October 31, 2017

Even The Week sees the Mueller investigation as unhinged

The Week, a formerly centrist magazine that has drifted leftward over the years has an interesting take on the Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation - it's run amok;
...Dot connectors will, of course, continue to connect dots. It could be that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is hoping to secure testimony from Manafort or Gates that will give him the dirt he needs to bring more appropriate charges. It could be that he already has that information and is just waiting for goodness knows what occasion. At the very least, obsessives will say, the hiring of Manafort indicates — these comments almost write themselves — a very serious lack of judgment on Trump's part. You don't say? The man whose idea of a feel-good national unity speech following an act of domestic terrorism was to suggest a degree of moral equivalence between the KKK and its opponents has horrible instincts, often fails to think things through, is a bad judge of character, etc.? Gosh.

Even George Papadopoulos' guilty plea is no smoking gun. The former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign admits that he lied about email exchanges with a shadowy figure known as "the professor" who had promised Russian "dirt" on Clinton. But as far as we can tell, his communications with Dr. Dirt went nowhere. Papadopoulos also made vague references in his emails to "meetings" with Russian officials that probably did not end up taking place, which seems important only if you ignore the fact that presidential candidates, especially after securing their parties' nominations, routinely meet with foreign leaders, even heads of state.

The most significant thing about Monday's Mueller bonanza is that it reminds us what is wrong with these hysterical wide-ranging special prosecutor investigations that take place in public. Whitewater went on for nearly a decade before it concluded in 2003.
When you have a magazine that blatantly, incorrectly summarizes president Trump's response to  "an act of domestic terrorism" in such a way as they did, say that the Mueller investigation is hysterical then you know the Mueller investigation is as ridiculous as it is malignantly aggressive.  Despite the liberal slant, the article is peppered with factual debunking of the media narrative associated with the investigation.

For example:
There are many problems with the Mueller probe, not least its show-boating obsession with keeping its business in the newspapers, but the biggest one is that its parameters were never well defined. What would count as actual collusion? Idle language is thrown around about people having "ties" to Russia or being "Kremlin-connected." How do you define "Kremlin-connected"? What would be the broad equivalent in the United States from Russia's perspective? A former congressman? Anyone who does business on K Street having a meeting? Defense contractors? Given the country's autocratic structure, there are very few living Russian nationals of any wealth or distinction who are not "Kremlin-connected."
Their conclusion in this regard, seems entirely reasonable:
If it's not going away, the least we could do is broaden the investigation's scope. Why not appoint another special prosecutor to investigate British meddling in our sacrosanct democratic process? The facts are there in plain sight. A former member of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service collaborated with a presidential campaign in an attempt to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. So did a former member of the British Parliament, who peddled disgusting conspiracy theories on Twitter and even attempted to collude with the Clinton campaign on advertising strategy. The speaker of the British House of Commons attempted to discredit Clinton's opponent.
That's awfully hard to argue, and actually seems aligned with what the president himself has been calling for to happen.

Scary Halloween stuff

Nope, it's not the election of Hillary Clinton to the presidency, that nightmare is a thing of the past.  Just some scary websites. Happy Halloween.

October 30, 2017

Hollywood continues to eat itself

Hollywood? Kevin Spacey? Progressivism? Take your pick.
Via (eye roll please...) CNN:
Actor Anthony Rapp has accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance at him when Rapp was 14, Buzzfeed reported Sunday.

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Rapp said Spacey picked him up, put him on his bed and "was trying to get with me sexually" in 1986. Spacey was 26 at the time.

In response to the allegations, Spacey tweeted that he was "beyond horrified to hear [Rapp's] story."

Spacey tweeted: "I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago.

"But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years."
There's so much to discuss here. In no particular order: 

(1) Why did CNN say sexual assault WITH a minor instead of 'on' or 'of' a minor? The terminology is different than it had been say a Republican Senator. 

(2) Why is Rapp coming forward now?
Rapp, who is now 46, released this statement through his publicist.

