GPD, etc. if over the long term (or even over say 10 years) the interest rate the government pays on their debt suddenly jumps from 0% to even a modest 2%.

    The FED has a shell game going and some day it will bite us. IMO.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Congress will not even audit the independent, privately owned, federally chartered Federal Reserve.

      The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.

      The concept of "ownership" needs some explaining here, however. The member banks must by law invest 3 percent of their capital as stock in the Reserve Banks, and they cannot sell or trade their stock or even use that stock as collateral to borrow money. They do receive dividends of 6 percent per year from the Reserve Banks and get to elect each Reserve Bank’s board of directors.

      The private banks also have a voice in regulating the nation’s money supply and setting targets for short-term interest rates, but it’s a minority voice. Those decisions are made by the Federal Open Market Committee, which has a dozen voting members, only five of whom come from the banks. The remaining seven, a voting majority, are the Fed’s Board of Governors who, as mentioned, are appointed by the president.

      The Fed is a little defensive about the question of ownership. ...

      "The Federal Reserve System is not ‘owned’ by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects."
      It continues:

      Federal Reserve Board: As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the U.S. Congress. It is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government ...



      ... its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government ...

      Delete
    2. “If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money,
      it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.”


      - Andrew Jackson

      Delete
    3. But the Fed is a weird entity when it comes to “ownership”. It exists due to an act of Congress. But it is also considered an independent entity because it is not part of the Executive or Legislative branches of government. The Fed exists because Congress created it, but it doesn’t enact policy measures with any Congressional or Presidential approval. Politically, this makes it a very independent entity.

      The Regional Fed banks are arms of the Fed system that serve like regional versions of the NY Clearinghouse. One thing that muddies this discussion on “ownership” is the issuance of stock by the regional Fed banks to the member banks. This stock pays a fixed 6% dividend and gives the banks a claim on the Fed’s annual profits.
      ...
      Let’s also not forget the primary purpose of the Fed. Remember, the Fed exists to serve the payments system. This means it is a supporter of the US banking system. Before it can ever achieve its dual mandate on price stability and full employment the Fed must ensure the payments system is healthy. Therefore, the Fed is often viewed as a servant to the banking system while also trying to be a public purpose servant. It has, in effect, two masters by design.


      Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/who-actually-owns-the-federal-reserve-2013-10#ixzz3It5Th8xZ

      Delete
    4. 12 Trillion at 2% = $240 Billion

      divided by $17.2 Trillion it comes out to a bit less than 1.4% of GDP.

      Delete
    5. And yet some how 3 billion in AID to Israel (most of which is spent in the USA) is a major issue…

      12 thousand BILLION if fake money aint… and the historically LOW interest rate of 2% is ONLY 240 BILLION…

      Delete
    6. ...meanwhile the US dollar has been strengthening.

      Interesting bit of news here in Canada - Canada and China are setting up a currency hub. Cutting out the greenback it would appear.

      Delete
    7. strengthening compared to what?

      tires still cost 800 bucks.

      gas is still 2.75 a gallon and if you took out ethanol? it' would be 3 bucks

      Delete
    8. The whole BRIC 'Movement' ( Brazil, Russia, India and China ), is moving slowly forward.

      When the Canadians accept payment for oil in a currency other than USD, there will be a 'Regime Change' in Canada.
      If history is any fore-teller of the future.

      Delete
    9. Poor little "O"rdure, he still must not be able to qualify for a 'refi'.

      if you took up 'mucking stalls', "O"rdure ... maybe your income stream would stabilize.
      Maybe not.

      {;-)

      Delete
    10. It would depend on your ability to do a 'good job' mucking stalls.

      You certainly would not have time to 'blog', but, maybe, just maybe ... you could get refinanced.

      Delete
    11. to a basket of currencies WiO.

      Delete
    12. .

      $240 billion over the 10 year budget cycle = $2400 billion = $2.4 trillion

      not counting the compounding effect of interest

      not counting the fact that interest payments over time become a larger and larger percent of the budget

      not counting the fact that interest dollars do nothing to meet the needs of the people

      not to mention that for every dollar of interest there is a bigger battle over any remaining budget expenditures.

      However, the 2% would only be on shorter term obligations. It is hard to say what longer term rates would do once rates started up. During the 2013 fiscal year, total interest on the debt amounted to $431 billion.

      The 2015 budget reflects interest as 6% of the total. It continues to grow.

      The FED is likely nervous about raising interest rates for the same reason they manipulate the CPI numbers to under-report true inflation. There are too many things tied to it, market performance, housing, corporate liquidity and profits, etc. just as the CPI is linked to items like SS payments, welfare payments, tax structure, federal wage scales, etc. Moves in the CPI (or lack of them) affects 80 million people due to federal statutes alone.

      .

      Delete
    13. It was several weeks ago, as I recall, that I read that Great Britain made its first interest payment on its "perpetual bonds" from WWI, taking advantage of current interest rates (It took advantage of the dead some time ago).

      Delete
    14. http://www.ft.com/fastft/229142/uk-repay-loans-from-wwi-south-sea-bubble
      MARKETS UK to repay part of perpetual WWI loans

      Quirk, the UK has bubble blowing down to a fine science.

      Delete
  19. Obamacare's exchanges are working better than expected

    In September, the Kaiser Family Foundation looked at insurance premiums for Obamacare's benchmark silver plan in 16 major cities and found, to their surprise, that prices were falling by 0.8 percent on average. On November 11th, they updated the analysis with data for 32 more cities — and found that the initial finding held. On average, prices are falling by 0.2 percent.




    "Falling" is not a word that people associate with health-insurance premiums. They tend to rise as regularly as the morning sun. And, to be fair, the Kaiser Family Foundation is only looking at 48 cities, and the drop they record is modest (though this is the same methodology they used in 2014, and to good results). But this data, though preliminary, is some of the best data we have — and it shows that Obamacare is doing a better job holding down costs than anyone seriously predicted, including Kaiser's researchers.

    "I expected premium growth to be modest in most of the country," Larry Levitt, a co-author of the report, told Vox's Sarah Kliff in September. "But what we saw were some decreases instead."

    Skyrocketing? Not ezzackly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Obamacare's surprising cost control

      Obamacare is doing better at a lot of things than anyone seriously expected. The law's initial premiums came in cheaper than the Congressional Budget Office projected when the law first passed. In April 2014, the Congressional Budget Office said the unexpectedly low premiums meant Obamacare would cost $104 billion less than they previously thought. If Kaiser's estimates hold nationally, Obamacare's cost will have to be revised downward yet again.

      The fear about government programs in general, and government health-insurance programs in particular, is that they are overly generous because they spend other people's money. But Obamacare's competitive insurance marketplaces  are actually doing what they promised to do: forcing insurers to compete for customers by cutting costs. The Congressional Budget Office explains that Obamacare's premiums are cheaper than expected because its insurance features "lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers' use of health care than employment-based plans do."

