November 2016 Archives

Winter - it is getting serious

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Of the high Cascade Range passes connecting Western Washington with the East, Snoqualmie Pass is the one that they keep open no matter what. It runs from downtown Seattle and is the major transportation route for goods coming in and out of our neck of the woods. Shit just got real - from the Bellingham Herald:

Interstate 90 westbound over Snoqualmie Pass closed
State transportation officials say Interstate 90 westbound remains closed over Snoqualmie Pass after multiple collisions and spinouts due to snow and icy conditions.

The Washington Department of Transportation said in a news release that the freeway closed in both directions at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday between milepost 47 and milepost 106 near Ellensburg. Officials said the eastbound lanes had reopened by about 8:15 p.m. with chains or vehicles with all-wheel drive required.

Officials did not estimate when the westbound lanes of I-90 would reopen.

And, to make things more fun, there is an arctic cold front developing which could hit our area sometime early next week.

A light night for posting

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Nothing much happening on the internet. The stew came out great but I used a little too many red pepper flakes so it is a bit hot. Still, I finished my bowl and will be eating it for dinner for the next couple of days...

Heading over to the other computer to do some more work on it - I upgraded the video editing software that I use (Pinnacle - not great but useable and cheap) and the disk for the new version arrived this afternoon. Install that puppy and give it a whirl.

My two dogs have been chasing each other around the house for the last 45 minutes - they will probably crash for the night in a short while.

Not surprised at all

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Amazing how intolerant some people are - from Philadelphia's The Inquirer:

City attorney identified in connection with anti-Trump graffiti
The surveillance footage shows two men ambling casually along a tony stretch of Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill. One wears a blue blazer, khakis and a rakishly-tied scarf. He carries a glass of wine.

It looks like the end to a night out in an upscale part of the city until the second man is seen spray painting the wall of a newly-constructed grocery store. His message: "F- Trump."

The wine-drinker captures the act on his cell phone.

While the tagger remains unidentified, the man in the blazer turns out to be Assistant City Solicitor Duncan Lloyd. No charges have been filed and as of Wednesday evening, the city was awaiting more information before taking any administrative action.

A juvenile male engaged in virtue signaling - I expect nothing less. A stupid poo-flinging monkey pounding his chest.

Now this is clever - AWS Snowmobile

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From Amazon Web Services:

AWS Snowmobile – Move Exabytes of Data to the Cloud in Weeks
Moving large amounts of on-premises data to the cloud as part of a migration effort is still more challenging than it should be! Even with high-end connections, moving petabytes or exabytes of film vaults, financial records, satellite imagery, or scientific data across the Internet can take years or decades.  On the business side, adding new networking or better connectivity to data centers that are scheduled to be decommissioned after a migration is expensive and hard to justify.

Last year we announced the AWS Snowball (see AWS Snowball – Transfer 1 Petabyte Per Week Using Amazon-Owned Storage Appliances for more information) as a step toward addressing large-scale data migrations. With 80 TB of storage, these appliances address the needs of many of our customers, and are in widespread use today.

However, customers with exabyte-scale on-premises storage look at the 80 TB, do the math, and realize that an all-out data migration would still require lots of devices and some headache-inducing logistics.

Introducing AWS Snowmobile
In order to meet the needs of these customers, we are launching Snowmobile today. This secure data truck stores up to 100 PB of data and can help you to move exabytes to AWS in a matter of weeks (you can get more than one if necessary). Designed to meet the needs of our customers in the financial services, media & entertainment, scientific, and other industries, Snowmobile attaches to your network and appears as a local, NFS-mounted volume. You can use your existing backup and archiving tools to fill it up with data destined for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or Amazon Glacier.

Physically, Snowmobile is a ruggedized, tamper-resistant shipping container 45 feet long, 9.6 feet high, and 8 feet wide. It is water-proof, climate-controlled, and can be parked in a covered or uncovered area adjacent to your existing data center. Each Snowmobile consumes about 350 kW of AC power; if you don’t have sufficient capacity on site we can arrange for a generator.

Brilliant idea - very of reminiscent of Sneaker Net (transferring floppy disks between machines) but it scales wonderfully and beats having to shove all the data down the corporate pipe, crowding out their daily traffic.

Nothing much in the internet

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Fixing some beef stew for dinner for the next couple of days. Using a pressure cooker so it will be ready in 20 minutes - love the thing!

Bear has gotten very picky about his food - wandering off after a few mouthfuls. This has happened for the last couple of days so tonight, I picked the bowl off the floor with 3/4 of the food still there. He is wandering around looking for it now. I'll do that for a few days and he should learn the lesson. I guess that since he no longer needs to compete with his six siblings, his feeding behavior has changed. A few days with a hungry belly should fix that.

Schadenfreude - McDonald's

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Those people petitioning for a universal $15 minimum wage - meet your replacements. From Forbes:

Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide
As the labor union-backed Fight for $15 begins yet another nationwide strike on November 29, I have a simple message for the protest organizers and the reporters covering them: I told you so.

It brings me no joy to write these words. The push for a $15 starter wage has negatively impacted the career prospects of employees who were just getting started in the workforce while extinguishing the businesses that employed them. I wish it were not so. But it’s important to document these consequences, lest policymakers elsewhere decide that the $15 movement is worth embracing.

Let’s start with automation. In 2013, when the Fight for $15 was still in its growth stage, I and others warned that union demands for a much higher minimum wage would force businesses with small profit margins to replace full-service employees with costly investments in self-service alternatives. At the time, labor groups accused business owners of crying wolf. It turns out the wolf was real.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s announced the nationwide roll-out of touchscreen self-service kiosks. In a video the company released to showcase the new customer experience, it’s striking to see employees who once would have managed a cash register now reduced to monitoring a customer’s choices at an iPad-style kiosk.

If you want more money, it is your personal responsibility to make yourself more valuable to your employer. Take a class, pick up a skill. It is not that difficult. Schadenfreude?

Now this will be fun - pen and phone

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From The Washington Examiner:

Push on to pardon all 11 million illegals, expand sanctuary city network
In a mad dash to protect illegal immigrants fearful of being deported under a Trump presidency, several pro-immigrant leaders Monday called on Obama to pardon all undocumented immigrants and expand the network of law-breaking sanctuary cities.

"This is not a political issue; but rather a moral imperative. It's time for President Obama to use his constitutional powers to protect vulnerable individuals and families and pardon communities from an administration intent on doing harm to those whom the bible calls, 'the least of these,'" said Bishop Dwayne Royster, political director for PICO National Network.

The group of faith based organizations is also calling on Obama to release low-level drug offenders.

Granting a pardon to illegals would likely result in national anger from supporters of President-elect Donald Trump who ran on a platform that included completing a wall between Mexico and the U.S. and deporting criminal aliens, up to 3 million.

All Trump has to do is withhold Federal funding for a few months and see how things shake out. I can see an accelerated naturalization for those people who have shown good work habits and have learned English. The grifters are another matter entirely,

Heading out today

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Coffee and a quick run into town. Lulu is out later tomorrow. Back in a couple hours.

That is it for the night

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Did a bunch of work on the new computer - almost ready to use.

Lulu is coming out to the farm tomorrow for a few days - we are getting a live tree this year so we can plant it. I want to get ten or fifteen trees between the road and the property so we will start to put those there.

Looks like we may be getting some lowland snow towards the end of this week.

Quite the commute

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Hat tip Maggie's Farm

It seems that people are caving to him even though he has not been inaugurated yet - from Fuel Fix:

EPA plans to withdraw pollution regulations for seven Texas power plants
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it plans to voluntarily withdraw a requirement that seven Texas coal-fired power plants reduce pollution, according to a filing with a federal appeals court.

The so-called regional haze rule is part of the Clean Air Act and was proposed two years ago with the goal of cleaning up the air in national parks. The act requires states to craft a plan to address air pollution, or else be forced to implement a plan compiled by the EPA. Texas declined to create a plan, and along with power plant owners took its objections to the EPA’s plan to court.

The EPA said it plans to soon file a motion to withdraw the regional haze rule with U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing it. The agency is not expected to scrap the rule, but rather to reevaluate its requirements come back with a reworked rule, according to the Sierra Club, a national environmental advocacy group. The original rule targeted sulfur dioxide pollution in national parks, and required that coal-fire power plants use scrubbers, air pollution control devices, to reduce emissions.

The rule would apply to seven power plants that the EPA claims affect air quality in Big Bend National Park and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the only two national parks in Texas. Big Bend is along the state’s western border with Mexico and the Guadalupe Mountains run along the Texas-New Mexico border.

A couple of things - the 'haze' in those parks comes from Mexico, and the plants in question are already kitted out with Flue-gas desulfurization units - there is essentially zero SOx or particulates escaping from the chimney. Most hippies will never admit it but we have had clean coal technologies for over 25 years.

A peek behind the curtain - Fidel Castro

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There is the image - the story - the narrative and there is the truth - the facts - the data. Liberals only care about the narrative - they do not seem to be mentally inclined to process the truth. Witness the level to which global warming has taken over their thought processes. In Philosophy, this is Rhetoric versus Dialectic.

A lot of politicians have gushed over Fidel Castro's memory as news of his death was broadcast. Here is the truth from the London Daily Mail:

$120 million bed-hopping hypocrite: He claimed he lived on $25 a month. But Castro had 20 luxury homes, a private island, an 88ft yacht - and mistresses galore
Fidel Castro the restless revolutionary had no time for pleasure, despising holidays as ‘bourgeois’ and claiming to live in a fisherman’s hut. His only luxury was the cigars that he continually chomped.

Or so he insisted to fellow Cubans who endured decades of abject poverty, crumbling housing and food rationing during his long rule. However, the reality — carefully kept from public consumption thanks to his iron grip on the media and public discourse — was very different.

A prodigious womaniser and food connoisseur who kept some 20 luxurious properties throughout the Caribbean — including a private island he used to visit on his beautiful yacht — Castro was a complete fraud.

The man who spent his life railing against the excesses of capitalism lived like a king — and a very debauched one at that.

Quite the difference - the world is a far better place for his passing.

Good news from Switzerland

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They get 52% of their electricity from hydro and 35% from nuclear. From Neutron Bytes:

Swiss Reject Plan for Early Close of Nation’s Nuclear Plants
The proposal to force older nuclear power plants to close in Switzerland has been rejected in a referendum by a vote of 56% to 44% to retain the units.

With 56% of people have voted ‘No’ to the rapid phase out, the election records a clear victory by winning both the popular vote and by taking majorities in the most cantons.

Makes sense - the reactors are paid for and the fuel is cheap.

Ethanol in our gasoline

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A few corporations are making a lot of money off of this scam but nobody likes it and it damages small engines. Now even the government admits it is bad policy - from The Daily Caller:

Gov’t Admits Ethanol Mandates Are Expensive And Failing
Federal ethanol mandates are extremely expensive and won’t meet their goals, according to a new report published Monday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

GAO’s report concluded that producing advanced biofuel is extremely expensive, takes a long time to produce and likely won’t meet its goals of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil or to lowering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

“The Renewable Fuel Standard program calls for greater use of advanced biofuels—fuel made from waste fats and oils or crop residues, for example—in the transportation fuel supply through 2022,” states the report’s summary. “Yet, there is not nearly enough of this fuel to meet the program’s targets—nor will there likely be enough in the near future.”

Time to get these corporations off the government teat and stop diluting our gasoline.

The White House on Islam

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The consequences of alt.energy

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Those that support alternative energy are condemning the poor to a life of suffering. From Breitbart:

Light, water and heat are a luxury for millions in Spain
Pedro and Mohamed await every utility bill with much angst.

To reduce the money they have to pay, they live in the dark, without heating, or shower just once a week — victims like millions in Spain of energy poverty.

Welfare associations have for years warned against this situation, but the death earlier this month of 81-year-old Rosa in a fire caused by a candle she used for light has brought the issue firmly to the fore.

Socialist lawmaker Pilar Lucio asked the ruling conservative government to immediately implement a “winter truce” on companies cutting power to those who cannot pay — a measure with majority support in parliament and encouraged in a 2009 EU directive.

Last year, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute, 10.6 percent of Spaniards were unable to properly heat their homes — or more than four million people — compared to just 5.9 percent in 2008, when an economic crisis kicked off.

The utility prices:

At fault are the economic crisis and widespread loss of jobs it caused, as well as a 30- to 50-percent rise in utility prices since 2006.

Directly caused by Spain's closing fully functional coal burning plants and replacing them with much more expensive solar and wind plants. Remember Obama's crack about how electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket?

Clever business move

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Czech Firm Makes Unusual Bet on Coal Power Plants
Not everyone in Europe has doubts about the future of coal.

While European utilities have been selling off their coal-fired power plants at a brisk pace, spurred by falling electricity prices and new rules against carbon-dioxide emissions, a least one buyer has been standing by to snap them up.

Since 2013, a little-known Czech company has purchased at least 10 coal- or lignite-fired power plants and related mines at fire-sale prices, in deals worth a total of more than $7 billion, according to data provider Dealogic. That gives it almost as much coal-derived electricity-generating capacity as Canada.

Heh - eventually people will wake up from the fever dream that coal is bad and when they do, they will find that their crown jewels are now owned by someone else. Renewable energy is not baseload - the two choices for reliable and cheap energy are coal and nuclear. They're not just buying the power plants:

In September, Swedish utility giant Vattenfall sold German lignite assets to EPH valued at an estimated $3.8 billion, according to Dealogic, one of the Czech company’s biggest deals. Germany’s focus on building renewable power capacity has left it reliant on more polluting fuels such as lignite on days when wind and solar don’t produce enough.

Beginning to end solution - the idea that solar and wind can provide sustainable cheap power is ludicrous especially considering the coming cold climate. More people die from cold than from heat.

Smart puppy

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My new puppy - Bear - just discovered the dog door and is outside in the fenced yard taking a dump. Talk about being a quick learner!

The door goes from the house into the garage and from the garage outside to a 15X20 foot chain-link pen.

Those militant Presbyterians

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An update on the Somali moke who attacked a bunch of people - from Yahoo / Reuters:

Ohio State attacker may have self-radicalized, officials say
A Somali immigrant who injured 11 people at Ohio State University in a vehicle and stabbing attack before he was shot dead may have followed the same path to self-radicalization as militants in a number of "lone wolf" attacks, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the attack.

Just wonderful... Trump is on to something when he wants to curtail illegal immigration and to carefull vet those people we let in.

The workers paradise of Detroit

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From Detroit's FOX News affiliate WJBK:

State of Michigan tells Detroit students 'Literacy is not a right'
Attorneys for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder are asking a judge to toss out a lawsuit against the state of Michigan filed by students in the Detroit school system and claim that literacy is not a legal right in the state of Michigan.

Seven children filed the lawsuit in September, saying decades of state disinvestment and deliberate indifference to Detroit's schools have denied them access to literacy.

The plaintiffs say the schools have deplorable building conditions, lack of books, classrooms without teachers, insufficient desks, buildings plagued by vermin, unsafe facilities and extreme temperatures.

The Michigan Attorney General asked a federal judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit arguing that Detroit schools are obligated to ensure that kids learn how to read and write. The state's motion to dismiss the lawsuit says: "there is no fundamental right to literacy".

Detroit last enjoyed a Republican mayor in 1962 - Louis Miriani. The city has been under Democrat rule since then - 54 years of decline.

Tip of the hat to Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.

Back from coffee and to work

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Finishing off the new computer - got all the software installed. Migrating from the installed 256GB to a 1TB solid state drive this afternoon and adding a couple of 3TB rotary drives for storage and backup. The soundbar is working fantastically - much better audio and only one thing on the desk instead of the two speakers and a bunch of wires/controller.

Got the dogs fed - time for a coffee break

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Working at home today on some projects. Heading out for coffee and checking the store and the post office.

The Internet Archive

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The Internet Archive is a wonderful website - they go out and make copies of all the websites that they can find and archive them for future generations to view. Now they are spinning off a copy of themselves. From The Verge:

The Internet Archive is building a Canadian copy to protect itself from Trump
The Internet Archive, a digital library nonprofit that preserves billions of webpages for the historical record, is building a backup archive in Canada after the election of Donald Trump. Today, it began collecting donations for the Internet Archive of Canada, intended to create a copy of the archive outside the United States.

“On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change,” writes founder Brewster Kahle. “It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a web that may face greater restrictions. It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.”

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive is comprised of several different preservation efforts, spanning nearly every medium. As of 2012, the entire archive held 10 petabytes of data; for reference, Facebook’s entire photo and video collection totaled 100 petabytes around the same time. Alongside films and books, the archive holds thousands of early software programs and video games that can be emulated on modern systems. It’s particularly known for the Wayback Machine, which continuously crawls the web to archive pages over the course of decades.

Spinning off a mirror is a great thing but I find it odd that they would use Trump's election as a cause. I would be much more concerned with revisionist history and tampering with data under a Clinton administration then under a Trump administration. Donald Trump may be a crude businessman but you do not get to where he is by being unethical - one whiff of taint and you are done. Clinton reeks of taint.

Some nice local news

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Our area has a bit of a dark side in that there are a lot of low-income people living out here and there are very few jobs in the community. Drug use is high, mailbox theft is so endemic that everyone uses a post office box. One local moke just got busted - from the Bellingham Herald Jail Report:

Oleg Grigoryevich Fedchuk, booked by the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office and the Sumas Police Department for possession of a stolen vehicle, first-degree taking motor vehicle without permission, first-degree possession of stolen property, resisting arrest, first-degree trafficking, third-degree malicious mischief, and failure to appear on charges of fourth-degree assault and third-degree theft.

He had been busted about two years ago but got off with a minimal sentence because there was not much physical evidence connecting him to his crimes - he used other people to relocate stolen goods and he was only caught because he was using a stolen laptop with a lo/jack program installed.

Now it looks like he will be spending some quality time in Con College

Newspaper endorsements - a closer look

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Don Surber is an ex-newspaperman and knows the business inside and out. He writes this today: Deplorable Don Surber:

President Trump's election shows the value of newspaper endorsements
The newspapers of America have spoken: 243 endorsed Hillary, 20 endorsed Trump, 9 endorsed Gary Johnson, and 1 endorsed Evan McMullin.

Nothing quite says we-hate-our-readers like telling them to vote for someone they refuse to vote for.

You know how many votes Evan McMullin got in the state where the newspaper endorsed him? None, because West Virginia does not count unregistered write-in votes. Nothing quite says out-of-touch-with-reality like endorsing a candidate whose votes won't count.

What is the point of having newspaper endorsements if all you are doing is pissing off your readers? People in thirty states preferred him over her. It wasn't even close.

Don quotes from a couple of these newspapers and offers this:

Newspaper circulations have fallen and they cannot get up. They blame the Internet, but the fact is the social justice warriors in management killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Newspapers survived radio and television. They should have survived the Internet, but the rock bed of newspaper subscribers are middle-class families who tend to be conservative, while even nominally conservative newspapers are run by social justice warriors. They want to save the world.

Word...

Japan and Oil

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Some curious business - from industry magazine Oil Price:

Japan Is Aggressively Buying Up Oil And Gas Around The World
This coming year could be a surprisingly exciting time for oil and gas developers.

Yes, energy prices are depressed right now. But not everyone sees that as a negative. In fact, private equity funds are still raising record amounts of capital for energy investments — with managers and investors alike seeing the current downturn as a prime time to pick up good assets for cheap.

Most of that PE money is earmarked for U.S. shale. But this week’s announcements from Indonesia state oil firm Pertamina, and Japanese government arm Jogmec, show that the spending spree may now be extending to global oil and gas assets.

Pertamina had $700 million this year for acquisitions — and will likely have billions for the coming year. Jogmec is even more flush with cash — having arranged financial backing totaling $5.2 billion yearly for oil and gas M&A.

Much more at the site - the Japanese government through Jogmec is also doing a lot of surveying for future development in Africa and the Americas. They are scaling back on nuclear power. Wonder what their thinking is. $5.2 Billion is a large number for any economy.

About that climate change

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Readers will know that I feel the numbers on Global Warming simply do not add up and that we are headed for a period of cooling. Here is another brick in the wall from the London Daily Mail:

The 'dead sun': Stunning Nasa video reveals barren solar surface with lowest level of activity since 2011
The face of the sun was nearly spotless this month as our star marches toward solar minimum, hitting its lowest activity level since 2011.

Images captured by Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory from Nov 14-18 reveal just a handful of barely-visible spots on the surface of the sun, which is otherwise as blank as a cue ball.

The sun follows a pendulum-like pattern of activity over roughly an 11-year period, and while scientists say this behaviour is not unusual, some have warned the current trend could send Earth into a ‘mini ice age.’

Some more:

In late June, it was revealed that the sun had entered the quietest period for more than a century.

Some more:

During Solar Minimum, the opposite occurs. Solar flares are almost non-existent while whole weeks go by without a single, tiny sunspot to break the monotony of the blank sun. This is what we are experiencing now.

The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years.

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.

It caused London's River Thames to freeze over, and 'frost fairs' became popular.

This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the 'Little Ice Age' when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.

Stock up on firewood. It is going to be a cold 30-50 years.

When you can't make them see the light...

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...make them feel the heat. Said by the Great Ronald Reagan of course. It seems that some of the Congressional Democrats are in tenuous positions and are planning to work with Donald Trump in order to bolster their appeal back home. From The Hill:

Vulnerable Dems ready to work with Trump
Vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018 are already identifying areas where they’re willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump and Republican colleagues.

North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) is ready to work with Republicans on legislation to invest in “clean coal” technologies.

More broadly, she says she’s willing to work across the aisle on regulatory reform.

“My priority is standing up for North Dakota, not party politics. The reason I’m in the U.S. Senate is to work with Republicans and Democrats to get things done,” she told The Hill in a statement.

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) is ready to work with the GOP and the Trump administration on military mental healthcare issues, curbing the exodus of U.S. jobs to foreign countries and combating the opioid epidemic.

“My responsibility to Hoosiers is to support the best ideas, regardless of whether the idea comes from a Republican or Democrat,” he said in a statement.

Quite the far cry from even a few months ago. Back then it was toeing the party line or else. Fun to see just how self-serving and venal these people can be when it comes to political power.

Interesting volte-face from German Chancellor Angela Merkel - from Lonndon's Daily Express:

Regretting something, Angela? Germany's Merkel announces plan to deport 100,000 migrants
The beleaguered Chancellor said authorities would significantly step up the rate of forced returns as she battles to arrest an alarming slump in her popularity which has fuelled a surge in support for the far-right.

Mrs Merkel, whose decision to roll out the red carpet to migrants from across Africa and the Middle East spectacularly backfired, has taken an increasingly tough tone on immigration in recent months.

And in her toughest rhetoric yet the German leader told MPs from her party this week: ”The most important thing in the coming months is repatriation, repatriation and once more, repatriation.”

The stance marks an astonishing U-turn from the once pro-refugee Chancellor, who has been widely pilloried by critics at home and abroad for her decision to throw open Germany’s borders to millions of migrants.

A bit more:

Her rhetoric this week is a far cry from the now infamous rallying cry of Wir Schaffen Das - ‘we can do this’ - which the beleaguered leader has now dropped after issuing a statement verging on an apology. 

The Express also has a wonderful 30 second video by one of my favorite English politicians - Nigel Farage. Unfortunately, it auto-plays so I am not embedding it here. Go to the site and see what a real leader looks like. Daniel Hannan is another of my favorites. Thank God that Trump is good friends with both of them - it will be good to have the Churchill statue returned to the Oval Office.

Well that was a bust

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Got a lot taken care of in town but the Craigslist deal was just a little too sketchy. I refuse to buy stolen stuff - too much karma goes along with it and the seller was not knowledgeable about what he was selling.

Had dinner in town (a Thai place close to the sale) and just sitting down to the computer.

Bought some speakers for the new media computer yesterday but didn't install them yet. Was in Costco and looked at some of the television sound bars and realized that for what I spent on the speakers, I could buy a cheap soundbar with subwoofer and have much better sound quality. They have an Aux input so bringing the sound in from the computer is a no-brainer. I am using a largish monitor so the unit I got will fit perfectly underneath. I never unboxed the loudspeakers so they will be returned next time I am in town.

Grace stayed at home and Bear came with - the two of them are rumbling through the house and yard - got a door open for a while. Time to get the dog food out - I have a lot of left-over gravy from Thanksgiving dinner and they love a bit of that mixed in with their food.

More in 45 minutes or so. Feed the pups and unpack the truck.

Heh - Stein clueless

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From the Washington Examiner:

Pennsylvania State Department says Stein missed recount deadline
Jill Stein has everything she needs to launch a presidential recount. She's got the cash, the grassroots fervor and the spotlight of an adoring media. But there's one thing she needs to overturn Trump's victory: a calendar.

Stein missed Pennsylvania's deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount. That blown deadline is a huge blow for Democrats who have pinned their hopes on recounts in the Keystone State, Michigan and Wisconsin.

"According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday, "the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Monday, Nov. 21."

Allied with Clinton's camp, Stein can still mount a legal challenge. While the chances of litigation are uncertain, the vote tally is clear. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania, a feat not accomplished by a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1988.

This is the problem with living inside a bubble - you miss the obvious data. Perfect metaphor for this whole election cycle.

Our global cooling

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A refreshing step away from the chattering political hype at the London Daily Mail:

Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions
Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end.

The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Nino – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.

And a bit more:

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Others have argued that the records were caused by El Nino, a complex natural phenomenon that takes place every few years, and has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions by humans.

The new fall in temperatures suggests they were right.

That would be Gavin Schmidt who is head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies - I wrote about GISS in the last half of this post: Drinking a glass of the finest wine - renewable energy. This is the same GISS that President Trump said that he will defund when he is inaugurated to office.

About those refugees

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Sure they will fit right in to our society - from NBC News:

Suspect Dead, 9 in Hospital After Ohio State Car-and-Knife Attack
An Ohio State University student plowed a car into a campus crowd, then jumped out and started stabbing people with a butcher knife before being shot dead by police Monday morning, officials said.

Nine people were taken to hospitals after the ambush, and one was in critical condition. The incident was initially reported as an "active shooter" situation, but the suspect did not shoot anyone.

And the identity of the moke?

Law enforcement officials told NBC News the suspect's name is Abdul Artan, an 18-year-old student at the university. He was a Somali refugee who left his homeland with his family in 2007, lived in Pakistan and then came to the United States in 2014 as a legal permanent resident of the United States, officials said.

Another terrorist act by those darned Presbyterians.

Nothing much today - coffee and then town

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Heading out for coffee and then into town for some banking and to check out a potential Craigslist deal.

Back in a few hours.

