Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Health Care

In more bad news for Obama, Obamacare more unpopular now than ever.
"According to newly released polling from Rasmussen Reports, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), likely voters now support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation."
Oops.

Obamacare individual mandate to add to IRS tax forms.

Politics

Obama may have cost himself the election in the last debate.
"President Barack Obama pounced. "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them ... ""
"But "sarcasm and condescension only work if the speaker's presumption of lofty superior knowledge is borne out by his command of actual facts," said Pastor Donald Sensing, a retired Army colonel."
"But facts and civility do matter to most Americans. A CBS panel of undecided voters in Ohio chose Mr. Romney, 6-2. A video of the dismay of CBS "This Morning" co-host Norah O'Donnell when this was reported is zipping across the Internet.
The Navy and shipbuilding are very important in southeast Virginia. With his wisecrack, the president may have kissed the state goodbye.
It isn't just in Virginia where Mr. Obama's fortunes are plummeting. When Missouri isn't a swing state, but Minnesota is, Democrats are in big trouble. No challenger who's cracked 50 percent in Gallup's tracking poll has ever lost. Mr. Romney is polling better at this point in the campaign than did every victorious challenger from 1968 on."
"Economist Timur Kuran coined the term to explain why totalitarian regimes usually collapse suddenly. A preference cascade happens when people discover millions of others share their doubts about the Great Leader. Massive media bias has made the term applicable here, Mr. Reynolds said. The Barack Obama that Americans saw in the debates bears little resemblance to the heroic figure portrayed by the news media."
"The biggest losers could be "mainstream" journalists. Their blatant bias has dropped trust in the news media to an all-time low. It'll plunge further if more evidence of collusion with the administration emerges. Nobody trusts a liar. There will be bankruptcies."
This strikes me as the most accurate political analysis I've read so far this election season.

War

US switches loyalties in Syrian conflict from exile group to militias fighting on the ground.

Regulation

Rent control in Queens. New York has the oldest and strongest rent control laws. Fed study says rent control leads to lower maintenance of buildings.

Tax and Spend

The government steals our money and gives to people who live on the beach in the path of hurricanes.

Even with their incorrect economic thinking, leftists realize that taxing the rich doesn't bring in nearly enough revenue to cut the deficit, so some admit they plan to tax the middle class.

Global Warming and Energy

Government malfeasance has left New York City gridlocked after Sandy.
"“All of us have been shocked by the force of mother nature,” said the president, who was expected to visit Atlantic City on Wednesday."
Only a fool or a liar would be shocked by a category 1 hurricane. Before the storm Obama declared all preparations had been made and that there had been close cooperation between federal, state and local officials. Yet they were completely unprepared.

Sandy set a couple records. 63 killed in US. 71 killed in Caribbean. 8.2 million households and businesses without power.

Battery Park City is a centrally planned, fascist owned property created by landfill.

People stranded in Manhattan. Storm flooded seven subway stations.
"With about 900,000 customers already without power in New York City and its neighborhood, officials at Consolidated Edison, New York City’s utility, have said it could be up to a week before full power restoration.
John Miksad, Consolidated Edison Senior Vice President, said though they had anticipated mass outages, but the storm surge was even higher.
Some power cuts, he noted, had been earlier initiated to lessen storm damage. Certain cuts were because of an explosion at a Con Ed substation.
He estimated it would take up to a week to restore power cut to the substation explosion. Fixing power lost to downed lines is going to take the longest, Miksad said."
Bloomberg shut down all 468 stations. More government failure.

Poorly designed and maintained government sewers flood beaches with pollution.
"Rainstorms often cause large amounts of pollution to flow to the beach, overwhelming aging and poorly designed sewage and stormwater systems."
"Beach closings and warnings due to pollution nearly doubled along New York and New Jersey coastlines, the report documents."
Government failure.

Foxnews reports that Bloomberg declared bridges into the city are for high-occupancy vehicles only. Schools closed for the whole week.

The benefits of price gouging.

Chris Matthews calls global warming sceptics pigs.

New York Times hits were up 54 percent yesterday over the three month average. Accuweather.com was up 58 percent over the last seven days.

Katrina had 125 MPH sustained winds and a 27 foot storm surge.

Walmart's success versus FEMA's failure in the aftermath of Katrina.

Global warming fraud admits the fraud.
"“This is a Sophie’s Choice: If we respond to the moral imperative to raise public awareness and alarm about climate, we have to be deceptive.
If we are committed to truth and scientific accuracy, we have to talk in hedged, caveat-filled, probabilistic language that is utterly ineffectual in reaching and activating a tuned-out public.” -David Roberts, Grist"
I love it when people are accidentally, publicly honest.

Police State

Government testing more aptly named predator drones in US air space. Oh happy day.

Cop tasers boy because he didn't want to wash his cruiser. 

Power-mad NJ Governor Chris Christy bans Halloween.

Politics

Rasmussen has Romney up by 2 in Ohio.

Education

Obama increases student debt to record levels.

Foreign Policy

FBI agents told Congress then Benghazi attack was likely an al Qaeda attack two days after it happened.

Socialism

Remember when Obama seized Chrysler then handed it to Fiat? Now Fiat is considering moving production to China.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Economy

Boortz claims that the September unemployment number has been revised up to 8.0 percent, but I can't find confirmation of that.

Tax and Spend

Just like Obama has been encouraging people to get on food stamps, he's encouraging 1,000 people a day to get on Social Security disability to increase dependency on government and to reduce the number of people in the work force to make it appear that unemployment is falling.

"The national debt has risen by $5 trillion in the three-and-a-half years since the Senate last passed a budget on April 29, 2009. On that date, the debt was $11.2 trillion. As of October 29, 2012 it stood at $16.2 trillion. "


Local

Sequestration will force contractors to have good ideas.
"Automatic, across-the-board defense cuts could cause “substantial pain,” but a tough fiscal era offers opportunities to contractors that have good ideas, a top Air Force leader said Tuesday."
Why were they funding contractors who didn't have good ideas in the first place? If they had only funded contractors with good ideas all along, our financial mess wouldn't be as bad.

