Friday 27 June 2014

"No hand on the f-ing tiller" Hillary's candid opinion of Obama. UPDATE.

Edward Klein's party scoop sounds plausible but should be checked.
He reports on a May 2013 dinner party in his book Blood Feud:

“When her friends asked Hillary to tell them what she thought — really thought — about the president she had served for four draining years, she lit into Obama with a passion that surprised them all,” ...... “The thing with Obama is that he can’t be bothered, and there is no hand on the tiller half the time. That’s the story of the Obama presidency. No hand on the f–king tiller,” according to the book. “Obama has turned into a joke,”

“The IRS targeting the Tea Party, the Justice Department’s seizure of AP phone records and [Fox reporter] James Rosen’s e-mails — all these scandals. Obama’s allowed his hatred for his enemies to screw him the way Nixon did,” she raged, the book says, adding that she called the president “incompetent and feckless.”

(Selections from Powerline article by Paul Mirengoff.)








UPDATE: Review from Roger Simon:
Blood Feud, Ed Klein’s new book on the Clintons and the Obamas currently rocketing to the top of the Amazon best seller list even before its official publication day, is a lurid, irresponsible work of yellow journalism filled with suppositions, inaccuracies, myriad anonymous sources, made-up dialogue and (often extreme) bias. In other words, it is essentially like your average front page story in the New York Times. But unlike the Times, Klein gets it essentially right about his subject — the Clintons and the Obamas despise each other. And unlike the Times, Blood Feud is a compulsive read.

Thursday 26 June 2014

Presbyterian Presbyopia: Netanyahu Scores Against BDS Folly.



On Meet The Press, David Gregory asks:
"The Presbyterians in the United States have just passed a decision voted to divest its holdings in companies that do business with Israel, that sell parts to Israel that they claim are used in the course of the occupations of the Palestinians. How troubling is this to you?" 

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu responds:
"It should trouble all people of conscience and morality because it's so disgraceful. You know, you look at what's happening in the Middle East, and I think most Americans understand this: They see this enormous area riveted by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions.  Then you come to Israel and you see the one democracy that upholds basic human rights, that guards the rights of all minorities, that protects Christians. Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East. So most Americans understand that Israel is a beacon of civilization and moderation.              You know, I would suggest to those Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour. Go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference. And I would give them two pieces of advice: One is make sure it's an armor-plated bus. And, second, don't say that you're Christians."
From the comments at smalldeadanimals which linked the story:
"Netanyahu suggested the Presbyterians visit and tour Israel and then go tour Libya, Syria, Iraq. If the Presbyterians do it in that order, when the Arabs see the new Israeli visitation stamps on their passports, they'll be thrown in prison so fast it'll make their heads spin.
LOL"  Oz

The Critics of Plenty.

In the sixties, I got to tag behind archaeologist, Clyde Kennedy, on a dig by Pembroke, Ontario. I'll never forget the throw-away food bones in the dirt of that Archaic camp by the rapids.  Bones no thicker than a bowling pencil or old-style straw had all been cracked to get at the marrow.

Clyde Kennedy at the Morrison Island
site near Pembroke, early sixties.
For comparison, here's my scarcely-gnawed leftover from a T-bone supper.   I'll take the latter while those who glorify the noble pre-industrial savage
(They had iphones, didn't they?)
can go back in time and take the former.
Good riddance.  Plenty is better.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

Live hack attack video for the world

The security firm, Norse, has a honeypot worldwide network that attracts a tiny fraction of the hacking assaults.  The tiny honeypot attracts hundreds of probes in a minute and mirrors what's happening across the internet.  Watch for yourself.  Most originate in China or the USA and most are directed at the USA.   USA targets are internal or scattered about the globe.  China's targets have tunnel vision and are mostly in one place, the USA.  There is a separate category for attacks attributed to military and state institutions.  If you hover over any one country source or target or type of attack, the display immediately filters for those results. (Hat tip to Engadget). (If nothing shows, try a different browser).  I happened to catch a large outbreak with the screen shot below.

Thursday 19 June 2014

Dirty belts - Hygiene loophole.

We're a clean society with hand sanitizers and daily showers but there's a big loophole.  Who ever washes a belt?   Gentlemen apply the wipe, pull up the trousers, buckle the belt and then  (the better sort) wash their hands.   Belts go years without a wipe-down.