A wonderful rant from one of my favorite bloggers - Paul Dammit at Hawspiper:

Forever Yours, Literally Hitler
It's been a fun week on the internuts. I'm shedding 'friends' on fecesbook like a dog's fur in springtime what with my shitposting and all. It's been a great distraction in my offtime here as I wind down another tour at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/hostel for indigent mariners.

Just going to excerpt a few lines here - go and read the whole thing. It is wonderful.

It took a little while for someone to summon Hitler at the Republican du jour, but once it got started, Hitler has been one busy dead asshole.

And:

In the early days, before Literally Hitler, back when mankind's thinking set were not a bunch of under-educated women who studied Women's Studies and Marx, but have never read Euclid and the fathers of Western philosophy, summoning Hitler was done specifically and consciously as a shocking act, rather than so much shit-flinging, which is where it stands today.

And (Paul is a merchant mariner and he works onboard a ship (HQ)):

I can hear our generators running in my stateroom here at the HQ. I can't actually HEAR them, unless I focus on it, though. It's not that they're quiet. They're not really. I'm just habituated to the white noise. When I go home, the silence of a house with no generator running is shockingly silent, and the ringing in my ears, fish jumping in my pond, and occasional sound of the air handler kicking on are startling. It's the same with cries of fascism and Literally Hitler.

One more bit:

So, despite the fact that after 50+ years of flinging the same old feces during their daily 2-minutes' hate, the shit no longer sticks, leftists are still dropping trou in search of ammo for the next handful, regardless of results. I interpret this to mean that there is no feedback loop, and even though summoning Hitler no longer works as anything but a reverse virtue-signal, allowing the rest of us to tune out the noise-maker preemptively, it's not going to stop. Every election will be the final chance to stop Hitler. Again.

Like I said, an epic rant and worth reading in full.

Arguing with a Democrat - a meme

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Such a wonderful culture

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We need to bring them into the United States and let them suck at the welfare teat - I am sure they will assimilate nicely into our own culture. From Russia Today:

Moroccan TV show giving women tips on hiding domestic violence bruises provokes outrage
A daytime show on Moroccan television has sparked an online petition after staging a detailed live tutorial that showed women at home how to cover up facial bruises from domestic violence.

According to international statistics, Morocco is home to some of the world’s most disempowered women.

Sabihayat is a studio lifestyle on the popular majority state-owned 2M channel that airs a regular makeup segment, but the one that appeared on November 23 was unusual, despite presenters maintaining their usual chirpy tone.

In the chair sat a woman who bore lurid purple “bruises” on her face. Over the next six minutes, the victim was covered up with foundation and powder brushes, until it was completely invisible.

The controversial segment could have passed into oblivion if the channel had not decided to post it onto its social media feed, where it immediately went viral, sparking indignant shares, and a petition on Change.org that has been signed by more than 1,500 people.

If you want to remain in the ninth century, fine. Just do it in your own nation and do not try to export this atrocity to the civilized world. What else do they do? (here, here and here)

What are you expecting from the worshipers of a false prophet?

Life under the Trump administration

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Rolling Stone seems to be jumping the gun by a few months - from Doug Powers writing at Michelle Malkin's website:

Shh, nobody tell Rolling Stone that Trump’s not even president yet
Lets not inform Rolling Stone that Obama’s the president for nearly two more months, because they seem to be enjoying life in their alternate reality:

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Hey Rolling Stone, this is still “life under Obama,” but that’s one of the reasons there’s about to be “life under Trump.” However, the ignoring of basic facts is what we’ve all come to expect from Rolling Stone. Maybe they’re angling for a Christmas gift basket from Obama before he leaves office.

One of the comments is spot on:

How convenient that everything that happened the first 7 yrs and 10 months is GWB's fault and the last two months of his term is Trump's fault. Obama is like the kid who always got away with everything. Remembering kids like those, we all grew up to despise them. I wish he would go away but he won't as President Trump takes down his pathetic legacy and he whines ad infinitum.

So true...

The current regime - a three-fer

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Corrupt and venal as ever - these three posts caught my eye:

FirstFederal agencies push 'midnight' rule-making flurry under Obama

Trying to ram as much socalist crap through as possible.

SecondClinton campaign will participate in Wisconsin recount, with an eye on ‘outside interference,’ lawyer says

ThirdTrump assails recount push, claims millions voted illegally

Two million illegals voted - these votes should be found and disqualified. Jill Stein is using the recount to fund-raise for her party. She first asked for donations up to $2.5 million to fund a recount, now she is up to $7 million with zero accountability as to how the money will be spent.

Went into town again today for some stuff for the new computer. Shaping up nicely and blazingly fast.

Been raining pretty constantly throughout the day, showing 1.5" of precip at the house over the last 24 hours. Mt. Baker had 9" of fresh snow today with a base of 87" at Pan Dome.

Had a big lunch so skipping dinner - maybe a snack later after the meeting and net.

Bear is starting to come to his name - I start with a double-clap to catch their attention and work with that until they start to realize that what I am saying has actual meaning. For him to be at this point at three months is really good.

From the Boston Herald:

Newt: ‘Under no circumstance’ should Obama, Biden go to Castro’s funeral
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich asserted yesterday that “under no circumstance” should President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, or Secretary of State John F. Kerry attend Fidel Castro’s funeral and admonished anyone who was honoring the death of former Cuban president.

“Under no circumstance should President Obama or VP Biden or Secstate Kerry go to Cuba for Castro’s funeral,” Gingrich, who serves as an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, wrote in a Twitter post, adding, “He was a tyrant.”

In an earlier tweet, Gingrich labeled Castro a “relentless dictator who imprisoned thousands (and) killed and tortured many Cubans” and went on to say, “the outpouring of praise for Fidel Castro is tragic ... Build a list of those praising Castro and you will have a list of leftists who reject reality for an ideological fantasy.”

And meanwhile in Miami - from Yahoo / Agence France Presse:

Miami parties a second night over Fidel Castro's death
Neither rain nor fatigue drained the energy of Cuban-Americans in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood who spent a second night celebrating the death of their archenemy Fidel Castro.

The dancing and singing continued into early Sunday, well after crowds first spilled into the streets to celebrate as news of the 90-year-old revolutionary leader's death in Cuba was announced on Friday.

Some two million Cubans live in the United States, nearly 70 percent of them in Florida. The vast majority of those live in Miami.

The revelry went on all day Saturday and continued into the night.

"I'm not tired of celebrating because I can't believe it, I never thought that this moment would arrive," said a woman named Delsy who celebrated with a large crowd outside the Cafe Versailles, where exiles met for decades to plot the overthrow of the Castro regime.

Among the cacophony of car horns, drums, loud music and singing, a chant rang out: "Fidel, you tyrant, take your brother too!"

Good riddance to evil scum. And to all of those braqin-dead ninnies who venerate him.

I got nothing...

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It is almost too quiet out there on the internet - things are so chill it is downright spooky.

Spent tonight loading some more software on the new media machine and prepping to transfer the image and video files from several sources.

See what tomorrow will bring - ham radio network and a water board meeting.

Road trip in a year or two - Hanford

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I knew that they were developing this into a National Historical Park. From The Seattle Times:

Hanford’s Manhattan Project park celebrates first year
The Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Hanford is a year old and proving to be quite popular.

About 13,000 people visited the park in its first year, despite its relatively remote location in southeastern Washington, far from the state’s major population centers.

“It’s a great number,” said Kris Kirby, who recently was named superintendent of the historical park.

She’s based in Denver and is splitting her time among the park’s three sites: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Los Alamos, N.M. Each community played a key role in developing the world’s first atomic bombs during World War II.

I am fascinated by nuclear energy - had the great pleasure of travelling with Lulu to visit Trinity Site two years ago. The main event at this park?

The centerpiece of the Hanford park is the B Reactor, the world’s first full-sized nuclear reactor. It was hurriedly built by the Manhattan Project in the darkest days of the war as the United States rushed to beat Nazi Germany in developing the first atomic bomb.

Tours?

Park tours are offered spring through fall, and Kirby wants to focus on increasing the number of people who take them.

Sounds like this new park is in good hands - looking forward to visiting in a year or two. One place I love that I have not been to in well over ten years is the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport, WA. Maybe we can do a trip out there sometime this spring...

Did a quick run into town today for some stuff - had dinner at the Roadhouse and the food was a lot better than it had been before. Looks like someone noticed the slide in quality and applied correction.

Had Bear in the truck with me all day and he was perfect - no accidents and he held it until such time as I took him out for a walk. Turning into a great little dog. There were a lot of people at morning coffee today so he got plenty of attention and socializing.

The pups are munching on dinner (prime rib scraps too!) Unpack the truck and see what is on the internet tonight.

Rain rain rain

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Got almost one inch in 24 hours. Mt. Baker has 9" of new snow and some mixed snow/rain but temps are supposed to drop later today with significant snow accumulation tonight and tomorrow. Off to a great start!

Heading out for coffee - Lulu is in town for a few days so it is just me, Bear, Grace and the critters.

And the good news is Fidel Castro is still dead. I wonder if he is enjoying Hell - he has a couple cronies to hang out with; Che, Mao, Chavez, Ho, Lenin and Stalin.

About time - the New York Times gives his corpse a loving tongue-bath:

Fidel Castro, Cuban Revolutionary Who Defied U.S., Dies at 90
Mr. Castro brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere, bedeviled 11 American presidents and briefly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Like this is a good thing... More:

Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died Friday. He was 90.

His death was announced by Cuban state television.

In declining health for several years, Mr. Castro had orchestrated what he hoped would be the continuation of his Communist revolution, stepping aside in 2006 when he was felled by a serious illness. He provisionally ceded much of his power to his younger brother Raúl, now 85, and two years later formally resigned as president. Raúl Castro, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro from the earliest days of the insurrection and remained minister of defense and his brother’s closest confidant, has ruled Cuba since then, although he has told the Cuban people he intends to resign in 2018.

Why is being revolutionary a good thing? Honest question. Look at the citizens of Cuba and you see grinding poverty while the Castro family is worth well over 900 million USD (here, here, here, here). What are they doing for their citizens - why do so many of them risk life and limb to come here. Why is nobody trying to emigrate to Cuba.

Sure, Batista was corrupt but Castro was also corrupt. Batista encouraged the Miami mobsters to build in Havana during prohibition and everyone made lots of money - Batista, mobsters and citizens. Castro wanted in on this but was not able to get traction until he allied himself with the Soviets who bankrolled his takeover of Cuba. Having a KGB outpost near the USA was too tempting. Castro was just a полезные дураки. A useful fool. In 10 years, the Castro family name will be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Do you really want to see the end-game of socialism? Go here and read: New York Times

One of my more favorite modern composers - from FACT Magazine:

Pauline Oliveros, experimental composer and pioneer of “deep listening”, dies aged 84
Pauline Oliveros, the composer whose concept of “deep listening” had a profound impact on the trajectory of 20th century experimental music, has died aged 84.

The news was reported by flutist Claire Chase on Instagram and confirmed by friends of the composer on her Facebook page.

As a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, Oliveros collaborated with Terry Riley, playing in the first performance of Riley’s ‘In C’, and modular synthesist Morton Subotnick. She later became director of the Center, where she developed a philosophy of listening as a ritual and healing process, an approach she described through her coinage “deep listening”. Her Deep Listening Band specialized in performing recording in resonant or reverberant spaces, and her touchstone album Deep Listening was recorded in 1989 in a disused cistern 14 feet beneath the ground.

Her practice emphasized the difference between hearing and listening, as she told an interviewer in 2003. “In hearing, the ears take in all the sound waves and particles and deliver them to the audio cortex where the listening takes place. We cannot turn off our ears–the ears are always taking in sound information–but we can turn off our listening. I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you’re listening, is how you develop a culture and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture.”

The cistern in question lies about three hours to the Southwest at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA: Dan Harpole Cistern

Oliveros played in Seattle frequently when I first moved there - fascinating musician. Her website: Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Institute.

The adult in the room

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New cartoon from Ben Garrison:

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News you can use

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The boffins at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute took an old flight simulator and built a tool to look at footwear and ice. The floor is a layer of ice and the hydraulic support allows it to be tilted to any angle. Most supposed "snow boots" failed at only a few degrees of tilt. Most boots failed at 7° which is the slop of the cutouts in sidewalks to accomodate wheelchairs.

Check out by brand and model at Rate My Treads. I found out about this site from a facebook video that has gone viral so the website is down a lot ( the server is throwing a 503 error).

From the Beeb:

Tokyo sees first November snow in 54 years
Tokyo is experiencing its first November snowfall in 54 years.

Residents of the Japanese capital were taken by surprise, as the temperatures around this time of the year usually range from 10C to 17C.

A bit more:

Tokyo last saw November snow in 1962, though in that year it did not accumulate on the ground.

The current snowfall marks the first time fallen snow has been seen on the ground in Tokyo in November since records started to be taken in 1875.

All indications point to a period of cooling. Solar output is declining, sunspot numbers are down. Warming would be a boon as more people die from cold than from heat.

From the US Naval Institute News:

USS Zumwalt Sidelined in Panama Following New Engineering Casualty
USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is pier side following an engineering casualty the ship suffered transiting the Panama Canal, U.S. Navy officials told USNI News on Monday.

The guided missile destroyer will undergo repairs at a former U.S. naval station until its fit to complete its journey to Naval Station San Diego, Calif., U.S. 3rd Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry told USNI News.

The ship was in the midst of a southbound transit through the canal when it suffered the casualty, Under orders from U.S. 3rd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Nora Tyson, Zumwalt is now stopped for repairs at the former U.S. Naval Station Rodman, he said.

The problem:

The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt’s port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, a defense official told USNI News on Tuesday. The AIMs are the massive electrical motors that are driven by the ship’s gas turbines and in turn electrically power the ship’s systems and drive the shafts.

Large amounts of electricity next to salt water is a recipie for problems. The previous problem came last September: Next-Generation Destroyer Zumwalt Sidelined for Repairs After Engineering Casualty

Good news from the mountain

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Talked with a couple people who were boarding on Mt. Baker this morning and conditions were wonderful - people are stoked for a good season.

Back home and botting the new computer to work on it some more. First real experience with Windows 10 and it is a lot smoother than the initial public release that was forced on us. Maybe time to convert the rest of my computers over (except for the music system which remains disconnected from the internet).

Out for coffee and then back home

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Check in at the store and then back home working on the new computer - adding a different (larger) solid-state drive as well as a couple of other drives for storage and swap space. Speed up photo and video editing but this puppy is already much faster than my old media computer. Good purchase.

Left-over turkey for dinner tonight.

Welcome to Trump Airlines Flight 1600

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Heh - swiped from Grouchy Old Cripple

Snowfall

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Got a nice dusting of snow on the slopes of Black Mountian - down to about 3,000 feet. More due tomorrow. Mt. Baker is open with a base of 74" at Pan Dome.

Down here we got about 0.6" of rain.

Winter is here!

Clueless ninny - climate change

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Whenever some braying ninny makes a grandstanding proclimation on climate change, they are always wrong. Never fails.

The braying ninny of the day award goes to Professor Guy McPherson from University of Arizona - from New Zealand's NewsHub:

Humans 'don't have 10 years' left thanks to climate change - scientist
There's no point trying to fight climate change - we'll all be dead in the next decade and there's nothing we can do to stop it, a visiting scientist claims.

Guy McPherson, a biology professor at the University of Arizona, says the human destruction of our own habitat is leading towards the world's sixth mass extinction.

Instead of fighting, he says we should just embrace it and live life while we can.

"It's locked down, it's been locked in for a long time - we're in the midst of our sixth mass extinction," he told Paul Henry on Thursday.

The guy is delusional.

About that election - a two-fer

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First - they just finished counting in Michigan - first Republican win since 1988. From the Michigan office of the Secretary of State:

2016 Presidential Election Results
The results below have been canvassed and certified by county canvassing boards, but are unofficial until certified by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers on Nov. 28. These are the numbers that will be presented to the state board for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump leads Clinton by 10,704 votes.

    • 2,279,543 Donald J. Trump, Republican
    • 2,268,839 Hillary Clinton, Democratic
    • 172,136 Gary Johnson, Libertarian
    • 51,463 Jill Stein, Green

Heh - if Johnson and Stein voters went for Hillary instead, she would have won. Your votes have consequences.

Second - from MSN / USA Today:

Teacher unions smarting after many members vote for Trump
Two weeks after Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election, the USA’s teachers unions are wondering what happened to their chosen candidate — and how so many of their members could have voted for her opponent.

Despite early and eager endorsements of Clinton by both unions, the nation’s school teachers and other school workers contributed substantially to Trump’s Nov. 8 win.

How substantially? About one in five American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members who cast a ballot voted for Trump, the union’s leader estimated. Among the larger National Education Association (NEA), which comprises more than 3 million members, more than one in three who voted did so for the billionaire developer, early data show.

The unions are losing their power - this is a wonderful thing to see. They very much had their place in the early 1900's but they have not evolved with the times.

Food coma - turkey

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The turkey turned out fantastic - almost 12 pounds including turkey breast, one leg, dressing and about a quart of gravy. $30 so $2.70 per pound - we will have turkey for days. Delicious - nice fresh sage in the dressing.

Spent the day installing apps on the new photography and video machine - that puppy is fast and also dead silent. Might get another one for my audio recording setup except it doesn't have an interface port that I need for my audio converters - still, I can add a card for that. That and the existing computer is only three years old and works just fine. Minor details.

From The Seattle Times:

Trump expected to pick billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as commerce chief
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to select as commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who became known as the “king of bankruptcy” for buying, restructuring and selling off steel-makers and other fading industrial companies, officials on the transition team said Thursday.

Makes a lot of sense - except for the 0.1% banksters, businesses are hurting and to get someone to turn things around will greatly help the economy. A bit more:

Ross, 78, an economic adviser to Trump’s campaign whose fortune is estimated by Forbes to be $2.9 billion, is aligned with Trump on trade. He says the United States must free itself from the “bondage” of “bad trade agreements,” and he has advocated threats of steep tariffs on Chinese goods. Ross, chairman of the private equity firm WL Ross & Co., has also pressed for cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, from 35 percent, and reducing taxes and regulations on energy companies.

And this is not an unknown precident:

If confirmed by the Senate, Ross would succeed another wealthy campaign donor at the helm of an agency charged with promoting U.S. commercial interests and trade around the world. Penny Pritzker, President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary, is a billionaire entrepreneur who was an early financial backer of Obama and is an heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune.

Unlike Trump and Ross, Pritzker has been a leading proponent of forging new free-trade agreements. One of her top priorities was the completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation accord that Trump has promised to scrap.

Works for me - nice to return to the Laffer Curve. Cut the tax rate and watch the tax revenue soar.

Those fires in Israel

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From The New York Times:

As Wildfires Rage, Israel Suggests Arson and Asks for Foreign Help
Parts of the port city of Haifa in northern Israel were ablaze on Thursday as wildfires raged through the country for a third day, devouring forests, damaging homes and prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Asked how long Haifa was likely to be battling the blazes, Mayor Yona Yahav told reporters, “This is a question that has to be referred to God.”

Israeli officials said the fires had been fanned by unusually strong winds and made worse by a dry atmosphere, but they also said they suspected that many of them had been caused by arson and negligence. Dozens of people have been slightly affected by smoke inhalation, but no serious injuries or fatalities have been reported.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, told Army Radio that the professional assessment was that almost half the fires were the result of arson.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attributed the fires to “natural and unnatural” causes and said that “any fire caused by arson or incitement to arson is terrorism in every sense of the word, and we will treat it as such.”

Arson is terrorism and the Israelis need to punch back twice as hard when confronting it. The so-called Palestinians (actually Hashamite Jordanians) do not consider Israel to be a valid state and have no desire for peace. A group of people brainwashed by a false prophet and corrupt leadership. I truly pity them for one day they will wake up and see the black cloud they have been living under.

News you can use - for time-nuts

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The precise determination of time is a somewhat arcane field - a field that I find very interesting. I am a time nut. A heads-up from The Register:

It's time: Patch Network Time Protocol before it loses track of time
The maintainers of the Network Time Protocol daemon (ntpd) have pushed out a patch for ten security vulnerabilities.

Leading the fixfest is a trap-crash turned up by Cisco's Matthew Van Gundy.

If ntpd is configured with the trap service enabled, a malformed packet causes a null pointer dereference and crash it.

Windows bug fixed in ntpd Version ntp-4.2.8p9 is triggered by an oversized UDP packet, and its discoverer, Magnus Stubman, has posted proof-of-concept code here.

CERT's full list of the vulnerabilities and fixes is here.

That is all - next up is the Leap Second on December 31st.

News from Israel - wildfires UPDATE

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Several updates at the bottom
More terrorism - this time by fire. From The Jerusalem Post:

As Israel burns, are we looking at a new form of eco-terrorism?
With hundreds of wildfires currently raging across Israel for a third consecutive day, many are concerned that this may be a new form of terrorism.

Israel Police estimate that over 200 fires have broken out throughout central and northern Israel since Wednesday and assessments by police have strengthened suspicions that many the fires were deliberately set, some suspected of being nationalistically motivated.

"since Wednesday" - that would be Wednesday, November 23rd. Today is Thursday, November 24th. More:

The wildfires have been cheered by many on social media, using the hashtag #اسراييل_تحترق or #IsraelBurns, many saying that this is divine retribution for the pending controversial law to limit loudspeakers for the Muslim call to prayer.

Last week Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said that “what the Israeli occupation state is doing at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as preventing the call to prayer in Jerusalem, is playing with fire. This created a fierce reaction in the Palestinian community and the whole of the Islamic nation.”

Israel is our only friend in the Middle East - she is the one outpost of Democracy in the entire riegon. For those who profess sympathies for the Palestinians, you need to read your history and see that the organizer of the current Palestinian nation is a KGB plant and that the current leader - Mahmoud Abbas- is also a Russian mole.

UPDATES:

Bias on display - The Washington Post

They put up an article grumbling about how Trump has only recieved two of the Presidential Daily Brefings since his election two weeks ago:

Trump turning away intelligence briefers since election win
President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month, a frequency that is notably lower — at least so far — than that of his predecessors, current and former U.S. officials said.

A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won.

And then, they turn around and mention this:

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election, officials said.

Pence is the politician, he understands the workings of government a lot better than Trump and since Pence is Trump's deputy, it makes sense for him to be the one recieving the information. Trump is too busy vetting and picking his team to be bothered with the day-to-day details. If there was something critical, I am sure that Pence has Trump's phone number.

Compare and contrast to this report written by Katie Pavlich on Sep 30, 2014 at Town Hall:

Good News: Obama Skips the Majority of His Intelligence Briefings
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Institute, President Obama skips 60 percent of his intelligence briefings. Breitbart breaks down the data:

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014.

The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.

This information comes shortly after Obama blamed the intelligence community for underestimating ISIS during an interview on 60 Minutes. That assertion prompted a visceral reaction from people inside the intelligence community, who have been warning the President about ISIS for years. A former official told The Daily Beast's Eli Lake over the weekend, "Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting."

Katie concludes with this: You can bet Obama would never miss 60 percent of his tee-times.

7.0 magnitude but only 10km deep - no word as to any Tsunami yet.

More information here: M7.0 - 149km SSW of Puerto El Triunfo, El Salvador

This is all the while Cat2 Hurricane Otto is passing through the same area.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

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Got a turkey breast ready to go in the oven courtesy of Costco, will be making home-made cranberry sauce. Nice quiet dinner for the two of us.

You can not make this stuff up - from Reuters:

Mexican cement maker ready to help Trump build border wall
A Mexican cement maker is ready to lend its services to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to build the wall he wants to erect on the southern border of the United States to curb immigration.

"We can't be choosy," Enrique Escalante, Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) said in an interview. "We're an important producer in that area and we have to respect our clients on both sides of the border."

A healthy business environment is good for everyone. The rising tide lifts all boats.

Our education system

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Leading off with a quote here:

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
--Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

From Seattle station KING-5:

Kids ask judge to hold Dept. of Ecology in contempt
A group of young people returned to King County Superior Court Tuesday to hold the Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) in contempt of court over clean air regulations.

Recently, ECY released a new Clean Air Rule under the direction of Gov. Jay Inslee, but the kids don't believe the Clean Air Rule stringent enough. They want additional regulation, saying ECY's current rule is based on "outdated science.”

"We are not here to appeal the legality of the clean air rule," said attorney Andrea Rodgers.

The teacher who put them up to this needs to spend the rest of their career cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors. They are not teaching their children how to think - they are only indoctrinating their kids with the politically correct meme du-jour.

From Costco - 375°F oven for 65 minutes and dinner was done. It was $3.99/pound so under $16 for four large servings plus some table scraps for the pups. The meatloaf was very lean beef - not a lot of fat puddled in the container.

Watched another two episodes of Person of Interest - about half-way through Season Three and the shows just keep getting better and better. They are strongly chronological so you do need to start from S1E1 to get the full story.

Hamilton on Hamilton the Musical

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Great post from Michael Ramirez:

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Instant karma - Starbucks

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Never forget, the internet is all-seeing and forever:

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From Task and Purpose:

‘Where Evil Resides’: Veterans ‘Deploy’ To Standing Rock To Engage The Enemy — The US Government
On Dec. 4, if everything goes according to plan, hundreds of veterans will muster at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. The mission: To stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
“Most civilians who’ve never served in a uniform are gutless worms who’ve never been in a fight in their life,” Wes Clark Jr. declares. “So if we don’t stop it, who will?”

Clark Jr. is one of the most vociferous opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a controversial 1,170-mile project that, if and when it is completed, will shuttle an estimated 470,000 barrels of crude oil every day from North Dakota to Illinois. “It’s immoral, and wrong, and dangerous to us all,” Clark Jr. adds.

He doesn’t fit the traditional tree-hugger mold. He’s not a hippie. Nor is he a member of the Lakota or Dakota tribes, the two Native American group known collectively as the Sioux. He’s a former Army officer and the organizer of an upcoming three-day deployment of U.S. military veterans to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in southern North Dakota, the site of an escalating months-long standoff between law enforcement-backed security contractors and activists that has so far resulted in multiple injuries, more than 500 arrests, and a United Nations investigation of potential human rights abuses.

According to an “operations order” for the planned engagement, posted to social media in mid-November, “First Americans have served in the Unites States Military, defending the soil of our homelands, at a greater percentage than any other group of Americans. There is no other people more deserving of veteran support.”

Good luck and Godspeed! They have a GoFundMe page here: Veterans for Standing Rock #NoDAPL

Obama has to know that this is happening and yet he still allows it to go on - probably one of his bestest buddies is behind the pipeline, Warren Buffett perhaps? A 0.1% bankster anyway.