Global Warming and Energy

39 dead from Sandy. 8.2 million without power. Obama declares "major disaster". What's a major disaster? This is no super-storm. It was a class one hurricane.

Another fraud blames Hurricane Sandy on climate change. The only thing unprecedented about this storm is how unprepared governments were to deal with it. The decivilizing effect of government made the storm's damage worse than it should have been.

A who's who list of people claiming Sandy was caused by global warming and those claiming it was not.

Some goof-ball claims the hurricane was an economic boost. Another.

The New York Times declares a big storm requires big government. Right. If we just allowed government to steal all of our money, we'd be so much better off.

How government made the problems caused by the storm worse.

Obama's green jobs program is a failure.
"President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training.

The Labor Department’s inspector general also said grantees who received the green jobs-training money did a poor job of reporting their results.Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program. …

Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it."
That sounds about normal for government.

Foreign Policy

Boortz updates us on the Benghazi cover-up. Here's the most important bullet point to me:
"There were AC130U gunships available that could have been on the scene in under an hour.  They were not used."
I keep saying the US government set up Ambassador Stevens to be killed. I believe this makes the case.

Politics

Of course voter ID laws don't discriminate. It's not like they apply on to minorities or any other group identity.

National Review Online hasn't responded in over ten minutes. That has to be because of a hacker attack. I wonder who might attack a right wing media outlet right before the election.

Tax and Spend

Obama boosts disability to record levels, reducing the number of people in the workforce and therefore reducing government's unemployment statistics.

As if we needed somebody to tell us this, Obama spent more on White House dinners than past presidents. Duh. I'll go out on a limb and say he also spent more on flying around the country on Air Force One. That doesn't make me genius. It just makes me captain obvious.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Misc

The problems at post-Jobs Apple are becoming public as numerous executives are ousted. As great an advantage as government bans on competition are, they cannot be the base of a business. Just ask Microsoft. If it's any consolation to iZombies, I'm sure a new company will make style more important that substance to fill that market.

AMD to license ARM processors. This is another backward looking move on AMD's part. It's bad enough that AMD is becoming a foundry, but it's becoming a foundry for a declining product. ARM was a growth business 15 years ago. Intel is catching up with Atom, and it's going to win this battle. I left AMD 13 years ago because I believed the company was in inexorable decline, it had chosen to be second rate to Intel, imo, but it still hurts to watch it self-destruct. I still have friends there, and I still have history there. This makes me sad.

Foreign Policy

Israel's hardline ruling party to form coalition with more radical nationalist party. Yikes. With this tail waging the US government dog, it's hard to see how war with Iran will be avoided.

Local

It's going to be windy. That means people will lose power.

UPDATE: Sure enough, here come the power outages. Our power grid is a national embarrassment. I was just outside. It isn't very windy yet.

UPDATE: Hey, the wind is blowing. Not hard, but enough to notice. I bet thousands of more people have lost power. The DDN has no new reports. They will by morning.

I shook hands with Senator Dick Durbin this evening. I was out at a local watering hole, and a bunch of local Democrats showed up, then Dick Durbin showed up. He was very friendly. Because of where I sat at the corner of the bar, he shook my hand before anybody's. He gave a nice speech. He was targeting Catholics in response to a mailer claiming Obama, with his birth control edict, had undermined Catholicism. The funny thing was there were no undecideds in the bar. It was a a couple of regulars, Republicans all except me, and a bunch of Democrats who were there solely to see him. But the funniest thing was when another regular walked in at the end of the speech and told us - the rest of the regulars - he was undecided. I threatened to bring Durbin over to meet him, and I think he decided real quick he didn't support Obama.

War

Syrian warplanes attack rebels in the capital of Damascus. The rebels continue terrorist attacks.

Regulation

UN trying to seize control of internet with support from China and Russia. What a bunch of crap.

Global Warming and Energy

Sandy's winds are up to 85 MPH. But not so fast. Not too long after I posted the previous link, which was about 4pm eastern, another reporter, with access to real data, not media generated data reported that Sandy had declined to a tropical storm.
"As at 2 PM Pacific time, here’s the current position of Sandy and the projected path....
I had said a couple of days ago, when Sandy was a hurricane, that it would not be a hurricane when it hit the coast. How did that go? Well, as of the time that this location and projection of the path was done, the NDBC has shown all the nearest stations. Not one of the actual observations is showing sustained winds over 50 knots, and that’s a long ways from the 72 knots that marks a hurricane. Please note that the big damage from such storms is the flooding, so I am not minimizing the likely extent of the damage.  It will be widespread. However … not a hurricane."
I'm not surprised that others besides me predicted Sandy would not be a hurricane when it hit land. I showed yesterday that scientific predictions said as much, besides which, the media has cried wolf so many times only a fool wouldn't notice. Yet the weather channel claimed winds were 90 MPG just before 6 PM eastern, just minutes before the storm made landfall. This discrepancy must be accounted for. Here's the report from 5PM eastern:
"MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...90 MPH...150 KM/H"
We saw a similar discrepancy with the last media-hyped storm of the century in the Atlantic.

CNN reports Sandy had declined to a tropical storm before it made landfall.
"Though no longer a hurricane, "post-tropical" superstorm Sandy packed a hurricane-sized punch as it slammed into the Jersey Shore on Monday, killing at least 11 people from West Virginia to North Carolina and Connecticut."
Rational people must resolve these differences in reporting.

Because the US government regulated the power industry, our archaic power transmission system is little changed from the way it was a century ago. Therefore hurricane Sandy will knock out power to millions.
"Thousands are without power already, millions more could go dark. Forecasters predict it could become the worst storm to hit the East Coast in 100 years."
If that's accurate, I wonder how the global warming frauds will rationalize that a worse storm hit over a century ago.

First hand report that Sandy is a relative dud. I saw pictures earlier of a reporter standing in calm weather and in inches of water. I don't doubt this storm is dangerous for some, but it has been grossly over-hyped.

Here's the story that puts Sandy into perspective:
"Will Sandy turn political yard signs into projectiles?"
Apparently Sandy is so not dangerous that this is the pressing question American want to know. I hate to make fun because Sandy is hurting people, and it will likely kill some, but the media hyped this storm the way it would hype a life-killing meteor impact. Hurricanes happen. They've happened for longer than human history. They are not big news.

