October 2016 Archives

A curious disappearance - UPDATE

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I like to link to the excellent compilation at Arkancide - this chronicles the suspicious deaths and COD's for people who irritate the Clinton political machine.

For the last two weeks, any attempt to visit www.arkancide.com has been met with the following:

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Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has a full copy from October 13th, one of the last days this website was still accessible. A great resource and worth checking out if you are considering voting for Crooked Hillary.

UPDATE: Just checked the next morning and it is back up with no word as to what the problem was.

About that global warming new Ice Age

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From The Daily Caller:

The Next ‘Little Ice Age’ Is Already Here, Russian Scientist Claims
A new study by a prominent Russian astrophysicist claims the “new Little Ice Age” started at the end of 2015 due to low solar activity, kicking off decades of “deep cooling” in the latter half of the 21st Century.

“As a result, the Earth has, and will continue to have, a negative average annual energy balance and a long-term adverse thermal condition,” Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, who is the head of space research for the Pulkovo Observatory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote in a recent study.

“The quasi-centennial epoch of the new Little Ice Age has started at the end 2015 after the maximum phase of solar cycle 24,” Abdussamatov wrote. “The start of a solar grand minimum is anticipated in solar cycle 27 in 2043 and the beginning of phase of deep cooling in the new Little Ice Age in 2060.”

All evidence points to this - we have not had any warming for the last twenty years. All of the NASA claims about hottest ever come from one office in New York City - the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I wrote about them in the last half of this post from October 7th, 2016. They are a political organization and not a scientific one.

Last 24 hours has about 0.8" at the farm. Stopped for now but I expect it will pick up in an hour or so. Low clouds in the valley.

Getting ready to pull the steak out of the sous-vide machine - making a pepercorn sauce for it.

Two posts in one - first, from Lifezette:

Carville Melts Down: Asserts FBI, GOP, and KGB in Cahoots
Famed Democratic strategist James Carville may be the first Clinton surrogate to have officially lost his mind over the FBI’s decision to reopen its investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

In an appearance on MSNBC on Monday, Carville relentlessly — and repeatedly — attacked the FBI’s decision to reopen the investigation, asserting it is part of a conspiracy to subvert American democracy.

“This is in effect an attempt to hijack an election,” Carville claimed. “It’s unprecedented … the House Republicans and the KGB are trying to influence our democracy,” he said.

If your candidate is a criminal, I would think that We The People would want to know before their votes were cast. BTW, the KGB was disbanded in 1991 after it tried to foment a coup. Russia now has the Federal Security Service (Domestic) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (Foreign).

Secondly, Podesta's email hack was stupid simple - a major facepalm moment. From The Smoking Gun:

How Podesta's Gmail Account Was Breached
So how did John Podesta’s e-mail account get hacked?

The answer to that question came into embarrassing focus this morning with the latest Wikileaks dump of correspondence stolen from the Gmail account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

On March 19, a Saturday, Podesta received an e-mail -- purportedly from Google -- warning him that, “Someone has your password.” The alert (seen above) informed Podesta that a sign-in attempt from an IP address in Ukraine was thwarted and that, “You should change your password immediately.”

The e-mail, addressed "Hi John," included a blue “CHANGE PASSWORD” box to be clicked.

As TSG reported in August, similar messages were sent to the Gmail accounts of scores of other Clinton campaign officials around the time Podesta received the phony alert. An identical e-mail--containing the exact Ukrainian IP address--was received on March 22 by William Rinehart, a campaign organizer. The IP address included in the e-mails received by Podesta and Rinehart traces back to Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest telecommunications company.

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The stupid, it burns:

After the e-mail arrived in Podesta’s account, it appears that his chief of staff, Sara Latham, sought guidance from an IT worker with the Clinton campaign. After examining the “Someone has your password” e-mail, staffer Charles Delavan mistakenly assured Latham and Shane Hable, the campaign’s chief information officer, that, “This is a legitimate email. John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authorization is turned on his account.”

They fscking fell for it, Podesta clicked on the link and entered a new password. If these people are supposed to be our elites, they sure are downright stupid about the real world.

Way to go Chicago

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Eighty five years under Democratic rule (and the last Republican mayor was Big Bill Thompson - a real piece of work - He ranks among the most unethical mayors in American history)

Despite having some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation (Illinois is rated #3), Chicago just crossed a threshold. One person is shot in just under two hours - 24 hours/day, 365 days/year. Two people are murdered every day.

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Infographic from Hey Jackass - Illustrating Chicago Values

Of course, the majority of this gun violence is young black male on young black male. Where is the (old white man funded) Black Lives Matter crowd here?

I'm witch her - Hillary

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Another great one from Ben Garrison:

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Visit the site to see in its full glory.

A costume idea

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Swiped from Grouchy Old Cripple:

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Searing - the fires of hell

Got a nice thick-cut steak under the broiler searing - putting it into the sous-vide cooker after it rests for a few minutes and letting it cook for four hours. Dinner tonight. Thinking of doing a pan-reduction peppercorn sauce.

Heading into town this morning - spaced out on some bills that are due on the first - get that Oct. 31 postmark on them.

Computer geek question - why do programmers confuse Halloween with Christmas.

Because OCT(31) = DEC(25)
The long explination can be found here: A long explanation of a damned fine joke

Now this looks interesting - Mammoths

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Just to the North - from the Royal BC Museum:

Mammoths! Giants of the Ice Age
Sometimes standing more than 14 feet tall, mammoths and mastodons towered over the lands of Europe, Asia and North America from as long ago as 1.8 million years in the past to as recently as 10,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. And now they're here at the Royal BC Museum. Beginning in June 2016, the Royal BC Museum presents the rare opportunity to see the larger-than-life exhibition, Mammoths! Giants of the Ice Age, in partnership with The Field Museum in Chicago. This engaging and interactive look at these magnificent creatures transports visitors to a time when giants walked among us and humans struggled to survive in a world they had yet to conquer.

For the first time ever in Canada, you are able to see Lyuba, a 40,000 year-old baby woolly mammoth. Discovered in Siberia in 2007, Lyuba is the world's most complete preserved mammoth. This is a remarkable opportunity for visitors to see an animal – now extinct – that once roamed across much of BC.

Through a rich collection of fossils, casts, preserved flesh, immersive media and engaging interactives, visitors will discover the Proboscidean family tree, from woollies to mastodons to dwarves to modern-day elephants, immersed in a richly animated Ice Age panorama. Visitors can walk through the ancient landscapes where mammoths and mastodons lived and learn how today's scientists excavate and learn more about these amazing animals, their eventual extinction and whether it's possible to clone them today.

Thinking it might be fun to visit Victoria - good reason to go. The museum is incredible

Hacking the vote - Diebold voting machine

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PWNED in this video:

Trivially easy to change the vote counting. From this video: Hacking Democracy

Their Facebook page: Hacking Democracy

More here: Russians attacking U.S. election systems? Here’s the real risk, from a man who fought Soviet electronic attacks during the Cold War

Computer graphics just got cool COOLER!

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Projection mapping - this has been done with buildings and other rigid structures with great results. Bot & Dolly did this great video six years ago. They were assimilated into the Google collective in 2013 - I hope for a lot of money. 

Now, combining high-speed computer vision, it is possible to warp the projected image to match the deformations of the screen allowing projection mapping on a flexible surface.
From Hackaday:

A group in the Ishikawa Watanabe lab at the University of Tokyo has a technique where they cover the target with a number of dots in an ink that is only visible in the infra-red. A high-speed (1000 FPS!) camera and some very fast image processing then work out not only how the surface is deforming, but which surface it is. This enables them to swap out pieces of paper and get the projections onto them in real time.

The video is amazing - I can only imagine when some real artists get hold of it:

A summery from local meteorology legend Cliff Mass:

Monthly Precipitation Records Have Fallen
Yesterday, Seattle-Tacoma Airport's October rainfall finally exceeded the October monthly record of 8.96 inches, and it is well over 9 inches at this point. A number of other western Washington locations (such as Olympia and Hoquiam) have exceeded their October records, as well as many locations in eastern Washington

Really, the eastern Washington wetness is quite exceptional.   The US Drought Monitor no longer has any part of Washington in drought.

Some numbers:

Most of Washington has had above 200% of normal with much of eastern WA with more than 400% of normal.   Same thing is true of northern CA and SW Oregon.

Great news for the West coast. We sure need it and things look good for a major snowfall this winter. Mt. Baker will be epic!

I am on several high-volume email lists and have probably kept about 12,000 emails on my machine over the last 15 years. The volume quoted here is staggering - these people are drowning in minutia.
From The Wall Street Journal:

FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.

The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.

650,000 emails? Let's say ten years, that is 178 emails per day or 7.4 every hour, 24 hours/day. That is too many to process.- one every ten minutes, 24 hours/day.

As things get interesting - Huma

From The Washington Post:

Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she doesn’t know how her emails wound up on her husband’s computer
Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter.

The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing any of her messages to be there.

Huma has studied at the feet of a master liar and taken Hillary's lessons to heart. The noise you are hearing is Anthony being thrown under the bus...

I read his blog every other day or so - doesn't post frequently but when he does, it is always interesting. From yesterday:

Let Me Tell You a Crazy Theory
I've been thinking about this for a while, and while I'm not sure I believe it, I think it's in the realm of possibility. I thought I'd run it by you.

Let's start with the Federal Reserve. While I think they're so bound by their models for Keynesian stimulus programs that their blinders won't let them see any other answers, I don't think they're idiots. They just don't have words for what they're seeing because it's impossible in their models. Therefore they have to know that for some reason, their creation of $4 Trillion dollars hasn't really stimulated the economy. At this point, it has to be dawning on some of them that creating debt to get out of debt isn't a winning strategy. They have to know on some level that all their lies about the economy being healthy and inflation being nearly zero are just that: lies. They have to know they're building a house of cards, now taller than the Empire State building, that's going to come down in the slightest breeze.

If untrained lay people like me (and about a zillion others) can see the economies of the west are heading for collapse, they have to be able to see it, too. So imagine that Yellen or someone from the Fed tells the POTUS that they just can't hold back the flood too much longer, and the dike is going to collapse.

What if the Democratic Party leaders got together in one of their covens and said, "look, the economy is going to collapse within the next four years. Let's get the worst candidate the world has ever seen. The Republicans will win, the collapse will happen, and everyone will blame them. If they use our argument about everything being Bush's fault and blame it on us, we can get the media to show how stupid that is. No Republican will ever be elected so much as dog catcher ever again."..."But who can we get that's so bad anyone can beat them"... "Get Shit For Brains Clinton". I think the leaked DNC memos showed conclusively that the Hildebeest was selected, and it didn't matter what the voters did, with the super delegates and all (as well as the DNC memos getting Seth Rich murdered).

More at the site - makes a lot of sense...

Gorgeous day today

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Hading out for coffee and to pay some bills - end of the month snuck up on me so need to get these in the mail tomorrow AM.

Water Board meeting tonight and then ham radio net but the last Sunday is simplex communications and I can't hear anyone from out here so I will be playing hookey.

Lulu is out playing in the garden and hanging out with the critters.

Having the last of the pea and ham soup for dinner tonight and prepping two thick-cut steaks for sous-vide cooking for Monday night.

Another Clinton email

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This is the gift that keeps on giving - here is an excerpt from this email from Doug Band to Cheryl Mills and John Podesta dated November 12, 2011:

Need get this asap to them although I'm sure cvc [Chelsea Clinton] won't believe it to be true bc she doesn't want to. Even though the facts speak for themselves. John, I would appreciate your feedback and any suggestions

I'm also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed.

And screwed you are Doug. Our nation is in the best of hands...

The Campaign Trail - Hillary

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Great tweet from Jim Hoft:

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Yikes - not good - Turkey

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From the US Department of State:

Turkey Travel Warning
The U.S. Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens of increased threats from terrorist groups throughout Turkey.  U.S. citizens should avoid travel to southeast Turkey and carefully consider the risks of travel to and throughout the country.  The U.S. Department of State is updating this Travel Warning to reflect the October 29, 2016, decision to order the departure of family members of employees posted to the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, Turkey.  The Department of State made this decision based on security information indicating extremist groups are continuing aggressive efforts to attack U.S. citizens in areas of Istanbul where they reside or frequent.  The Consulate General remains open and fully staffed. 

And even Turkey is feeling the heat:

Finally, the Government of Turkey has closed its border with Syria.  Border crossings from Syria into Turkey are prohibited, even if the traveler entered Syria from Turkey.  Individuals seeking emergency medical treatment or safety from immediate danger are assessed on a case by case basis. 

Nothing good coming out of Syria - it is being used as the breeding ground for World War Three. All the "refugees" fleeing are actually muslim men in their teens and early 20's setting up sleeper cells in Europe and the USA. No Christians, no women, no families.

Sad because there is such an amazing history there and the nation of Turkey was so stable for so long. Istanbul is a world heritage site and Turkey derives a lot of money from tourism ($33Bn as quoted in this link). Time to kiss that goodbye and go back to that 9th century false prophet they seem to be so fond of.

Got $300 or so?

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I may be watching too many episodes of Person of Interest (we just watched the first three episodes of Season Two) but this product looks downright creepy:

Product sales page is here: Omron Electronics LLC B5T HVC-P2 Sensor Modules

Offline for a couple hours

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Lulu is on her way out here and I am working on stuff around the house. Time to put the internet away for a couple of hours...

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Internet Archive, repository of modern culture, turns 20
When the Internet Archive was created 20 years ago, few envisioned how a small galaxy of about 500,000 websites would evolve into the center of human communication and culture.

Now, the nonprofit San Francisco organization — which celebrated the milestone with a party Wednesday night — curates a vast digital archive that includes more than 370 million websites and 273 billion pages, many captured before they disappeared forever.

It’s more than an archive of Internet sites. The organization, founded by computer scientist and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle, now has a virtual storehouse ranging from digitally converted books and historic film to funny memes and audio recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.

A bit more:

The archive is best known for the Wayback Machine, which uses computer algorithms to crawl the Web and constantly save snapshots of sites. Online visitors use it to compare how websites, like SFGate.com, have changed over the years. It’s also a repository of Internet firms that went belly-up long ago, like Pets.com.

The site’s 3 million to 4 million visitors a day show that “people want old stuff, they want to remember,” Kahle said.

And:

In another section is an archive of about 3 million hours of TV news broadcasts. That includes a searchable database of political ads captured during the current election season, which political scientists 100 years from now might use to figure out what we were thinking during this “craziest, most disruptive election since the Civil War,” said Roger Macdonald, the TV archive’s director.

And:

Kahle said the archive has digitized about 2.5 million books, although it’s still a long way from its goal of 10 million books by 2020, and from the Library of Congress. But archive visitors can now search through books it has digitized, a feat not possible until recently.

An amazing resorce - I use it several times/week. Lots of blacksmithing and radio resources on there.

Huma in hot water

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Interesting - from The Daily Caller:

Huma May Have Violated ‘Legal Obligation’ Regarding Classified Info, FOIA Request Shows
Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN’s Michael Smerconish Saturday that Huma Abedin signed an OF-109 disclosure form when she left the State Department in 2013, signifying she understood the “legal obligation” to “turn over all classified information and to further safeguard any further information that could be disclosed.”

“Let’s put this in context,” Spicer told Smerconish. “Hillary Clinton initially said she turned over everything that was relevant. The only thing she didn’t were emails regarding yoga and Chelsea’s wedding.”

“We know that to be false.”

“Further, when Huma Abedin left the State Department they have to file a form of OF-109,” he continued. “It’s a separation agreement that states simply people understand when leaving government that they are maintaining no classified information, they understand their legal obligation to protect further classified information and safeguard any potential disclosures of that.”

I find it curious that people are not looking into Huma's history - from the New York Post:

Huma Abedin worked at Muslim journal that opposed women’s rights
Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.

And from Breitbart:

The Truth about Huma Abedin that Media Matters Doesn’t Want America to See
“Still don’t believe Media Matters functions as a propaganda machine to aid and abet Hillary Clinton’s political aspirations? Just read its response to a Vanity Fair article titled Is Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton’s Secret Weapon or Her Next Big Problem?

The left-wing attack machine wasted no time in posting an article with false information and smears in order to protect the Clinton campaign.

Hillary Clinton has stated publicly that she helped “start and support” Media Matters, and that organization has consistently come to Clinton’s aid with a consistent campaign of misinformation, half-truths and smears of her critics that can then get repeated by the mainstream media.

Much more (with links to corroborating data) at the Breitbart piece.

The whole bunch of them are dirty. Time to get some adults in the room.

News you can use - WikiLeaks

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Someone has gathered the top 100 most damning emails from WikiLeaks and compiled them into a very readable web page: Most Damaging WIKILEAKS

Links to the original source emails as well as a concise list of talking points for each one. Here are the first three:

  • Obama lied: he knew about Hillary’s secret server and wrote to her using a pseudonym, cover-up happened (intent to destroy evidence)
  • Hillary Clinton dreams of completely "open borders”
  • Hillary Clinton received money from and supported nations that she KNEW funded ISIS and terrorists

Some really damning stuff there - go and read.

Urban life - a dystopia

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From the US Army by way of The Intercept:

A bit more on the subject from al fin next level

Age of Disintegration, Age of Promise: Opportunities of the Coming Breakup
The globe is crowded with unwieldy, oversized, unstable nations pretending to be something they are not. Winter is coming, and by “winter” I mean a spreading state of anarchy where “nothing works,” when hosts of over-puffed nations will soon be forced to face the reality of violent downsizing.

A bit more cheer (the whole post is very thoughtful and worth reading):

Megacities Becoming Foci First of Power, then of Instability
Anyone who has had to balance the ongoing demands of power grids, transportation systems, communications networks, water and sewer infrastructures, and all of the other critical infrastructures of a city, will understand that the complexity of these systems increases exponentially as populations rise. This is particularly true when populations consist of growing numbers of low IQ peoples of violent tendency. The more stupid and violent people you try to cram into a limited space, the more dysfunctional and unworkable the project becomes. Europe and the Anglosphere have made an art of importing large numbers of such people to populate their own cities, so western people will be able to see the consequences of these policies at first hand.

As competent control weakens and declines, these central hellholes necessarily become foci of violence, hunger, plague, and human predation. Distinctions between governments and crime syndicates will be distinctions without differences. And since cities traditionally dictate order and prioritise activity for surrounding countrysides, chaos in cities will spread outward.

And finally, the syphilitic morons who are bringing this to you - the United Nations. From CFACT.ORG

UN Habitat III’s “new urban agenda” coming to you
With an enthusiastic call for “sustainable urban development,” the United Nations has adopted a far-reaching document intended as a blueprint for the future of cities around the world. Described by the UN as an “inclusive, action-oriented, and concise document,” the “New Urban Agenda” (NUA) was approved on Oct. 21, the final day of the UN’s Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador.

The NUA, the UN proclaims, “will guide the next twenty years of sustainable and transformative urban development worldwide.” “It is a vision,” the UN explains, “of pluralistic, sustainable, disaster-resilient societies that foster green economic growth.” The centerpiece of the NUA is the promotion of “compact cities,” in which people will have little choice but to live in densely populated, high-rise buildings in order to lower their impact on the environment.

And Obama is going in hook, line, and sinker:
The setup:

All of this may seem like little more than the typical blather served up by the chattering classes, whose members have far too much time on their hands. Unfortunately, the New Urban Agenda needs to be taken seriously thanks to a little-noticed rule being cooked up by Obama administration appointees at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

And the reveal:

Indeed, deep in the bowels of HUD, plans are underway that will make the pronouncements of Habitat III look like child’s play. As Stanley Kurtz of National Review Online has pointed out, HUD’s proposed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule is “arguably the most radical, transformative” initiative the Obama administration has ever undertaken. AFFH all but eliminates the independence of suburbs, towns, and small cities in the U.S. by forcing them to address supposed “imbalances” in the racial, ethnic, and class composition of their greater metropolitan areas. Under AFFH, suburbs that accept grant money from HUD will have to change their zoning codes and build high-density, low-income housing for groups HUD deems are “underrepresented.”

As NRO points out, “Suburbs may even be forced to relocate planned schools, transportation hubs, and business districts to answer to the federal bureaucracy’s ideas of racial, ethnic, and economic ‘balance.’” What’s more, unelected regional councils composed of HUD bureaucrats, housing advocates, and other “stakeholders” will oversee and enforce the scheme. Local elected officials and ordinary taxpayers will be shunted aside and will find themselves powerless in opposing the edicts of the feds and their henchmen.

AFFH is nothing short of federal zoning of America’s suburbs, with the goal of de facto annexation of those suburbs into central cities. When combined with the Obama administration’s “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, which creates an EPA-led regulatory structure for federal zoning of rural areas, AFFH will result in Washington calling the shots on housing and land-use decisions throughout the U.S.

Kurtz actually wrote three articles about the AFFH - here are the links:

If Hillary gets in, this plan will move forward. One of the reasons she must be stopped.
This is in direct violation of the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Simple and eloquent. The power belongs to the individual states and not to the federal government - let alone some unelected faceless bureaucrat who is creating rules for people he does not know.

And that is it for the night

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Involved with some Raspberry Pi programming and watching some YouTube videos.

The political circus is chugging along and we will be left to deal with whatever rubble our elites leave behind for us after their "lost weekend" with the 0.001% banksters. I remember learning about checks and balances back in school in the 1960's - sure would come in handy these days.

Spending tomorrow at home - Lulu is coming out for a while. Got a staff party at the house on the 8th - turning 66 on the 3rd. Feel like I am in my 40's - my Dad passed away at 94 and I am in better health than he ever was.

After examining Anthony Weiner's phone

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Spot on - from andrew kaczynski

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Great 20 minute TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory:

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Good meeting tonight

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Had a burrito at Whole Foods before - I like that they serve beer in their cafe.

The debrief went well - only missed a few items and we are now planning to do two events per year just for the increased training. Thinking about involving our local fire hall in April's exercise as there are a lot of people living out here and we are at the end of a very long chain of supplies and communications.

Back home listening to Mark Levin and his analysis rant on the re-opening of Hillary's email scandal.

Off to town - meeting at 5:30

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Heading into town - get a late lunch, do some shopping and then off to a 5:30PM meeting to debrief from The Great  Shakeout.

It will be interesting to see how we did. We had roving CERT teams with envelopes. When they reached a specific address, they would open that envelope and read out the supposed earthquake damage to that structure. This would be radioed to a stationary CERT person who filled out a standard radiogram (PDF file) and handed it over to a ham radio operator (that was my job) who relayed it to the local fire hall. The operator at the fire hall would then radio this information to the county Emergency Operations Center.

The people at the EOC had copies of the envelopes at their end so they could see if there was a game of telephone being played or if the information was being sent accurately.

It was fun and good practice - remember, not IF but WHEN

Hillary update - emails

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Turns out that the emails that made the FBI reinvestigate her came from Huma Abedin's and Anthony Weiner's computers - from the New York Times:

New Emails in Clinton Case Came From Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices
Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.

The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

But really, what difference, at this point, does it make:

A long and stunning report from PJ Media:

GIVE ‘EM A ‘TASTE OF BLOOD’: Federal Report Exposed Robert Creamer's Thuggery LONG BEFORE Obama Joined With Him in 1980s
A series of undercover videos produced by investigative journalist James O’Keefe have implicated Hillary Clinton -- and many others -- in what would amount to serious violations of Federal Election Commission (FEC) law.

The videos describe Hillary as engaging in illegal coordination with super PACs through a complex network of political consultants.

The videos also place her at the center of a (successful) scheme to incite bloody political violence at Donald Trump rallies.

President Barack Obama, through White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, quickly attempted to distance himself from the lawlessness and carnage.

However, Obama’s story now appears fantastical in light of the contents of two federal records.

The first shoe:

Last week, the life-long radical operative featured in the O'Keefe videos, Robert Creamer, was found to have visited the White House 340 times during the Obama administration according to the White House Visitor Log.