It seems that Barry's last days are being spent making America as weak as he can. From Breitbart:

Obama Commutes More Drug Traffickers’ Sentences Amid Heroin Epidemic, Crime Spike
Outgoing President Obama has shortened the prison sentences of another 79 drug traffickers, many of whom were also convicted on weapons charges or had prior drug convictions.

The new sentencing commutations mean that Obama has shortened jail sentences for more than 1,000 criminals, many of whom are quickly released from prison.

Drug overdoses take tens of thousands of American lives: More than 47,000 people died drug-induced deaths in 2014, including 10,574 from heroin. The FBI in its annual report on crime statistics found the murder rate rose a shocking 10.8 percent in 2015, with violent crimes increasing 3.9 percent from the previous year.

Because of Obama’s last-minute commutations, a former armed cocaine dealer will be back on Virginia’s streets in March. So will a convicted armed Philadelphia crack cocaine dealer, and a jailed armed California meth dealer. Another former armed Texas drug trafficker sentenced to life in prison had his sentence commuted to 38.75 years. An armed Florida cocaine dealer had his life sentence reduced to 25 years.

This is disgusting - Obama is acting like a spoiled six-year old little boy who didn't get his toy.

About this winter - colder than usual

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An interesting theory - from Bloomberg:

Siberian Snow Theory Points to an Early and Cold Winter in U.S.
For those cursing the unseasonable November chill, there’s an ominous sign up north. It suggests this winter will be long and cold, according to one eminent scientist.

He’s the father of the “Siberian Snow Theory.” In a nutshell, he argues that the more snow covering the ground in northern Eurasia, the colder we can expect it down below. Sadly, Siberia is looking pretty white already.

Judah Cohen, a renowned MIT climatologist, has been working on this theory for 17 years, despite skepticism from some U.S. government weather experts. Cohen, who figures his theory has been right 75 percent of the time, spies all the makings of an early, cold winter.

“This year, we have had this very textbook situation,” Cohen said.

The first blast of Siberian-spurred cold could come in December this year, instead of the usual January, according to Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a unit of Verisk Analytics, which works with governments and financial-services and insurance companies.

While it isn’t certain where the frigid air will land -- North America, Asia or Europe -- Cohen is predicting cold will envelop more of the U.S. than government forecasters expect. Cold, rain and snow could extend from the upper Great Plains to Florida.

We will see - Mt. Baker is opening this Friday - earlier than usual. The fact that Cohen is director of seasonal forecasting indicates that he is on to something.

From the UK Guardian:

Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’
Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.

Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.

Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.

“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.

This is wonderful news - NASA has politicized climate science and has been rewarded by the Obama administration for this. Time to return to their core competencies. After all, NOAA was created to monitor and predict the weather - no need for another organization to have the same function.

A quiet day at home

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Heading out for coffee - taking Bear along to socialize him some more. He is turning into a really great dog.

Setting up the new computer today and tomorrow. Picked up a turkey breast at Costco so we will have that for dinner tomorrow.

More later...

That so-called 'dirty' coal - a gold mine

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There are a lot of valuable minerals in the residue of burning coal. Some of them are toxic to human health so the unregulated burning of coal on a large scale is not a good thing.

CAVEAT: I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA during the heyday of the steel mills and am really healthy - my Dad had to bring an extra shirt to work every day because his collar would be stained by lunchtime from the coal smoke in the air. He lived to be 94 years old. I am 66 and feel like a very strong 40.

That being said, there are two things to consider with coal.
First, we have a lot of it. More than most people can imagine. Several thousand years worth for just the known fields.
Second, we have the technology to use it without the impact it used to have. Mountains no longer need to be removed. Built into the mining contracts are the provisos that the mining company restore the land to what it used to be like. Sure, the countours will be different but the vegetation will be all native and in 20 years, it would take a trained geologist to tell that anything had ever happened to the site. Toxic runoff is a thing of the past. Using the stuff is now possible with stack scrubbers removing more than 99.9% of the contaminants.

Now it seems, some people in Russia are looking at the removed contaminants as another revenue stream after energy production. From Russia Today:

Modern alchemy: Russian scientists discover how to extract gold from coal
Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Far East branch say they are building a facility to make gold out of coal.

Although the science is no fairy tale, to the dismay of business owners, the process is not as productive as they might hope – burning a ton of coal yields one gram of gold, tops.

At present, the scientists are setting the bar even lower, expecting a yield of 0.5 grams, or 1,500 rubles, per ton.

“We burn a ton – we gain 1,500 rubles,” Oleg Ageev, CEO of Complex Innovative Technologies of the Amur Scientific Center, said in a press statement.

At current exchange rates, that is roughly $23 US dollars.

Not much but a good start - remember, this is the revenue after the cost of purification and extraction so it is not too shabby.

There are a lot of other valuable minerals in coal particulates - mercury, lead, uranium, monazite (Thorium ore) some precious metals (depending on the origin) - this is not a waste stream, this is a resource and revenue opportunity.

From the Washington Examiner:

DOJ fines Denver Sheriff Dept. for excluding noncitizens when hiring
The Denver Sheriff Department will accept a penalty from the Department of Justice after a federal probe found it wrongly made U.S. citizenship a job requirement during a recent hiring spree.

The sheriff's department — the biggest sheriff's office in Colorado — will pay a $10,000 fine after it required applications for deputy sheriff jobs to be U.S. citizens when hiring from the beginning of 2015 through March 2016. The department went on a hiring spree of 200 deputies as part of its ongoing reform.

The department will also have to go through old applications to find applicants who were eliminated because of their citizenship status and reconsider them for future jobs.

Denver is a sanctuary city after all. 95% of the illegals are just wanting a better life but the 5% who are career criminals need to be found and sent back. Not to mention the terrorists who are embedding themselves into the Mexican flood. We have no way to determine who these people are. To give them positions on a large police force is insane.

The mountain forecast

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Cliff Mass has some great news - from his website: Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Heavy Mountain Snows Ahead
There are going to be some happy skiers, snow shoe enthusiasts, and snow lovers this weekend, because quite a bit of snow is going to fall above 3000-3500 ft during the next week. A combination of a series of wet systems and temperatures just cold enough for mountain snows will result in several feet of fresh snow at higher elevations.

The infrared satellite image this morning looks promising. A modest frontal band, associated with a band of rain at lower levels, is now crossing the coast. But that is not what has gotten me excited...it is what is offshore: a broad region of instability (the mottled broken clouds) that is associated with cold air over warmer water. These kind of cold convective showers are the big snow makers of our region.

20161122-satellite.jpg

Fun times ahead - looks like a big snow season.

From the WA State Dept. of Transportation:

Chinook and Cayuse passes temporarily closing 10 a.m. Wednesday
MOUNT RAINIER – In advance of the forecasted storm in the mountains on Wednesday and Thursday, Chinook and Cayuse passes in Mount Rainier National Park will temporarily close at 10 a.m., Wednesday Nov. 23 as a precautionary measure. Crews will reevaluate conditions next week.

WSDOT will close Chinook Pass (elev. 5,430 feet) between Crystal Mountain Boulevard, about 12 miles northwest of the summit, and Morse Creek, five miles east of the summit. Cayuse Pass (elev. 4,675 feet) will close within Mount Rainier National Park from Crystal Mountain Boulevard to Stevens Canyon Road.

Fortunately, for those wanting to travel West to East, I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass is kept open except for the most dire of snowfalls.

From the New York Post:

Trump won’t pursue charges against Clinton
President-elect Donald Trump won’t subject Hillary Clinton to a criminal inquiry — instead, he’ll help her heal, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“I think when the president-elect who’s also the head of your party … tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content, to the members,” Kellyanne Conway told the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who first reported that the president-elect would not pursue his campaign pledge to “lock up” Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

Very good move on his part. If she tries anything after the election then put her in the slammer but it is good to just walk away from past indescressions. That family is political toast now anyway.

First, from Breitbart:

‘Hamilton’ Star Who Lectured Pence Under Fire for ‘Racist,’ ‘Sexist’ Tweets
Hamilton actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who lectured Vice President-elect Mike Pence Friday from the Broadway stage about fears of bigotry under a Trump presidency, is under intense fire for sexually suggestive tweets some social media users have called racist and sexist.

Second, from The London Daily Mail:

REVEALED: Number of Hamilton stars haven't voted in YEARS despite clash with vice president-elect Mike Pence over his political persuasions
Some members of the cast of Hamilton, who delivered a message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence about their fears of the new administration, have abstained from voting for years, records show.

There are no records available for this year, so it's unclear if the cast members voted in 2016, but years prior show many were absent on Election Day.

Do not complain about who got elected if you did not participate in the first place.

Off to town today

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Heading out for coffee and then into town for some banking and picking up the new computer. Got a shopping list of other stuff too. Back in a few hours.

Getting near the end of the chinese food - Costco had fresh turkey breasts in a pan with stuffing and gravy - pick up one of those for Thanksgiving day.

Since the elections have ended, so have postings from Wikileaks. There is a strong rumor that Julian Assange may have been murdered. People around him have been - shades of Arkancide. From Daisy Luther:

Is Julian Assange Still Alive?
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and author of The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire, still doesn’t have web access since his internet was cut off at the Ecuadoran Embassy on October 17th shortly after a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The US denies that Kerry had anything to do with the termination of Assange’s internet. At the time, I wrote:

Although it has been denied, Wikileaks tweeted that John Kerry asked the Ecuador government to switch off the internet in order to prevent any more damning evidence of why Hillary Clinton should not become president…

Ecuador said that the internet connection that Assange uses has been “temporarily disconnected” because the Wikileaks dumps were having a major effect on the upcoming presidential election. (source)

Which was kind of the point.

Milo Yiannopoulos put together this two-minute video which goes over the key points:

And it is official - winter has arrived

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From the Washington State Department of Transportation:

Avalanche risk closes SR 20 North Cascades Highway
BURLINGTON – The North Cascades Highway section of State Route 20 is now closed until next spring.

The Washington State Department of Transportation has been monitoring the road and the avalanche chutes above the highway. WSDOT maintenance and avalanche technicians temporarily closed the highway Friday, Nov. 18, due to weekend snow forecasts.

Conditions were re-evaluated today, Monday Nov. 21, and more avalanche chutes are full and not stable – especially near Liberty Bell Mountain area – causing crews to close the road for the season.

“While there hasn’t been a ton of snow on the road, it’s continued building at higher elevations in the chutes,” said Twisp Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker. “The potential avalanche risk makes reopening unsafe for our crews and drivers.”

It re-opens in Spring - a gorgeous stretch of road but treacherous in winter.

Trump's first day in office

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Not a bad list:

That's not rain I hear, it's snowflakes melting...

Two related posts - first:

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for this - from the New York Post:

Donald Trump’s media summit was a ‘f—ing firing squad’
Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.

“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.

“Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ ” the source said.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.

A second source confirmed the fireworks.

“The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said.

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.”

The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump Administration.

The post lists the people who attended - quite the 'A' list of media personalities. It also mentions this upcoming meeting:

Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, plans to meet with Trump Tuesday.

The Sulzberger meeting will be a good one too. Good that someone is finally standing up to their bias. Hold their feet to the fire.

And Second - from Kevin D. Williamson at National Review. Mr. Williamson is not a fan of Trump but he does like one thing, taking power away from Washington D.C. From National Review:

Trump Snubs D.C. as Millions Cheer
I do not agree with Donald Trump about much of anything. Early in the primary season, I wrote a little book titled “The Case against Trump.” I believe him to be morally unfit and intellectually unprepared for the office to which he has been elected. Which is why one of the most annoying of my tasks for the next four (one assumes!) years is going to be pointing out that while Trump may not be right about very much, his critics often are wrong.

And the heart of the matter:

Trump’s hesitation to set up housekeeping in our nation’s hideous capital is not causing klaxons of alarum because people are concerned about good government. A nation genuinely concerned about good government would not have entrusted its chief administrative post to Donald J. Trump, a frequently bankrupt casino operator and game-show host. Rather, this is about Trump’s implicit declaration — one shared by his enthusiasts — that Washington is not the most important American city, much less the center of the world, which is where Washingtonians often mistakenly believe themselves to be.

About that much we can agree. National Review has kept its headquarters in New York for much the same reason: Politics should not be the central activity in our lives, or even in our shared public life, and consequently the political capital should be subordinate to the financial and cultural capitals. (Also, I suspect that while William F. Buckley Jr. was one of the most persuasive men of his generation, he’d have had an impossible time convincing his wife to live in Washington, even if he had thought it necessary.) Washington may desire to dominate our lives, but that desire can and should be resisted.

Well said - a good way to drain the swamp is to remove the power and let things trickle out on their own. D.C. should be the place where legislators meet and a tourist destination - nothing more.

CRAP - Mag 6.9 off Namie, Japan

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Near Fukushima - link to the U.S. Geological Survey website for the event.

No word yet as to tsunami - the quake happened about two hours ago.

Bailing on turkey day

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We were planning on having the kids over for Thanksgiving but bailed on it - too much stuff to deal with.

Our timing was good - this just popped up in the local weather forecast:

A PAIR OF FRONTS WILL IMPACT WESTERN WASHINGTON OVER THE
THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY WEEKEND. THE FIRST FRONT IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN
CROSSING WESTERN WASHINGTON LATE WEDNESDAY NIGHT...HAVING AREA-
WIDE IMPACTS FOR MUCH OF THANKSGIVING DAY. IN THE WAKE OF THIS
FIRST FRONT...COLDER AIR WILL ENTER THE AREA WHICH WOULD ALLOW
SNOW LEVELS TO FALL TO AROUND 2500 FEET...RESULTING IN SNOWFALL
BEGINNING TO ACCUMULATE IN THE MOUNTAIN PASSES. UP TO 3 INCHES OF
SNOWFALL IS POSSIBLE DURING THE DAY THANKSGIVING DAY...WITH UP TO
AN ADDITIONAL 6 INCHES POSSIBLE THROUGH FRIDAY IN ADVANCE OF THE
SECOND FRONT. CURRENT FORECASTS SUGGEST THAT TOTAL SNOWFALL
AMOUNTS FOR THE ENTIRE HOLIDAY WEEKEND WILL RANGE FROM 10 TO 15
INCHES ARE POSSIBLE IN THE MOUNTAIN PASSES. THOSE CROSSING THE CASCADES
FOR THE HOLIDAY ARE ENCOURAGED TO ALLOW EXTRA TIME AND PREPARE
THEMSELVES AND THEIR VEHICLE PROPERLY FOR THESE CONDITIONS.

IN ADDITION...THESE FRONTS WILL BRING BREEZY TO WINDY
CONDITIONS AND MORE RAIN FOR THE LOWLANDS. WINDS AHEAD OF AND
ALONG THE FIRST FRONT ARE EXPECTED TO BE STRONGEST ALONG THE
COAST...IN THE SAN JUANS...AND PORTIONS OF WHATCOM AND SKAGIT
COUNTIES WITH SPEEDS 20 TO 35 MPH AND GUSTS TO 50 MPH. REMAINING
LOCATIONS IN WESTERN WASHINGTON WILL STILL SEE WIND SPEEDS RANGING
15 TO 30 MPH WITH POSSIBLE GUSTS UP TO 40 MPH. WHILE RAINFALL
AMOUNTS DURING THIS TIME FRAME ARE NOT EXPECTED TO REACH VALUES
UNCOMMON FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR...THE COMBINATION OF RAIN WITH THE
AFOREMENTIONED WINDS IN ADDITION TO THE INCREASE IN TRAVEL
ASSOCIATED WITH THE HOLIDAY WILL CREATE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MERIT
ADDITIONAL CAUTION. THE SECOND FRONT PASSING THROUGH THE AREA
FRIDAY WILL ALLOW FOR RAIN TO PERSIST INTO THE WEEKEND...ALTHOUGH
WIND SPEEDS ARE EXPECTED TO EASE SOME.

Heading into Costco tomorrow to pick up that computer and to get some other stuff done (paying bills and some banking).

Creating jobs - President Trump

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20161121-trumpjobs.jpg

A bit of sobering information - WIkiLeaks

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This message arrived as an image - here is the first part. Click in the image for a full-size version:

20161121-wiki.jpg

The original location of the image is here - still up as of this morning.

The rise of Trump

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Great analysis on what went wrong with the Democrat Party from American Thinker:

The High-water Mark of Progressivism
President Obama seems to think he can jawbone his “legacy” into permanency, despite the recent election. He says the Iran nuclear deal will endure. The Paris agreement will last. Regulations cannot and will not be rolled back. ObamaCare will retain its chief provisions.

But the political earthquake resulting in the election of Donald Trump is but an indicator of the tsunami of change that is about to happen. The truth of the matter is that the Obama administration saw the high-water mark of progressivism. Its overwhelming power has been broken.

Attempts to persuade the renegade American public and its new leaders back into the progressive fold will not cease, but they will be largely futile because Americans have made it clear they do not want progressivism to dictate domestic and foreign policy.

Why was there a revolution at the voting booth?

The revolution happened because Americans have seen the wrecking ball that is progressivism in action for the last eight years (and counting). The pendulum swung because citizens have watched as the leadership of the Democratic Party was gradually taken over by a bunch of fanatical extremists whose agenda was both morally and pragmatically repellent -- completely divorced from the realities of human existence.

I have repeatedly said that I would enthusiastically vote for another John F. Kennedy or Harry Truman if they were up for election. In Psychology, there is something called an Overton window - from InfoGalactic:

The Overton window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept. It is used by media pundits. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who in his description of his window claimed that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within the window, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. According to Overton's description, his window includes a range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.

The Democratic Party had been hijacked and the Overton Window was ratcheted too far for most people's liking.

The article is a good one and is worth visiting American Thinker to read in full.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Earthquakes: Reckoning With ‘The Big One’ in California—and It Just Got Bigger
For years, scientists believed the mighty San Andreas—the 800-mile-long fault running the length of California where the Pacific and North American plates meet—could only rupture in isolated sections.

But a 2014 study by federal, state and academic researchers showed that much of the fault could unzip all at once, unleashing a rare, singular catastrophe. Now, a firm has used that research to come up with a new analysis of the damage that could be caused by statewide break of the San Andreas.

The analysis, by CoreLogic Inc., a real-estate analytics firm in Irvine, Calif., lays out an alarming scenario of destruction.

The threat is rare but within the relm of possibility:

The damage to homes alone could total $289 billion, compared with a previous range of $137 billion on the southern portion of the fault and $161 billion in the north, according to the CoreLogic analysis.

Researchers say a statewide quake above 8.0 would likely hit the Golden State once at least every 2,500 years. “We are talking about very rare earthquakes here,” said Maiclaire Bolton, a seismologist and senior product manager for CoreLogic.

Well, they have been talking about suceeding from the Union. This would help things along.

Great article at The Daily Caller News Foundation:

Analysis: Enviro Groups Don’t Like It When You Check Their Math
A recent report by a prominent environmental group claims that energy efficiency measures have reduced American power bills, but a closer look at the data shows this may not be the case.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found states that did not invest in green energy projects and energy efficiency measures “are paying for it with both higher electricity bills and greater amounts of power-plant pollution emissions from fossil fuel-fired electricity generation.”

The report further claims states that invested heavily in green energy and efficiency measures have cut electricity rates or kept rates down, but a DCNF examination of NRDC’s data doesn’t support the group’s conclusion.

Statistical regressions run by TheDCNF using the same data found no statistically significant positive correlation between the number of pro-green energy polices in a state and falling power bills. In fact, statistical analysis determined that states with falling power bills tend to have very few policies supporting green energy and states with rising power bills had numerous policies.

Oops - pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Some numbers:

The top four states with the fastest rising power bills were Hawaii with a 44 percent rise, Connecticut with a 39 percent rise, Massachusetts with a 29 percent rise, and Rhode Island with a 28 percent rise. Washington D.C. had a 37 percent rise.

Each of those states has more pro-green energy subsidies or energy efficiency measures than the national average, according to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency. Democrats almost exclusively control the state governments in each of those states, and none of them voted Republican in the last five presidential elections.

The five states with the fastest falling power bills were Louisiana with a 14 percent fall, Illinois with a 12 percent fall, Arizona with a nine percent fall, Arkansas with a seven percent fall, and North Carolina with a four percent fall.

Other states with falling power bills included Maine, Iowa and Washington state. These states have fewer subsidies and energy efficiency measures than the average.

The cost of electricity goes into everything we buy - my store spends a couple hundred bucks each month just keeping stuff refrigerated and frozen.

Great turn of events from Breitbart News:

Clinton Foundation Donations Plummeted by 37 Percent
Donations to the Clinton Foundation tanked in 2015 amid allegations that Hillary Clinton used the billion-dollar charity to siphon seven-figure donations from foreign governments and corporations, who received favorable government actions while Clinton was Secretary of State.

The Clinton’s troubled charity received $108 million in donations in 2015, down from a $172 million haul in 2014, according to the organization’s tax records.

The Clinton’s seven-figure speech income collapsed, too, from $3.6 million in 2014 to $357,500 in 2015, the New York Post reports.

Good - let them earn their money the good old fashioned way - work for it. I wonder how long it will take Chelsea to burn through the remaining funds - she has excessive tastes and little talent.

A foreshadowing of the truth

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Saturday Night Live actually gets it right this time:

Great news for Mt. Baker

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From the Bellingham Herald:

Mt. Baker Ski Area could open by the end of the week
It’s been snowing in the North Cascades, and that’s good news for skiers, snowboarders and other winter sports enthusiasts as officials at the Mt. Baker Ski Area are optimistic they will be able to open before the end of the week.

Snow has been falling steadily at the upper elevations since last week, and more snowfall is forecast nearly daily through the weekend, according to meteorologists at the National Weather Service and forecasters at the Northwest Avalanche Center, both in Seattle.

Some 8 to 9 inches of snow was on the ground Sunday at Heather Meadows, and 2 feet of snow at Pan Dome, at the top of the chair lift, said Gwyn Howatt, the ski area’s executive vice president

Very good news - summer is our biggest season at the store but ski season follows a close second.

Bears in the woods

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From the BBC:

Political lesson for today

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Swipped from Knuckledraggin:

20161120-winning.jpg

Back from town - liking the new Costco

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It was very crowded as expected but I like the new layout - about 30% bigger. They now have a lot of pre-cooked food for dinners - mac & cheese, meatloaf, pot pies, etc... The gas station now carries diesel at about 30¢ /gallon cheaper than the cheapest places in town.

I had been looking at building a computer for photo and video editing and they have a special on a high-end gaming computer that looks really nice - high-end gaming systems require the same features that photo and video editing do - fast video, lots of memory and several disk drives. Checking prices online to see if this is actually the great deal that it looks like.

Picked up a bunch of chinese food for several dinners.

Heading into town today

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Running low on a couple of things - check out the new Costco while I am there.

Back in a few hours

Going to be a rough winter for France - they used to derive about 75% of their power through nuclear energy but as the plants have aged, they have not built new ones. They used to export electricity and now have to import. The joys of moving to alt.energy. From Reuters:

France could face winter power cuts, hit by nuclear dependence
France could impose power cuts this winter due to an electricity shortage, an unprecedented step in the wealthy nation which would expose the vulnerabilities of its dependence on nuclear power.

The warning was issued on Tuesday by grid operator RTE, which said power supply had been hit by the closure of around a third of the country's ageing nuclear reactors for safety checks. The country's regulator has ordered a review of the strength of crucial steel components after the discovery of manufacturing irregularities.

France relies on nuclear for three-quarters of its power, more than any other country. RTE said the amount of nuclear power available was at a record low for this time of year, around 10,000 megawatts lower than a year ago - equivalent to more than twice the consumption of Paris and Marseille combined.

Bad news on the conservation front:

Power supplies are likely to be most stretched in the first three weeks of December, RTE said. With about a third of French homes heated by electricity, the country is highly sensitive to cold snaps.

Emphasis mine - they could have offered mini-split heat pumps through the utility and saved a lot of money there. Too late now though. The safety checks are actually a very good thing:

The discovery last year of weak spots in the steel of the EPR reactor state-backed utility EDF is building in Flamanville in northwest France led nuclear regulator ASN to take a closer look at manufacturing procedures of state-owned reactor builder Areva.

In May, the ASN said the anomalies found in Flamanville had also been discovered in reactors being operated by EDF and ordered safety tests on 18 out of EDF's 58 reactors.

Unlike other nuclear countries such as the United States and China, which have used different reactor models and suppliers, all French reactors are pressurised water reactors made by the same manufacturer, a forerunner of Areva.

This standardisation allowed France to build reactors relatively quickly and cheaply, but also created the risk that a generic design flaw or manufacturing problem would affect many reactors and incapacitate a large part of the fleet. Green activists have warned of this possible scenario for years.

The Green activists do not know what the fsck they are talking about. The French did something that the US Navy does and it is the best way to go. Each USA and Chinese nuke plant is different. Sure, incorporating new technology is a good thing but when you have a proven design, it makes a lot of sense to duplicate that design. Henry Ford did this with the mass production of automobiles and made it so the common family could afford to buy a car. The economy of scale. With reactors, this is even better because if there is a problem at one plant with a certain pump's bearings, you isolate the problem, reproduce it, fix it and then go through and retrofit every other reactor with the same pump bearing upgrade. End of problem.

This so-called "generic design flaw" is a feature and not a bug.

Drones and Eagles

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A mining company in Australia is having some peoblems with their drones - the eagles do not like them. From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Wedge-tailed eagles do battle with mining giant's drones, knocking nine out of sky
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have become unlikely prey for wedge-tailed eagles in Western Australia's Goldfields, costing a mining giant more than $100,000 to replace its newest surveying tool.

Ten UAVs have been lost since South Africa's Gold Fields, the world's seventh-biggest gold producer, began operating the Trimble UX5 systems at its St Ives operations near Kambalda.

One crashed as a result of human error, while nine have been taken down by wedge-tailed eagles, which are known to have wingspans more than twice that of the 1-metre-wide UAVs.

The drones are about $20K each. Great video at the site.

Obama's 'Zero' Legacy

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A long and well written rant on Obama's legacy - difficult to excerpt so go and read the whole thing - follow the links too, this was well researched. The author voted for Obama three times - primary and each election.

Here is the link: Obama's 'Zero' Legacy

From The Daily Signal:

Why Jeff Sessions, ‘an Advocate for the Constitution,’ Has Conservatives So Excited
As attorney general, Jeff Sessions could go a long way toward reversing the politicization of the Justice Department that occurred under the Obama administration, Republican senators and conservative activists said Friday, after President-elect Donald Trump announced he is nominating the Alabama Republican senator for the nation’s top law enforcement job.