So far, Sandy has killed at least ten and knocked out power to 5.2 million.

Reuters reports that 5.5 million people have lost power, but hints at the most important point from the media's point of view:
"Sandy, one of the biggest storms to hit the United States, pounded the east coast on Tuesday, flooding large parts of New York City, bringing transport to a halt and interrupting the presidential campaign."
Of course deaths and people without power are secondary concerns to politics from the point of view of a political propagandists.
""We have not seen the kind of flooding problems that certainly could have happened thus far, but we've still got a long ways to go to get through this storm," Washington Mayor Vincent Gray said on local television."
Let's hope they don't happen, but it almost sounds like he's rooting for them.We should create a new term called "storm profiteers". Here's one of the phrases used by storm profiteers, bold mine:
"The storm's wind field stretched from the Canadian border to South Carolina, and from West Virginia to an Atlantic Ocean point about halfway between the United States and Bermuda, easily one of the largest ever seen."
Not the largest. In other words, it's normal in the larger scope of things, but Reuters is capitalizing on the storm by pretending it's something abnormal.

Death count to 16. 6.2 million without power. I don't condone the use of the word dud for a storm that killed people and wiped out power to people. It's one thing to point out this storm has been over-hyped, which I have done for two days. It's another to call it a dud. The families of the people who died disagree.

A reference to another, similar hurricane.

I just coined the term "storm profiteering" and invited Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat.com to join in using it. My post to him:
"We all know about the term "war profiteering".  It's an accurate term for many deplorable businesses, and it's a powerfully activist term for limiting wars.

We should apply that term to storms: storm profiteering. It's an accurate term for the plethora of media outlets which over-hype storms, and it should be a powerful term for limiting that over-hype.

I'm using it. I hope you will too."
I'm probably not the first to champion this term, but I intend to use it every time these government media propagandists exaggerate storms for their own profit. Then again, maybe I'm the first. I don't see it in a search. Apparently the term hurricane profiteering is already know in political circles as cronyism in the wake of hurricanes.
"Bill White was rewarded for steering a 2 million dollar contact to BTEC, whos majority owners Bill White was paid by, by being invited to make a $1 million private investment into BTEC that the general public could not make.  This investment into BTEC quickly made Bill White a 50 percent profit."
It's good work if you can get it.

Rebels in New York enjoy the freedom.

Here's another vague government update about the storm:
"...SANDY TURNING TOWARD THE NORTH...EXPECTED TO BRING LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE...COASTAL HURRICANE WINDS AND HEAVY APPALACHIAN SNOWS..."
What is a life-threatening storm surge in a universe where people can drown in 2 inches of water? Why be so vague?

Hurricanes in the 18th century.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Politics

New poll shows Obama and Romney tied in Ohio at 49 percent each. This poll was commissioned by Ohi media outlets, so it's probably more accurate than the major polls. Obama has been ahead in Ohio the entire campaign, so this is good news for Romney.

Obama supporters threaten to riot if Romney wins.

Education

On surveillance, submission and RFID chips in government's prison schools.

Police State

TSA agent steals woman's jewelry. TSA blames woman for not watching her bag.

Never satisfied with the current level of the police state, researchers create a surveillance system that can they claim can predict what will happen next. But it can't predict. It can only apply probabilities. So now people are going to get arrested for something they did not do based on a probably calculated by a computer.

US customs official remove a Pakistan's most popular politician from a flight in Canada that was bound for New York because he wants to stop drone strikes in Pakistan. Why are US customs agents operating in Canada? When did the US border disappear, and if it disappeared, how come people aren't free to come and go at will?
"Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility.""
That's funny. Government can only impede travel. It cannot facilitate it. And stopping this guy had nothing to do with securing our borders.
"There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur."
No kidding. Republicans like to talk about Obama's apology tour, but Obama has increased US government arrogance and hostility to foreigners while in office, not decreased it. As if on cue:
"But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics.""
Nice of Greenwald to point this out.

Global Warming and Energy

Right now Sandy has sustained winds of 75 MPH, making it the weakest hurricane possible. From the news coverage, you would think it was the biggest hurricane ever. Now damage could be catastrophic. If so, all this would prove is the destructiveness of government subsidies that encourage people to live in dangerous places.

My contention that forecasters don't believe Sandy will be a hurricane when it makes landfall are verified.
"...WINDS FORECAST TO BE NEAR HURRICANE FORCE AT LANDFALL..."
Storm surge could reach up to 8 feet. Isolated areas could get 12 inches of rain. While this is nothing to take lightly, hurricanes that hit the south are generally produce more rain and higher storm surges. Mountains may get 3 feet of snow, which doesn't happen in the south. The hype for this storm is still way out of proportion with its statistics. And it looks like alarmism has spread from the media to the government, which is no surprise since the two are one and the same anymore, but it's still not good. I get that there's a lot more people in this area than along the Gulf, but that doesn't make the storm more dangerous. Accuweather description describes a run of the mill hurricane despite the hyperventilating warnings. They claim it will hit with the punch of a category 2 hurricane. If you looked back the last 100 years, you'd find dozens of category 2 storms or larger which hit the US. The problem is it's headed right at New York City and New York City and New England are foolishly unprepared for even a run of the mill hurricane.

The perfect storm includes links to deadly New England hurricanes. Katrina's maximum storm surge reached 27.8 feet.