"I came forward with my story, standing on the shoulders of the many courageous women and men who have been speaking out, to shine a light and hopefully make a difference, as they have done for me. Everything I wanted to say about my experience is in that article, and I have no further comment about it at this time."
Hollywood is currently rife with new sexual assault stories seemingly coming out every day now. That no doubt is the reason. But it seems like a sudden, rapid implosion of Hollywood.

(3) Those who would have normally came out praising Kevin Spacey for revealing that he is gay, are quite angry. Why? Because it paints being gay in a bad light. Suddenly they are not interested in his revealed sexuality.
Okay, so there's that. I'm not sure Kevin Spacey was using it as a defense, it seems like he had no choice but to reveal the fact of his homosexuality as a result of the accusation against him.  Maybe it was a bad decision if it is coming off as a defense.  But it seems the anger is directed at the fact that he has mixed it up with the assault of a minor and that is making homosexuality look bad. That's how the anger at Kevin Spacey seems to be directed. Just my observation.  If so, those erstwhile defenders of homosexuality as it relates to Kevin Spacey are themselves conflating an admission of a fact with an excuse.  They're handling it as badly as Kevin Spacey himself appears to have done.

Court oddly bars president Trump on transgender military service reversal

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Washington on Monday barred President Donald Trump's administration from excluding transgender people from military service.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that transgender service members who had sued over Trump's policy were likely to win their lawsuit. She directed a return to the situation that existed before Trump announced his new policy this summer.
On the surface of it, it's ridiculous. How could president Obama change the rule but president Trump cannot reverse the decision? No judge blocked president Obama from making the change, so how does a court have the ability to do so now? Either both changes are legally permissible or neither are. The specious argument that transgender service members are likely (likely???) to win their lawsuit does not rise to the level of reasonable cause to deny the president the option to attempt to reverse the recently changed policy. The lawsuit has not even concluded yet. As a result of the lawsuit perhaps a change will be required.  At this point, why?

By that judicial logic, likelihood is enough of a reason to allow the president's travel ban to be extended indefinitely: it's likely that someone from one of the countries named in the travel ban will at some point in the future commit an act of terror against the United States.

Both sides can play the game of likely. I expect that this activist judicial decision will be overturned. Regardless of your view on the transgender issue. the court is on thin ice with the argument behind this decision.

Manic Monday or Panic Monday or no big deal?

As you've probably already heard, 3 people, ostensibly with the Trump campaign, were charged with conspiracy against the U.S. 
Donald Trump sought to distance himself Monday from federal charges leveled against his former campaign chairman, saying on Twitter that the crimes alleged against Paul Manafort concerned activities that took place long before his White House campaign.

'Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????' the president tweeted. Minutes later he insisted in a second tweet: '....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!'

That last note is meant to push back against nonstop claims from Democrats that his campaign worked hand-in-glove with Russia to tilt the results of last November's election.

Trump has lately been on a digital rampage about reports that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded an opposition research project last year that resulted in a discredited 'dirty dossier' full of salacious claims about him.
 The Manafort and company charges likely won't amount to much but there is some concern that the charges against George Papadopoulos might be an issue for the Trump team. Nevertheless, while Manafort and Gates have plead not guilty and George Papadopoulos plead guilty, his actions so far, appear to be arms's length from the Trump campaign.

October 29, 2017

Timing of indictments is suspect

After Hillary Clinton's worst week since losing the presidential election last year, isn't it a bit curious that suddenly there are suddenly charges going to be laid against someone in the Mueller collusion anything-we-can-dig-up investigation of the White House? And it wasn't really a good week for former president Obama either as his White House has been implicated in the Democrat-Russia collusion scandal now too.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is facing a fresh round of calls from conservative critics for his resignation from the Russia collusion probe, amid revelations that have called into question the FBI’s own actions and potentially Mueller’s independence.

This week’s bombshell that a controversial anti-Trump dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign has Republicans asking to what extent the FBI – which received some of the findings and briefly agreed to pay the same researcher to gather intelligence on Trump and Russia – used the politically connected material.

Hill investigators also are looking into a Russian firm’s uranium deal that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010 despite reports that the FBI – then led by Mueller – had evidence of bribery involving a subsidiary of that firm.
Previously I suggested Muller was doing this in self defense, but now I'm wondering if maybe he's being told or pressured to hurry up in order to shift the focus of the media off of the unfolding Democrat scandal.  The timing is suspect to say the least.