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Tax Freedom Day calculator - too easy not to try.


Each year, when do you start working for yourself and family instead of government?  Thirty seconds with the Fraser Institute calculator shows you.  There's a tiny edge in your favour.  And a bigger edge to lucky you in Alberta.

Your employer is held hostage to take part of your earnings and send them monthly to government, to take earnings you never see or touch or spend or make any choices with.  In other words, it's not yours at all, you didn't really earn it.  If government had to persuade millions of employed citizens to send their fair share after they banked their wages, provincial and federal budgets would be tighter and respect for your views a little bit higher.

What's included in tax?
All taxes from all levels of government that Canadians pay. This includes: income & sales taxes; liquor, tobacco, amusement & other excise taxes; automobile, fuel, & motor vehicle licence taxes; CPP/QPP and EI contributions, medical & hospital taxes; property taxes; import duties; profit taxes; and natural resource levies.

Step 1:
Where do you live?
 Newfoundland
 P.E.I
 Nova Scotia
 New Brunswick
 Quebec
 Ontario
 Manitoba
 Saskatchewan
 Alberta
 British Columbia
Step 2: Complete this form
(see note below regarding privacy)
Age of Household Head
Sex of Household Head
 M
 F
Married (or common-law) and living together?
 Yes
 No
Number of dependent children in household
Income
(Before Taxes)
(Due to sample size limitations, please enter an income above $20,000 or below $150,000. Do not use a comma.)

 



Catch 22: Corrupted DOJ outwits Investigators

Remember the 21 disks of Tea Party tax files the IRS forwarded to FBI illegally?  There's a beautiful Catch 22 to the story, posted at powerlineblog and summarized in part here.  First the Department of Justice spent a year ignoring three subpoenas to avoid disclosing the outlaw transmission. Then June 2nd the DOJ produced the disks but said there was nothing naughty on them.  Two days later the DOJ says "the disks actually include confidential taxpayer information that was given to the FBI in violation of federal law.  This is a serious matter; violation of the applicable statute carries a penalty of five years in prison."

Here is the catch:  Because of this notification June 4th, it is illegal for anyone to look at the disks to see if there is anything illegal on them. Sleazy, brilliant.

Canada rated high for lowest business taxes.

The KPMG report reviewed in the Financial Post says Canada's taxes are the most business-friendly in the world.  This has "annoyed U.S. lawmakers to the point where Congress is considering a bill to make it harder for companies to change addresses abroad."   More stick and less carrot won't help them.



As a patriot, I'm pleased and blame HARPER for successive reductions in the small business tax rate.   Money earned by a business is taxed when it goes out to the owners and reinvested when it isn't.  WIN-WIN for Canada.


Footnote: Is this report true? There are some jurisdictions like Hong Kong that technically fall outside the KPMG list.

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Masturbation by age and by sex

Hat tip to io9:
The data came from National Survey of Sexual Health and Behaviour (Indiana University)
and the chart below was extracted by Mona Chalabi.



Deadbeat government gets butt kicked.

SCOTUS ruled 7:1 against the Republic of Argentina today even though the US Government begged the Supreme Court to go easy.  Will sovereign nations (read "politicians") now find it harder to default, losing their traditional "privilege" to do so? Argentina defaulted in 2001 on bonds that it had double deep cross your heart promised to pay honourably.  SCOTUS says Argentina must disclose where it has overseas assets that the plaintiff (NML Capital Ltd.) could collect on.  The peso plunged.   (Summarized from The American Interest article.)
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner unveils new money.


In related reading from John Mauldin:

"The financial world is beset by sovereign debt in nearly all corners.  (This is) reshaping the investing landscape (to a degree)unprecedented in human history.  Central bankers exacerbate this debt bomb by expanding central bank balance sheets, pressing interest rates to the floor, and trying to quantitatively ease the global economy back to widespread prosperity."

Sovereign debt is floating upwards like the sweet smell of farts in the outhouse and by large percentages even in the last six years.
A diverting little chart, also from Mauldin:



Westjet sign and bedside tables reveal the Petroboom. UPDATE

Outside tiny Oliver in the South Okanagan is this billboard from Westjet.  Petrobucks are big ones and if you  live in cities near the 49th parallel, you may not know it.  We rarely have ten people at work in our shop but three of them went north hoping to make their fortune last year.

