Police State

NSA's chief hacker advises security experts. With disinformation, I'm sure.

Economy

Top engineers eschew Apple. Telsa is a bubble company too.

Misc

Elon Musk to unveil spacecraft, not built, of course, for planned 2025 manned Mars mission. Elon Musk produces great headlines but not much else.

Health Care

Claim that Alzheimer's is contagious.

Education

Obama calls for Bill Gates's plan on computer science education.

Politics

Obama admin confirms Top Secret info in Hillary emails.

Obama claimed he learned of Hillary's email server from the media, but it turns out he sent her 18 emails there.

FBI upset at White House meddling over Clinton emails.

Canadian candidate changes name to "None of the Above".

Local

Lead exposure linked to poverty.

Health Care

Thanks to government meddling, drug rationing has started.

Tax and Spend

$1 trillion to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal. If this was really going to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal, it would be one of the least bad uses of tax dollars, but that isn't what it's for. It's more profiteering. You could upgrade and shrink it for a lot less.

Media

Top parody books.

War

US blames Assad, Maliki and Saddam Hussein for the rise of ISIS.

Former Syrian ambassador admits the moderates he supported were really allies of ISIS and al Qaeda.

This is the real reason for war.

"The U.S. government was nice enough to gift our loyal friends the Afghans $17 billion of your tax money, and, in the true spirit of giving, asked nothing in return for itself.
What that means in actual dollars and nonsense is that the U.S. government wasted $17 billion in taxpayer money in Afghanistan on various projects that never made it off the ground or were doomed to fail because of incompetence or lack of maintenance, according to a new report."

It wasn't wasted. I went to profiteering.

Hillary's west African legacy.

Police State

Security experts wake up and warn against IoT appliances. It's a little late since they're everywhere already.

FBI snipers assassinate rancher and attack others in Oregon standoff.

LAPD recommends people take care of themselves in an emergency because of long waits.

Misc

CIA releases thousands of declassified X-files on potential UFOs.

Politics

Last night's debate without Trump got better ratings than the last debate with Trump, but the last one was on Fox Business, not Fox News.

"Trump said he wouldn't debate on Thursday because Fox News and moderator Megyn Kelly had not been nice to him. Trump instead held a rally and fundraiser for veterans. The leader of one veterans group called the fundraiser a political "stunt." In recent years Trump's charitable foundation has given more money to the Clinton Foundation than it has given to veterans groups."

This from the Weekly Standard.

Judge Napolitano still thinks Hillary Clinton is in deep doodoo with the FBI over her server and handling of classified information. I'm skeptical. I expect the FBI to exonerate her in the middle of the general election to give her a boost in November. They certainly didn't time this to take her down and kill her chances.

Some Clinton emails too damaging to release.

This comment the FBI will announce findings at the height of the campaign suggests the fix is in.

FBI has not interviewed Clinton.

White House says Clinton won't be indicted based on what we know even though the FBI wants to indict her.

Union leaders fear Trump will draw lots of union voters.

Economy

Retired workers getting rehired because the economy stinks.

Rulers in Davos shocked by stock crash.

Japanese Central Bank implements negative interest rates, boosting US stocks.

Regulation

Government regulators are not more virtuous than the rest of us, and there's plenty of reason to believe they're less virtuous.

Regulators are coming for 3D printers.

Environment

Somebody noticed bed bugs are developing resistance to common insecticides.

Local

Schools blamed for people not moving to Hamilton.

Mariott's Fairfield Inn coming to Water Street. We'll see.

Developers want to double-down on the Liberty Center malinvestment.

Dayton announces yet another plan for the Arcade. Good for the DDN for pointing out the futility of these plans.

GE Aviation cutting local engineering jobs.

Express closing at Dayton Mall.

Regulation

Major sports leagues including MLB partnering with gambling firms. Free Pete Rose.

Economy

We like to talk about the market, but we're really talking about people.

A strong dollar is bad for Apple.

Foreign Policy

US security forces stink.

"In his final State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama noted in passing that the United States spends as much on defense as the next eight countries combined. He might have added that the proportions are similar for the Foreign Service and the intelligence community, which cost $50 billion and an estimated $80 billion respectively. The president might well have asked why, if that is so, is there so little bang for the buck in terms of what the U.S. taxpayer gets in return.
To be sure, no one has invaded the United States since Pancho Villa in 1916, but every war fought after 1945 has been either unnecessary, inconclusive, or a failure while the intelligence community is repeatedly caught flat footed in terms of anticipating the moves of both competitors and enemies. And a string of 294 fortress-like diplomatic missions around the world has done little to lessen foreign concerns over the seemingly persistent blundering of an imperial Washington that sometimes seems to be more concerned with style than substance. The Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan is, for example, currently sponsoring an “I Love English” video contest."

Government doesn't make us safer, but it makes us poorer.

"So people sometimes wind up in the wrong places and as a result people die. But one has to suspect that having the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time is somehow systemic in the federal government, particularly related to those individuals who have to do official tours overseas. When I was a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, complaints from officers and non-coms about the rotation system were frequent. One-year tours in Vietnam meant that soldiers were just learning how to do their jobs when they were replaced by someone new who had to learn all over again how to survive. Many did not live through the learning curve and one might reasonably suppose that some thousands of American soldiers might have come home alive if the system had been able to maximize combat effectiveness." 