      That is something of an extraordinary statement: Obamacare is forcing insurers to run leaner than employers are.

      Delete
    2. My doctor will not accept my anthem blue cross blue shield because it's ACA. I have to pay out of pocket to see him

      something about how the rules say a patient can fake having insurance for a period of time and the practice has to eat it if not recoverable.

      Delete
    3. You ought to change doctors.

      {;-)

      Delete
  20. Ask Jack to do his homeWORK?

    How silly, it is WORK, after all.

    As for a reading assignment, he has no reading comprehension skills, so what's the use?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, got back from Missoula, aye.

      Have you formulated an answer, yet?

      Are you a draft dodger, or did you lie to us on 22 June 2014?

      Delete
    2. I can supply the quote, if need be.

      Delete
  21. I happened to scroll up stream, many demands are made of good ole' Jack ...
    ... but not a single quote has been provided for him to diagram.

    Not a single 'hard fact' produced.

    Nothing but hyperbole.
    Typical of so many of the fellas, here.
    Sound and fury, but nothing to back it up.

    Never had it in the past, don't have it now, either.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Rat, you are the victim of unwarranted persecution.

      Delete
    2. No one understands you. No one loves you. No one appreciates your quest for the impossible dream. ... which reminds me ...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKIVOf4IzE

      Delete
  22. TOUCHDOWN!
    Jubilation As Probe Lands On Comet...
    10-year journey...
    Europe makes space history..........drudge

    :):)

    YES !

    ReplyDelete
  23. Jack's insane.

    After long day, nap time!

    Ah.......

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you a draft dodger, or did you lie to us on 22 June 2014?

      Delete
    2. Come on Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, give us an answer!

      Delete
    3. Have you tried playing that LP backward? I bet it says something like, "Satan force-feeds Rat fiery turds from Tejas." ... or not ...

      Delete
    4. Rat is still a figment of your imaginationWed Nov 12, 06:43:00 PM EST

      That's an "Or Not'.

      Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson has to answer the question, as it will continue to be asked, until he does.
      His moniker does not change, until then, if it changes then ...
      Choice is his to make.

      Delete
  24. http://www.godvine.com/When-They-Saw-This-Old-Woman-Sit-At-The-Piano-They-Didn-t-Expect-THIS-Hold-On-To-Your-Hats-fb-gv-6181.html
    When They Saw This Old Woman Sit At The Piano They Didn't Expect THIS. Hold On To Your Hats!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Still no answer to Ash's query ...

      AshTue Nov 11, 02:30:00 PM EST

      allen,

      I looked through that article you linked I could not find any mention of churches or the quote you put up:

      ""The Palestinians 'will defend Al-Aqsa and the churches against the settlers and extremists,' he pledged..."

      to which you asked:

      What "churches" are threatened by "settlers and extremists"?"


      Where did that quote come from?


      Of course the response by allen ...
      Not adequate to the question. He just repeated the nonexistent quote

      Nothing but hyperbole and hot air, just like the "Quote"

      Delete
    2. Jack HawkinsWed Nov 12, 06:56:00 PM EST
      Still no answer to Ash's query ...


      Yesterday, I twice gave a series of links. Today, I have repeated the one from Al Jezeera.

      Those terrible Jews are praying on the Temple Mount -- attacking it.

      I give you the same advice as Ash: Try reading. If you need some help, find a Jew.

      Delete
    3. My question has not been answered, now that I think about it. What "churches" are being attacked by Israel?

      Abu Mazen made the same claim, today, and promised to protect them.

      Delete
    4. Nope, you quoted a nonexistent source, now you are making it up as you go along.
      Proof you are a liar, a fraud and worse ...
      An Israeli

      Delete
    5. It grows tiresome in the repetition, but you are a liar.

      Delete
  25. UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday there needs to be greater international pressure on Russia to abide by a ceasefire in Ukraine, as Russia denied it was a threat to its neighbour.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Muslims just love, love, love their children.

    http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2009/12/29/warning-not-for-the-fainthearted-pictures-of-what-moslems-do-to-their-children-thanks-pam-geller/
    WARNING! NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED….PICTURES OF WHAT MOSLEMS DO TO THEIR CHILDREN…THANKS PAM GELLER

    The city of Atlanta permitted this to go on with impunity. Personally, the adults would have gone to jail and their children into state care had I any say. Getting out of jail would have been possible only upon forever leaving our fair shores. America has no place for this barbarism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies


    1. Send those Atlanta adults to Gaza. Put the kids in state custody.

      Delete
  27. Finally, Science Explains Why No One Can Lift Thor’s Hammer

    By James Kakalios
    11.12.14 |
    6:30 am |

    These are exciting days for physics, with several recent experimental observations providing important information on some of the most important mysteries of nature. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has found the Higgs boson, the last missing particle in the Standard Model, advancing our understanding of the origin of the mass of fundamental particles. The discovery by astrophysicists that the expansion of the universe is accelerating implies that 75% of the universe is composed of “dark energy.” And a recent trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron suggests an explanation for the long-standing open question: can the Hulk lift Thor’s hammer?

    The scene in question aired Oct. 28 during an episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC. In this clip, the Avengers are relaxing in their street clothes in Tony Stark’s penthouse apartment, and are discussing the “enchantment” on Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, which stipulates that it can only be lifted by those “deemed worthy,” and whoever does so will “possess the power of Thor.” Thor places his hammer on a coffee table (actually, as shown below, it is resting partially on some books on the table), and various heroes attempt to pick up the hammer, to no avail. Thor then hefts the hammer and casually flips it into the air.
    mjolnir

    YouTube/Screengrab

    And thus one proposal for why the hammer is unliftable is put to rest. Astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, has speculated that, if Mjolnir is composed of neutron star matter, the densest material in the universe outside of a black hole, then it would weigh as much as three hundred billion elephants. Water has a density of one gram per cubic centimeter, and lead has a density of eleven grams per cubic centimeter, but they pale compared to neutron star matter, which has a density of one hundred million million grams per cubic centimeter. In this case Mjolnir would weigh roughly twelve thousand trillion pounds. I know Tony Stark is rich, but even if he could buy a coffee table that could support such a weight, I can’t imagine any book, even an impenetrable physics text, that could bear up under this force. No, we must look elsewhere for an explanation as to why only Thor (and a few select others—more on this in a moment) can raise Mjolnir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Norse mythology and Marvel Comics tell us that Mjolnir is composed of “uru metal,” forged ages ago by the blacksmith Etri in the heart of a dying star. Presumably uru metal is magical in nature, and thus conveys the enchantment placed on it by Thor’s father, Odin. But in this matter we are not concerned with the fantasy of myths or comic books, but the real world of Hollywood movies.