It looks like there might be an outbreak of honesty among the global warming fraud gatekeepers. Apparently one of Climategate's central figures, Briffa, has new paper that points out bias in the CRU data and restores the Medieval Warm Period and erases Mann's fake hockey stick.
"What is most curious here is that it was Briffa (in the Climategate emails) who was arguing that some claims about his post 1960 MXD series data as used in other papers might not be valid. It set the stage for “Mikes Nature trick” and “hide the decline“."
"I have to wonder if this is some sort of attempt to “come clean” on the issue. Mann must be furious at the timing. There’s no hint of a hockey stick, and no need to splice on the instrumental surface temperature record or play “hide the decline” tricks with this data."
You do have to wonder if Briffa decided to come clean. If so, good for him.
"I suspect there will be a flurry of papers trying to counter this to save Mann’s Hockey Stick."
That's because this is the first big crack in the solidarity of the gate keepers: Jones, Mann, Hansen and Briffa are the four I'm aware of. The reason the timing is bad for Mann is Mann recently sued Mark Steyn and National Review. This would seem stupid on his part since he's fighting another suit to keep his taxpayer funded data and email private. The discovery process of this suit will make it impossible to keep those things private. Apparently Mann falsely claimed to be a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize which was actually awarded to the IPCC and Al Gore, not him.
"I’m sure Mark Steyn is thrilled with the prospect of now being able to do additional commentary on this side show.  I can’t wait for depositions and discovery."
I'm sure he is. Never attack the man with the microphone. Steyn and National Review are going to have a field day with this. If Mann follows through on this, it will probably end his career.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Misc

Walter Williams discusses slavery in a way no white person is allowed.

Federal Reserve

Two foreign banks reject US regulations, signaling the US dollar is getting weaker overseas.

Economy

Graph shows strong correlation between private investment and employment.

War

Apparently the Washington Post exposes the US waging war in East Africa without a declaration of war. Drone attacks are acts of war.

Foreign Policy

The father of former SEAL slain in Benghazi slams Obama and Biden.

Global Warming and Energy

NOAA mismanagement will likely leave the US without critical weather satellite coverage for several years.
"The mismanagement of the $13 billion program to build the next generation weather satellites was recently described as a 'national embarrassment' by a top official of the Commerce Department."
No it's not. It's a government embarrassment. And this is the crack organization promoting global warming.

USA Today tries to over-hype Sandy.
"Although Sandy is currently a hurricane, it's important not to focus too much on its official category or its precise path. It's a massive system that will affect a huge swath of the East Coast, regardless of exactly where it hits or its precise wind speed."
What this tells me is forecasters are expecting winds to fall below hurricane force before it hits land, and since no major hurricanes have hit the US since 2005, the press doesn't want to bother with that pesky hurricane designation. They want people to worry about is what the media says, not any objective measurements.

In a report with a headline about Sandy gaining strength, we get this:
"Even if Sandy loses strength and makes landfall as something less than a hurricane, the combined storm was expected to bring misery to a huge section of the eastern U.S. An 800-mile wide swath of the country could see 50 mph winds regardless of Sandy's strength."
This is more evidence for my contention that forecasters believe Sandy will not be a hurricane when it hits land. 75 mph winds used to be big news, enough to make a storm a hurricane, but because so few hurricanes have hit the US since Katrina, 50 mph winds are the new level for scary. It sounds like this convergence of storms is going to impact a lot of people, but that's no excuse for the irresponsibly alarmist coverage. Pretty soon any time it rains, it's going to be a national story.

I guess the media realizes it has cried wolf so many times on storms that people are numb to it, so they're saying to take this one seriously.

What's this crap about declaring emergencies before the disaster happens?

Climate fraud James Hansen declares a planetary emergency because arctic ice melt is the lowest in the satellite era. On the flip-side the Antarctic reached a record maximum.

Children sing global warming propaganda in anti-Romney ad.

Local

So last week gas prices were falling like crazy. Suddenly they've jumped like 30 cents overnight. I'm sure they'll blame it on the storm, but this storm isn't taking out any production. I managed to get gas at $3.08 while everywhere else was already $3.45.

If the people of Montgomery County want to purchase property to widen a bike path on Austin Boulevard, they can start and investment program to pay for it. This "common good" crap is just an excuse for the county to steal the property using eminent domain.
"“We did move the path closer to the road across the front of this parcel, as close to the road as is permitted by ODOT. We don’t bend roads around specific parcels unless there is truly a historic property, other severe environmental impacts, or severe economic impacts,” he said."
In other words the state does not acknowledge your ownership of your property. Ultimately, it owns all property, and it just generously allows us to buy and sell the right to rent it as long as we use it for a government approved purpose.

Politics

In another sign that Obama is going to lose this election, the mainstream media is already blaming race for his loss.
"Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not."
This will supposedly cost Obama 5 percent of the vote. What a crock of excrement. Leftists are scrambling to find excuses for the failure of Obama's policies.

Of course Romney and Ryan will reach across the isle. They're both liberals. They're going to work with Republican and Democrats leaders, progressives all, to advance the progressive agenda.

Police State

Police using stingrays to capture cell phone data without warrants.

Head of TSA inadvertently admits fascism.

North Korean leader executes political opponent with mortar round.

Freedom of Speech

You know how the government always wants to seize control of the internet so it can make it secure? Let's check government's record on internet security:
"Internet hacking of government networks is nothing new. There have been 603 publicly disclosed cases of breaches of government and military networks since 2005, in which at least 141 million records were stolen, according to The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Chronology of Data Breaches. "
But what about recently?
"Thus far in 2012, there have been 76 government and military network data breaches, in which 9.8 million records were taken. Cyber security and law enforcement experts say the publicly disclosed cases represent only a fraction of the actual number of successful hacks of corporate and government networks."
Who would think it's a good idea to turn over internet security to the same people who run Medicare? Government's desire to control the internet comes from its desire to stem freedom of speech.

Global Warming and Energy

Here's nice quote to show just how evil the global warming frauds are:
"But what their role as national leaders demands that they also do is explain that Hurricane Sandy is a true Frankenstorm, a monster created by man tampering with nature with oil, coal, and gas pollution."
In the past, pseudo-scientists have backed up this guy's lies:
"This isn’t the first time he has claimed punishment from on high is retribution for not seeing climate issues his way, readers may recall he blamed conservative states for bringing tornadoes upon themselves by not acting on the climate issues he and his fellow propagandist, Joe Romm were pushing at the time. Three scientists, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Gavin Schmidt provided quotes to make that exercise in Tabloid Climatology™  complete."
Here's a quote from another fraud:
"Perhaps this weather scare that may well be much more than just a scare is God’s revenge for the refusal of the U.S. government to take action on the climate crisis."
Anthony Watts responds:
"By extension, Johnson and Glick’s claims are essentially that this Category 1 storm with 75MPH winds is somehow unique to American history, the result of “tampering” with “nature with oil, coal, and gas pollution.” And it hasn’t even made landfall yet. I don’t have to call BS on their idiotic claims, because the facts do it for me."
He follows with a long, really long, list of October Hurricanes that made landfall in the US, pretty much all of which have higher winds than Sandy.