Socialists can't manage.

Economy

Wall Street markets never predict a recession including this one.

"And that’s basically why the stock market goes up for 5-7 years on a slow escalator, and then plunges down an elevator shaft during several quarters of violent after-the-fact retraction when an economic and profits downturn has already arrived.
Needless to say, there are plenty of economic booby traps hiding in plain sight this time, too. Yet the sell side was out over the weekend with noisy chatter about stocks now being on sale at a discount, and that selective buying of the dip is once again in order."

Maybe buying the dip is a feint.

Local

Listeria outbreak shows regulations worthless.

Environment

Great discrepancies between RSS satellite and NASA GISS surface temperatures.

NOAA has a data set even more corrupt than their pause-buster data set.

Federal Reserve

Rulers want to ban cash and implement one world currency, but cash in circulation continues to grow.

Politics

Of course Republicans want to be in charge of big government, but they'd rather be the minority party in big government than the majority party of small government.

Pat Buchanan understands this anti-establishment election.

"Understandably, the interventionists and neocons at National Review, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard are fulminating against Trump. For many are the Beltway rice bowls in danger of being broken today."

They might lose their phony-baloney jobs.

War

The US is planning to go back into Libya.

"The New York Times reports that the “government” of Libya is hiding in a hotel room in Tunis"

The UN-appointed government.

Saudi war crimes in Yemen committed with US bombs.

Police State

Uniformed tax collectors collect more tax with license plate readers.

Local

Wright_Patt economic influence rises to $4.3 billion. So much for the sequester.

Regulation

New Yorkers die obeying government's order to shovel sidewalks.

Police State

In upside-down world, NSA wants to destroy 14 years of illegally-gained phone records and the EFF opposes that because it fears destroying the records may destroy evidence in its lawsuits against NSA.

Cleveland fires six cops for doing what cops everywhere typically get away with.

"Six Cleveland police officers have been fired in connection with a November 2012 car chase that ended with officers firing 137 bullets at a car, killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, said Detective Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association."

It's not prosecution, but it's something.

Misc

Galaxy clusters don't form from gravity alone, but the bias isn't magical. It's electric.

Economy

Ohio still near bottom for financial security. But I thought the economy was booming and Kasich was wonderful.

Local

Thanks to low taxes, the film industry in Greater Cincinnati is booming.

Health Care

Whooping cough vaccine doesn't prevent whooping cough.

Environment

Top ten reasons Gore was wrong in "An Inconvenient Truth" ten years ago.

Claim global warming has doubled the number of blizzards. When it gets hotter, colder or stays the same, blame global warming.

Immigration

Germans using farmers as "laboratories of integration" with dangerous refugees.

Politics

Trump is the nationalist response to what Pat Buchanan calls globalism and many call empire.

Clinton and State Department trying to delay release of some emails until after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Economy

The Fed blame China and oil for the recent crash, not years of ZIRP.

"More importantly, however, is the fact that much of the newly created money has not even come close to creating “widespread [consumer price] inflation” due to the actual structure of the current, post-crises banking regime. In fact, Jeffrey Snider, among others, have argued that it is literally impossible for “price inflation” to take place as a direct result of QE due to the way that money currently enters the system as reserves. “Price inflation” would need to come from the actions of individual banks themselves who are at present cautious about their consumer lending practices. Therefore the Fed is not creating “price inflation,” but something far worse: capital misallocation."

Malinvestment.

Walmarts are closing. I doubt it will last.

War

Republicans conspire with Obama to escalate war in Middle East.

"It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law."

Lovely.

Socialism

Government created the Flint water crisis.

Immigration

Illegal immigrants not jailed or prosecuted.

"Criminal prosecution of immigration offenses over the past five years is down 36 percent, and the once-successful program of detaining illegal immigrants in state and local jails is in free fall, down by two-thirds, according reports from two federal agencies."

Thanks, Obama.

Economy

Technology FANGs leading the market down.

"Indeed, Amazon and its fellow FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) succinctly explain the pivot. They have actually been the canary in the coal mine all along; it just now that their warnings signals are being noticed.
As we have previously pointed out, the FANGs were the “beard” that hid the market’s initial breakdown during 2015. They gained $485 billion of market cap (+66%) while the other 496 companies in the S&P 500 actually deflated by more than half a trillion dollars.
Needless to say, that happened before the calendar year turned. Yet when the stock market’s advance drastically narrows to just a handful of ultra-momentum stocks, the bull’s days are numbered, and always have been."

I like the term FANGs.

Larry Page's obsessions became Google's business, signaling Google is in for a fall.

Walmart gave it's lowest level employees a raise to silence critics, then had to fire 15.000 people as a result.

"Well sure enough, WalMart announced on Wednesday evening that all hourly workers will receive a 2% pay bump next month.

The cost: around $2.7 billion."

To keep higher paid employees happy.

What's eroding the middle class.

Foreign Policy

Russians may have killed Alexander Litvinenko.

Health Care

Sweden and Norway officially go low-carb, high-fat. You can't call it a fad anymore.

Dangerous side-effects of the new flu vaccine.

A drug to cure fear would be wonderful for people with debilitating fears, but it could also cause recklessness.