“Sen. Sessions’ solid understanding of the Constitution and firm commitment to the rule of law is exactly what the Justice Department needs,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “I have worked closely with Sen. Sessions on the Judiciary Committee over these past six years and I have every confidence that he will make a great attorney general for all Americans.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, commended the Sessions nomination and excoriated the Justice Department under the controversial leadership of Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Finally getting some adults in the room. Feels really good.

From Page Six - September 25, 2016:

Benjamin Netanyahu booed by audience at ‘Hamilton’
There was a revolutionary spirit both on the stage and in the audience at “Hamilton” on Saturday night.

Page Six is told that some in the crowd booed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he took his seat at the Broadway smash.

“The show started late because of his arrival — the heightened security slowed down seating,” said a theatergoer. “But he still entered and sat down before the lights went down, so everyone was focused on him. There was a lot of applause when he walked in, but definitely a few loud boos.”

And there is a call for a boycot of the show - from Variety:

Donald Trump Supporters Call for ‘Hamilton’ Boycott in Defense of Mike Pence
Supporters of Donald Trump and Mike Pence started the hashtag #BoycottHamilton to defend the vice president-elect who was booed while attending the Broadway show “Hamilton” Friday night, and addressed directly by the cast after the show.

“We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” said current cast-member Brandon Victor Dixon Friday night as the rest of the cast stood behind him. “But we hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of all of us.”

Trump demanded that the cast apologize in two tweets sent out Saturday morning: “Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!,” Trump wrote. “The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”

A boycott would be a petty thing to do - that is a tactic that a liberal would employ. We can do better.

The Internet of Things

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Manufacturers are putting web interfaces on everything - cameras, light switches, routers. Hackers are making malware to exploit this - here is one such example from The Register:

Surveillance camera compromised in 98 seconds
Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, on Friday documented his experience setting up a $55 JideTech security camera behind a Raspberry Pi router configured to isolate the camera from his home network.

According to Graham's series of Twitter posts, his camera was taken over by the Mirai botnet in just 98 seconds.

Mirai conducts a brute force password attack via telnet using 61 default credentials to gain access to the DVR software in video cameras and to other devices such as routers and CCTV cameras.

After the first stage of Mirai loads, "it then connects out to download the full virus," Graham said in a Twitter post. "Once it downloads that, it runs it and starts spewing out SYN packets at a high rate of speed, looking for new victims."

Learn how to set up a firewall or pay someone to do it for you. Change the default passwords on all your web-based devices.

A bit of a protest and an arrest

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Interesting story about radical islam and a college campus - from Oleg Atbashian of The People's Cube:

Why I was arrested & thrown in jail by @GeorgeMasonU police
As you may have heard, on November 4th I was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to jail for posting anti-terror stickers on George Mason University campus. I was charged with "class 6 felony for destruction of property," threatened with five years in prison, and released 14 hours later on $8,000 bail posted by my wife. The court date is now set for February 14th, 2017.

You can read the full description of how it happened in a number of news stories below. Now I'd like to explain why I did it.

George Mason University (GMU) ranks number three in the top 10 most anti-Semitic campuses, with very active, rabidly anti-Israel student groups, who thrive in the school's politically correct climate. The administrators' endorsement of pro-terror activism may be explained not only by their "progressive" ideology, but also by large donations from Islamist groups tied to terror finance - two factors that have been increasingly converting American universities into Marxist madrassas. For more background, see a well-researched article about this case by Kyle Shideler.

On the weekend of November 4th, GMU was hosting a two-day national conference held by the Hamas-affiliated hate group, Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP). In this regard, prominent author David Horowitz had addressed the GMU president with an open letter, recommending to conduct an immediate inquiry into the group's activities and remove their campus privileges and funding, in order to stop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students at George Mason. That letter remained unanswered.

While I'm not Jewish myself, it is self-evident that Jews have been the "canaries in a coal mine," always targeted first before the rest of us are killed and maimed by totalitarian forces, be it Nazism in the 20th century or Islamofascism in the 21st. Israel is as much a part of Western civilization as Europe and America are. When Jews are targeted, the rest of us eventually fall into the crosshairs as well, as has been proven by multiple terrorist attacks in Europe and America in recent years. Stopping Islamic terrorism, therefore, is not just a matter of someone's decency or solidarity with the Jews. We're past the point when that was anyone's moral choice; it's now a matter of everyone's self-preservation.

It's as simple as that.

A lot more at the site - amazing job the mainstream media is doing covering this story. NOT. Here are some links to sites that are covering it:

Stuff like this should have died out in the 1970's - it has been resurected by the marxist left.

Liberals - staying classy

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This is not how you do it - from the New York Post:

VP-elect Mike Pence booed at ‘Hamilton’
Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed Friday night at a performance of the Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

Pence was walking to his seat at the Richard Rodgers Theatre when a few scattered claps turned into a thundering chorus of boos.

The crowd continued to mock Pence throughout the performance, including during the song “Yorktown,” when Alexander Hamilton and Marquis de Lafayette sang “Immigrants, we get the job done.”

They high-fived each other as the audience cheered.

Brandon Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, addressed Pence after the curtain call, saying the diverse cast is “anxious” about his administration.

The guy goes out for a quiet evening of theater and gets singled out and heckled from the stage? Not cool at all. It is funny that they should highlight diversity so much - from the New York CBS affiliate:

Broadway Union Takes Issue With ‘Hamilton’ Casting Call For ‘Non-White’ Performers
The hottest show on Broadway has won praise for its groundbreaking casting of black and Latino performers, but now, “Hamilton” may have run afoul of the strict New York City Human Rights Law.

As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, the controversy was sparked by a casting notice posted by the producers of “Hamilton,” which specifically seeks “non-white” performers.

One critic said “Hamilton” takes a story that “valorizes dead white guys” and replaces it with black, Latino and multi-ethnic performers playing America’s founding fathers.

But as the blockbuster musical looks to expand to other cities, the casting notice with its call for “non-white” performers looks problematic to civil rights attorney Randolph McLaughlin.

“What if they put an ad out that said, ‘Whites only need apply?’” said McLaughlin, of the Newman Ferrara Law Firm. “Why, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians would be outraged.”

Of course, these people are living in a bubble of their own making and do not see the hypocrisy in their actions.

Back home again - lazy day

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Neither of us feels like doing anything useful. I'm going to putter in the garage for a little bit but that is it for my efforts today.

Making tacos from some leftover scraps for dinner tonight.

Got nothing this morning

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Nothing catches my eye this morning - heading out for coffee and stop in at the store for a while.

Was thinking of heading into town for the new Costco opening but it will be a zoo today - head in Monday; I have to go in then for some other stuff.

That Seattle shooting - Alrick Hollingsworth

Alrick Hollingsworth is the person of interest. From the Seattle Times:

Suspect identified in shooting that injured 5 in downtown Seattle
Seattle police have identified a suspect in the shooting last week that injured five people in downtown Seattle.

Alrick Hollingsworth Jr., 18, is being sought on a warrant. Police say he is 5-feet-5 and 160 pounds. He has been charged with five counts of first-degree assault, each with a firearms enhancement.

The shooting happened shortly before 7 p.m. Nov. 9 outside a 7-Eleven store on Third Avenue between Pike and Pine streets, near a major bus stop.

Witnesses said some people were arguing when the gunman began to walk away, and then turned around and fired into the crowd.

Mr. Hollingsworth has been in the news before - sometimes in a good way:

Youth Spotlight: Alrick Hollingsworth
Alrick Hollingsworth is an exceptional teen who has been involved with SYVPI since October, 2011. Recently, Alrick participated in World Vision’s Youth Empowerment Network. This program trains and equips community groups to develop youth leaders to promote transformation in their neighborhoods.

World Vision and the Washington State Legislative Youth Advisory Council invited Alrick and dozens of other students to participate in the annual Legislative Youth Action Day at the state Capitol. There they learned ways to influence legislation to help their communities, experienced government at work, and discussed specific pieces of legislation with their elected officials.

And here: Visit to state Capitol inspires youth to help transform their communities

But Mr. Hollingsworth needs to keep better control over his Facebook Page:

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And:

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Blaming the streets? Please... This dindu was in some good programs and he still screwed up.

Counting the days

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Fun times ahead - the Honey Badger

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Great allusion from Joel Pollak writing at Breitbart:

The Age of the Honey Badger Dawns
This time was different.
The mainstream media and the Democrats brought every weapon they had to the fight against Stephen K. Bannon — and, by extension, Donald Trump, and 61 million deplorables.

For the first 24 hours, they had total control of the debate, and near-total control after that. They defined Bannon, and Breitbart, as antisemites, white nationalists, neo-Nazis. Who could survive that?

And yet Trump did not waver, and the Republican Party did not bend, and the conservative media did not break.

This time, there were no betrayals — no political leaders who tried to help themselves by abandoning the victim of an entirely false and unjustified attack.

Even most of Bannon’s critics and rivals in the conservative media declined to condemn him.

They understood: these were lies. And they knew: if we yield now, they will never stop.

Joel cites some examples of this and concludes:

The GOP elephant — loud and mighty, but frightened by mice — has begun to learn from the honey badger.

The honey badger, you see, does not care. The honey badger will fight through venom, prey on predators.

Welcome to the age of the honey badger.

We. Never. Quit.

Wonderful - stand up to the bullies. Punch back twice as hard.

An interesting demographic

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From the Bellingham Herald:

Move over, booze: 2016 is a milestone year for sales of pot in state
Marijuana sales passed a quiet milestone in Washington state in the first three months of 2016.

For the first time, residents and visitors as a whole spent more on cannabis products than on hard alcohol, based on an analysis of purchase and tax records from two state agencies.

In the first quarter of 2016, people spent $19.1 million more on marijuana than spirits, which includes the cost of the products and its associated taxes. By the second quarter, that gap increased to $52.3 million. Those amounts include taxes levied by the state on those products. Spirits sales do not include wine and beer. Marijuana sales include all cannabis products but not paraphernalia.

Makes a lot of sense - pot is more of a social lubricant than hard spirits. I wonder what the numbers would be if we subtracted restaurant spirit sales. Also, pot sales have not canibilized spirit sales:

Ozgo said spirits retailers have not seen a drop in sales volume since marijuana was legalized.

“In fact, the growth rate is at or equal to the national average over the last couple of years,” in Washington, he said. In other states with legal weed, “really it’s been a non-issue.”

The pot store in our little hamlet is doing a great business - lots of traffic. Good people too.

The driving force behind global warming

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Captured in a nutshell by Josh:

20161118-money.jpg

From Vox:

The US government is finally telling people that homeopathy is a sham
Homeopathy is one of the most enduring forms of snake oil available to consumers; it has been duping people since 1814. But the United States government only recently decided to clamp down on these bogus treatments, with a new policy from the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC’s policy statement explains that the agency will now ask that the makers of homeopathic drugs present reliable scientific evidence for their health claims if they want to sell them to consumers on the US market.

Mustering that evidence is likely to be difficult given that homeopathy is a pseudoscience.

The main idea behind homeopathy is that an animal or plant extract that causes symptoms similar to the ones a person is suffering from can cure the symptoms. An example: Because onions make eyes tear and noses run, diluted onion extract is thought to cure cold and hay fever. So homeopathic remedies on the market are just extremely diluted versions of plant or animal extracts believed to bring relief to symptoms.

And the scientific community?

The scientific community is monolithically stacked against homeopathy. There have been many studies, books, and investigations demonstrating that this type of therapy is bogus. There's so much evidence on homeopathy's failure to help people, in fact, that some researchers have argued it’s time to stop investing government research funding on this alternative therapy in favor of putting it into treatments that might actually help people.

The most exhaustive review of the evidence for homeopathy yet came out of the Australian government. Its conclusion: The treatment doesn't work, and people should stop wasting their time, money, and potentially their health on what amounts to junk science.

Homeopathy is big business though so people still promote it. The problem here is that the manufacturer simply does not have to make a claim about their product and they can still sell it. A little re-labeling and it is business as usual.

They would be laughed out of the city - from Heatstreet:

‘Feminist’ Snow-Plowing System Brings Stockholm to a Standstill
A “feminist” strategy for clearing the roads of snow in Stockholm ended in failure as the city ground to a halt in recent days.

A new system, suggested by progressive politicians in the Swedish city, tore up tried and tested snow plow routes and diverted them to areas said to be used more by women.

But the inevitable consequence was that other spaces – like main roads – were clogged up for longer, and it became impossible to get around.

And the consequences:

Public transport failed, traffic piled up and injuries requiring a hospital visit reportedly spiked.

The disaster struck despite a $270,000 increase in this year’s snow removal budget meant to help the new system succeed.

The original idea:

The “gender equal” strategy came in last year after politicians in the Swedish Green Party argued that the old way of clearing major roads in central areas favours men, who are more likely to work in the city, and get there by car.

Instead, the plows were sent to clear out sidewalks and cycle paths – on the basis that women walk and bike often. They also focused on areas like kindergartens, which children and parents visit in the morning.

Unfortunately, the theory did little to save Stockholm when a bumper snowfall hit at the end of last week.

Indeed, almost a week later buses are still struggling to run, and some 1,700 public transport passengers are planning to sue.

This is what happens when you get a bunch of cloud-people - cultural elites who do not bother to mingle with the rest of us but who think that they alone are qualified to decide how the dirt people will live. After all, they went to all the right schools and mingle with all the right people.

Progressive politicians have gone on the defensive, with the MP who suggested it claiming that the snow plows hadn’t executed the “gender-equal” plan properly.

Classic liberal defense - the idea was fine, it was just not implemented correctly. We need to take that last effort and double it - then it might work.

The border wall

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From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Border Patrol union welcomes Trump's wall as 'vital tool'
The National Border Patrol Council has high hopes for President-elect Trump’s border security policies.

The union’s president, Brandon Judd, has been advising the Trump transition team. The union has encouraged the building of a border wall and changing enforcement policies put in place in the past four years.

San Diego-based Shawn Moran, vice president of the union, said a wall on the border would be a “vital tool,” and it’s difficult to say exactly where along the border a wall is needed.

And it is not just the lack of a physical fence that is causing the problems:

The wall on its own would not be enough, Moran said, but it could be effective when paired with an ease in restrictions on Border Patrol agents’ actions.

He said former deputy commissioner David Aguilar made a policy that border agents could not operate at public transit hubs unless they had specific intelligence that smuggling activity or criminal activity was taking place there. Aguilar designated several such spaces for restricted enforcement, such as schools and hospitals, in a 2013 memo.

Moran said the union wants to get rid of the priority enforcement program — or the policy of focusing enforcement of immigration laws on those with criminal records or those caught crossing the border.

Fortunately, it is now former deputy commissioner Aguilar - we need to clean house from top to bottom. Get rid of those who would weaken our nation.

Heh - I love it - Lobbyists and Trump

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A bit of panic on K Street - from BuzzFeed:

Lobbyists Have No Clue How They’re Going To Work Under A Trump Administration
To lobbyists, the election of a new president usually means new jobs, new access to the corridors of power — and, by default, more influence for their clients.

But President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “drain the swamp.” His transition team recently purged a number of registered lobbyists and announced a lobbying ban for those who want work in the administration. Virtually no one on K Street — the button-down power corridor of Washington — has any idea what is actually happening or what it will mean for their business.

Increasingly on edge are Democratic lobbyists. One of the most powerful Democratic lobbyists in Washington, Heather Podesta (whose former brother-in-law John Podesta ran Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign this year), wrote in an email to unnerved clients that their hard-earned influence dollars will still be well spent with her firm.

Do not count your chickens before they hatch, Heather. Trump is playing his cards perfectly:

But at least in the early stages of this year’s transition, Trump and his crew are turning that pattern on its head.

“The reality is that right now, Trump world is very small so access is very limited,” said Kyle Downey, president of Downey Communications and a veteran Republican strategist.

“Anybody who says they know how this going to work is kidding themselves, and their clients,” said a lobbyist with a bipartisan shop. “A lot of lobbyists are scrambling, because the biggest issue is access.”

The transition is being run by a tight group of advisers — many of which were the same people behind Trump’s campaign — many of whom don’t have deep connections to Washington. Most notably are his children Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric, who while all accomplished in the business world haven’t been players in any legislative or regulatory battles, nor have they spent years developing the normal relationships in Washington that would help lobbyists.

Looking forward to the next year.

European globalism - a two-fer

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First, from the London Daily Mail:

We're not letting EU go! German finance minister warns that Britain could still be paying into Brussels coffers in 2030
Britain could be forced to write cheques to Brussels until 2030 despite leaving the EU, the German finance minister has warned.

Wolfgang Schauble delivered his blustering warning as Theresa May flew into Berlin for talks with Angela Merkel and other world leaders.

Mr Schauble said post-Brexit Britain would be bound by tax rules restricting it from granting incentives to keep investors in the country.

I bet that the English have something choice to say about that.

Second from Nigel Farage at the Express:

'Brexit, Trump Presidency... more to come' Merkel's worldview is OVER, Farage vows
The Brexiteer could barely contain his joy over the prospect of more nations following the path paved by Britain in voting to leave the European Union and the American people as they elected Donald Trump as President.

In two weeks time, Austrians will be heading to the ballot boxes again to elect their next president after their last run-off was overturned because rules on the counting of postal votes were broken.

A bit more from Nigel:

Beaming how Austria could be the next country to take a brick out of the "Merkel-Obama wall", Mr Farage told Fox Business: “The poor darlings are in denial.”

“They simply can’t face up to the fact that their worldview has taken an absolute beating in the year of 2016.”

Referring to how his life mission to get Britain out of the bloc had started a trend, the Eurosceptic vowed there was more to come.

Wonderful news - big centralized governments have never worked. Ever. Time to dismantle this latest attempt.

Bet he wasn't expecting that - Trump Star

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The guy who smashed President-elect Trump's Hollywood star just got charged with felony vandalism. From the Bellingham Herald:

Man charged with felony vandalism in smashing of Trump star
A man who used a pickaxe and a sledgehammer to smash Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was charged Thursday with felony vandalism, authorities said.

James Otis, 52, faces a maximum of three years in jail or a $10,000 fine, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

Otis destroyed the star of the president-elect in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 27, when Trump was still a candidate, police said. He was arrested soon after.

Otis, who is free on bail and scheduled to be arraigned on Friday, could not immediately be reached for comment and it's unclear if he has an attorney.

The star, given to Trump in 2007 for his work on the reality show "The Apprentice," has since been repaired.

Good - no word as to his political leanings but I can guess...

First hard frost

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Got down to 27.6°F last night - woke up to a hard frost on the ground. Mt. Baker has over a foot of snow and is looking to open Thanksgiving Weekend. Winter is definitely in the air.

The Trump Presidency

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Great news from Bill Ford at The Gateway Pundit:

TRUMP EFFECT: Ford Calls Donald Trump – Says Plant Will Not Move to Mexico, Will Remain in Kentucky
Bill Ford, the Chairman of Ford Motors, called Donald Trump tonight and said he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky- Not Mexico.

Trump tweeted the news tonight–

20161117-ford.jpg

I had been a Dodge and Chrysler driver for the last 30 years but when it was time to get a new truck back in 2010, I decided to go with a Ford since they were the only car company that did not take a federal bailout. (here and here). Needless to say, I have been incredibly happy with my decision - when my truck sustained a large front-end collision in 2014, I replaced it with a new version of the same make, model and package. Got almost 50,000 miles on this rig and still a very happy camper. Ford does good stuff.

Fresh from her high-powered meeting, someone is challenging Senator Pelosi's position - from Bloomberg:

Pelosi to Face Little-Known Challenger as Democrats Rue Election
Representative Tim Ryan, a little-known Democrat from Ohio, said Thursday he’ll challenge Nancy Pelosi to lead a party that’s reeling from a disappointing Election Day.

Ryan’s announcement that he’ll run against Pelosi pits him against the only woman to ever serve as House Speaker and comes after more than a half-dozen better-known colleagues in recent years shied away from the challenge. He declared his candidacy hours after she told reporters that she’d had support from more than two-thirds of the House’s roughly 200 Democratic members.

Ryan, 43, was undeterred, saying that the Democratic Party’s disappointing performance in last week’s election demanded new leadership.

“Over the last 18 years, Democrats have only been in the majority of the House of Representatives for two terms, and last week’s election results set us back even further," said Ryan, of Youngstown. “We have lost over 60 seats since 2010. We have the fewest Democrats in state and federal offices since Reconstruction. At this time of fear and disillusionment, we owe it to our constituencies to listen and bring a new voice into leadership.”

Ryan seems to be good people. If we can get back to the Democratic party of Kennedy and Truman, the whole world will be better off. Pelosi is a symptom, not a cause. The hyper-wealthy should not have control over the government. Pelosi is one of the top 0.1% banksters - here, here, here and here just to start.

From The Daily Caller:

EXCLUSIVE: Venezuelan Diplomat Joins Chicago Communists Plotting Trump Resistance
A Marxist, a Venezuelan diplomat and an illegal alien headlined a meeting of organizers of the Trump resistance as they announced their plan to shut down Chicago on Saturday and Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day.

The Chicago branch of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) met in Chicago’s northwest side neighborhood of Albany Park to plot their next move in their resistance of the Trump presidency.

Chicago ANSWER was one of the radical leftist groups that helped to organize anti-Trump protests when his campaign tried to hold a rally in March; that rally was canceled after protesters clashed with attendees.

As TheDC reported last week, the group is responsible for organizing rallies in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Albuquerque.

And of course, ANSWER is mostly funded by George Soros. A pull-quote from one of the organizers:

“People can and must be organized in a deepening resistance,” Stephanie said. “As united as possible, as militant as possible.”

Break the law, do the time. I hope to God nobody commits suicide by cop - the one thing these people do not need is a martyr.

A lot lighter than the old one - I'll be taking the old one apart tomorrow and will find its age from the date codes on any internal integrated circuits. I am betting a good 20 years old.

The unit I got was a demo so got a nice chunk of change taken off the price.

Also got some replacement belts for Lulu's new lawn mower - Jimmy ran over a rock and broke the drive belt. I asked the guy at the Deere dealership if there were any tricks to putting a new one on and he said: "Patience" and that there are a couple of YouTube videos I needed to watch. Great...

Heating up some pea soup spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight - cold and intermittent rainfall.

A nice election outcome in Oregon

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From The Daily Signal:

Oregon Official Who Shut Down Sweet Cakes Loses Election Bid to a Republican
The Oregon official who ordered the former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa to pay $135,000 in damages for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding lost to a Republican in his bid for Oregon secretary of state.

Brad Avakian, commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and a staunch Democrat, lost in the race to Dennis Richardson, a conservative. The result is historic, ending a 20-year stronghold of Democrat control over statewide offices.

“The people of Oregon have spoken,” Aaron Klein, co-owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, told The Daily Signal. “Hopefully with the guy that won, we’ll see religious freedom start to grow in this state.”

Political correctness has had its trial run and been found wanting.

Not going gracefully - Obama

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This is disgusting - from the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

Obama's 2016 Federal Register Just Topped Highest Page Count of All Time
Well that didn’t him take long.

President Barack Obama’s Federal Register, the daily depository of rules and regulations, added 572 pages today, and stands at 81,640 pages for 2016.

This is the all-time record. Ever.

Obama also held the prior record, 81,405 pages in 2010.

The 80,000 page mark has been passed in only three previous years (2010, 2011, 2015).

The chart below shows the highest 15 Federal Register Federal Register page counts. Note that Obama holds seven of the 10 highest-ever tallies.

Yet nearly a month and a half remain in this record-setting year.

No one knows what the future holds, but at a pace of well over 1,000 pages weekly, the Federal Register could easily top 90,000 pages this year.

The article also looks at a low number:

The new president-elect Donald Trump could take a page from President Reagan, who brought page counts down from Carter’s 73,258 to as low as. 44,812.

We don’t need a pen and phone, we need a meat axe.

Let us hope so - the first link (this one) brings up a PDF file of all 660 (572 pages plus table of contents and index) of the Federal Register for just today - November 17th. Our government is growing at this rate - several hundred pages of new regulations each and every day. Nonstop.

Another day in paradise

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Heading out for coffee and then into town. Last night when preparing dinner, I went to microwave some stuff and zilch - the old microwave oven finally went up to the big oven in the sky. No magic smoke or sparks, just no response to the keypad.

Oh well, the unit was old when I bought the house 14 years ago. Going to take it apart and salvage the transformer and other kibbles and bits - microwave ovens are a great resource for do-it-yourself electronics.

Two photo applications from Google

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Wonderful stuff. First, from the Google Research Labs:

Enhance! RAISR Sharp Images with Machine Learning
Everyday the web is used to share and store millions of pictures, enabling one to explore the world, research new topics of interest, or even share a vacation with friends and family. However, many of these images are either limited by the resolution of the device used to take the picture, or purposely degraded in order to accommodate the constraints of cell phones, tablets, or the networks to which they are connected. With the ubiquity of high-resolution displays for home and mobile devices, the demand for high-quality versions of low-resolution images, quickly viewable and shareable from a wide variety of devices, has never been greater.

With “RAISR: Rapid and Accurate Image Super-Resolution”, we introduce a technique that incorporates machine learning in order to produce high-quality versions of low-resolution images. RAISR produces results that are comparable to or better than the currently available super-resolution methods, and does so roughly 10 to 100 times faster, allowing it to be run on a typical mobile device in real-time. Furthermore, our technique is able to avoid recreating the aliasing artifacts that may exist in the lower resolution image.

They have a couple before and after photos at the site - the results are quite good.

Second - from Digital Photography Review:

Google's new PhotoScan app makes digitizing prints super easy
There are plenty of existing methods for digitizing printed photos, and most of them fall on a spectrum between 'arduous with good results' and 'quick with terrible results.' Google's new PhotoScan app aims to aims to bridge the gap with a method that's easy and produces good results by employing computational photography.

The free app, available now for Android and iOS, requires the user to place their photo on a flat surface. After snapping a reference frame, the app directs the user to move their phone around the image to capture more data and, critically, move around the glare that the photo is almost certainly reflecting.

After you've made a successful pass, the app will work its magic and spit out a digitized, glare-free rendition of your photo. Images can be saved to your phone's camera roll and to the cloud. In less than a minute, you've got a shareable digital photo that's way better than the quick-and-dirty version.

Brilliant idea - take a baseline photo and then use a video to analyse where the glare and shadows are plus harvest more pixels. Very clever!

What was that peak oil thing again?

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From the United States Geological Survey:

USGS Estimates 20 Billion Barrels of Oil in Texas’ Wolfcamp Shale Formation
The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin province contains an estimated mean of 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.