The second shoe:

Now, Obama also must explain how the story spun by Josh Earnest fits with the findings of a second public federal document: a 1979 report that concluded an investigation by the House Committee on Appropriations.

That Jimmy Carter-era federal investigation found that recipients of several big-dollar government grants were illegally using the money for partisan political advocacy.

How partisan?

The investigation found that several avowedly socialist and communist organizations were fraudulently using the money to train young activists interested in being ... community organizers.

And Robert Creamer helped found one of the organizations that was investigated -- Midwest Academy.

In fact, Creamer was listed as its president.

Much more at the article - including a little taste from this 2010 book by Stanley Kurtz: Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism 

In many ways, the Midwest Academy is the hidden key to Barack Obama’s political career.

Obama’s organizing mentors had ties to it; Obama’s early funding was indirectly controlled by it; evidence strongly suggests that Obama himself received training there; both Barack and Michelle Obama ran a project called “Public Allies” that was effectively an extension of the Midwest Academy.

Obama’s first run for public office was sponsored by Academy veteran Alice Palmer; and Obama worked closely at two foundations for years with yet another veteran organizer from the Midwest Academy, Ken Rolling.

The rot is deep - it needs to be cleaned out.

From The Washington Post:

FBI to take new ‘investigative steps’ on Clinton emails
The FBI will investigate whether additional classified material is contained in emails sent using Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state, FBI Director James B. Comey informed congressional leaders Friday.

The announcement appears to restart the FBI’s probe of Clinton’s server, which previously ended in July with no charges. The explosive announcement, coming less than two weeks before the presidential election, could reshape a campaign that Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has been leading in public polls.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Comey said that the FBI, in connection with an “unrelated case,” had recently “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the Clinton investigation.”

I wonder who dug up what dirt on Comey - who is holding his feet to the fire and if he will survive his upcoming "suicide"

Comey wrote that he had been briefed on the new material Thursday. “I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation,” he wrote.

An FBI spokesman on Friday declined to elaborate, and a spokesman for Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch declined to comment. A Clinton campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nobody is going to comment - they know they are busted and are entering damage control mode. The next couple of days will be fun.

And of course, the usual Democratic cheating:

Tip of the iceberg. If the Democrats had a viable candidate and an honest platform, they would not have to cheat like this. If John F. Kennedy were running today, I would vote for him in a heartbeat.

Meeting with people today

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Got one at 10AM at the store and another at 5:30PM in town.

Critters, coffee and the idle life of retirement. Yeah...

Pumpkin design

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Some good ones out there but this one tickled my funny-bone:

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Evil people - Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

This is downright deplorable. From Foreign Policy:

Facebook’s Free Basics Is an African Dictator’s Dream
NAIROBI — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise visit to Kenya and Nigeria in September saw him eat ugali fish with his hands and crash a Nollywood music video shoot in between whirlwind tours of innovation hubs and tech incubators.

“Hey Africa,” he seemed to say. “I get you. Facebook gets you.”

Zuckerberg’s lighting public relations blitz contrasted sharply with Facebook’s under-the-radar expansion in Africa, which is built around a no-frills internet app called Free Basics. India’s government rejected the same app, which provides access to a low-data version of Facebook and a limited number of pre-selected websites, on the grounds that it amounted to a two-tiered internet system, one for the rich and one for the poor. But Facebook continues to roll it out quietly in Africa — so quietly, in fact, that many of hundreds of millions of people who now have access to the app in 23 different African countries don’t even know they do.

On the surface, Free Basics seems like the answer to many interconnected prayers. It’s a cheap, easy way to get millions of people online at a time when the internet is not only a daily necessity but increasingly thought of as a human right. The app piggybacks on the rapid adoption of mobile phones in Africa and is made available for free through partnerships with local mobile telecom providers. Those who sign up for a Facebook account through Free Basics are then able to log on to a pared-down version of the internet on their phones.

But there’s a dark side to Free Basics that has the potential to do more harm than good — a side that suggests that Zuckerberg doesn’t get Africa after all. The app is essentially a cheap version of the internet, a fact that by itself implies that some people aren’t good enough to merit the whole thing. Even worse, it’s a version of the internet that gives Facebook — and by extension the corporations and governments that partner with Facebook — total control over what its users can access.

Wait until people learn how to set up mesh networks and long-distance point-to-point routing. The internet was designed to route around damage and cencorship certainly counts as damage. The technology is cheap and not difficult to set up. I give this scam about three years until it is totally hacked and beaten to the ground. Information wants to be free.

My two favorites? SR-71 Blackbird and A-10 Warthog. Both at the acme of their intended design goals.

The F-35 fighter has been an amazing waste of money and it is unfortunately draining resources that need to go to other airplanes. They were looking at shutting down the A-10 - phasing it out of service. Fortunately - from Popular Mechanics:

U.S. Air Force Fires Up the A-10 Depot Line to Keep Warthogs Flying 'Indefinitely'
On paper, the Air Force plans to start mothballing the A-10 in 2018, with the last Warthogs sent to the boneyard by 2021. But last month Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said that the retirement of the A-10 would likely have to be delayed further as the military continues to rely on the low-and-slow attack plane for close-air support (CAS) missions flown against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Even more telling, the Air Force Material Command (AFMC) is bringing the depot line for A-10 maintenance and repair back up to full capacity, according to Aviation Week.

The Hawg isn't going anywhere.

"They have re-geared up, we've turned on the depot line, we're building it back up in capacity and supply chain," AFMC chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski recently told Aviation Week. "Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely."

More emails from WikiLeaks

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A doozy of a one was released yesterday - pay to play on parade. From the Los Angeles Times:

An aide says he once arranged for $50 million in payments for Bill Clinton
A close aide to Bill Clinton said he arranged for $50 million in payments for the former president, part of a complicated mingling of lucrative business deals and charity work of the Clinton Foundation mapped out in a memo released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

The report was written by Doug Band, who has transitioned from his job as a Clinton aide to a partner in Teneo Consulting, a firm whose client roster now includes some of the biggest companies in the world. Along the way, Band wrote, he also pushed his clients and contacts to donate millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and to help win business deals for Bill Clinton.

Band wrote the memo in November 2011 to John Podesta, now chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and sent copies to other key Clinton aides, apparently to explain and justify his work in the face of criticism from others in the Clinton orbit — notably Chelsea Clinton.

And another WikiLeaks email backs this up:

Earlier that month, another hacked email shows, Chelsea Clinton had written Podesta, saying it was time to professionalize the foundation’s operations and complaining that her father had heard of “multiple examples of Teneo ‘hustling’ business” at Clinton Global Initiative meetings.

In the memo, Band depicts himself as the indispensable linchpin of the Clinton family’s finances even as he acknowledges that the arrangement is unusual: “We appreciate the unorthodox nature of our roles,” Band wrote.

Time to clean house - throw the all of the bums out.

Some great news - Ammon Bundy

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It seems the government is having its ass handed to it by We The People - from Associated Press:

Jury acquits leaders of Oregon standoff of federal charges
A jury delivered an extraordinary blow to the government Thursday in a long-running battle over the use of public lands when it acquitted all seven defendants involved in the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in rural southeastern Oregon.

Tumult erupted in the courtroom after the verdicts were read when an attorney for group leader Ammon Bundy demanded his client be immediately released, repeatedly yelling at the judge. U.S. marshals tackled attorney Marcus Mumford to the ground, used a stun gun on him several times and arrested him.

Emphasis mine - always classy. It will be interesting to see if a video surfaces - see what the provocation was. A bit more:

Said defendant Neil Wampler: "This is a tremendous victory for rural America and it is a well-deserved, overwhelming defeat for a corrupt and predatory federal government."

The U.S Attorney in Oregon, Billy J. Williams, issued a statement defending the decision to bring charges against the seven defendants: "We strongly believe that this case needed to be brought before a Court, publicly tried, and decided by a jury.

I find it curious that Associated Press would run this story as it is counter to their progressive bias - using this photograph is unusual as well:

20161027-Ehmer.jpgDuane Ehmer rides his horse Hellboy at the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
on the sixth day of the occupation of the federal building in Burns,
Oregon on January 7, 2016. Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images

I have been covering this story for a couple of years - the Bundy family have been paying the Federal Government for grazing rights since the 1890's

Back from town - good meeting

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And got meetings tomorrow at 10:00AM and another at 5:30PM - unload truck, crack open a bottle of wine and surf in a few minutes...

Happy Blogo-versery to me!

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On October 27th, 2003 I posted this: Hello World

It has now been 13 years, 23,666 blog entries and 1,680 viewer comments.

20161027-blog.jpg

I fell in love, got married and divorced; quit my IT job in downtown Seattle and moved up to the rural countryside; dealt with the deaths of both parents; fell in love again (five years and going strong  - Lulu, you bring me joy!), had a hip replacement, had cataract surgery; done some amazing travels; purchased a grocery store and built the business; took up amateur radio and became active in the emergency communications community (I think I found my tribe); learned blacksmithing and built a forge.

Life has its ups and downs but I am still having a blast and it is fun sharing it with all of you readers - bring you along for the ride...

Off to town today

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Have a meeting in town this evening. Heading in early to do some shopping and get a bite to eat.

More posting later this evening.

I can dream can't I

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Dinner was really good

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Finished two bowls a while ago - really good and cheap to make, couple bucks worth of ham steak and a pound of dried split peas, an onion, some vegetable stock and garlic. Lots of fresh ground black pepper. I have soup for the next couple of days. Five minutes preperation, 20 minutes in the pressure cooker and it's done.

Price is still too high for these drones but the technology is getting really wonderful:

The Alta-8 is a top of the line professional drone and costs around $17,500

Think I'll wait a few more years...

Curious events - the Clintons

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Just because you are a conspiracy theorist does not mean that people are not actually out to get you. From Freedom Outpost:

Are the Obamas, the Clintons and the Bushes going to seek refuge in Countries that don't Extradite to the US if Trump Wins?
It appears Bill and Hillary Clinton are making plans to flee the country in the event Donald Trump wins this election. Reports are circulating that the Clintons have transferred 1.8 Billion dollars from the Clinton Foundation to the Qatar Central Bank, via a facilitation/abatement of JP Morgan Chase & Company for reasons not revealed.

This move of such a large sum of money to the country of Qatar says in itself, Hillary Clinton knows she is going to lose the election, and she doesn't plan to allow herself to be prosecuted for various high crimes and treason under a Trump Administration.

The country of Qatar happens to be one of a handful of countries that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, thus would be a perfect place for her to run to in escaping justice.

Donald Trump has said many times during his campaign and at the Presidential debates that once he gets into office, he intends to prosecute her on various high crimes from her latest crimes of sending classified material via a personal e mail server. All the way to gun running to terrorist groups in Syria resulting in the deaths of 4 Americans in Benghazi.

Apparently, Hillary is not the only person in Washington who has made plans to escape justice under a Trump Administration. John Kerry has quietly been selling his property in the US for millions of dollars of late, with an announcement of the sale of his $25 million dollar Nantucket mansion in June 2016, as well as the sale of his yacht for $3.9 million in July 2016.

President Barack H Obama has also apparently been making exit plans with his purchase of a $4.9 million dollar seaside mansion in Dubai in January 2016, another non extradition country.

Snopes and other supposed fact checking sites have debunked both the story of Obama's purchase of the mansion and the firing of Rear Admiral Rick Williams. However, over the last several months, these sites have been busted for lying in trying to debunk such information as the before mentioned, when in fact the information is true. Snopes and other sites try their best to keep incriminating information from being believed, but the truth has a way of coming out on its own, as it always has.

More at the site including links to data. Again, Snopes has lost their credibility several years ago - they are biased on a lot of things that simply can not be backed up with hard data.

Emojis in an art museum?

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From the Los Angeles Times:

Emojis join Van Gogh and Picasso at Museum of Modern Art
Nearly two decades ago, Shigetaka Kurita was given the task of designing simple pictographs that could replace Japanese words for the growing number of cellphone users communicating with text messages.

Kurita, who was working for the Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo at the time, came up with 176 of them, including oddities such as a rocking horse, two kinds of umbrellas (one open, one closed) and five phases of the moon. He called them emojis.

An estimated 74% of Americans now use emojis every day, nudging the written word to the side in favor of a medium that can succinctly and playfully convey emotions in a society often more adept at texting than talking.

A bit more:

“These 12x12 pixel humble masterpieces of design planted the seeds for the explosive growth of a new visual language,” Paul Galloway, a collection specialist in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

“Shigetaka Kurita’s emoji are powerful manifestations of the capacity of design to alter human behavior,” he added.

Museum officials say emojis are the modern-day answer to an age-old tradition of communicating with pictures.

Part of our culture.

Cute Halloween costume

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Meet Princess Cumulus AKA Glowy Zoey

Fun on the horizon

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Regardless of who wins the election, Hillary is going to have a tough time ahead. From The Washington Post:

House Republicans are already preparing for ‘years’ of investigations of Clinton
Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman wrapping up his first term atop the powerful House Oversight Committee, unendorsed Donald Trump weeks ago. That freed him up to prepare for something else: spending years, come January, probing the record of a President Hillary Clinton.

“It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.”

If Republicans retain control of the House, something that GOP-friendly maps make possible even in the event of a Trump loss, Clinton will become the first president since George H.W. Bush to immediately face a House Oversight Committee controlled by the opposition party.

A bit more:

“The rigorous oversight conducted by House Republicans has already brought to light troubling developments in the [Hillary] Clinton email scandal,” the office of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The speaker supports [Oversight’s] investigative efforts following where the evidence leads, especially where it shows the need for changes in the law.”

And the Oversight Committee may not be the only House panel ready for partisan battle. While the Select Committee on Benghazi appears to have finished its work, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a committee member who says Clinton might have perjured herself on questions about her email, said recently that he wants the committee to continue.

If she wins, Clinton would enter office with low favorability ratings and only one-third of voters considering her “honest and trustworthy.” As a result, Republicans are not inclined to give her a political honeymoon. To many of them, a Clinton victory would mean that Trump threw away an election that anyone else could have won.

When RINOs like Ryan want to prosecute, things are really not going your way. Orange is becoming the new black.

Making soup

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Last weeks split-pea and ham soup came out so well that I am making another batch of it. Perfect dinner for a cold rainy evening. Pressure cooker and twenty minutes - easy as can be...

If it ain't broke - Obamacare

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Economist Jonathan Gruber was one of the key architects of Obamacare.
He is the moke who talked about The Stupidity of the American Voter (more here):

He was recently interviewed by CNN’s Carol Costello and had this to say:

Gruber: ‘Obamacare Not Collapsing,’ System ‘Largely Works’
The architect of Obamacare, economics professor Jonathan Gruber, praised his creation on Wednesday and said that it is largely working for Americans.

Hey Johnny-boy - do not try to piss on me and tell me it's rainfall. He proceeded to do the usual shuffling of facts and then made this comment:

“It’s a system which largely works,” Gruber said. “You now have 20 million Americans or more who are now getting insurance that they like.”

The population of the USA is 324.7 million people. 20 million people are being well served by Obamacare. That is 6.17% of the total population. Only in the mind of a clueless elite would this ever be considered to be a success story. Time to sweep this worthless abomination off the lawbooks and start up some competition.

From The Gateway Pundit:

SILENCED! Bill Clinton’s Alleged Son Danney Wiliams PERMANENTLY BANNED from YouTube
Danney Williams was banned on YouTube today.

20161026-danney.jpg

He will no longer be able to tell his story.

It’s too damaging to the Clintons.

Much more at the site - the kid looks a lot like Bill and the timelines match up.

Just under a half inch this morning and no signs of letting up. Slept in for a while - the sound of the rain on the metal roof is wonderful.

Heading out for coffee and then working at home today.

Planetary K Index is still very high - aurora watch tonight if the clouds break at all.

A new (to me) YouTube channel - This Old Tony

He is a machinist with a wicked sense of humor and very good at shooting videos. Check out This Old Tony

Great point - Vladimir Putin

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She does have a point

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Great video from Praeger University:

Many of America's legal and illegal immigrants fled nations that were ruined by corrupt politicians and failed government policies. But once here, they support the same things. Why? Gloria Alvarez, Project Director at the National Civic Movement of Guatemala, explains.

Video in Spanish: Immigrants! Don't Vote for What You Fled

Electronic voting machines

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The joys of dealing with them - two Facebook messages from Amarillo, Texas station KISSFM:

Early Voters From Amarillo Are Saying Their Votes Were Changed On the Ballot
Early voting for the 2016 election started today (Monday, October 24th). The people of Potter and Randall County are taking this opportunity to skip the long lines that always file out of the voting locations on Election Day.

It’s common to see pictures of the “I Voted!” stickers on social media. It’s not as common to see the stories I’ve been seeing today.

Here are the two Facebook messages:

20161025-vote.jpgThis is trivially easy to do - these machines display the candidates on a touch screen display. The programmer of the machine sets the boundaries of the touch screen - anywhere within this box will register as a vote for candidate one and anywhere in that box will register as a vote for candidate two. It is trivial to make one box much larger than the other and this is invisible to the voter. They think that they are selecting one candidate but in reality, their vote is being recorded as for the other.

They call this calibration error - a very benign term. Makes it sound like the voting machine's programmer didn't sleep very well the night before and was just off a little bit. Do not believe them - this requires intentional forethought and planning and constitutes pure intentional voter fraud.

Look up tonight

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The Planetary K Index is high tonight - good chance for Northern Lights. The sky is unusually clear too - great evening for observation. Six is a good possibility of aurora. Seven is very unusual.

20161025-kindex.gif

Back from town

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Got a bite to eat for dinner at the Pita Pit and finished all of my errands. Our local Value Village has a substantial discount on Tuesdays for old farts and picked up a nice air purifier for $3.60. This does not remove particulates, it generates ozone which eliminates odors. Sometimes the dogs and cat have accidents in the house (we leave the door to the outside closed or something) and this will go a long way to neutralize any pet odor.

Did some banking, pulled out some walking-around money and returned the dollies. Next project is re-wiring the lighting box at the store and getting that all traced out and fixed up.

Off for coffee and then into town

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Got Lulu on her way home - heading out for coffee and then into town for some banking and to return the dollies.

More posting later this evening.

Clinton's fixer - Jeff Rovin

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I had written about it before on October 18th, here is the video of him being interviewed by Sean Hannity:

A tale of two rallies

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From The Gateway Pundit:

WOW! Tim Kaine Holds Rally and ONLY 30 PEOPLE Show Up!
Hillary’s VP pick Tim Kaine Held a Rally today AND NOBODY CAME!

There were literally like 30 people there — in West Palm Beach, Florida. And that includes journalists and operatives.

20161025-kaine.jpg

Meanwhile, Trump regularly draws 10,000 people - 20,000 people showed up for his rally in Tampa. Here is the crowd outside of yesterday's rally with just Mike Pence - Salisbury, North Carolina.

20161025-pence.jpg

A bit of a difference there...

Awww crap - RIP Steven Den Beste

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Not exactly a household name but one of the early bloggers and a great mind. The world is a little darker today.

He had this to say about left-wing causes:

Isn’t it interesting that no matter what the current global crisis is, according to leftists, the solution is always the same: a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite, and mass transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations.

That’s what they want to do about global warming. It’s what they wanted to do about overpopulation. It’s what they wanted to do about endangered species.

A friend's obituary: Steven Den Beste

Want to buy an apartment cheap?

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Downtown San Francisco - from the Associated Press:

TILTING, SINKING SAN FRANCISCO HIGH-RISE RAISES ALARM
Pamela Buttery noticed something peculiar six years ago while practicing golf putting in her 57th-floor apartment at the luxurious Millennium Tower. The ball kept veering to the same corner of her living room.

Those were the first signs for residents of the sleek, mirrored high-rise that something was wrong.

The 58-story building has gained notoriety in recent weeks as the "leaning tower of San Francisco." But it's not just leaning. It's sinking, too. And engineers hired to assess the problem say it shows no immediate sign of stopping.

A bit more:

Completed seven years ago, the tower so far has sunk 16 inches into the soft soil and landfill of San Francisco's crowded financial district. But it's not sinking evenly, which has created a 2-inch tilt at the base - and a roughly 6-inch lean at the top.

And it is in an earthquake zone. More:

Several documents involving the downtown building were leaked in recent weeks, including exchanges between the city's Department of Building Inspection and Millennium Partners, the developer. They show both sides knew the building was sinking more than anticipated before it opened in late 2009, but neither made that information public.

And this:

The tower's troubles are apparent in its five-floor underground garage, where Porsches and Lamborghinis sit near walls bearing floor-to-ceiling cracks, many bracketed by stress gauges to measure growth.

Follow the money:

Dodson and other residents blame developers for what they say is a flawed design. The tower's foundation, for instance, uses piles driven 60 to 90 feet into landfill, rather than the pricier option of going down at least 240 feet to bedrock.

And he said, they said:

Jeffries blames the building's problems on an adjacent construction site where a city rail terminal is being built. He says the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the public agency building the $4.5 billion transit hub, dug a 60-foot hole to create a dry construction site and pumped out millions of gallons of groundwater that wound up compressing and weakening the soil under the Millennium Tower.

Transbay says the tower's "inadequate foundation is the sole cause of the excessive settlement and tilt." It released a statement saying the building had sunk 10 inches and started to lean before the agency broke ground in 2010.

Emphasis mine - kind of hard to refute those facts... Someone is looking at spending a lot of money to fix this. My bet is that the developers tried to cheap out on the foundation and will be paying the price for it. If the buildings foundation is buoyant and floating in the soil, the first Mag 8 earthquake to hit will cause significant damage regardless of internal bracing. It will be interesting to see what the original engineers specified for the foundation - going to bedrock for a 58 story building is a zero-brainer.

Climate change - follow the money

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Quite the nice scam if you can get it - from the London Daily Mail:

Exposed: How top university helped secure £9 million of YOUR money by passing off rivals' research as its own... to bankroll climate change agenda
One of the world's leading institutes for researching the impact of global warming has repeatedly claimed credit for work done by rivals – and used it to win millions from the taxpayer.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday also reveals that when the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) made a bid for more Government funds, it claimed it was responsible for work that was published before the organisation even existed. Last night, our evidence was described by one leading professor whose work was misrepresented as 'a clear case of fraud – using deception for financial gain'. The chairman of the CCCEP since 2008 has been Nick Stern, a renowned global advocate for drastic action to combat climate change.

Everything points to a long stretch of cooling in the future - how much of that £9 million could have been spent on insulating houses of the poor and elderly? Retrofitting efficient heat pumps, etc... You know, actually doing something instead of more self-sustaining "studies".

Much more at the site including links to the actual papers and proof that they were swiped from other people's work. The agency in question gets a lot of other funding from private donors as well as other British agencies - total of about £30 million.

I hope that they are disbanded but I know that there will be some tsk tsk noises made, a period of public quiet and media avoidance and then it will be back to business as usual. Some people will be publicly "fired" from their positions but they will be then hired at some other position in the agency a few months later, frequently at a higher salary. This is how bureaucracies take care of their own.

Did tacos (left over chicken) and watched the last two episodes of season one of Person of Interest - some excellent writing.

Starting to feel really stiff from moving the freezer - it will be a fantastic addition to the store though. Add another 33% to our ice cream capacity.

Heading into town tomorrow (Tuesday 25th) to return the moving dolly and to do some banking and errands. Lulu is heading back to her house so I get to play the wild and crazy bachelor for a couple of days. Zzzzzzzz...

Right on schedule - Obamacare

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Obamacare is crashing right on schedule - the government wants to scrap it and institute a single-payer like they have in England. That was their intent all along. From the Associated Press:

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CONFIRMS DOUBLE-DIGIT PREMIUM HIKES
Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama's health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That's sure to stoke another "Obamacare" controversy days before a presidential election.

Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.

Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.