Education

Socialist schools are collapsing as charter, home-school and the Khan academy grow.

Politics

Plutocrats in Davos fear the people.

"Can that crowd at Davos not understand that it is despised because it is seen as having subordinated the interests of the nations and people in whose name it presumes to speak, to advance an agenda that serves, first and foremost, its own naked self-interest?"

It's about time they feared the people. Buchanan's term globalism is a euphemism for empire. We don't speak of empire like past empires. Instead of talking about conquering and colonizing, our rulers use terms like liberating, exporting democracy and ending humanitarian crises. But our empire looks the same with military bases, armies, wars, death and destruction.

Beck prefers Sanders over Trump signaling if Trump wins the nomination, the Republican establishment will sandbag him like they did Goldwater.

Beck retweeted fake Trump tweet making it appear he voted for Obama.

This article hints at Clinton's defense for misuse of classified information.

"Somehow, highly classified information from SIPRNet, as well as even the super-secure JWICS, jumped from those closed systems to the open system and turned up in at least 1,340 of Clinton’s home e-mails — including several the CIA earlier this month flagged as containing ultra-secret Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs, a subset of SCI.

SAP includes “dark projects,” such as drone operations, while SCI protects intelligence sources and methods.
Top aide Huma Abedin sent emails containing classified materials to Hillary, according to intelligence agency reviewers.Photo: Reuters"

Blame the staff. I doubt it will work for her politically.

Police State

Terrible IoT security benefits criminals and NSA.

State of emergency continues in France.

Government taking over blockchain.

Environment

Paleo diet benefits the environment.

China's crashing economy produced lower GHG emissions. This is what the greens want.

Media

Google Earth censors secret government sites.

Regulation

FCC power grab on broadband.

Federal Reserve

The petrodollar system. While a fiat currency, the Fed can print at will, the dollar is informally tied to a commodity: oil. That's what keeps inflation from skyrocketing.

"From 1972 to 1974, the U.S. government made a series of agreements with Saudi Arabia. These agreements created the petrodollar system.
The U.S. government chose Saudi Arabia because of its vast petroleum reserves, its dominant position in OPEC, and the (correct) perception that the Saudi royal family was corruptible.
In essence, the petrodollar system was an agreement that the U.S. would guarantee the survival of the House of Saud. In exchange, Saudi Arabia would:

1. Use its dominant position in OPEC to ensure that all oil transactions would happen in U.S. dollars.

2. Invest a large amount of its dollars from oil revenue in U.S. Treasury securities and use the interest payments from those securities to pay U.S. companies to modernize the infrastructure of Saudi Arabia.

3. Guarantee the price of oil within limits acceptable to the U.S. and prevent another oil embargo by other OPEC members.

Oil is the world’s most traded and most strategic commodity. Needing to use dollars for oil transactions is a very compelling reason for foreign countries to keep large U.S. dollar reserves." 

Thus the alliance with the Saudis.

Environment

Temporary phenomena made 2015 hot.

Record snow hits Atlantic coast again. This is three years in a row.

Poltics

Three articles supporting libertarianism.

"The Simplicity of Libertarianism
The Consistency of Libertarianism
The Morality of Libertarianism"

All true.

The Republican establishment's opinion of conservative critics:

"Bigshot Republican Party “strategist” Rick Wilson recently denounced all people associated with the “old right” (a.k.a, non-neocons) who he thinks are Trump supporters as “crazy people . . . who love Donald Trump, who have Hitler iconography in their Twitter icons . . . .  Most of them are childless, single men who masturbate to Anime [animated cartoon characters] . . . .  These are not people who matter in the overall course of humanity.”"

An honest opinion.

National Review slimes Trump, loses subscribers.

Economy

Corporate buybacks are the final stage before the Big Crash.

The same supply-siders who missed the last crash say stocks aren't overvalued.

The skyscraper curse goes mainstream in Barrons.

Mainstream media has started predicting a crash and noting the Fed consistently predicts to high of GDP.

Central banker warns of crash.

"The situation is worse than it was in 2007. . . . Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief.  It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something."

It's coming.

War

How the military keeps the people from overseeing it wars.

"The problem was solved in two major ways. The first was to end the draft and go to the All Volunteer Army. The command realized that if they conscripted kids from Yale and the University of Virginia to come back in body bags, the prospective conscriptees, their girlfriends, and their families would take to the streets. This would threaten the smooth flow of funds. If volunteer kids from Tennessee died, no one would care.
The second step in keeping the public out of the loop was to control the press. This was done partly by “embedding” reporters in American military units in the victim country. The control was furthered, more by happenstance than plan, by the amalgamation of the major media in a few large corporations which then controlled content. It worked.
A third and crucial element was the quiet and de facto abolition of the restrictions imposed by the Constitution. As long as that document was held to be canonical, Congress would have to declare war before the military could attack anyone. A congressman voting for a war would have to explain to his constituents why he wanted to spend a trillion dollars on killing remote peasants when his jurisdiction had crumbling schools. People in Oklahoma might ask, “Can’t we grow our own goat herds more cheaply and kill them here?”"

Well done.