The estimate of continuous oil in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp shale assessment is nearly three times larger than that of the 2013 USGS Bakken-Three Forks resource assessment, making this the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation that USGS has assessed in the United States to date.

“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” said Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program. “Changes in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable, and that’s why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world.”

We have a proven reserve of 36.5 billion barrels, this discovery almost doubles the number. We have a nice pulse of energy to sustain our development until we get back on track with modern nuclear.

The future of the Clinton Foundation

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From R.J. Matson:

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Great little hacking toy - PoisonTap

From Ars Technica:

Meet PoisonTap, the $5 tool that ransacks password-protected computers
The perils of leaving computers unattended just got worse, thanks to a newly released exploit tool that takes only 30 seconds to install a privacy-invading backdoor, even when the machine is locked with a strong password.

PoisonTap, as the tool has been dubbed, runs freely available software on a $5/£4 Raspberry Pi Zero device. Once the payment card-sized computer is plugged into a computer's USB slot, it intercepts all unencrypted Web traffic, including any authentication cookies used to log in to private accounts. PoisonTap then sends that data to a server under the attacker's control. The hack also installs a backdoor that makes the owner's Web browser and local network remotely controllable by the attacker.

PoisonTap is the latest creation of Samy Kamkar, the engineer behind a long line of low-cost hacks, including a password-pilfering keylogger disguised as a USB charger, a key-sized dongle that jimmies open electronically locked cars and garages, and a DIY stalker app that mined Google Streetview. While inspiring for their creativity and elegance, Kamkar's inventions also underscore the security and privacy tradeoffs that arise from an increasingly computerized world. PoisonTap continues this cautionary theme by challenging the practice of password-protecting an unattended computer rather than shutting it off or, a safer bet still, toting it to the restroom or lunch room.

Once you have physical access to a machine, that machine is toast. There are many ways of hacking into a computer if you don't mind the victim knowing that someone has touched their machine. There are several ways (including this new one) to do it without their being aware.

Just wonderful - Android devices

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From Kryptowire:

KRYPTOWIRE DISCOVERS MOBILE PHONE FIRMWARE THAT TRANSMITTED PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION (PII) WITHOUT USER CONSENT OR DISCLOSURE
Kryptowire has identified several models of Android mobile devices that contained firmware that collected sensitive personal data about their users and transmitted this sensitive data to third-party servers without disclosure or the users' consent. These devices were available through major US-based online retailers (Amazon, BestBuy, for example) and included popular smartphones such as the BLU R1 HD. These devices actively transmitted user and device information including the full-body of text messages, contact lists, call history with full telephone numbers, unique device identifiers including the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI). The firmware could target specific users and text messages matching remotely defined keywords. The firmware also collected and transmitted information about the use of applications installed on the monitored device, bypassed the Android permission model, executed remote commands with escalated (system) privileges, and was able to remotely reprogram the devices.

The firmware that shipped with the mobile devices and subsequent updates allowed for the remote installation of applications without the users' consent and, in some versions of the software, the transmission of fine-grained device location information. The core of the monitoring activities took place using a commercial Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) update software system that was shipped with the Android devices we tested and were managed by a company named Shanghai Adups Technology Co. Ltd.

Much more at the site - the infection is deep and operates without the user being aware of its presence. Because the software is pre-installed, any anti-virus software thinks it is OK and does not signal.

Talk about unreal - from Politico:

Will America Now Have a Pravda?
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take control of the American executive branch, he will have a weapon at his disposal that few if any presidents have enjoyed—a direct connection to a faithful media operation that reaches millions of loyal populist readers in the form of Breitbart, the self-styled honey badger of alt-right journalism.

Other presidents have had strategies for going around the mainstream media. Franklin Roosevelt had his Fireside Chats on the radio, but his broadcasts were sporadic and rarely ran more than half an hour long. Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed direct lines to the top at the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the television networks, where they directed their angry Bat-calls in hopes of manipulating coverage.

But in Breitbart, Trump has an international Web tribune for his message. It's run by the man Trump just named as his chief strategist: Stephen Bannon, who will serve as co-#2 in the White House with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. And depending how Bannon shapes it, Breitbart could become the closest thing the United States has ever had to a “state-run media enterprise,” to quote a phrase by a former Breitbart spokesman.

Excuuuuuse me - America has already had a Pravda and an Izvestia for many many years. Having a reliable conservative media outlet will be a breath of fresh air.

From Breitbart/Reuters:

Unemployment Falls in Three Months After Brexit Vote to 11 Year-Low
Britain’s unemployment rate fell in the first three months after the Brexit vote to its lowest level in 11 years but there were some signs that a slowdown in the labour market could be coming.

The unemployment rate edged down to 4.8 percent in the July-September period, compared with a median forecast of 4.9 percent in a Reuters poll of economists.

But the number of people in work rose by 49,000, the slowest increase since the three months to March this year, the Office for National Statistics said.

Britain’s economy weathered the initial shock of the Brexit vote in better shape than the Bank of England and almost all private economists expected.

The Eloi never know what is really happening. Great news from our friends across the pond.

Always classy - Senator Barbra Boxer

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From Yahoo News:

Democratic Sen. Boxer plans bill to scrap Electoral College
Outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., plans to introduce legislation on Tuesday to eliminate the Electoral College and to award the presidency to the candidate with the greater share of the popular vote, in direct response to President-elect Donald Trump’s historic victory.

“This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency,” Boxer said in a statement. “The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

Good riddance - you may remember Boxer from her comment to Brigadier General Michael Walsh in 2009:

"I've worked so hard to get that title"

Glad she is retiring - not a moment too soon.

Out for coffee

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Running a bit late today - slept in and took care of some stuff around the farm. Heading out for coffee in a few minutes and check in at the store.

Doing a big ham steak for dinner tonight - orange glaze and some mashed potatoes and frozen peas.

A little bit of pushback - Seattle

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We The People are finding their voice - from Seattle station KING-5:

Petition to remove Sawant from council gains momentum
An effort to recall Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is gaining momentum.

Over 9,800 people have electronically supported an online petition that is circling. It launched after the socialist councilmember urged people to protest the election of Donald Trump on his inauguration day January 20.

The group wants to send a message to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray that Sawant should be impeached because they believe it's not appropriate for elected officials to call for protests.

Good news - the petition can be found here: Remove Kshama Sawant Seattle city council woman for abuse of power

1,000 words on management

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Been the Aurochs, done that and got the face-poo:

20161115-management.jpg

The outcome is that now, I think I know how to manage.  Got an incredible team of people working with me at Crossroads Grocery - love them all.

Plus, they have the good grace to fix me when I am wrong. This is a wonderful trait in an employee!!!

The hubris is unreal - from Yahoo/Reuters comes this report from yet another wonderfully cushy resort town with great amenities and to which, all of the participants flew in their private jets - use Skype? The horrors...

France, UN tell Trump action on climate change unstoppable
MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - France and the United Nations on Tuesday stepped up warnings to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump about the risks of quitting a 2015 global plan to combat climate change, saying a historic shift from fossil fuels is unstoppable.

French President Francois Hollande, addressing almost 200 nations meeting in Morocco on ways to slow global warming, said that inaction would be "disastrous for future generations and it would be dangerous for peace".

Both he and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Trump, who has called man-made global warming a hoax, to drop a campaign pledge to cancel the global 2015 Paris Agreement that aims to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energies.

"The United States, the largest economic power in the world, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, must respect the commitments it has undertaken," Hollande said to applause. The agreement was "irreversible", he said.

In such U.N. meetings, it is very rare for leaders to single out others for even veiled criticism. Both Hollande and Ban were among the architects of the Paris Agreement.

First of all, the USA is not the second largest worldwide CO2 emitter - the Oceans are the first, Earth's land masses are the second. Earth's  volcanoes are third. China comes in at a very distant fourth and we are greatly smaller at fifth.

As for "irreversible" - I am betting that Trump's reply - if not turning around and walking out from the conference call - will be: Watch This. It is going to be a lot of fun watching hippies heads exploding over the next eight-plus years. It will be doubleplusgood.

UPDATE: Go here and read: Climate Report to UN: Trump right, UN wrong – Skeptics Deliver Consensus Busting ‘State of the Climate Report’ to UN Summit

From Rolling Stone:

Mose Allison, Iconic Blues and Jazz Pianist, Dead at 89
Influential blues and jazz pianist Mose Allison, whose songs were covered by an array of rock veterans, died Tuesday at the age of 89 of natural causes. Allison's daughter, Amy, confirmed the musician's death to Rolling Stone.

Though primarily known for his piano playing, Allison also garnered acclaim for his voice, crafting a repertoire that drew on Delta blues, bebop, early American pop and even European classical, per NPR. Consequently, Allison's earliest labels struggled to find the best way to market him, with Prestige pushing him as a pop star and Columbia and Atlantic billing him as a blues artist.

But Allison ultimately defied such categorization, as his songs would go on to be covered by an extensive and diverse collection of artists including the Clash, the Who, Elvis Costello, the Gories, Van Morrison, Robert Palmer, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Rogers, Leon Russell, Hot Tuna, the Yardbirds and the Bangles.

Crap.

Serious food coma - New York Steak

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I did two steaks for the three of us - Lulu and I shared and Jimmy hoovered down a whole one himself. Growing boy. The peppercorn sauce came out perfect - a wee bit too runny but nothing I would complain about. Flavor was spot on just needed to have the stock a little more concentrated. I will try adding a pinch of unflavored gelatin next time - add some mouthfeel and unctuousness.

We watched the last show of Season Two and the first show of Season Three of Person of Interest - the writing keeps getting better and better - the producer and writers realize that there are watchers out there who can follow three or four plotlines and see how they interweave. The technology is spot on for the time and the code on the screens is not just another iteration of Nmap or some random scrolling source code - the screens are actually doing what the plot is saying they are doing.

Quote of the day

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Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
--Norman Schwarzkopf

Getting ready for dinner

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Spuds are almost done, the steaks should be fine - pulling them in a few minutes and starting the peppercorn sauce. Looking forward to seeing how they come out.

From The Washington Post:

Obama warns against ‘a crude sort of nationalism’ taking root in the U.S.
President Obama warned Tuesday that Americans and people around the world “are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism” taking root amid the populist movements that are gaining currency around the world.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras by his side, Obama refrained from criticizing President-elect Donald Trump directly as he discussed the impact of his electoral victory last week. But the president made it clear that he sees a dark side to the kind of populist movements Trump's campaign embodied — ideals that other conservative leaders are advocating in Europe and elsewhere.

Barry didn't get his way so he is lashing out at all the deplorable dirt people who spoiled his plans for a one world government.

Good riddance and may your legacy be mocked for the rest of time.

Jonathan Gruber's comeuppance

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From The New York Sun:

Jonathan Gruber Discovers ‘Stupidity’ Is Wrong Word For American Voters
Call it the Jonathan Gruber election. He is the Ford professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He got his Ph.D. at Harvard. As a White House consultant, he helped to design ObamaCare and was then caught afterward on videotape explaining its passage by talking about “the stupidity of the American voter.”

Well, if anyone is “stupid” in this story, it’s not the voters, but the academics who in their hubris designed an Affordable Care Act that became so unpopular that it became a decisive factor in Hillary Clinton’s defeat. These economists and health care experts — Jonathan Gruber and others like him — have fancy graduate degrees, but they designed a law whose results aren’t exactly making them or the politicians they advised look like geniuses.

Asra Q. Nomani, a Muslim woman immigrant who voted in Virginia for Donald Trump, explained in a Washington Post column that she did so in part because, “I am a single mother who can’t afford health insurance under Obamacare.”

A friend of mine reported that while volunteering for the Clinton campaign in Pennsylvania, she encountered one voter who had just gotten off the phone with her health insurance company, “battling an astronomical increase in premiums. A cancer survivor, she had lost her favorite doctor when she went onto Obamacare two years earlier. Now her rates were going up.” That voter wound up supporting Trump, too.

These people live in a bubble of their own making. The only problem is that bubbles will always pop at some point in time.

The Portland rioters do not want to be photographed - they might be identified. From The College Fix:

Student reporter gets a not-so-subtle threat: ‘STOP FILMING’ anti-Trump protests
Portland State University’s student media are covering the riots against President-elect Donald Trump in their city, and someone apparently doesn’t want the attention.

Mike Bivins, who writes for the Pacific Sentinel campus magazine and has been on a tear with video from the protests, got a threatening letter that ended:

STOP FILMING. CONSIDER THIS A WARNING.

His colleague at the Vanguard student paper, Andy Ngo, posted the flyer that Bivins received. It pretty baldly demands that student journalists stop reporting – which might incidentally help police identify suspects – and start advocating for the protesters’ causes.

20161115-snitch.jpg

Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be a warning. It was not supposed to be a training manual.

Back home again for a short while

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Splurging on the steaks so having baked potatoes along with. The ones I had in the pantry are a bit on the soft side so heading back to the store for a couple russets.

Got the steaks seared in a pan with some grapeseed oil - the last time, when I nuked them under the broiler, I accidentally cooked them medium well all the way through. The pan searing crisps and caramelizes the outside but leaves the inside raw. Using the Sous Vide, I will be able to nail a medium rare.

Also, by pan searing, I can get all the delicious juices and fond to make the peppercorn sauce and will also be able to reduce it properly - the first time I tried in a saucepan it was too runny.

A photo taken at a liberal bookstore

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This photo was taken at Village Books in Fairhaven. A wonderful independent bookstore with a decent science and nature section but the store's customers are very liberal.

20161115-books.jpg

I love the titles and that the shelves are empty. The fact that these cloud-people have to read a book in order to understand what the rest of America is thinking says a lot about their self-imposed isolation and general cluelessness...

Off for coffee and cooking a steak

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Heading out for coffee - Lulu's nephew Jimmy is coming out for two days this afternoon. Cooking a thick-cut New York for dinner tonight trying the green peppercorn sauce again.

More in an hour or so...

From Portland, OR station KGW:

More than half of arrested anti-Trump protesters didn't vote in Oregon
More than half of the anti-Trump protesters arrested in Portland didn’t vote in Oregon, according to state election records.

At least sixty-nine demonstrators either didn’t turn in a ballot or weren’t registered to vote in the state.

KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.

Records show 34 of the protesters arrested didn’t return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren’t registered to vote in Oregon.

These are paid agitators who travel from cause célèbre to cause célèbre as they happen on the American political landscape. Fergusson, Black Lives Matter and now Trump.

It is going to be listed as a terrorist organization. From The Clarion Project:

Trump to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Org
Donald Trump will work to pass legislation designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, said Walid Phares, a foreign policy advisor for the president-elect.

Speaking to the Egyptian news outlet Youm7, Phares said the legislation, which was already approved by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year and referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was held up due to the Obama administration’s support of the group.

Clarion Project spearheaded a campaign to educate legislators and move the bill forward over the past year. The bill currently has bipartisan support.

This is big news - the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the major funding sources for terrorist organizations. Their motto should tell you something:

Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

A bit more:

Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

While the Brotherhood's radical ideas have shaped the beliefs of generations of Islamists, over the past two decades, it has lost some of its power and appeal in the Middle East, crushed by harsh repression from local regimes and snubbed by the younger generations of Islamists who often prefer more radical organizations.

But the Middle East is only one part of the Muslim world. Europe has become an incubator for Islamist thought and political development. Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. Unlike the larger Islamic community, the Muslim Brotherhood's ultimate goal may not be simply "to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be," but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States.

Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe's political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.

Hillary's defeat is even better because her close aide, Huma Abedin, has close ties to this organization through her mother and father.

From FOX News:

New York Times publisher vows to 'rededicate' paper to reporting honestly
The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s embattled publisher, appealed to Times readers for their continued support.

Well, the New York Times is losing money big-time. Sales are down, subscriptions are tanking. Maybe the leadership feels that they might want to start telling the truth instead of what the denizens of the East and West coast conurbations want to hear. See if that will turn things around.

Supermoon - shmoopermoon

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Big washout here - the clouds are thick on the horizon. Much clearer above but when it gets up there, I will not have the horizon effect that makes the moon look so much larger.

Next time...

Down but not out - our rich elitists

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Here are four links - someone really needs to sit these people down and tell them that We The People want nothing of their plans for a world government.

Soros was the guy who as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany claimed to be a Christian and showed the Germans where his Jewish friends lived. A very nasty sociopath.

Snowfall due tonight/tomorrow

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Got a winter weather advisory today from the National Weather Service:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SEATTLE HAS ISSUED A WINTER WEATHER
ADVISORY FOR SNOW...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO
MIDNIGHT PST TUESDAY NIGHT.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL DEVELOP AROUND 5000 FEET LATE TONIGHT AND
CONTINUE THROUGH TUESDAY AS SNOW LEVELS FALL TO 3000 TO 3500
FEET IN THE AFTERNOON. SNOW WILL TAPER OFF IN THE EVENING.

* ACCUMULATIONS...24 HOUR ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 15 INCHES.
HEAVIEST ACCUMULATIONS WILL OCCUR EARLY TUESDAY MORNING THROUGH
MID AFTERNOON TUESDAY.

It's beginning... We will not have anything on the ground at 600' but both mountains by the house should get a good dusting.

From the London Daily Mail:

'Reality has a way of asserting itself!' Condescending Obama says Trump can't keep his promises as he warns his successor's 'temperament' will be his undoing unless he 'corrects' it
President Barack Obama delivered a series of patronizing backhanded compliments to President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday during a lengthy White House press conference conducted before his final trip abroad as America's leader.

While he praised Trump for pulling off 'one of the biggest political upsets in history,' Obama scolded his Republican successor for believing he can deliver on his campaign promises.

'I think that he successfully mobilized a big chunk of the country to vote for him,' Obama told reporters.

But 'regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up.'

'And those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick. Because reality has a way of asserting itself.'

Trying to salvage his legacy as an effective leader. He is going to be eating his words in a few months. Listen to what Trump has said about his conversations with Hillary and Obama - that is being classy. Listen to what Obama and Hillary say about President Elect Trump and it is nothing but nasty vituperation.

From the London Daily Mirror:

Trump and Putin vow to tackle ISIS together as they hold breakthrough talks after billionaire's election
President-elect Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have vowed to tackle ISIS together after holding breakthrough talks on the telephone.

Less than a week after the billionaire’s election, the Kremlin said Putin called Trump yesterday to begin negotiations over how best to tackle to terrorism.

The Russian is reported to have said he is ready for dialogue with the US “on the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention into each other’s internal affairs”.

According to the news agency Kremlin, Putin and Trump have agreed to “work to channel bilateral relationships into constructive cooperation, to combine efforts to tackle international terrorism and extremism, and to continue contact by telephone and to work towards meeting in person”.

Hillary was all for starting World War Three - collapse the system so that the globalists could institute a world government. A tyranny.

Back home from town

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Lulu is here for a while - her dog Augie and Bear are getting along great.

Fixing dinner in a while - Costco chicken and broccoli and bow-tie pasta stir-fried together with plenty of olive oil and cracked black pepper. Some carbohydrates but not too many.

Nothing much today

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Headed out for coffee and then a quick trip into town - my store does a drawing every ski season and the winner gets a free pass to Mt. Baker for next year. Picking uup the pass for last years lucky winner.

Crap - RIP: David Charles Hahn

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From Tributes.com:

David was born on October 30, 1976 and passed away on Tuesday, September 27, 2016.

David was a resident of Shelby Township, Michigan at the time of his passing.

Visitation will be on Saturday from 11am until 3 pm with a Funeral service 2 pm at the Wasik Funeral Home Inc. 49150 Schoenherr Rd. N. of 22 Mile Shelby Twp. Interment at Great Lakes National Cemetery.

Only 39 years old. David was known to most people as The Radioactive Boy Scout - from the November 1998 issue of Harpers:

The Radioactive Boy Scout
When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor
Golf Manor is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen, the kind of place where people live precisely because it is more than 25 miles outside of Detroit and all the complications attendant on that city. The kind of place where money buys a bit more land, perhaps a second bathroom, and so reassures residents that they’re safely in the bosom of the middle class. Every element of Golf Manor invokes one form of security or another, beginning with the name of the subdivision itself—taken from the 18 hole course at its entrance—and the community in which it is nestled, Commerce Township. The houses and trees are both old and varied enough to make Golf Manor feel more like a neighborhood than a subdivision, and the few features that do convey subdivision—a sign at the entrance saying “We have many children but none to spare. Please drive carefully”—have a certain Back to the Future charm. Most Golf Manor residents remain there until they die, and then they are replaced by young couples with kids. In short, it is the kind of place where, on a typical day, the only thing lurking around the corner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck.

But June 26, 1995, was not a typical day. Ask Dottie Pease. As she turned down Pinto Drive, Pease saw eleven men swarming across her carefully manicured lawn. Their attention seemed to be focused on the back yard of the house next door, specifically on a large wooden potting shed that abutted the chain-link fence dividing her property from her neighbor’s. Three of the men had donned ventilated moon suits and were proceeding to dismantle the potting shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces of wood into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. Pease had never noticed anything out of the ordinary at the house next door.

The Harpers article goes into a lot of detail about David's experiments - here are two paragraphs:

Now seventeen, David hit on the idea of building a model breeder reactor. He knew that without a critical pile of at least thirty pounds of enriched uranium he had no chance of initiating a sustained chain reaction, but he was determined to get as far as he could by trying to get his various radioisotopes to interact with one another. That way, he now says, “no matter what happened there would be something changing into something—some kind of action going on there.” His blueprint was a schematic of a checkerboard breeder reactor he’d seen in one of his father’s college textbooks. Ignoring any thought of safety, David took the highly radioactive radium and americium out of their respective lead casings and, after another round of filing and pulverizing, mixed those isotopes with beryllium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What were once the neutron sources for his guns became a makeshift “core” for his reactor. He surrounded this radioactive ball with a “blanket” composed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenuously held together with duct tape.

David monitored his “breeder reactor” at the Golf Manor laboratory with his Geiger counter. “It was radioactive as heck,” he says. “The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of assembly. I know I transformed some radioactive materials. Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent.”

Quite the story and sad to see a life cut so short.

Nothing wrong with Bear's appetite

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He was a bit uncertain about the food the last two days but he gobbled tonight's dinner right down the hatch. There is a problem with large-breed puppies that they can be overfed - this will make their bodies grow too fast leading to bone problems later in life. Limiting him to two feedings/day of about a cup or two of food each time. Going to rename him Tanglefoot - always right by my feet when I am walking around.

Got some soup heating in the microwave for my dinner - good stuff for a rainy night.

The anti-Trump protests

Activism is big business in the USA - a lot of money being spent to get people stirred up. Take the riot in Chicago on November 12th (last night). From the Chicago Tribune:

Thousands march in anti-Trump protests in downtown Chicago for 4th day
Carrying signs and chanting, “Not my president,” thousands of people marched through the streets of downtown Chicago on Saturday to protest President-elect Donald Trump.

On the fourth day of demonstrations since the Tuesday election, protesters walked shoulder to shoulder down the Magnificent Mile to Millennium Park, pausing outside the Trump Tower along the Chicago River where police set up barricades to keep them from getting close.

This was not a spontaneous grass-roots protest, instead, these people were paid $15/hour and more and were bused in from outside of Chicago for the event. Here is dashcam footage of the buses used:

Moreover, the media is in the tank for these people. From yesterday's USA Today:

Trump protesters' resounding message: No national mandate
They come in all ages and walks of life, unflinching and determined to be heard.

Mothers with young children, hoping to impart an up-close lesson in history. Animated college students stretching their political vocal cords for the first time. Aging Baby Boomers who haven't toted a protest sign since their anti-war days in the 1970s.

One such protester:

Yong Jung Cho, 26, who organized a candlelight vigil in front of the White House on Wednesday night, said about 2,000 people showed up. "Together, we sang, we cried and we marched" to Trump's hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. "In this moment, the protests are showing the people, the country and the world that we are here for each other."

And, this email from the John Podesta Wikileaks:

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Cho is a campaign coordinator. Here is a screencap from the Seattle Craigslist advertising for people to protest - pay is $15 to $22/hour:

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The advertisement was subsequently taken down but not before someone saved a copy - remember, the Internet is forever!

Time for these people to wake up and start dealing with reality. The next eight years are going to be a time of transformation and people who really want to make a difference are needed. This does not include idiots who just want to smash stuff.  More herehere, here and here.

The joke of it is that just a few words from Obama or Hillary could shut these riots down instantly. Do they make a statement? No.

Quiet day at home

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Puttering around the kitchen. Grace is napping under my desk in the kitchen and Bear is napping over by the  dishwasher.

Working on some stuff at the house. Raining off and on - about 0.2" in the last 24 hours - supposed to get gusty later tonight.

Overall, a nice lazy day...

Jet-set John F Kerry - climate change

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What a maroon - this is something that has marked both Hillary's and Kerry's tenure as Secretary of State. When anyone asks them to name their accomplishments, they point to how many miles they have traveled.

From ABC News:

John Kerry Says He'll Continue With Global Warming Efforts
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday he will continue his efforts to implement the Paris Agreement on global warming until the day President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20.

Speaking in New Zealand following a trip to Antarctica, Kerry said his administration would continue to do everything possible to meet its responsibility to future generations.

Kerry has long championed climate action but now his legacy is under threat. President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would "cancel" U.S. involvement in the landmark Paris deal.

A bit more:

But Kerry appeared to take a swipe at Trump when he listed some of the ways in which global warming could already be seen. He said that globally, there were more fires, floods and damaging storms, and sea levels were rising.

Absolute bullshit. There have been fewer fires. California had a normal wildfire season even with the drought. The flooding comes from rivers and canals that used to be dredged on a regular basis but are now not maintained thanks to the EPA. Sea levels are rising very gradually - about one inch every 100 years. Some coastlines are sinking - this is what people are measuring when they talk about "sea level rise".

Kerry beclowns the office. Must be nice to be able to fly to so many interesting places and stay in so many cushy digs on someone elses dime.

I love the Scottish

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Part lowland Scot myself (Father was born in England of Scottish parents). From the town of Buchan's newspaper - The Buchan Observer:

Aberdeenshire business owner wins presidential election
Donald Trump, owner of Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie, has been elected as the next President of the USA.

Mr Trump, whose golf course opened in July 2012, beat off strong competition from Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.

He has visited the area on several occasions, the most recent being earlier this year.

Mr Trump is half Scottish - his mother Mary MacLeod being from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She grew up in a simple croft until she landed in Manhattan at the age of 20 and her first language was Gaelic.

Keeping things in perspective.