That was Emanuel's and Gruber's intent all along - build it up into some monstrous unsustainable program, let it crash and out of the rubble, build a centralized government program that will take care of everybody. Right - I have some ocean-front property for sale in Colorado if you believe that.

A moving experience

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Got the old freezer out and the new freezer in place - chilling down nicely, ready to stock tomorrow (want to make sure it stays at temp). Took the old freezer to the food bank - they are going to have to wire a line for it but this is a brand new building so this will not be an issue - plenty of capacity in the conduit.

Did not have time for my morning coffee so got it moved and running, went out for coffee and then came back and programmed it. Looks really nice with LED lighting and full digital control.

Just say no - EPA and government waste

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From The Washington Free Beacon:

EPA Hiring 15 ‘Diversity and Inclusion Specialists,’ Will Pay Six Figures for Each
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to hire 15 “Diversity and Inclusion Specialists,” each of whom will make $100,000 or more per year.

The agency will hire employees to set up diversity and inclusion “advisory bodies” across the country, according to a government job posting.

“Earth Day is every day at EPA!” the agency said. “At EPA, you can protect human health and the environment of all Americans, and you’ll discover that EPA is one great place to work!”

And the salaries in question:

The salary range for Diversity and Inclusion Specialists is between $99,785 and $146,570 per year. If all 15 positions are filled, the hires would cost taxpayers between $1,496,775 and $2,198,550 each year.

And diversity and inclusion has what to do with safeguarding the environment? Stick to your damn jobs people.

Running a bit late

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Moving the freezer in 15 minutes so no morning coffee for this guy.

More later...

Bob Woodward on the Clinton Foundation

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When someone like Bob Woodward says that they are corrupt, it is time for everyone to listen. From Tyler at Zero Hedge:

Watergate's Bob Woodward: "Clinton Foundation Is Corrupt, It's A Scandal"
It's one thing for the right-wing press to accuse the Clinton foundation of cronyism, corruption, and scandal (especially if the facts, and internal admissions by affiliated employees, confirm as much) - it tends to be generally ignored by the broader, if left-leaning, media. But when the Watergate scandal's Bob Woodward, associate editor at the liberal Washington Post, says very much the same, Hillary Clinton's campaign has no choice but to notice. This is precisely what happened today when journalist Bob Woodward told a Fox News Sunday panel that the Clinton Foundation is "corrupt" and that Hillary Clinton has not answered for it.

Here, courtesy of RealClearPolitics, is the transcript of today's exchange:

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Then there are the allegations about the Clinton Foundation and pay to play, which I asked Secretary Clinton about in the debate, and she turned into an attack on the Trump Foundation.

But, Bob, I want to go back to the conversation I was having with Robby Mook before. When -- when you see what seems to be clear evidence that Clinton Foundation donors were being treated differently than non-donors in terms of access, when you see this new -- new revelations about the $12 million deal between Hillary Clinton, the foundation, and the king of Morocco, are voters right to be troubled by this?

BOB WOODWARD, THE WASHINGTON POST: I -- yes, it's a -- it’s corrupt. It's -- it’s a scandal. And she didn't answer your question at all. And she turned to embrace the good work that the Clinton Foundation has done. And she has a case there. But the mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined and it's corrupt. You know, I mean, you can't just say it's unsavory. But there's no formal investigation going on now, and there are outs that they have.

But the election isn't going to be decided on that. I mean Karl was making the point about this, I'm not going to observe the result of the election. I mean that's -- that’s absurd. I mean it has no consequence. If Trump loses, they're not going to let him in the White House. He’s not going to have a transition team. And -- and to focus on that, I think, is wrong. I think the issue is, what's going to be the aftermath of this campaign.

So it's corrupt, it's a scandal, and... it will have no consequences at all. It's time to look up the latest definition of Banana republic again.

A bit of schadenfreude that it is Bob Woodward denouncing her as being corrupt - remember this from the Watergate Investigation? From Ed Morrissey at FOX News; February 25, 2014:

Hillary Fired for Lies, Unethical Behavior from Congressional Job: Former Boss
Dan Calabrese’s new column on Hillary Clinton’s past may bring the curtain down on her political future. Calabrese interviewed Jerry Zeifman, the man who served as chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, has tried to tell the story of his former staffer’s behavior during those proceedings for years. Zeifman claims he fired Hillary for unethical behavior and that she conspired to deny Richard Nixon counsel during the hearings:

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

More here: HotAir Disgusting.

Fun fun fun. 900 pound commercial freezer. We are selling a lot of ice cream so expanding from a two-door to a three door and donating the old one to our local food bank.

Got a couple large guys showing up tomorrow morning and rented a piano-mover's dolly plus I have a bunch of pipe rollers and comealongs and bars. Gotten to be OK at rigging with stuff at the farm.

Surf for a bit more and then an early bedtime - took some sleeping pills to knock me out. The little gray cells conspire to keep me up too late most nights...

Heh - Samsung

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Venezuela - things are heating up a bit

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From Russia Today:

Venezuela's Congress accuses President Maduro of staging ‘coup’ by axing recall referendum
Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly has declared at an emergency session that “President Maduro’s regime” staged a coup by blocking a referendum on Maduro’s recall. The parliamentary meeting was briefly interrupted by pro-government supporters.

The lawmakers passed a resolution announcing a "break of the constitutional order and the existence of a coup d'etat committed by the Nicolas Maduro regime," AFP reported.

On October 20, the Venezuelan National Election Assembly announced the blocking of the preparations of a recall referendum for the current president.

The emergency meeting on Sunday was briefly interrupted after alleged pro-government activists rushed into the session, shouting “The Assembly will fall.”

Reuters reports that several people were injured in the standoff, before the intruders were forced out.

End game of socialism. I hope that the citizens do not suffer and that they get some wise leaders in office. This is going to take more than ten years to recover and it will be hard for everyone but my heart goes out to the poor people who were deluded by the free government stuff for so long - this is a heady intoxicant but it never lasts for any length of time. The money always runs out.

It works great if you have a lot of national income and a smallish population (scandinavian countries) and it worked for a while in Venezuela while oil prices were abnormally high but new technologies brought the prices down low and Venezuela's market crashed. Had Chavez and Maduro been investing in infrastructure instead of bread and circuses, Venezuela would be in fine shape. Spending their national income on free government stuff? Not so much.

New cartoon from Ben Garrison

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From his website:

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Words to live by - deregulate

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Tip of the hat to The Silicon Graybeard - a daily read.

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Writing a scientific paper

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Using the iOS autocomplete feature - from Christoph Bartneck:

iOS Just Got A Paper On Nuclear Physics Accepted At A Scientific Conference
Automatically generating scientific articles has become easy with dedicated software such as SCIgen. Even a paper that only repeated the sentence “Get me of your fucking mailing list” was recently accepted for publication. Today I received an invitation from the International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics to submit a paper. Since I have practically no knowledge of Nuclear Physics I resorted to iOS auto-complete function to help me writing the paper. I started a sentence with “Atomic” or “Nuclear” and then randomly hit the auto-complete suggestions. The text really does not make any sense. After adding the first illustration on nuclear physics from Wikipedia, some references and creating a fake identity (Iris Pear, aka Siri Apple) I submitted the paper which was accepted only three hours later! I know that iOS is a pretty good software, but reaching tenure has never been this close.

The text of the paper is here: Atomic Energy will have been made available to a single source (PDF file) Pure unreadable gibberish. He has a video on its making at his site.

Looks like a lot of fun - perfect for Silver Lake Park:

Fustercluck

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Took a good look at the panel that controls the outdoor lighting and it is a royal fustercluck - surprised that it ever passed inspection. The "electrician" used whatever wire they had on hand for the project - there is both solid and stranded wire of every color. They had white wire running hot (a big no-no) purple, red and black wire running hot (the last two are OK - black is the specified color and red for a seond circuit). Going down there this week with a couple spools of THHN solid black and white and redo the whole thing to my specs.

Coffee and store

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Working on a couple projects at the store today - cleaning up some bad wiring for the outside lights. Coffee first - got my priorities dammit!

Played veterinarian this morning - Grace showed signs of a worm infestation so dosed her as well as doing seasonal flea treatment for all the critters.

Back in a few hours - did a split pea soup with ham for dinner last night and having that for dinner tonight as well - came out really yummy and perfect for the cooler weather.

Two thoughts on America

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Fred Reed and Vox Day - excerpts (and links) from both:

"It cannot be saved"
Fred Reed is correct. The USA cannot and will not be saved. The Mandate of Heaven has been lost. God has, quite rightly, damned America.

Let’s not delude ourselves. America is ruled by the Five Cities, Boston, New York, Washington, Tel Aviv, and Hollywood. The rest of us just pay taxes. The heart of the beast is New York, the Ivies being its nursery and Washington its storefront.

To a practicing curmudgeon, the presidential contest is amusing but unimportant. Hillary will win, whether she wins or not. She is just the wave front of deep and fast-flowing currents of decay that cannot be stopped. Trump may try, but he cannot succeed. We live in a dying culture and, soon, a diminished country. It cannot be saved.

Not true? Add up the bits and pieces. We laugh in horror, some of us, primarily the older, at the decline of schooling, the courses like Batman and the Struggle for Gender Equity. Comic, yes. Yet in aggregate these constitute an academic and civilizational collapse both profound and irreversible. Enstupidation does not happen in a healthy country. Who even wants to reverse this onrushing night? Not the universities, nor the teachers unions, nor a professoriat gone as daft as the “students,” nor the banks battening on student loans.

It is over. Hillary may start wars in her six months before going into a sanatorium. Trump may build walls. But the rot will go on.

Does that mean you should give up? It depends. You should give up any thoughts of reviving what is already dead; you cannot fix a corpse. But you should not give up on the vision of building something better.

Go and read both posts in their full - Vox Day and Fred Reed - finger on the pulse and all that...
And one more bonus link from 2004: You Can't Fix a Corpse

Respecting the election process

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About that global warming

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From AccuWeather:

Blustery winds, interior snow to chill northeastern US this weekend
Colder weather, and in some cases, a taste of winter with snow will continue to invade the northeastern United States this weekend.

Shorts and short-sleeve weather from earlier this week is being replaced by conditions requiring long sleeves and layered clothing, including coats, hats and even gloves, for those spending time outdoors at area football games.

Some people may have to put their heat on for the first time this season.

Looking at some epic snow this winter for Mtl Baker. Good for business.

Raspberry Pi

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I have been playing around with a couple of Raspberry Pi computers. These are single board modest devices (they will run Linux just fine but do not have the memory needed for Windows) that have taken the world by storm. They are cheap enough ($35 or so) that you can dedicate one to a specific task instead of having to use a stand-alone Windows box. I have been having a blast with mine.

Here is one sucess story about a company who used a Raspberry Pi to control their office - from Monterail:

How we built a truly Smart Office system based on Raspberry Pi
Last year, when Monterail decided to change their office to be a bigger and better-designed place , they decided that it should also be smarter. I was introduced to the team as a person who could make this happen. I collaborated with Monterail during the renovation of their new home and then finally joined the team.

The “Smart” part
Such a huge project cannot start without a good, long workshop about our needs and requirements. After a thorough workshop we decided to have the following features:

    • light control,
    • conference and call room occupancy signalization,
    • individual access codes for the main doors for each team member in a centralized database,
    • audio system with a wireless music streaming option,
    • separate, manageable audio experience in the restroom,
    • five TVs with the ability to manage the content displayed on them,
    • kitchen LED lamp color management,
    • ability to control everything via a web application (desktop, mobile, phone and panels mounted on the walls).

After that, the automation system project was done and the whole office concept was ready to be implemented in real life. The entire hardware side of the smart office had taken place during the construction work done by the renovation crew. Of course, there were some small complications during whole venture, but everything ultimately ended up as we wanted.

Lots of pictures and details at the link - this is the kind of thing that the Raspberry Pi was made for. There are lots of programming libraries out there so you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

The end game of government subsidies

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One of the 'softer' forms of socialism is government subsidized staples - food, shelter, energy, etc... People come to accept these as their right and when the inevitable economic perturbations happen and these get taken away, the thin veneer of society crumbles. Look at Venezuela to see the end game of government gimmies. The same thing is playing out in Egypt as well - from The New York Times:

Sweet-Toothed Egypt Endures a Sugar Crisis: ‘People Are Going to Snap’
Egyptians pile sugar into mugs of tea by the spoonful — or three or five. A staple long subsidized by the government for most of the population, sugar is the chief ingredient of the national pudding, Om Ali. It can feel like the only ingredient. It is also a prime reason that nearly a fifth of Egyptians have diabetes.

So a weekslong sugar shortage has plunged people into a panic. The sugar crisis, as it is known, has quickly become shorthand for the brewing anger against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s management of the economy and his overall rule.

“The people are going to snap,” Ahmad el-Gebaly said as he turned away customers seeking sugar he did not have at his subsidized-goods store in Bulaq, a working-class neighborhood of Cairo.

“Nobody can stand him anymore,” he added of Mr. Sisi. “Sugar is like rice and oil and wheat. You can never run out of it. You can never mess with it. Who can live without sugar?”

Still reeling from the political turbulence and militant attacks that followed the 2011 uprising, Egypt’s economy is in free fall. Its pound is now worth 6 cents on the black market, about half its value a year ago.

Tourism has collapsed, remittances from Egyptian workers in the Persian Gulf have dropped and revenue from the Suez Canal has fallen. Inflation reached a seven-year high of 15.5 percent in August. Saudi Arabia delayed a shipment of discount petroleum products this month, setting off fears of a deteriorating relationship with an ally that has propped up Egypt with more than $25 billion since Mr. Sisi came to power in 2014.

Sugar is not the only scarce staple, as the plummeting pound has slashed Egypt’s import-purchasing power. Cooking oil disappeared from shelves for a time this year, residents said, as did baby formula, and rice is in low supply. Some people complained that they could not find certain medicines, or that the prices had skyrocketed.

They have sugar, it is just priced at the world market and when you use the government to fix the price, supplies will run out as people hoard. Tourism used to be a major revenue stream but their failure to condemn islamic terrorism has caused that to dry up to a trickle.

Salt

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Great four minute video on the different kinds of salt:

J. Kenji López-Alt runs the Serious Eats website - one of my go-to places for cooking tips and recipes.

From The People's Cube:

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I might try to explain various types of economies and governments in the terms of kids and candy. This is partly inspired by a list with the same idea, but explained with cows and milk. I tried to cover a wider range of topics than the cow list, also.

Capitalism is where the kid who worked the hardest on his costume gets the most candy.

Crony Capitalism is where the kid pays off the guy with the bowl to give him the most candy.

American Capitalism is where the kid tries earnestly to get some candy, but kids from other towns who are willing to get less candy take all the candy he should've gotten.

Monarchism is where the guy with the bowl gets all the candy, but may or may not give some out to the kids who make the candy.

Communism is where both the guy with the bowl and the kids are equal, call each-other comrades, and get an equal amount of candy, but the amount is tiny, the candy is stale (or moldy) and the chocolate gives you the runs.

Russian Communism is where the guy with the bowl gets fine European chocolate in unlimited quantities, but the kids have to all share expired Hershey bars from 1945 that are hidden in the attic from the guy with the bowl or chocolate bars that are nothing but cocoa, powdered milk, and sawdust compressed into a block. However, the kids can get some European chocolate with a little bit of blat.

Fourteen more at the site. Too true...

Gorgeous day today

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But more rain is scheduled for tomorrow. Fall in the Pacific Northwet...

WA State Elections - Initiative 1501

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From an email - typical union dirty politics:

Initiative 1501 is about power and control, nothing more.
Initiative 1501 is probably the most convoluted initiative on the ballot this November. We hope you’ll read the entirety of this short article, as it is extremely important to be informed about this initiative and make the right choice when voting.

I-1501 alleges to help protect three classes of people against identity theft:

Seniors, disabled people, and in-home caregivers for these people. At first glance, this seems noble. Who would be against protecting vulnerable people against identity theft? Sadly, this initiative does virtually nothing to protect anyone against anything. On the contrary, it is a dangerous piece of legislation, cleverly engineered by lawyers and bureaucrats to help the largest monopoly in Washington – the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – maintain an iron grip on public information.

To understand why, we have to take a brief look at the back-story.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state-funded in-home providers (IPs) could not be considered full state employees, and therefore could not be required to pay union dues. Simple enough.

One big problem, however: The unions never told the IPs that they had the right to opt-out, for obvious reasons. Employees leaving the union would inevitably mean fewer dollars to line SEIU’s vast bank accounts.

Several watchdog groups, such as the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, realized that this was a scandalous way to do business, and called out the unions on their actions. The Freedom Foundation started a campaign to contact union members and inform them that they had the right to opt-out of paying dues, and could keep more of their own money.

Naturally, this didn’t set too well with union leaders, so they devised a way to prohibit organizations like the Freedom Foundation from contacting their members. This is where I-1501 comes in.

I-1501 makes contact information for these in-home providers exempt from public disclosure, and exposes these watchdog organizations to potential criminal prosecution. It is nothing more than a shady, last ditch attempt to keep people from understanding their rights. Additionally, there are already laws on the books to deal with the prosecution of identity thieves.

Make no mistake. I-1501 is about money and control, nothing more. It is only disguised as a protection for vulnerable people. In truth, it uses seniors and disabled adults as a convenient smokescreen – or battering ram, if you prefer – to hide and advance a much more perverse agenda: To deny people the choice to keep more of their hard-earned cash, and grow SEIU’s bargaining power.

Unions very much had their part in the workplace back in the 1900's through the 1940's but the times have evolved and the unions have not. Now, they are about political power and using the rank and file's dues to line their own coffers. These funds are used for political lobbying (federal violation of their 501(c)3 status) to gain power for the unions and not to benefit the enrolled workers. Time for them to die like the dinosaurs they are - another example of ideas that cannot stand on their own merit so they have to play dirty to get them enforced.

Nuclear power - first in twenty years

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We need to be building ten of these things per year - from the Tennessee Valley Authority:

Watts Bar Unit 2 Complete and Commercial
The nation’s first new nuclear generation in 20 years has officially entered commercial operation after the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 2 successfully completed an extensive series of power ascension tests and reliably operated at full power for more than three weeks.

“TVA’s mission is to make life better in the Valley by providing reliable, low-cost energy, protecting our area’s natural resources and working to attract business and growth—all priorities simultaneously supported by the completion of Watts Bar Unit 2,” said Bill Johnson, TVA president and CEO.

“Watts Bar Unit 2 is a key part of our commitment to produce cleaner energy without sacrificing the reliability and low cost that draws both industry and residents to our area.”

The $4.7 billion capital construction project was completed on budget. The unit now moves to working asset status.

Cheap power - if they built LFTRs, they would be even cheaper - no pressure vessel needed with these. All the politics about carbon and we still don't recognize that nuclear is the way to go.

Earthquakes on the brain

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An interesting metric from My Northwest:

Google searches prove devastating earthquake still top of mind in Washington
It’s clear that earthquakes are still top of mind for Western Washington residents.

One need only to look as far as the Google search bar to understand just how much interest there is.

As Estatly points out, “How to survive an earthquake?” is queried by Washingtonians in the Google search engine more frequently than any other state, including California. And that’s somewhat surprising, considering the fact that anxiety was high recently after a swarm of seismic activity prompted a warning of elevated risk for a San Andreas fault earthquake, and two faults were just found to be connected.

The search queries in Google were taken from the most common how-to questions over the past five years.

This is a good thing - preparedness begets survival and the more prepared you are, the more comfortable you will be until relief arrives.

Memorial Service

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It was a nice one with about 200 people showing up. Carl was a high-school English teacher for much of his life and a lot of his former students were present. Carl was also in the Army so two soldiers presented the flag and his ashes and there was a 21 gun salute after the service.

Back home again - beef barley soup for dinner tonight and unload the trailer tomorrow.

Got another rain front moving in - starting to come down fairly heavy.

Donald unchained

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Here is Donald unleashed - 16 minutes of pure fun:

Fun times ahead - James O'Keefe

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O'Keefe was the guy who sunk ACORN with the undercover videos - from PJ Media:

James O'Keefe Says Donna Brazile's Head May Be Next to Roll
Having already gotten Democrat operatives Scott Foval and Robert Creamer (Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's husband) to "resign" after the release of the first two parts of his recent sting, James O'Keefe just hinted that he's got bigger fish to fry:

Yes we do. Oh, we’re just getting started. @donnabrazile may be forced to resign next week after what comes out. https://t.co/dmAKlCgiEq

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 20, 2016

The MSM has been dismissing the videos that sunk Foval and Creamer with weak nonsense about them being "low-level" and "unknown," despite the fact that Creamer is married to a member of Congress. If Brazile is forced to go, look for a lot of unfounded attacks on O'Keefe designed to distract. Brazile has her current job because her predecessor was forced to step down under scandalous circumstances. I would say "resign in disgrace," but Democrats really aren't embarrassed by their behavior.

Heh - I hope he has good security.

Sleeping in today

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There is a memorial service for a friend today at 2:00PM so puttering around the house and then going out to that. Doing a coffee run in a few minutes. Gorgeous day today - was forecast to rain but the skies cleared and the sun is shining. Lulu heard a moose this morning and saw a hummingbird.

Reserved for Leadership

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Latest from Michael Ramirez - absolutely nails it:

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The mask slips - Hillary

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Only a few seconds but it speaks volumes - from last night's debate:

A new one from Moby

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Love his music - paired with a great animation:

Tip of the hat to James Gurney for the link.

Simon's Cat

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The latest one - The Monster

Now I want to go back to college again

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From The Denver Post:

North Dakota students learn how to build drone businesses
Instructor Matt Dunlevy probably didn’t have to remind his University of North Dakota students that they’d be sharing the airspace as they stood in a field preparing their drones for flight as the sun set one recent afternoon.

“Welcome to the drone business, where you will be eaten alive by bugs,” Dunlevy said, as the students swatted away mosquitoes.

What Dunlevy doesn’t expect, by the end of the semester, is for students in the new course to be eaten alive trying to make a living in the unmanned aircraft business. They are learning to fly drones, with the hopes of earning a Federal Aviation Administration pilot’s license, and are getting real-world business experience. At semester’s end, students will pitch their enterprise ideas to venture capitalists and executives in a “Shark Tank” style setting.

Makes a lot of sense - there is a big market for drones and there is a big gap between the hobby drones and the professional units. Image stability and quality vary widely and getting the shot that the customer wants versus what you think is best makes a big difference.

I am still waiting for the next level of technology - better weight capacity (being able to fly with better cameras) and the next advancement in batteries (longer flight time) before jumping into the waters.

This looks fun - People of Earth

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A new tranche of WikiLeaks

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And Gateway Pundit is on it but first this little bit of treason from last night's debate:

BREAKING: HILLARY COMMITS ANOTHER CRIME – LEAKS NUCLEAR SECRETS DURING DEBATE 
Hillary Clinton has a history of skirting the law.
Laws are for the little people.

She’s been accused during sworn testimony of disrespecting security agents and putting them in danger.
She abandoned her “friend” Ambassador Chris Stevens and left him to the Islamists who slaughtered him in Benghazi.

Tonight during the final presidential debate Hillary Clinton leaked more national security secrets.
Hillary said it took four minutes between the nuclear order and nukes flying.

And two WikiLeaks:

WIKILEAKS: Hillary Took Algeria Off Terror Watch List After Donation to Clinton Foundation

and

WIKILEAKS: Bernie’s Wife Jane BEGGED HIM Not to Endorse Hillary

Bernie endorsed Hillary because he thought he would get a place at the trough - Hillary does not operate that way. Bernie was a serious threat to her campaign so he will be politically eliminated.

Just checked and we have had just over one inch in the last 24 hours - it was 0.75" this morning and we got another 0.25" while we were doing the drill. It was raining buckets at times. Everyone was glad I brought the trailer...