"A solution appeared: Drones. They were wonderful, serving several purposes at once. They cost not as much as fighter planes, but enough to funnel lots of loot to contractors.. No body bags ever came back and so didn’t need to be hidden. Drones could be flown by wet-lipped sociopaths in air-conditioned comfort in Colorado. They couldn’t win a war, but neither could they lose one. This was ideal, since either winning or losing would slow the award of contracts."

Profiteering if the goal.

US backs jihadist group in Syrian peace talks.

Foreign Policy

Iran's Ayatolah making peace with US.

"When Iran said it did not have a nuclear bomb program, it was telling the truth. Indeed, it is Iran’s accusers, many from the same crowd that misled and lied to us when they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, whose credibility is in question today."

I don't see them paying a price.

Warmongers angry Iran won't act like our enemy.

We still don't know why 10 US sailor were caught in Iranian waters.

British report blames Russian government for assassinating Alexander Litvinenko with plutonium 210, but it was more likely radiation poisoning from smuggling.

David Stockman lambastes the US alliance with Saudi Arabia.

"That is, Washington’s Mideast policy is predicated on the assumption that the answer to high oil prices and energy security is deployment of the Fifth Fleet to the Persian Gulf. And that an associated alliance with one of the most corrupt, despotic, avaricious and benighted tyrannies in the modern world is the lynch pin to regional stability and US national security.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The House of Saud is a scourge on mankind that would have been eliminated decades ago, save for Imperial Washington’s deplorable coddling and massive transfer of arms and political support."

But the Bushes get oil money.

Education

Large donations from philanthropists impact education in New York City.

Health Care

Heirloom seed bank in Norway.

"Sadly, age-old heirloom varieties are disappearing at an alarming rate — 90 percent of the crop varieties grown 100 years ago are already gone. The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership estimates that 60,000 to 100,000 plant species are in danger of extinction.¹"

Not good.

How to fight a cold.

War

More Air Force drones are mysteriously crashing than ever.

Possible earliest evidence of war.

Federal Reserve

Venezuela's inflation tops 700 percent.

Bank consortium tests bitcoin tech.

Foreign Policy

Former Defense Sec. Gates believes China, Russia and Iran all accessed Hillary's server.

Environment

Twitter more accurate at weather forecasting than meteorologists.

NASA and NOAA tag-team claim 2015 was hottest year recorded at joint news conference for maximum propaganda effect.

Mainstream scientists winning bets against skeptics because of el Nino.

NOAA claimed the planet was over 3 degrees hotter than today in 1997.

Economy

Apple to experience first iPhone sales decline.

Google's Alphabet about to pass Apple in value because Apple is a bubble company.

Police State

FBI operated major child porn site for two weeks to combat child porn.

Texas judge sentences man to life in prison for tenth DUI.

NSA director Rogers comes out in favor of encryption.

Misc

Scientists come closer to recognizing currents in space which form and power stars.

"According to a recent press release, astronomers working with data provided by Herschel found evidence for cosmic “transmission lines” in space, although that is not how astronomers identify their observations. They found “… a radial network of filaments stretching throughout the Serpens Core, filaments that are predicted to break and fragment to form the cores of new stars.”"

Their inching their way to a better theory.

New study smashes tectonic plate theory.

Local

While Dayton's rulers pretend Dayton is a tech center, Lexus-Nexus is moving its tech jobs to Raleigh, NC. This article shows Raleigh is superior in every measured fashion except cost of living, but it fails to mention taxes. Raleigh has no income tax.

Health Care

Supermarket eggs can be up to two months old.

War

Navy launches carrier group powered by biofuels.

Socialism

Late to the self-driving car party, GM buys failed Uber competitor.

Environment

After claims 2015 was hottest on record were refuted, NASA jumps in and re-establishes the claim.

Climate change blamed for shortage of cauliflower.

"While demand is up due to the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets, they attribute the shortage to “unusually cold weather in California and Arizona, where the majority of the nation’s cauliflower is grown. Major shifts in temperatures have been reported, including some dropping below freezing overnight"

Cooling, not heating?

Misc

NASA discovers Van Allen Belts are shaped like donuts as EU theorists predict.

Fairy tales traced back to Bronze Age.

Police State

Somebody just noticed the surveillance implications of self-driving cars.

European Human Rights Court rules mass surveillance illegal. Governments laugh.

DHS wants to outlaw internet anonymity.

Google exec wants to lock ISIS out of open web.

Local

Bubble hotel at Liberty Center.

"Marriott International and European hotelier Antonio Catalan partnered on a joint venture and launched the brand in 2011. The hotel targets Millennial and business travelers, according to the company."

Launched during ZIRP, they're building a hotel for millenials in a place with one of the oldest populations in the country and for business travelers in a place with a poor economy. Liberty Center is the product of inflation and Boehner, and Boehner is gone. Low rates will be gone soon.

As if the cold is unforeseen, socialist water mains break all over the county. They always blame some outside forces. Things built in the private sector didn't break.

Local experts expect the bubble in construction to continue in 2016. I don't.

Economy

We need a recession because of the benefits.

Health Care

Here's the real reason the US won't explain sugar's health problems:

"According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute's 2013 study¹ "Sugar: Consumption at a Crossroads," as much as 40 percent of US healthcare expenditures are for diseases directly related to the overconsumption of sugar. Incredibly, we spend more than $1 trillion each year fighting the damaging health effects of sugar, which runs the gamut from obesity and diabetes, to heart disease and cancer."