Photos from the last couple of days

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Celebrated my birthday and had a staff party on the 8th - here is the paella

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And here is the birthday cake my staff got for me - love the anvil:

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Here is a shot of Grace - my older Shiloh Shepherd:

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And here are three shots of Bear - the new Shepherd puppy. Nine weeks old!

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Been taking him out for coffee every day to get him good and socialized around other people and critters. He is still uncertain about Rocky the horse and the llamas but they are certainly curious and gentle with him.

Coffee and working at home today

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Heading out in a few minutes - spending today home with the puppy.

The progressives on parade

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They are the tolerant ones but they are rioting in Portland. OR - from ABC News:

Anti-Trump Protests Sweep the Nation for a Second Night, Trump Calls Them 'Unfair'
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of several cities nationwide Thursday in a second night of rallies protesting the election of Donald Trump. While the gatherings were mostly peaceful, late-night vandalism and graffiti turned a march in Portland, Oregon, into what police described as a “riot.”

"Due to extensive criminal and dangerous behavior, protest is now considered a riot. Crowd has been advised," tweeted the Portland Police Department, who pointed the finger at "anarchists."

Thousands turned up in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square early in the night for a peaceful protest and march but, as the night wore on, individuals were seen vandalizing businesses and property in the city's Pearl District and throwing objects at police.

Activisim pays very well. The paymaster is the top 0.1% of the banksters. Riddle me this?

Our prayers go out to New Zealand

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Woke up to find multiple earthquake notices in my email. South Island of New Zealand has been hit with some big ones and there is a tsunami watch out.

Radio New Zealand has some photos: Earthquake: In pictures

as well as streaming updates: LIVE: 7.5 quake near Hanmer rocks whole country

From FOX News:

Rocker Leon Russell dies in Nashville at 74
Leon Russell, who performed, sang and produced some of rock 'n' roll's top records, has died. He was 74.

An email from Leon Russell Records to The Associated Press says Russell died Sunday in Nashville. The email cites Russell's wife as the source of the information. Russell had heart bypass surgery in July and was recovering from that at the time of his death. He had been planning on resuming touring in January, the email said.

Besides his music, Russell was known for his striking appearance: wispy white hair halfway down his back and that covered much of his face.

Russell played keyboard for the Los Angeles studio team known as the Wrecking Crew, helping producer Phil Spector develop his game-changing wall of sound approach in the 1960s.

He wrote Joe Cocker's "Delta Lady" and in 1969 put together Cocker's "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour, which spawned a documentary film and a hit double album.

As a musician, primarily a pianist, he played on The Beach Boys' "California Girls" and landmark "Pet Sounds" album, Jan and Dean's "Surf City," the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," and the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man." He also played guitar and bass.

The house I live in was built by Larry Knechtel - another member of the Wrecking Crew. We are losing some great ones.

About time - the EPA

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Schadenfreude - from E&E News:

Tears, angst as workforce braces for Trump takeover
EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early.

And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory.

"People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed," said John O'Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, "people were crying," added O'Grady, who works in EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago. "They were recommending that people take sick leave and go home."

EPA employees stand to see some of the most drastic changes under the Trump administration, and they may be taking things a bit harder than other government workers.

The president-elect has vowed to repeal some of the rules they've toiled on for the last eight years during the Obama administration, including the Clean Power Plan rule to cut power plants' greenhouse gas emissions.

Poor widdle unelected bureaucrats - everything can form a bubble and all bubbles pop. The EPA started out doing great work but it expanded its scope to way beyond its initial charter and has become the poster boy for bloated government over-reach. Time to trim the fat - an 80% budget cut would be a great place to start.

The Wicked Witch of the West Wing

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From Hope 'n Change cartoons:

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Cultural reference here: Wicked Witch of the West but actually, the slippers were on her sister's feet under the farmhouse - the Wicked Witch of the East

Joe Biden

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A tweet I saw on Facebook - fun:

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Back home again - fun day with the puppy

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Bear was a delight in the truck - hung out with Grace. Bear was surrounded by kids from several families at the coffee shop. Went into town for a few hours after that - Bear was great. When I parked, he ran off and peed so he had been holding it for some time in the truck. I think I got a really good buddy here...

Out for coffee and then the store

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Taking Grace and Bear along - good to get Bear used to my routine and to socialize him with lots of new experiences and people.

Back in a couple of hours.

Quite the find - atomic bomb

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Not an active one but still - from the BEEB:

Nuclear weapon missing since 1950 'may have been found'
Sean Smyrichinsky was diving for sea cucumbers near British Columbia when he discovered a large metal device that looked a bit like a flying saucer.

The Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) believes it could be a "lost nuke" from a US B-36 bomber that crashed in the area in 1950.

The government does not believe the bomb contains active nuclear material.

It is sending naval ships out to the site, near the Haida Gwaii archipelago, to verify the find.

And the story?

The story of the lost nuke has mystified military historians for more than half a century. In 1950, American B-36 Bomber 075 crashed near British Columbia on its way to Carswell Air Force Base in Texas. The plane was on a secret mission to simulate a nuclear strike and had a real Mark IV nuclear bomb on board to see if it could carry the payload required.

Several hours into its flight, its engines caught fire and the crew had to parachute to safety. Out of a 17-person crew, five didn't make it.

The American military says the bomb was filled with lead, uranium and TNT but no plutonium, so it wasn't capable of a nuclear explosion. The crew put the plane on autopilot and set it to crash in the middle of the ocean, but three years later, its wreckage was found hundreds of kilometres inland.

The crew was concerned about the TNT so they dropped the bomb in the water before parachuting out.

End of the ride

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Looks like Broomstick One is being retired - they are taking the Clinton / Kane livery off the chartered Boeing 737 airplane and returning it to normal service.

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New puppy - second night

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Last night was Bear's second night away from his litter-mates so he was whining quite a bit for a while. He is settling in to a good puppy though - starting to roam around the house a bit more, not as clingy. I'll post photos today.

From the US Consumer Product Safety Commission:

Kidde Recalls Combination Smoke/CO Alarms Due to Alarm Failure
Name of product:
Kidde NightHawk combination smoke/carbon monoxide (CO) alarms
Hazard:
The alarm can fail to continue to chirp when it reaches its seven year end of life if the batteries are replaced, leading consumers to believe it is still working. This poses a risk of consumers not being alerted to a fire or CO incident in their home.

There is a link to the Kidde website to get a free replacement. Also, for those living in my area, Fire District 14 will install a free smoke alarm in your house - contact them for more information.

Took them long enough

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Hillary and George - a match made in heaven. From the Strategic Culture Foundation:

The Clintons and Soros launch America’s Purple Revolution
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to «go quietly into that good night». On the morning after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent the coming together of Democratic «Blue America» and Republican «Red America» into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros.

The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros, were, in fact, helping to launch Soros’s «Purple Revolution» in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.

It is doubtful that President Trump’s aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when the nation faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin. President Trump should not allow himself to be distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump’s most loyal supporters.

It seems that our work here is just beginning - time to punch back twice as hard. Let these liberal globalists know that their ideas have failed, they have zero legacy and their dreams are the emanations of a fevered brain and not based on any real-world thought, morality or historical record.

The progressives can not gain traction on the basis of their own ideas, they have to cheat to win. Ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

Move over Pentatonix

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I love Pentatonix - their A Capella song arrangements are superb. But, they are not the only game in town - meet VoicePlay:

Here is Pentatonix with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:

The Democratic Party was the party of slavery, of corruption, of the KKK, of racism. Now they are trying to market themselves as the party of peace and tolerance. From Breitbart:

‘Orange is the New Black’ Star Threatens to Beat Republicans with Baseball Bat after Trump Win
Orange is the New Black actress Lea DeLaria took to social media Wednesday after Donald Trump’s historic presidential election victory to express her dismay at the outcome — and also to suggest that she would use a baseball bat to “take out” Republican and Independent voters.

DeLaria commented in response to a meme featuring a Leonard Bernstein quote about dealing with violence through music.

“[O]r pick up a baseball bat and take out every f*cking republican and independent I see,” DeLaria wrote on Instagram in response to the meme. The actress captioned the post with the hashtags “#fucktrump,” “#fucktheGOP,” #fuckstraightwhiteamerica” and “fuckyourprivilege.”

Photo of her at the site - why is it that progressive celebrities are so downright unattractive.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Obama Administration Gives Up on Pacific Trade Deal
A sweeping Pacific trade pact meant to bind the U.S.and Asia effectively died Friday, as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress told the White House they won’t advance it in the election’s aftermath, and Obama administration officials acknowledged it has no way forward now.

The failure to pass the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership—by far the biggest trade agreement in more than a decade—is a bitter defeat for President Barack Obama, whose belated but fervent support for freer trade divided his party and complicated the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The White House had lobbied hard for months in the hope of moving forward on the pact if Mrs. Clinton had won.

Good riddance - get rid of NAFTA too. And, in a nutshell:

The TPP became a symbol of Washington pursuing policies that disproportionately favor wealthier Americans over ordinary workers. Mr. Trump blamed the TPP on special interests trying to “rape” the country.

And that, my friend, is the pure unvarnished truth.

I expected nothing less - from CNN:

Mayor: Database of undocumented New Yorkers could be deleted
A database containing the identity of undocumented immigrants living in New York City would not be opened up to a Trump administration without a "real fight," the city's mayor said on Thursday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking at a news conference the day after President-elect Donald Trump's stunning electoral victory, also left open the possibility that the database, which holds personal information from the more than 850,000 New Yorkers who have a city municipal identification card, could be scrubbed.

All Trump has to do is block federal funding and boom - mountains are moved.

Always probing

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From the Chicago, IL CBS affiliate:

2 Investigators: Water Plant Trespasser Is Released, Then Vanishes
Clean drinking water is essential for our health, so when a man with a foreign passport is discovered trespassing in a protected Chicago water plant, the FBI and Homeland security are alerted.

Authorities say Shahroon Augustine entered the Eugene Sawyer Water Purification Plant with a duffle bag, containing a passport from Pakistan.

He was charged with trespassing, then vanished.

He is just mama's little snowflake:

Augustine, who may have lived in Palatine at one time, has had numerous previous arrests. He has pleaded guilty to two separate drug charges in Wisconsin. And last year he was charged with a misdemeanor after Palatine police stopped him with “an ax in the waistband of his pants” and a gym bag containing an expandable baton, duct tape and more.

The islamists are always probing our infrastructure - here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here. Lots more stories like this - we need to throw the book at these people and ship them back to their country of origin. Contaminating the water, damaging an electrical substation - these can cause widespread panic and fatalities. Instead, we let them post bail and act surprised when they fail to show up for their hearing.

Blast from the past - June 19th 2015

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2016 is a rough year

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Too many good people died this year - add to the list:

Bailey was the bassist for Weather Report.

So true - language alert

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He just keeps getting better and better - one of the better rants out there:

About that grass-roots movement

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Bought and paid for - activism is a lucrative business. From  John Perazzo at Frontpage:

THE COMMUNISTS BEHIND THE ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTS
Ever since Donald Trump's election victory Tuesday night, the media have been abuzz with stories about massive, sometimes violent, anti-Trump protests breaking out in cities all across the country. We've been told that ordinary Americans everywhere are so frightened and angered by the prospect of a Trump presidency—as opposed to a Hillary Clinton presidency—that they're taking to the streets to express their grave concerns for the future of the country.

In Chicago, for instance, thousands of people held an “emergency protest” outside a Trump hotel, chanting: “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA!”

John also talks about the riots in New York, Oakland and Los Angeles and continues:

Contrary to media misrepresentations, many of the supposedly spontaneous, organic, anti-Trump protests we have witnessed in cities from coast to coast were in fact carefully planned and orchestrated, in advance, by a pro-Communist organization called the ANSWER Coalition, which draws its name from the acronym for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.” ANSWER was established in 2001 by Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, a group staffed in large part by members of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. In 2002, the libertarian author Stephen Suleyman Schwartz described ANSWER as an “ultra-Stalinist network” whose members served as “active propaganda agents for Serbia, Iraq, and North Korea, as well as Cuba, countries they repeatedly visit and acclaim.”

A bit more about ANSWER and then this:

Another key organizer of the current anti-Trump protests is a group called Socialist Alternative, which describes “the global capitalist system” as “the root cause of … poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction.” Explaining that “the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were [unfortunate] perversions of what socialism is really about,” this organization calls for a happy-faced “democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.”

John concludes with the following:

The bottom line is this: The leaders and organizers of the anti-Trump protests that are currently making so much noise in cities across America, are faithfully following the blueprint of Hillary Clinton's famous mentor, Saul Alinsky, who urged radical activists to periodically stage loud, defiant, massive protest rallies expressing rage and discontent. Such demonstrations are designed to give onlookers the impression that a mass movement is preparing to shift into high gear, and that its present size is but a fraction of what it eventually will become. A “mass impression,” said Alinsky, can be lasting and intimidating: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.... The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

And that is precisely what we are witnessing at the moment.

Like I have said before, these people are not a grass-roots movement - they are being stirred up by highly paid agitators funded by the 0.1% of the 1%. George Soros and his ilk.

And of course - the EPA

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From the Washington Examiner:

EPA rushing through regulations after Trump election
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is telling staff to quickly finish up the last round of regulations before President-elect Donald Trump enters the Oval Office next year.

"As I've mentioned to you before, we're running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama's presidency," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a staff memo obtained by the Washington Examiner after Trump was declared the winner of Tuesday's election.

The agency is currently working on regulations for the oil and gas sector, and is finalizing new annual regulations for the nation's ethanol mandate and renewable fuel blending requirements. The agency is also moving rules related to implementation of its landmark Clean Power Plan for cutting carbon pollution from the nation's coal utilities to combat global warming.

The Clean Power Plan itself is currently under court review after being temporarily stayed by the Supreme Court on Feb. 9 until all judicial review has concluded. Over half the nation is opposing the climate rules along with major industry groups and the coal industry. Trump has made repealing the EPA climate plan a key part of his first 100 days in office.

None of these regulations have any basis in actual demonstrable science - all narrative-driven. The ethanol mandate is a financial boon to one company - Archer Daniels Midland - and serves no other purpose.

Film website here: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

More here - Luc Besson also did the wonderful Fifth Element

Just no - please

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For God's sake just drop it and walk away. From the New York Post:

Chelsea Clinton being groomed to run for Congress
While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far from over. Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for the New York seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey.

Chelsea could run for the seat in NYC’s 17th Congressional District once Lowey, a respected, 79-year-old career politician with nearly 30 years in office, decides to retire, we have exclusively learned.

We have had enough of political dynasties - look at what they have given us. Time to put the crack pipe away and just shut the whole machine down.

Brilliant idea

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Saw on Facebook:

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Disaster planning for Seaside Oregon

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I love the place - I used to like Cannon Beach about 20 miles to the South but C.B. has been 'di$covered' and is now very gentrified while Seaside has retained its working roots. I have been down there for the last couple of years for a very large amateur radio conference in June. Great coffee, chinese food and a wonderful hole-in-the-wall tavern where the locals hang out. When I lived in Seattle, Cannon Beach and Seaside were some of my favorite places to visit (with the obligatory side trip to Powell's in Portland).

Unfortunately, the town is smack-dab in the sights of a tsunami when the Cascadia subduction zone lets go. The New Yorker has an excellent article about some people trying to make the Seaside schools more tsunami-proof:

THE REALLY SMALL ONES
By their nature, coastal towns are seldom at the center of things. The little boardwalk city of Seaside, Oregon, is in the far northwest corner of the state, four square miles that are not square, bisected by a river and flush against the ocean. In the summer months, nearly everyone there is from elsewhere; given a little sunshine, well over half a million tourists spread their towels along the town’s long shoreline. After Labor Day, though, the candy stores and kite shops close their shutters, the “vacancy” signs blink on, and the beach, gone brown with rain, thins out to seagulls and bundled-up locals walking their dogs. Year-round, some sixty-five hundred people live in Seaside.

But everything is at the center of something. Last year, I wrote an article in this magazine about the Cascadia subduction zone, a little-known fault line that cyclically produces the largest earthquakes and tsunamis in North America—shaking of magnitude 9.0 or higher, waves of a scale and destructive force analogous to the 2011 disaster in Japan. The subduction zone runs for seven hundred miles along the western coast of our continent. At its south end is Cape Mendocino, California. At its north end is Vancouver Island, Canada. In the middle is Seaside.

That centrality is not just geographic. With one possible exception—the similarly unlucky town of Long Beach, Washington—no other place on the West Coast is as imperilled by the Cascadia subduction zone as Seaside. When the earthquake hits, the continent will jolt westward into the Pacific, displacing an enormous amount of ocean. All of that seawater will be forced upward into a massive liquid mountain, which will promptly collapse and rush back toward the shore. That’s the tsunami, which will flood the coastal region up to a mile and a half inland and to a depth of twenty, forty, even a hundred feet, depending on your precise location. The area that will be swamped is called the inundation zone; within it, tsunamis are essentially unsurvivable. Eighty-three per cent of Seaside’s population and eighty-nine per cent of its workforce are located inside that zone. So is its energy infrastructure, water supply, wastewater-treatment plant, hospital, police department, and fire stations. And so, during the school year, are nearly all of its children.

Some really good people, a great gift of land from Weyerhaeuser timber company for the new school buildings and a growing awareness of what can happen and how to cope. Out here, we will experience about a 5.0 Magnitude - building damage, unsecured houses shifting off their foundations, some dams and bridges failing - not as serious as Seaside but still something to prepare and plan for.

From Breitbart:

MILO Offers to Pay for Lena Dunham’s One-Way Ticket to Canada
Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos has made an open offer to Girls actress Lena Dunham to pay her full, first class, one-way ticket to Canada now that Donald Trump is the president-elect.

Many liberal celebrities made promises during the election cycle to leave the country if Republican candidate Donald J. Trump was elected. Now that he is the president-elect, it seems as if many are backing out of their commitment. Comedian Amy Schumer has openly stated that she won’t be leaving the country via a lengthy Instagram post, featuring a previously debunked photo of Donald Trump.

Punch back twice as hard - hold them publically accountable for their words. Mock them.

Looks like a great documentary

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They overhype climate change a bit but that is what is in the public eye these days:

From their website:

What if the solution to climate change were hiding in plain sight?
There’s been huge growth in renewable energy and energy efficiency in recent years, but most of America’s clean energy still comes from nuclear.

THE NEW FIRE is an independent documentary that will introduce audiences to young nuclear engineers who are developing next-generation reactors which they hope will provide clean and safe solutions to the world’s future energy needs. Could these audacious innovators be the agents of change the world has been waiting for? With unprecedented access to key people, places and events, award-winning filmmaker David Schumacher has traveled the globe to capture a powerful, eye-opening story that needs to be told now—before it’s too late.

New addition to the family

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Picked up little (nine weeks old) Bear this evening. He and Grace are getting along wonderfully - both curled up at my feet hanging out.

I'll shoot some photos tomorrow and post them. He fussed for a bit while driving back home but quieted down and has been poking around the house exploring. Koshka the cat is giving me a bit of the stink-eye but she will adjust. The breeder had two males in this litter and the other one had a prey drive that was just a little too high for my liking. If he was going to be a service or police dog, he would be great but not for a farm dog.

I needed a little chaos in my life - things were too orderly.

Trump really is a racist

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The New York Times has the proof:

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Swiped from Claire Wolf

From Variety:

Singer-Songwriter Leonard Cohen Dies at 82
Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who became a singular international presence as a singer-songwriter, has died. He was 82.

A statement on his official Facebook page read, “It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away. We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief.”

Only last month, Cohen released his final album, “You Want It Darker,” a deeply introspective work that focused thematically on mortality.

A nice obituary - he will be missed.

Electricity use in the news - marijuana

From trade-journal UtilityDIVE:

Legalized marijuana initiatives could drive power demand
The legal marijuana industry is beginning to have broader impacts on the electricity sector, outside of traditional epicenters like the Pacific Northwest and California. Florida, which has struggled to integrate more renewable energy sources, could be facing an uptick in demand driven by cannabis producers.

This week voters in California, Nevada, and Massachusetts, Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas approved a range of marijuana legalization initiatives.

For some comparison,growing four mature marijuana plants consumes about as much power as running 29 refrigerators around the clock.It is a remarkably energy-intensive industry, but because it was has been illegal for years, many operations choose to work inside. That is leading to development of a cottage industry surrounding cultivation and more efficient lighting.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council believes regional demand from producers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, could reach almost 250 MW by 2035. Efforts to rein in some of that demand have been hampered by federal laws which still have marijuana as a Schedule 1 restricted drug, making it difficult for utilities to fund efficiency measures.

Geee Whiz - if we hadn't taken all of our baseload generating capacity offline (ie: Clean Coal), we would not be having this problem.

The article also links to this article about power in Oregon: Marijuana grow houses trigger 7 summer outages for Pacific Power

What do we want? NUCLEAR When do we want it? YESTERDAY

Laughed out of court in 3... 2...

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From The New York Times:

Judge: Youth Climate Change Lawsuit Against Feds Can Proceed
A lawsuit filed by young climate activists who contend the U.S. government is failing to protect them from the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions can move forward, a federal judge in Oregon ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene denied motions by the federal government and trade groups representing big energy companies to dismiss the lawsuit. They had argued that lawmakers and federal agencies, not by the court, should determine climate change policy.

The plaintiffs, including 21 youths and climate scientist James Hansen, allege the federal government has known for decades that carbon pollution causes climate change but has failed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Wondered what he was up to - Dr. Hansen founded the Goddard Institute for Space Studies - a division of NASA located in New York City near Columbia University. Whenever you hear that NASA is claiming the hottest whatever, the proclamation is coming from these jokers. A small office too - about 20 scientists, 50 interns and about 30 visiting scientists. Dr. Hansen may have founded GISS but his ass was fired from it because he was being too political - being arrested at protests and that was too much for his handlers. The guy is deranged.

I hope the defense brings some good witnesses - this will be a fun one to watch.

Out for coffee and then heading into town

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Might be getting a puppy later today - some friends had a litter of shepherds. Get Grace a playmate.

The election - an analysis

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Excellent post from Don Surber - reprinted in full:

Your riots, they amuse me
So people in Manhattan, Los Angeles and other blue areas that robotically went to Hillary are screaming and yelling and stopping traffic. As long as it remains in their areas, I do not care what they do.

From KABC, Los Angeles:

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in downtown Los Angeles late Wednesday to protest the election of Donald Trump, spilling out past city streets to block traffic on the 101 Freeway.

The chaotic scene was one of many around the country, where thousands took to the streets to protest Trump's stunning upset in Tuesday's presidential election.

Large crowds also gathered in San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin among other locations.

Trigglypuff rises and joins forces with Black Lives Matter to become the brown shirts financed by Silicon Valley billionaires and the like. The plan is to turn the country upside down and to give the media visuals to distract from President Trump's ascendancy. Anything to keep the country from coalescing under a conservative leader.

CBS already is calling them "Trump protesters." No, they belong to Clinton and the billionaires who rent her.

You see, Hillary Clinton turned into the Enron of political candidates. And her shareholders are pissed and striking out by financing these rioters.

Saudi Arabia is not pleased to see its money vanish with nothing in return. I mean when you pay for influence in a banana republic you expect to at least get a banana. Knees get capped (or worse) over something like this.

But what can they do? Hillary Clinton is off limits. The Secret Service won't allow such retaliation.

And so her frustrated financiers are reduced to this reckless attempt to wreck our country by exploiting color, sex, and anger with protests that will devolve to riots, and the death and destruction that serve the aims of the oligarchs.

Maybe it works. Who knows? But on January 20th, conservatives regain control of the country, and if this illegal nonsense does not end, President Trump can and will stop it.

Till then, riot Triggly, riot. You could use the exercise.

Emphasis mine - absolutely spot on. Social activism is a big business these days - lots of money in it.

Bill Whittle on the election results

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Excellent wrap-up:

Hat tip BoingBoing who says:

Lyon, France-based tattoo artist JC Sheitan Tenet has no right arm. In place of his right hand, he wears custom tattoo machine prostheses he developed with biomechanical sculptor Jean-Louis Gonzal. According to Great Big Story, "the device can pivot 360 degrees and allows Tenet to create abstract designs unlike anyone else."

Facebook page here: JC Sheitan Tenet
Website here: Jean-Louis Gonzal

An interesting note - Russia and Trump

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From HeatStreet:

Kremlin: Clinton Victory Would Have Led to World War 3 Between Russia and the US
Vladimir Putin was one of the first leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on his Presidential victory. In his greeting card, Putin “expressed his confidence that a dialogue between Kremlin and Washington will be based on mutual respect and equal partnership.”

“Mutual respect” was the exact phrase that Trump’s ex foreign policy adviser Carter Page used in his infamous speech at the School of Economics, a college in Moscow, back in July. He critiqued the Obama administration for its “draconian practices,” against Russia and pointed out the necessity of “mutual respect.”

On Wednesday, Putin was quick to remind people about Trump’s statements expressing his desire to “restore relations with Russia.” He also pointed out that it might not be so easy.

“We understand and are aware that it will be a difficult path in the light of the degradation in which, unfortunately, the relationship between Russia and the U.S. are at the moment.” And then, he added: “As I have repeated many times, it is not our fault that Russia-U.S. relations are as you see them.”

Putin’s advisor Sergei Glaziev went as far as to officially suggest that Trump’s victory saved the world from WW3. “Americans had two choices: WW3 or multilateral peace. Clinton was a symbol of war, and Trump has a chance to change this course.”

I could see the relationship start to veer off course - especially with our disasterous meddling in Syria. Glad to see a calmer hand on the wheel. January is not that far off.

Great news from the Philippines - from Zero Hedge:

After Bashing "Son Of A Whore" Obama, Philippines' Duterte Congratulates, Wants To Work With Trump
Trump has barely been president elect for one day, and he is already fixing the foreign policy mistake of his predecessor.

What a difference a presidential election makes: after lashing out on an almost daily basis at outgoing American president Barack Obama, calling him "son of a whore" and telling him he can "go to hell", Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte joined Vladimir Putin in congratulating Donald Trump on his election success, and said on Wednesday he now wishes to stop quarrelling with the United States, recalling his anger at the Obama administration for criticising him.

The maverick leader, incidentally known as "Trump of the East" for his unrestrained rants and lewd remarks, has repeatedly hit out at Washington in recent months, threatening to cut defense pacts and end military joint drills. "I would like to congratulate Mr. Donald Trump. Long live," Duterte said in a speech to the Filipino community during a visit to Malaysia.

One effective leader recognizing another effective leader - simple as that.