And then there is this - from The Bellingham Herald:

Ski officials already pointing to early opening for season
Officials at Mt. Baker Ski Area already are anticipating an early opening based on snowfall predictions — and ski officials in British Columbia are hoping the strength of the U.S. dollar could send American skiers and snowboarders north of the border.

Duncan Howatt, general manager at Baker, is anticipating a promising 2016-17 season, based on forecasts for wet, blustery weather in November that typically translates to snow at the ski area.

“When this happens we tend to have a fairly early opening (at least by Thanksgiving), and then a lot of snow by Christmas,” Howat wrote this week on the ski area’s Snow Report website. Last weekend’s storm left a “light dusting at Heather Meadows,” but the ski area needs freezing levels to drop to get the 18 to 30 inches needed to open.

The ski area opened Nov. 19 last year, the only one in Washington state to open that early.

I have been saying that we have the potential for a record snow year this season. Mt. Baker had an epic snowpack in 1998-1999 and it was preceded by an epic El Niño. We just had another epic El Niño so...

Working in a gold mine

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I was reading about a local mine and ran into this description:

Mining at the ****  was not for the timid or faint hearted.

Meltwater from snowfields and glaciers above the mine poured through production stopes and raises 2 to 3 feet wide at a rate of 500 gallons per minute during the summer months. During winter months, avalanches shot by on both sides of the camp quarters. Labor turnover was as high as 96 percent in September 1921. Krom reported the following observation: “Labor turnover was so rapid that it required the proverbial three crews — one coming, one working, and one leaving — to keep the mine in operation. Not uncommonly, men arrived and departed without having worked one full shift.”

This is a gold mine that is in a nearby mountain. The mine's entrance is in Canada and is pretty much inaccessible now - most trails and roads have been washed out.

Well, if the economy goes to pot, I can still dig and I own a pick and a wheelbarrow - nice to know there is gold in these hills...

Our government and local farmers

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This sucks - central planning at it's most egregious - from Capital Press:

Congress mulls project to flood Washington farmland
Federal lawmakers may authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to pursue a $451.6 million project to convert hundreds of acres of privately owned farmland into Puget Sound fish habitat, unsettling to a farmer who owns property vital to the government’s designs.

“It’s definitely, definitely in the back of my mind, all the time,” said Scott Bedlington, third-generation Whatcom County farmer. “I have to farm. That’s what we live off.”

The corps and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife propose to inundate 2,100 acres in Whatcom, Skagit and Jefferson counties, including by removing dikes protecting farms.

Restoring habitat is a nice idea and it plays well with the disconnected-from-reality urban voters but the habitat was disturbed and nothing we do can bring it back to what it once was. Some of the dam removal is good for restoring salmon runs but stuff like this is expensive and will do nothing major. It will remove the layer of flood protection that the levees give which caused them to be built in the first place.

Follow the money:

The corps and WDFW spent 15 years and $22 million developing the Puget Sound Nearshore Restoration Project.

The corps forwarded the plan to Congress last month. The plan calls for $293.6 million in federal funding and $158 million in state funding over about 10 years.

How about we put this towards reforming our education system. The Federal funding is just our tax dollars being misspent and the state funding is money that would be better served fixing infrastructure. Fish do not say thank you.

Back from the shakeout

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I was on the air at 8:30AM and the rest of my crew showed up shortly after. We had a search team (two CERT volunteers) and a Team Leader and a Scribe - two other CERT volunteers and a fellow ham radio operator. It was a lot of fun despite it raining buckets - I had a propane heater running in the trailer so we were damp but warm. One of our search temates was ill so our Scribe went along (CERT always uses a buddy system when searching). Two of the teams had two search teams.

The search team had envelopes with specific addresses on them - when they reached the address, they would open the envelope and report the damage scenario to our team leader using the hand-held "Family" radio sets. The team leader wrote this down on an Incedent Report sheet and handed it to us hams and we reported them to the operator at the fire hall. The operator there then reported the incident to the Whatcom Emergency Operations Center.

What will be interesting is that the EOC has duplicates of each "inject" so they can compare the message they recieved with the actual contents of the inject. If there is a difference, then our communication and reporting skills need to be practiced.

Our EOC has a facebook page with some videos of the goings on. They are also doing an Ask Me Anything on Reddit.

Got up at 6:30 this morning - usually wake up around 10 or so so feeling a bit tired - probably take a nap later. The farrier is coming out to give Rockey his mani-pedi this afternoon.

Zero-dark thirty

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Heading out to the earthquake drill this morning - trailer packed, just packing lunch and getting ready to head out.

Should be fun except it is pouring down buckets (0.75 inches in the last 24 hours) and not due to stop until 11:00AM and the drill is scheduled to end at Noon. Got a propane heater for the trailer so we will be somewhat warm and dry.

That is it for the night

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Had dinner, watched an episode of Person of Interest (great show!) and heading out to the radio room to finish making the cables and programming the radios.

Because there is only so much front panel space for knobs and buttons, the radios are very menu driven with some functions requiring you to drill down four and five levels to reach a command. Fortunately, the radios have ports on them that connect to your computer's USB port and there is software that makes this a piece of cake. I use Chirp as well as some proprietary software depending on what I want to do.

Back to work - long but fun day tomorrow.

Another Podesta email

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From this email

On Feb 3, 2015, at 9:54 PM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com<mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com>> wrote:

I think Teddy's idea scratches the itch, is pretty safe and uncomplicated.
On the picture ID, the one thing I have thought of in that space is that if you show up on Election Day with a drivers license with a picture, attest that you are a citizen, you have a right to vote in Federal elections.

JP

So the formality of registering to vote is too complicated for people? They just want to bring a bus full of people to a polling place, they show their drivers licences and vote and then get back onto the bus and head to the next polling place.

These people are so bereft of virtue that this is the only way they can win the vote - by cheating.

Curious - Citizens for Trump

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The website is either very very busy or is suffering a DDoS attack - I try to go there and see this:

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Debate tonight

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Very interested but will probably catch it tomorrow - still have another hour or two work to do tonight.

Back to work

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Got the trailer all set - still need to make some cables and program the radios with the right frequencies.

Lulu has been busy in the kitchen (we both love to cook) making chocolate chip cookies for tomorrow as well as beef barley soup for the next couple of dinners.

Heading down to the store in a few moments to get some stuff for tomorrow.

More emails from WikiLeaks

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Classic Hillary obfuscation and outright lying - from Zero Hedge:

The Missing "Oh Shit" Link Revealed: Hillary Admits "I Asked That They Be Deleted"
Back in September we wrote about the circumstances leading up to the "Oh Shit" moment when Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks deleted Hillary's 30,000 "personal emails" (the full notes is here:  "The "Oh Shit" Moment: Hillary Wiped Her Server With BleachBit Despite Subpoena").  Within the original FBI interview notes, Hillary "stated she never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete, her e-mails to avoid complying with FOIA, State, or FBI requests for information."  Moreover, just last week, in sworn testimony provided to Judicial Watch, Hillary also denied asking for the emails to be deleted.  That said, a new email discovered in the latest WikiLeaks dump seems to offer a direct contradiction to what Hillary previously told both the FBI and Judicial Watch.

So which version is true?

    • FBI Notes: "Clinton stated she was also unaware of the March 2015 e-mail deletions by PRN."
    • Judicial Watch Testimony: "She believes that her personal e-mails were not kept, and she does not have any personal knowledge about the details of that process."
    • Private Talking Points (WikiLeaks): "As I said in March, I chose not to keep the personal ones.  I asked that they be deleted."

Before getting into the details, here is the background from the FBI notes on how Hillary's personal emails came to be deleted.

Lots more at the site - links to source materials. Hillary is quite the accomplished liar.

Our rigged elections

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A sobering article at The Daily Caller:

Soros-Connected Company Provides Voting Machines In 16 States
Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting technology company with deep ties to George Soros, has control over voting machines in 16 states including battleground zones like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Other jurisdictions affected are California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.

Its website includes a flow-chart that describes how the company has contributed to elections in the U.S. from 2006-2015 with “57,000 voting and counting machines deployed” and “35 million voters assisted.”

In 2005, Smartmatic bought-out California-based Sequoia Voting Systems and entered the world of U.S. elections.

According to Smartmatic’s website, “In less than one year Smartmatic tripled Sequoia’s market share” and “has offered technology and support services to the Electoral Commissions of 307 counties in 16 States.”

Among the “case studies” that Smartmatic lists on its website as examples of its work are Venezuela, where it has been facilitating elections since 2004 when it “won a bid to provide Venezuela with a reliable voting system.”

The very fact that they have been involved in Venezuela's elections should raise a big red flag. This kind of thing is easy to do if you have someone like Soros backing you - start up a shell company and then buy a company that has legitimate technology (Sequoia), lay off the Sequoia employees after you learn their intelectual property and then subvert the systems to your needs.

I do hope there is someone at Smartmatic with the courage to come forward as a whistle-blower. A copy of the source code would be easy enough to sneak out.

This just makes my blood run cold:

The chairman of Smartmatic is Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who sits in the British House of Lords and on the board of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. He was formerly the vice-chairman of Soros’s Investment Funds and even the deputy secretary-general of the United Nations when he worked as chief of staff to Kofi Annan.

Malloch-Brown’s resume includes stints as vice-president of the UN World Bank and in British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet.

In addition to a close relationship with Soros, Malloch-Brown has worked with consulting firms that are well-connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was an international partner with the Sawyer-Miller consulting firm and was a senior adviser to FTI Consulting.

That company needs to be disolved and scattered to the winds. Salt the earth.

Limiting the EPA

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Great news from the Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald

Federal judge rules in favor of coal companies in EPA battle
A federal judge in West Virginia ruled Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must comply with a federal code requiring the agency to evaluate the impact of its air pollution regulations on jobs.

U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey agreed with Murray Energy Corporation and its subsidiaries that the EPA's actions have caused harm to coal mining communities.

“In this case, the plaintiffs have alleged that the actions of the EPA have had a coercive effect on the power generating industry, essentially forcing them to discontinue the use of coal," the ruling said. "This Court finds these allegations sufficient to show that the injuries claimed by the plaintiffs are fairly traceable to the earlier actions of the EPA."

The EPA argued any injury caused to the plaintiffs would only be traceable to earlier EPA actions, not the failure of the EPA to conduct evaluations of job loss, but Judge Bailey disagreed.

The civil action suit said the plaintiffs combined employ more than 7,200 workers and comprise the largest underground coal mining operation in the U.S. The plaintiffs allege the EPA's actions have caused a reduced market for coal, which has threatened the economic vitality of the companies and their employees.

Good!  It is time to punch back twice as hard on those who would demonize coal. Raw, it is dirty and when burned in an uncontrolled manner will release a lot of toxins. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the heyday of the steel mills and the atmosphere was palpably dirty. There are now clean ways to use coal. No reason to limit its use - it is abundant and cheap.

Back home again

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Printed off a fundraising letter for our local preparedness group. Surfing for a little bit and then out to the radio room - making some extra cables for tomorrow - be prepared. Checked all three car batteries and they are just fine - trickle charging. Getting an updated forecast in 45 minutes or so and plan from there. Programming the radios to the operational frequencies.

Packing up the trailer

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Heading out for coffee, do some printing for a local group and then back home to pack up the equipment into my box trailer. Supposed to be pouring down rain all day tomorrow so wanting to operate in a comfortable spot.

More posting later.

At the debate tomorrow

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Heh - from Page Six:

Obama’s half-brother will be at Vegas debate cheering for Trump
President Obama’s Kenyan-born, half-brother Malik will be in the audience in Las Vegas Wednesday night when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton square off in their third and final debate.

Malik — an American citizen who lives in Washington, DC, when he’s not in Kenya — says he will be a guest of Trump, the Republican nominee he supports for president.

“I’m excited to be at the debate. Trump can make America great again,” Malik told The Post.

“I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik,” Trump said. “He gets it far better than his brother.”

Obama has a rather large extended family and he treats them like dirt - a bit more:

Malik, who is three years older than Barack, said he last saw his sibling in August 2015 after the president had visited Kenya.

“I went to the White House to say hello. I paid a courtesy call,” he said. But it wasn’t a very warm and loving reception.

“As usual, it was a hands-off kind of thing, very businesslike, very formal,” Malik said.

The problem is that Malik is one of the little people, not a ruling elite. Now if Malik worked for Goldman Sachs or Facebook, that would be a different story entirely.

Back from meeting

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The digital group did a bulk purchase of Northwest Digital Radio's Universal Digital Radio Controller or UDRC (PDF file). I picked up three of them as I want to tie my old weather station into the network, have one in my truck and have one for messaging at home. They fit onto a Raspberry Pi computer so you have a complete digital system for about $80 total plus a radio. Got a nice discount through the bulk buy so the price was right.

Spending tomorrow getting the box trailer ready for the Great Shakeout. I scoped out the school where we will be setting up - a couple good places but they are fenced off so we will need to get the gate opened. There is a small parking lot (20 spaces) but it is for faculty and will probably be pretty full - no room to manover my trailer so using that space is moot. The place I do want to park is a paved play area but Thursday morning is forecast to be dumping rain so unless the students are amphibious, we should have that space to ourselves.

Surf for a bit and then to bed.

Off to town in a little bit

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Scoping out my location for the Great Shakeout on Thursday morning, stoping by the tool rental place to extend the freezer dolly rental time and go to the bank.

Have a Digital Radio Group meeting tonight so back sometime around 9:00PM

Raining pretty hard - 24 hour rainfall is a bit under a half inch. Our main river is running about twice average - good, we can use the water.

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The WikiLeaks interruption?

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Finger pointed right at John F. Kerry - from the Gateway Pundit:

BREAKING: Secretary of State John Kerry Demanded Julian Assange’s Internet Be Cut Off
Secretary of State John Kerry demanded the Ecuadorian Embassy in London cut off Julian Assange’s internet be cut off.

Wikileaks tweeted the development on Tuesday.
McClatchy reported:

Wikileaks said Tuesday that Secretary of State John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, from publishing leaked emails that could disrupt peace negotiations with a guerrilla group in Colombia.

Assange, who has been in refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London for more than four years, saw his access to the internet cut over the weekend.

The FARC negotiations are just the cover - the Podesta emails were getting a little too close for Hillary's minders liking.

I am surprised that someone hasn't just parked a truck outside the Embassy with a high-power WiFi transciever - the internet was designed to route around damaged links. Wonder if they physically took Assange’s computer away.

And then, there is Hillary's reaction to an earlier WikiLeak - from TruePundit:

Clinton’s State Department was getting pressure from President Obama and his White House inner circle, as well as heads of state internationally, to try and cutoff Assange’s delivery of the cables and if that effort failed, then to forge a strategy to minimize the administration’s public embarrassment over the contents of the cables. Hence, Clinton’s early morning November meeting of State’s top brass who floated various proposals to stop, slow or spin the Wikileaks contamination. That is when a frustrated Clinton, sources said, at some point blurted out a controversial query.

Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department sources. The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States.

Quite the story and say what you will about it being The Enquirer - don't forget that they were the ones that broke the Monica Lewinsky story as well as the John Edwards story. From the National Enquirer:

Hillary Fixer Breaks Ranks: I Arranged Sex Trysts For Her — With Men & WOMEN
Hillary Clinton is a secret sex freak who paid fixers to set up illicit romps with both men AND women!

That’s the blockbuster revelation from a former Clinton family operative who is sensationally breaking ranks with his one-time bosses to speak to The National ENQUIRER in a bombshell 9-page cover story — on newsstands Wednesday.

“I arranged a meeting for Hillary and a woman in an exclusive Beverly Hills hotel,” the man, who was hired by the Clintons, via a Hollywood executive, to cover up their scandals, told The ENQUIRER.

Heh - the mud-slinging is just beginning. Time to make a big bowl of popcorn and sit back and enjoy the show.

RIP - Leo L. Beranek

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You may not have heard of him but he has influenced your life more than you realize - from The New York Times:

Leo Beranek, Acoustics Designer and Internet Pioneer, Dies at 102
Leo L. Beranek, an engineer whose company designed the acoustics for the United Nations and concert halls at Lincoln Center and Tanglewood, then built the direct precursor to the internet under contract to the Defense Department, died on Oct. 10 at his home in Westwood, Mass. He was 102.

His death was confirmed by his son James.

Dr. Beranek taught acoustic engineering at Harvard and M.I.T. for more than three decades after World War II, conducting research there that laid the groundwork for acoustic advances with wide social impact, including noise standards for public buildings and airports. But one of his most notable achievements was well outside the field of acoustics.

In 1969, the company he helped found, Bolt, Beranek & Newman, won a contract from the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency to build the first computer-based network, which came to be called Arpanet.

By demonstrating the ability to share data and messages through vast computer networks, Arpanet, a product of government-sponsored research, paved the way for the creation of the internet. Among its many breakthrough achievements, his company sent the first email message that used the @ symbol, in 1972.

A fascinating life - I was very fortunate to have met him a few times when I was living in Boston and working at the public aquarium there BB&N designed the new auditorium that was built when I was working there. They are based in Cambridge (neighboring town across the Charles River).

So true...

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A quick heads up - Shakeout

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Major General Bret Daugherty talks about the importance of building a preparedness kit as well as a promotion for the Great Washington ShakeOut:

Digital music - piano player rolls

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A great 1980's video tour of a company that makes player piano rolls - they are still in business: QRS Music Technologies

I love the Apple ][ still cranking away. Iffen it ain't broke...

Too damn true - admin/password

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From CommitStrip:

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More rain today

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About a quarter inch - the ground is getting nice and soaked and rivers are at normal stage. Rain is forecast for the rest of this week too - time to plant garlic next sunny day.

Planning for the Great Shakeout coming up this Thursday - going to be raining so I will take my box trailer. Pack a table and some chairs and operate in comfort. WA State is up to one million participants for the event.

Chicken tacos for dinner tonight.

Our school system on display

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Evidence of our excellent school system is on display here - from The Washington Free Beacon:

Millennials Pretty Cool With Socialism
A report released Monday reveals a growing acceptance of socialist and Marxist viewpoints among younger Americans born after the Cold War.

Nearly half—45 percent—of those aged between 16 and 20 years old said they would vote for a socialist, while one in five responded they would vote for a communist, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found.

Reasons for the widespread backing Bernie Sanders garnered among millennials during the primary election were also evident in the survey, with younger generations expressing greater support for remarks made by the Vermont senator than quotes from the Bible or free market economist Milton Friedman.

This trend, dubbed the Bernie Sanders “bounce,” was also evident in findings that less than half of young Americans viewed capitalism favorably. Nearly three in four millennials favored policies promoted by Sanders versus just over half who preferred those put forward by Friedman.

Marion Smith, executive director of the organization, said in a statement the study confirms the group’s fears that “an emerging generation of Americans have little understanding of the collectivist system and its dark history.”

This sentiment is particularly notable in the lack of knowledge among young Americans of communist leaders.

Read the whole thing - the report (PDF) is grim. People fail to study their history and are reaping the benefits.

The fact that these people vote makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Moving the goalposts - climate change

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When the recorded data do not match your models? Change the data - a two-fer.

First - Investors Business Daily:

Warming Alarmists Redefine What A Hurricane Is So We'll Have More Of Them
Whether they admit it out loud or not, many global warming alarmists want more destructive weather events to validate their assumptions. But what happens when they can't get their "dirty weather," as Al Gore calls it? Then they'll just have define down what a disaster is.

Eleven years ago, Gore swore that "the science is extremely clear now." Global warming was "magnifying" the "destructive power" of the "average hurricane," he said. Man's impact on the environment "makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger."

The weather refused to cooperate with Gore and the U.S. went 11 years without a hurricane making landfall. But Hurricane Matthew renewed the alarmists' faith in their own nonsense. Acting is if 11 days rather than 11 years had passed, Gore said last week that in Hurricane Matthew, "Mother Nature is giving us a very clear and powerful message." From the same stage in Florida, Hillary Clinton said "Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change." The Washington Post, ever dutiful to the man-made global warming narrative, asked climate scientist Michael Mann (whose hockey stick chart supposedly proves human-caused warming but fails the test for some) about her statement. Naturally, he told the Post she was "absolutely" right.

Yeah - Hurricane Mathew was the first hurricane to make US landfall for 4001 days.

Second from Fabius Maximus:

A leaked memo about climate change explains why we’re unprepared
Summary: A leaked memo from the highest levels of the Democratic Party leadership discuss how to build public support for large-scale climate policy initiatives. It shows why their efforts failed, and raises questions about the coming Hillary Clinton administration.

Memorandum: “Climate: A unifying theory to the case“,
Emailed from John Podesta to Chris Lehane, 28 January 2014.

This memo was emailed to Podesta (a senior White House official) from Lehane (partner in the strategic communications firm Fabiani & Lehane, dissolved in Nov 2015). We have it courtesy of Wikileaks — and whoever leaked it to them.

John Podesta was Chief of staff to Bill Clinton and Counselor to the President for Obama. He is Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Chris Lehane – When an attorney in the White House Counsel’s office, he and his current business partner Mark Fabiani called themselves the “Masters of Disaster” for their work as a “rapid-response” team responding to the many scandals of the Clinton Administration. Lehane co-authored a book on damage control titled Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control. Jim Jordan, Kerry’s former campaign manager, called him ”a master of the political hand-to-hand” for his work as a political strategist.

The memo is disgusting - pure politics and absolutly zero science - two paragraphs to illustrate:

…At the end of the day, given the powerful and entrenched interests that are opposed to climate change policy, one needs to have an organizing platform that defines the Administration as being morally on the right side of the issue and, equally important, defines the opposition as morally responsible for an issue that threatens the health and welfare of the American people.

Define the issue as between those who believe in the science, and therefore are taking steps to respond to the scientific findings, versus those who do not believe in the science. The power of this approach is that it puts the opposition in an indefensible box (the vast majority of people believe the science that climate is changing); it fits into what we call the Troglodyte Narrative (anti-women; anti-Latino; anti-gun safety; anti-common sense fiscal policy; and anti-science) that is raising basic trust issues for the Republican Party – especially with electorally decisive voter cohorts. You either believe in basic science or you are against basic science — in which case you fail a basic requirement for being capable of occupying public office.

The only issue here is that the science is not that difficult - anyone with high school algebra should be able to follow the numbers and the numbers simply do not add up. There is no danger of run-away warming, there is no CO2 "tipping point" and we, as a planet, will be a lot better off with a slightly warmer climate.

From the Chicago Tribune:

1,000 more people shot in Chicago compared with same time last year
A thousand more people have been shot in Chicago this year compared with the same time last year after a weekend that saw eight people killed and at least 40 wounded, according to police and data compiled by the Tribune.

At least 3,475 people had been shot in the city as of shortly after midnight Monday compared with 2,441 people shot this time last year, an increase of 1,034, according to Tribune data. There have been at least 595 homicides this year compared with 409 this time last year, an increase of 186.

How are those gun laws working out for you - Chicago has some of the most stringent and draconian gun laws of any city in the USA. It is worth noting that Chicago has been under Democratic party rule for 92 years - the last Republican mayor was Big Bill Thompson who led the city from 1915 to 1923. Detroit is also having serious problems as I noted two days ago - another city with over 50 years of Democratic leadership rule.

Hmmm - say bad things about Hillary

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And your Internet gets taken away - from MSN:

WikiLeaks: Assange's internet link 'severed' by state actor
WikiLeaks says that founder Julian Assange's internet access has been cut by an unidentified state actor. Few other details were immediately available.

Assange has been up holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than four years after skipping bail to avoid being extradited over sex crimes allegations.

The cramped quarters haven't prevented the Australian transparency activist from working and WikiLeaks continues to deliver scoops, including revelations that have rattled Hillary Clinton's campaign for president as the U.S. election enters its final stretch.

Calls, texts and emails left with WikiLeaks weren't immediately returned Monday. A woman who picked up the phone at the embassy said: "I cannot disclose any information." An email to Ecuador's ambassador wasn't immediately answered. London's Metropolitan Police declined comment.