Government love sugar.

Tax and Spend

Hamilton County taxpayers have paid nearly $1 billion to the Bengals since 2000.

Regulation

Copyright prevents tractor from being fixed.

Texas declares daily fantasy illegal gambling.

War

African airstrip typifies US way of war for the near future.

Health Care

Accusation of fraud in research claiming GMOs are harmful.

Misc

This sand dune could not have been sculpted by winds in an atmosphere 1/100 the density of ours.

Misc

Astronomers surprised by star that has dimmed over a century.

Weak electric field communicates information around brain.

Foreign Policy

God forbid peace break out with Iran.

"How did the “irrational” Iranians celebrate being allowed back into the international community? They immediately announced a massive purchase of more than 100 passenger planes from the European Airbus company, and that they would also purchase spare parts from Seattle-based Boeing. Additionally, US oil executives have been in Tehran negotiating trade deals to be finalized as soon as it is legal to do so. The jobs created by this peaceful trade will be beneficial to all parties concerned. The only jobs that should be lost are the Washington advocates of re-introducing sanctions on Iran."

Hooray for trade. You have to wonder if the Pentagon was trying to undermine the nuke deal when sailors invaded Iran's territorial waters.

War on Drugs

Sean Penn led police to escaped drug kingpin.

"But the public’s attention has instead been focused on the fact that Penn found and met with Guzman for seven hours in a mountain hideout last October while he was still evading Mexican officials. He was apprehended only last week after six months on the run." 

Incompetence or Penn is a narc.

Police State

Vermont laws to allow cops to warrantlessly examine cell phone data is advertised as fighting texting while driving, but that's not the real motive.

Environment

NOAA's el Nino predictions wrong again.

NOAA also predicted el Nino would prevent polar vortexes like the one hitting us now.

Federal Reserve

Since the market crashed bigtime after the Fed raised rates a measly quarter of a point, it may impose negative rates next.

Polirics

It's ironic Black Lives Matter has Marxist roots considering Marx was a racist.

Economy

AT&T chooses Linux over Windows. Microsoft is turning off its customers, even corporate ones.

Tech fundraising slows and layoffs rise.

Education

Obama promotes Bill Gates's CS education for every American student.

Foreign Policy

US lifts sanctions on Iran because it complied with nuclear agreement.

Iran to sell lots of oil.

Middle East stock markets crash on Iranian oil news.

Regulation

Entrepreneurs beat regulators by improving incandescent bulb.

Environment

Frauds blame lying satellites for pause.

Satellite deniers. I love it.

Federal Reserve

Unlike printing money, the Fed funds rate, which everybody focuses on, has little influence on interest rates.

Foreign Policy

A series of lies covering up why US military boats were captured by Iran in Iranian waters.

Health Care

French drug trial leaves one volunteer brain dead and five others injured.

Politics

Like many have warned for decades, deaths have surpassed births in much of Europe.

It's OK that the terrorists Hillary backed in Libya killed four Americans in an attack on the Benghazi consulate, but it could be trouble for her if revealed they committed genocide against black Africans.

Police State

Of course many, I would bet most, Americans don't want a smart home. It's stupid and counterproductive.

War

Years after supposedly waging air war against ISIS, US finally deploys tankbuster warthogs. It's not much of a war when you're not trying to destroy the "enemy's" tanks.

36 years of base building in the Middle East has produced nothing but failure from our perspective, but it continues because it's been a success from our rulers' perspective.

CIA slams Benghazi movie "13 Hours". That's praise.

Socialism

This plan to colonize the moon in crazy because governments have no prices to guide them.

In a bid to boost government control of the internet, the World Bank claims it may boost inequality.

The market, not government, should determine the best use of land.

Tax and Spend

Navy's $2.1 billion catamarans need millions of dollars in repairs after being damaged by waves.

With every big company in the world developing self-driving cars, Obama wants to take over the process by throwing $4 billion at it. He needn't worry. These corporations are controlled by the government already. He's doing this more for politics than anything. It's a hot topic.

EU rules Apple owes $8 billion in back taxes.

Local

Reflecting the continuing weak economy, Dayton expo center shuts down.

Canadian company buys downtown office building. Thank goodness Canadians have capital to risk in Dayton.

This burrito business sounds like a giant bubble-rider poised for a hard fall.

"A burrito chain that was founded in Kettering in 2007 and has grown to more than 70 locations has moved its headquarters from the Dayton area to West Chester Twp., said co-founder and co-owner Ray Wiley."

Sounds like the cupcake bubble.

Poor decision causes removal of MLK event fliers in kowtow to political correctness.

FAA approves Sinclair plan to fly drones out of Miami University airport.

Wind farm going up in Logan County unless a crash stops it.

Economy

How the Rockefeller oil industry created the oil, medicine, finance and agriculture oligarchy.

"Interestingly, the event that made John D. Rockefeller into the world's first billionaire was supposed to rein in his unbridled power. He'd come under intense scrutiny as his wealth increased and, on May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Standard Oil a monopoly "in restraint of trade" and ordered its dissolution. "

Regulations always favor the biggest producers.

