March 09, 2017
Was the DNC Hack Fake News?
Timothy Birdnow
Here is a story that dovetails with what I've been saying for a long time. A tweet by Donald Trump over the weekend 9and lost in the kafuffle over Trump's claim that Obama was spying on him) made an accusation - first delineated by a CNN article - that the DNC hack may have been done by our government and not the Russians.
According to Robert Romano at Netrightdaily:
"The second tweet on March 4 stated, "Is it true the DNC would not allow the FBI access to check server or other equipment after learning it was hacked? Can that be possible?"
Here, Trump was referring apparently to a CNN report from January that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) refused to give the FBI access to its computer servers after it claimed in June it had been hacked by the Russian government.
Although the DNC tells the story a different way, with DNC deputy communications director Eric Lake offering to Buzzfeed News, "The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington Field Office, the Department of Justice's National Security Division, and US Attorney's Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers."
But, either the FBI tried to get access to the servers, and was refused, or the FBI simply never requested access. Either way, per the CNN report, "The FBI instead relied on the assessment from a third-party security company called CrowdStrike," which had performed its own audit of the DNC server.
This raises the obvious question of how the U.S. government ever proved on its own that Russia was behind the hack — if there even was a hack — if it never accessed the DNC computers. For, this goes to the heart of all claims central to Russia and the 2016 election.
Namely, if Russia was not behind any hacking of the DNC or John Podesta, then the Trump campaign could not have possibly colluded with Russia in such efforts.
Enter into the mix Wikileaks once again with its bombshell disclosure of CIA cyber warfare hacking tools and capabilities, which, besides Edward Snowden, appears to be the most impactful dump of classified information in U.S. history. Included in the disclosure is the ability of the agency — and presumably other hackers — to mask who is performing a hack.
According to Wikileaks' press release, "The CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.""
End excerpt.
How indeed did Crowdstrike make this determination? And, perhaps more importantly, can the public trust the Crowdstrike investigation? After all, the DNC was the client, not the American People.
The entire case for Russian hacking is predicated on metadata suggesting the use of a Cyrillic typewriter and codes similar to those used by Russian national security. These can all be faked. In point of fact, one would expect better of Russian security operatives.
Romano points that out:
"But if those techniques can be co-opted by other hackers or intelligence agencies — as the UMBRAGE program appears designed to do — it appears that the list of potential intruders on the DNC server should have been longer than just Russia. How does analyzing techniques tell you who perpetrated a hack?
Because, not only did the U.S. government apparently not physically investigate the DNC servers, it should have known full well that the hacking techniques identified by Crowdstrike as being used by state actors could be mimicked.
Add to that the fact that the DNC servers were already compromised in Dec. 2015, not because of a hack, but because of its internal voter and donor database software, NGP VAN, kept dropping its firewall. The problems were so bad that opposing campaigns could access each other's files. Josh Uretsky was Bernie Sanders' national data director but was fired after he accessed and stored files from the Clinton campaign he was able to access via NGP VAN before a software patch was issued. Has the FBI investigated these internal vulnerabilities? Might they explain how somebody internally might have gotten to the files that did wind up on Wikileaks?"
End excerpt.
Here is a good article discrediting the "Russians did it" mantra. Here is a snippet:
"or one, a lot of the so-called evidence above is no such thing. CrowdStrike, whose claims of Russian responsibility are perhaps most influential throughout the media, says APT 28/Fancy Bear "is known for its technique of registering domains that closely resemble domains of legitimate organizations they plan to target.†But this isn’t a Russian technique any more than using a computer is a Russian technique — misspelled domains are a cornerstone of phishing attacks all over the world. Is Yandex — the Russian equivalent of Google — some sort of giveaway? Anyone who claimed a hacker must be a CIA agent because they used a Gmail account would be laughed off the internet. We must also acknowledge that just because Guccifer 2.0 pretended to be Romanian, we can’t conclude he works for the Russian government — it just makes him a liar.
Next, consider the fact that CrowdStrike describes APT 28 and 29 like this:
Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of "living-off-the-land†techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter. In particular, we identified advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities including deliberate targeting and "access management†tradecraft — both groups were constantly going back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels and perform other tasks to try to stay ahead of being detected.
Compare that description to CrowdStrike’s claim it was able to finger APT 28 and 29, described above as digital spies par excellence, because they were so incredibly sloppy. Would a group whose "tradecraft is superb†with "operational security second to none†really leave behind the name of a Soviet spy chief imprinted on a document it sent to American journalists? Would these groups really be dumb enough to leave Cyrillic comments on these documents? Would these groups that "constantly [go] back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels†get caught because they precisely didn’t make sure not to use IP addresses they’d been associated before? It’s very hard to buy the argument that the Democrats were hacked by one of the most sophisticated, diabolical foreign intelligence services in history, and that we know this because they screwed up over and over again.
But how do we even know these oddly named groups are Russian? CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch himself describes APT 28 as a "Russian-based threat actor†whose modus operandi "closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government†and "may indicate affiliation [Russia’s] Main Intelligence Department or GRU, Russia’s premier military intelligence service.†Security firm SecureWorks issued a report blaming Russia with "moderate confidence.†What constitutes moderate confidence? SecureWorks said it adopted the "grading system published by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence to indicate confidence in their assessments. … Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.†All of this amounts to a very educated guess, at best.
Even the claim that APT 28/Fancy Bear itself is a group working for the Kremlin is speculative, a fact that’s been completely erased from this year’s discourse
End excerpt.
In short, all of the evidence for Russian involvement is circumstantial. In a world of top level security one does not make these kinds of mistakes. That is, unless one WANTS to.
So why didn't the FBI examine the DNC server? Strange they did not, and then did nothing to correct the misperception that they had.
Leaked e-mails show that the Clinton camp planned to skew polling data to make her elevation appear immanent, and that suggest to me her people suspected she might lose - and planned for such a contingency. Obama - with the more powerful tools of the State security apparatus at his disposal - likely knew this as well. In fact, I theorized all along that Obama really did not want Hillary to win but preferred to see Trump win and then destroy him. Obama is a rabble rouser, a community organizer who loves the chaos of political theater and revolution. I wonder if this isn't what he intended all along.
That may be paranoid speculation, but it doesn't change the fact that there is no hard evidence linking the Russians to the DNC hack, and certainly no evidence linking Trump to the Russians. This was clearly a carefully thought-out strategy by the Democrats, one that appears to have had the assistance of Barack Obama BEFORE the election. In short, something does not smell clean.
Here is a story that dovetails with what I've been saying for a long time. A tweet by Donald Trump over the weekend 9and lost in the kafuffle over Trump's claim that Obama was spying on him) made an accusation - first delineated by a CNN article - that the DNC hack may have been done by our government and not the Russians.
According to Robert Romano at Netrightdaily:
"The second tweet on March 4 stated, "Is it true the DNC would not allow the FBI access to check server or other equipment after learning it was hacked? Can that be possible?"
Here, Trump was referring apparently to a CNN report from January that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) refused to give the FBI access to its computer servers after it claimed in June it had been hacked by the Russian government.
Although the DNC tells the story a different way, with DNC deputy communications director Eric Lake offering to Buzzfeed News, "The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington Field Office, the Department of Justice's National Security Division, and US Attorney's Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers."
But, either the FBI tried to get access to the servers, and was refused, or the FBI simply never requested access. Either way, per the CNN report, "The FBI instead relied on the assessment from a third-party security company called CrowdStrike," which had performed its own audit of the DNC server.
This raises the obvious question of how the U.S. government ever proved on its own that Russia was behind the hack — if there even was a hack — if it never accessed the DNC computers. For, this goes to the heart of all claims central to Russia and the 2016 election.
Namely, if Russia was not behind any hacking of the DNC or John Podesta, then the Trump campaign could not have possibly colluded with Russia in such efforts.
Enter into the mix Wikileaks once again with its bombshell disclosure of CIA cyber warfare hacking tools and capabilities, which, besides Edward Snowden, appears to be the most impactful dump of classified information in U.S. history. Included in the disclosure is the ability of the agency — and presumably other hackers — to mask who is performing a hack.
According to Wikileaks' press release, "The CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.""
End excerpt.
How indeed did Crowdstrike make this determination? And, perhaps more importantly, can the public trust the Crowdstrike investigation? After all, the DNC was the client, not the American People.
The entire case for Russian hacking is predicated on metadata suggesting the use of a Cyrillic typewriter and codes similar to those used by Russian national security. These can all be faked. In point of fact, one would expect better of Russian security operatives.
Romano points that out:
"But if those techniques can be co-opted by other hackers or intelligence agencies — as the UMBRAGE program appears designed to do — it appears that the list of potential intruders on the DNC server should have been longer than just Russia. How does analyzing techniques tell you who perpetrated a hack?
Because, not only did the U.S. government apparently not physically investigate the DNC servers, it should have known full well that the hacking techniques identified by Crowdstrike as being used by state actors could be mimicked.
Add to that the fact that the DNC servers were already compromised in Dec. 2015, not because of a hack, but because of its internal voter and donor database software, NGP VAN, kept dropping its firewall. The problems were so bad that opposing campaigns could access each other's files. Josh Uretsky was Bernie Sanders' national data director but was fired after he accessed and stored files from the Clinton campaign he was able to access via NGP VAN before a software patch was issued. Has the FBI investigated these internal vulnerabilities? Might they explain how somebody internally might have gotten to the files that did wind up on Wikileaks?"
End excerpt.
Here is a good article discrediting the "Russians did it" mantra. Here is a snippet:
"or one, a lot of the so-called evidence above is no such thing. CrowdStrike, whose claims of Russian responsibility are perhaps most influential throughout the media, says APT 28/Fancy Bear "is known for its technique of registering domains that closely resemble domains of legitimate organizations they plan to target.†But this isn’t a Russian technique any more than using a computer is a Russian technique — misspelled domains are a cornerstone of phishing attacks all over the world. Is Yandex — the Russian equivalent of Google — some sort of giveaway? Anyone who claimed a hacker must be a CIA agent because they used a Gmail account would be laughed off the internet. We must also acknowledge that just because Guccifer 2.0 pretended to be Romanian, we can’t conclude he works for the Russian government — it just makes him a liar.
Next, consider the fact that CrowdStrike describes APT 28 and 29 like this:
Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of "living-off-the-land†techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter. In particular, we identified advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities including deliberate targeting and "access management†tradecraft — both groups were constantly going back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels and perform other tasks to try to stay ahead of being detected.