      In the 2011 film Thor, the Norse “gods” are identified as a race of alien beings, whose science is so advanced compared to twenty-first century Earth that their abilities appear not unlike magic to us (explicitly invoking Arthur C. Clarke’s third law). In this case, we can speculate as to the properties that uru metal must have in order to account for the experimental evidence in the Thor and Avengers films.

      In the first Thor film, when Odin prepares to banish his wayward son to Earth, he whispers to the hammer: “whoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” In these days of interactive, voice recognition software in smartphones, such reprogramming of the hammer’s operating system through speech commands hardly counts as ‘magic.’ But how the nanotech embedded within the hammer executes Odin’s instructions does defy present-day science.

      In the Avengers: Age of Ultron clip, Tony Stark speculates that there is a biosensor in the hammer’s shaft that recognizes when Thor has grasped Mjolnir. He is correct, in a sense—though it is not Thor’s fingerprints that the hammer is reading. Most likely it is taking some complex biological and psychological profile that calculates the “worthiness” of whoever is trying to lift the hammer. This is consistent with the scene in the clip where Steve Rogers (Captain America) is able to move the hammer (albeit slightly), while Tony Stark and Jim Rhodes, using thruster-assisted Iron Man and Iron Patriot gloves, are unable to budge Mjolnir at all. But if someone the hammer’s nanotechnology has determined to be “unworthy” tries to raise Mjolnir, how does it prevent itself from being moved?

      Here the answer lies with Newton’s First Law of Motion, which states that an object at rest will remain at rest, if no net force acts upon it. The key word in the last sentence is “net.” When the hammer rests on the coffee table, there is a downward force on it from the gravitational attraction between the mass of the hammer and the mass of the Earth (which we refer to as its “gravitational weight”) and a counter-force from the book and tabletop pushing up on the hammer. This counter-force, referred to in physics as a Normal force (as it acts perpendicular or normal to any surface) is fundamentally electrostatic in nature, and is easy to take for granted except when it fails (as when one puts a thousand ton object on a table that can only provide a counter force of several hundred pounds).

      Delete
    2. When Tony Stark tries to lift Mjolnir using his Iron Man glove, he exerts a large upward force, greater than its weight, and yet the hammer remains at rest. So where does the additional downward force come from? One can only conclude that a unique property of uru metal is that, under the proper stimulus, it can emit large quantities of gravitons. On Earth, these fundamental particles have not been experimentally confirmed to exist, but as stipulated, the Asgardians are ahead of us scientifically. Gravitons are conjectured to transmit the gravitational force, and if an object emits additional gravitons, it is equivalent to increasing its mass. Thus, when an “unworthy” person applies an upward force, the uru metal increases the hammer’s weight to exactly cancel this lift, and the hammer remains unmoved. When Tony and Rhodey simultaneously exert a larger upward force, the emission rate of gravitons increases, to again neutralize their efforts. The greater weight will not damage the tabletop, as only enough gravitons are emitted to balance out all upward forces, to keep the hammer stationary. Once the lifting force is stopped, the excess graviton emission also ceases.

      The ability of uru metal to alter its interaction with gravitational fields may also account for another astounding property of Mjolnir—that when thrown, it can alter its trajectory and move, seemingly of its own volition, returning to Thor’s hand. In physics, the only valid answer to the question: How fast are you moving? is: Who’s asking? Right now if you are reading this sitting on a bench at a train station, you are at rest, while another reader on a train speeding by you is moving east at, say, 40 miles per hour. Of course, from the point of view of the reader on the train, she is the one who is stationary, and it is the bench warmer who is moving west at 40 miles per hour. And both readers are in fact racing at a dizzying speed of 67,000 miles per hour as the Earth orbits the sun, which in turn is in motion about the center of the Milky Way galaxy. All motion is relative, and the amazing properties of uru metal, which scientists are just beginning to explore (or would be, if it actually existed) must include the ability to alter its rest frame in mid-flight, so that its motion, when viewed from the perspective of a stationary observer, will be such that it returns to Thor’s hand.

      Delete
    3. An important check on any scientific result is the review and vetting by other scientists. The above arguments were described in an article I wrote on “The Materials Science of the Avengers” for Hollywood Chemistry, a collection of essays published in 2014 by the American Chemical Society (who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of shameless plugs?). I shared this information with Mark Waid, the writer at the time of Marvel Comics’ The Indestructible Hulk, at the start of a storyline where the Hulk would have an adventure with Thor. In The Indestructible Hulk #8, the question of whether or not the Hulk could lift Mjolnir arose, and no less a scientific authority than physicist Bruce Banner (the Hulk’s alter ego) provides peer-review and approval of my “graviton emission proposal,” as shown here:
      HULK-2

      Marvel Comics

      These panels also provide experimental evidence for another speculative scientific theory. As this scene from The Indestructible Hulk #8 indicates, there are two physicists named Jim Kakalios: one a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies amorphous/nanocrystalline composite semiconductors (and writes popular science books and articles about the physics of superheroes), and another who lives in the Marvel Earth-616 universe, whose theories on uru metal are known to Bruce Banner. This provides confirmation of the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, indicating the existence of at least two parallel Earths. Whether or not there are more such worlds, with additional Jim Kakalios’s residing in the multiverse remains to be determined, but future studies of both Thor’s hammer and parallel universes now have a firm experimental foundation. After all, they couldn’t put it in a comic book or Hollywood movie if it weren’t true!

      Jim Kakalios is the Taylor Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota and the author of The Physics of Superheroes and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, both by Gotham Books.

      Delete
    4. To watch the neat videos and see the comics go here -

      http://www.wired.com/2014/11/can-hulk-lift-thors-hammer/


      Quirk sold shares in a Uru Mine once, Q's Uru Mine, supposedly located somewhere southwest of Ely, Nevada

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ely,_Nevada

      and got heavily fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his efforts.

      Delete
  28. http://www.examiner.com/article/it-s-war-ukraine-and-it-s-the-jews-fault
    It's War In Ukraine And It's The Jews Fault

    ... all part of "The Plan" ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you say so, allen ...
      You ought to know.

      Delete
    2. You do have the Social Media Commando talking points.

      Delete
  29. Timing Test:

    Rat Free Zone

    Start: Now..........................1:45 am................

    Counting................

    ReplyDelete

  30. Religion

    Are We Seeing Another Global Great Awakening?
    A series of books have explored varying reasons why belief in God is high across the globe. Except for a few holdouts.
    Donald Devine
    By Donald Devine
    November 12, 2014
    Share on emailEmail
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    Hangout with us

    Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge shocked the secular West in 2009 by announcing that “God Is Back”—starting with China, of all places. Here were two epitomes of British reasonableness explaining that Europe was the modern exception in viewing God as dead, an irrational shadow of the past, with its continent declining in population and power, and the rest of the world resembling America in having religion as a part of their cultural dynamism.