News from Canada

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Living a couple of miles from the Canadian border, I tune into the Canadian news almost as much as the US news. From The Burning Platform:

BREAKING NEWS FROM CANADA
The flood of Trump-fearing American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week. The Republican presidential campaign is prompting an exodus among left-leaning Americans who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, pay taxes, and live according to the Constitution.

Canadian border residents say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, liberal arts majors, global-warming activists, and “green” energy proponents crossing their fields at night.

“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said southern Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. “He was cold, exhausted and hungry, and begged me for a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

More at the site including this bit of information as to the cause of the exodus:

Rumors are circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer, study the Constitution, and find jobs that actually contribute to the economy.

Gives me goosebumps.

Crap - shooting in Seattle

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From The Seattle Times:

5 shot in downtown Seattle at busy intersection
Five people were shot outside a convenience store in downtown Seattle Wednesday night, and the shooter is at large, police said.

Gunshots were reported shortly before 7 p.m. outside the 7-Eleven store on Third Avenue between Pike and Pine streets, at a major bus stop.

Witnesses said a group of people were arguing when the gunman began to walk away, and then turned around and fired into the crowd. At least one victim was a bystander, Seattle police Assistant Chief Robert Merner said.

A bit more:

There was an additional police presence in downtown Seattle because of an anti-Donald Trump rally, which started at Westlake Mall earlier in the evening.

The rally turned into a march and was proceeding down various streets at the time of the shootings, according to witnesses. Merner said the shooting is unrelated.

Merner is the Seattle police Assistant Chief - no ID on the shooter as far. I used to love Seattle, glad I do not live there any more.

And it begins - Trump's EPA choice

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Great news - from Scientific American:

Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition
Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign.

Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump’s transition plans for EPA, the sources said.

The Trump team has also lined up leaders for its Energy Department and Interior Department teams. Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna is heading the DOE team; former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt is leading the effort for that agency, according to sources close to the campaign.

All three are excellent choices. The EPA really needs to be reined in - they accomplished their original goal. We now enjoy very clean air and our rivers do not catch fire. They did not stop with this, they continued to increase their scope until now, they are a despotic juggernaut. Cut their budget by 80% and restore their original charter.

Someone gets it - Trump the punk

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Kyle Smith writing at the New York Post:

Donald Trump is the punk-rock president America deserves
Donald Trump may favor stodgy blue suits and boring red ties and wear his hair in a strange double combover, but don’t be fooled. That’s how he looks, not who he is. Who he is is a guy with a safety pin through his nose and a purple mohawk. He just pulled off the most punk act in American history.

If you’re a Hillary Clinton voter, or a member of the average media outlet, observing the Trump phenomenon to you was like watching Frank Sinatra in the 1970s: has-been, used-up, going through the motions appealing to a rapidly disappearing demographic, relying entirely on crusty oldies like “My Way.”

Yet the version of “My Way” Trump actually represented was the one gargled by Sid Vicious, the short-lived Sex Pistol, over the closing credits of “Goodfellas” — crude, sneering, shocking, postmodern. None of us could believe what Trump was doing — because no one had ever seen anyone do it that way before.

Some fun writing - she closes with this:

Trump didn’t just throw out the playbook, he set fire to it. And America loved it. Not releasing his taxes? Fine, said America — can you help us game the system too? So antagonizing the media that major news outlets dropped all pretense of neutrality and openly campaigned against him? Not a problem, said America — we hate those sons of bitches too, and the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

Punk is the art of taking the stage with no preparation whatsoever and screaming: It’s me against the world, and what the freak are you gonna do about it?

The last year-and-a-half it was Trump against the world, and the world lost.

Actually, the world won - big time - but some people just need a couple years to figure that out.

Great news from Israel

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From The Times of Israel:

Netanyahu hails Donald Trump as a ‘true friend’ of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, saying the Republican is “a true friend of the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s remarks were released a few hours after Trump proclaimed victory over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in a surprise electoral coup.

“We will work together to advance security, stability and peace in our region,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“The bond between the US and Israel is based on shared values, shared interests and a shared future. I am sure that President-elect Trump and I will continue to strengthen the special alliance between Israel and the US and we will bring them to new heights,” he added.

I would like to see him move our Embasy to Jersulem.

A list of sixteen people

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It will be interesting to see if they follow through with their public statements - from Breitbart:

16 Celebrities Who Will Leave the U.S. if Trump Wins
With Election Day polls opening up across the country on Tuesday, some of Hollywood’s most progressive celebrities have got their bags packed just in case Republican Donald Trump prevails over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Here are 16 of Hollywood’s best and brightest who have pledged to move out of the United States in the event of a Trump win.

1. Barbra Streisand
“I can’t believe it. I’m either coming to your country if you’ll let me in, or Canada,” the singer told 60 Minutes in an interview in August. Streisand has been a vocal supporter of Clinton’s candidacy, and appeared at a high-profile fundraiser for the candidate in New York City earlier this year.

2. Bryan Cranston
“I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t,” Cranston said in October of the possibility of a Trump victory. The Breaking Bad star suggested he would take a permanent vacation to Vancouver.

3. Miley Cyrus
The young pop star said she would “move out da country” if Trump, whom she called a “f*cking nightmare” were to win the election.

Thirteen more at the site - looking forward to their upcoming change of residence.

From Business Insider:

Canada's immigration website just crashed
The Government of Canada's immigration website crashed on Tuesday night as the US election results were rolling in.

The site went down about 10:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and there was intermittent accessibility after that.

About 9 ET on Tuesday evening, CNN announced that a number of key states in the election — including Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida — could all swing in Republican nominee Donald Trump's favor. (Virginia has since been won by Clinton and Florida by Trump.)

The top story on Business Insider has been "How to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen."

Fine - leave our Nation and let us get back to work. Not like you were ever a productive supporter after all...

Dewey defeats Truman - a replay

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Newsweek prepped these issues in advance so they could be on the stands the day after:

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Heh. Shades of this:

20161101-truman.jpg

The Mainstream Media

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From Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man

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Woke up to wonderful news

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Little hippie heads exploding

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Schadenfreude writ large - from Newsbusters - copied in full as it is just too delicious:

Hollywood Freaks Out: ‘About to Throw Up’
Around 10 p.m., Hollywood stars began to panic. Hillary Clinton wasn’t as far ahead as they had expected her to be. In fact, the race was far from a landslide. Reflecting the anxiety of the Tinsel Town set, actress Mia Farrow re-tweeted a NYT poll showing that, as of 9:40 pm, Trump had a 55-percent chance of winning the election. As a comment on the tweet, she simply posted: “Xanax.”

Several celebrities indicated suffering physical symptoms. Funny or Die comedian and actor Billy Eichner posted: “Still feeling confident but about to throw up.” After tweeting “And Trump has closed a wide gap in North Carolina. Another shot, please,” Dan Savage commented “I’m going to puke.” Later in the evening, he intimated that death would come as sweet relief in the event of a Trump presidency. “Colorado approves assisted suicide,” he noted about an article from a local Colorado news outlet. “That’s going to come in handy.”

Model Emily Ratajkowski tweeted “Ok I’m getting really nervous,” while Khloe Kardashian expressed her view that “it shouldn’t be this close.” Singer Mandy Moore was flummoxed. “I am absolutely beside myself right now. I can’t believe the way this thing has turned. Trying to remain hopeful but geez louise.”

The Hollywood Reporter writer Lacey Rose declared “So. Much. Anxiety.” Comedian Sarah Silverman seemed to despair further. “Someone give me hope,” she pleaded. Rapper/Singer and Hamilton star Lin Manual Miranda tried to calm the bunch. “Breathe,” he wrote above an attached picture with the words: “We will survive.”

Ellen producer Andy Lassner, as a representative for the crowd planning a Northern exodus, tweeted: “I’m on hold with @AirCanada.” Apparently, Canada’s immigration site crashed around 8 pm.

Expressing his sentiments in two pregnant words, British Late Late Show host James Corden posted: “Brexit Feelings.” Cher was channeling the same thoughts. “Ask yourself “DID I DO ALL I COULD HAVE DONE”!? It’s a good Lesson. We r still Try’n 2have hope. SAW BREXIT RIP GB APART IN ONE NITE,” the singer tweeted in her signature all caps style.

Sarah Silverman finally gave up around 11 p.m with the alarmist comment: “Putin’s gonna win this thing.”

I love it.

Winding down

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A great party - Knut outdid himself with the Paella. Got a few people left talking out on the patio. Came in to check email and the status of the elections. Looks like I might get my birthday wish after all.

Getting ready to party

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A good friend is cooking his famous Paella, I have a couple pounds of smoked pulled pork ready to serve as well as a bunch of shrimp. People should start to arrive in about an hour. Drinks in the cooler.

The sun came out today and the inevitable rain is supposed to hold off until 10:00PM

Ready for Hillary

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A look at the Clinton Foundation

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By Charles Ortel who writes the following:

Concentrating on Clinton Foundation Facts
The attached Executive Summary continues an investigation into the Clinton Foundation public record begun, by chance, in February 2015.

Since then, questions have started to swirl around the various entities that comprise what I call the Clinton Charity Network: a group of entities supported by a variety of donors from inside the United States and around the world.

Beginning today, and regularly thereafter, numerous detailed Exhibits will examine the known public record of the Clinton Charity Network within the context of applicable state, federal, and foreign laws.

His attachment: Exhibit 1 - an excerpt:

To informed analysts, the Clinton Foundation appears to be a rogue charity that has neither been organized nor operated lawfully from inception in October 1997 to date--as you will grow to realize, it is a case study in international charity fraud, of mammoth proportions.

In particular, the Clinton Foundation has never been validly authorized to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than as a presidential archive and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moreover, its operations have never been controlled by independent trustees and its financial results have never been properly audited by independent accountants.

Emphasis mine - talk about scope creep. But it's the Clintons so hands off.

Charles has much more at his website - a good writer and analyst. The Clinton Charity needs to be taken apart and scattered to the winds. It is just a vehicle for the Clintons to get rich by peddling influence.

Great essay - our ruling elites

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From Thomas Frank writing at the UK Guardian:

Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.

A bit more and then this:

They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.

And this:

Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt, smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous email chain, for example, the reader can watch current US trade representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address in 2008, appear to name President Obama’s cabinet even before the great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an important clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put out of its misery).

The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here in force, interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the people. We watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans to visit Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to one missive, wants to “learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action”). Podesta exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an ugly race now unfolding for Silicon Valley’s seat in Congress; this man, in turn, appears to forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another Silicon Valley grandee, who complains that one of the Democratic combatants in that fight was criticizing billionaires who give to Democrats. Specifically, the miscreant Dem in question was said to be:

Spot on. Regardless of who is seated in the White House, this swamp must be drained.

Time to breathe a sigh of relief

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The last day of election season. Out for coffee and then to get the house ready for the staff party tonight.

Bubbles for everything

But they burst and now it is time to pay the butcher's bill for Chinese company LeEco. From The Register:

LeEco – the Chinese biz that said it'll topple US tech giants – has already hit the rocks
Less than a month ago, Chinese media and electronics firm LeEco made its glitzy launch into the US market. However, its founder Jia Yueting has just told staff that the firm is in trouble.

Back then LeEco (pronounced Le Echo) promised a smartphone better in spec to Google's Pixel or Apple's iPhone but costing half as much; a $5,000 seven-foot Android-powered smart TV; an electric autonomous vehicle; an electric bike; and a VR headset. Now it is slashing its expectations and product lines.

"No company has had such an experience, a simultaneous time in ice and fire," Jia said in a letter to staff that was leaked to Bloomberg News. "We blindly sped ahead, and our cash demand ballooned. We got over-extended in our global strategy. At the same time, our capital and resources were in fact limited."

He wrote that the company had caught "big company disease" and has grown faster than its organization could cope with. As such, the company will be trimming the fat and tightening up its product line, and Jia said he would cut his annual salary to a single Yuan ($0.15) as an economy measure.

So now we know, the Chinese have Bolivian Marching Powder. I actually had the same problem (too-rapid growth, not cocaine) with my second business in Seattle. Things were going gangbusters and I kept adding functionality - more equipment on cheap long-term leases. We hit a bit of a bump in business and all of a sudden, the lease payments were more than our gross revenue. I was able to pull out and successfully sell the business a few years later but that is an experience I will never let happen again.

Competition is good and I like that the founder has cut his salary - keeping skin in the game. Time will tell.

So true - wish it was different but no

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Can we not agree that the government has become way too large? Here is one statistic - from CNS News:

Government Workers Now Outnumber Manufacturing Workers by 9,977,000
The United States lost 9,000 manufacturing jobs in October while gaining 19,000 jobs in government, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Government employment grew from 22,216,000 in September to 22,235,000 in October, according to BLS, while manufacturing jobs dropped from 12,267,000 to 12,258,000.

The 22,235,000 employed by government in the United States now outnumber the 12,258,000 employed in manufacturing by 9,977,000.

The government creates very little - what it does is regulate. Do we really need this much regulation in our lives. I think not. For every new regulation, take two old ones off the books and any new regulation, make sure it has a sunset clause - if people don't vote for it again, it never should have been put in force in the first place.

The truth - socialism and war

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Sobering bit of information from The Foundation for Economic Education:

Socialism Kills More Babies than War
Recent reports that infants now die at a higher rate in Venezuela than in war-torn Syria were, sadly, unsurprising – the results of socialist economics are predictable. Venezuela’s infant mortality rate has actually been above Syria’s since 2008.

The big picture, fortunately, is happier. The global infant mortality rate has plummeted. Even Syria and Venezuela, despite the impact of war and failed policies, saw improvements up to as recently as last year. From 1960 to 2015, Syria’s infant mortality rate fell by 91% and Venezuela’s by 78%. This year, Syria’s rate rose from 11.1 per 1,000 live births to 15.4, while Venezuela’s shot up from 12.9 to 18.6. Meanwhile, infant mortality rates have continued to fall practically everywhere else, and have declined even faster in countries that enjoy more freedom and stability.

Makes a lot of sense. In Syria, there are pitched battles between the warring factions but they tend to let the civilian population alone unless they are using them as human shields (using schools, mosques and hospitals as redoubts). The constant grinding malnutrition and poverty of socialism's end game wears on the mother as well as on the child. Sanitation is also a major factor, Venezuelan's have to leave the country to buy toilet paper and other basic necessities.

Potential voter fraud in New York City

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A woman wearing a full burka went to a polling place and gave her name as Huma Abedin. Huma's name was not on the rolls so they would not let her use the voting machine but they were more than happy to give her a paper ballot on which to cast her votes.

From James O'Keefe's Project Veritas.

Back from town - party tomorrow

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Woo hoo! Got two pounds of shrimp (non-farmed) and some pupus for people to eat while the paella is cooking.

Picked up some dog food (for the dogs - why? What were you thinking?) and a couple bottles of wine plus a roti chicken for dinner tonight.

Unloading the truck - more posting after dinner.

Off to town today

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Heading out for coffee and then in to town for some shopping and banking. Staff party out here tomorrow so picking up some last minute items.

Back in a couple of hours...

About those Wikileaks - shouldn't be reading them, it is illegal. From The Daily Caller:

CNN Host Claims It’s ILLEGAL For Public To View WikiLeaks Emails
CNN’s Chris Cuomo told viewers it is illegal for them to possess emails leaked by the website WikiLeaks, and as a result they could not read them and had to rely entirely on the media to learn about their content.

Believe that and I have some oceanfront property in Idaho you might be interested in...

That guy in Reno - Austyn Crites

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The Hillary supporter who intterupted the Trump rally? Turns out he also interrupted a Trump rally in Kissimmee, FL on 08/11/2016. From The Gateway Pundit:

Update: Trump Attacker Is Hillary Supporter, Mentioned in Wikileaks, Hit Previous Rally
Donald Trump was rushed off stage Saturday night at a rally in Reno, Nevada.

The crowd was screaming “Gun! Gun!”

The man was identified as Austyn Crites (Daily Mail) and is identified a Hillary supporter.

A search of Wikileaks brings up seven entries of Austyn Crites from Reno Nevada.

Vote rigging in Virginia

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From The Daily Signal:

Virginia Governor Pardons 60,000 Felons, Enough to Swing Election
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has granted voting rights to as many as 60,000 convicted felons just in time for them to register to vote, nearly five times more than previously reported.

McAuliffe sought to allow all of Virginia’s estimated 200,000 felons to vote, but state courts said each individual felon’s circumstances must be weighed. To get around that, McAuliffe used a mechanical autopen to rapidly sign thousands of letters, as if he had personally reviewed them, even as his office was saying the total was 13,000.

Now, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned that McAuliffe churned out five times as many letters before the registration deadline than publicly claimed.

Virginia’s recent political history has seen multiple races that were decided by tiny margins. The 2014 U.S. Senate race, for example, was decided by only 17,000 votes, while the attorney general’s race came down to a mere 165 votes.

If the Democrats were able to lead on the strength of their morals and their ideas for governance, why do they always have to cheat to win?

Came to me that if Pooty-Poot really wanted to influence the Democratic National Committee and this election, all he would have had to have done was to make a quiet but major contribution to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Much cheaper in the long run and he would be In like Flynn

And it begins - another Wikileaks tranche

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This time, it is from the Democratic National Committee:

20161106-DNC.jpg

I am getting a 502 bad gateway error for all of the links off the Wikileaks main page so things are probably a bit busy over there for now.

As Hillary said, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain:

Same as it ever was...

There is a lot of silver, gold and palladium used on modern electronic circuit boards so there is a major cottage industry built around recycling this eWaste.

This video is very long (45 minutes) but only the first three minutes or so are of interest. How to remove the chips from the circuit board. There are lots of techniques. Back when I was trying to recover and reuse some of the older style (DIP through-hole) chips, I would use a propane torch on one side and some pliers on the other.

The method in this video is not for re-using the chips, it is just for removing them from the circuit board to salvage the precious metals from within them. Brilliant idea using an air hammer. I love the Brrrrrrp sound it makes.

Carbohydrates - so bad yet sooooo good

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We are both stuffed.

The TV show Person of Interest just keeps getting better and better - watched up to Season Two, Episode 16 tonight and it runs for another three Seasons. I love that they show actual screenshots of hacking software, not some random salad of numbers and figures flying by. Whomever they had consulting on their tech knows their stuff.

Enjoying the extra hour from the DST switchover. I feel sorry for those poor sods in England who had to move the stones at Stonehenge to their Winter positions. At least they have diesel excavators these days - imagine when they had to do it by hand...

Vampires sure have it bad

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Making the spaghetti sauce - the smell of garlic is transforming the house. Yum!!!

From Dave Merrick writing at the Canada Free Press:

To America On The Eve Of Its Destruction ...
Like a spitting cobra, a viper or a fox, a confident and smiling Hillary is saying anything she can to get her prey to let her in. It has taken a tenth of a second (if you are my age at least) for the Clintons to claw - tooth and nail - from Arkansas to Washington. Most of the time Mrs. Clinton has been posing as June Cleaver. Now she is masquerading as the quintessential grandma - whatever it takes to lull her lightheaded constituency long enough to seize the most powerful office on earth. (And by the way, Hillary, Captain Kangaroo called .... said he wants his clothes back.)

Nevertheless, in my entire life I have never imagined such egregiously obvious, wholesale lying followed mostly by thunderous applause from her crowds, and elephant bucks from the people who own most of the internet. It’s frightening. Shirer’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ tells the parallel horror of how Hitler and Joseph Goebbels strapped down Germany. Just like that, Hillary is telling her listeners whatever they want to hear. And just as brutal as a beer hall putsch, the liberal media are her brownshirts. But this time instead of clubbing people, a worse, more paralyzing violence is done to the truth.

As I have said before, this is not an issues-based campaign. Thinking people are not the problem. Don’t bother arguing with the ‘emancipating’ morons who gave eight years to Barack Obama just because they wanted to have bragging rights for electing the first black president. Now those same people and their voting-age children are determined to elect the first woman president - oblivious to and/or careless of her nefarious and treasonous history. But if she wins, this will be the capstone moment for the machine she has built, and the debtors and anxious underwriters she has secured en route. What her tv-mesmerized constituency doesn’t realize is that the muzzle and manacles she and her cohorts have built for ‘racist’ and ‘hater’ Americans will take away their freedoms as well.

A good long thoughtful read. Dave had also written this a month ago on October 2nd, 2016:

Finally I Can See What ‘Emailgate’ is REALLY All About!
To date, I’m not real certain that anyone has logically put all the parts together regarding the puzzle/debacle of Hillary’s homemade, basement Internet server. I want to keep this a quick read, mainly because I think the issue has already been sufficiently obscured by the sea of words put forth surrounding it. And if someone else has made this point, well, I will own my ignorance and surely wear that throughout the balance of my writing career. As anyone who does conservative commentary will attest, unless you employ a staff of researchers it is impossible to read (or write) fast enough to keep up with all the garbage taking down our country today. So this angle may not be news to some of you.

My problem with the Hillary deal has always been this: Though it hurts to acknowledge it, she is far from stupid. And she has decades of experience in ‘handling’ all sorts of data, records, evidence - call it what you will. She has stolen, clouded, shredded, hidden, twisted, traded, etc., all manner and form of vital communication - some believe she’s maybe even killed for it. Nevertheless, the notion that this particular woman would be ditzy or negligent enough to set up a little server there in her Chappaqua parking shed, without having completely thought that move through to its every possible consequence and in its every micro-detail, is the height of naïveté.

Again, more at the site. Dave Merrick's archived writings for the Canada Free Press are here: Most Recent Articles by Dave Merrick

Turns out he is quite the artist as well: Dave Merrick - A Painter of Life (he does a lot of portraiture and wildlife as well as political art)

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Very clever idea - meet SPUD

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Kickstarter here: The Spontaneous Pop-up Display (SPUD)

Coming to market in June 2017 for $399 MSRP.

I wonder what they have on him - it looked for a while like FBI Director James B. Comey finally grew a pair and was standing up to the Clinton machine - now this from The Washington Post:

FBI Director Comey says agency won’t recommend charges over Clinton email
FBI Director James B. Comey notified key members of Congress Sunday afternoon that after reviewing all of the newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails the agency stands by its original findings against recommending charges.

Comey wrote that investigators had worked “around the clock” to review all the emails found on a device used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that had been sent to or from Clinton and that “we have not changed our conclusions expressed in July.”

Excuse me - you were able to review 650,000 emails in seven days? That is 64 emails per second 24/7. Even if you put a team of 50 people on it, they would each have to call up, read and decide on 77 emails per minute. A bit more:

Comey had upended the campaign just over a week ago, when he alerted Congress that new emails had been located that were related to Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state.

The emails came from a laptop owned by Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and had been seized by the FBI on Oct. 3 as part of an investigation into lewd text messages Weiner is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl.

Comey had come under fire for inserting the FBI into the campaign’s final days with the announcement. Department of Justice policy discourages the agency from taking steps in days before an election, to avoid the perception that the FBI is trying to the influence the outcome of the vote.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment beyond Comey’s letter.

I wonder what form Comey's upcoming suicide wiill take - two bullets to the back of the head? That is an Arkancide for sure.

Nothing much on the web

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So heading out for coffee and stop in at the store for a bit.

Heading into town tomorrow for a few things.

Fixing spaghetti for dinner tonight - trying to cut down on carbohydrates so haven't made it as often as we used to.

Hubris on display

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Obama is now most concerned about his "legacy" - he is a narcissist and this is his self-identification; what greatness he left behind after his tenure as pResident.

Fully on display at Russia Today:

Obama’s humility: ‘We really are an indispensable nation’
Humility in foreign policy “is useful trait,” outgoing President Barack Obama said, adding that America is “an indispensable nation” that has “a lot to be proud of” in the world – thanks to having the most powerful military force.

Stupidly weak foreign policy is not national humility. The Iranians were openly laughing at Kerry (here, here and here for starters) when he was negotiating that nuclear deal. The Iranians stalled and played him for a fool and then, they had Obama send over a pallet of $400 Million in bills to get some hostages released. "Most powerful military force" - no thanks to you who gutted it every chance you got.

The assertion came during Obama’s sit in with HBO’s Real Time show host Bill Maher on Friday. The interview was focused on the president’s political legacy and domestic problems, but the commander-in-chief also shared his thoughts on why the US needs a military that costs over $600 billions a year, according to Maher’s count.

Yes, we spent 633bn on military in 2014. We also spent 813bn on Social Security, 536bn on Income Security (supplemental income and tax breaks) and 220bn on health care for a total of 1.56 Trillion on entitlement programs - almost three times what was spent on the military. To put things into percentages, that is 18% of Federal Tax revenues being spent for Defense and 69% of Revenues being spent on entitlement programs.

“The US having the most powerful military on Earth… helps up check the impulses of some other bad folks,” Obama said, giving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his country’s nuclear weapons program as an example.

The Norks do whatever China wants them to - they are beholden to China for everything. Our "negotiations" with them have absolutely zero effect on their plans.

The Pentagon stages annual military exercises with its ally, South Korea, to prepare for a possible conflict with North Korea. South Korea is the world’s tenth biggest defense spender, investing about $34 billion in its military annually, compared to North Korea’s estimated $10 billion. Pyongyang insists it needs nuclear weapons to deter possible military aggression from the US.

Why the focus on North Korea - why didn't Obama talk about all the wonderful work we are doing in the Middle East, specifically Iran, Afghanistan, how we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.

There is a lot more at the site but the taste in my mouth is bad enough as it is. As they say, one does not have to eat the whole egg to know that it is rotten.

From the London Daily Mail - USA media are not-so-surpisingly quiet on the event:

The Donald is rushed off the stage by Secret Service while speaking during Reno rally after a 'Republicans against Trump' protester causes chaos in the crowd over fears he had a gun
Secret Service agents rushed Donald Trump offstage on Saturday evening during a rally in Reno, Nevada after they determined a protester in the audience posed a threat to the Republican presidential candidate.

'Go! Go!' agents shouted as they whisked him away and a combination of local police and private security wrestled a man at the front of the crowd to the ground.

A sea of bodies scattered, screams rang out and authorities dragged the man, identified as 33-year-old Austyn Crites, away as he kicked and strained.

A Trump campaign source who spoke with DailyMail.com said someone in the audience had shouted 'gun', kicking off the ensuing chaos.

Say no more - here is his facebook page:

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A #hillbot - no surprise there. More here, here, here and here.

True dat - biggest loser? The Media

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From The Baltimore Sun:

Biggest loser of 2016 presidential election? The media
We are still days away from finally knowing the winner of one of the ugliest elections in modern history, but we already have the biggest loser: the media.

From cable news employees sharing questions with Democrat Hillary Clinton in advance of TV town halls and debates, to executives making their airwaves endlessly available to Donald Trump for phone "interviews" that the Republican candidate controlled, the media have never performed less responsibly in a modern-era presidential election.