Compare that description to CrowdStrike’s claim it was able to finger APT 28 and 29, described above as digital spies par excellence, because they were so incredibly sloppy. Would a group whose "tradecraft is superb†with "operational security second to none†really leave behind the name of a Soviet spy chief imprinted on a document it sent to American journalists? Would these groups really be dumb enough to leave Cyrillic comments on these documents? Would these groups that "constantly [go] back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels†get caught because they precisely didn’t make sure not to use IP addresses they’d been associated before? It’s very hard to buy the argument that the Democrats were hacked by one of the most sophisticated, diabolical foreign intelligence services in history, and that we know this because they screwed up over and over again.
But how do we even know these oddly named groups are Russian? CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch himself describes APT 28 as a "Russian-based threat actor†whose modus operandi "closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government†and "may indicate affiliation [Russia’s] Main Intelligence Department or GRU, Russia’s premier military intelligence service.†Security firm SecureWorks issued a report blaming Russia with "moderate confidence.†What constitutes moderate confidence? SecureWorks said it adopted the "grading system published by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence to indicate confidence in their assessments. … Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.†All of this amounts to a very educated guess, at best.
Even the claim that APT 28/Fancy Bear itself is a group working for the Kremlin is speculative, a fact that’s been completely erased from this year’s discourse
End excerpt.
In short, all of the evidence for Russian involvement is circumstantial. In a world of top level security one does not make these kinds of mistakes. That is, unless one WANTS to.
So why didn't the FBI examine the DNC server? Strange they did not, and then did nothing to correct the misperception that they had.
Leaked e-mails show that the Clinton camp planned to skew polling data to make her elevation appear immanent, and that suggest to me her people suspected she might lose - and planned for such a contingency. Obama - with the more powerful tools of the State security apparatus at his disposal - likely knew this as well. In fact, I theorized all along that Obama really did not want Hillary to win but preferred to see Trump win and then destroy him. Obama is a rabble rouser, a community organizer who loves the chaos of political theater and revolution. I wonder if this isn't what he intended all along.
That may be paranoid speculation, but it doesn't change the fact that there is no hard evidence linking the Russians to the DNC hack, and certainly no evidence linking Trump to the Russians. This was clearly a carefully thought-out strategy by the Democrats, one that appears to have had the assistance of Barack Obama BEFORE the election. In short, something does not smell clean.
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March 08, 2017
A Dagger Pointed at the Heart of Japan
Dana Mathewson
When Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941, Adm. Yamamoto was well aware that he was awakening a sleeping giant (his own words).
One wonders if NK's Li'l Kim is aware that in boasting about attacking Japan, that he may well be doing the same thing. True, Japan has no nukes, but they certainly can develop enough "punch" to drop on NK that it would effectively paralyze that medieval country.
http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20IX/MARCH%202017/08.JAPAN.HTML
When Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941, Adm. Yamamoto was well aware that he was awakening a sleeping giant (his own words).
One wonders if NK's Li'l Kim is aware that in boasting about attacking Japan, that he may well be doing the same thing. True, Japan has no nukes, but they certainly can develop enough "punch" to drop on NK that it would effectively paralyze that medieval country.
http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20IX/MARCH%202017/08.JAPAN.HTML
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A Day Without (U.S.& female) Tech Workers
Jack Kemp forwards this:
http://theresurgent.com/it-would-be-better-for-republicans-to-do-nothing-than-to-pass-their-swampcare-plan/
A Day Without American Tech Workers
Michelle Malkin
|
Last month, there was a national "Day Without a Latino." This week, the demonstration du jour shutting down schools and shops is a "Day Without Women." Here's my question for all the virtue-signaling protesters who pay lip service to better jobs and wages:
Where's your awareness-raising event for untold thousands of our country's high-skilled men and women victimized by H-1B visa havoc? Thanks to cheap labor-hungry big businesses and money-grubbing politicians in both parties, every day has become a "Day Without American Tech Workers."
Our own best and brightest are vanishing in plain sight. It has been going on for decades -- and it's all legal. Several court challenges to the corporate abuse of the program have failed.
So last week, the same workplace nightmare that befell American tech employees at Disney, New York Life, Southern California Edison, and countless other U.S. companies struck the University of California, San Francisco.
That's right: H-1B hell has engulfed a taxpayer-subsidized institution smack dab in the middle of the West Coast's liberal paradise. Forty-nine information technology workers at the UC system's health care and research nerve center officially got the boot last week.
I interviewed a group of those workers last fall at a protest organized by American workers' advocate and lawyer Sara Blackwell after they got wind of the impending pink slips. Like the Disney workers and thousands of others before them, UCSF's loyal employees were coerced to dig their own graves: No severance packages unless and until they trained their inexperienced, cheap foreign replacements from India-based HCL Technologies Ltd. by Feb. 28.
End excerpt.
This is an excellent article; be sure to read it all.
http://theresurgent.com/it-would-be-better-for-republicans-to-do-nothing-than-to-pass-their-swampcare-plan/
A Day Without American Tech Workers
Michelle Malkin
|
Last month, there was a national "Day Without a Latino." This week, the demonstration du jour shutting down schools and shops is a "Day Without Women." Here's my question for all the virtue-signaling protesters who pay lip service to better jobs and wages:
Where's your awareness-raising event for untold thousands of our country's high-skilled men and women victimized by H-1B visa havoc? Thanks to cheap labor-hungry big businesses and money-grubbing politicians in both parties, every day has become a "Day Without American Tech Workers."
Our own best and brightest are vanishing in plain sight. It has been going on for decades -- and it's all legal. Several court challenges to the corporate abuse of the program have failed.
So last week, the same workplace nightmare that befell American tech employees at Disney, New York Life, Southern California Edison, and countless other U.S. companies struck the University of California, San Francisco.
That's right: H-1B hell has engulfed a taxpayer-subsidized institution smack dab in the middle of the West Coast's liberal paradise. Forty-nine information technology workers at the UC system's health care and research nerve center officially got the boot last week.
I interviewed a group of those workers last fall at a protest organized by American workers' advocate and lawyer Sara Blackwell after they got wind of the impending pink slips. Like the Disney workers and thousands of others before them, UCSF's loyal employees were coerced to dig their own graves: No severance packages unless and until they trained their inexperienced, cheap foreign replacements from India-based HCL Technologies Ltd. by Feb. 28.
End excerpt.
This is an excellent article; be sure to read it all.
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Australia $pends on woman image pedestrian street light
Jack Kemp
In 1973, there was a feminist book with a great title, "I'm running away from home but I'm not allowed to cross the street." See Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/running-away-allowed-cross-street/dp/0912786000/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488936083&sr=8-1&keywords=but+i%27m+not+allowed+to+cross+the+street
Well, now, after all these years Melbourne, Australia, is spending money to show feminists that they are FINALLY, really are allowed to cross the street with expensive new traffic lights. Or is that a man in a dress? As the author asks, how about women who wear slacks? Do they now have to change into a dress to legally cross the street in Australia? As Yul Brenner said in "The King and I," it is a puzzlement. But the feminists are tackling the really important issues of our time. Or maybe not.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/thanks-gender-change-pedestrian-signal-women-can-finally-cross-street
Thanks to Gender Change on Pedestrian Signal, Women Can Finally Cross the Street
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/thanks-gender-change-pedestrian-signal-women-can-finally-cross-street
For too long, women have been held back from realizing their full potential… across the street.
3.7.2017
News
Trey Sanchez
5
Melbourne, Australia has just done something revolutionary: city officials changed out the pedestrian crosswalk signal so that the human stick figure is wearing a dress. Now women know it’s okay to cross the street, too. (Serious question: Was there a pileup of females at the city’s intersections unsure of what to do when the walking man lit up?)
At the average cost of over $8,000 for six lights, Melbourne is battling the "unconscious bias†of the "maleâ€-only signals which apparently prioritized one gender over the other when it comes to foot traffic.
But no one is ever satisfied in the liberal utopia and enquiring liberal minds want to know, why do women have to be depicted in dresses?
"Better equality PR would be if Melbourne left pedestrian light signals the same and said ‘See, it doesn't matter what women choose to wear!’†someone said on Twitter.
Another said, "Standard symbol can be woman in pants, no? With short hair or hair tied back. What's with ‘skirt denotes woman?’â€
Still, others called this "#Melbourne madness†and said the money could have been used in smarter ways for the city.
National Review’s Katherine Timpf took this lunacy to its maximum end in her commentary:
End excerpt.
A NOTE FROM DANA MATHEWSON:
Everybody's missing the point. Now the problem is: can MEN cross the street? Normal, pants-wearing men?
I understand using pants-vs.-skirt symbols on rest room doors. It makes more sense than the overly-clever things that they sometimes try to come up with in themed restaurants in this country. But we don't seem to have a problem with graphics symbolizing Walk and Don't Walk here in the States. Or at least I've never heard anybody complain about the signs around this neck of the woods. A simple circle-with-diagonal-crossbar is universal in the civilized world for "Nope/nix/uh-uh/don't do it," isn't it?
And didn't red and green suffice? Aren't red/green color-blind people clever enough to figure out how to get around their problem? Hell, in my youth I knew a county sheriff who couldn't distinguish the colors on a traffic light -- it didn't disqualify him from serving, though maybe it should have. I never heard that he had a car accident because of it.
/Rant off
Mr. Kemp replies:
Dana, I think that when there is a hurricane and people lose their homes and don't have what to eat, the federal government will FIRST reserve $1 Billion to change all the electric crossing signs to women in a dress because that is the most important priority. I bet Angela Merkel in Germany, when she hears about this Australian story, will want to change all the street signs first rather than use the money to hire more police to protect women from refugee rapists.
FROM DANA:
Most likely. However, I neglected to point out that all this "street crossing" is merely code for accommodating, or even pushing, the transgender lifestyle. Although I'm surprised to learn that it's caught on in Australia.
A NOTE FROM TIM:
Reminds me of the Monte Python sketch about the guy who went to take a position at an Australian university. They demanded they be allowed to call him Bruce (since that was all their names) and quoted the first rule of the university "no poofters!"
If that was made today the staff would be wearing frilly summer dresses.
Bob Redmond adds:
Transgender- Kinda gives new meaning to a "Sheila".
In 1973, there was a feminist book with a great title, "I'm running away from home but I'm not allowed to cross the street." See Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/running-away-allowed-cross-street/dp/0912786000/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488936083&sr=8-1&keywords=but+i%27m+not+allowed+to+cross+the+street
Well, now, after all these years Melbourne, Australia, is spending money to show feminists that they are FINALLY, really are allowed to cross the street with expensive new traffic lights. Or is that a man in a dress? As the author asks, how about women who wear slacks? Do they now have to change into a dress to legally cross the street in Australia? As Yul Brenner said in "The King and I," it is a puzzlement. But the feminists are tackling the really important issues of our time. Or maybe not.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/thanks-gender-change-pedestrian-signal-women-can-finally-cross-street
Thanks to Gender Change on Pedestrian Signal, Women Can Finally Cross the Street
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/thanks-gender-change-pedestrian-signal-women-can-finally-cross-street
For too long, women have been held back from realizing their full potential… across the street.