    China’s atheistic communist government conceded that its Christian population had doubled to 21 million over the past decade, worshiping in 55,000 official Protestant and 4,600 Catholic churches. The underground church, it’s widely known, was much larger—by foreign estimates perhaps 77 million, which means larger than the Communist Party. A Pew Global Attitudes study found only 11 percent of Chinese saying religion was not important in their lives, compared to 31 percent saying it was very or somewhat important. Indeed, everywhere the authors looked outside their European homeland, religion was booming in the early twenty-first century world.
    Global Enthusiasm for Religion Persists

    Six in 10 Americans today tell Pew pollsters that religion plays a very important role in their lives. Over 80 percent believe in God or some higher power, with only 4 percent choosing agnosticism and merely 2 percent atheism. Only 8 percent said they did not pray, as against 73 percent who said they pray at least weekly, while 83 percent said God answers prayers. Sixty-three percent said they belonged to a church. The most recent Pew poll reflected some changes, with a plurality agreeing that gays had a right to marry, but a majority also thinking that homosexuality was sinful. Seventy-two percent agreed religion was “losing influence” in America but 56 percent of these thought that this was a bad thing.
    Six in 10 Americans today tell Pew pollsters that religion plays a very important role in their lives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What is often overlooked is international data. WIN-Gallup International statistics show that 59 percent of the world population says it is religious and only 13 percent is atheistic, almost all of the latter in China, Japan, the Czech Republic, and France. The people of Africa, Latin America, India and Asia, and the Muslim world almost all consider themselves religious. Tempering the Micklethwait-Wooldridge thesis somewhat, even many in Europe say they believe in God (with Sweden registering the lowest polling number; apparently we ought to call it Secularism Central) and many Europeans also say they pray.

      The Science Times section of the New York Times became part of this reawakening in the person of Nicholas Wade, one of its former editors and earlier editor of the prestigious journals Nature and Science. He issued a book the same year titled “The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures.” Religion is merely an evolved instinct, Wade argued, but it was essential to the evolution of human beings from frail animal to master of the world.
      Even Darwinists Recognize a Need for Religion

      Wade’s jumping-off point was chimpanzees, asking why humanity’s closest living cousins have not evolved much since their species split some five million years ago even as humans have changed dramatically merely in the last 50,000 years. His explanation is culture, which evolutionists have only recently taken seriously. They’ve learned that culture can feed back into the genome, “accounting at least in some part of the vast differences between people and chimpanzees.” Moreover, evolved humans are “vastly preferable—kinder, more prosperous, less warlike, less profligate of the environment and more knowledgeable.” With the hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times, war deaths reached 15 percent of the population, compared to war deaths of 1 percent even in a horrible century (the twentieth).
      The fear of gods and spirits effectively restrained attitudes that were hostile to group survival and solidified the in-group against outsiders, who often were not viewed even as human.

      “Such substantial and fairly steady progress cannot have been directed by evolution, a blind and largely random process with not a flicker of interest in human welfare,” writes Wade. “Surely the only possible origin of progress is human choice.” Early humans in small groups needed rules to restrain individual self-interest for group survival to preserve individual survival. These rules “likely” have a genetic root, which accounts for morality at its “core” being “very similar in every society” but their development and significant differences are based on culture. The similarities are rules against murder, theft, and incest and a general belief in “do as you are done by.” Even Charles Darwin found the latter principle “the foundation of morality.”

      Delete
    2. Hunter-gatherer religion developed to provide more effective restraints than force, since even the strongest leader was easily overwhelmed by several offended men. The fear of gods and spirits effectively restrained attitudes that were hostile to group survival and solidified the in-group against outsiders, who often were not viewed even as human. Religion provided the “primal glue” that unified these groups and prepared them to survive. Roman emperors even took the title pontifex maximus, meaning chief priest as well as emperor, and all bureaucracies probably started in temples. As the late Samuel Huntington reminded us, religion still defines the line between the major civilizations.
      It’s Impossible to Not Acknowledge Moral Rules

      God is making such a comeback that a professor of political science at the University of Texas can write a book provocatively titled “What We Cannot Not Know.” Jay Budziszewski argues therein that what we “cannot not” know is moral rules and even God. These are obvious to any thinking person, he claims. Everyone has a sense of a moral law written in his conscience. Only sloth, self-deception, or apathy can lead to denial. To argue that everyone believes in God and morality, in the face of the nonstop proclamations we hear from various people that they do not believe in them, has always seemed rather arrogant if not irrational. But one must admit Budziszewski makes a powerful case.
      Everyone has a sense of a moral law written in his conscience. Only sloth, self-deception, or apathy can lead to denial.

      Budziszewski in some ways models Wade in arguing that there is a “universal common sense of the human race” about morality. Budziszewski calls this “natural law” that, at “some level,” is known to all. He does not find this exclusively biological, but neither does Wade with his concept of culture. Budziszewski claims these are also “right for all” and even Wade has his sense of “preferable” human development that implies some sense of “right.”

      Budziszewski goes on to say that it “makes a difference” that moral rules “are right for all; otherwise there would be nothing for moral reasoning and persuasion to be about. It makes a difference that they are known to all; otherwise even though moral reasoning and persuasion would be about something, they could never get started” discussing, much less agreeing upon, basic moral behavior or the immorality of the act of murder.

      Delete
    3. How could we argue something was moral or immoral without some reference point somewhere? Budziszewski says it is naturally in us all. Wade finds it based in genes and then further developed by culture to promote survival. Neither expects we know these principles unfailingly, with Budziszewski arguing that we refer to these principles even when we break them, to justify breaking them. To Wade’s short list of universals, Budziszewski adds: caring for one’s children, and being against maiming, slander, and most adultery. Wade would probably accept these and perhaps even the popular belief in some type of universal spirit or God, as opposed to Budziszewski’s belief in its reality.
      We Can Suppress Morality, But It Hurts

      Budziszewski slips a bit quickly into treating the Decalogue and its authorship by a designing, caring, forgiving God as universal—clearly neither is—but he also insists that one cannot speak about moral rules in general, only how they are elaborated by tradition. In this he is similar to Wade on culture. We otherwise only know natural law inarticulately, with Budziszewski even admitting that the monotheistic traditions and pre-Noahide covenant pretty much define modern natural law, which has the benefit that these different traditions can understand each other at least to some degree.
      No matter how repressed, somehow ‘the flotsam of natural law—all those corks of truth’ cannot ‘all be kept down at once.’