I'm not impressed by the hype surrounding this so-called Frankenstorm. People have dealt with storms like this for tens of thousands of years, at least. I think I'd be more scared of FEMA.

In order to promote itself, NASA jumps on Frankenstorm meme.

First the news creates a bunch of anxiety about the storm, then it reports on the anxiety. The press salivates over storms. I bet storms are their biggest source of revenue. People are still awed by the power of nature, as we should be.

Friday, October 26, 2012

War

Syrian rebels, funded and armed by the US through proxies, bombed a bunch children during a cease fire today, but the media doesn't want to report it that way.

Somebody let slip the real reason the US wants to attack Iran.
""One advocate asserts it would be a 'transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the (Persian) Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.'" "
It's about power, not security, but frankly I don't see how attacking Iran's nuclear facilities makes the US more powerful in the region. It seems to me it makes us less secure and therefore less powerful. It's going to make Israel less secure, and counterattacks against Israel will weaken Israel too. Over a decade of non-stop war in the Muslim world has cleared weakened the US at home and aboard. I don't see how starting another one can do anything but hurt us.
"And if after months we had smashed Iran as we did Iraq in Desert Storm, would the regime give way to a pro-Western democracy? Or would the result in Iran look like what exists today in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan? "
Don't forget Egypt and Pakistan. You might at as well add Somalia, Tunisia and Mauritania too. And don't forget the anti-American movements in Morocco, Algeria and Sudan, let alone those in Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
"Syria is breaking apart into Sunni and Alawite, Arab, Kurd and Druze, Christian and Muslim, Islamist and secular. Afghanistan is dissolving into Tajik and Uzbek in the north, Hazara in the center, and Pashtun in the south and east. Iraq is losing Kurdistan and reverting to civil-sectarian war.
A U.S. defeat of Iran could bring to power revanchists bent on payback through terrorism and propel that half of the population that is Arab, Baluch, Kurd and Azeri to try to break away."
This is one aspect of the decivilizing effect of US aggression on the Middle East, but this never-ending war has had a tremendous decivilizing effect on the US too. Think warrentless wiretaps, TSA, and arresting people for taking pictures of landmarks.

Local

I-75 southbound was closed 7 hours this evening because of an accident, but the accident appears to be north of any construction zone.

Media

The French government threatens to force Google to pay a part of its advertising revenues to French media companies. Apparently Germany is considering the same. In response, Google announced it would be forced to drop French media from its search results.
"French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti told a parliamentary commission this week that she was in favour of the idea, calling it “a tool that it seems important to me to develop”.
She said she was surprised by the tone of Google’s letter.
“You don’t deal with a democratically-elected government with threats,” Filippetti told AFP on Thursday."
Spoken like a true thug. She and her government are the aggressors here, not Google. The government is issuing the threats. This is just flat out robbery. If a given media company can't negotiate a revenue sharing agreement with Google, it deny Google's aggregators access.
"Leading French newspaper publishers last month called on the government to adopt a law imposing a settlement in the long-running dispute with Google, forcing it and other search engines to share some of the advertising revenue from user searches for news contained on media websites."
This would be like horse and buggy companies using the government to steal money from those new-fangled automobile companies to subsidize them. These media companies forget the service Google provides them.
"It also noted that Google “redirects four billion ‘clicks’ per month towards the Internet pages” of French media."
It's not Google's fault the antique media companies can't make money from this.
"French lawmakers last year ultimately rejected plans for a tax on online advertising revenues, fearing the project would hurt small local companies more than global Internet giants like Google, Facebook or Twitter."
At least they got that decision right, but they still want to steal from Google. They're using privacy concerns to further threaten Google into compliance. More info. Google is prepared "to go nuclear on the issue."
"Google says that such a law would "threaten its very existence," according to a letter it sent to several French officials."
Google is right. If Google allows this in one country, then every country will do the same and Google will be destroyed in a Tragedy of the Commons situation as each country tries to grab more and more of its revenue compared to the others.
"Such rules "would be very damaging to the internet," Google said in its blog post."
But that's good for the government. It hates the internet. It's also good for the antique media companies. They hate the internet. Because there's so much resistance to outright regulation of the internet, this may be he way governments cripple it until they can control it.

Foreign Policy

Now we have a report that the CIA denied the former SEAL's request for rescue forces.
"The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators."
The more we learn, the more it sounds like the ambassador was set up.
"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help."
Baloney. They had an former SEAL turned CIA guy on the ground, and they had two drones in the air above the Benghazi consulate. This cover-up just keeps getting deeper and more obvious.

Regulation

How government safety regulations make cars less safe.

I sincerely doubt that the market is responsible for the high prices of hearing aids. I bet it's regulations. And of course the market is much smaller than for cell phones.

Socialism

Obama may have saved GM, but he killed many small businesses in the process. But he didn't just kill the dealerships mentioned in this article. He stole money out of the economy and gave it to GM, destroying wealth in the process. What is unseen is the businesses that bankrupted and jobs that were lost or never created.

Economy

Team Obama claims the recovery is stronger than it seems, but it fact, it's worse than it seems. That's because it's not a recovery. GDP growth is less than inflation.

Obama boosted military spending in Q3 in order to create a phony bump in GDP before the election which is ironic since he wants to cut military spending. There's nothing Obama won't do to get elected.

Federal Reserve

Fed economist says the reason for the 2008 recession was the Fed failed to inflate enough.

I've seen lots of predictions that the next phase of the collapse will happen in 2013, but a few years ago, bears were predicting it would come before then. But John Williams of shadowstats.org is not an alarmist, but he's predicting the collapse will come by 2014.
"Williams contends there is 12 trillion in liquid dollar assets held outside the U.S. Williams says it is only a matter of time before all the Fed money printing will “trigger a sell-off . . . and that will provide the early start of the hyperinflation.” You think the U.S. is better off today than it was in the last meltdown? Not according to Williams, he thinks, “. . . things have gotten a lot worse.”"
It's going to be painful.