Sunday verse



October 28, 2017

Mueller pressing charges. Is it self defense?

Not the story, but yeah, the story.
CNN is reporting that criminal charges are being pressed by special counsel. The timing seems odd to say the least given that his name has come up in the Uranium One and Obama Clinton Russia collusion allegations.

Nevertheless, CNN is likely thrilled by the sealed indictment.
Washington (CNN)A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said.

It is unclear what the charges are.

A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment. The White House also had no comment, a senior administration official said Saturday morning. Mueller was appointed in May to lead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Details might leak prior to Monday but  that's when the proverbial poop will hit the fan for someone - be it president Trump, Hillary Clinton (not likely), someone in the FBI or someone in the Trump administration, or someone else entirely. Maybe even CNN again.

Saturday Learning Series - Postmodernism (Part 1)

Professor Stephen Hicks explains the perils of postmodernism which is largely progressivism.

October 27, 2017

October 26, 2017

Larry Elder vs. David Rubin (done politely)

From January of this  year, a polite political discussion.

October 25, 2017

UPDATED: links on the unfolding Clinton-Russia scandal


The story is unravelling as the Clintons' narrative of a Trump Russia scandal starts to turn on the true perpetrators: the Clinton campaign itself.

Adding links as the details unfold.

Daily Mail on the overarching issue.
WSJ on the state of the Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign
Washington Examiner on the impact on the FBI.
Daily Caller on big journalism's continued denial and downplaying of the problem

CNN is reporting on it.
And it's made it to the BBC. And the liberal Vox (albeit spun to protect Hillary).
Two days ago The Hill called for a special counsel on the matter.
IBD brings up the ties to the Uranium One scandal.

PolitiFact still defending Hillary.
NewsMax: Some Democrats are faithfully calling it a distraction.
Politico is blaming the lawyer.

As an aside, if Hillary never knew any of this was going on right under her nose, what kind of president would she have made?

FoxNews has the story.
NBC credits the Washington Post with the original story a couple of days ago when this story has been out there for months already.
New American: Republicans are looking into the Uranium One deal and the Clinton email scandal.
Mother Jones is reporting a schism between the Republicans and Democrats on the investigation.

Make no  mistake on that last one - it's a Democrat political move designed to deflect any issues and allow for a continued pursuit of Trump outside of the Hillary fallout.

Epoch Times: Trump special prosecutor Mueller was complicit in the Clinton-Russia deals.
Newsweek: Obama administration granted Visa to Russian officials in the Clinton nuclear sale scheme.
Mediaite: President Trump calls it a modern age Watergate.

FoxNews: What you need to know about the Uranium One deal.

Two days ago CNN was claiming president Trump's allegations were preposterous.

The man behind the phony dossier was viewed as an idiot by his MI6 superiors according to The Daily Mail.

And about that Clinton and Russia collusion

It turns out that there was collusion with Russia, except it came from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Republican tax cut work is progressing nicely thank you.

Setting aside the slow-brewing Clinton-Fusion GPS-Russia scandal, there's actual work going on regarding tax cuts and tax reform.  And while the mainstream media are angling to tell the story as Trump meddling interfering with progress, if you dig, you'll find out that things seem to be progressing.

Firstly, president Trump had a real reason to interfere, as CNBC reports;
The American people were treated today to another example of the congressional Republicans' contortionist act. This time it was over 401(k) plans. But the real story is how much the GOP congressional leaders will twist and turn and basically make themselves into a pretzel all to avoid one thing: Cutting the spending.

First, let's look at the most recent details. A report surfaced late Friday that the Republican tax-reform bill may include a provision that would limit tax-free contributions to 401(k) plans to $2,400 per year. An understandable howl went up over that one, as 401(k)s have become a major staple of retirement savings for millions of Americans, a key benefit employers offer via matching contributions, and a big money maker for Wall Street firms.
In another report, CNBC points out that the tax bill is expected to be delivered next week.
House Republicans aim to introduce their tax bill on Nov. 1, a Capitol Hill source tells CNBC.