      The problem is speaking to people with no tradition, or rather to the modern intellectual tradition that explicitly rejects the common tradition in favor of one pragmatically defined by its experts as new conditions arise. To those who argue that the modern is superior because it is based on reason rather than belief, Budziszewski counters that the great atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel admitted his atheism is partially based on the “hope there is no God. I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

      Still, if the natural law is written on all hearts, and is even enforced by a conscience, how can some deny it? Even in the face of conscience and the possibility of negative consequences, humans desperately want to be thought good, even to themselves. They resist conscience’s demands but they can escape through remorse, blurted confession, reflexive atonement, desired reconciliation, or need for justification, for each of which Budziszewski presents pertinent examples. Some people can avoid these manifestations especially when taught to ignore them, but often at a psychic cost. The furies can be fought but there is a price to pay. Feelings can be manipulated even to accept a magazine’s image of a nude woman being fed into a meat grinder and emerging as hamburger; but Treblinka required psychiatric conditioning of its executioners to allow them to carry out their instructions. No matter how repressed, somehow “the flotsam of natural law—all those corks of truth” cannot “all be kept down at once.”

      Moderns cannot but find Budziszewski impertinent to insist we all must believe in God and natural law when many of us have thought them safely buried. Still, what is one to make of it when, for example, a professed agnostic such as Charles Krauthammer says, “I don’t believe in God, but I fear him greatly”? George Will, criticizing the agnosticism of Krauthammer, said that he believed his friend is actually an “amiable low-voltage atheist” like himself but “flinches from saying it.” Listen to Will explaining himself:

      The basic question in life is not, ‘Is there a God,’ but ‘Why does anything exist?’ St. Thomas Aquinas said that there must be a first cause for everything, and we call the first cause God. Fine, but it just has no hold on me.

      Fearing something one doubts exists? “Fine” about accepting a first cause called God “but it just has no hold on me”? What, we may wonder, is going on here? The books under review here might just be on to something.

      This article is reprinted from the blog of the Library of Law and Liberty.

      Delete
    4. http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/12/are-we-seeing-another-global-great-awakening/

      Interesting but too much talk about faith or belief when the real goal is knowing.

      Delete
  31. 3:41 am..............still Rat Free

    ReplyDelete
  32. >>>Although he barely touches it in the commercial, Carson's policy ideas, when he does express them (which is rarely) are not particularly new: vehemently anti-marriage equality, pro-flat tax, and against the Affordable Care Act, which he, a black man, has called “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."...................

    ................Since its formation in August 2013, the PAC has raised $10.6 million, and Robinson and Sousa delight in noting they even out-raised Ready for Hillary in one quarter. And the PAC has plans to put that money to use. Robinson and Sousa both assured me that they would be setting up offices all over the country, specifically in Iowa, the Carolinas, and New Hampshire—and that they would be hiring staff in Florida. If they succeed in drafting Carson, which it seems likely they will, they are adamant that the PAC will not dissolve, but evolve “to try to broaden the base of the GOP, and should Dr. Carson get the nomination” go “brick by brick, house by house, making the case to minority voters” on his behalf.<<<

    The Wild Bunch
    11.12.14
    Ben Carson’s Bizarrely Serious, Seriously Bizarre Campaign Crew
    The GOP is fielding its strongest slate of presidential candidates in forever. Who tries to draft the guy with extreme views and no political experience? Here’s who.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/12/ben-carson-s-bizarrely-serious-seriously-bizarre-campaign-crew.html

    Ben Carson For President - lots of people like the idea.

    ReplyDelete
  33. 3:51 am Pacific.................

    ReplyDelete
  34. Health

    Another tape surfaces of ObamaCare architect calling American people ‘stupid’

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/12/another-tape-surfaces-obamacare-architect-calling-american-people-stupid/

    One must admit, the guy may be onto something.......

    4:01 am Pacific.................

    Oh, these delightful early morning hours !

    ReplyDelete
  35. Rat shit and boobie droppings make for a lot of scrolling. Funny how two sides of the same coin hate each other so much.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No hate involved, Ash.
      Purely entertaining, after Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson has harassed the women off the site, calling them cunts, infusing his racist and bigoted views into every thread, turn about is a 'good time'.

      I just needed the proper and authentic references, to bash him with.
      As Deuce said, folks in glass houses should be careful, when throwing stones a others.

      Now, the retorts the defenders of Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson make against 'rat' or Jack, Farmer Rob, Anonymous ...
      Just don't mean nothin', because they are falsehoods, unreferenced claims that are, for the most part, pure fabrications.

      Those retorts that are accurate, are embraced.
      Israeli are the scum of the earth
      Judaism is not Zionism and Zionism is not Judaism.
      Israel does not represent Judaism.
      To criticize Israel is not Anti-Semitic.

      The rest, the accusations of crimes, murder, and such, are comical.
      But also provide further cause to continue the game.

      Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson has been offered respite. All he has to do ...
      Admit his accusations of criminal conduct against desert rat and the other characters, were mistakes on his part.

      That after reflection, he realizes the error of his ways.
      Until that happens, I have the quotes, the log ons and account numbers to reference and verify my position in the game.

      Delete
    2. Then he can return to being Boobie.

      Delete
    3. I was and will remain a professional asshole

      I'm the 'go to guy', the fella that gets the call when shit needs to hit the fan.
      It's never personal, never hateful, just is what it is.
      Entertaining.


      Delete
    4. ... nothing personal, mind you ...

      Delete
    5. But, unlike you, allen, I am no liar.

      I do not fabricate quotes.

      Delete
    6. The rat admits he is a moron !

      :) hehe

      Delete
  36. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2832524/Obama-admits-initial-ISIS-strategy-wrong-develops-new-plan-defeat-President-Assad-first.html
    Obama now admits Assad MUST go before ISIS can be defeated: President plans to focus on Syria and ousting brutal dictator as he tries to beat back terror group

    Lincoln made an observation to the effect that it was a bad idea to change horses mid-stream. Mr. Obama is not changing horses, he is changing streams.

    As the article makes patently clear, the US military is not even remotely ready for this mission. Taking the time frames given by the article, the best case scenario would have the US fielding 5,000 "somebodies" in about 13 months, if it started today. It is evident that militarily no strategy is in play now beyond bombing ISIS targets of opportunity. Working up a brand new "strategy of the month", will create a logistical nightmare and probably be a monumental waste of time. The Turks should be happy with the change of direction, and maybe that is the point. That said, I do not foresee a less troublesome Turkey, no matter how much lipstick Mr. Kerry applies to the pig.

    Like Sir Thomas More's Utopians, I am a firm believer in the assassination/extrajudicial execution of an enemy's leadership -- the more the merrier in the shortest time. The US has never shown any stomach for such a sanguinary foreign policy. I ask readers to consider how much better off the US would be today if, instantly on the heels of 9/11, it had comprehensively eliminated several thousand key Muslim players across the globe and "occupied" oil rich regions, leaving internal politics to the locals. Without question, the Strait of Hormuz would have been secured by a relentless, aggressively enforced, US only DMZ. Last, but far from least, think of the children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. revised and extended ...