And that perception is not simply the result of WikiLeaks giving us an unvarnished, drip-drip-drip look at the incestuous groveling and information-sharing that reporters at some of the nation's top news outlets engaged in with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta the past 18 months. It's the result of my daily reporting on an industry that appears to have largely lost a clear sense of civic direction and purpose, while simultaneously becoming cozier with the powers that be and more dishonest with audiences.

So true - I have not seen media bias this bad since the days of Baghdad Bob.

Good news from the Washington coastline

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Clever design for a new school building - the reinforcements cost less than 15% more to build but the new school is a Tsunami shelter for up to 2,000 people. From Seattle station KING-TV

The lower walls are designed to collapse to lower the water resistance. From The Seattle Times:

‘It will happen here’: Washington Coast school builds nation’s first tsunami refuge
The first students to race up the stairs at Ocosta Elementary School’s new gym and tsunami refuge were so excited, it took teachers a while to corral them into orderly lines on the rooftop.

“It’s really cool to finally see kids up here,” Paula Akerlund said, as the third-graders jostled and joked and tried to peer over the tall parapet on a sunny spring afternoon.

Akerlund is superintendent of the Ocosta School District, headquartered near Westport a scant half-mile from the Pacific Ocean. On Saturday, she will preside over a dedication ceremony for what — on the outside — looks pretty much like any modern school complex.

What’s unique about this gym is mostly hidden from view: tons of concrete and steel that make it the first structure in the nation designed to withstand a tsunami and provide a safe haven from the rushing waters.

Very cool to hear about - it is not a matter of IF,it is a matter of WHEN and the better prepared we are, the more of us will survive and thrive.

The Paris Climate Accord is a cultural marxist scam designed to skim off many billions of dollars from rich nations to line the purses of despots and the "climate challenged" nations. The USA has thankfully, not signed on to this piece of crap. Not what the UK Guardian thinks:

Paris climate change agreement enters into force
The Paris agreement on climate change enters into force on Friday, marking the first time that governments have agreed legally binding limits to global temperature rises.

The passage of the accord – the fruit of more than two decades of often tortuous international negotiations on combating climate change – was hailed by nations and observers around the world.

Under the agreement, all governments that have ratified the accord, which includes the US, China, India and the EU, now carry an obligation to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. That is what scientists regard as the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.

Unnnh - that would be a no. From the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change:

Paris Agreement - Status of Ratification
The Paris Agreement pdf-icon entered into force on 4 November 2016, thirty days after the date on which at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55 % of the total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession with the Depository.

The list below contains the latest information concerning dates of signature and receipt of instruments of ratification by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, as Depository of the Kyoto Protocol. The dates in the third column are those of the receipt of the instrument of ratification, acceptance (A) or approval (AA).

Authoritative information on the status of the Paris Agreement, including information on signatories to the Agreement, ratification and entry into force, is provided by the Depository, through the United Nations Treaty Collection website, which can be accessed here, and the Depository Notifications which are available here.

Background information related to the ratification, acceptance, approval or accession of the Paris Agreement, as well as its entry into force can be found here.

As you can see from the list, the United States accepted the ratification but it did not issue a declaration. Obama is forcing this using his pen and his phone but the Senate is not ratifying this treaty (as they must under the US Constitution and it must be by a 2/3rds vote).

Quiet day today

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Working on a couple projects here at home - dinner will be the last of the split-pea and ham soup. We are both feeling low energy having had poor sleeps last night. Spending the day in sloth mode to recover.

Nothing much happening on the internets - quiet news day.

Not that much here but this is PART 1

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Anonymous releases their first tranche of data on the Clinton Sex Scandal:

Clinton Underground Child Sex Scandal PART 1
The Clinton investigation is now connected to a massive child trafficking and pedophile sex ring operating within Washington, D.C. Over the next few days, and this November 5th, we will be referencing evidence and exposing the Clinton foundations for multiple incidences of child trafficking and sex scandals.

Hillary Clinton is being investigated by the FBI for involvement in an elite Washington pedophile ring, according to veteran State Department official Steve Pieczenik. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zVlaZyX3Q

Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his relationship with Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and other famous names, and their connection to a high-level sex scandal is exposed by Conchita and Cristina Sarnoff. http://bit.ly/2eH3ELq

Anthony Weiner Talking to FBI about underage Sex Island (Lolita)
The FBI wants to know everything about the Lolita Island that Jeffrey Epstein owns. Lucky for them Anthony Weiner knows a lot about the Underage sex Island that Bill Clinton would visit and Weiner is ready to Talk. http://bit.ly/2f4u9xv

A lot more at the site - most of this is stuff we already knew but they have only just begun dumping the goods.

So true - twilight zone

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Cue the music:

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From Hope 'n Change

Slept in today

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Could not fall asleep last night - both of us kept having really bizarre dreams.

Off for coffee and working at the store for a bit. Heading into town Monday for some errands and banking.

Heavy rain last night - got about 0.4" in a couple of hours and more to come.

So true

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Anonymous is supposed to be releasing some juicy stuff tomorrow. Fun times indeed.

Marijuana laws in Texas - in song

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The laws there are draconian - if you make a pound of pot brownies, it is considered to be the same as a pound of heroin. The folks at Hutson and Harris in Waco Texas put it to music:

Their blog has a lot of other videos - here is a bit more on Pot Brownies.

Tip of the hat to Miss Cellania at Neatorama for the link.

Spirit Cooking revisited

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Earlier today, one of today's Wikileak Podesta emails talked about Spirit Cooking. Did a bit of poking around and Mark Dice has written a book titled: The Illuminati in Hollywood: Celebrities, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies in Pop Culture and the Entertainment Industry. From the blurb:

The infamous Illuminati secret society represents the pinnacle of power in politics, banking, and the news media; but what about the entertainment industry? Do Hollywood’s elite studios, producers, and celebrities have a secret agenda? Are they part of a covert conspiracy?

Media analyst Mark Dice will show you exactly how Hollywood uses celebrities and entertainment as a powerful propaganda tool to shape our culture, attitudes, behaviors, and to promote corrupt government policies and programs.

You will see how the CIA and the Pentagon work hand in hand with Hollywood to produce blockbuster movies and popular television shows crafted to paint positive portraits of war, Orwellian government surveillance, unconstitutional agendas, and more.

You’ll also learn the strange and secret spiritual beliefs of the stars that fuel their egos and appetites for fame and wealth, making them perfect puppets for the corporate controllers behind the scenes. And you will also discover the rare instances of anti-Illuminati celebrities who have dared to bite the hand that feeds them.

Character Howard Beale once warned in the 1976 classic film Network, “This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people,” and unfortunately that is exactly what has happened.

Mark released this video today:

This is just one example of the rot at the heart of the Democratic Party - pretty damning stuff.

Mark's tweet from today was spot on:

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He has a point - Mayor Rudy Giuliani

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Voting in Florida

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Corrupt? Of course - from Danger & Play:

Florida Election Officials Caught Filling Out Absentee Ballots, Affidavit Alleges 
Florida voters have complained that they have not been receiving their requested absentee ballots. We may now know the reason why. According to a former Secretary of Elections Department employee, there is a secret room where Democrat insiders fill out those absentee ballots.

The woman provided her sworn testimony via affidavit.

You can read the affidavit here (PDF File).

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Color me surprised - not...

Notorious HRC

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Pay my foundation:

Follow the money - ISIS and Hillary

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From Russia Today:

Assange: Clinton & ISIS funded by same money, Trump won’t be allowed to win (JOHN PILGER EXCLUSIVE)
In the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be exclusively broadcast by RT on Saturday, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Islamic State’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.

In a 2014 email made public by Assange’s WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Islamic State, IS, ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups.”

From the interview:

John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.

JP: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

JA: Yes.

Not surprised at all. Prison is too good for her - she has sold out American interests. She needs to be marooned on an uninhabited tropical island. Forgotten.

Don't be late for dinner - Spirit Cooking

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Shot: This Podesta email:

20161104-spirit.jpgChaser: about Spirit Cooking

Spirit Cooking
Spirit Cooking is an event started by Marina Abramović, who is an artist known for her gory performances and occultist rituals.

Origin
The origins of Spirit Cooking can be found in Cake of Light, a sacrament in the religion of Thelema which was founded by Aleister Crowley. The ingredients of the Cake of Light include honey, oil, menstrual blood and sperm. The sacrament is meant to symbolize the union between the microcosm, Man, and the macrocosm, the Divine, which is a representation of one of the prime maxims in Hermeticism "As Above, So Below." The consumption of the Cake of Light is a fulfillment of the sacred circle of the connection between Man and the Divine.

This really creeps me out - shades of Nazi Occultism and the Thule Society.

A shot across the bow - Guccifer 2.0

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Guccifer has been very quiet for the last few weeks but they posted this today:

INFO FROM INSIDE THE FEC: THE DEMOCRATS MAY RIG THE ELECTIONS
I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.

As I’ve already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities.

I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly.

I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the U.S. society about the facts of electoral fraud.

I do not doubt any of this.

Strange tale from California - from Breitbart:

Nearly 100 Ballots Found Outside California Man’s Home
California resident Jerry Mosna found 83 unused 2016 voter ballots at his home over the weekend — each ballot had a different name but were all addressed to his neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment — causing concern and serious suspicion of voter fraud.

Why didn't the postman say something - it should have been obvious that something was fishy?

Damning evidence - Weiner's laptop

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Sucks to be you Hillary - from CBS News:

FBI finds emails related to Hillary Clinton's State Department tenure
The FBI has found emails related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the laptop belonging to the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, according to a U.S. official.

These emails, CBS News’ Andres Triay reports, are not duplicates of emails found on Secretary Clinton’s private server. At this point, however, it remains to be seen whether these emails are significant to the FBI’s investigation into Clinton. It is also not known how many relevant emails there are.

Anthony's Get Out Of Jail card. Wonder what tomorrow will bring - they always do a big dump on Friday trying to keep it out of the news cycle.

Deciding the election

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This cuts to the quick:

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Appropriate use of technology

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Very cool - from engadget:

Ukraine's military wants HoloLens helmets for its tank commanders
It's not easy to see out of a tank (that's the point) but in order to be effective on the battlefield, their crews need to know what's going on around them. Modern tanks often have a variety cameras mounted to their exteriors to help the soldiers inside get a better view but crews still have to rely on monitors in the cabin to see out. However, a new HoloLens-enabled helmet from Limpid Armor can give tank commanders a better view of their surroundings just by turning their heads.

The helmet, dubbed the Circular Review System (CRS), sets a HoloLens headset directly onto the front of its frame. Video feeds gathered from the tank's exterior cameras are stitched together and displayed through the headset as a "mixed reality" view to the wearer. With it, tank crews are afforded a 360-degree view of the situation in both the visible and infrared spectrums. Not only that, the CRS can tag enemy and friendly soldiers, designate targets and feed critical information to the commander.

Very clever idea - simple enough to stitch the image together - there are lots of image  processing  libraries out there for the Raspberry Pi so I would imagine that something could be adapted for whatever platform they are using for this. I like the IFF feature.

Also love that it is a COTS project - most of the components are Commercial Off The Shelf as opposed to some fancy one-off custom design. Much cheaper, more reliable and better function - the marketplace forces a product to evolve, something springing from the mind of one engineer may have overlooked problems. Witness all the problems with the F-35 fighter.

Now this is interesting - arctic noise

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From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik
Hunters in a remote community in Nunavut are concerned about a mysterious sound that appears to be coming from the sea floor.

The "pinging" sound, sometimes also described as a "hum" or "beep," has been heard in Fury and Hecla Strait — roughly 120 kilometres northwest of the hamlet of Igloolik — throughout the summer.

Paul Quassa, a member of the legislative assembly, says whatever the cause, it's scaring the animals away.

"That's one of the major hunting areas in the summer and winter because it's a polynya," an area of open water surrounded by ice that's abundant with sea mammals, he said.

"And this time around, this summer, there were hardly any. And this became a suspicious thing."

The noise is "emanating from the sea floor," according to remarks Quassa made last month in the Nunavut legislature.

One possibility and I would not put it past them:

He also says some of his constituents suspect the sound is being generated on purpose by Greenpeace to scare wildlife away from the rich hunting ground. The organization has a tense past with Inuit stemming from its opposition to the seal hunt in the 1970s and 1980s. 

"We've heard in the past of groups like Greenpeace putting in some kinds of sonars in the seabed to get the sea mammals out of the way so Inuit won't be able to hunt them," Quassa said.

Curious.

About the Primary process

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Two emails released today from Wikileaks:

From here:

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From here:

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66 years on this planet

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Turning 66 today. Do not feel old at all - feel the same as I did when I was 40.

Lulu is coming out later today - no plans, just hang out here.

Finding Amelia Earhart

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She might have been found in 1940. From The Earhart Project

NEW DISCOVERY - Comparing Earhart to the Bones on Nikumaroro
There is a newly discovered similarity between Amelia Earhart and the castaway whose partial skeleton was found on Nikumaroro in 1940.

The bones, suspected by their discoverer of being Earhart’s, were dismissed by British authorities after a doctor judged them to be male. The bones were subsequently lost and the entire incident forgotten until TIGHAR discovered the original British files in 1998, including the skeletal measurements the doctor made. An evaluation of those measurements by forensic anthropologists Karen Burns, Ph.D. and Richard Jantz, Ph.D. led to the conclusion that “the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin.” (See Bones & Shoes.)

That was eighteen years ago. Recently, in preparing an updated evaluation of the bone measurements, Dr. Jantz noticed a peculiarity. Among the bones recovered was a humerus (upper arm bone) and a radius (lower arm bone). In the British doctor’s notes, the humerus was reported to be 32.4 centimeters long. The radius was 24.5 centimeters – a ratio of 0.756 to the length of the humerus. Statistically, women born in the late 19th century (Earhart was born in 1897) had an average radius to humerus ratio of 0.73. In other words, if the castaway was a middle-aged, ethnically European woman, she had forearms considerably longer than average. Dr. Jantz wondered if Amelia may have had similarly longer than average forearms.

To answer that question we called on forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman. Selecting an historical photo of Amelia where her bare arms were clearly visible, and working with Dr. Jantz to identify the correct points on the shoulder, elbow and wrist for comparing bone length, Jeff found that Earhart’s humerus to radius ratio was 0.76 – virtually identical to the castaway’s. Click HERE for Jeff Glickman’s full forensic report.

The match does not, of course, prove that the castaway was Amelia Earhart but it is a significant new data point that tips the scales further in that direction.

Fascinating - always wondered what happened to her. Lots of stories but precious few facts.

A great article about breeding dogs

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From Big Think:

Top Vets Urge Dog Owners to Stop Buying Pugs and Bulldogs
Pugs, Frenchies, boxers, shih-tzus and other flat-faced dog breeds have been trending for at least the last decade, thanks to higher visibility (usually in a celebrity’s handbag), an increase in city living (smaller dogs for smaller homes), and possibly even the fine acting of Frank the Pug in 1997’s Men in Black. We’re not ruling it out. These small, specialty pure breeds are seen as the pinnacle of cuteness – they have friendly personalities, endearing odd looks, and are perfect for Stranger Things video montages.

So what’s their cutest feature? Is it their squashy little faces? Their grunting pants (like tiny little obese people!)? Their double-curled tails?

That coiled tail is possibly less endearing when you know it’s a purpose-bred genetic defect, which in its most serious forms leads to paralysis. And their squished noses? That’s been selectively bred to become ever shorter and smaller, making it difficult for the dogs to breathe and eat, causing trickle down effects like cardiovascular stress, eye prolapses, overheating (dogs don’t sweat, so they need to pant to expel heat through evaporation), weight gain because of that sedentary overheated lifestyle, dental crowding, soft-palate collapse, and skin-fold dermatitis. More of an “anatomical disaster” than the patron saint of cuteness.

And the problem with the veterinarians is that the customer knows best - they overlook the serious problems that these dogs have and are focused only on their physical appearance:

Despite performing corrective surgeries and designing pain treatment plans for these dogs, veterinarians don’t often speak up about the unethical nature of buying and creating demand for genetically impaired dogs for one simple reason – it’s bad for business. “If I stood up and told the truth about these breeds,” says an anonymous vet to The Guardian, “I would immediately alienate [their owners] and they would up sticks and move to the neighboring practice where the vet was not as outspoken. Vets in general practice simply cannot afford to be honest and to speak out.”

Much more at the site - they talk about cats as well.

Readers will know that I love the German Shepherd but the dog as it is today is just a pale crippled shadow of what they used to be even just 20 years ago.. Too much inbreeding. When I was looking for a dog, I went with a Shiloh Shepherd. Grace has turned out to be one of the best dogs I have ever been with and healthy too. Here is the Best of Breed GSD from the Crufts Show from 2016:

Her name is Cruaghaire Catoria and she is only three years old and already can not walk with a normal gait because she is in constant pain from her hips. Needless to say, there was quite the uproar in the media when she was awarded the Best in Show prize.

Finnegan, my Brittany Spaniel (a pound rescue) passed away in 2014, I have been looking around for another spaniel - these are great field and hiking dogs. My only problem is that all of the local breeders (Washington, Oregon, Idaho) are emphasizing how their dogs excel in the ring and are great show dogs. Very few of them talk about how they are in the field. Needless to say, I am looking around for other breeds - maybe another Shiloh. Maybe a pibble if I can find a good puppy.

You think a copper mesh with a few kV* would do the trick. From CNN:

Urine is eroding the world's tallest church tower
The tallest church in the world is under attack -- and the aggressor is human urine.

The magnificent 531-feet-tall (162-meter) steeple of Ulm Minster dominates the German city of Ulm, which lies on the River Danube in Baden-Württemberg.

But now officials responsible for its upkeep say the stone base of the Gothic tower, which has long acted as a lightning rod to late-night revelers looking to relieve themselves, is being eroded by salt and acids in the urine, Südwest Presse reports.

"Wildpinkler," as al fresco micturition is known in Germany, has become such a problem that earlier this year the city doubled fines to 100 euros ($109) for anyone caught in the act.

*kV - kiloVolts as in a few thousand volts. Restrict the current so there is no tissue damage, just a good healthy ZAP!. The finger of God as it were...

Serious groan-inducing joke here

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20161102-weiner.png

And a tip of the hat to Bayou Renaissance Man

A new advertisement

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Now that things are winding up, the advertisements have been getting better and better:

Back from town and disappointing dinner

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Stopped in at the Roadhouse for dinner tonight on the way back from town and was very dissapointed. Prices are up about 20% (close to Bellingham restaurant levels) and they had neither a pasta of the day nor a baked potato option for the entree. Their salad was a commercial salad mix (you can tell because of the huge range in size of the pieces of lettuce - this stuff is the waste stream from a lettuce processing facility). That is a very slippery slope and once you start down, things just get worse and worse faster and faster. I hope they can recognise this as they are good people.

Still need to get four more things done in town so will be doing a trip in tomorrow or Friday. Friday is supposed to be sunny - still need to plant this winter's garlic.

24 hour rain level is now a bit over one inch.

The clouds are too low to see if Black Mountain gor any snow but I am betting that it got a good bit. Raining steadilly down here - a bit more than 0.6" in the last 24 hours.

Off for coffee and in to town for a few hours - Lulu is at the dentist. Thinking about making some more ham and pea soup - that stuff is delicious. I could eat a gallon of it right now.

There are already thirteen telescopes built around the summit of Mauna Kea that benefit from the very laminar, dry and smooth airflow and the lack of light pollution on the mountain. It is also a sacred Hawai'ian site.

There were plans to build a new and very large telescope - 30 meters in diameter (98 feet) but the Hawai'ian natives decided that the site was too close to their own native sites and there has been an active protest against further development. Mother board has an excellent article from November 30th, 2015 on the protests against the construction of this scope. A lot to be said on both sides - this is their sacred ground. But still, Hawaii is a poor state and this is a $1,400,000,000 project. A lot of the infrastructure will be manufactured elsewhere and shipped in but a wild-assed guess would put the local construction cost at about 30% or $420,000,000 as a direct injection of cash to the local working community. And then, there is the annual maintenance required - road work, custodial and hotel services, the increase in revenues from the visiting beakers.

The indigenous people may have been holding out for a little more baksheesh but if so, their plans just got stymied - from the Beeb:

Biggest telescope may swap continents
One of the world's biggest telescope projects might be forced to move its location to a different continent.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was due to be built in Hawaii, but ran into opposition with indigenous groups which consider its proposed site sacred.

Now the TMT's board says a site in the Canary Islands, Spain, could act as a potential alternative.

The $1.4bn project will enable experts to study the early Universe and peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The initial ideas to build the scope started around fifteen years ago - they had a long time to present the idea and only recently was there any pushback. Mauna Kea is the better site - higher and dryer but when there is no negotiation, time to go with plan B.

The current political activists have no skin in the game - they show up, get locals agitated and vocal and when things do not work out well, they fade away and go to the next scene. The protesters at Mauna Kea were not local - too many haoles in the photographs.

We are suffering from the same activism in our own county from the people trying to demonize coal to the benefit of those who make lots of money from government subsidies of alt.energy. Commercial political activism is a very well-paying job - Soros has funded Black Lives Matter to the tune of over one million dollars overall through his various organizations - the major funding gift was $650,000. The puppetmasters want our system to collapse so they can step in and offer the soft jaws of tyranny.

Not just any precipitation record

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The whole slate - from Cliff Mass:

Extraordinary Climate Record Broken at Spokane: The Greatest Monthly Precipitation of ALL TIME
There are records and then there are RECORDS.

Yesterday (Monday), Spokane Airport broke one that left this normally dispassionate meteorologist in a state of amazement: the greatest monthly precipitation total for a station that goes back over 120 years (since 1889 to be exact).

Not the greatest monthly total for October, something true of Seattle and a number of Northwest locations. But of any month, including the normally wetter months of December and January.

Folks, this is a major record, as noted by the National Weather Service Spokane announcement yesterday (see below).   As of 7:23 AM Monday Spokane had received 6.21 inches, smashing the old record (5.85 inches) set in 1897.

20161101-spokane.jpg

Certainly has been wetter than usual here which is a welcome relief after our drier than normal summer. Reservoirs in WA, OR and northern CA are filling up. There was snowfall on Black Mountain this morning at around 4,500 feet (looking out our kitchen window).

Back home again

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The new windshield looks great.

The trip was uneventful - got a Costco chicken for dinner tonight and Lulu had a pot of rice cooking when I got home.

Only problem was a driver that proceeded to do 20 miles at 40MPH, then 55MPH (the speed limit), then 30MPH, then 45MPH. Of course, when they hit a straightaway, they sped up to 55-65MPH and there was enough oncoming traffic that nobody could pass. There were a good dozen cars stacked up. They finally peeled off at the last roundabout three miles from my town. I was halfway tempted to follow them home and strangle them for the good of all humanity but I had already wasted enough time today. And yes, they were breaking the law - specifically:

RCW 46.61.427
Slow-moving vehicle to pull off roadway.
On a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe because of traffic in the opposite direction or other conditions, a slow moving vehicle, behind which five or more vehicles are formed in a line, shall turn off the roadway wherever sufficient area for a safe turn-out exists, in order to permit the vehicles following to proceed. As used in this section a slow moving vehicle is one which is proceeding at a rate of speed less than the normal flow of traffic at the particular time and place.

This will be a court case to watch - from Ars Technica:

Hoverboard catches fire, destroys family’s $1M home—they sue Amazon
A Nashville couple whose home burned down after a hoverboard caught fire has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.

Brian and Megan Fox bought a hoverboard for their children for Christmas last year. It burst into flames on January 9. The fire destroyed "virtually all their personal belonging in a manner of minutes," and nearly killed their 16-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, according to the couple's complaint (PDF).

The offending hoverboard was purchased through an Amazon marketplace store called "W-Deals" and was supposed to contain an "original Samsung advanced battery," but it allegedly didn't. The Foxes say W-Deals is a sham entity with a registered address of an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. Inquiries sent to the address weren't responded to.

The Tennessean interviewed the couple's lawyer, who said that Tennessee's product liability law holds the seller responsible in situations in which the manufacturer can't be found.

"We've spent months investigating it, and to this day, I don't know who manufactured this product, and it doesn't appear that Amazon does," attorney Steve Anderson told the newspaper. It was Amazon that charged the Foxes, and shipped the product.

The suit seeks $30 million in damages. The Foxes claim they lost $1.9 million in direct property loss in the form of their house and belongings, and they're also seeking compensation for injuries and emotional distress.

And of course:

Hoverboards, which are really self-balancing scooters, were a hot gift item last year, but they've been plagued by complaints since then. In July, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled about 500,000 hoverboards from the US market. Amazon and Target both suspended hoverboard sales in July.

I would not mind getting a Segway scooter or an electric motorcycle for tooling around my neighborhood and going out for coffee - that would be fun. Hoverboards hold no interest to me - too much battery power in too small an area plus the learning curve is very steep - just watch FailArmy to see what I mean.

A little too early to tell - Hillary

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Unreal - from the New York Post:

Hillary already planning her giant victory celebration
This could blow up in her face!

Hillary Clinton may have lit the fuse for her victory celebration a little too soon — by planning an Election Night explosion of fireworks over the Hudson River, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement officials and the FDNY have been told to prepare for a barge-launched pyrotechnic display off Manhattan’s Javits Center, where Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine will join their supporters for the Nov. 8 vote count, sources said.

The aerial detonations would last for two minutes, with the triumphal celebration permitted to start as early as 9:30 p.m. — a mere half-hour after the polls close in New York, sources said.

Shades of this:

20161101-truman.jpg

That would be President Truman holding the newspaper. The urban areas were polling for the progressive candidate Dewey to win by a wide margin. Conservative and plain-spoken Harry Truman won by a landslide. Oh - by the way, Truman was a Democrat in the same mold as John F. Kennedy. As I have said before, if Kennedy were running today, I would vote for him in a heartbeat.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Glass Blogging

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Sitting here at the glass shop waiting for Thnderbunny to get her new front windshield. Brought the laptop so able to surf while this is being done. Mt. Baker Auto Glass for those in Whatcom county - very happy with their work.

The joys of modern technology...

Out for coffee and in to town today

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Got a stone chip in my windshield that turned into a runner - a long crack on the window to getting it replaced at 1:00PM today.

Lulu was under the weather last night - either food poisoning or a virus. We will see how I feel in the next two or three days. Having chicken breast with white rice for dinner tonight. Nice and bland.

Last night's steak was wonderful - need to make some adjustments on the green peppercorn sauce but the flavor was spot on, just a bit runny.

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