3.7.2017
News
Trey Sanchez
5
Melbourne, Australia has just done something revolutionary: city officials changed out the pedestrian crosswalk signal so that the human stick figure is wearing a dress. Now women know it’s okay to cross the street, too. (Serious question: Was there a pileup of females at the city’s intersections unsure of what to do when the walking man lit up?)
At the average cost of over $8,000 for six lights, Melbourne is battling the "unconscious bias†of the "maleâ€-only signals which apparently prioritized one gender over the other when it comes to foot traffic.
But no one is ever satisfied in the liberal utopia and enquiring liberal minds want to know, why do women have to be depicted in dresses?
"Better equality PR would be if Melbourne left pedestrian light signals the same and said ‘See, it doesn't matter what women choose to wear!’†someone said on Twitter.
Another said, "Standard symbol can be woman in pants, no? With short hair or hair tied back. What's with ‘skirt denotes woman?’â€
Still, others called this "#Melbourne madness†and said the money could have been used in smarter ways for the city.
National Review’s Katherine Timpf took this lunacy to its maximum end in her commentary:
End excerpt.
A NOTE FROM DANA MATHEWSON:
Everybody's missing the point. Now the problem is: can MEN cross the street? Normal, pants-wearing men?
I understand using pants-vs.-skirt symbols on rest room doors. It makes more sense than the overly-clever things that they sometimes try to come up with in themed restaurants in this country. But we don't seem to have a problem with graphics symbolizing Walk and Don't Walk here in the States. Or at least I've never heard anybody complain about the signs around this neck of the woods. A simple circle-with-diagonal-crossbar is universal in the civilized world for "Nope/nix/uh-uh/don't do it," isn't it?
And didn't red and green suffice? Aren't red/green color-blind people clever enough to figure out how to get around their problem? Hell, in my youth I knew a county sheriff who couldn't distinguish the colors on a traffic light -- it didn't disqualify him from serving, though maybe it should have. I never heard that he had a car accident because of it.
/Rant off
Mr. Kemp replies:
Dana, I think that when there is a hurricane and people lose their homes and don't have what to eat, the federal government will FIRST reserve $1 Billion to change all the electric crossing signs to women in a dress because that is the most important priority. I bet Angela Merkel in Germany, when she hears about this Australian story, will want to change all the street signs first rather than use the money to hire more police to protect women from refugee rapists.
FROM DANA:
Most likely. However, I neglected to point out that all this "street crossing" is merely code for accommodating, or even pushing, the transgender lifestyle. Although I'm surprised to learn that it's caught on in Australia.
A NOTE FROM TIM:
Reminds me of the Monte Python sketch about the guy who went to take a position at an Australian university. They demanded they be allowed to call him Bruce (since that was all their names) and quoted the first rule of the university "no poofters!"
If that was made today the staff would be wearing frilly summer dresses.
Bob Redmond adds:
Transgender- Kinda gives new meaning to a "Sheila".
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Reproducibility Crisis in Science
Wil Wirtanen forwards this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/06/science-has-a-reproducibility-crisis/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/06/science-has-a-reproducibility-crisis/
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March 07, 2017
Oh-oh! This means war!
Dana Mathewson
Granted, Li'l Kim is certifiably crazy. But if he means what he says, he's trying to start -- or more accurately, re-start -- a war.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/SKorea-NKorea-defence-diplomacy/2017/03/06/id/777247/?ns_mail_uid=95809690&ns_mail_job=1717035_03072017&s=al&dkt_nbr=dxtmtxr4
North Korea Says It Was Trying to Hit US Bases in Japan With Missiles
Nuclear-armed North Korea said Tuesday its missile launches were training for a strike on US bases in Japan, as ...
Granted, Li'l Kim is certifiably crazy. But if he means what he says, he's trying to start -- or more accurately, re-start -- a war.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/SKorea-NKorea-defence-diplomacy/2017/03/06/id/777247/?ns_mail_uid=95809690&ns_mail_job=1717035_03072017&s=al&dkt_nbr=dxtmtxr4
North Korea Says It Was Trying to Hit US Bases in Japan With Missiles
Nuclear-armed North Korea said Tuesday its missile launches were training for a strike on US bases in Japan, as ...
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Democrat Null Set Becomes Best Seller
Jonathan Dickinson
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the very best political story of 2017. Hint: Read the actual Amazon reviews, you'll die laughing
http://www.dailywire.com/news/14184/nyt-best-selling-political-humor-amanda-prestigiacomo
Troll Level 100: Blank Book Called 'Reasons To Vote For Democrats' Becomes Amazon Bestseller
challenging task to date: compiling all the r...
Jonathan Dickinson
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the very best political story of 2017. Hint: Read the actual Amazon reviews, you'll die laughing
http://www.dailywire.com/news/14184/nyt-best-selling-political-humor-amanda-prestigiacomo
Troll Level 100: Blank Book Called 'Reasons To Vote For Democrats' Becomes Amazon Bestseller
challenging task to date: compiling all the r...
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Confederacy a Con Job?
Dana Mathewson
Interesting slant on things. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html
The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.
I’ve lived 55 years in the South, and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decade...
A NOTE FROM JACK KEMP:
He makes some points but...it's complicated.
Most of the auto plants are in the South now, as is Lockheed Martin and many gun manufacturers.
And the author was, according to his website:
http://frankhyman.com/7.html
* Jesse Jackson delegate to SC Democratic convention in summer of 1984.
END
Not someone I want to trust.
Interesting slant on things. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html
The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.
I’ve lived 55 years in the South, and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decade...
A NOTE FROM JACK KEMP:
He makes some points but...it's complicated.
Most of the auto plants are in the South now, as is Lockheed Martin and many gun manufacturers.
And the author was, according to his website:
http://frankhyman.com/7.html
* Jesse Jackson delegate to SC Democratic convention in summer of 1984.
END
Not someone I want to trust.
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Is Google Faking Fake News?
Timothy Birdnow
Here is a funny story; Google Home Robot has a story claiming Barack Obama is working with the Chinese to engineer a coup to seize power.
According to the U.K. Independent:
" And here's what happens if you ask Google Home "is Obama planning a coup?" pic.twitter.com/MzmZqGOOal
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) March 5, 2017
The problem appears to be a consequence of Google's smart search results. In an attempt to make searches faster, the site pulls small snippets out from various websites that can be shown on the results page – or read out by the Google Home – rather than clicking through to the page and reading it from there.
But because Google is pulling its answer to "Is Obama planning a coup" from the website 'Secrets of the Fed', it answers with the same conspiracy theory. The message is not just read out on the Google Home but shown to anyone who searches for the same question.
"According to details exposed in Western Center for Journalism's exclusive video, not only could Obama be in bed with the communist Chinese, but Obama may be in fact be planning a communist coup d'état at the end of his term in 2016!" anyone trying to find out whether or not Mr Obama is planning a coup will be told."
end excerpt.
Well, my question isn't if Obama is plotting with the Chinese to perpetrate a coup but rather if Google isn't trying to gin up more discussion of "fake news" because the Left lost control of that particular narrative when Conservatives started calling what the mainstream media was doing (that is, lying) fake news. So now they may want to reclaim the initiative on that, which, if you remember, was intended as a way of imposing censorship on the alternative media - outfits like Breitbart.
Google and other gatekeepers of news realized the genie had gotten out of the bottle, that websites were now having real influence and the Left's control of the narrative was slipping. Trump should have lost, by the traditional wisdom, and his victory spoke volumes. Those speaking Truth to Power had to be silenced.
Hence the "fake news" narrative. But it was turned against them.
I wonder if Google didn't do this to make the case for internet censorship. It's just like all the Black Lives Matter fake hate crimes, where they filed false police reports or painted swastikas on walls in dorms to taint the Trump people and the conservative movement, so too I suspect Google may be doing this to taint sites like The Aviary.
Look for more of this kind of thing in the future.
Here is a funny story; Google Home Robot has a story claiming Barack Obama is working with the Chinese to engineer a coup to seize power.
According to the U.K. Independent:
" And here's what happens if you ask Google Home "is Obama planning a coup?" pic.twitter.com/MzmZqGOOal
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) March 5, 2017
The problem appears to be a consequence of Google's smart search results. In an attempt to make searches faster, the site pulls small snippets out from various websites that can be shown on the results page – or read out by the Google Home – rather than clicking through to the page and reading it from there.
But because Google is pulling its answer to "Is Obama planning a coup" from the website 'Secrets of the Fed', it answers with the same conspiracy theory. The message is not just read out on the Google Home but shown to anyone who searches for the same question.
"According to details exposed in Western Center for Journalism's exclusive video, not only could Obama be in bed with the communist Chinese, but Obama may be in fact be planning a communist coup d'état at the end of his term in 2016!" anyone trying to find out whether or not Mr Obama is planning a coup will be told."
end excerpt.
Well, my question isn't if Obama is plotting with the Chinese to perpetrate a coup but rather if Google isn't trying to gin up more discussion of "fake news" because the Left lost control of that particular narrative when Conservatives started calling what the mainstream media was doing (that is, lying) fake news. So now they may want to reclaim the initiative on that, which, if you remember, was intended as a way of imposing censorship on the alternative media - outfits like Breitbart.
Google and other gatekeepers of news realized the genie had gotten out of the bottle, that websites were now having real influence and the Left's control of the narrative was slipping. Trump should have lost, by the traditional wisdom, and his victory spoke volumes. Those speaking Truth to Power had to be silenced.
Hence the "fake news" narrative. But it was turned against them.
I wonder if Google didn't do this to make the case for internet censorship. It's just like all the Black Lives Matter fake hate crimes, where they filed false police reports or painted swastikas on walls in dorms to taint the Trump people and the conservative movement, so too I suspect Google may be doing this to taint sites like The Aviary.
Look for more of this kind of thing in the future.
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ISIS Threatens China; Echoes of Armageddon
Timothy Birdnow
Isis is threatening to attack China. According to Pravda:
"Terrorists of the movement have exposed a video, in which the portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping "turns" into a flame. The terrorists threaten China and promise to shed "rivers of blood" in the country.
The video also features footage of Uighur Islamists, who prepare to attack China. In their message, the terrorists call themselves "soldiers of the Caliphate." "We will come to you and we will explain in the language of weapons. We will shed rivers of blood to take revenge for the oppressed," the message in the video says."
End excerpt.
They seem to have flipped their Uighers! (I am soooo glad you can't throw tomatoes through the computer!)