Wonder how long it will be for the body count to start piling up - Arkancide...

A bit of history - Watergate

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Something to remember - more here and yes, Snopes is in the tank for the Democrats (more at the link):

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How nice of them

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I have not been able to check the veracity of this but it is a good joke if not a real sting:

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Obama and his cronies will never come out and call Islamic Terrorism by its real name. Case in point - from The Washington Free Beacon:

Podesta Wished San Bernardino Shooter Was Named Chris Hayes
In the wake of last year’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta privately wished that the shooter’s name were Christopher Hayes, hacked emails show.

After MSNBC reporter Chris Hayes identified one of the two shooters in the attack as Syeed Farook, Podesta wrote, “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”

The email to Clinton campaign spokeswoman Karen Finney was one of thousands released by Wikileaks after hackers believed to be acting in concert with the Russian government breached Podesta’s email account.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and injured 22 more in the Dec. 2, 2015, attack before being killed in a shootout with police.

Farook and Malik were later discovered to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which praised the attack and dubbed its perpetrators “martyrs.”

The current administration will never admit to the infiltration of radical islamist terror into our nation. And it is not just in our nation. In the last 30 days, there have been 212 Islamic attacks in 29 countries, in which 1322 people were killed and 1652 injured. 

Read here: List of Islamic Terror: Last 30 Days

The Junior Varsity team

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You may remember when Obama dismissed ISIS as being a junior varsity team back in 2014. BTW, Hillary agreed with him.

Now this - from Military Times:

There's a new push to counter the rise of ISIS in Southeast Asia
With much of the United States' national security focus centered on the Middle East, one senator is speaking out about the rise of Islamic State group sympathizers in Southeast Asia and the long-term problems that could cause if left unchecked.

The concern has grown more urgent in recent months. ISIS-linked militants there have urged supporters in the region to “join the mujahideen in the Philippines” if they cannot travel to take part in the group's main fight in Syria and Iraq. Since then, cities in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have been attacked.

More recently, the Philippines' newly elected president, Rodrigo Duterte, has called for an end to the U.S. military's counter-terror mission in the Pacific's nation's volatile south. He's also questioned the two countries' broader alliance.

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, has called for increased attention on the issue, saying the region is a potential breeding ground for terrorist plots if the militant groups who operate there aren’t closely monitored.

Just wonderful - General John 'Black Jack' Pershing cleaned the Moro islamists out of the Philippines back in 1913's and they were out of business for 103 years. Now, thanks to our feckless Foreign Policy, they are gathering strength sufficient to cause problems again.

Always classy - Democrats

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From ABC News:

North Carolina GOP Office Burned, Graffiti Sprayed Nearby
A local Republican Party office in North Carolina was torched by a flammable device and someone spray-painted an anti-GOP slogan referring to "Nazi Republicans" on a nearby wall, authorities said Sunday.

A bottle filled with flammable liquid was thrown through the window of the Orange County Republican Party headquarters overnight, according to a news release from the town of Hillsborough. The substance ignited and damaged the interior before burning out. No one was injured.

A bit more:

The news release from authorities said an adjacent building was spray-painted with the words: "Nazi Republicans leave town or else." The graffiti had been covered in paint by late afternoon.

Again, progressives have no ideas worth voting for so they resort to crap like this to intimidate others.

Now this is how you do alt.energy

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From the Kemper Project website:

State-of-the-Art Technology
The Kemper County energy facility is a 21st-century integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) design called TRIG. IGCC converts lignite coal to synthesis gas. The lignite is sent through a device called a gasifier where it undergoes a chemical reaction creating a synthesis gas. The gas is then used to generate power by firing it in a gas turbine.

TRIG was developed over the last two decades at the Power Systems Development Facility (PSDF) in Wilsonville, Ala. - a research facility for the department of energy and Southern Company.

A unique feature of TRIG is the high-efficiency design that sends lignite not converted to gas in the initial process back for a second round of gasification. This allows a high rate of lignite-to-gas conversion to take place at a lower temperature - and thus lower cost - than what's possible with other available gasification technologies.

TRIG produces gas that can be used to generate electricity while making it easier to remove emissions, such as carbon dioxide, that otherwise would end up in the atmosphere.

Clean coal power - I wonder how long it will take for the green marxists to backpedal on their anti-coal platform. The way they were demonizing it, you think that there was something actually bad about it. All that wonderful cheap fuel to recharge their Teslas. Plus, it is baseload - it doesn't go away when the wind stops blowing (or blows too fast).

Infogalactic has more on IGCC. I would prefer LFTR - proven nuclear technology and lots of other nations are building them. Cheap to build and chep to run. The spent fuel needs to be sequestered for about 300 years max.

The Columbus Day storm of 1962

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Great video on the Columbus Day storm of October 12, 1962 from The Oregonian and Portland station KGW:

Seattle station KING-5 also did this video:

Non-GMO food is so tasty

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Great video from CFACT:

From the website:

Student’s love gourmet “non-GMO organic” food (from McDonald’s)
Think you could tell the difference between organic, non-GMO food and McDonald’s? Well, these students sure couldn’t!

Watch as CFACT students show that all you need to do is tell someone the food is organic and non-GMO, and they will think it is better. The students even say the McDonald’s they don’t know they are eating is way better than McDonald’s!

And these are the kids that skew the elections for the progressives. They just regurgitate what their cultural marxist professors tell them.

A new band and dammit, I missed them

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Just got turned on to Stary Olsa and it turns out that they were playing 50 miles South of here last August 24th. They are from Belarus so I do not know when they will be here next.

Here they are on YouTube: Stary Olsa Their traditional stuff is gorgeous too.

Hillary's medical problems

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Interesting - from The Hill:

Axelrod: Maybe Clinton should reconsider final debate
Democratic strategist David Axelrod on Saturday suggested that Hillary Clinton skip her third and final presidential debate with Donald Trump.

The former White House adviser to President Obama responded to Trump's call for a drug test before his next debate with Clinton later this month.

Given her performance on the last debate, I doubt they would want to chance another lackluster performance like that.

Last night's devastating storm

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Cliff Mass said it best this morning:

As I will describe in a future blog, this was not a failure so much of the models, but of communication of uncertainty.    My profession has to stop providing the worst case or most probable weather evolution, but provide society with full probabilistic guidance.  Yesterday was a good example of the failure mode when we do not.   The media, such as the Seattle Times and several TV stations, were happy to hype up the storm because of all the interest in such events.   Many events were unnecessarily cancelled or postponed, some on Friday or Saturday morning when there was no chance of strong winds.

Of course, we will rebuild from the devastation:

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Today? Dealing with priorities - critters have been fed so I am out for coffee. Working at home getting ready for the radio network tonight and the great shakeout on Thursday.

Bailing on a class

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Was scheduled to take a Search and Rescue First Aid class today from 9AM to 5PM but spent too much time on the radio last night and do not feel like driving 30 miles to the classroom.

Next time - heading upstairs to catch a couple hours more sleep...

The closer Donald Trump gets to winning the Presidency, the more poo Democrats fling at him hoping that some of it will stick. The latest groping claims are enumerated and debunked by Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit:

HERE IT IS=> List of Debunked Groper Allegations by Corrupt Media Against Donald Trump
The Democrat-media complex carpet bombed Donald Trump with several alleged groping stories this week from several women.

The media clearly did not fact check these stories. They ran the stories no matter how farfetched they were. It is clear from the number of stories dropped in the last week that this was a coordinated effort, probably from inside the Hillary Clinton campaign. The goal was not to present facts to the public. Their goal was to destroy Donald Trump.

In 2008 the Democrat media hit Republican John McCain with similar allegations. Vicki Iseman, the woman named in the hit piece, settled with The New York Times after the election.

There are five cases - here is just the first:

Jessica Leeds
Jessica Leeds accused a young Donald Trump of groping her in first class on a flight from Dallas to New York City on Braniff Air in 1979.

Leeds said young multimillionaire Trump lifted the armrest to grope her during the flight.

The armrests on a Braniff Air first class 727 are fixed (photos at the link). They do not lift up. And this from fellow passenger (from the New York Post):

Trump camp puts forward witness to refute sex assault claim
Donald Trump’s campaign says a British man is countering claims that the GOP presidential nominee groped a woman on a cross-country flight more than three decades ago.

The man says he was sitting across from the accuser and contacted the Trump campaign because he was incensed by her account — which is at odds with what he witnessed.

“I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her. Not only did he not do so (and I was present at all times) but it was she that was the one being flirtatious,” Anthony Gilberthorpe said in a note provided to The Post by the Trump campaign.

Pants on fire. This image from Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man really sums it up - be sure to visit his site and read the rest - epic rant with links. This "scandal" is being manufactured out of thin air by people who do not have a legitimate leg to stand on. Their ideas will not fly with the American people and they know this. The only way they can see to win is by cheating and cheating is what they are doing. Check out this image and visit Peter's post.

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Never knew there was a name for it

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This is always how I open my truck door - The Dutch Reach

Storm

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My ham radio group just got activated - this is county wide with all Emergency Communications groups.

I still have power but I have three car batteries on float maintenence and each one is good for full-power operation for about ten hours. Got two solar panels if I need more juice.

More practice is always good.

Obama's economic recovery

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Believe in that and I have oceanfront property in Colorado to sell you. A disheartening number from CNN/Money:

2 out of 3 people in Detroit have debt in collections
It wasn't too long ago that Detroit was a booming town with a robust middle class. But after the decline of manufacturing crushed the local economy, Detroit filed the biggest public sector bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2013.

And the city's troubles have left a mark on the financial stability of its residents in a big way, according to a new report from the Urban Institute.

About 66% of residents have debt in collections -- meaning more than 180 days past due -- at a median amount of $1,847. Across the U.S., 35% of Americans have debt in collections.

Excuse me? Detroit is just the logical outcome of

  1. not listening to your market,
  2. shipping jobs overseas and
  3. 54 years of Democratic Party rule (Detroit's last Republican mayor was Louis C. Miriani)

What caught my eye is this: "Across the U.S., 35% of Americans have debt in collections" I though we were supposed to be in an economic recovery - that is what all the politicians have been telling us. Listen to the five minute Trump video I just posted.

Tick tock tick tock

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The skies have cleared quite a bit, rain has stopped and now a warm wind is coming out of the South

Just finishing off the pressure-cooker (electric) phase of my chili so can move over to the propane cooktop at any time.

Donald Trump unleashed

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Regardless of where you stand, this five minute video is worth watching:

Voter ID - Michael Ramirez

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So true:

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The only ones squealing about requiring positive Identification for voting are the Democrats. They can not win on quality of governance or honesty so they are forced to resort to subterfuge.

Just the title alone: Icons & Idols: Rock n' Roll 2016 Featuring Property From The Estate of Frank & Gail Zappa

Over 800 items up for bid including household furnishings, his recording studio equipment and instruments as well as memorabilia from other performers - Elvis, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Prince, the Beatles, etc...

Seeing if there is a small piece of studio equipment for sale cheap just to have something of his in my music room. There are some large speaker cabinets for $150 but shipping from LA would kill me and I have no space for them.

Back home again

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Did a bunch of paperwork for the food trailer and for home (bills, etc...) and got the cash register programmed to some extent - will try running it tomorrow and see how the various departments and groups work out.

I want to have single buttons for each item being sold (the register has 35 so we are fine) but I want to gather all related things into specific groups. Sandwich, extra meat or cheese, extra toppings, etc. would all be grouped as sandwiches. 8oz soup, 12oz soup and 16oz soup would be grouped as soup, various sodas and carbonated beverages would be grouped as drinks. That way, when I do the daily counting sheets, I only have a few things to keep track of for business purposes but I have complete granularity for inventory - I can see how many portions of meat were sold on a given day; how many Mexican cokes, etc...

Been raining heavy off and on - just under a half inch since when I checked this morning - Cliff Mass has an update on the storm track and had the following take-away:

This is going to be bad along the coast and I expect lots of power outages there.  Same for NW Washington, with the San Juans, northern Whidbey, and the Bellingham area to have gusts to 60-70 mph and plenty of power outages. Much less over the south Sound.

Supposed to be here around 8PM and pretty much blown over by 11PM and the nice thing with it being so small and tight is that the electrical crews will not be as spread out as they were last night - be able to fix things faster.

Heading out for coffee

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Motoring up to the mountain hamlet of Glacier for my morning coffee at Wake 'n Bakery

Spend a couple hours at the store and then home to weather the storm. Cooking a big batch of beef-barley soup for dinner tonight.

It is quiet outside - no word as to when the wind is due to pick up. The house is tight and there are no large trees nearby so I should be just fine.

Storm blogging

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Two down and one more to go. Power went out yesterday around noon and didn't come on until well after 1:00AM - total 24 hour rainfall is a bit over one inch.

Cliff Mass is forecasting the center of the third storm to hit Port Angeles area sometime around 10:00PM tonight - this is the biggie with intense winds. The (relatively) good news is that it is very compact and if it comes in through Puget Sound, Seattle and Vancouver, BC will be spared the worst of it. The bad news is that we are staring down the barrel here.

Last night had sustained winds around 30-35 with gusts up to 50. See what tonight brings - I have a generator but just don't like the noise. I would rather light a few candles, build a fire and read a book with a glass or two of wine. If the power is out for more than 24 hours, I'll run the generator to keep the freezers cold and to pump water. Puget Sound Energy is showing over 5,800 customers still without power as of this posting.

I was in town yesterday to get some grocery shopping and some wheel chocks for the food trailer - stopped in at Hardware Sales and they had a pile of empty Honda generator cartons flattened in their dumpster. I asked and they had sold over 50 of them on Friday alone. We are talking the EU2000I which runs around $1,000 each - a nice day for sales for a great company.

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Photo by Evan Abell from The Bellingham Herald

The good news coming out of this is that we got our first measurable snowfall on Mt. Baker - from the Washington State Department of Transportation:

Artist Point
11:35 a.m. Oct. 14, 2016
Status: CLOSED

    • The final 2.7 miles of SR 542, the road to Artist Point, is closed for the winter.
    • The road will remained closed until late spring/summer of 2017.
    • WSDOT maintenance crews will spend the winter making sure SR 542 to Mt. Baker Ski Area is safe for skiers, snowboarders and ski area staff.

Inch and a quarter

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Rainfall in the last 24 hours. Still coming down - some wind gusts but nothing major. Power went out for a few minutes earlier. The big blow is due tomorrow tonight.

Taking care of the critters and heading out for coffee - working at home today.

Such a deal - the MV Evergreen State

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From the Washington State Surplus website:

20161013-ferry01.jpg

20161013-ferry02.jpg

Actually, quite a good deal if you are in the market for something like this. I could see puddling around Silver Lake in this - invite a few friends over for fishing.

And of course - the Planetary K Index

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The Planetary K Index is spiking this evening - it would be a great chance to see some aurora borealis if we weren't completely socked in with rain clouds. Arrrrgggghhhhhhh.

20161013-k-index.gif

No big surprise there - the EPA

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From Yahoo News/Associated Press:

US declines prosecution of government worker in mine spill
U.S. prosecutors have declined to pursue criminal charges against an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency over a massive mine wastewater spill that fouled rivers in three states, a federal watchdog agency said.

The EPA's Office of Inspector General disclosed Wednesday that it recently presented evidence to prosecutors that the unnamed employee may have violated the Clean Water Act and given false statements.

However, office spokesman Jeffrey Lagda said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado declined to pursue a case against the employee. In lieu of prosecution, an investigative report will be sent to senior EPA management for review, Lagda said.

An EPA-led cleanup team inadvertently triggered the Aug. 5, 2015, spill while doing work at the Gold King mine near Silverton. The 3-million-gallon blowout tainted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with an estimated 880,000 pounds of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, mercury and lead.

The spill turned rivers downstream of the site a sickly yellow color until the slug of wastewater had passed.

The Associated Press reported in the aftermath of the spill that the government officials knew of the potential for a catastrophic blowout of poisonous water from the inactive mine. Nevertheless, cleanup work was initiated with only a cursory emergency response plan in place.

Figured as much - it always happens in cases like this. The guilty party will not be named and if their identity is found out, they get fired but quietly re-hired in a different capacity often with a nice raise. Until we root this out and instill a sense of culpability, these fuckups will keep happening.

For more on this disaster as it happened, read here, here, here, here, here and here.

And it starts

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It had been sprinkling all afternoon but the rain is now coming down steady. See what the next 96 hours brings...

From Yahoo News/Agence France Presse:

Rock poet Bob Dylan wins Nobel Literature Prize
US music legend Bob Dylan, whose poetic lyrics have influenced generations of fans, won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the first songwriter to win the award in a decision that stunned prize watchers.

The 75-year-old was honoured "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", the Swedish Academy said.

The choice was met by gasps and a long round of spontaneous applause from journalists attending the prize announcement. The folk rock singer had been mentioned in Nobel speculation over the years, but was never seen as a serious contender.

The Academy's permanent secretary Sara Danius said Dylan's songs were "poetry for the ears" while acknowledging that some might find Dylan a "strange" choice.

"... if you think back to Homer and Sappho, you realise that was also aural poetry. It was meant to be performed, together with instruments," she said.

"But we still read them, 2,500-some years later... And in much the same way you can read Bob Dylan too. And you realise that he is great at rhyming, great at putting together refrains and great at poetic images," she told AFP.

Good choice!

Wikileaks - another 2,000 emails

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These releases seem to be once each day - they just released their sixth tranche of emails from Podesta's computer. The guy is not getting any love either - some people hacked his twitter and gmail account. From Russia Today:

Podesta’s Twitter, new email hacked by 4chan users
It's certainly not John Podesta's week. Both the Twitter and email account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman have been hacked just hours after WikiLeaks released a fifth batch of his emails.

Both accounts were apparently infiltrated by 4Chan users on Wednesday, with Podesta alerted to the Twitter hack when his account tweeted, “I’ve switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol.” The tweet has since been deleted.

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The Daily Caller is reporting: WikiLeaks: Qatar Gave Clinton Foundation A Million Dollar Check For Bill’s Birthday

And Tyler at Zero Hedge has a long list of emails from this release:

Wikileaks Releases Another 2,000 Podesta Emails In Part 6 Of Data Dump
Just hours after wikileaks released the 5th part of the Podesta emails dump which in turn came shortly after part 4 which together amounted to some 1,866 new email, Wikileaks has unveiled the latest, 6th part in what now is a daily event, which released another 2,000 emails, bringing the total number of emails released to over 9,000 and assuring that at least one part of the media will be busy digging through hundreds of emails more, while much of the remaining part of the media will be doing all it can to ignore the latest release and instead focusing on the latest sexual allegations against Donald Trump.

Some of the ones there raise my eyebrows - especially this one:

20161013-scalia.jpgJustice Antonin Scalia died quite unexpectedly on the night of February 12th, 2016

These bullet points from True Pundit put things into a very suspicious perspective:

To say Scalia’s death was suspicious is putting it mildly.

    • No autopsy
    • No medical examiner on site to decipher cause of death
    • No U.S. Marshal protection detail accompanying Scalia
    • No functioning CCTV cameras on day of death
    • Scalia found clothed on bed with pillow over face
    • Scalia’s body mysteriously cremated before it could be examined
    • Resort owner large Obama contributor

Time to clean the room out and get some adults working for us.

Dinner in town and back home again

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Had a bite to eat at the Roadhouse and just got back in. Food is good, prices are reasonable and staff is really nice.

Latest weather forecast shows high winds moving in late Saturday night - with it being this widespread, I am planning on several days without power. Camping out in the country. I have several car batteries on trickle-charge to run my radios so communications will not be an issue. Worst case scenario, I'll stay at Lulu's house in Bellingham for a few days but I want to take care of the critters.

Quote of the year - take two:

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The real motives of liberals have nothing to do with the welfare of other people. Instead, they have two related goals -- to establish themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the rather distasteful population of common people, and to gather as much power as possible to tell those distasteful common people how they must live their lives.
--Thomas Sowell

Off for coffee and to town

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Slept in a bit later than I was planning to - took care of the critters and heading out for coffee and then to town for a few things.

Rained about a half-inch last night. The second storm is moving through sometime today with even more rain and the big winds are supposed to hit late Saturday evening. Life in the country.

Quote of the year

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“We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue, and it is never an end in itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of evil.”
— Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

Chaput is a major thinker and has quite a history. From Infogalactic (my replacement for Wikipedia which has been taken over by bureaucrats - a la Pournelle's Iron Law)

Charles J. Chaput
Charles Joseph Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. (pronounced "shuh-poo") (born September 26, 1944) is an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He is the ninth and current Archbishop of Philadelphia, installed on September 8, 2011. He previously served as Archbishop of Denver (1997–2011) and Bishop of Rapid City (1988–1997).

Chaput is a professed Capuchin and has a reputation for orthodoxy. A member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi tribe, he is the second Native American to be consecrated a bishop in the United States and the first Native American archbishop. His Potawatomi name is “the wind that rustles the leaves of the tree” while his Sioux name is "good eagle".

I keep waiting for a major (and much needed) reformation of the Episcopal Church. They used to have a moral backbone and with overall declining church attendance (and revenues), they have opened the floodgates to anyone willing to sit through a homily, listen to some pretty music and drop a few shekels into the collection plate. Meanwhile, due to competition in the market (from most other denominations  specifically UCC, overall attendance is down everywhere and they are left with a smaller and smaller market share. I bet that if they went back to the original ball-buster 1940 prayer-book, hymnal and sermons, they would find themselves back in business big-time.

Barring that, it might be worth checking out the Catholics - the idea of an infallible Pope really sticks in my craw but the rest of their doctrine seems to be pretty level-headed. Not afraid to call a spade a spade...

Speaking of Hymns, this one from 1845 still gives me goosebumps:

Meet Typhoon Songda:

20161012-songda.jpg

This image was taken October 11 at about 8PM our time (PDT). From the NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team. She is due to make landfall somewhere along our coast sometime on Saturday.

Fascinating news - soybeans

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From Washington State University:

Soybean nitrogen breakthrough could help feed the world
Washington State University biologist Mechthild Tegeder has developed a way to dramatically increase the yield and quality of soybeans.

Her greenhouse-grown soybean plants fix twice as much nitrogen from the atmosphere as their natural counterparts, grow larger and produce up to 36 percent more seeds.

Tegeder designed a novel way to increase the flow of nitrogen, an essential nutrient, from specialized bacteria in soybean root nodules to the seed-producing organs. She and Amanda Carter, a biological sciences graduate student, found the increased rate of nitrogen transport kicked the plants into overdrive.

Their work, published recently in Current Biology, is a major breakthrough in the science of improving crop yields. It could eventually help address society’s critical challenge of feeding a growing human population while protecting the environment. See the paper at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216306157.

“The biggest implication of our research is that by ramping up the natural nitrogen allocation process we can increase the amount of food we produce without contributing to further agricultural pollution,” Tegeder said. “Eventually we would like to transfer what we have learned to other legumes and plants that humans grow for food.”

Shades of Norman Borlaug - very wonderful work.

John Stumpf is was the head of Wells Fargo Bank - from BoingBoing:

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf resigns
First he was flayed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, then Congress had a go, then everyone got to gnaw on the fact that he'd done some seriously criminal stuff, then it emerged that he'd been a party to the bank's frauds since at least 2008, then we learned that his $200B bonus would be subsidized by taxpayers, then we learned that he walked through one of the bank's notorious boiler rooms every day, then his board of directors clawed back a couple million.

Say buh-bye John - cannot imagine anyone hiring this moke now - except for maybe the Democratic National Committee. He would fit right in over there.

Stirring up a hornets nest

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The latest batch of emails are causing a bit of commotion in Democratic ranks. From CBS News:

WikiLeaks dumps more John Podesta emails
Hacked emails show that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was slow to grasp the seriousness of the controversy over her use of a homebrew email server and believed it might blow over after one weekend.