The plan's release will follow an expected House vote on the Senate-approved budget plan on Thursday. The Senate resolution unlocks a tool that would allow the tax bill to pass with only a simple majority of Republican votes in the Senate.

The GOP wants to approve a plan by the end of the year to dramatically lower individual and corporate tax rates, double the standard deduction and scrap certain taxes that largely affect wealthier Americans.
Doesn't seem the media are really drilling down but just looking for reasons to continue to go after president Trump, spurious though those reasons might be.

Some liberals actually get the regressive left

David Rubin, a liberal, gets the problem with the left - it isn't liberal, it's regressive. What he espouses, is not what the left is today, and arguably can no longer be.

October 24, 2017

Helpful Hints: Ben Shapiro on how to engage the Left

Worth learning.

You gotta wonder if anti-Trump Republicans are staged

All the senate is a stage.
Bob Corker is decrying president Trump, but he's not running for re-election.  Senator Jeff Flake has been a vocal basher of the president. He's also not coming back.
Condemning the nastiness of Republican politics in the era of President Donald Trump, Sen. Jeff Flake on Tuesday announced he will serve out the remainder of his term but will not seek re-election in 2018.

The bombshell, which Flake, R-Ariz., intended to detail Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor, will further roil Republican hopes of keeping the party's 52-seat Senate majority in the midterm elections of Trump's first term, when the president's party historically loses seats in Congress.

It also likely will upend the race for Flake's seat.

Flake, one of the Senate's more prominent critics of President Donald Trump, has been struggling in the polls.
President Trump won running as the anti-establishment guy. The guys who appear to be the anti-Trump GOP Establishment are slowly declaring they are not seeking re-election. It's not a coincidence. It could be because their positions have put them out of touch with their constituents and also out of contention for re-election. But these are the same guys who have no problem shifting right during primaries and left during elections. They are surely not so stupid that they can't shift now as needed to bolster their approval ratings. Why dig in their heels now? Just because of Trump? Just because they have to live up to their promises and they are not prepared to do so? Come on - they are more self-serving than that. Re-election is clearly all that matters and state polling (pardon the pun) trumps what CNN says about you as a senator.

So...what could possibly be going on with their establishment intransigence? Maybe, just maybe the GOP and president Trump have staged this as a way to shift the party to the right and getting out the vote (GOTV) for the 2018 midterm elections by firing up the Trump base. It would not be a dumb move. Not despite the lack of lockstep allegiance to president Trump, just maybe the GOP are smarter than they appear. One can hope, right?

October 23, 2017

The sad thing is, she'll probably win re-election

Florida Democrat Frederica Wilson is doubling down on her story by attacking a General.  The sad thing is, she'll probably win re-election.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) is calling for an apology from White House chief of staff John Kelly for "character assassination."

“Not only does he owe me an apology, but he owes an apology to the American people,” Wilson said during an appearance Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy," according to The Washington Post.
An apology?  For this brilliant attempt to diffuse the situation and well, call Wilson out for who she really is:



Yep America, this is one of your congresswomen.  It must be a proud moment for you.

October 22, 2017

October 19, 2017

The Hill's story on Mueller, is the story

This story in political website The Hill, is really in and of itself, the story.
Much has been written about the prosecutorial prowess of Robert Mueller’s team assembled to investigate allegations of Russia’s involvement in the Trump campaign. Little has been said of the danger of prosecutorial overreach and the true history of Mueller’s lead prosecutor.

What was supposed to have been a search for Russia’s cyberspace intrusions into our electoral politics has morphed into a malevolent mission targeting friends, family and colleagues of the president. The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some.

Many Americans despise President Trump and anyone associated with him. Yet turning our system of justice into a political weapon is a danger we must guard against.
Potent stuff you'd expect to see on Breitbart, not an establishment type website. True, it's not front page splash type stuff, but it's there. And it makes me wonder - with the revelation that the Justice Department might be going after Obama and the Clintons for the nefarious, possibly treasonous Uranium One deal, maybe they (The Left) are considering trying to downplay the Trump-Russia collusion as sort of an unspoken truce because there side is about to be caught out. Or perhaps it's just starting to become apparent that there's no 'there' there as far as any Trump Russia collusion. In either case, when voters on the left realize they were busy chasing phantoms, it will be interesting to see how they react to being fed misleading, misdirection from the media and the Democratic leadership.