Police State

Never satisfied with the currently level of surveillance on Americans, the Secret Service is asking Americans to spy on each other's tweets.

It's not just DHS purchasing ammo. The Social Security Administration ordered 174 thousand rounds of hollow point ammo. NOAA also purchased ammo.

The US has banned a Chinese telecom from certain applications in the US over supposed security fears. Now China has banned Cisco from certain applications in China over the same supposed security fears. As the article astutely points out, this is just protectionism masquerading as security concerns.

Politics

After the last debate, I claimed Romney's soft strategy was designed to attack women. A new poll shows Romney has pulled even with Obama with women. On the flip side, Obama has pulled even with Romney with men. Even in politics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe Obama's tougher strategy was to attract men.

Misc

People are scoring higher on IQ tests, like 30 points higher than a century ago. To the researcher's credit, he doesn't jump to the conclusion people are getting smarter.

This case where a UK judged ordered Apple to announce that Samsung did not copy the iPad, but German and US courts did really highlights the absurdity of patents.

Education

Doctors prescribing ADHD drugs to poor children to boost their performance in school. The government never considers that it may be the problem, so they blame children instead of government prison schools for per performance.

Health Care

Cancer researchers surprised to find gut flora and chemotherapy can boost cancer. Government so-called experts seem to be constantly surprised.

Pharmaceutical company busted for ghost-writing favorable papers and paying doctors hundreds of millions of dollars to promote its product. This is business as usual.

Health Care

In order to make it harder for employers to use part time workers so to avoid paying the Obamacare costs, Obamacare defines a full time work week as 30 hours.

Tax and Spend

The pay gap between government and private sector workers increased by 8 percent to 34 percent last year.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad predicts the US will collapse under the weight of government debt. He's right. These claims that he's threatening the US are baloney. He just sees the writing on the wall.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Media

Foxnews set a ratings record during the final presidential debate.
"Although the overall ratings weren’t quite as strong as last week’s debate ratings — ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” and Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on the FOX broadcast network both drew viewers away — the Fox News Channel was able obtain it’s highest rated telecast in the network’s 16-year history with last night’s debate.
Leading all the cables, FNC pulled in nearly 11.5 million viewers, up from its previous high of 11.1 million viewers in last week’s debate and the 2008 vice-presidential debate between then-Delaware Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and then-Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin.
FNC’s 11.5 million was also competitive with its broadcast competition, which was won by NBC with 12.4 million viewers, down from last week’s debate when NBC drew 13.8 million. NBC narrowly edged out ABC’s 11.7 million viewers, followed by CBS in a distant third-place with only 8.4 million."
This is probably good news for Romney.

If you're in the mainstream media and you're trying to help Obama any way you can, so you search far and wide for a story that might make it look like the economy is improving, what do come up with? Illegal immigrants are coming back to the US for the first time since 2007 because of the improving economy.

Global Warming and Energy

As the world de-regulates to promote business, the US is increasing regulation.

For the first time since 1988, global warming wasn't mentioned in a presidential debate. Thank goodness.

Solyndra bankruptcy plan to funnel Solyndra's $350 million in tax credits for losses to big Obama bundler who also is the largest shareholder of the company. If this goes through, it's institutionalized corruption.

List of 34 green companies that received gifts of taxpayer dollars from Obama that are in financial trouble.

Australian government orders talk radio personality to undergo factuality training because he disputes the global warming baloney.

Politics

Republicans encouraged by early voting turnout.

Another Democrat operative, the son of a Democrat congressman, caught on tape helping commit voter fraud.

Somebody is using fraudulent ineligibility letters to suppress the Republican vote in Florida.

In a case of typical crony corruption, Joe Biden's brother wins a lucrative contract to build houses in Iraq.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Republican policies that improved the economy in Ohio got Obama re-elected?

I continue to wonder if Trump isn't a double-agent working for Obama.

Report claims scores of Islamic radicals have been guests at the White House.

Foreign Policy

Boortz reports that the attack on Benghazi took place over seven hours and that Obama knew about it two hours into it but refused to send help. More info.
"So by the time Barack Obama sat down for dinner that night, he knew that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack.  He knew!
And about that first email … who is the 17th of February militia?  Their real name is the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade.  Obama likes to talk about outsourcing … the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade are the people whom Obama outsourced  for security for our consulate in Benghazi.  And who are they?  They are an offshoot of Ansar al-Sharia ... the group that was conducting the attack on the consulate!
Are you following this? Obama outsources security to our consulate to the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Ansar al-Sharia.  And then we know that in the interim Chris Stevens asked for more security and Obama’s State Department says,  “You don’t need it.  You are fine!”  And then the parent group launches an attack, brags about it on Facebook and Twitter, and then by the time Obama had finished dinner, he knew who launched this attack.
What he didn’t know by dinner is where our ambassador and personnel were.  So he goes to bed."
I still wonder if this was a setup.
"We’ll blame it on this video. It’s all this guy in California … we are going to get him and we’re going to put him in jail and make him the scapegoat.  He’ll do a perp walk.  We’ll march him up and down the street in handcuffs … “Here he is!  Here’s the responsible guy!  And don’t you dare have a hearing until after the election.  His hearing is scheduled for three days after the election."
That's convenient.

Thomas Sowell on Obama's cover-up of the Benghazi attack.
"The full story of what happened in Libya, down to the last detail, may never be known. But, as someone once said, you don't need to eat a whole egg to know that it is rotten. And you don't need to know every detail of the events before, during and after the attacks to know that the story put out by the Obama administration was a fraud."
Absolutely.

Local

The raised the $4 million for the kayaking central plan on the river. It'll be less bad the dams we have now.

Local

Beavercreek mafia surprises neighboring parks by seizing them by force. This is naked theft.

Some locations offer gas prices below $3 per gallon. I'm sure the relationship between this and the impending election is pure coincidence, if you know what I mean.

Misc

Gangnam style will become a nerd anthem and general turn off.