Two days after The Associated Press was first to report in March 2015 that Clinton had been running a private server in her home in New York to send and receive messages when she was secretary of state, her advisers were shaping their strategy to respond to the revelation.

Among the emails made public Tuesday by WikiLeaks was one from Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, who optimistically suggested that the issue might quickly blow over.

“Goal would be to cauterize this just enough so it plays out over the weekend and dies in the short term,” Merrill wrote on March 6, 2015.

It did not, and became the leading example of Clinton’s penchant for secrecy, which has persisted as a theme among her campaign critics and rivals throughout her election season. Clinton did not publicly confirm or discuss her use of the email server until March 10 in a speech at the United Nations, nearly one week after AP revealed the server’s existence.

WikiLeaks began releasing on Friday what it said were years of messages from accounts used by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He has acknowledged his emails were hacked. Podesta warned that messages may have been altered or edited to inflict political damage but has not pointed to any specific case of this.

The gift that keeps on giving. Case in point - an excerpt from this email:

I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans, but I think we should use
it once the first time she says I'm running for president because you and
everyday Americans need a champion.

Hey Hillary - we are returning the favor...

The coming storm - a comparison

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People are saying that this storm could equal the 1962 Columbus Day storm. Here is a nice retrospective:

The 1962 Columbus Day Storm
With little fear of exaggeration, it can be stated that the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 was the most powerful windstorm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century. Certainly no windstorm since has generated as much widespread devastation as the Big Blow, not even close. Comparisons of peak gusts, where they can be had, tend to put the Big Blow at the top, but such figures are abstract, and often don't reveal the very reasons why those who lived through the Columbus Day Storm remember it so vividly. The sudden violence of the wind compelled many people to take cover in their homes or basements, a lasting memory, and the sheer magnitude of destruction, in literally all categories of accounting, puts this storm far above any other.

More at the site - this is downright scary...

Back from town

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The new freezer for the store came in yesterday so I went into town to do some banking and to rent a set of piano-mover's dollies. Have a BERT meeting tonight - it should be interesting because of the upcoming storm. I spent maybe ten minutes at the rental center and while I was there, they had three phone calls asking about generators...

Blogging from work - going home in a few minutes to get a bite to eat and to make sure the windows are closed and latched.

Happy happy joy joy - UPDATE

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UPDATE at the bottom

From the National Weather Service Special Weather Statement:

...VERY STORMY WEATHER TO UNLEASH MULTIPLE IMPACTS ON WESTERN
WASHINGTON FROM THURSDAY THROUGH THE WEEKEND...

AN IMPRESSIVELY STORMY PERIOD IS COMING UP FOR WESTERN WASHINGTON
FROM THURSDAY THROUGH THE WEEKEND. THE MAIN IMPACTS WILL BE FROM
FLOOD-PRODUCING RAINFALL AND DAMAGING WINDS. ALONG THE COAST...
GIANT WAVES AND COASTAL FLOODING ARE POSSIBLE THIS WEEKEND.

RAIN WILL FIRST DEVELOP ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON TONIGHT...AND
BREEZY CONDITIONS WILL DEVELOP ALONG THE COAST.

HOWEVER...THE FIRST BIG INCREASE IN SOUTHERLY WIND WILL HAPPEN ON
THE COAST ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON...SPREADING INLAND ON THURSDAY
NIGHT. THIS WILL OCCUR FOLLOWING THE PASSAGE OF A DEEP LOW CENTER
THROUGH THE REGION. PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST HIGH WIND WATCHES
AND WARNINGS FOR DETAILS ON THE THURSDAY NIGHT STORM. HEFTY
RAINFALL TOTALS ARE EXPECTED THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING...RAINFALL
AMOUNTS ARE EXPECTED TO BE: 1 TO 3 INCHES OVER THE INTERIOR
LOWLANDS...2 TO 5 INCHES ALONG THE COAST AND IN THE CASCADE
MOUNTAINS...AND 4 TO 8 INCHES OVER THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS. THIS
WILL CAUSE RISES ON AREA RIVERS...WITH FLOODING POSSIBLE ON A FEW.
REFER TO THE LATEST FLOOD BULLETINS FOR DETAILS.

FRIDAY WILL BE RAINY AND WINDY...BUT IT WILL SERVE AS A RELATIVE
LULL BEFORE A MORE POTENTIALLY DAMAGING STORM ON SATURDAY.

WE STILL HAVE MUCH TO LEARN ABOUT THE SATURDAY STORM. WHAT WE KNOW
IS THAT AN INCREDIBLY DEEP LOW PRESSURE CENTER...WITH ITS ORIGINS
TRACED BACK TO TYPHOON SONGDA IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC...WILL MOVE
INTO THE NORTHEAST PACIFIC AND PEAK IN STRENGTH ON SATURDAY.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN IS EXACTLY WHAT TRACK THE LOW CENTER WILL
TAKE. THIS WILL MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN HOW BADLY THIS STORM
IMPACTS WESTERN WASHINGTON. THERE IS A 1 IN 3 CHANCE OF THE LOW
CENTER DIRECTLY CROSSING SOME PART OF WESTERN WASHINGTON. THIS
WOULD BE A WORST CASE SCENARIO LEADING TO A HISTORICAL WINDSTORM
FOR NEARLY ALL OF WESTERN WASHINGTON THAT WOULD BE LONG
REMEMBERED.

THERE IS A 2 IN 3 CHANCE THAT THE LOW CENTER WILL PASS HUNDREDS OF
MILES OFF THE COAST...MAKING LANDFALL OVER CENTRAL OR NORTHERN
VANCOUVER ISLAND INSTEAD. THIS OUTCOME CONFINE THE MOST DAMAGING
WINDS TO THE COAST AND TO THE NORTH INTERIOR (AREAS NORTH OF
EVERETT)...BUT INLAND LOCATIONS SUCH AS THE PUGET SOUND REGION AND
THE I-5 CORRIDOR OF SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON WOULD EXPERIENCE THE TYPE
OF WINDSTORM THAT WOULD NORMALLY BE EXPECTED A FEW TIMES EACH
STORM SEASON. POWER OUTAGES AND TREE DAMAGE OVER INLAND LOCATIONS
WOULD BE LESS WIDESPREAD.

Ho. Li. Crap. Spending today and tomorrow battening down the hatches...

UPDATE: Cliff Mass has the goods - go here and read: Warning: Major Storms Threaten the Pacific Northwest

Here is just a small example of what is headed our way (click on image to embiggen):

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Twitter, Facebook and Instagram delenda est. Time to severely cap the data we personally put on these platforms. From engadget:

ACLU: Police use Twitter, Facebook data to track protesters
1984 called, it wants its state surveillance scheme back.
According to an ACLU blog post published on Tuesday, law enforcement officials implemented a far-reaching surveillance program to track protesters in both Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD during their recent uprisings and relied on special feeds of user data provided by three top social media companies: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Specifically, all three companies granted access to a developer tool called Geofeedia which allows users to see the geographic origin of social media posts and has been employed by more than 500 law enforcement organizations to track protesters in real time.

Law enforcement's ability to monitor the online activities of protesters could have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, the post asserts. "These platforms need to be doing more to protect the free speech rights of activists of color and stop facilitating their surveillance by police," Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the ACLU of California, told the Washington Post. "The ACLU shouldn't have to tell Facebook or Twitter what their own developers are doing. The companies need to enact strong public policies and robust auditing procedures to ensure their platforms aren't being used for discriminatory surveillance."

For local police to 'friend' a suspect on Facebook is one thing - that can turn up some useful information and they are only seeing stuff that the moke willingly uploaded for public consumption. For these three companies to give up tools that allow a broad-based 'scraping' of data without letting their customers know is unconscionable. And I know, this is probably covered somewhere between line 350 and line 400 of the End User Licensing Agreement but still.

Dangerous

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The latest from our next President:

A late dinner

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We were both hungry after coming back from Ikea so I made a large sandwich for each of us. Finally getting hungry enough to have a light supper - some beef stew again. Watch a bit of the boob toob.

Wikileaks - more emails

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From Breitbart comes this email that was released today:

Wikileaks: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Warned Hillary of ‘Stale’ Campaign
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote to Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills in July 2015 to warn that the Clinton campaign’s message “feels stale” and lacks “transparency” and “truth,” according to an email released by Wikileaks on Tuesday.

Schultz’s impassioned warning message, which Mills forwarded to Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, also urged the Clinton campaign: “Reboot the look of it all and the overriding message before its to [sic] late.”

At the time, there was speculation that Schultz, who has been critical of both parties, might run himself. Ultimately, Schultz endorsed Hillary Clinton, but not before delivering an impassioned warning to the Clinton campaign that it was out of touch.

Both parties are stale - that is why Trump has over 10,000 people attending his rallies and Hillary struggles to get 500.

As things get interesting - Trump

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From The Washington Post:

Trump declares war on GOP, says ‘the shackles have been taken off’
Donald Trump declared war on the Republican establishment Tuesday, lashing out at House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and other GOP elected officials as his supporters geared up to join the fight amid extraordinary turmoil within the party just four weeks before Election Day.

One day after Ryan announced he would no longer campaign on Trump’s behalf, the GOP nominee said as part of a barrage of tweets that the top-ranking Republican is “weak and ineffective” and is providing “zero support” for his candidacy. Trump also declared that “the shackles have been taken off” him, liberating him to “fight for America the way I want to.”

Very interesting in the wake of this development from Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit:

RUMBLINGS: Top Paul Ryan Advisor Leaked Trump Sex Talk Tape to WaPo (Updated)
On Friday, the Clinton Campaign (Washington Post) released video of Donald Trump bragging about grabbing p*ssy in an off the record conversation with Billy Bush.

The Los Angeles Times reported hours after audio was released of Donald Trump making sexually suggestive comments about a woman, that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan castigated Trump and said he would no longer attend their scheduled event on Saturday.

“I am sickened by what I heard today,” Ryan said in a statement. “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Paul Ryan was scheduled to campaign with Trump for the first time on Saturday.
It never happened.

Much more at the site - tweets and links to other reports. If this is the case, Ryan needs to be removed stat. He is supposed to be representing us and not playing political power games behind the scenes. Sounds like we are headed for a "night of the long knives" purge. Overdue in my book...

The numbers versus the narrative

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In philosophy, there are two kinds of argument - rhetoric and dialectic. (And I am not using this in the terms that K. Marx used when he co-opted these terms for his own use, I am referring to the original 700AD Greeks.)

People tend to think either one way or the other - either rhetorically or dialecticaly. Rhetoric appeals to the heart. To tell your story and to profess your intentions. Dialectic is to reason based on observed data and facts. If someone presents data that disagrees with yours, you examine their data and change your ideas if you can see that their data better represents the actual truth. A give and take constantly refining (and improving) what you percieve as the truth.

Sufice to say, I think that liberals think rhetorically and conservatives think dialecticaly. Case in point from Ars Technica:

Less than 1 in 10 conservative Republicans trusts climate scientists
Last week, amid all the attention devoted to presidential polls, a couple of different polls came out examining how one of the issues in the presidential campaign is perceived by the voters. Climate change has come up in both presidential debates so far, and the positions of the candidates on this issue are radically different (stay tuned to Ars for more on that). But as the polls reveal, these differences reflect fundamental differences between the members of the two parties.

A bit more:

One of the new polls comes from the Pew Research Center, which surveyed more than 1,500 US adults (the survey has a margin of error of 4 percent). In addition to answering questions about their view on climate science and policy, the participants were asked about their political affiliations, which were divided into four categories based on strong or moderate affiliation with one of the two major parties.

A number of studies, using varied methodologies, have all indicated that an overwhelming majority of scientists accept the evidence for human-driven climate change. But it's clear the public doesn't know that. Barely more than half of liberal Democrats say that there's a scientific consensus. Less than a third of moderate Democrats do, and only about 10 to 15 percent of all Republicans do. Similar numbers were obtained when Pew asked whether scientists knew if climate change is occurring, what its causes are, and what the best ways to address it are. None of these issues is at all scientifically controversial, yet only 11 percent of conservative Republicans felt that we understand the cause.

That 97% consensus trope (from John Cook in Australia) was soundly debunked a few weeks after publication but it fits the rhetorical narrative so the warmists keep parroting it. The true believers fail to see that there has been a pause of 19 years in atmospheric warming and that all of the changes predicted by their computer models have failed to manifest. Do they re-examine their data and make changes? No - it is full speed ahead with even more rhetoric.

Conservatives like numbers - we look at them and analyze them. The earth's climate has more variables than anyone can model - it gets hot, it gets cold. Because of the increase in CO2 we are seeing the deserts become green again, we are seeing a 5% increase of cereal growth per acre and we are seeing plants being a lot more tolerant of drought. CO2 is the gas of life and carbon is our friend.

A little food issue - Soylent

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There is a company - Rosa Labs - that makes an all-in-one nutritional drink. From their website:

In 2013, Rob Rhinehart set out to develop a simple and affordable nutritional drink that possesses everything the healthy body needs. That drink is what we now recognize as Soylent, the first macronutritious food replacement beverage customized for you.

Rob lived on it for 30 days and felt better so he started making it for friends and then grew it into a business. I love cooking and eating so this is unimaginable to me except during emergency conditions but there are a lot of people out there who really like the idea.

Rosa Labs recently started making a new snack bar and are having some problems - from Ars Technica:

People get “violently ill” from Soylent bars; company stumped
Soylent’s new snack bar, packing 12.5 percent of your daily nutrients, supposedly “makes the afternoon slump a thing of the past.” But that may only be true if that “slump” doesn’t involve you over a toilet.

According to a discussion on Soylent’s website and several Reddit threads, customers say that some of the bars caused them gastrointestinal distress, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. On the Soylent thread, user Raylingh has tallied 33 reports since September 7, just two months after the company started making the bars. Generally, customers say that stomach problems arise a few hours after eating a bad bar and pass within a day or two with no other symptoms. These shared illnesses easily meet the description of food poisoning, and many users have ruled out the possibility of food allergies, noting that they had eaten the bars and other Soylent products in the past with no problems.

Best wishes to Rob and his customers - this will be a curious one to track down as this kind of nutrition is very much cutting edge.

Back home - shopping therapy

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Picked up a couple things for the food trailer and some curtains, etc. for the rental units. Going to check Craigslist for furnature first before buying new items. Money is going out a little fast for my liking these days.

Fixed lunch (grilled pastrami sandwiches on Dave's Killer Bread with mustard and mayo) and surfing for a bit.

Off to the big city

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Heading up to a suburb of Vancouver BC to go to the local IKEA. This is a two-hour round trip and the IKEA store south of Seattle is a seven-hour round trip. Makes sense.

Had a serious hard frost last night - got down to 26.4°F last night - winter is coming...

Back later today...

Oh yes, Wikileaks just released another thousand or so Hillary emails - considering her temper, I would hate to be a staff member right now.

From yesterday's tranche - this email

>>While this military/para-military operation is moving
>> forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence
>> assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia,
>> which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and
>> other radical Sunni groups in the region.

Hillary is in the Saudi pockets all the while they are funding the terrorists that she created by her ineptness.

And then there is this one:

I'm certain the
poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the
conventions are over, but I think not. And as I've mentioned, we've all
been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire
to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains
strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands
some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven,
demographically-inspired messaging.

Hey bub - what part of We The People do you fail to get...

Planet Earth II

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The Beeb is doing another season of their amazing Planet Earth series - here is the trailer.

No word as to when it will hit the colonies but the first one was very well done. First one came out ten years ago. Season two has been filming since 2013. More here.

Critter humor

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Found on the internet:

20161010-sheep.jpg

Unreal - from WND News:

Haitians fear Clintons will 'scam' them again
Hurricane Matthew has reopened the debate over whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation provided true disaster relief for the people of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake or mostly enriched themselves at the expense of the suffering Haitian people.

Crossing Haiti with a vengeance, Hurricane Matthew last week killed 877 people in the impoverished island nation and left tens of thousands homeless. It also reignited a cholera outbreak that has killed another 17 people as floodwater mixed with sewage.

Former President Bill Clinton on Oct. 4 wrote a sympathetic offer of renewed charitable assistance on Twitter: “Praying for everyone impacted by #HurricaneMatthew. Here’s how you can help in Haiti.”

Clinton linked the tweet to a page created on the Clinton Foundation website to solicit tax-favored contributions from U.S. donors to provide relief efforts in Haiti in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

Clinton’s tweet prompted one Twitter user to respond, “Is this a joke, you looted Haiti once already.” Another said, “Clintons still scamming off poor Haiti after a natural disaster.”

And there are people that seriously think Hillary would be the best choice for our next President. For more on the Clinton Foundations horrible track-record in Haiti, read here, here and here.

Done with dinner - surf for a bit

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Surfing after dinner for an hour or two - long day tomorrow.

Done with the day

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Got the truck cleaned out for tomorrow's border crossing. Canada is about five miles due North of here but we have to drive about 20 to the legal crossing in Sumas-Huntingdon. It's always easier if customs doesn't have stuff to poke through in the back of the truck. Forecast to be a nice fall day tomorrow for the trip.

Heating up some of the beef stew for dinner tonight. Also spent some time programming the cash register for the food trailer - making it as one-touch as possible - buttons for everything.

Growing tomatoes down under

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An interesting idea - from Farmer's Weekly:

£120m state-of-the-art-tomato farm opens in Australia
A high-tech sustainable tomato farm with its own desalination plant and 23,000 mirrors to harness the sun’s energy, has opened in South Australia.

The AUS$200m (£120m) investment by Sundrop Farms is reported by Australian news service The Lead to be the first of its kind in the world. It will produce 15,000t of tomatoes a year for the Australian domestic market.

The farm, near Port Augusta – a seaport on the Spencer Gulf – has 20ha of climate-controlled greenhouses made using 20,000 glass panels.

The solar power system concentrates the sun’s energy using a 127m-high tower weighing 400t and more the 23,000 mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays.

This produces steam that drives onsite processes and heat to run the desalination unit, which churns out 1m litres of fresh water a day.

Eight trucks a day are currently leaving the farm to freight tomatoes to supermarkets across the country and Sundrop Farms has a 10-year contract with Australian retailer Coles.

Very clever idea - there is no fresh water in the desert to use the heat of the sun to desalinate the ocean water. Perfect climate for 'maters - bright and hot.

Here is the companies website: Sundrop Farms They just completed a farm in Portugal and are breaking ground for one in Tennesee. Here is a link to their technologies - very nicely integrated.

Off for coffee

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And working at the store for a little while. Come back home and clean out the truck.

We are driving up to Canada tomorrow to visit the Ikea store there - need to get some stuff to winterize the house, furnishings for some vacation rentals (there are apartments in the building above Crossroads and am converting these to nightly rentals) and some large cookware for the food trailer.

A curious event at a local airport

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From the Bellingham Herald:

Bellingham airport evacuated after suspicious suitcase found
A suspicious suitcase left unattended on a sidewalk outside Bellingham International Airport led to a brief evacuation Sunday, Oct. 9 after screeners got a “positive swab for explosives.”

Bellingham Police Lt. Bob Vander Yacht said the swabs are preliminary swabs that have a reaction to an array of chemicals. If any one of those chemicals were present, then a reaction would have occurred.

Police sent a bomb squad to investigate the medium-sized black suitcase that was found in the passenger pick-up area at about 3:30 p.m. About 300 passengers in the airport were evacuated and a bomb robot was used to x-ray the suitcase. It was empty.

The airport resumed normal operations after about two hours. Passengers were allowed back into the pre-screening and check-in areas, though several flights were delayed.

That the suitcase was empty raises a big red flag for me. Was someone probing the airport in preparation for an attack? They would have left the suitcase empty so as to minimize any incriminating evidence - DNA from skin cells, etc... Crap like this is a little too close to home.

Cookbooks

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Amazing resource. Been looking for recipies for the food trailer and found this online resource - from Michigan State University

Cookbooks and Food History: Cookbooks at MSU
MSU's Cookery & Food Collection includes more than 25,000 cookbooks and food-related works from all over the world. The collection spans more than five centuries, from as early as the 16th century up to the present.

Our collection is especially strong in:

    • Contemporary cooking of the Americas, including the United States
    • African American cooking
    • Jewish American cooking
    • Caribbean, Latin American and South American cooking
    • The influence of West African food and diet on the Americas
    • The Michigan Cookbook Project: an effort to collect all cookbooks published in our state.

We also have significant holdings on diet, health, and nutrition -- from long-standing traditions to the latest diet fad.

Just wow...

Watching the Presidential Debate

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I loved this line:

CLINTON: "It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country." 
TRUMP: "Because you would be in jail."

Hurricane Matthew - post mortem

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FEMA has put up a website with lots of data and pictures/video on the responses to Hurricane Matthew.

A lot of this will serve well for materials for future drills and training.  Events like this are a constant OODA loop of training, learning and advancement - Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.

Trailer load distribution

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Great visual - something people need to know.

You can be driving and everything is fine and then a gust of wind happens and you are oscillating all over the road. Seen this a bunch of times while driving and had it happen to me once (learned my lesson). This can be very speed dependent too - everything is fine at freeway speeds and then you go to pass someone and whammo.

The Association of Old Crows

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Sounds like their meetings would be fun to listen in on - from the About page:

In the beginning. It all started as an idea to have a small friendly gathering that would reunite men tied together through the common bond of having served in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) as Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) officers. By September 1964, the reunion idea had grown too large to be staged as an informal outing, and ended up in a large reception room at one of the largest hotels in Washington, DC - the original beginnings of the AOC as a non-profit association. Few at the time could have predicted the eventual success and longevity of the association almost forty years later.

During World War II Allied ECM officers, tasked to disrupt enemy communications and radars, were given the code name of “Raven” to provide a degree of security to their existence. After WWII, a group of Raven operators were directed to establish a SAC flying course in ECM operations at McGuire AFB, New Jersey. From all accounts from those present at the time, the students changed the name to “Crows” and those engaged in the profession became known as Old Crows.

Got to be some great stories - their motto is “Non Videbunt”, which translates from the Latin to “They Shall Not See”.

A grand buffoon

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A clown masquerading as a climate scientist - Dr. Peter Wadhams - fancies himself to be an expert on Arctic Ice but his grandiose predictions are dead wrong every time. From Truth-Out:

Arctic Expert on Sea Ice: We Could "Reach Zero" Within Two Years
Arctic sea ice is in big trouble.

This is bad news for multiple reasons, the primary one being that Arctic sea ice helps keep the polar regions cool along with working to moderate the entire global climate.

"Sea ice has a bright surface; 80 percent of the sunlight that strikes it is reflected back into space," explains the National Snow and Ice Data Center's website. "As sea ice melts in the summer, it exposes the dark ocean surface. Instead of reflecting 80 percent of the sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90 percent of the sunlight. The oceans heat up, and Arctic temperatures rise further."

(cough)(bullshit)(cough) Yes, the ocean at the equator absorbs 90% of the sunlight striking it but as you move to higher and higher latitudes, this drops off considerably to where, around 80°, the ocean's albedo is greater than that of ice. Polar regions will always have ice. Besides, ice is a thermal insulator - open seawater will radiate heat away much better than ice at that latitude. His basic thesis is wrong.

When it comes to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), the Arctic is the proverbial canary in the coalmine. And if Arctic sea ice expert Dr. Peter Wadhams is right, that canary will likely be gone within two years. This would be the first time in more than 10,000 years that the Arctic sea ice has disappeared.

So they are no longer using the term Anthropogenic Global Warming - it morphed into Climate Change and is now Climate Disruption. Having 19 years of cooling air temperatures will do that.

This is not the first time that Wadhams has come to my attention - I wrote about him two times before:

The second post references this article at the UK Telegraph which is just too surreal to pass up:

Three scientists investigating melting Arctic ice may have been assassinated, professor claims
A Cambridge Professor has made the astonishing claim that three scientists investigating the melting of Arctic ice may have been assassinated within the space of a few months.