October 18, 2017

Newsweek Delivers Democrat Fantasy Scenario to Still-Frothing Liberals


This. Is. Inane. Blather.
Sure, it's been more than 340 days since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, but there's still one very narrow, highly unlikely and entirely unprecedented way that Clinton could become president.

And it has some Democratic die-hards dreaming again.

Harvard University professor Lawrence Lessig offered a Clinton path to the presidency on Medium, putting forward a series of "if/then" scenarios that lead to House Speaker Paul Ryan handing the White House keys to Clinton.
They kid you not - this is real. At least to them.
Here's how constitutional law expert Lessig lays it out:

If number 1: If Trump is definitively found to have colluded directly with Russia, he would be forced to resign or be impeached.

If number 2: If Trump is removed, Vice President Mike Pence would become president.

If number 3: If Pence becomes president, he should resign too, given that he benefited from the same help from Mother Russia.

If number 4: If Pence resigns before appointing a vice president, Ryan would become president.

If number 5: If Ryan becomes president, he should do the right thing and choose Clinton for vice president. Then he should resign.
To be fair, this is from a Harvard law professor and a 'mainstream media' publication, not Democrats in Washington, but based on the actions of Democrats in Washington, they secretly agree with the writing.  These are the type of people that Republicans have to work with to govern the country. How do you work with people who harbor fantasies like this?  Answer: you don't.


Russia Collusion: Clinton-Obama style


A report in The Hill reveals that there was collusion with Russia, and there was a cover-up.  It's just that the perpetrators were not anyone on team Trump:
An American businessman who worked for years undercover as an FBI confidential witness was blocked by the Obama Justice Department from telling Congress about conversations and transactions he witnessed related to the Russian nuclear industry's efforts to win favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton and influence Obama administration decisions, his lawyer tells The Hill.

Attorney Victoria Toensing, a former Reagan Justice Department official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday she is working with members of Congress to see if they can get the Trump Justice Department or the FBI to free her client to talk to lawmakers.

“All of the information about this corruption has not come out,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “And so my client, the same part of my client that made him go into the FBI in the first place, says, 'This is wrong. What should I do about it?'”
Except it's not front page news anywhere. It's not plastered all over CNN as a major, major scandal because of who it is that's involved. Now they may complain that these are unsubstantiated claims, but that has never stopped anyone from doing that to president Trump.

This is a big deal and the Justice Department needs to let this come out, truthful or not, to establish what actually happened.

The game is so much easier when you play by the same rules as the Left, it really is.

October 15, 2017

October 14, 2017

Knee jerk liberals versus Harvey Weinstein.

Whenever somebody asks me to describe modern liberalism (as opposed to classical liberalism, which is entirely different) in one word, I always ask if I can use a hyphen.  That's because my word is knee-jerk.  Or knee jerk in two words if you prefer.  Liberals constantly react with their feelings and do not stop to think about the logic of a situation, the totality of the facts, or the consequences of their immediate reaction.  Knee jerk.

At least they are consistent and do not disappoint.  With Harvey Weinstein accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment and possibly even rape.  Liberals were quick (though not quite as quick as if he had been a Republican)  to jump on him as a misogynist, sexist jerk.  There's a lot of evidence that they are right.  But just like the case with Bill Cosby, he deserves his inevitable day in court, doesn't he?  I mean innocent until proven guilty in a court of law is kind of a founding principle isn't it?  Isn't it an American ideal?  They certainly apply that standard to illegal immigrants.

And Harvey was a proud Hillary donor and supporter.  But now, he's liberal poison;
Embattled film mogul Harvey Weinstein — a once-dominant force in the Academy Awards who rewrote the rules of Oscar campaigning — has been expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in response to mounting allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him.