Digital edition is
more common now
Handy to your pillow.
I've travelled across the prairies by car in recent years.  Every motel has two books in the night table.  The first is the Canadian Oilfield Service and Supply Directory and the second is Gideon's Bible.  You probably don't know how to find Three Hills, AB, on a map, it's so tiny, pop 3200.  But it has a Super 8 and a Best Western motel with the yard full of oil field trucks and more than 130 busy rooms.  They look like heavy truck sales lots.
Not what you expect in a little village
and another like it just down the road.
UPDATE:  I talked to a salesman from Kelowna.  5000 people work in the Fort Mac oil field area and live around Kelowna, actively commuting.   Allowing for the multiplier effect creating secondary jobs in Kelowna and allowing for family size, that's over 20,000 people feeding on Fort Mac directly and indirectly.
UPDATE: Our dinner guest flew out of St. John's, NFLD at 5:30 a.m. recently and they were welcomed aboard the "Fort Mac Express".

Monday 16 June 2014

"Clanking of the swords" though bloody is an ISIS movie, not a news report.




Difficult to watch this ISIS self-promotion video.
Drive by murders of unarmed men in cars looks like a video game gone horribly wrong.
And it's celebrated in Allah's name.

1.  This is a movie, not a news report.  It's purpose is to alarm and demoralize the enemy (that includes you, dear reader). It's purpose is to recruit young hot heads.  Works on both levels.
2.   Note that some of the warriors are kitted out professionally and have infrared goggles being used for night raids.  The preponderance of newspaper photos shows a rather rag tag lot of men but this one hour video shows a high percentage with professional uniforms.
3.   Note that every time something goes kaboom, it is presented three times with slow motion added.  This means the supply of actual events was much smaller than the promoters want us to believe.
4.   There are some professional values in the movie like the closing scene of the flag carrier walking majestically, split screens showing a prisoner now and in his public life, lots of Islamic quotes with subtitles and a near continuous musical score with chanting.
5.    The score had to have been mostly written before the attacks began.  The loader being used to tear down barracks didn't just happen to be handy. To embed video clips of prisoners from before they were captured and to do it while the action was still happening bespeaks a significant budget and priority being given to the film makers.
6.    The leader who rants and then pulls out his sword that a second person appears to have been holding in readiness ... makes me think of Attila the Hun.   That invasion fell apart since it wasn't designed to hold territory but that didn't happen overnight.
7.     If you've watched other Middle East preaching clips on MEMRI, you'll appreciate that ranting with "death to infidels and sons of monkeys" rhetoric is a skill set widely employed by Islamic notables.  The ranter picks up the mike and keys in the rant program.
8.     Killing  is glorified.  This isn't something new.  It's Islam from day one.      "Honour" is repeatedly mentioned because Arab culture is an honour culture.  It doesn't mean what you think it means.
9.     Notice the laptop with a personnel database being used at a check point.  This is US technique being used in the confusion of battle and likely includes stolen information.  This is high end technology that was put in place with advance planning and money.
10.   Loot is an effective financing technique.  Today's news shows Hummers being transported back to Syria from Iraq by the terrorists.  Yesterday's stories report hundreds of millions of dollars falling into the warrior's war chest.
11.   The military vehicles that are destroyed are taken out by roadside bombs in some cases and by RPG's and by high power guns.  The new factor seems to be more guns capable of damaging military vehicles.
12.   There are a couple repentance meetings available to those who aren't being killed immediately.  This is old fashioned conversion at the point of the sword which got Islam started in the first place.
13.    The warrior's ferocity is directed almost entirely at Shia Muslims.
14.    Their creed is supranational.  There are two scenes involved with destroying passports.

Friday 13 June 2014

Bitcoin software can replace the ballot box.