Professor Peter Wadhams said he feared being labelled a “looney” over his suspicion that the deaths of the scientists were more than just an ‘extraordinary’ coincidence.

But he insisted the trio could have been murdered and hinted that the oil industry or else sinister government forces might be implicated.

The good professor is seriously off his medications...

Heh - Trump's vulgarity

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Says it all:

20161009-grey.png

This is going to go over well - from Engadget:

Germany calls for a ban on combustion engine cars by 2030
Germany isn't content with relying on financial incentives to usher in an era of pollution-free cars. The country's Bundesrat (federal council) has passed a resolution calling for a ban on new internal combustion engine cars by 2030. From then on, you'd have to buy a zero-emissions vehicle, whether it's electric or running on a hydrogen fuel cell. This isn't legally binding, but the Bundesrat is asking the European Commission to implement the ban across the European Union... and when German regulations tend to shape EU policy, there's a chance that might happen.

I wonder when the German citizens will stand up to their ruling class and say enough! Electric cars have a range of about 80 miles at the very best. Tesla is advertising more but that is under very limited conditions, not real world. Germany is a little bit larger than our state of New Mexico - how are you going to drive across without long stops for charging? Where is your electricity going to come from?

Another example of liberal intentions and narratives having no relationship to the actual numbers.

Coffee and then working at home

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Heading out for coffee and then working at home today. Lulu is coming out - her car problems were just a bad battery.

Planning a trip up to Ikea this week - probably Tuesday. Getting stuff for the food trailer and things for the house.

Had another half-inch of rain last night for a total of 2" in 24 hours. The ground is starting to rehydrate again. Planting the garlic in a week or so.

There has been a big kerfuffle over Trump's comments from 2005. Turns out other people are just as crude:

Trump says pussy - the media go into hyperdrive. Barry says it and Zzzzzzzzzz...

Of course, Hillary is no saint either: here, here and here

UPDATE - the woman Donald was talking about is Arianne Zuker - here she is talking about her side of the occasion:

Hint: She openly said that she flirted with Donald (she is married) and she thought that Melania was gorgeous.

Mmmmmm - beef stew

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Came out pretty tasty. Salted a top round steak and let it sit for a couple hours - drained off the water that accumulated, rinsed it and patted it bone dry. Let 'er rip under a full broiler for five minutes/side to get a nice Maillard reaction going, let it rest as the pressure cooker was heating up. Cubed it (Grace got her obligatory couple pieces) and cooked it for fifteen minutes. Opened the cooker, added the vegetables (onion, parsnip, carrot and celery core with leaves) and cooked for another five.

Got leftovers for a couple more meals so I am a happy camper...

There is still a lot of work to be done but here are some numbers so far from the FEMA daily digest:

FEMA has provided so far:

    • Florida: More than 71,000 meals; 341,000 liters of water;
    • Georgia: More than 535,000 meals, 617,000 liters of water; 17,000 blankets;
    • North Carolina: More than 570,000 meals; 26,000 blankets; and,
    • South Carolina: More than 250,000 meals; 4,500 blankets.

And a couple of interesting programs out there:

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) is operating its SafeStor program on the M/V Cape Decision in Charleston, South Carolina, as shelter for local emergency vehicles in the region. A total of seven agencies, including the Charleston Sheriff's Department, have a total of 53 emergency service vehicles loaded on the Cape Decision’s massive cargo hold to weather out the passage of Hurricane Mathew. MARAD’s SafeStor program provides safe shelter for emergency equipment and personnel and allows affected areas to be up and running as soon as possible in order.

The American Red Cross is supporting a massive shelter operation in the affected areas. More than 18,000 people stayed the night in 183 Red Cross and community evacuation shelters in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The Red Cross has more than 2,200 trained disaster workers on the ground in addition to 95 pre-positioned response vehicles and 94 trailer loads filled water, ready-to-eat meals, shelter and kitchen supplies, cleaning supplies and comfort kits, insect repellant, gloves, masks, shovels, rakes, coolers and more.

They need blood and platelets too - go to http://www.redcrossblood.org/ to find out where to donate - literally the gift of life.

The U.S. Department of Interior’s United States Geological Survey (USGS) is preparing to collect the 393 surge sensors and gages deployed in advance of Hurricane Matthew along the East Coast to provide data that will assist water managers in determining the peak and duration of storm surge. This includes Storm Surge Sensors (190), Wave Sensors (79), Barometric Pressure Sensors (92), and Rapid Deployment Gage's (32). The information supports disaster recovery efforts and critical weather forecasts for the National Weather Service and FEMA. The information collected will be distributed live on the USGS website to help federal and state officials gauge the extent and the storm's damage as it passes through each area. This is the largest deployment of surge sensors by the USGS and surpasses the total deployments for Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy.

And this caught my eye - from guns.com:

Florida emergency concealed carry law may see first use in Hurricane Matthew
As extremely dangerous Hurricane Matthew barrels down on the Florida coast, some in the state may be able to temporarily carry concealed handguns without a permit under a new law.

The National Hurricane Center as of Thursday morning places the eye of the tropical cyclone about 180 miles Southeast of West Palm Beach Florida moving at 14 mph to the Northwest. Packing Category 4 hurricane strength winds of 140 mph, the storm is expected to move close to or over the east coast of the Florida peninsula through Friday night.

With more than 1.5 million Floridians in evacuation zones, attention by some gun owners concerned with safety is falling on a law signed last year by Gov. Rick Scott to allow law-abiding citizens without concealed carry licenses to bear arms during declared mandatory evacuations.

The measure, which passed as HB209/SB296, creates an exception to Florida’s prohibition against concealed carry of a weapon without a permit by allowing adults not otherwise prohibited from possessing a firearm to temporally do so while evacuating. The law allows for a 48-hour window that this would be allowed after the evacuation has been ordered. However, the governor can authorize an extension as needed.

Further, existing state law does not authorize the seizure, taking, or confiscation of firearms that are lawfully possessed in an emergency, unless a person is engaged in a criminal act.

Wonderful idea - Lulu, her son and I have talked about getting Concealed Carry permits but the application is a long process and only open two times/week for a short time. I tried a couple times but was always too late or the line was too long. Where I live is very safe but if I was still living in some areas of Seattle and had to evacuate, I would feel a lot better if I had a bit of backup in my pocket.

Up to 1.25" of the wet stuff

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It has been a blustery day - raining heavy off and on with a total 24 hour accumulation of just under 1.25 inches.

Was at the store for the last two hours doing some paperwork and playing with GnuCash some more. Amazing program - very deep. It has sockets for the Python scripting language so you can essentially run an online store with inventory updates and such or do point of sale. Lots of third-party development both fee-based and open source.

Starting some beef stew for dinner tonight - I use a pressure cooker so it only takes 45 minutes or so. I give it a flavor boost by using V-8 juice for the stock - makes a big difference.

Fun times ahead - a two-fer

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First - a long and well written article by John R. Schindler at The Observer:

Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama
It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack Obama with utter contempt. To the hard men in Moscow, who got their schooling in the KGB, our diffident, wordy Ivy League lawyer president is a weakling—almost a caricature of everything they despise about the postmodern West.

Here the Kremlin mirrors most Russians, who find Obama a puzzling and contemptible man. This is nothing new. I’ve heard remarkable put-downs of our commander-in-chief for years, going back to 2008, even from the mouths of highly educated Russians. Their comments are invariably earthy, insulting, and nowhere near politically correct.

It’s therefore no surprise that Russians view Obama with contempt—and so does their leader. As our president winds up his second term and prepares to move out of the White House, the Kremlin simply isn’t bothering to hide that contempt any longer, even in high-level diplomacy, where a modicum of tact is expected.

Take Syria, the foreign policy nightmare that hangs darkly over Obama’s legacy. The pathetic attempts of John Kerry, Obama’s sad-sack secretary of state, to assert America’s role in that sordid conflict have been rudely rebuffed by Moscow. The Kremlin has made it indelibly clear that it has no interest in further parley with Washington about Syria: We won, you lost, get over it.

And the missile?

Today’s biggest news, however, comes from Estonian reports that the Russian military is sending Iskander-M missiles to Kaliningrad on a civilian freighter. It’s expected to dock in Kaliningrad today with its alarming cargo.

The Iskander-M system, called SS-26 by NATO, is the replacement of the Scud missile of American Gulf War memory. It has a range of 300 miles and can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead. An Iskander-M based in Kaliningrad can strike targets deep in Poland and across the whole Baltic region. Make no mistake, this is primarily an offensive weapons system.

There’s a reason that the Kremlin promised to not ship this missile system to Kaliningrad back in 2009, in exchange for President Obama’s scuppering of missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. Activating an Iskander-M unit in Kaliningrad, west of the Baltic republics, is rightly seen as destabilizing by NATO’s whole eastern flank which, despite security promises by the White House, remains vulnerable to Russian attack. For Warsaw and several other NATO capitals, this move resembles a Baltic version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Talk about a poke in the eye with a sharp stick - as a member of NATO, we are bound by the treaty to defend fellow members including Poland and the Czech Republic. Our Secretary of State at the time - Hillary Clinton - made the deal to not deploy the shield if the Russians would not deploy their missiles. No accountability, no leverage. Her tenure started with a big reset that was more an overload of her diplomatic skills. Couldn't even get that one word correct.

It is worth your time to read the entire article above - John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books.

Second - our response from Sputnik News:

Pentagon Hyping Test of Two Fake Nuke Bombs in Nevada Desert
With the United States’ Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) arsenal aging, the US Air Force has pushed the Pentagon to fund nuclear modernization programs.

To that end, the Air Force conducted successful tests with two B61 nuclear bombs. Neither carried a live warhead.

"The primary objective of flight testing is to obtain reliability, accuracy, and performance data under operational representative conditions," reads a statement released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

We are rattling sabers, they are moving ordnance into place.

I stand with Israel

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All those that are supporting the palestinians do not know their history (here and here to start).

More here: The Hallelu Foundation

Rainy Maple Falls morning

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Got another 0.6" of rainfall this morning with another inch or so forecast through tomorrow. Slept in a bit this morning - I love the sound of the rain on the metal roof. Critters taken care of and heading out for coffee in a bit.

Working at home today - making some beef stew for dinner - that kind of weather...

Wine made from hippies tears. Renewable energy does not work. From the IEEE Spectrum:

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change
Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?
Google cofounder Larry Page is fond of saying that if you choose a harder problem to tackle, you’ll have less competition. This business philosophy has clearly worked out well for the company and led to some remarkably successful “moon shot” projects: a translation engine that knows 80 languages, self-driving cars, and the wearable computer system Google Glass, to name just a few.

Starting in 2007, Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.

Google’s boldest energy move was an effort known as RE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do. The company announced that Google would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and conducting its own internal R&D. Its aspirational goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades.

Unfortunately, not every Google moon shot leaves Earth orbit. In 2011, the company decided that RE<C was not on track to meet its target and shut down the initiative. The two of us, who worked as engineers on the internal RE<C projects, were then forced to reexamine our assumptions.

Ouch! That is going to leave a mark... A few snippets:

...we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions...

People keep thinking that carbon is bad - it is not. Carbon and Carbon Dioxide is essential for life on Earth. Without it, there would be no photosynthesis and no plants. The authors go off the rails a bit with this paragraph:

A 2008 paper by James Hansen [PDF], former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change, showed the true gravity of the situation. In it, Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric CO2 society should aim for “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” His climate models showed that exceeding 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects.

That would be the same James Hansen who was fired from the GISS and replaced by Gavin Schmidt. Hansen was coming up with all sorts of crackpot ideas and the media picked up on them because NASA. The GISS occupies a two floors of a building in downtown New York City near Colombia University. They have about 25 permanent scientists, about 30 visiting scientists and about 50 interns. For them to be the USA's climate authority is absurd.

The original (and failed) computer model had a positive feedback loop in the earth's temperature - above a certain temperature, there would be a tipping point and the earth's temperature would skyrocket with zero hope of recovery. We would become Venus with atmospheric temperatures of 800°F or so. Even the IPCC no longer uses this model. The earth has been shown time and again to have a negative feedback loop - gets too hot, clouds form reflecting sunlight, thunderstorms happen and things cool down.

The best path would be modern nuclear power - the designs today are walk-away safe - they can not melt down. Because there is zero need for a pressure vessel, the cost of the reactor is significantly cheaper. China is building them, India is building them. We are pissing our tax revenues away on fairy dust and not very good fairy dust at that.

Quote of the month

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What with Hurricane Matthew and our own earthquake preparedness drill this is apropos:

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
--Benjamin Franklin

Fine art from 1937

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Classic Popeye:

Tip of the hat to James Gurney

Brilliant - a kids menu

While planning the menu for the food trailer, I want to have a kids menu as well. Kids can be notoriously picky when it comes to ordering food so The Deli at Mansion Park in Pennsylvania came up with this:

20161007-kidmenu.jpg

Since Florida is not in my backyard, I just get the daily FEMA digests outlining what is going on. Here is just an excerpt:

    • FEMA deployed ten Urban Search & Rescue task force teams to Florida and Georgia to support search and rescue missions. Additional teams from around the country are ready to deploy to affected states and tribes as necessary. FEMA Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMAT) are on the ground in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These teams are in place to support preparation and anticipated response activities, and ensure there are no unmet needs.
    • The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting daily coordination calls with industry, impacted states and the leadership of the Electricity Sub-Sector Coordinating Council to discuss preparations for the storm and plans for timely restoration.
    • The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has eight Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, two National Veterinary Response Teams, a Public Health System Deployment Force team, disaster mortuary assessment personnel and an Incident Response Coordination Team. In addition, the department is promoting health related preparedness actions during disasters and evacuations.
    • The United States Geological Survey (USGS) deployed hundreds of storm surge sensors and rapid deployment gages, including approximately 80 sensors along Florida’s east coast to provide data that will assist water managers in determining the peak and duration of storm surge as it approaches Florida. The information supports disaster recovery efforts and critical weather forecasts for the National Weather Service and FEMA. The information collected will be distributed live on the USGS Flood Viewer to help federal and state officials gauge the extent and the storm's damage as it passes through each area.
    • The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) deployed staff to the FEMA NRCC and Regional Response Coordination Center to support the IMAT teams in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. In addition, liaisons are deployed to monitor and inspect USACE-operated dams. Non-federal dams are being inspected at the request of state partners.
    • The American Red Cross (ARC) is supporting a massive shelter operation in the affected areas. More than 27,000 people stayed the night in nearly 200 Red Cross and community emergency evacuation shelters in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The Red Cross has also prepositioned workers, shelter supplies, ready-to-eat meals, clean-up and comfort kits to support the response efforts.

This is just a fraction of the agencies involved and most of them have specific websites for more information. This is how you run a disaster. The amount of practice drills and rehearsals is large but the results are well worth it.

FEMA really got its start with the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. None of the agencies were able to interoperate - not local police and fire and Red Cross, not Federal relief agencies - no one. Out of this was developed a common Incident Command System and everyone from the top brass at FEMA and the Military down to the citizen CERT responder is trained in this so when aid comes, they can slot right into the existing chain of command and communications accuracy and efficiency is maintained.

Uneventful run into town - got some things for the food trailer and some groceries for home. Getting to be soup and stew weather so stocking up on supplies - dried beans, root vegetables, etc...

Rainfall

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Had just under 0.6" last night and there is a lot more on the way for tomorrow night. No sign of the snow that was forecast.

Heading out for coffee and then into town to take care of a couple of things - finishing off the last of the spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight.

An interesting Raspberry Pi project

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I have been playing around with a couple of $35 Raspberry Pi single-board computers and having a lot of fun. Just ran into the Cosmo project.

There is a music application called CSound - a complete synthesis and signal processing system written in software. It can be made to run on the Raspberry Pi and the Cosmo project is a plug-in card and control box to enable real-time synthesis and signal processing. The examples are not my cup of tea but it looks fascinating regardless.

If you have gone to a movie theater and heard the wonderful crescendo for the THX sound system - that was written in CSound.

The Bear and the washing machine

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Cute Samsung commercial from a couple years ago - filmed in the E.C. Manning Provincial Park in BC.

Just wow - full screen with the sound up please:

Monsoon III (4K) from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Here is one of his earlier ones: Vorticity
Amazing work. Tip of the hat to Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.

More voter fraud

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We heard about Virginia. Now it's Indiana - from Indianapolis, IN station WXIN:

State police expand Indiana Voter Registration Project investigation to 57 counties
Indiana State Police added 48 additional counties Thursday to an investigation into allegations of fraudulent voter application information in Indiana.

The investigation originally involved nine counties, but has expanded to include many more. A total of 57 are now included.

This week, police raided the business offices of the Indiana Voter Registration Project, 2425 North Meridian Street, Suite A, in downtown Indianapolis amid reports of fraud.

Ah yes, the Indiana Voter Registration Project - most likely a front for an Alinsky-ite community organization scam like ACORN. Taking taxpayer money to defraud the government. I hope they get audited down to the last penny and put out of business. We seriously need to go back to positive voter identification and paper ballots. Clean house.

Our tax dollars at work

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Surprisingly, some branches of our Federal Government are run pretty well. Just got this update email from FEMA:

FEMA is staffing Incident Support Bases in Albany, Georgia and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to pre-position resources closer to potentially affected areas, should affected states request them. Today there are more than 444,000 liters of water and more than 513,000 meals, as well as thousands of cots and blankets on site. Additionally, FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center has been activated to support response and recovery efforts on the ground.

According to the National Weather Service, hurricane conditions (winds 74 MPH or greater) are expected to first reach the east coast of Florida from Golden Beach to Fernandina Beach by Thursday evening, and will spread northward along the Florida coast overnight into Friday. Hurricane force winds are expected to develop this evening along the east coast of Florida and will continue to spread northward into Friday.

“This is a serious storm that is not to be underestimated,” said FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate. “There is very real potential for deadly storm surge, high winds and extended power outages. Listen to your state, local and tribal officials, and heed their directions. If you have been asked to evacuate, do it now. Do not wait for the next forecast.”

Well supplied, poised and ready. Good to know. There is even an app you can download to your phone of tablet:

Download the FEMA mobile app for shelter information, disaster resources, weather alerts, and safety tips, in English and in Spanish. The app provides a customizable checklist of emergency supplies, maps of open shelters and recovery centers, disaster survival tips, and weather alerts from the National Weather Service. The app also enables users to receive push notifications reminding them to take important steps to prepare their homes and families for disasters.

Back from town - dinner

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Had to go to the bank - picked up a few things for the food trailer (big honkin' electrical connectors) and check with Labor and Industries about getting permitted to install a new power feed to run it. I am getting a 100 Amp service at 220 volts - all of the cooking and refrigeration equipment is electrical. They did have propane at one time but took it out. They were running the trailer with a 30 Amp 120 volt rated RV extension cord so needed to upgrade it.

Had fish and chips at the new Roadhouse - excellent as always. Time to open a bottle of wine and surf the net for a while.

A late start to the day

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Been having to get up early the last couple of days so slept in this morning. Lulu is out getting her car repaired. I puttered around the house for a couple hours and am now heading out for coffee and to work at the store for a bit.

More posting later...

Running as it should

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With Hurricane Matthew making USA landfall sometime today, all of the disaster services are performing perfectly. In my morning email, I received notices from FEMA, the ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League - our craft guild over 100 years old) and the Federal AlertSense site.

FEMA advised basic preparedness and evacuation information as well as the fact that the governors for Florida, Georgia and both Carolina's declared an Emergency so FEMA is lining up support to go in when the hurricane passes.

The ARRL established specific frequencies for emergency communications and asked all other hams to stay off those frequencies until the emergency has passed - this way, emergency traffic is not hindered.

There is always room for improvement but our emergency services are working pretty damn well and coordinating with each other. This is what all the practice and drills are for.

Fussy eaters

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Nails it:

20161005-eating.jpg

Freedom of the press

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This is why we picked up and moved here over 200 years ago - from the UK Express:

FREE SPEECH CRACKDOWN: EU orders British press NOT to reveal when terrorists are Muslims
A report from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found there was an increase in hate speech and racist violence in the UK from 2009 to March 2016.

Blaming the press, ECRI Chair Christian Ahlund, said: “It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.”

A bit more:

In the 83-page report, the Commission said: “ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fueling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety. 

“In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.”

I hate to say this but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck... Guess what. I could go along with this if the so-called 'peaceful' muslims stood up in their mosques and denounced the terrorists as just a fringe group and made an effort to have them stop. I have not seen this anywhere in any nation.

Fortunately, the English government had this to say:

In a written statement to the ECRI, the Government said: “The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law.”

In other words: ECRI? Screw You!

Hurricane Matthew is expected to make a direct hit starting tomorrow evening. The global warmists are saying that Matthew's intensity is because of Anthropogenic Global Warming but in reality, this is the first hurricane to make landfall in 4,000 days or almost eleven years. The hurricane count is actually way below normal and although Matthew is a large one, most of them have been smaller than usual.

From NBC News:

Thousands of Americans Head Inland to Escape Hurricane Matthew
Hundreds of thousands of Americans headed for higher ground Wednesday as Hurricane Matthew barreled toward the Florida and South Carolina coasts and the death toll from the monster storm climbed to at least 25.

Evacuations were underway in Florida and South Carolina after Matthew, which hammered Haiti and strafed Cuba, began battering the Bahamas.

And the key thing for Governor Scott (a Republican):

Scott said that 1,500 National Guard members had been activated and that he had asked President Barack Obama to declare a federal emergency in 26 counties.

When Katrina hit New Orleans, people blamed President Bush for the slow federal response to the disaster. It was actually the fault of Governor Kathleen Blanco (a Democrat) who waited for three days to declare a state of emergency and request federal help. The federal government can not come into a state without being asked first. Gov. Scott is making the declaration a day before the disaster happens.

I am very much a knob guy - my musical instruments need to have knobs and not some touch-screen with layers and layers of menus I have to navigate. I want to reach out and touch something.

That being said, this is just plain brilliant:

I own some Behringer equipment - their signal processing stuff is really well done. I am going to pass on the Deep Mind though but still, looks like a lot of fun.

That $15/hour minimum wage

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Not working out as intended - from Forbes:

As I Predicted, Seattle's Minimum Wage Rise Is Reducing Employment
We’ve been debating the effects of raising the minimum wage for some time now, and specifically there’s been a back and forth between me and various acolytes of Nick Hanauer over what the minimum wage rise in Seattle will do to employment prospects there.

My claim was, by the standards of basic and conventional economics, entirely uncontroversial. A rise in the price of something will lead to people purchasing less of that thing. So a rise in the price of low-skill labor will lead to employers purchasing less of low-skill labor.

The claim is not (and never has been) that raising Seattle’s minimum wage will cause the economy to become some howling wasteland of huddled masses desperately looking for a job. It is that with a higher minimum wage there will be less low-skill employment than without a raise in that minimum wage. And yes, of course the effects of a minimum wage are going to be marginal when laid against all the other things that can happen to a labor market. (But remember that all economics happens at the margins.)

Lots of links to pesky numbers - liberals are all about their narrative and their intentions. They do not see the realities of the situation and they think that if they just wish really hard, the unintended consequences will just dry up and blow away.

Was checking the weather service and saw a Special Weather Statement which read:

WAZ567-568-061200-
CASCADES OF WHATCOM AND SKAGIT COUNTIES-
CASCADES OF SNOHOMISH AND KING COUNTIES-
307 PM PDT WED OCT 5 2016

...6 TO 12 INCHES OF SNOW EXPECTED OVER THE NORTH CASCADES ABOVE
6000 FEET ON THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY MORNING...