The film academy’s 54-member board of governors, which includes such industry luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kathleen Kennedy and Whoopi Goldberg, voted in an emergency meeting on Saturday morning to remove Weinstein from the organization’s ranks in an unprecedented public rebuke of a prominent industry figure. The move marked the latest blow in Weinstein’s stunning downfall and, in symbolic terms, amounts to a virtual expulsion from Hollywood itself.
So much for the idea of innocent until proven guilty. It's hard to feel sympathy for liberals eating their own, especially when the likes of Harvey Weinstein were instrumental in foisting modern liberalism on America - he's reaping what he sewed. And while he will probably turn out to be guilty of all manner of Hollywood debauchery and unwarranted sexual advances, he does, like any other American, deserve hisa day in court.

Saturday Learning Series - Fire in micro gravity

What happens to fire in free fall? Or in space?


October 13, 2017

Friday Musical Interlude (late) - Genesis remix

Just some dancing to a remix of Genesis' hit I Can't Dance.  Due to some technical issues (or sleep), I was unable to post this on time (by Friday end of day).  So I've retro-fitted it to yesterday.

October 12, 2017

Hillary Clinton is appalled (once again).

Remember the good old days when Hillary Clinton was appalled at Donald Trump instead of her donor Harvey Weinstein?



Or for his views on immigration?



Now that her donor and dare I say friend, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been caught not discussing women but is being accused of actually having sexually assaulted women, she's dug out the same old outrage script.


Disingenuous much?

October 11, 2017

NFL. better late than never, but uh, weak

Roger Goodell has finally realized that maybe players should stand during the national anthem.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday wrote a letter to all 32 league owners regarding the protests that have taken place during the national anthem, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.

In the letter, which Schefter shared on his Facebook page, Goodell wrote that the “current dispute over the National Anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game, and is now dividing us, and our players, from many fans across the country.”
Ya think?

[Editor's Note: This post was accidentally removed and some content accidentally deleted.]

October 9, 2017

Happy Columbus Day, as much as you can manage

Happy Columbus Day America.

Despite what CNN and the New York Times are trying to do to demonize the holiday and the celebration of discovery. CNN example reminds us that even president Obama was reticent to recognize the brave explorer.
Never mind the disease and slavery wrought by Christopher Columbus' voyage -- or the fact that he didn't actually "discover" the New World. President Donald Trump's first presidential proclamation of Columbus Day gave only high praise to the 15th century explorer, a stark contrast to the proclamation made by President Barack Obama one year earlier.
Sheesh. And it gets worse. CNN also eagerly points out the break with history that often betides the downfall of a civilization:
Many school districts and local governments will mark Columbus Day the same way they have for decades, with no classes and no work in honor of the man widely believed to have "discovered" America.

But some cities and states are shifting that honor from Columbus to indigenous people.

At least 16 states, including Alaska, Hawaii and Oregon, don't recognize Columbus Day as a public holiday.
In any case, enjoy the day. Celebrating discovery is not a bad thing.


The inconsistency in demands for socialism

This particular inconsistency must be constantly pointed out.  Socialists, communists, progressives and liberal Democrats consistently demonize big business while often pay lip service to the little business owner or in some cases free market capitalism. This all as they overtly or covertly work to dismantle the free market.  They rail against corporate welfare and insufficient taxation and they proclaim interminably that business cannot be trusted to do the right thing - particularly big business. Yet there is a fundamental inconsistency in their proclamations.

Sometimes it's true, big business, particularly progressive liberal businesses do not play fair;
In an explosive new allegation, a renowned architect has accused Google of racketeering, saying in a lawsuit the company has a pattern of stealing trade secrets from people it first invites to collaborate.

Architect Eli Attia spent 50 years developing what his lawsuit calls “game-changing new technology” for building construction. Google in 2010 struck a deal to work with him on commercializing it as software, and Attia moved with his family from New York to Palo Alto to focus on the initiative, code-named “Project Genie.”

The project was undertaken in Google’s secretive “Google X” unit for experimental “moonshots.”

But then Google and its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “plotted to squeeze Attia out of the project” and pretended to kill it but used Attia’s technology to “surreptitiously” spin off Project Genie into a new company, according to the lawsuit.