ISIS has never made threats against China, and for good reason; the Chinese are unwilling to play games with them. There is no fear of public opinion tempering a response by the Chinese government, and should it come to it the Chinese will take whatever action they deem fit.
Increasingly, the situation in the Middle East looks like the alignment in the Book of Revelations. First war breaks out, a war that includes Gog and Magog (Russia, the King of the South (the Arab world) and will expand to include the King of the East with his 200 million man army. If ISIS were to draw China into the region we could well face Armageddon.
We live in perilous and frightening times.
Isis is threatening to attack China. According to Pravda:
"Terrorists of the movement have exposed a video, in which the portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping "turns" into a flame. The terrorists threaten China and promise to shed "rivers of blood" in the country.
The video also features footage of Uighur Islamists, who prepare to attack China. In their message, the terrorists call themselves "soldiers of the Caliphate." "We will come to you and we will explain in the language of weapons. We will shed rivers of blood to take revenge for the oppressed," the message in the video says."
End excerpt.
They seem to have flipped their Uighers! (I am soooo glad you can't throw tomatoes through the computer!)
ISIS has never made threats against China, and for good reason; the Chinese are unwilling to play games with them. There is no fear of public opinion tempering a response by the Chinese government, and should it come to it the Chinese will take whatever action they deem fit.
Increasingly, the situation in the Middle East looks like the alignment in the Book of Revelations. First war breaks out, a war that includes Gog and Magog (Russia, the King of the South (the Arab world) and will expand to include the King of the East with his 200 million man army. If ISIS were to draw China into the region we could well face Armageddon.
We live in perilous and frightening times.
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Laying on of Hands
Timothy Birdnow
According to Bloomberg News airport screenings are about to become even more personal. Yes, not content to simply lay hands on the wedding tackle our guardians will likely perform what erotic messagers call hand relief.
I am not sure what they think this will accomplish. The 911 hijackers used box cutters, which are tools and not weapons, and are designed for safety. They could as easily used their hands. Now, first class on planes uses glass drinking implements and metal cutlery, so what is to prevent a terrorist from fashioning those into sharp weapons?
And of course we must not profile, so a 90 year old woman will get groped along with the rest of us. Who are we to judge?
In the end, one must wonder if this policy isn't to get Americans used to being the PROPERTY of the authorities, rather than any attempt to protect us.
According to Bloomberg News airport screenings are about to become even more personal. Yes, not content to simply lay hands on the wedding tackle our guardians will likely perform what erotic messagers call hand relief.
I am not sure what they think this will accomplish. The 911 hijackers used box cutters, which are tools and not weapons, and are designed for safety. They could as easily used their hands. Now, first class on planes uses glass drinking implements and metal cutlery, so what is to prevent a terrorist from fashioning those into sharp weapons?
And of course we must not profile, so a 90 year old woman will get groped along with the rest of us. Who are we to judge?
In the end, one must wonder if this policy isn't to get Americans used to being the PROPERTY of the authorities, rather than any attempt to protect us.
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CIA Spying Unmasked: What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?
Timothy Birdnow
Wikileaks, the annoying drip in the surveillance state's faucet, has done it again, this time leaking thousands of documents purportedly from the Central Intelligence Agency.
While the CIA isn't talking Jake Williams, a security expert at Rendition Infosec, says the amazing detail in the more than 8,0000 documents make it unlikely that it is a forgery.
Some of those details include subverting smart televisions to make them into Orwell-style surveillance devices, subverting smart phones, and other ways to spy on Americans.
Isn't it strange that the CIA has been laboring so hard to devise ways to spy on us and yet we are supposed to believe that the Obama Administration did not spy on Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. As I just pointed out at American Thinker, the Obama Administration used our national security apparatus to spy on large numbers of people nationwide, and in fact a request by Loretta Lynch to wiretap candidate Trump was turned down by the FISA court - only one of two turned down out of over ten thousand since 2009! It's clear the Obama Administration wanted to spy on Donald Trump.
Let us hope the Wikileaks dump has evidence of that.
Then again, one wonders at how Wikileaks is getting this stuff. Obama decided to spread secret intel around, ostensibly to promote "data sharing" to better our actionable intelligence but likely really to see that scurrilous accusations would make it out against his successor. If the CIA is the source of some of the leaking against Trump's people (such as the claims against Mike Flynn or Jeff Sessions) then perhaps it is the same mechanism leading to the Wikileaks drip? If so, that is a serious thing, and one Mr. Obama should have to answer for - at the very least in the court of public discourse. What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It? He and his surrogates should have to answer that question publicly.
America is supposed to be the land of the free, and yet we have a surveilance state that would have been the envy of the U.S.S.R. under Joseph Stalin. How can we say we have a free nation when our government is spying on us all the time? When they spy on our citizens who want to run for public office?
Big Brother was a piker...
Wikileaks, the annoying drip in the surveillance state's faucet, has done it again, this time leaking thousands of documents purportedly from the Central Intelligence Agency.
While the CIA isn't talking Jake Williams, a security expert at Rendition Infosec, says the amazing detail in the more than 8,0000 documents make it unlikely that it is a forgery.
Some of those details include subverting smart televisions to make them into Orwell-style surveillance devices, subverting smart phones, and other ways to spy on Americans.
Isn't it strange that the CIA has been laboring so hard to devise ways to spy on us and yet we are supposed to believe that the Obama Administration did not spy on Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. As I just pointed out at American Thinker, the Obama Administration used our national security apparatus to spy on large numbers of people nationwide, and in fact a request by Loretta Lynch to wiretap candidate Trump was turned down by the FISA court - only one of two turned down out of over ten thousand since 2009! It's clear the Obama Administration wanted to spy on Donald Trump.
Let us hope the Wikileaks dump has evidence of that.
Then again, one wonders at how Wikileaks is getting this stuff. Obama decided to spread secret intel around, ostensibly to promote "data sharing" to better our actionable intelligence but likely really to see that scurrilous accusations would make it out against his successor. If the CIA is the source of some of the leaking against Trump's people (such as the claims against Mike Flynn or Jeff Sessions) then perhaps it is the same mechanism leading to the Wikileaks drip? If so, that is a serious thing, and one Mr. Obama should have to answer for - at the very least in the court of public discourse. What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It? He and his surrogates should have to answer that question publicly.
America is supposed to be the land of the free, and yet we have a surveilance state that would have been the envy of the U.S.S.R. under Joseph Stalin. How can we say we have a free nation when our government is spying on us all the time? When they spy on our citizens who want to run for public office?
Big Brother was a piker...
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As They Accuse So They Be
Dana Mathewson
Kurt Schlichter. If you don't like him, don't read this and then complain to me about what he said. But he has his facts straight. 'Nuff said.
http://www.townhallmail.com/lkmpmlydppwrmdpdrdmgyrfnnhrnndhyqqglcmwhnqhzgk_hbqqcqbhbsn.html?a=&b=
Kurt Schlichter. If you don't like him, don't read this and then complain to me about what he said. But he has his facts straight. 'Nuff said.
http://www.townhallmail.com/lkmpmlydppwrmdpdrdmgyrfnnhrnndhyqqglcmwhnqhzgk_hbqqcqbhbsn.html?a=&b=
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Obama's Shadow Tenure of Office Act
Timothy Birdnow
I had a thought on this business of slow-walking Trump appointees. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated Congress passed something called the Tenure of Office Act, which essentially said that his successor - Andrew Johnson - could not appoint his own cabinet but had to keep Lincoln's contentious one whether he liked it or not. This is now fully understood to be unconstitutional, but nobody cared at the time. When Johnson tried to replace Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War (leading to an actual siege of the War Department offices which lasted two weeks and ended with Stanton surrendering with a white flag) he was impeached by the House of Representatives for 20 offenses, all bogus except for violating the Tenure of Office Act. (For example, Johnson was accused of being a drunkard, although the man did not drink alcohol; it was based on a cough medicine given him which led to his collapsing on stage, a result of the alcohol in the potion.) Johnson was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.
The point is, there was a powerful cabal of swamp-dwellers in the U.S. government who wanted to remain there, and they tried to stop Johnson from enacting Abraham Lincoln's plan for reconstruction (which would have put them in a minority as the South regained it's political power.) The Tenure of Office Act was a tool to neuter Johnson.
While there is no Tenure of Office Act today, this is essentially the same problem Donald Trump is facing. Barack Obama embedded his own people in government, and even the GOP in Congress do not want to see Trump succeed, any more than they did Johnson. This is a battle between a reformer President and those seeking to maintain the status quo. While Johnson retained his office, he was impotent for the rest of his Presidency, and the Radical Republicans were able to punish the South as they pleased - and thus dragged Reconstruction on and planted the seeds of bitterness and hatred that plagued America for a century, and in some ways continue to do so.
See, swamps are the places where diseases thrive. It was true then and it is equally true now.
At any rate, this is pretty much the same problem, only Trump has to face the fury of an electronic media, something far more powerful than the local print journalism of Johnson's day. On the other hand Trump's supporters have not yet been beaten by force of arms as the South had been, but that may be coming if the Left gets it's way.
And while America went on to greatness after the Civil War, one cannot help but suspect America will go on to dissolution if we continue on the same course we have followed for decades. We can't keep spending the future's money. We can't keep empowering the surveillance state. We can't keep turning people into serfs of the great governmental Lord. These are the very things which brought down the Roman Empire, and more recently the Soviet Union. History must be learned from, not ignored.
Trump HAS to get his own people in. As long as he is held to an unspoken Tenure of Office Act he will be powerless - and America will continue to slide into the abyss. It's time for people like Mitch McConnell to get off their pillows and get us a new government. Sadly, too many people like McConnell are content to be Edwin Stanton.
I had a thought on this business of slow-walking Trump appointees. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated Congress passed something called the Tenure of Office Act, which essentially said that his successor - Andrew Johnson - could not appoint his own cabinet but had to keep Lincoln's contentious one whether he liked it or not. This is now fully understood to be unconstitutional, but nobody cared at the time. When Johnson tried to replace Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War (leading to an actual siege of the War Department offices which lasted two weeks and ended with Stanton surrendering with a white flag) he was impeached by the House of Representatives for 20 offenses, all bogus except for violating the Tenure of Office Act. (For example, Johnson was accused of being a drunkard, although the man did not drink alcohol; it was based on a cough medicine given him which led to his collapsing on stage, a result of the alcohol in the potion.) Johnson was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.
The point is, there was a powerful cabal of swamp-dwellers in the U.S. government who wanted to remain there, and they tried to stop Johnson from enacting Abraham Lincoln's plan for reconstruction (which would have put them in a minority as the South regained it's political power.) The Tenure of Office Act was a tool to neuter Johnson.