Sports

Earlier tonight, before the World Series game had started, I predicted that the team that won this game would win the series, and I predicted that the Tigers would win this game. The Giants won the game, so I was wrong about that, but being consistent, I now predict the Giants will win the series.
"Sandoval hit three home runs and joined Reggie Jackson, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols as the only sluggers to do it in the Series, and the Giants jolted Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers 8-3 on Wednesday night in Game 1."
I can't realistically imagine anything more impressive than that.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

War

New report claims that 98 percent of the people killed by US drone strikes are low level militants and civilians. That tells us nothing. If you are waging war, killing low-level opposition is a good thing. Killing civilians is bad. You have to distinguish between them, not lump them into one statistic. Granted, the story does refute the US government claim that drone attacks pretty much always kill al Qaeda leaders, but for it to be effective, any criticism must differentiate between militants, regardless of level, and civilians.
"They argue that the strikes have done more harm than good, in fact, by so alienating the local population that drones have "facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks."
As GlobalPost has discussed in a special series, The Drone Age, US forces favor drones because they reduce and even eliminate danger to American personnel, while supposedly allowing them to target enemies with "surgical precision."
However, the technology isn't flawless. "Human operators peering at grainy video shot by high-flying [unmanned aerial vehicles] have repeatedly mistaken civilians for militants," writes GlobalPost's David Axe. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that as many as 884 Pakistani civilians were killed by US drones between 2004 and 2012.
Aside from death and injury, the report lists several other ways in which strikes can harm civilians — for example, by damaging property, causing economic hardship, creating sustained fear and stress, and interrupting education when children are taken out of school for fear of being caught in a drone attack.
"[D]rone attacks create widespread devastation," one interviewee told the researchers. "They have killed so many young men, who have left behind helpless young orphans. We cannot figure out when a drone will strike — they may strike in two days, three days, ten days, or a month — but they are always there.""
We just need to end this war.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

War on Drugs

Referendums in three states propose legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Even if passed, it won't stop the feds from killing people who smoke it.

Foreign Policy

My suspicion that the two former Navy SEALs killed in the Benghazi attack were CIA agents seems confirmed by this report.
"The 'annexe' to the U.S. consulate in Benghazi which was attacked by militants last month was a CIA building, it has been revealed.
The intelligence base, which has previously been described only as a 'safe house', was the building which two Navy SEALs were defending when they died in the terrorist raid.
It was around a mile from the consulate where ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed on the night of September 11."
But we still don't know why US forces didn't mount a rescue or at least provide air support.
"It is unclear exactly how many CIA operatives were stationed at the base, but officials said that two aircraft were required to lift all agents and diplomats out of Benghazi.

Two weeks ago, officials from the State Department speaking at a congressional hearing exhibited a map of Benghazi with the CIA station marked on it, but were asked to remove the map."
I'm telling you, there is more to this than meets the eye. For example:
"On Saturday, Gary Berntsen told CBS News that U.S. military officials had been able to watch the attack through unmanned aerial drones in the sky above Benghazi, and criticised them for being too slow to respond.

'They stood, and they watched, and our people died,' he said.

Defense Department officials considered sending troops in to rescue the ambassador and staff, but ultimately decided not to."
But this is inconsistent with claims the battle raged for hours. This is sounds like a cover-up too, people being thrown under the bus. Somebody chose to let these people die, almost as if they were set up to be killed. If the complex housed so many agents and diplomats it took two aircraft to carry them all, where were they? Why was the ambassador in Benghazi instead of at the embassy in Tripoli?
"On August 2, six weeks before Stevens was killed, he requested 'protective detail bodyguard' positions, calling the security situation in Libya 'unpredictable, volatile and violent.'
A month earlier, he requested that the State Department extend his tour of duty personnel, which is a 16-man temporary security team trained in combating terrorism. The request was denied and the security team left on August 8.
Stevens had asked for the security team to stay through mid-September.
Colonel Andrew Wood, the leader of the security team that left Libya in the weeks before the terror attack, told CBS News that Stevens fought hard against losing the team.
'It was quite a degree of frustration on their part,' he said. 'They were - I guess you could say - clenched-fist over the whole issue.
The White House maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was a spontaneous mob upset about an anti-Islam video, even though it has now been revealed that they were informed within 24 hours of the attack that it was planned and carried out by militants."
Did the US assassinate him? Some scenario like this would explain why Romney refused to go after Obama about Benghazi given that was the first question of tonight's debate. Somebody briefed Romney about what really was going on and told him to shut up about it. With every new piece of information that comes out, this smells worse and worse.

Local

The DDN is salivating over an Obama-Biden event a couple blocks from my house tomorrow. Compare this to the matter-of-fact coverage of the Romney-Ryan event at the Dayton airport last month.

Another crash on I-75 at the boundary of the new construction zone. Luckily nobody was hurt when a semi jackknifed.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Global Warming and Energy

At another green boondoggle company that Obama gave taxpayer money to, employees play cards and video games because they have no work to do.

Ethanol ruins the engines of older cars.

Tax and Spend

Of course Obama is using welfare to buy votes.
"According to Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, means-tested welfare programs soared to over $1 trillion last year. The federal government accounted for $750 billion of that, while $250 billion came from the states, which leveraged federal payments into even larger expenses."
But just like Obama's debt hasn't created jobs, I doubt this will buy him nearly as many votes as he hopes.

Politics

Romney family members and donors have ownership stakes in electronic voting machine company in use during the election.  Can you say conflict of interest?

Voting machines should be safer than paper ballots because they should contain both a paper trail and an electronic vote count that can be compared. That how our voting booths work. When I'm done voting, the machine prints out my votes so I can verify they match what I entered. But not all voting machines work that way, many are electronic only and capable of being hacked like every other computer, and the only conclusion is they are designed that way so our rulers can manipulate vote counts.

My girlfriend watched the beginning of the debate tonight, so I did too, and couldn't help but laugh at watching Obama and Romney trying to pretend to differentiate themselves while taking the same position on everything. But unlike this guy, I didn't find it bizarre, and I didn't think Romney got pummeled.
"Tonight, America was introduced to Peacenik Mitt — and watched him take a pummeling. I don’t know how much this will impact the overall dynamic of the race — it may not matter much at all — but it’s hard to see this as a good night for Romney."
"Oddly, Romney again and again supported Obama's positions, at one point basically acknowledging that Obama had made it clear that the United States has Israel’s back. "
These two statements are inconsistent. It's not possible that one guy pummeled another when they both took all the same positions. I think Romney was trying to appeal to women by being even keel while allowing Obama to look aggressive. It think it was his strategy.