"Henry Ford designed his Model T automobile to run on either gasoline or alcohol, stating that just about anything that could be fermented could be used for fuel, predicting the future of fuel was wide open to a number of alternatives. However, the oil industry succeeded in eliminating the competition yet again, this time by supporting the anti-alcohol movements and the formation of the Prohibition Party in 1869. "

That's the first I've heard of that motive behind prohibition. It makes me wonder how much the corn and cotton industry is behind marijuana and therefore hemp prohibition.

"Next came the undermining of the railway system. In 1953, General Motor President Charles Wilson was appointed Secretary of Defense, and Wilson, along with Francis DuPont, Chief Administrator of Federal Highways, set into motion the largest public works project in U.S. history with the creation of the interstate highway system. As a result, railway travel declined by 84 percent between 1945 and 1964, while private car ownership soared, and along with it, gasoline sales, which rose 300 percent in that same time frame. Similar social engineering feats took place in Europe, further securing the future of the oil business as a primary force to be reckoned with." 

So this was the hidden motive behind Eisenhower's interstate highways.

"In order to win the public over, he was going to have to give them what they wanted. And what they wanted wasn't difficult to understand: money. But just as his father, Devil Bill, had taught him to do in all his business dealings, Rockefeller made sure to get the better end of the bargain. He would 'donate' his great wealth to the creation of public institutions, but those institutions would be used to bend society to his will."

"As every would-be ruler throughout history has realized, society has to be transformed from the ground up. Americans in the 19th century still prized education and intellectual pursuits ... with a remarkable 93 to 100 percent literacy rate.
Before the first compulsory schooling laws in Massachusetts in 1852, education was private and decentralized, and as a result ... a solid grounding in history and science was widespread. But a nation of individuals who could think for themselves was an anathema to the monopolists. The oiligarchs needed a mass of obedient workers."

This is the model used by philanthropist plutocrats like Bill Gates today.

""His brother, Abraham, was an educator who was contracted by the Carnegie Foundation to write a report on the state of the American medical education system. His study, 'The Flexner Report,' along with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations were to shower on medical research in the coming years, resulted in a sweeping overhaul of the American medical system. Naturopathic and homeopathic medicine, medical care focused on unpatentable, uncontrollable natural remedies and cures was now dismissed as quackery; only drug-based allopathic medicine requiring expensive medical procedures and lengthy hospital stays was to be taken seriously ...  
The fortunes of Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller financed surgery, radiation and synthetic drugs. They were to become the economic foundations of the new medical economy ... The oiligarchy birthed entire medical industries from their own research centers and then sold their own products from their own petrochemical companies as the 'cure.'""

The FDA is trying to wipe out natural cures today, and Gates wants to transform medicine with medical gadgets produced by Microsoft.

Microsoft to deny support for pre-Windows 10 OSs on new processors. And they wonder why Apple is gaining so much marketshare.

Markets suffer worst opening to year since Great Depression.

400 richest men lose $305 billion on paper as the bubble deflates.

Foreign Policy

Pat Buchanan calls the Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric among 47 on New Years Day a deliberate provocation of Iran.

Media

Pleasantly subversive book list.

China's move market requires Chinese be portrayed positively, and that's a good thing.

Politics

The FBI expands it's investigation into Hillary Clinton's state secret crimes, but not to bust her. She committed a lot of crimes to cover up and whitewassh. She will not be arrested, indicted or prosecuted.

Environment

Abject failure of global warming predictions.

War

More US troops heading to Iraq.

Economy

In the latest signs of bubble, Tesla plans to hire 1,600 engineers to compete with Apple and Google. This will blow up in Musk's face.

Awesome graphic shows Austrian Economics is real economics and Keynesianism is a fraud.

Misc

Rosetta scientists believe they've saved comet theory with discover of a couple grains of water ice on the surface.

Google's Nest IoT thermostat bug left users without heat.

Local

Dayton still won't clean side-streets of snow unless it's over four inches.

Proving that failure is the path to success in government, Nan Whaley appointed vice-chair of some national education group.

Politics

The Clinton crime family.

Environment

Claim el Nino has peaked.

Another climate scientists accuses of financial fraud. That's what the global warming fraud is all about.

Reguation

Against TPP.

Police State

French push for backdoor into encryption. So does New York.

ATF puts up surveillance cameras in Seattle to catch grease dumpers.

Another backdoor discovered with the fingerprints of NSA hackers.

Somebody developed an algorithm that spies only on potential terrorists, not everybody. What a novel idea.

Hacker hacks DNI chief Clapper.

Education

The Feds allow kids to walk to school. Allow.

Federal Reserve

The value of a nickel tops eight cents.

Economy

Windows 10 failed to increase PC sales, but Apple increased Mac sales in 2015.

America's antipathy toward capital, required for the middle class, is helping shrink the middle class.

Misc

Scientists surprised by discover in Crab Nebula pulsar.

Local

Boil advisory in Harrison Twp.

Socialism

Flint water crisis as water full of lead.

Health Care

Most organic eggs are unhealthy.

Economy

The American middle class is losing ground.

Oil falls to $31 per barrel.

Foreign Policy

We're supposed to be scared of the Russians.

Immigration

Open borders are good for rulers because they create conflict and people give more power to rulers to combat that conflict.