“The real adding-insult-to-injury was Google telling him the project had been canceled and they weren’t going forward with it when in fact they were going full blast on it,” Attia’s lawyer Eric Buether said in an interview Friday.
That seems quite predatory if it's proven to be true.   It's anti-free market because it's the type of behavior that discourages innovation because there's no benefit in innovation for the innovator.  Every financial benefit flows into the hands of a shrinking cabal of monopolies.

It's enough to make one thing that maybe socialism isn't such a bad idea.  Almost.  The problem, the inconsistency with that type of thinking is that the solution socialism or communism provides is to take that centralized power over the market from those monopolies and hand it over to the government, which is in itself a super-monopoly.  Think about it - if the government is in a business like health care, as is the case in Canada, they not only can dictate the terms of the marketplace as there are no competitors, they can actually write the rules to dictate the marketplace.  They can enforce the rules of the marketplace through the police and courts. 

The solution socialism suggest actually worsens the problem.  The real solution is actually the exact opposite of socialism - more competition, which provides more choice and therefore more opportunity for innovation.  Both of those things advance social welfare.  Government should only exist in that spectrum as an adjudicator between competing companies or between companies and consumers where products and services have caused issues for consumers.  Even then it should be an adjudicator of last resort, as the marketplace that recognizes poor performance for a business will resolve that by flowing business to competitors that provide better service, better quality and/or better prices.

That this inconsistency needs to be constantly reminded or shown to people is sad, nevertheless it's a job we should all share tirelessly and with enthusiasm and no expectation of personal reward (because that's the socialist thing to do).

October 8, 2017

October 7, 2017

Breitbart thought you should know

In case you were wondering why it's so hard for president Trump to get anything done, consider this:

Saturday Learning Series - Uranium

Some information on Uranium.





And a little more:


Hey, let's ban cars too

Not to be too glib, because a lot of leftitst would be thrilled to witness the disappearance of the automobile.  However, those who want to ban guns because guns kill people should take note - cars kill people too, often inadvertently, but increasingly, not always;
Several people have been injured after a car mounted the pavement and mowed down pedestrians outside the Natural History Museum in London this afternoon.

A man was pinned down by security guards and arrested by police in the heart of the capital's museum land in Kensington.

Hundreds of terrified tourists fled the scene as the black Toyota Prius - a registered minicab - careered into a sign before ultimately crashing into a crowd of as many as 10 people as it hit a silver car, according to witnesses.
Gun laws are extremely strict in the U.K. but they still have murders. They still have terrorism. Gun laws are not the answer. Maybe stricter penalties for murder and assault might work. Maybe it's something else. The point is that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Otherwise while we are at it we should not only ban guns, we should also ban shovels, rakes, steak knives, camping (because grizzly bears), construction sites, fire and doctors who can't cure cancer.

October 6, 2017

Friday Musical Interlude - unusual Landslide cover

An unusual cover version; a Korean gayageum cover of Fleetwood Mac's 1975 song Landslide by Luna.

October 5, 2017

Polls still fudge-y on president Trump

Make no mistake, president Trump is still polling underwater, but what's remarkable is how little underwater he is given the deluge over the past year plus of negative stories that the media continues to purvey about him regardless of substance.  The unspoken secret however is that these polls mean zero to the president, zero to his supporters and zero to his re-election chances as well as nearly zero to the Republican controlled congress.

Nevertheless it's all worth a brief debunking.  Here's what the latest RealClearPolitics polling average of job approval for the president looks like.


In the recent average there are a total of 12 polls. Gallup (having the president at -17%), Reuters (-18%), CNN (-19%), CNBC (-14%) and CBS News (-20%) all are polling all adults.  That's been proven to be unreliable with respect to electoral results.  They are often unreliably skewed as well.  For example take CNN's poll. On page 6 it suggest 37% of Democrats approve of the president's job.  In a poll of 1037 respondents and a confidence interval of +/- 3.5%, and the standard 95% confidence level, reverse engineering the statistics, it means the sample contained 429 Democrats. That's a poll that contains 41.4% Democrats.  Similarly the poll contained 235 Independents (22.6% of those polled), leaving 373 Republicans (36% of the polled population).