      AshTue Nov 11, 02:30:00 PM EST

      allen,

      I looked through that article you linked I could not find any mention of churches or the quote you put up:

      ""The Palestinians 'will defend Al-Aqsa and the churches against the settlers and extremists,' he pledged..."

      to which you asked:

      What "churches" are threatened by "settlers and extremists"?"


      Where did that quote come from?


      Of course the response by allen ...
      ... that only Jews could 'see' it, foolhardy.

      A lot like the "Quote"

      Delete
  37. Until now, only parts of the letter were released to the public, but for the first time since King first read it 50 years ago, the letter has been published in its entirety by the New York Times.

    Aside from trying to urge King to commit suicide, the letter also threatened to expose his extra-martial affairs, which the F.B.I. found out about by wiretapping his phone. It also called him evil several times and gave him a deadline of 34 days to kill himself before he was exposed.

    As shocking as the letter is, it is a prudent reminder about the lengths governments are willing to take to invade citizens' private lives -- a debate that is still very much controversial today.

    According to the original report, a copy of the request to wiretap King remains on the desk of the current F.B.I director, as a reminder to him that even the bureau can do wrong by the people they are supposed to help protect.

    Read more: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/20132/20141113/fbi-urged-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-commit-suicide-shocking.htm#ixzz3Ixdtor9v

    ReplyDelete
  38. 1:45 am Pacific to 4:58 Pacific

    3 hours and 13 minutes Rat Free

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My starting time was based on the average of past experience.

      Delete
    2. Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, were you lying on 22 June 2014, or are your really a draft dodger?

      In Vino Veritas

      Delete
  39. Ben Carson Making Case to Be Taken Seriously in 2016

    By Scott Conroy - November 13, 2014
    Email
    Print

    53
    Comments

    When Ben Carson keynoted the Polk County Republican Party dinner in Des Moines this past August, the first thing noticed by longtime Iowa observers of presidential politics was the size of the crowd.

    A sold-out audience of 400 attended the event -- an impressive showing for a late-summer county-level fundraiser in the nation’s first voting state.

    But perhaps even more revealing than the crowd size was its composition.

    Instead of the well-known GOP activists who typically attend such functions in droves, unfamiliar faces dominated the Carson event. These were people who had become familiar with the retired pediatric neurosurgeon through his regular appearances on The Fox News Channel and his best-selling book. And, by and large, they were not longtime participants in state politics.

    “There was this whole new group of people, and we were just floored,” recalled Polk County GOP Chairman Will Rogers.

    That reaction has been a common one following Carson’s speaking engagements around the nation this year. In Iowa and the other early-voting states, in particular, it is Carson’s ability to draw from a new herd of caucus-goers and primary voters that makes him a potential presidential candidate to watch, despite his glaring vulnerabilities.

    A rhetorical missile-launcher in human form, who has never before run for public office, Carson is easy to dismiss as a serious contender. But already a hero among grassroots conservatives who hold outsized influence in the early GOP nominating process, Carson’s capacity to make significant noise in 2016 should not be overlooked..................

    Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/13/ben_carson_making_case_to_be_taken_seriously_in_2016.html#ixzz3IxnCroAs
    Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter

    I like this guy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The "Draft Dodger", Robert Peterson, likes Ben Carson, the unemployed doctor.
      The man with no money, no organization and no hope to change either.

      Delete
  40. Economist Laurence Kotlikoff uses a concept known as the fiscal gap, which is much more accurate, and much more depressing, than tracking Treasury debt. The fiscal gap basically measures the present value of future tax revenues against the present value of future government obligations. So not just Treasury bond debt, but also Social Security, Medicare, welfare entitlements, etc. And Kotlikoff came up with a fiscal gap of more than $200 TRILLION. Let me repeat that: $200 TRILLION. Now we don’t have time today to discuss the details of the federal government’s fiscal situation, and how this fiscal gap came to be. But rest assured the reality is wildly worse than virtually anyone in government or the mainstream press will admit.

    Understand that there is zero political will in Washington to cut the big ticket items like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, and defense. Zero. Remember the howls during the sequestration debates? Witness the outrage when Congress merely considers cuts in the rate of growth of certain programs! There is zero political will in Washington for huge tax increases, which wouldn’t help anyway. Politics will not solve this problem. Our federal government’s fiscal reality cannot be fixed, politically or economically. We cannot grow our way out of it. The numbers behind Kotlikoff’s fiscal gap simply cannot be overcome, they can only be put off — and made worse — by endless monetary expansion.
    ...
    Governments, and the political classes who run them, are facing a nonviolent revolution of ideas that was scarcely imaginable just twenty years ago. And this revolution will strike at the heart of these states’ only true asset: their legitimacy in the eyes of those they would govern. The bottom-up revolution is based on informed individuals who increasingly don’t need elites, political, academic, or scientific, to run their lives. It is based on the recognition that national and global governance schemes have failed to solve, or even address, huge structural problems like hunger, medical care, energy, and economic development. It is based on radical decentralization, political and otherwise, because the vast diversity of individual interests demands an end to top-down government edicts and bullying by 51 percent of the electorate.

    This can happen — and is happening — without even a tacit acceptance or understanding of liberty among the majority of people necessarily. They simply see with their own eyes that the state doesn’t work, so naturally they seek another way. I think this is especially true of millennials, who are not particularly libertarian but yet still deeply distrustful of government.

    Technology plays a huge role in this bottom-up revolution. Technology has given us the ability to find fellow travelers anywhere in the world, and to compare notes on what our would-be rulers are doing. It has taken the monopoly over the marketplace of ideas away from traditional media outlets. It has enormously lowered the cost of learning and acquiring knowledge. It has literally brought the vast store of human knowledge to our fingertips! Governments will have an awfully hard time keeping all this information, not to mention the ideas of liberty, away from people who are increasingly connected and hungry for a better life.

    The toothpaste is out of the tube, so to speak. To be absolutely clear: technology is not an ideology. And technology is used by the state, just as it is used against the state. Imagine J. Edgar Hoover with today’s NSA apparatus available to him! And technology can never change the fundamental choice before us: liberty or statism. There is no “third way.”

    ReplyDelete
  41. Beware Presidents with nothing to lose -

    November 13, 2014
    Obama may veto Keystone authorization bill
    By Rick Moran

    The White House is hinting that President Obama will veto any bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline.

    One of the few bi-partisan pieces of legislation is threatened by the most partisan president in history.

    The Hill:

    The White House on Thursday hinted that President Obama could veto congressional legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline as lawmakers in both the House and Senate were readying votes on the controversial construction project.