Widespread thieving and sexual assaults by refugees in Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve.

War

Why Americans care so little about the mass murder of children, women and other non-combatants labeled collateral damage.

Long list of false flag attacks.

Politics

Thanks to its corrupt education push, Microsoft CEO gets front row seat at State of the Union address.

Health Care

New study claims Gardasil is safe in latest back-and-forth of vaccine wars.

Weak flu season so far.

"Time is running out, better get your flu shot.  That’s what news agencies around the country are urging Americans to do.  Roll up their sleeves, despite the fact it’s too late to really develop adequate antibody defense, and get jabbed with a largely ineffective and somewhat problematic flu vaccine.
While the Centers for Disease Control says the flu strikes 5-to-20% of the population in any given year, the flu is only evident in 0.8 to 1.3% of the blood samples taken from virally-infected individuals so far this year. [Centers Disease Control]"

Rare good news.

"Apparently public health authorities missed the fact this flu season, which usually runs from October through May and peaks in December and January, was diminished by an uncommon warm spell.
The heat spell was experienced as far north as Alaska with sled dog races there moved to more northern climates due to unseasonable weather.  [Alaska Dispatch News Jan 5, 2016]  How did public health authorities not notice this major continental weather shift?" 

Another advantage of global warming.

Misc

Windows 10 secretly downloads itself then prompts users to install it even if users have disabled that download.

Local

Why does RTA provide free rides on MLK day? Do they do it on other holidays? Columbus day?

Economy

The auto loan bubble reaches dangerous levels.

Poliitics

Eleven distinct cultures make up America.

Environment

El Nino shortened the pause by one month to 18 years, eight months.

Arctic species adapted to climate change.

"A new paper that combines paleoclimatology data for the last 56 million years with molecular genetic evidence concludes there were no biological extinctions over the last 1.5M years despite profound Arctic sea ice changes that included ice-free summers: polar bears, seals, walrus and other species successfully adapted to habitat changes that exceeded those predicted by USGS and US Fish and Wildlife polar bear biologists over the next 100 years."

Good.

Socialism

Government ownership of western land creates conflicts like the one in Oregon.

"As a Plan B, the feds began to encourage the use of "open range" and the idea of public lands in which large numbers of small landowners would share water and grazing resources.
Eventually, neither the government nor the settlers wanted these lands to be privatized. Each interest group — homesteaders, ranchers, and water owners — wanted the lands to continue to be public since each group assumed it would be able to use its own political power to gain de facto use and control of the lands." 

The ranchers don't want to buy it.

"However, it should be remembered that, generally speaking, ranchers who use federal lands have never been opposed to the existence of federal lands. After all, federal subsidization of water projects and federal control of watersheds has furnished ranchers with cheap water for years, at the expense of taxpayers and urban dwellers. In dry and high-altitude areas especially, cattle are reliant on alfalfa crops and on other non-forage feed, which means their need for water is immense."

Privilege.

"The perennial conflicts in the West over land seizures by environmentalists, regulatory battles, micromanagement, and overgrazing all illustrate how much of a failure the federal land ownership scheme has been.
With control over such immense resources, the far away federal government does not respond to local needs or local demand, but to national interest groups. " 

Politics, not economics.

Health Care

US dietary guidelines still stink.

Misc

Myths and legends document real events from the past.

Sports

Bureaucrat Napoleon Goodell blames local governments for not stealing enough money to keep San Diego, Oakland or St. Louis from moving to Los Angeles.

Pittsburgh's bogus win over the Bengals explains Goodell's bureaucratic rules avalanche. If a Bengal had been injured like Rothlesburger, he wouldn't have been allowed back. But Rothlesburgher is a Steeler. More rules give officials more cover to pick winner, and that's what they did picking Pittsburgh over Cincinnati. Lying sacks of excrement. The worst thing about this loss is people will act like the Steelers beat the Bengals, not the officials.

Environment

I'm skeptical of claim lobal temperature correlates with air travel.

More on NOAA's incorrect claim 2015 was hottest ever.

Despite the fraud and propaganda, 73 percent of Americans disagree with supposed AGW consensus.

Insurance company observes warming and el Nino makes disasters less expensive.

Foreign Policy

Every time North Korea does something provocative, like setting off a nuclear bomb and calling it a hydrogen bomb, we're told its ruler just wants attention. I bet there's a more calculated reason.

Tax and Spend

People flee high tax states.

Services are better in low-tax Texas than high-tax California.

Police State

Because they lack market forces to guide them, police departments are overstaffed and overfunded.

Economy

Four awesome graphics describe Keynesianism and destroy it at the same time.

Poor science, and education, lead to most market criticism, which is bogus.

"The reason is as obvious as it is overlooked: the real economy is heavily regulated, politically manipulated, and therefore distorted, and therefore not the actual "market." Yet the market skeptics ASSUME it is. That's why  they find that "market" causes lasting inequality, environmental issues, etc."

True.

Auto bubble based on sketchy loans explained.

The big short, where the movie ignored government regs, will happen again.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Guns don't cause suicide. Redux.

Socialism

A more balanced analysis of the conflicts surrounding grazing on federal lands shows ranchers enjoy great subsidies while suffering government coercion in return. Property rights is the solution.