While there is no Tenure of Office Act today, this is essentially the same problem Donald Trump is facing. Barack Obama embedded his own people in government, and even the GOP in Congress do not want to see Trump succeed, any more than they did Johnson. This is a battle between a reformer President and those seeking to maintain the status quo. While Johnson retained his office, he was impotent for the rest of his Presidency, and the Radical Republicans were able to punish the South as they pleased - and thus dragged Reconstruction on and planted the seeds of bitterness and hatred that plagued America for a century, and in some ways continue to do so.
See, swamps are the places where diseases thrive. It was true then and it is equally true now.
At any rate, this is pretty much the same problem, only Trump has to face the fury of an electronic media, something far more powerful than the local print journalism of Johnson's day. On the other hand Trump's supporters have not yet been beaten by force of arms as the South had been, but that may be coming if the Left gets it's way.
And while America went on to greatness after the Civil War, one cannot help but suspect America will go on to dissolution if we continue on the same course we have followed for decades. We can't keep spending the future's money. We can't keep empowering the surveillance state. We can't keep turning people into serfs of the great governmental Lord. These are the very things which brought down the Roman Empire, and more recently the Soviet Union. History must be learned from, not ignored.
Trump HAS to get his own people in. As long as he is held to an unspoken Tenure of Office Act he will be powerless - and America will continue to slide into the abyss. It's time for people like Mitch McConnell to get off their pillows and get us a new government. Sadly, too many people like McConnell are content to be Edwin Stanton.
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Minnesota Beats Back Gun Grabbers
Dana mathewson
Seems like we sometimes do things right in this state!
Dear Dana, Monday Night
We just witnessed a HUGE VICTORY for gun owners in Minnesota!
For weeks you and I have fought tooth and nail against the DANGEROUS ID act, pouring calls, emails and Facebook messages into the capitol telling the legislature to vote NO on Dangerous ID.
Today, thanks to all of your hard work, the Senate voted DANGEROUS ID down by a vote of 38-29!
As you know, Dangerous ID would have enabled the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to arbitrarily require a Dangerous ID for purchase of firearms, ammo and virtually anything else he wants.
The anti-gun League of Minnesota Cities said YES.
Notorious anti-gun factions of Minnesota House leadership said YES.
Even the establishment "gun lobby†organizations here in Minnesota, always the first tuck tail and run at the sign of a hard fight, hung their heads and ran interference for their pals in the legislature.
But not Minnesota Gun Rights – or the thousands upon thousands of our members and supporters like YOU across the state that make this organization so effective!
You all sent a great big fat HECK NO to the Minnesota Senate today!
LeAnd they got the message.
Learn more http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/40954303:WIgynZlON:m:1:749965929:6C52B2FE663023FF9973DCBBF2CEBFF8:r
Benjamin Dorr
Political Director
Minnesota Gun Right
Seems like we sometimes do things right in this state!
Dear Dana, Monday Night
We just witnessed a HUGE VICTORY for gun owners in Minnesota!
For weeks you and I have fought tooth and nail against the DANGEROUS ID act, pouring calls, emails and Facebook messages into the capitol telling the legislature to vote NO on Dangerous ID.
Today, thanks to all of your hard work, the Senate voted DANGEROUS ID down by a vote of 38-29!
As you know, Dangerous ID would have enabled the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to arbitrarily require a Dangerous ID for purchase of firearms, ammo and virtually anything else he wants.
The anti-gun League of Minnesota Cities said YES.
Notorious anti-gun factions of Minnesota House leadership said YES.
Even the establishment "gun lobby†organizations here in Minnesota, always the first tuck tail and run at the sign of a hard fight, hung their heads and ran interference for their pals in the legislature.
But not Minnesota Gun Rights – or the thousands upon thousands of our members and supporters like YOU across the state that make this organization so effective!
You all sent a great big fat HECK NO to the Minnesota Senate today!
LeAnd they got the message.
Learn more http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/40954303:WIgynZlON:m:1:749965929:6C52B2FE663023FF9973DCBBF2CEBFF8:r
Benjamin Dorr
Political Director
Minnesota Gun Right
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Deep State Gate
Dana Mathewson
Forwarded from my brother-in-law
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/05/trump-ends-innuendo-game-dealing/
Now here's an extremely interesting take, speculative though it might be, on the "DeepStateGate" as it's come to be defined. One thing to keep in mind is that everyone, but none more so than the American media, has underestimated Donald Trump, and continue to do so.
DeepStateGate: Trump Ends the Wiretapping Innuendo Game by Dealing Himself In - Breitbart
Forwarded from my brother-in-law
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/05/trump-ends-innuendo-game-dealing/
Now here's an extremely interesting take, speculative though it might be, on the "DeepStateGate" as it's come to be defined. One thing to keep in mind is that everyone, but none more so than the American media, has underestimated Donald Trump, and continue to do so.
DeepStateGate: Trump Ends the Wiretapping Innuendo Game by Dealing Himself In - Breitbart
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March 06, 2017
Diogenes searching for honest policies
Paul Driessen
Far too many of our existing energy policies were devised by special interests seeking money and power, often using exaggerated or even fabricated climate change, sustainability and precautionary problems to justify their quest. Like Diogenes, many of us have joined the Trump Administration and members of Congress in search for more honest policies.
Rescinding and replacing today’s policies and regulations will be a critical factor in determining whether America rejuvenates its job and wealth building machine.
Diogenes searching for honest policies
Renewable energy is defective solution in search of a problem, money and power
Paul Driessen
The Greek philosopher Diogenes reportedly carried an oil lamp during the daytime, the better to help him find an honest man. People everywhere should join Congress and the Trump Administration in search of honest energy and climate policies – as too many existing policies were devised by special interests seeking money and power, and often using imaginary problems to justify their quest.
The health and environmental impacts from fossil fuels are well documented, though often exaggerated or even fabricated by activists, politicians, bureaucrats and companies with lofty agendas: securing climate research grants, and mandates and subsidies for renewable energy projects to replace fossil fuels; reducing economic growth and living standards in industrialized nations; and redistributing the world’s wealth, fundamentally transforming the global economy, and telling impoverished countries what kinds of energy and what level of economic development they will be permitted to have.
More often than not, proponents justify these agendas by insisting we must prevent dangerous manmade global warming and climate chaos, prevent unsustainable resource consumption, and safeguard people against purported technological risks. My multiple articles on the catechism of climate cataclysm … sustainability realities, absurdities and duplicities … and selective application of precautionary pabulum address the conceptual fallacies of these interchangeable, agenda-driving mantras.
All three are routinely defined, twisted, used and abused to block technologies that activists despise, and promote technologies and policies that advance their agendas and fill their coffers.
But beyond their glaring, often insurmountable conceptual problems are the practical issues. With what, exactly, will these agitators replace fossil fuels? Applying the same health and environmental standards they use against oil, natural gas and coal – just how clean, green, Earth-friendly, sustainable, climate-stabilizing, healthy, and human rights/social justice-oriented are their renewable energy alternatives?
If their alternatives are so wondrous, why do they still need permanent mandates, renewable portfolio standards, investment tax credits, production tax credits, feed-in tariffs, myriad other subsidies, exemptions from endangered species and other regulations, and laws requiring that utility companies buy their electricity whenever it is produced (even if it is not needed)? Why must they build and run fossil fuel "backup†power plants for the 50-85% of the time that wind and solar are not producing?
The following brief examination will hopefully guide more rigorous analyses of the impacts of these "technologies of the future†– aka wind, solar and biomass technologies that served mankind rather poorly for countless generations, until the fossil/nuclear era began, and now are supposed to serve us once again.
Probably the biggest single problem with any supposedly renewable, sustainable alternative is its horrendously low energy density: the amount of energy produced per acre. We can get far more electricity or fuel from a few dozen, hundred or thousand acres of oil, gas or coal production operations than we can from millions or tens of millions of acres of renewable energy projects.
Moreover, fossil fuel operations can often be conducted in the middle of farm fields or wildlife habitats – or the land can be reclaimed and returned to those uses once the energy has been extracted. Offshore oil and gas platforms actually create thriving habitats for marine life. Most renewable energy operations displace food crops or destroy wildlife habitats – and must do so in perpetuity.
And so we have corn as high as an elephant’s eye, across an area the size of Iowa (36 million acres) to produce ethanol that replaces 10% of US gasoline but also requires vast quantities of water, fertilizer, fuel and pesticides to grow the corn and turn it into fuel – instead of feeding hungry people.
We find bright yellow canola fields across more millions of acres in Montana, Saskatchewan, Germany and elsewhere, to produce biodiesel – and still more acreage devoted to switchgrass for ethanol and algae ponds for "advanced biofuels.†In Brazil, it’s millions of acres of sugarcane for ethanol, and millions more for other biofuels from palm oil, from areas that once were rainforests, "the Earth’s lungs,†as environmentalist groups like to say. Once teeming with wildlife, they are now monoculture energy plantations – so that we don’t have to desecrate Mother Earth by drilling holes in the ground to produce oil and natural gas: nature’s own biofuels, created over millions of years and stored for mankind’s benefit.
Of course, when these expensive, environment-intensive alternatives are burned, they send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the same as fossil fuels do – on top of the CO2 that was burned by fuels and released from soils and clear-cut trees to produce the "climate-friendly renewable†energy.
Meanwhile, American and Canadian companies are cutting down millions of acres of forest habitats, and turning millions of trees into wood pellets that they truck to coastal ports and transport on oil-fueled cargo ships to England – to be hauled by truck and burned in place of coal to generate electricity. The pellets cost more than coal (which Britain still has in abundance), so utility companies receive huge taxpayer subsidies to make up the difference. One power plant received £450 million ($553 million) in 2015.
The financially and environmentally unsustainable scheme is justified on the ground that trees are renewable; so the scam helps Britain meet its climate change and renewable fuel obligations under various laws and treaties. Even though the trees-to-pellets-to-power process emits more carbon dioxide and pollution than coal-based power generation, the "wood fool†arrangement is considered to be "carbon neutral,†because growing replacement trees over the next century or two will absorb CO2.
If this sounds freaking dishonest and insane, it’s because it is freaking dishonest and insane. Diogenes must be turning summersaults in his grave. But there’s more.
On top of all this biofuel lunacy, we also have tens of thousands of wind turbines towering above fields, lakes, oceans and homes – butchering millions of birds and bats, and impairing the health of thousands of humans whose wellbeing is sacrificed to Big Wind profits. We’ve also got millions of solar panels sprawling across countless acres of desert and grassland habitats, to produce well under 1% of the world’s electricity. Their expensive, intermittent power reaches distant urban areas via thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. They all require greenhouse gas-emitting backup power plants.