Bitcoin is the topic du jour but is at bottom a privacy tool applied to money, an anonymizing security protocol.   Researchers at the University of Waterloo applied it to voting to create a secure and unique vote that can't be traced back by the people who count them.   Participation could jump and corrupt political machines (where present) will lose some grip.  The method can be extended to voting even on parliamentary bills. Why rely on representatives in Ottawa when we can represent ourselves?  (Trick question.)
"The trick to bitcoin might be that it doesn't have to be a currency at all. Maybe cryptocurrency’s fundamental value is as a security protocol—a safe, anonymous, hack-proof network that decentralizes trust and democratizes power. ...  Online voting in its current form— is very vulnerable to fraud, cyberattack, and government corruption. The theory is that the bitcoin security protocol matched with anonymizing software and a totally open source voting infrastructure would solve for a lot of these problems.  Like a bitcoin transaction, the entire process is recorded in the blockchain public ledger, repurposed to verify votes and avoid voter fraud. So instead of placing your trust in a central authority like, say, the ballot counters tallying up hanging chads in Florida, the network is anonymous but transparent, and audited by the crowd.
"Just replace a coin in your head with a vote, and run it the exact same dynamic,"  (Link to story at Motherboard.)
From the source of the source at New Scientist:
(Researchers) "at the University of Waterloo, also in Ontario, realised they could convert a message - for example, a list of codes that securely link voters to their votes - into a Bitcoin address. Sending a tiny fraction of a bitcoin - a small transaction - to that address would allow the holder of that list to store it in the public record without revealing its contents. When they later publish the message for verification, anyone can repeat the conversion to a Bitcoin address and confirm its age by checking the public record.
Faking Bitcoin's public record would be very difficult as you'd need more computing power than the rest of the Bitcoin network combined - a feature that ensures the currency's security".
 One man person featherless biped, one vote.
 

Thursday 12 June 2014

Solar X flare video of eye-popping beauty from NASA

I did not dream to see such beautiful film from the reaches of space in my lifetime.  Here is NASA's video from June 10-11th.  Watch in full screen.

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Blood on Obama the Innocent.

Obama's smarter-than-thou disengagement will take tens of thousands more lives.  He skipped a status of forces negotiation so he could skedaddle from Iraq.  Reading that Mosul fell to ISIS and half a million people are fleeing Tikrit (where Saddam was captured), while beheadings spurt and almost half a billion dollars is taken from Iraqi banks into terrorist pockets.... makes me beyond spitting mad, beyond contempt for the world view Obama so well espouses.  He is always innocent, finding out about stuff by reading the newspapers.

John Hinderaker takes a different view:  Arab culture is the problem.
"It looks as though the many sacrifices that we and our allies made to overthrow Saddam Hussein and establish a semblance of a modern democracy in Iraq will be in vain. It is tempting, and maybe correct, to blame the Obama administration for Iraq’s descent into chaos. But after the surge, Iraq had a good opportunity to build a functioning society, a growing economy, and a legitimate, self-governing country. American troops could not forever be the guarantor of relative peace in Iraq.
In my view, the Iraq war was fought, in part, to answer a critical series of questions. The first was, are Arabs capable of self-government? A further question was, will helping Arab countries to build modern, normal, self-governing societies be enough to destroy the appeal of radical Islam for young Arabs? The effort, in my opinion, had to be made, and Iraq was the logical, if not the only, place to begin. At this point, however, it is hard to be optimistic about the results of that effort. Arab culture is deeply dysfunctional. Expansionist, homicidal Islam is the most potent ideology in the region".
The Genesis forecast that there would always be trouble with Abraham's Arab kids by his Egyptian wife, is tempting to believe, although a sober review of the text de-emphasizes that.
(Ishmael) “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12 NIV).
“His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt, as you go toward Asshur. And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers” (Genesis 25:18).






Tracking tag on Great White Shark points to giant predator.

A three meter Great White Shark was tagged and disappeared.  Months later the device, still functioning, washed up on an Australian beach.  Data showed the Great White suddenly accelerated to a depth of 580 metres and the surrounding temperature rose from 7C to 25C.    Something really big grabbed it, dragged it 1900 feet below the surface of the ocean and warmed the device by sticking it and the aforementioned shark in its belly.  What ate the shark?

I like how a bloody death is inferred from such a harmless digital file.  If you read the article, it becomes clear that this happened 11 years ago and the reason we are reading about it today is promotion for a movie, "Hunt for the Super Predator" due to air on the Smithsonian Channel June 26th.
Great link bait photo used by The Independent in its story. See link.

Monday 9 June 2014

Fossil record shows men are specialized to fight.