Education

Reports of sexual assault and harassment skyrocketed again at US military acadamies last school year.

Immigration

The refugee debacle in Europe reminds us that all cultures are not created equal and they often don't mix contrary to the advocates of multiculturalism.

War

While drone pilots are quitting from stress, the Air Force wants to double their number.

We serfs are human shields for rulers is a wonderfully accurate expression.

There's already a low-level and proxy sectarian war going on in the Middle East, but the Saudi's execution of a Shiite cleric among 47 executed on Jan. 1 will escalate that war.

Local

Library use has dropped off while the $64 million library is being built.

The Liberty Way malinvestment continues.

Misc

Study of coment Siding Spring as it passed Mars and 67P by Rosetta and Philae falsify standard comet theory but support electric universe theory.

Somebody is confusing EM fields and gravity. Of course EM fields will produce attractive and repulsive forces.

Foreign Policy

While North Korea is setting off nuclear bombs, government is concerned with Iran.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Obama admits his executive orders advancing gun control are ultimately about banning guns.

War

US military undermined Obama's support for ISIS and others in Syria.

Regulation

Government forces Uber into retreat in Europe.

Police State

NSA compromised two leading encryption chips.

This story about Comcast's home security leaving doors open will become commonplace as the internet of things grows.

Police learn how to use body cameras to their advantage, and that's bad news for victims.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo resist UK spy bill.

Government should buy smart guns, not dictate to others.

Education

Anybody with eyes knows prettier girls get better grades.

Microsoft, Google and Apple dictating first grade education and beyond instead of opening private schools.

Local

Like teachers in a classroom, Dayton police ban all spectators from HS basketball games because of a few bad apples.

Thanks to crappy economies and regulations, Dayton, Ohio and midwest in tops for bed bugs.

Socialism

One motive for BLM's land grabs against ranchers as in Oregon.

"These family farms will go under; will be absorbed into the federal government’s national parks project. Eventually, the cattle rancher will go the way of the practitioner of free-market medicine: extinct. Should these families be driven to extinction qua farmers, where will liberals (I include “naysayer” conservatives) get their “local,” organic, grass-fed beef? Where will said beef be raised once America’s frontier men and women have been driven off the land of their ancestors?"

Big Ag wins.

Resisting BLM is not terrorism. More.

Environment

Mainstream media admits 2015 was not the hottest year on record despite hype.

After failing with Volt, GM introduces Bolt. Like changing the name will help.

Half the world's population lives on 1 percent of the land, belying claims we're using all the world's resources.

Socialism

LA gas leak declared state of emergency.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Supposedly effective, non-lethal bullet.

Environment

El Nino strength linked to clouds.

This supposed monster el Nino is only as powerful as 1997-1998, which is powerful enough and the feeds the global warming frauds, but it's still ridiculously over-hyped.

Economy

The market is crashing again today, and the Fed, along with China, Iran and the Saudis, is being blamed for not doing enough, raising rates too soon. My alternate theory on that: if Yellen and company knew the economy was about to crash, they'd rather have people complain the Fed didn't do enough than it did too much. Being accused of doing to much could ruin its credibility.

Apple shares crash on planned cuts of iPhone production. Who would have predicted that? Oh, wait. It was me.

War

Another American killed and two wounded in Afghanistan.

Economy

Oil hits seven year low on weak demand.

Ohio one of top five states people are leaving.

"Two major reasons for leaving the Midwest — specifically Ohio — are a sluggish economy and an older population seeking to retire in warmer climates, according to the survey. While Ohio’s unemployment rate has decreased more than 50 percent since 2010, the Ohio growth and payroll employment rate — which measures the quantity of wage and salary workers — has only increased 1.4 percent from 2014-2015, much lower than the national average, which has increased 2.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." 

The economy still stinks.

Stocks crash Monday and today.

Car sales up nationally and locally in signs of bubble.

Federal Reserve

The Fed fears inflation.

"Fed policymakers have justified this increase with the view that the economy is strong enough and can stand on its own feet. “The Committee judges that there has been considerable improvement in labor market conditions this year, and it is reasonably confident the inflation will rise over the medium term to its 2 percent objective,” the Fed said in its policy statement."

It's coming.

"Various key economic indicators such as industrial production don’t support this optimism. The yearly growth rate of production fell to minus 1.2 percent in November versus 4.5 percent in November last year. According to our model the yearly growth rate could fall to minus 3.4 percent by August.
Although the yearly growth rate of the CPI rose to 0.5 percent in November from 0.2 percent in October according to our model the CPI growth rate is likely to visibly weaken.
The yearly growth rate is forecast to fall to minus 0.1 percent by April before stabilizing at 0.1 percent by December next year." 

The economy is going down.

"So from this perspective Fed policymakers did not have much of a case to tighten their stance."

They did it because they fear inflation.

Health Care

Alcohol poisoning doubles.

Big Pharma got a recommendation for healthy people over 40 to take statins. That's nuts.

Environment

Tremendous rain and snow predicted for California. Good for Californians. They need it.

Socialism

Government's war against cowboys.

War

Nuclear weapons kill workers.

"This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News. Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases. Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. And 33,480 of these workers have died."

Not good.

Police State

Dutch government backs strong encryption and condemns backdoors.