STEADY PRECIPITATION WILL SPREAD INTO THE NORTH CASCADES AFTER
SUNSET ON THURSDAY, BECOMING INTENSE DURING THE OVERNIGHT HOURS ON
THURSDAY NIGHT. WITH A FORECAST SNOW LEVEL NEAR 6000 FEET, THIS
WILL AMOUNT TO MODERATE AND HEAVY SNOW AMOUNTS FOR HIGH
ELEVATIONS. FROM THURSDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING, 6 TO 12
INCHES OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED ABOVE 6000 FEET FROM THE GLACIER PEAK
AREA NORTH TO THE CANADIAN BORDER, INCLUDING HARTS PASS.

THOSE VENTURING INTO THE BACKCOUNTRY, INCLUDING HIKERS ALONG THE
PACIFIC CREST TRAIL, NEED TO BE PREPARED FOR THIS EARLY SEASON
SNOW OVER THE HIGH COUNTRY.

Say hello to Buoy #42058

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Data collection buoy #42058 happened to sit square in the path of Hurricane Matthew - 65 Knots is 74 Miles per Hour:

20161005-buoy.png

Now this will be interesting

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From The Christian Science Monitor:

Small Texas company announces massive oil discovery in Alaska
The Dallas-based Caelus Energy Alaska LLC announced on Tuesday a discovery of 6 billion barrels of light oil in Smith Bay off Alaska’s North Slope; 450 miles north of Fairbanks and 300 miles above the Arctic Circle. If estimates are accurate, the recent find could prove to be one of the largest fields ever discovered in Alaska.

The site, located in the shallow waters of Smith Bay, southeast of Barrow – Alaska’s northernmost city – could eventually deliver 200,000 barrels per day of “highly mobile oil” into the trans-Alaska pipeline, according to a statement released by the company.

While noting that such figures do not include analysis by a third-party engineering company, Caelus says it believes that the numbers do indicate the site could be even larger than the Alpine unit of ConocoPhilips, which reached a peak output of 139,000 barrels per day (BPD) in 2007 after beginning production in the year 2000, reported the Alaska Dispatch News.

Very cool - we certainly can use the energy. Makes for a better life for everyone (except the enviros but they are their own special little nut-case). It sounds like really sweet oil too - doesn't need as much refining.

Aer + GoPro

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Clever idea - put some fins on a GoPro and toss it in the air:

Kickstarter page: Aer

Back home from town

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Got Thunderbunny (my truck) ready for winter with new oil and filters. Really like the quality of service that I get at the dealership - they have been in business since 1908 and are the third oldest Ford dealership. Still family owned and run.

Fixing some Falafel for dinner tonight - doing it fried as well as oven baked and cooked on the panini press. I cannot use a fryer in the food trailer so seeing how the alternatives will work. Made some vegan Tatziki sauce yesterday that came out really good. It took 24 hours for the flavors to meld but they came together nicely. Just ground the soaked garbanzo beans and now letting them rest in the fridge. Got to let the starch develop so they hold together during the cooking process.

A curious bit of news

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The most transparent administration ever? From Politico:

Obama DOJ drops charges against alleged broker of Libyan weapons
Arms dealer had threatened to expose Hillary Clinton’s talks about arming anti-Qadhafi rebels.

The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.

Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.

The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.

Crooked Hillary - I seriously doubt that we will ever know the depth of her corruption.

Truck blogging

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At the dealership getting an oil and filter change. Brought the laptop.

Clueless but politically on point

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Our lame duck president being himself - from The Daily Caller:

Obama Shifts Blame From Assad To Global Warming As The Cause Of The Syrian Civil War
President Barack Obama said global warming “contributed” to the Syrian civil war, shifting at least some of the blame for the deadly conflict from the repressive Assad regime to people driving gas-guzzling SUVs.

What a maroon. The cause is more our meddling in Middle Eastern politics by our idiots in the State Department than any change in weather.

The way I feel right now

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Found on the internet:

20161004-assholes.jpg

Back home from meeting

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Got a bite to eat at the new Zane Burgers in Fairhaven - smallish burger and a bit skimpy on the toppings but hey, it was $2.79 so a very good deal. They also have a bigger version with a hand-formed patty for $7.99. I'll try that one next. They serve beer which was a nice discovery - we have moved out of milkshake season. Fries were nice and crisp.

The meeting was the final one to coordinate CERT, HAM and Fire activities for the Great Shakeout in two weeks. Me and my team will be stationed in the parking lot of an Elementary School. We will have two teams of CERT volunteers walking the neighborhood and reporting to us with household walkie-talkies (GMRS band) and we will communicate to the two teams and relay their messages via ham radio to Net Control at the district firehall who will use Winlink to relay them to the Emergency Operations Center in Bellingham. We will also be passing clarification messages back down the chain if needed. Two of the larger lakes in this area were enlarged with earthen dams so the potential for serious damage is high. Should be an interesting event - learning a lot with these practices. We met at the Fairhaven firehall and the on-duty Firemen were very interested in what ham radio had to offer.

Got a 10:00AM car appointment tomorrow so surf for a bit, have a glass or two of wine and off to bed.

Got a meeting at 6:00PM and running a few errands before. Back late tonight.

An interesting connection - from the Australia First Party website:

SA Blackout caused by China and cheap shoddy chinese steel dumped in Australia
So, a spring storm off the Bight blew over 23 electricity transmission towers south of Port Augusta, which caused the SA Blackout.

Cold fronts are a weekly occurrence over southern Australia. Sure, lightning strikes will trigger auto-tripping and isolation protocols as a safety precaution to the electricity network. But 23 steel towers blown over? Why?

Dodgy towers not rated to a maximum of 120 km wind? You’re kidding! But that was the reported maximum wind gust during the storm of September 28, 2016 this week. Yet south of Port Augusta where the ElectraNet transmission towers blew over, the Bureau of Meteorology recorded only a maximum wind gust of just 83 kph!

A bit more:

Welding Technology Institute of Australia (WTIA) says 80% of fabricated steel from China is shoddy and not safe and fails Australian standards.

A lot more at the article. They were spending so much money on alt.energy foolishness that they had to use the lowest bidder for their transmission towers. Now, who will they use to replace them? The Chinese again? Here is another article on the blackout pointing out the silliness of windmills - from the Australian Broadcasting Company:

SA storms: Rushing to renewable energy targets puts sector's reputation at risk
The last time an entire state blacked out was on the night the Beatles arrived in Sydney in 1964.

So what happened in South Australia yesterday was rare and the repercussions could be vast.

The key question is whether that state's heavy reliance on wind turbines might have increased the risk of a state-wide blackout. More broadly, the event will supercharge concerns over how renewable energy is being integrated into a national grid that was not designed to cope with it.

Wind presents two problems. First, it is intermittent, so all of it has to be backed up by baseload power for those days when the wind does not blow.

The second is a diabolically tricky engineering problem. For an electricity network to function, demand and supply have to be kept in the perfect harmony of 50 hertz every second of every day. If the frequency gets out of tune, the system identifies a fault that could destroy it and that trips the shutdown switch.

This electrical harmony is called synchronous supply, and thermal power is very good at delivering it to the grid.

Thermal power being coal or gas. Finally, it is not just Australia getting bad steel - here is a story from the New Zealand website stuff:

Chinese steel fails strength test
Roading bosses are defending their quality control standards after 1600 tonnes of Chinese steel destined for a major Waikato project was found to be below standard.

The substandard steel piles were to be used on four bridges along the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway.

Memo to self - check for the country of origin...

The gift that keeps on giving. Very few actual files as yet but from his website:

GUCCIFER 2.0 HACKED CLINTON FOUNDATION
Many of you have been waiting for this, some even asked me to do it.

So, this is the moment. I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ databases.

Hillary Clinton and her staff don’t even bother about the information security. It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server.

Here’s the contents of one of the folders that I got from there

Here is just one snippet:

20161004-clinton.jpg

Pay to Play? The way she has been running the foundation, that should be the name of the root directory - Crooked Hillary does not brush her teeth in the morning unless someone pays her.

Guccifer 2.0 is suffering from an embarassment of riches - their comment:

I can’t post all databases here for they’re too large. I’m looking for a better way to release them now.

Staying tuned...

Utterly clueless

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A perfect example of the "culture" we are dealing with - from Breitbart:

Iraqi Transportation Minister: Iraqis ‘Launched Spaceships 7,000 Years Ago’
At the inauguration of a new airport in southern Dhi Qar, Iraqi transportation minister Kadhem Finjan al-Hamami asserted that Sumerians, the members of an ancient Iraqi civilization, built “the first airports” and “Sumerian spaceships used to launch from here towards the other planets” 7,000 years ago.

“It’s a long story, maybe you don’t know about it. Maybe even people from Dhi Qar don’t know – the first airports that were built on planet Earth were built in the 5th Century BC in Dhi Qar,” al-Hamami said, in an Al Jazeera translation. “There were Sumerians who launched spaceships [from Dhi Qar] and headed to other worlds,” he added, arguing that all the world’s angels “were Sumerian” and suggesting that Sumerians had discovered a new planet during their time.

And the joke is that the majority of people in Iraq listening to this idiot will believe him

Ho. Li. Crap - Hurricane Matthew

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Shot from the International Space Station at 4:14PM EDT yesterday:

John Forbes Kerry on Syria

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One of the worst Secretaries of State ever after Hillary - at least Kerry isn't corrupt, just stupid, impotent and naive. From CNN:

Kerry in leaked audio: 'I lost the argument' for use of force in Syria
Secretary of State John Kerry's frustration with the failure of American diplomacy was on display as he defended US efforts to help end the five-year civil war in Syria during a meeting last week with a group of Syrian civilians, according to an audio recording obtained by CNN.

Adults in the room - now please...

Bill Clinton on Obamacare

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Even he things it's nuts - from CNN:

Bill Clinton calls Obamacare 'the craziest thing in the world,' later tries to walk it back
Bill Clinton criticized President Barack Obama's signature policy reform Monday while on the stump for his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, calling Obamacare "the craziest thing in the world." But he attempted to temper his criticism at a Tuesday rally.

Speaking at a Democratic rally in Flint, Michigan, the former president ripped into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for flooding the health care insurance market and causing premiums to rise for middle-class Americans who do not qualify for subsidies.

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world," Clinton said.

The sooner this is repealed, the better. Best system would be to allow competition in an open market.

Getting ready to head out for coffee and work at the store for a bit.

Got a class tonight - the primary orientation for this years Shake Out so I cannot miss this one. WA State has about 800,000 people participating and Whatcom County is leveraging some of the Cascadia Rising knowledge to improve our performance. Good training for when the real one hits. Not IF, more a matter of WHEN

Dinner - update

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It was good - the noodles have a different mouthfeel but they absorb the flavors of the sauce and we are both stuffed with less than 20 grams of carbohydrates (guessing about 10 from the sauce - put a lot of carrots and 'maters in there). I was Googling around a bit and you can also get "steaks" made of the same stuff - sort of like tofu, it is a chameleon and takes on the flavor of whatever you are cooking with it.

See how our guts are tomorrow and take it from there - the dogs got a bunch of leftovers too so will be monitoring their health as well.

Dinner

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Heating up some of the left-over spaghetti sauce and getting ready to rinse and cook the carb-free noodles - see what this tastes like.

Getting things ready to make falafel tomorrow - the food trailer has no facilities to deep fry so I will be baking these. I will also try grilling them on a panini press - use an oil spray release so they don't stick. Experimentation is fun especially when there are a lot of options. Made a vegan Tzatziki sauce - it normally uses yogurt and sometimes sour cream. I used a vegan mayonnaise and a bit of cider vinegar to give it some tang. Sitting in the fridge letting the flavors meld. Got dry garbanzo beans soaking.

The sun will be over the yardarm in 50 minutes or so - very glad I bailed on the class. I would not be a happy camper driving into Bellingham right now.

Lulu's new ride

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Came back from this morning's town run to find Lulu busy at work on her new ride:

20161003-lulu.jpg

You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl.

Decided to bag tonight's training session - feeling very tired and the prospect of driving home at 9:00PM is not a pleasant one. This class is more for the CERT volunteers who will be walking the neighborhoods inspecting for damage. I will be on the radios communicating with them and relaying their information via ham radio to a centralized dispatch point (Net Control)

Dinner tonight will be spaghetti again but this time with carb-free noodles - give them a try. These are made with a type of yam, a relation to taro root. I had done some cold salads with them and they were good - there is a bit of an off-aroma when you open the package but rinsing in some water with a splash of vinegar removes this entirely. Try them hot tonight.

Off to town this morning

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Got to return the trailer and stuff to the rental place. Heading home and then heading back to Bellingham for a 6:00PM class on damage assessment.

The 20th of October is the Great Shakeout and I will be in a communications team at one of the Bellingham fire halls practicing Incident Command Structure.

This year's activities will incorporate some of the Cascadia Rising drill we did this spring - 80% of that went really well, got to fine-tune the other 20%

Time to get rid of Jeh Johnson

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The guy is too dumb to be in such a position - he is politically well connected and a good puppet but he hasn't had an original thought in 50 years. From The Washington Free Beacon:

DHS Head to America: Brace for More Terror Attacks
Department of Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson informed Americans on Wednesday that the country is likely to suffer more domestic terror attacks, warning that the department cannot make all threats “a priority” and that the likelihood of an extremist “attack is still there,” despite the department’s best efforts.

Johnson, speaking at the Atlantic magazine ideas forum, admitted that DHS sees a range of threats on the homeland, but “can’t say everything is a priority.” He was unable to provide any firm figure quantifying the number of attacks that could be faced in the upcoming months.

If he was actually able to do his job, he would not have to be saying crap like this. A perfect example of Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Illegal voting in Virginia

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Only about 40 days until the election - from Breitbart:

Illegal Foreign Voting in Virginia Covered Up by Soros-Backed Democratic Officials, Says Report
Virginia’s election officials are enabling illegal registration and voting by foreign citizens, according to an extensive new study, titled “Alien Invasion in Virginia,” by a former Department of Justice civil rights lawyer.

“Virginia election officials don’t seem to care that thousands of [foreign] aliens have corrupted their voter rolls,” by illegally registering to vote, said J. Christian Adams, the former Department of Justice lawyer, and now the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. “Even worse than doing nothing about it, they are trying to cover it up,” he told Breitbart News.

Even small amounts of illegal voting can make a decisive difference — Democratic Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring defeated Republican Mark Obenshain in 2013 by a mere 165 votes out of 2.2 million votes cast.

But “in the eight [out of 130-plus] jurisdictions that provided us with lists of aliens recently removed from their voter rolls, we discovered that 31 non-citizens had cast a total of 186 votes between 2005 and 2015,” said the report, given first to Breitbart News.

“This is just a fraction of the aliens caught in just eight counties in a state with over 130 counties,” Adams said. “Even with such a small sample, the number of aliens who got on the voter rolls is staggering. The aliens are casting ballots in a state where elections have been decided by a few hundred votes.”

Kicking ass and naming names:

The authors highlighted the role played by Edgardo Cortés, the commissioner of the commonwealth’s department of elections.

Before his appointment by Democratic Gov. Terence McAuliffe, Cortés was a left-wing operative of Virginia Voting Rights Restoration Campaign, within the left-wing Advancement Project. The project was funded and supported by George Soros, through his Tides Foundation and Open Society Foundations.

They know they can not win on merit so they feel compelled to cheat. Rope. Tree. Some assembly required.

Meet Dalibor Farny

Mr. Farny lives in Czech Republic and has a small business making a very early style of numeric display tube - a Nixie Tube which was popular during the 1960's. They have become popular again as they are very legible and just downright beautiful to look at. Here is a short video of two of Dalibor's tubes being tested. The numbers are about 1.5 inches tall.

Dinner was awesome

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The pot roast was perfect - I made a big batch three weeks ago and we tucked into the second piece. Take a chuck steak, salt it, wrap it in paper towels (I use the blue Costco shop towels - they are lint free and super absorbent) and let the moisture run off for 24 hours. Rinse off, pat dry and nuke under the broiler under full heat for about 4 minutes per side. Seal in a vacuum bag and put into a 160°F sous vide. This is more than the temp for medium rare but this is the temperature where the fat and the connective tissues render into gelatin so although this is technically 'overcooked', it is also delicious, fork tender and has a wonderful mouth-feel.

I took the juices from the cooking bag, added a bit of pepper and flour and made gravy.

The red potato smash was not what I had hoped - the potatoes fell apart when I smashed them - cooked a little too long. I did cook a loose pancake with some bacon on top and it was delicious. I was going to top it with a scrambled egg but I had purchased a box of prepared egg yolks, not whole eggs. Maybe I'll do this as a burrito for the food trailer. Hmmm - maybe even do a couple slices of a buckwheat pancake with maple syrup in the burrito - a Farmer's Breakfast Burrito.

Clever idea for credit card fraud

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Change the number every hour - from The Memo:

This high-tech card is being rolled out by French banks to eliminate fraud
Your bank security is pretty broken. It’s not your fault, it’s just really hard to keep people’s money safe, especially online.

Part of the problem is that once your card details are stolen – whether through a phishing attack or by someone copying the digits on the back – fraudsters are free to go on a spending spree until you notice something’s up.

And their solution? The CCV code changes every hour

At first glance these cards don’t look any different from the ones you carry around today, but they’re hiding some technological wizardry.

The three digits on the back of this card will change, every hour, for three years.

And after they change, the previous three digits are essentially worthless, and that’s a huge blow for criminals.

Only issue is that it will not be long before someone hacks this - all they are doing is running a random number algorithm and each card is "seeded" with a different number linked to the customer's account. They have the same algorithm running at the bank with the same seed and when the two numbers match, it is a valid customer. All they need to do is find the algorithm and the seed number and that account is as hacked as before.

More complex versions of this have been around for high-security network logins for the last fifteen years.

Must be the season for drones

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We saw the announcements of the DJI Mavic and the GoPro Karma drones; now, check out the PowerEgg:

This is made by PowerVision who makes some really high-end drones ($4K) so they already understand the market.

Baby red potatoes - resistant starch

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We are trying to keep our carbohydrate intake under 60 grams/day - pretty easy actually although we do backslide when spaghetti is on the menu.

Been looking into resistant starches - these are when potatoes, rice and to a lesser part beans are cooked, chilled and then re-heated. From the Wikipedia article:

Resistant starch (RS) refers to starch and starch degradation products that escape from digestion in the small intestine of healthy individuals. Resistant starch occurs naturally in foods but is also added to foods by the addition of isolated or manufactured types of resistant starch.

Some types of resistant starch (RS1, RS2 and RS3) are fermented by the large intestinal microbiota, conferring benefits to human health through the production of short-chain fatty acids, increased bacterial mass, and promotion of butyrate-producing bacteria.

Resistant starch in various ways has similar physiologic effect as dietary fiber.

So basically, the resistant starches are not metabolized as carbohydrates by the stomach or small intestine - they pass through and feed the gut biota of the large intestine. Win win situation.

Tonight's baby reds are about done with their boil - I will smash them into patties, chill them in the freezer and top them with a scrambled egg and a piece or two of bacon.

Slow Sunday - nothing much to post

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Diagnosed an electrical problem at the store (with coffee of course) and working on some stuff around the farm. Getting Beautiful Dreamer (the travel trailer) under the Quonset hut for the winter and cleaning up the yard a bit.

Lulu's new present is a riding lawnmower. Buttercup is too big for her to feel comfortable driving and the brush cutter weighs about 300 pounds - she is in great shape but small so that is not an option. When I was in renting the electrical tracer, I saw that they had the mower for sale - got them to knock a couple hundred off the price and throw in a free rental of a trailer to bring it out here. Only has 120 hours on the engine so it is just broken in.

Thawing out some pot roast for dinner tonight - I had done it sous vide and is fork tender. Boil up some baby reds to go with.

So true

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Found on facebook:

20161002-clinton.jpg

Back home again - hic!

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Had a pint at the North Fork and toasted my two friends on their way. They just bought a 30' motor-home so they will be travelling to the East in style.

Surf for a bit and then to work tomorrow - a nagging electrical issue at the store so one of the items I picked up at the rental place was a top-of-the-line wire locator. I have used this unit before and it is amazing. If they weren't $1,800 I would get one.

Oh Hell No - this coming election

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Talk about camel's nose under the tent - from Bloomberg:

Wary of Election Hacks, U.S. Urges States to Get Security Help
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is urging state and local election officials to seek assistance from the federal government to fend off cyberattacks that could be used to manipulate the results of the November presidential elections.

The agency is ready to provide any assistance to help states secure their systems, if they request it, Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, said in a statement Saturday. Threats are rising that criminals will use cyberattacks to try to disrupt the administration of U.S. elections, the agency said.

Jeh Johnson is a politically useful idiot - just not that bright. The article comntinues with this big honker of a lie:

“These challenges aren’t just in the future -- they are here today,” Johnson said in the statement. “In recent months, malicious cyber-actors have been scanning a large number of state systems, which could be a preamble to attempted intrusions. In a few cases, we have determined that malicious actors gained access to state voting-related systems.”

No, most states use voting procedures that still retain a paper trail. Ballots are cast and then read electronically. Any attempt to hack these can be found out by a spot-check. This is the job of each state's Secretary of State. The liberals want to get all balloting under one happy roof so 99% of the people can vote for the people's leader for life and the other 1% can have their entire financial records audited back to grade school.

If you want an example of how unethical these people are, check this out at Zero Hedge:

Meet The Young Virginia Democrat That Registered 19 Dead People To Vote In Virginia
Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see "FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia"). While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation...until now.

Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently "Lead Organizer" for HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.

While this should come as a surprise to precisely 0 people, Spieles just happens to be Democrat who, accorded to a deleted FaceBook post, apparently recently ran for Caucus Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats.

It's too bad really, sounds like Spieles had all the right "special talents" required to be very successful politician...he just forgot the most important first rule: "Don't get caught."

More at the site - of course, these dead people are going to vote for Hillary.

systemd and a wee little bug

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systemd is used in Linux to initialize the machine and manage all subprocesses after boot. Being written by a committee, it is bloated and soaks up machine resources like a biscuit on gravy. Before systemd came into being, we were very happy with initd or any of the other boot managers. There are many Linux distributions that take great pride in not using systemd.

Well, two days ago, Andrew Ayer posted this little piece of joy:

How to Crash Systemd in One Tweet
The following command, when run as any user, will crash systemd:

NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify ""

After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system). All of this can be caused by a command that's short enough to fit in a Tweet.

The bug is remarkably banal. The above systemd-notify command sends a zero-length message to the world-accessible UNIX domain socket located at /run/systemd/notify. PID 1 receives the message and fails an assertion that the message length is greater than zero. Despite the banality, the bug is serious, as it allows any local user to trivially perform a denial-of-service attack against a critical system component.

Chiefio has two great systemd stories - here is the opening of the first:

My 1st & 2nd SystemD Bite On The Ass
SysAdmins with a long experience develop a sense… a sense of Impending Doom… about some changes. After 20+ years of sewing your own toes back on and looking for the foot that got shot off and watching your friends and neighbors go up in flames (sometime self immolated, others with outside help), well, you get cautious about some things. Rather like someone from battle experience who reacts badly to “SURPRISE!” from a darkened room suddenly full of moving people and lights…

That was my initial response to SystemD.

No, not a single “reason”. No, no bad experiences At All. Yes, lots of folks who had plenty of experience and credentials said the Cool-Aid was Just FINE… But it smelled a bit fishy to me…

And, it would seem, to plenty of other ‘old hands’ at Unix and Linux. Part of the Unix philosophy, carried over until recently in Linux, was a program ought to be small, do one thing really well, and modularly connect to other programs.

Read more here: SystemD – it keeps getting worse

Long day today

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Did the usual coffee and went into town to rent some piano-mover dollies for the new ice-cream freezer coming in Monday. Got some other stuff too including something for Lulu.

The people that I bought the food trailer from are having a get-together at a local pizza place - getting a bite to eat here and then heading out for a pint or two. The Department of Licensing gave me new plates for the trailer so I am going to give them the old ones as a souvenir.

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