While Democrats tend to be more numerous a +5.4% skew towards Democrats and a much larger proportion of Independents than a lot of historical polls.  The latter point could be a real variance from the past but the skewness of the poll is still highly questionable. [If you are interested in reverse engineering the polls minus all the stats, there's a good basic calculator here.]

Much of the remaining polling - in fact all but Rasmussen - look at registered voters.  It's historically more reliable but based on that sort of polling, president Obama would not have won re-election in 2012.  The merits of each of those polls require their own individual assessments, something I'm not prepared to do here but it is worth noting that one pollster is a Democrat firm, and as I've pointed previously, Marist polling has issues (something the election results bore out).  While everyone is now saying most all of the polling in 2016 was correct within the margin of error nationally, there were very few polls that actually had Donald Trump ahead state-by-state in the electoral college.  Yet that's exactly what happened. Issues with polling is nothing new.

Putting stock in the polls of the day is a dangerous and misleading game.  All that said, there is a continuity of evidence when even Rasmussen has president Trump at -9%. Rasmussen was so off in 2012 that in 2016 I tended to disregard it.  Nevertheless Rasmussen has Trump much better off than his predecessor was for much of his first term.  If I were president Trump I would not be discouraged by the polls.  It still really is about getting things he's promised, actually done.


October 4, 2017

The fallout of Obama's gutting of the American military

Heritage explains:


China knows it.


It's only political if president Trump does it


Puerto Rico, recently hit by a hurricane was visited by president Trump who has actually done quite a lot for the island since the hurricane.  But to hear the media and liberal politicians tell it, he's done nothing, doesn't care and racist, racist, racist.  But the political hackery related to the recovery is clearly coming from the left - including San Juan's mayor.

President Trump said she said some nasty things. He did not call her nasty. 


But she still seems content to bite the hand that helps.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who had previously said her criticisms of the federal government's handling of Hurricane Maria relief were about saving lives and "not about politics," took a shot at President Donald Trump by wearing a shirt that read "NASTY" on it during a Univision interview.
It's okay - she's a liberal so she's allowed to make the hurricane political.

I'm starting to think that the liberal media has completely overplayed it's hand.  Nobody who has an ounce of critical think could possibly take the New York Times or CNN seriously anymore.  They and other liberal media outlets are just causing themselves to be tuned out and are serving as echo chambers for each others' continued false reality.  It's a recipe for another Trump election and possibly even Republican gains in congress in 2018.

October 3, 2017

Gun control vs. welfare state failures


Why is it that every time there's a major gun crime it reignites the debate on gun control but 70 years of liberal social welfare policy which have created an endemic poverty and a cycle of dependency that has doubtless led to homicide, suicide, theft and rampant drug use in certain communities doesn't get a revisit by the mainstream media more than once every seven decades?

It makes no sense.  But I guess progressive liberalism isn't supposed to make sense. Rather than gun control we should be talking about liberal policy control because the resulting early deaths are likely in the hundreds of thousands and the negative impact on quality of life for millions of people is not even measurable. 

October 2, 2017

Some people are just plain crazy


No, I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton, although I could be. I'm not talking about the vulgar response from a former CBS VP who had no sympathy for the victims because they're probably Republican. I'm talking about the shooter who purportedly snapped and killed 59 people and injured over 500 others in Las Vegas.  

While ISIS is desperately trying to claim the shooter as another recruit, he's apparently not been motivated by religion or politics.  Some people are just plain crazy and we need to acknowledge that fact and act accordingly.

It doesn't mean we can't try to understand and help them, but public safety has to come first.  In this case with no prior indication of this potential besides a traffic ticket in 64 years, I understands that knowing ahead of time is next to impossible. But that doesn't mean the only solution is to ban guns.  But it does mean that warning signs as was the case with the Fort Hood shooter or the previous Las Vegas shooter, should never be ignored or treated lightly.

Meanwhile, and most importantly I would like to extend my sympathies to the victims and their families.  My prayers are with them.

October 1, 2017

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