Those turbines, panels, transmission lines and backups require millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, rare earth and other exotic metals, fiberglass and other materials – much of it produced under nonexistent health and environmental laws in faraway countries, where injury, illness, child labor and death run rampant … and are ignored by local, national and United Nations authorities and human rights activists.
Removing all these worn-out turbines and solar panels will cost billions of dollars that state and federal governments don’t have, and developers have rarely had to cover with bonds.
Finally, the energy produced from all these "planet-saving†enterprises is far more costly than what could be produced using fossil fuels. Poor families are hit hardest, as they must spend a much larger portion of their incomes on energy than middle class and wealthy families. Businesses, factories, hospitals and schools also face rising energy costs, and must lay off workers, reduce services or close their doors.
The impacts ricochet throughout communities and nations, adversely affecting living standards, nutrition, health and life spans. We are reminded once again: Corporate fraud affects a limited number of customers; government and activist fraud affects every taxpayer, citizen and consumer.
The essence of all these renewable fuel programs is embodied in the notion that we must capture methane from cow dung, to safeguard Earth’s climate from this "potent greenhouse gas.†The operable term is BS.
The US Congress and Trump Administration could become world leaders in returning honesty and sanity to energy, climate, economic and environmental discussions and policies. Let’s hope they do.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
Far too many of our existing energy policies were devised by special interests seeking money and power, often using exaggerated or even fabricated climate change, sustainability and precautionary problems to justify their quest. Like Diogenes, many of us have joined the Trump Administration and members of Congress in search for more honest policies.
Rescinding and replacing today’s policies and regulations will be a critical factor in determining whether America rejuvenates its job and wealth building machine.
Diogenes searching for honest policies
Renewable energy is defective solution in search of a problem, money and power
Paul Driessen
The Greek philosopher Diogenes reportedly carried an oil lamp during the daytime, the better to help him find an honest man. People everywhere should join Congress and the Trump Administration in search of honest energy and climate policies – as too many existing policies were devised by special interests seeking money and power, and often using imaginary problems to justify their quest.
The health and environmental impacts from fossil fuels are well documented, though often exaggerated or even fabricated by activists, politicians, bureaucrats and companies with lofty agendas: securing climate research grants, and mandates and subsidies for renewable energy projects to replace fossil fuels; reducing economic growth and living standards in industrialized nations; and redistributing the world’s wealth, fundamentally transforming the global economy, and telling impoverished countries what kinds of energy and what level of economic development they will be permitted to have.
More often than not, proponents justify these agendas by insisting we must prevent dangerous manmade global warming and climate chaos, prevent unsustainable resource consumption, and safeguard people against purported technological risks. My multiple articles on the catechism of climate cataclysm … sustainability realities, absurdities and duplicities … and selective application of precautionary pabulum address the conceptual fallacies of these interchangeable, agenda-driving mantras.
All three are routinely defined, twisted, used and abused to block technologies that activists despise, and promote technologies and policies that advance their agendas and fill their coffers.
But beyond their glaring, often insurmountable conceptual problems are the practical issues. With what, exactly, will these agitators replace fossil fuels? Applying the same health and environmental standards they use against oil, natural gas and coal – just how clean, green, Earth-friendly, sustainable, climate-stabilizing, healthy, and human rights/social justice-oriented are their renewable energy alternatives?
If their alternatives are so wondrous, why do they still need permanent mandates, renewable portfolio standards, investment tax credits, production tax credits, feed-in tariffs, myriad other subsidies, exemptions from endangered species and other regulations, and laws requiring that utility companies buy their electricity whenever it is produced (even if it is not needed)? Why must they build and run fossil fuel "backup†power plants for the 50-85% of the time that wind and solar are not producing?
The following brief examination will hopefully guide more rigorous analyses of the impacts of these "technologies of the future†– aka wind, solar and biomass technologies that served mankind rather poorly for countless generations, until the fossil/nuclear era began, and now are supposed to serve us once again.
Probably the biggest single problem with any supposedly renewable, sustainable alternative is its horrendously low energy density: the amount of energy produced per acre. We can get far more electricity or fuel from a few dozen, hundred or thousand acres of oil, gas or coal production operations than we can from millions or tens of millions of acres of renewable energy projects.
Moreover, fossil fuel operations can often be conducted in the middle of farm fields or wildlife habitats – or the land can be reclaimed and returned to those uses once the energy has been extracted. Offshore oil and gas platforms actually create thriving habitats for marine life. Most renewable energy operations displace food crops or destroy wildlife habitats – and must do so in perpetuity.
And so we have corn as high as an elephant’s eye, across an area the size of Iowa (36 million acres) to produce ethanol that replaces 10% of US gasoline but also requires vast quantities of water, fertilizer, fuel and pesticides to grow the corn and turn it into fuel – instead of feeding hungry people.
We find bright yellow canola fields across more millions of acres in Montana, Saskatchewan, Germany and elsewhere, to produce biodiesel – and still more acreage devoted to switchgrass for ethanol and algae ponds for "advanced biofuels.†In Brazil, it’s millions of acres of sugarcane for ethanol, and millions more for other biofuels from palm oil, from areas that once were rainforests, "the Earth’s lungs,†as environmentalist groups like to say. Once teeming with wildlife, they are now monoculture energy plantations – so that we don’t have to desecrate Mother Earth by drilling holes in the ground to produce oil and natural gas: nature’s own biofuels, created over millions of years and stored for mankind’s benefit.
Of course, when these expensive, environment-intensive alternatives are burned, they send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the same as fossil fuels do – on top of the CO2 that was burned by fuels and released from soils and clear-cut trees to produce the "climate-friendly renewable†energy.
Meanwhile, American and Canadian companies are cutting down millions of acres of forest habitats, and turning millions of trees into wood pellets that they truck to coastal ports and transport on oil-fueled cargo ships to England – to be hauled by truck and burned in place of coal to generate electricity. The pellets cost more than coal (which Britain still has in abundance), so utility companies receive huge taxpayer subsidies to make up the difference. One power plant received £450 million ($553 million) in 2015.
The financially and environmentally unsustainable scheme is justified on the ground that trees are renewable; so the scam helps Britain meet its climate change and renewable fuel obligations under various laws and treaties. Even though the trees-to-pellets-to-power process emits more carbon dioxide and pollution than coal-based power generation, the "wood fool†arrangement is considered to be "carbon neutral,†because growing replacement trees over the next century or two will absorb CO2.
If this sounds freaking dishonest and insane, it’s because it is freaking dishonest and insane. Diogenes must be turning summersaults in his grave. But there’s more.
On top of all this biofuel lunacy, we also have tens of thousands of wind turbines towering above fields, lakes, oceans and homes – butchering millions of birds and bats, and impairing the health of thousands of humans whose wellbeing is sacrificed to Big Wind profits. We’ve also got millions of solar panels sprawling across countless acres of desert and grassland habitats, to produce well under 1% of the world’s electricity. Their expensive, intermittent power reaches distant urban areas via thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. They all require greenhouse gas-emitting backup power plants.
Those turbines, panels, transmission lines and backups require millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, rare earth and other exotic metals, fiberglass and other materials – much of it produced under nonexistent health and environmental laws in faraway countries, where injury, illness, child labor and death run rampant … and are ignored by local, national and United Nations authorities and human rights activists.
Removing all these worn-out turbines and solar panels will cost billions of dollars that state and federal governments don’t have, and developers have rarely had to cover with bonds.
Finally, the energy produced from all these "planet-saving†enterprises is far more costly than what could be produced using fossil fuels. Poor families are hit hardest, as they must spend a much larger portion of their incomes on energy than middle class and wealthy families. Businesses, factories, hospitals and schools also face rising energy costs, and must lay off workers, reduce services or close their doors.
The impacts ricochet throughout communities and nations, adversely affecting living standards, nutrition, health and life spans. We are reminded once again: Corporate fraud affects a limited number of customers; government and activist fraud affects every taxpayer, citizen and consumer.
The essence of all these renewable fuel programs is embodied in the notion that we must capture methane from cow dung, to safeguard Earth’s climate from this "potent greenhouse gas.†The operable term is BS.
The US Congress and Trump Administration could become world leaders in returning honesty and sanity to energy, climate, economic and environmental discussions and policies. Let’s hope they do.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
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Time to Go Big Bird Hunting
This from Americans for Limited Government
PBS & NPR: Cutting the cord
By Peter Hong
Recall the flak Mitt Romney took in 2012 for declaring war on Big Bird when the candidate suggested that he would cut federal subsidies for PBS? Well, Sesame Street may be on HBO now, but the fight over defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is being rekindled. And it's about time.
The CPB was incorporated fifty years ago as a private, nonprofit corporation; in fact, its website proudly proclaims it as "A Private Corporation Funded by the American People." (emphasis mine)
The CPB was created at a time when broadcasting options in America were limited. In 1967, before cable and the Internet, most Americans had access to only ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Today, the average U.S. household receives nearly 200 TV channels, not including a glut of terrestrial and online listening and viewing options.
In spite of this record-breaking broadcasting surplus, NPR and PBS still receive over $400 million in federal funding each year. This is particularly galling, given that America's gross national debt as a percentage of GDP has nearly tripled from 38 percent to 106 percent over the life of publicly subsidized broadcasting.
Federal funding not only comes from taxpayers, but gives NPR and PBS a built-in advantage over their competitors when it comes to raising money. Yes, like their "commercial" brethren, publicly subsidized broadcasters unabashedly sell sponsorships to corporations (horror of horrors) and foundations. And, as anyone who has sat through a PBS fundraising campaign knows, they raise individual contributions from "viewers like you."
Confession time: I use publicly subsidized broadcasting. I watch documentaries on PBS, and listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" and old time radio shows on NPR. I even listen to the drive time "news" shows when the bias does not lead me to drive off the road.
I also pay for it by giving money to my local PBS and NPR affiliates, which allows me to show off my gift tote bag without guilt. After all, payment for services or goods that I choose to use is the American way.
The problem is you're paying for it too, whether you use the products and get the tote bag or not. To the tune of about half a billion dollars a year, your tax dollars pay for a product that you may not use, simply because you're not interested in the auctioning off of the original mold used to make penicillin.
Or you may actually find some of the content offensive or insufferably biased. Consider this NPR annotation of President Trump's recent address to Congress, which reads more like talking points from the DNC than a news report. Appropriate for Rachel Maddow or progressive talk radio — absolutely! But this time, your tax dollars paid for it.
In a 2012 report, "Alternative Sources of Funding for Public Broadcasting Stations," the CPB stated that ending federal funding for publicly subsidized broadcasting would severely diminish, if not destroy, public broadcasting service in the United States. That's right: the CPB actually argues that it cannot make up for any loss in federal funding — no matter how many tote bags they offer.