Health Care

Lew Rockwell on the consequences of McGovern's food pyramid.

Apparently McGovern repudiated his interventionist ways later in life.

Rothbard on McGovern in 1972.

Federal Reserve

Because of Germany's clout in the eurozone, it has the power to save the world by leading the way back to commodity money.
"In 1923 Germany experienced one of the world's worst cases of hyperinflation and the worst ever for an industrialized nation. The reichsmark was destroyed by its own central bank, plunging the German people into misery and desperation. Now, after only a dozen years of relative monetary discipline, the euro faces the same fate as country after country demands to be bailed out of its mounting debts by unlimited printing of money by the ECB. Because Germany is part of the EMU, it must accept these newly printed euros. This threatened monetary inflation of unlimited amounts has shaken German bankers to the core. It is the nightmare scenario that they feared when, against their better judgment, the German politicians agreed to give up their beloved deutsche mark and place the economic fate of the nation in the hands of a committee of foreigners not as concerned about monetary inflation. But Germany can put a stop to this destruction and save the world while it saves itself. It can leave the EMU, reinstate the deutsche mark, and tie it to gold."
"By leaving the EMU Germany would insulate itself from the consequences of the euro as a tragedy of the commons; i.e., monetary inflation by third parties would end, Germany would not experience higher prices due to the actions of third parties, and the capital-destroying transfers of wealth would end.
Yet Germany should go one step further. It should anchor the DM to gold. Germany is the world's fourth-largest economy, behind only the United States, China, and Japan. Furthermore, Germany owns more of the world's gold than any other entity except the United States, more than either China or Japan and more than any other European country. A prerequisite to market acceptance of any gold money would be confidence in the integrity of the sponsoring institution. Not only is the Bundesbank known for its integrity and reverence for stable money; Germany itself has a worldwide reputation for the rule of law, advanced financial architecture, and a stable political system. For these reasons, Germany would prove to the world that a gold-backed money is not only possible but desirable. Expect a cascade of similar pronouncements once Germany's trading partners realize the importance of settling international financial transactions in the best money available — which initially at least would be a golden DM."
I love this idea. This is the way to stop any more damage from being done. Obviously the US should immediately tie the dollar back to gold, but that's not going to happen. Germany might be our best hope.

Of course Dodd-Frank was a gigantic gift to the banks. The biggest corporations always benefit from tighter regulations because those regulations put their smaller, more nimble competition out of business.
"As many analysts and officials have explained, Dodd-Frank subsidizes large, influential Wall Street financial institutions, while imposing disproportionately heavy burdens on Main Street banks and the communities they serve. Even if we take President Obama, Senator Dodd, Representative Frank, and the rest of Dodd-Frank’s supporters at face value when they protest that they actually intended to rein in Wall Street banks, the laws they passed accomplish the opposite result. Intentional or not, a kiss is still a kiss."
Please. Have we forgotten how corrupt Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were? These regulations were designed to benefit the giant banks, and they do.  And let's not forget the big banks gave Obama more money than anybody else in 2008. As opensecrets.org shows, It's a myth that the big banks support Republicans more than Democrats, though in this election they support Romney over Obama.

Americans fear inflation more than unemployment.
"Journalists, politicians and economists all seem to agree that the biggest economic issue currently worrying voters is unemployment. It follows then that most believe that the deciding factor in the presidential race will be the ability of each candidate to convince the public that his policies will create jobs. It seems that everyone got this memo...except the voters.
According to the results of a Fox News poll released last week (a random telephone sample of more than 1,200 registered voters), 41% identified "inflation" as "the biggest economic problem they faced." This is nearly double the 24% that named "unemployment" as their chief concern. For further comparison, 19% identified "taxes" and 7% "the housing market" as their primary concern. A full 44% of women, who often do more of the household shopping and would therefore be more sensitive to prices changes, identified rising prices as their primary concern."
Funny how inflation is never mentioned as a problem.

Economy

A mysterious algorithm accounted for 4 percent of US stock market traffic last week though it never executed a trade. It canceled every order instead.

This is a nicely presented article explaining how bad things are without resorting to doom and gloom.

Police State

Italian court convicts scientists of manslaughter for failing to warn of a deadly earthquake. That's crazy.

Misc

Microsoft pushing users to upgrade from Windows XP.

More evidence that the US government was aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor before it happened.

Bizarre information regarding events on 9/11.

Media

After a report I just read of Drudge disappearing a story, I went to the site to see for myself. I don't see the reportedly disappeared article, but I see a tremendous number of stories I would think are important that haven't shown up on my Google aggregator homepage. Here's a screen-shot:
Granted, there's nothing new here, but this is powerful. These pictures of Obama bowing to everybody should be covered by every media outlet. Obama bowing to people matters to Americans.

Here's a screen-shot of the text/link portion of the page:

I can hardly begin to highlight the headlines that are important. Let me try.
"Taxes go up in 2013 for 163 million workers..."
"PAPER: Obama's Blind Eye to Illegal Donors..."
"Campaign Borrows $15M from Bank of America..."
"Free Pot Offered To Lure Residents To Vote... "
"Sandra Fluke campaign stop in Reno draws 10 people!"
"Wary Swiss Banks Shun Americans..."
"SHUT: Anti-Muslim filmmaker detained for almost a month, next court date three days after election... "
"Thousands call Planned Parenthood for mammograms after Obama's false claim..."

Just wow. How is it all of these stories aren't dominating the news?
The top headline on my Google aggregator is:
"Critic's Notebook: Presidential debates as theater"
The top headline on my USA Today Google gadget is:
"Gas prices could soon drop 50 cents a gallon"
I'll grant that one is a big story, but where are all these other stories? (Rhetorical question.)


Here's probably the biggest of all:
"GALLUP: R 52% 0 45%..."
Every day since the first debate I see a new headline about a poll calling this race a dead heat. I have never seen a headline about Gallop showing a big lead for Romney, which would agree with my prediction all along.