    "Our dim view of these kinds of proposals has not changed,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

    Earnest reiterated that the State Department was still reviewing the controversial pipeline project, and that litigation in a Nebraska court still needed to be resolved.

    On Wednesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), facing a tough reelection effort, requested unanimous consent to proceed on a vote approving the pipeline. With nearly a dozen Democrats supporting the measure, the Louisiana senator may have the votes to pass the bill into law.

    “I am glad that we will now have an up-or-down vote on the Hoeven-Landrieu bill to green light the Keystone pipeline, and I urge all senators to join me in the effort to approve this important project,” Landrieu said in a statement.

    Although a dozen Democrats may join Republicans in passing a bill, that isn't enough to override a presidential veto. Several of those Democratic votes would disappear in the new sesssion of Congress beginning in January, as most pro-Keystone Democratic Senators lost their seats in the mid term elections. By my calculations, Republicans would still need 13 Democrats to bolt in order to override a presidential veto in the new Congress. At this point, it doesn't appear possible.

    President Obama is making a dramatic swing even farther left than he has been in the past following the mid terms. On every issue from immigration, to the EPA regs on carbon, to the pipeline, to closing Gitmo, Obama is preparing to energize his base far left liberal supporters. He's got nothing to lose anymore.

    Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/11/obama_may_veto_keystone_authorization_bill.html#ixzz3Ixok0Aoe
    Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do you mean to say the Republican Congress cannot control the President?

      That the Republicans will be truly powerless ...

      That the election of 2014 was inconsequential?

      Delete
    2. Hillary's got to be the biggest loser in all of this Obama incompetence and nonsense.

      Republicans will say when she runs for President is she is running for Obama's third term.........

      Delete
    3. Now, the Republican spinmiesters tell us that the country is going to be worse off with a Republican Congress.

      Why did they not mention this prior to election day, 2014?

      Why did you not see this coming Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson?

      Delete
  42. Seems like the Euros may have screwed the pooch...

    The first photo image from the surface of a comet shows the tiny lander Philae perched in the shadows of a cliff that could complicate the operation of solar panels needed to keep instruments working, European Space Agency said Thursday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. $1.2 billion spent, and they still could not land the thing in the sunlight ...

      Delete
    2. yeah, those Euro folk just aren't as good at the ole americans at this kind of thing...

      ...what is it the USA is launching stuff into space on? Oh, ya, they hire the Russians :o|

      Delete
    3. Exactly the point, Ash.
      More waste, fraud and abuse of the taxpayer ...

      This time the European taxpayer is footing the bill for 'space adventures' ...
      The technocrats cannot even land the thing in view of its power source

      The US cannot even get into low earth orbit without Russia rockets.

      Yet billions of dollars have been spent on the idea, the effort, and all for naught.
      Well, not for naught, people no longer need map reading skills.

      Delete
    4. Map reading skills? I tried to google map the directions but it didn't turn out. I saw a nifty graphic of the orbital route that unit took over the last ten years to match up with the comets path is pretty darn good map reading - They then plunked down a dishwasher size thing on a very irregularly shaped chunk of ice flying through space and there was no 'man' in the cockpit steering the thing - just nerds at their computer. Probably a fake just like the USA moon landing was.

      Delete
    5. and, of course, that pesky chunk of ice is also rotating....

      Delete
  43. >>>It will be challenging for Hillary Clinton to market herself as different enough from Barack Obama that the country would want to risk another four or eight years of political back-biting and dysfunction during a time of unmatched-in-recent-years peril to the civilized world. Indeed, the more that foreign policy remains in the headlines, the worse it is for Hillary “reset button” Clinton whose term as Secretary of State is notable only for how effectively she used it to stay away from her husband.<<<

    heh

    Special Report
    The Biggest Loser of Them All

    Does anybody really think Hillary had a good election night?

    By Ross Kaminsky – 11.12.14

    http://spectator.org/articles/60955/biggest-loser-them-all

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Al Gore was able to 'get it done', Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, recieving more votes than George W Bush, just not in all the right places.

      And Hillary will have Bill, and the GOP will have no one of consequence.
      Another Bush, or maybe their last loser, Mittens Romney.

      Wonder who Sheldon will be putting his Chinese lucre on?

      Delete
  44. AshThu Nov 13, 08:22:00 AM EST

    Rat shit and boobie droppings make for a lot of scrolling. Funny how two sides of the same coin hate each other so much.

    ...

    Ash, I'm actually much more upset with Deuce for letting rat determine the tone of his blog.

    It is disgusting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, what in the world are you talking about?

      Were you lying on 22 June 2014, or are you a truth telling draft dodger?

      In Vino Veritas

      Delete
    2. Take the first step on the road to redemption, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson.
      Come clean about your 22 June 2014 post, you know the one ...

      BobSun Jun 22, 01:42:00 PM EDT

      When did I ever say I was a scholar??

      I don't recall saying that.

      I have a college degree in English Lit. from U of Washington.

      To avoid being drafted in part. ...

      Delete
    3. ummm, dude, both the rat-shit and boobie droppings "define the tone" of THIS blog.

      Delete
    4. “All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.”

      Delete
    5. Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants,
      and collaborative production relies on shared creation,
      but collective action creates shared responsibility,
      by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.


      Delete
  45. You gotta love this stuff -


    Besieged by stupid Americans, Media circles the wagons around Gruber
    posted at 10:01 am on November 13, 2014 by Noah Rothman

    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/13/besieged-by-stupid-americans-media-circles-the-wagons-around-gruber/

    hahaha

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      The videos, none of which were uncovered by any major news organization...

      SOP

      Calling his comments “the impolitic but ultimately unnewsworthy confessions of a single technocrat,”...

      More, nonsense. Gruber was quite willing to spread the blame...er, I mean...share credit for the deceit stating that is was Kohn Kerry who came up with the idea to say it was a 'tax on the insurance companies' instead of a tax on people's policies.

      Neil Irwin, writing in The New York Times,.. “Mr. Gruber was, in an infelicitous way, expressing frustration with that state of affairs,” Irwin charitably explained

      Anyone that watched the videos knows the guy was laughing his ass off and bragging about how clever he was, sharing the joke with his friends, other liberal elitist pricks.

      The New York Times writer and MSNBC contributor Josh Barro insisted. “Public opinion on health care policy is just completely incoherent.” He later insisted that the public’s confusion “puts politicians in a position where the only thing they can do to make the public happy is lie and so, people lied.”

      The elitist mindset, do what you have to do, lie, cheat, or still, but always remember 'its for their own good'.

      After allowing Gruber to deliver an interruption-free soliloquy, Farrow resolved that Gruber’s comments, which displayed all the subtlety and refinement of a jackhammer, were really quite “nuanced.”