Yet, according to its own published "Audience Profile," NPR brags to commercial sponsors that its audience skews heavily toward the wealthy and powerful. NPR listeners are:
* 74 percent more likely than other Americans to earn greater than $100,000 in annual income;
* 133 percent more likely than other Americans to be top management; and
* 148 percent more likely than other Americans to be C-Suite executives.
In other words, you may not watch PBS or listen to NPR, but your boss might and your boss' boss probably does. And the CPB wants you to keep paying for them.
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) has reintroduced legislation (H.R. 726 and H.R. 727), which would defund the CPB and NPR. Upon introducing the legislation, Lamborn said, "Republicans and the new Administration need to demonstrate that we take our fiscal responsibility seriously. American taxpayers do not want their hard-earned dollars funding superfluous government programs just because that is the way things have always been done."
Also circulating are reports that the Trump Administration plans to ax federal funding for publicly subsidized broadcasting. In other words, help may be on the way, beleaguered taxpayer!
In his address to Congress, President Trump proclaimed "the time for small thinking is over." Publicly subsidized television and radio in an era of cable, Internet, and record deficits is an early and easy test of this declaration.
Are Republicans prepared to cut the cord?
Peter Hong is a contributing reporter at Americans for Limited Government.
PBS & NPR: Cutting the cord
By Peter Hong
Recall the flak Mitt Romney took in 2012 for declaring war on Big Bird when the candidate suggested that he would cut federal subsidies for PBS? Well, Sesame Street may be on HBO now, but the fight over defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is being rekindled. And it's about time.
The CPB was incorporated fifty years ago as a private, nonprofit corporation; in fact, its website proudly proclaims it as "A Private Corporation Funded by the American People." (emphasis mine)
The CPB was created at a time when broadcasting options in America were limited. In 1967, before cable and the Internet, most Americans had access to only ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Today, the average U.S. household receives nearly 200 TV channels, not including a glut of terrestrial and online listening and viewing options.
In spite of this record-breaking broadcasting surplus, NPR and PBS still receive over $400 million in federal funding each year. This is particularly galling, given that America's gross national debt as a percentage of GDP has nearly tripled from 38 percent to 106 percent over the life of publicly subsidized broadcasting.
Federal funding not only comes from taxpayers, but gives NPR and PBS a built-in advantage over their competitors when it comes to raising money. Yes, like their "commercial" brethren, publicly subsidized broadcasters unabashedly sell sponsorships to corporations (horror of horrors) and foundations. And, as anyone who has sat through a PBS fundraising campaign knows, they raise individual contributions from "viewers like you."
Confession time: I use publicly subsidized broadcasting. I watch documentaries on PBS, and listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" and old time radio shows on NPR. I even listen to the drive time "news" shows when the bias does not lead me to drive off the road.
I also pay for it by giving money to my local PBS and NPR affiliates, which allows me to show off my gift tote bag without guilt. After all, payment for services or goods that I choose to use is the American way.
The problem is you're paying for it too, whether you use the products and get the tote bag or not. To the tune of about half a billion dollars a year, your tax dollars pay for a product that you may not use, simply because you're not interested in the auctioning off of the original mold used to make penicillin.
Or you may actually find some of the content offensive or insufferably biased. Consider this NPR annotation of President Trump's recent address to Congress, which reads more like talking points from the DNC than a news report. Appropriate for Rachel Maddow or progressive talk radio — absolutely! But this time, your tax dollars paid for it.
In a 2012 report, "Alternative Sources of Funding for Public Broadcasting Stations," the CPB stated that ending federal funding for publicly subsidized broadcasting would severely diminish, if not destroy, public broadcasting service in the United States. That's right: the CPB actually argues that it cannot make up for any loss in federal funding — no matter how many tote bags they offer.
Yet, according to its own published "Audience Profile," NPR brags to commercial sponsors that its audience skews heavily toward the wealthy and powerful. NPR listeners are:
* 74 percent more likely than other Americans to earn greater than $100,000 in annual income;
* 133 percent more likely than other Americans to be top management; and
* 148 percent more likely than other Americans to be C-Suite executives.
In other words, you may not watch PBS or listen to NPR, but your boss might and your boss' boss probably does. And the CPB wants you to keep paying for them.
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) has reintroduced legislation (H.R. 726 and H.R. 727), which would defund the CPB and NPR. Upon introducing the legislation, Lamborn said, "Republicans and the new Administration need to demonstrate that we take our fiscal responsibility seriously. American taxpayers do not want their hard-earned dollars funding superfluous government programs just because that is the way things have always been done."
Also circulating are reports that the Trump Administration plans to ax federal funding for publicly subsidized broadcasting. In other words, help may be on the way, beleaguered taxpayer!
In his address to Congress, President Trump proclaimed "the time for small thinking is over." Publicly subsidized television and radio in an era of cable, Internet, and record deficits is an early and easy test of this declaration.
Are Republicans prepared to cut the cord?
Peter Hong is a contributing reporter at Americans for Limited Government.
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March 05, 2017
Science deniers in the wind industry
Paul Driessen
By now most Americans have heard about wind energy’s costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power and build ultra-long transmission lines from distant wind farms to urban centers; and the impacts that towering lines and turbines have on wildlife and habitats. What they haven’t heard much about is the damage that turbines can inflict on human health and wellbeing.
Not everyone is affected the same way or to the same degree. But for susceptible people living near gigantic turbines – even a mile or more away – the constant inaudible "infrasound†bombardment and "flicker†effects early and late in the day can be horribly debilitating. The Big Wind industry has done everything in its power to keep this story buried, and to ridicule and vilify the victims who suffer in so many ways.
Sensory perception expert Helen Parker has done something I don’t believe anyone else has done: pulled together the science and personal interest stories associated with this growing problem.
Science deniers in the wind industry
The human health consequences of manipulated measurements
Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, LCP
Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image. Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because we enjoy it.
The problem with wind energy is not just its costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power; or its impacts on wildlife and their habitats.
Infrasound (inaudible) and low-frequency (audible) noise (slowly vibrating sound waves collectively referred to as ILFN) produced by Industrial-scale Wind Turbines (IWTs) directly and predictably cause adverse human health effects. The sonic radiation tends to be amplified within structures, and sensitivity to the impact of the resonance increases with continuing exposure.
These facts have been known to the wind industry and the US government since the 1980s when it became a ‘hot topic,’ with numerous studies presented and published by acousticians working under grants from the Departments of Energy, Defense and NASA. The wind industry response?
Deny the science. Insist that "what you can’t hear can’t hurt you.†Claim that "neighbors will get used to it.†Measure only outside dwellings, and allow only noise measurements in the field that reflect the relative loudness perceived by the human ear, while drastically reducing sound-level readings in the lower frequencies that are known to cause problems.
From a distance, many view the massive turbines as majestic – as a clean, seemingly quiet and free source of endless energy. To untold thousands of families clustered within 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) or more of the pulsing machines, however, the IWTs bring strangely debilitating illness – increasingly incapacitating for some, yet scoffed at by wind proponents.
Common sense tells us that fifty-story-tall metal structures with blades as long as football fields moving at 180 mph at their tips would negatively impact quiet neighborhoods. But the extent and severity of the IWT’s effect on body, mind and spirit comes as a surprise to most people.
"When I’m at home I’m usually sick with headaches, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, anxiety, hopelessness, depression. My ears pop a lot and I hardly ever sleep…. Suicide looks to be my only relief. Land of the FREE Home of the BULLSHIT! … Million to one odds anybody contacts me back.â€
The primary pathway of turbine assault on human health is no mystery. The Israeli army has used low-frequency sound pulses as high-tech crowd control for years. People are made nauseous and confused, with blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, tachycardia, heightened blood pressure, pain and ringing in the ears, difficulties with memory and concentration, anxiety, depression, irritability, and panic attacks.
This also describes the Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), a constellation of symptoms first given a name by the brilliant young MD/PhD, Nina Pierpont. She followed her astute and compassionate observations of turbine neighbors around the world with epidemiological research, using a robust case-crossover statistical design: subjects experienced symptoms that varied with proximity to the turbines. When the same subjects were placed at a greater distance from the turbines, their symptoms abated; returning them to the scene brought the symptoms back.
Michigan State University noise engineers explain that "Inaudible components [ILFN] can induce resonant vibration in liquids, gases and solids … bodily tissues and cavities – potentially harmful to humans.†A subject in the groundbreaking Cooper study describes how the resonance shows up in a glass of water on her kitchen table, and in the toilet bowl, and how she feels it in her body.
Pierpont hypothesized that a significant pathway from ILFN to symptoms might include disruption to balance mechanisms located in the inner ear.
Dr. Alec Salt and colleagues, otolaryngologists at Washington University, later found that inaudible ILFN reaches the brain via inner ear Outer Hair Cell (OHC) displacement, leading indeed to unfamiliar and disturbing sensations paralleling WTS.
As turbine size trends upward, the sickening ILFN emissions worsen. There’s a lot of money riding on keeping the science under the radar of public awareness, and regulations to a minimum.
When Denmark’s EPA proposed tightening turbine noise regulations to protect turbine neighbors from increasing ILFN (May 2011), the Vestas CEO wrote the DEPA Minister, asserting: "It simply isn’t technically possible to curtail the ILFN output,†and "Increased distance requirements [setbacks from residences] cannot be met whilst maintaining a satisfactory business outcome for the investor.â€â€™ DEPA folded, turning instead to looser standards that were "likely to be copied by other countries.â€
Although alerted to the increased endangerment of turbine neighbors around the world, the press remained silent, and Big Wind’s central players ramped up their game plan undeterred.
In addition to the impact of ILFN radiation, turbine neighbors suffer from Turbine "Flicker†– a strobe-like effect caused by turbine blades alternately blocking and allowing sunlight to skim rhythmically and repeatedly across the land, or ricochet in bursts across interior walls and stairwells.
The direct impact extends to nearly a mile from the turbine – long after sunrise, and again long before sunset. It is mesmerizing, disorienting, and often brings on nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, irritability, even panic, indoors or outside.
Repetitive sleep disturbance and stress-related symptoms are the most common health complaints of IWT neighbors. The audible sound constantly fluctuates, described as akin to low-flying jets or the rumble of helicopters, "freakish, screeching sound sludge.†It is unnatural. People say the noise gets into your head, and you can’t get it out.
Advising the Falmouth, MA Board of Health, Dr. William Hallstein wrote: "All varieties of illnesses are destabilized, secondary to inadequate sleep: diabetic blood sugars, cardiac rhythms, migraines, tissue healing. Psychiatric problems intensify … all in the ‘normal’ brain. Errors in judgment and accident rates increase.â€
As with seasickness, not everyone is similarly affected. But for many, the experience becomes literally intolerable. Devastated families and individuals around the world, having lost their health, jobs or farms, return their keys to the bank, sell their homes at fire-sale prices, or simply pack up and flee. Some never recover their health.