Reported in Discovery:
The researchers found that bones that suffer the highest rates of fractures in fights are the same parts of the skull that exhibited the greatest increase in sturdiness during the evolution of our early human relatives. These bones are also the parts of the skull that show the greatest difference between males and females in both australopiths and humans today.
"In other words," Carrier said, "male and female faces are different because the parts of the skull that break in fights are bigger in males. Importantly, these facial features appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time that our ancestors evolved hand proportions that allow the formation of a fist."

Source article. 

Do you have the copyright on your own DNA? Insurers would like to see your genetic report. Welcome to a world without privacy.

This is a little scary but it's coming. Can you refuse to let the life insurance company see your DNA?  You let them take a drop of blood to check for a few things including drugs but suppose they spend a few bucks to do your whole genome?  Lawmakers are putting up little barriers but your DNA will be like a piece of gossip that someone will divulge somewhere sometime in your life.  It's under $1000 already and three quarters of a million Americans have had at least partial sequencing.

I talked to a GP back from a Hawaiian medical conference and this was one of the issues discussed there.  There are some costly health problems that can be guessed at before your baby is born and that little kid may never ever be eligible for health insurance.

From an NYT story:  Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, asks potential customers in Massachusetts about genetic testing — and stipulates that refusing to share results could lead to a declined application or an extra premium. Jean Towell, a spokeswoman, says applicants are told “out of fairness” that insurers have the right to decline coverage if any medical information is omitted. .... 12 other companies ask no explicit questions about genetic testing. But when Dr. Green asked company executives why not, he said, “at least one of them has told me, ‘We would do this, but we don’t want to be the first.' ”


Saturday 7 June 2014

Google satellites will compete with Big Brother

Google has announced a $1 billion plus plan to circle the globe with hundreds of low-orbit quick-ping satellites.  Privately owned-satellites parked above Tiananmen square, Tehran and Pyongyang point to governments losing control over what their captive populations see and hear.   They also point to "the other three billion" people on earth getting convenient affordable communications and internet access. (This is the stated business plan from Google. It started with the o3b network.)  Google also complicates the picture by introducing more competition for snooping on us.  Google, the NSA, the GPS people, and all the broadband satellite companies have competing business models.  They will still know far more about us and than we consider decent but the divided ownership will give us more options.

It's probably going to be cheaper too.
And have fewer blank spots where some government says "Don't peek".
Military implications.



Friday 6 June 2014

Tipping point in Mexico

Cartels are getting more money from mining than drugs, moving from thuggery to the Robber Baron stage. Can national government be many decades off?  As reported by Strategy Page:
Officials and national security analysts believe that the Knights Templar and the Zetas may have reached a “tipping point” in sources of income. The cartels may be making more money from non-narcotics related criminal operations. The Knights Templar and Los Zetas both make a lot of money in mining (Templars extracting iron ore, Zetas in coal). Both run extensive business extortion operations.
Davidson and Rees-Moog make the case in The Sovereign Individual that the opportunity costs and benefits of violence explain much of society.  Government and banditry, in their view, are on a continuum.  At the low end,  life is cheap and everyone poor.  At the high end, few people own the right to use violence and rewards are widely distributed to crony players and to civil servants but the size of the pie is so big that the insider who gets a small slice has more than the old time warlord who got all of his local little pie.

Matthew Jameson's book, "The Robber Barons" makes the case for this halfway step from brigandage to a prosperous economy. The book summary at Amazon is below.  I've never forgotten the tale.  This looks like Mexico's future, creating societal institutions from the ground up at home.
The Robber Barons details the history of a small class of men who arose at the time of the American Civil War and swept into power. They were aggressive, and in important crises, nearly all of them tended to act without those established principles associated with the common people of the community. At the same time, many of them showed qualities of courage. These robber barons, as were their medieval counterparts, were the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.
In their hands the renovation of American economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized production; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, where they had been purely individualistic and wasteful. To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into producers, and to do this only in the name of profit—is the great contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.
Matthew Josephson illuminates the story of industrial concentration in the United States, which is here pursued through the study of the major financial events and personalities between 1861 and 1901. This book also focuses on establishing the manner in which the country’s natural resources and arteries of trade were preempted, its political institutions conquered, and its social philosophy turned into an economic one, by the new barons. This is, by all odds, a classic study of the culture of American capitalism.