      Nuanced? Yea, nuanced like a hammer to the head. The guy has never apologized for what he did only that he was caught talking about it.

      The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker indignantly countered by noting that his paper ran a front page, above the fold feature on this kerfuffle just today.

      The Washington Post, home to Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate, comes in last on the story and expects a round of applause rather than the tepid clapping of the remaining crowd reserved for the last marathoner that crosses the finish line.

      .

      Delete
  46. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of extremist group ISIS, called on his supporters to “erupt volcanoes of jihad” in an apparent new audio message released Thursday. The recording, which appeared to be genuine according to Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm and NBC News counterterrorism consultancy, came days after speculation that Baghdadi had been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq.

    "O soldiers of the Islamic State, continue to harvest the soldiers," the recording said. "Erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere. Light the Earth with fire." The extremist leader claimed the bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is failing, saying: “America and its allies are terrified, weak, and powerless.”

    He also said ISIS fighters would not "never abandon fighting," adding: "They will be triumphant, even if only one man of them is left.”

    ReplyDelete
  47. .

    Exactly the point, Ash. More waste, fraud and abuse of the taxpayer ...

    More silliness seeping up from that polluted basement in Arizona.

    Waste?

    Hell, the world will get more benefits out of even a partially successful effort by the Germans to interface with that comet than they can ever hope to get from the current US conflict in Iraq/Syria.

    $1.2 billion cost?

    Heck, we have spent at least that much on the war so far and now Obama is asking for another $6 billion and 1500 troops.

    I've said from the beginning getting involved there was a big mistake. Once the US started the bombing in Syria and brow beat 60 (?) countries to join a coalition, I argued with Ash that politically it was impossible for the US to back out at that point, that they would have to stay until they reached a certain level of success (not winning, not wiping them out, not 'defeating' them) just enough where we could with a straight face declare victory and go home, the same as we have done in the past, win or lose. What I didn't argue with Ash about was that this one would be different. Despite the assurances of the babes in drone land, this is not a different war. It is the same shitty little war we have fought in the past. Our best hope is in getting out of it quickly and with the least cost and damage to assets and reputation that we can.

    If this thing expands to regime change or even a 'no-fly zone' in Syria (which is the same thing) all bets are off.

    A partially successful space flight that expands knowledge and capability at a manageable cost? Yea, I would take that any day ahead of dumping the same money in some shithole in the ME.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exceedingly wasteful, Legionnaire Q.

      You compare apples to oranges, but disregard the apricots.

      Between 1959 and 1973 NASA spent $23.6 billion on human spaceflight, exclusive of infrastructure and support, of which nearly $20 billion was for Apollo

      $20 billion 'not adjusted for inflation' dollars on an ego trip.

      Delete
    2. Plus the costs of ... infrastructure and support

      Delete
    3. And for what ... ?

      ... Tang ...

      Delete
    4. The little publicized knowledge that the moon is older than the earth ...

      Delete
    5. We did manage to gainfully employ a bunch of NAZIs, guess that counts for ... something.

      Delete
  48. .

    But, unlike you, allen, I am no liar.

    I do not fabricate quotes.



    You might not 'fabricate quotes' but you truncate them and take them out of context so as to deceive. For anyone who doesn't use English as a second language, or for that matter, anyone possessing a sliver of honesty, that is called lying.

    Now lying is not a disease, everyone does it at one time or another. However, repeating the same lie time after time even after it has been pointed out and everyone knows that it is a lie reflects a certain juvenile narcissism, a refusal to accept reality. At that point, the lying becomes compulsive and pathological.

    Just saying.

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  49. I must say, Legionnaire Q, that for someone that was going to catalog these supposed and alleged lies, you certainly have fallen short.

    Each quote I provide, comes with a link and the wrds in the quoe, they are at the link.
    That the words, the quotes are often spun in a different dirction than you think is appropriate, is not lying.
    Is not fabrication, it is analysis. It is discussion.

    Feel free to post any of these supposed and alleged lies, and we will discuss them, at length.

    But I am sure you will fall short, one more time.
    As is your wont.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Each quote I provide, comes with a link and the words in the quote, they are at the link.

      Delete
    2. Now there are times that I will change the headline, but the headline is not a quote, it is an attention getting headline.
      When not italicized, that is an indication it is not a quote

      Israel prefers Daesh (al-Qeada) in Syria, over the Alawites, Christians and their Kurdish allies

      Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.

      “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

      Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.
      “We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” Oren said in the interview.


      http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Oren-Jerusalem-has-wanted-Assad-ousted-since-the-outbreak-of-the-Syrian-civil-war-326328

      This is an example,all of the words that are italicized are in the piece at the JPost.
      Where they are not consecutive, there are ... to indicate that fact.
      The headline, is not that provided by the JPost, but it is not italicized, is it?

      {;-)

      Delete
    3. Now you can go to ...
      https://www.google.com/search?q=US+Michael+Oren+jpost+al-qeada&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

      And see how other folks have interpreted what Mr Oren said. I am in the 'Mainstream"

      Delete
    4. Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists
      September 18, 2013

      Exclusive: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, has confirmed suspicions that Israel has taken the side of Syrian rebels in their bloody civil war and wants President Assad to fall even if that turns Syria over to al-Qaeda-connected jihadists, a disclosure that may change how recent events are viewed, reports Robert Parry.

      Delete
  50. .

    I stand by my latest post on this subject.

    Yesterday, I put up the example you asked for, time stamped and with the quotes indicated.

    The fact that you say you have not seen this points to one of two possible pathologies, one that you continue with your compulsive lying or two that you cannot remember what was put up here yesterday. If the latter, Occum's Razor would probably suggest ADD or short term memory loss and the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's or some other dementia resulting from the ravages of old age.

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    Replies
    1. Stand where ever you want to, Legionnaire Q

      It matters not lick, to me.
      You are just another anoni.

      No more, no less.
      Certainly not anyone qualified to make psychological evaluations, based upon blog posts.

      {;-)

      Delete
    2. As for whatever you may have posted, yesterday, if I did not respond, I have not seen them.
      If you want to discuss it, today, post it today, while we are all involved.

      If you wait, they won't be seen, again.

      Delete
    3. Truth is ... Legionnaire Q, I rarely scroll up the current thread, so there you go.
      Do whatever makes you happy.

      Find that happy place, for yourself ...

      {;-)

      Delete
    4. .

      Clearly, rat, other than as a running joke, you are useless here.

      That particular joke was put up yesterday. To put it up again today would be redundant, rather rat-like if you would. Those I offered the joke up for no doubt enjoyed it. If you are interested in it, go back and read it. Then come back and report on it.

      If you are not interested that much as you seem to state, who here really gives a shit.

      However, I suspect you will likely go back to see what was said about you. That is what narcissists do.

      :o)

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