(For more details on this human health travesty, see my three-part series on MasterResource.org)
The continuing expansion of Big Wind is a tale of money and power shunting aside integrity and compassion, abetted by a disinterested news media, leading to an un-informed public, further betrayed by "human rights advocates†loathe to break ranks from popular positions.
The myth that "saving the world†requires tolerating the costs of Big Wind could not be further from the truth. Responsible stewardship demands critical thinking, common sense and grade school science, not just following Big Wind’s Pied Piper and supposedly good intentions.
In fact, allowing wind into the energy mix squanders our non-renewable environment and taxpayer billions that are greatly needed elsewhere, wasting them on the most idiotic of engineering conceits.
Reliance on wind actually increases emissions and fossil fuel use overall, due to inefficiencies introduced into the system. Big Wind eliminates none of the need for conventional capacity, but rather consumes vast quantities of additional fuel and raw materials, while spewing emissions during the manufacture, transportation, construction and maintenance of the enormous redundant turbines and their uniquely demanding infrastructure.
The Wind Game is nothing but an obscenely costly, mostly useless energy redundancy scheme. It funnels unimaginable profits from our taxpayer and rate-payer pockets to its inner circle, while knowingly ignoring its victims’ desperate pleas for relief – and indeed ridiculing them and trying to bury all the growing evidence of harm to their health and wellbeing.
We’ve witnessed three decades of this callous, mercenary assault, this arrogant denial of what is known to be true, this untold suffering of thousands of innocent victims around the world. It’s time to bring in the human rights and social justice referees – and call "game over.â€
___________
Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Past Clinical Supervisory Faculty member at the University of Virginia Medical School. Her career includes practical experience in the fields of autism, sensory perception, memory and learning, attention deficit and anxiety disorders, including panic disorder and PTSD.
By now most Americans have heard about wind energy’s costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power and build ultra-long transmission lines from distant wind farms to urban centers; and the impacts that towering lines and turbines have on wildlife and habitats. What they haven’t heard much about is the damage that turbines can inflict on human health and wellbeing.
Not everyone is affected the same way or to the same degree. But for susceptible people living near gigantic turbines – even a mile or more away – the constant inaudible "infrasound†bombardment and "flicker†effects early and late in the day can be horribly debilitating. The Big Wind industry has done everything in its power to keep this story buried, and to ridicule and vilify the victims who suffer in so many ways.
Sensory perception expert Helen Parker has done something I don’t believe anyone else has done: pulled together the science and personal interest stories associated with this growing problem.
Science deniers in the wind industry
The human health consequences of manipulated measurements
Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, LCP
Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image. Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because we enjoy it.
The problem with wind energy is not just its costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power; or its impacts on wildlife and their habitats.
Infrasound (inaudible) and low-frequency (audible) noise (slowly vibrating sound waves collectively referred to as ILFN) produced by Industrial-scale Wind Turbines (IWTs) directly and predictably cause adverse human health effects. The sonic radiation tends to be amplified within structures, and sensitivity to the impact of the resonance increases with continuing exposure.
These facts have been known to the wind industry and the US government since the 1980s when it became a ‘hot topic,’ with numerous studies presented and published by acousticians working under grants from the Departments of Energy, Defense and NASA. The wind industry response?
Deny the science. Insist that "what you can’t hear can’t hurt you.†Claim that "neighbors will get used to it.†Measure only outside dwellings, and allow only noise measurements in the field that reflect the relative loudness perceived by the human ear, while drastically reducing sound-level readings in the lower frequencies that are known to cause problems.
From a distance, many view the massive turbines as majestic – as a clean, seemingly quiet and free source of endless energy. To untold thousands of families clustered within 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) or more of the pulsing machines, however, the IWTs bring strangely debilitating illness – increasingly incapacitating for some, yet scoffed at by wind proponents.
Common sense tells us that fifty-story-tall metal structures with blades as long as football fields moving at 180 mph at their tips would negatively impact quiet neighborhoods. But the extent and severity of the IWT’s effect on body, mind and spirit comes as a surprise to most people.
"When I’m at home I’m usually sick with headaches, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, anxiety, hopelessness, depression. My ears pop a lot and I hardly ever sleep…. Suicide looks to be my only relief. Land of the FREE Home of the BULLSHIT! … Million to one odds anybody contacts me back.â€
The primary pathway of turbine assault on human health is no mystery. The Israeli army has used low-frequency sound pulses as high-tech crowd control for years. People are made nauseous and confused, with blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, tachycardia, heightened blood pressure, pain and ringing in the ears, difficulties with memory and concentration, anxiety, depression, irritability, and panic attacks.
This also describes the Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), a constellation of symptoms first given a name by the brilliant young MD/PhD, Nina Pierpont. She followed her astute and compassionate observations of turbine neighbors around the world with epidemiological research, using a robust case-crossover statistical design: subjects experienced symptoms that varied with proximity to the turbines. When the same subjects were placed at a greater distance from the turbines, their symptoms abated; returning them to the scene brought the symptoms back.
Michigan State University noise engineers explain that "Inaudible components [ILFN] can induce resonant vibration in liquids, gases and solids … bodily tissues and cavities – potentially harmful to humans.†A subject in the groundbreaking Cooper study describes how the resonance shows up in a glass of water on her kitchen table, and in the toilet bowl, and how she feels it in her body.
Pierpont hypothesized that a significant pathway from ILFN to symptoms might include disruption to balance mechanisms located in the inner ear.
Dr. Alec Salt and colleagues, otolaryngologists at Washington University, later found that inaudible ILFN reaches the brain via inner ear Outer Hair Cell (OHC) displacement, leading indeed to unfamiliar and disturbing sensations paralleling WTS.
As turbine size trends upward, the sickening ILFN emissions worsen. There’s a lot of money riding on keeping the science under the radar of public awareness, and regulations to a minimum.
When Denmark’s EPA proposed tightening turbine noise regulations to protect turbine neighbors from increasing ILFN (May 2011), the Vestas CEO wrote the DEPA Minister, asserting: "It simply isn’t technically possible to curtail the ILFN output,†and "Increased distance requirements [setbacks from residences] cannot be met whilst maintaining a satisfactory business outcome for the investor.â€â€™ DEPA folded, turning instead to looser standards that were "likely to be copied by other countries.â€
Although alerted to the increased endangerment of turbine neighbors around the world, the press remained silent, and Big Wind’s central players ramped up their game plan undeterred.
In addition to the impact of ILFN radiation, turbine neighbors suffer from Turbine "Flicker†– a strobe-like effect caused by turbine blades alternately blocking and allowing sunlight to skim rhythmically and repeatedly across the land, or ricochet in bursts across interior walls and stairwells.
The direct impact extends to nearly a mile from the turbine – long after sunrise, and again long before sunset. It is mesmerizing, disorienting, and often brings on nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, irritability, even panic, indoors or outside.
Repetitive sleep disturbance and stress-related symptoms are the most common health complaints of IWT neighbors. The audible sound constantly fluctuates, described as akin to low-flying jets or the rumble of helicopters, "freakish, screeching sound sludge.†It is unnatural. People say the noise gets into your head, and you can’t get it out.
Advising the Falmouth, MA Board of Health, Dr. William Hallstein wrote: "All varieties of illnesses are destabilized, secondary to inadequate sleep: diabetic blood sugars, cardiac rhythms, migraines, tissue healing. Psychiatric problems intensify … all in the ‘normal’ brain. Errors in judgment and accident rates increase.â€
As with seasickness, not everyone is similarly affected. But for many, the experience becomes literally intolerable. Devastated families and individuals around the world, having lost their health, jobs or farms, return their keys to the bank, sell their homes at fire-sale prices, or simply pack up and flee. Some never recover their health.
(For more details on this human health travesty, see my three-part series on MasterResource.org)
The continuing expansion of Big Wind is a tale of money and power shunting aside integrity and compassion, abetted by a disinterested news media, leading to an un-informed public, further betrayed by "human rights advocates†loathe to break ranks from popular positions.
The myth that "saving the world†requires tolerating the costs of Big Wind could not be further from the truth. Responsible stewardship demands critical thinking, common sense and grade school science, not just following Big Wind’s Pied Piper and supposedly good intentions.
In fact, allowing wind into the energy mix squanders our non-renewable environment and taxpayer billions that are greatly needed elsewhere, wasting them on the most idiotic of engineering conceits.
Reliance on wind actually increases emissions and fossil fuel use overall, due to inefficiencies introduced into the system. Big Wind eliminates none of the need for conventional capacity, but rather consumes vast quantities of additional fuel and raw materials, while spewing emissions during the manufacture, transportation, construction and maintenance of the enormous redundant turbines and their uniquely demanding infrastructure.
The Wind Game is nothing but an obscenely costly, mostly useless energy redundancy scheme. It funnels unimaginable profits from our taxpayer and rate-payer pockets to its inner circle, while knowingly ignoring its victims’ desperate pleas for relief – and indeed ridiculing them and trying to bury all the growing evidence of harm to their health and wellbeing.
We’ve witnessed three decades of this callous, mercenary assault, this arrogant denial of what is known to be true, this untold suffering of thousands of innocent victims around the world. It’s time to bring in the human rights and social justice referees – and call "game over.â€
___________
Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Past Clinical Supervisory Faculty member at the University of Virginia Medical School. Her career includes practical experience in the fields of autism, sensory perception, memory and learning, attention deficit and anxiety disorders, including panic disorder and PTSD.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:29 AM
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Why Trump Should Defund the NEA
Dana Mathewson
When our president first announced that he hoped to put the NEA on the chopping block, many folks had an instant case of the vapors. The assumption was that the arts in this country would immediately -- or at least very soon -- die of strangulation.
Jeff Jacoby here presents some facts that indicate this is very unlikely to happen. After all, the arts were thriving before the NEA came into being. I have often seen arguments made that the NEA actually stifles art, since it is totally insensitive to what is needed at the local level. Jacoby doesn't address that, unfortunately.
https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2017/03/01/scrap-the-nea-and-americas-arts-scene-will-thrive-n2292444?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
When our president first announced that he hoped to put the NEA on the chopping block, many folks had an instant case of the vapors. The assumption was that the arts in this country would immediately -- or at least very soon -- die of strangulation.
Jeff Jacoby here presents some facts that indicate this is very unlikely to happen. After all, the arts were thriving before the NEA came into being. I have often seen arguments made that the NEA actually stifles art, since it is totally insensitive to what is needed at the local level. Jacoby doesn't address that, unfortunately.
https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2017/03/01/scrap-the-nea-and-americas-arts-scene-will-thrive-n2292444?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:26 AM
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