Police State

How NSA and giant tech firms helped each other build the surveillance state to their mutual advantage.

Snowden's NSA revelations are the story of the year.

Sweden closing prisons because of lack of prisoners. Apparently Sweden's rulers have not figured out the great benefits of the war on drugs.

Americans struggle to reconcile the two Snowdens: the hero who blew the whistle on NSA's ubiquitous spying on Americans and the traitor who outed ubiquitous government spying against foreigners. There is no reconciliation needed. The US through NSA is the aggressor in both cases, and neither can be justified either morally or practically. True defenders of the people would focus on threats - finding needles in the haystack - instead of on building bigger haystacks without any reason to suspect a threat.

Education

MPAA to fund teaching of "value of copyright" in government schools. Can you smell the fascism?

Misc

Russian cosmonauts deliver malware to ISS computers. Netflix and YouTube combine to surpass 50 percent of net traffic in September.

This picture shows how stupid society has become:

War on Drugs

Ohio wastes half million a year - I bet its way more - on a helicopter and pilot to ferret out marijuana farms. The only people who benefit from this are the pilot and the politicians and bureaucrats who fund him. Interview.

Socialism

Facing bankruptcy, the USPS makes deal with Amazon for Sunday delivery.

Immigration

Americans revolt against amnesty again.

"According to new national polling data from Pew Research, the American people have revolted against President Barack Obama’s and the GOP establishment’s efforts to grant amnesty to America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform."

Funny how he fails to mention Democrats.

Health Care

Up to 52 million Americans could lose their health insurance policies because of Obamacare. I don't think the Democrats will be able to successfully blame insurance companies for that. True believers will buy it, but moderates won't.

I thought this article about con men taking advantage of confusion was about Obama and Democrats.

In North Dakota, 30 people have signed up on the exchange while 35,000 people are losing their plans.

Misc

Atheist mega-churches are a reminder than atheism is a religion too.

Foreign Policy

Poor President Obama and top US officials have to travel with security tents to protect themselves from spying by foreign governments including allies. Don't you feel bad for those innocent babies?

Iran blames France for blocking nuclear deal.

War on Drugs

Apparently the guy in New Mexico who was subjected to eight anal probes had politely exercised his rights when stopped by police a few months previously. Maybe he wasn't targeted for race but for having the temerity to assert his rights. As for the "searches":

"All of those procedures took place outside the jurisdiction specified in the warrant; all but the abdominal X-ray were entirely unauthorized and took place after the time limit imposed in the warrant. More importantly, none of this was valid or licit in any sense: As Dr. Ash pointed out, subjecting an unwilling “patient” to invasive procedures was illegal and unethical."
"According to DeSantis, “it was common practice for the task force leadership to double count drug seizures,” reports the Narco News. One of the ways it padded its statistics was to use a specific informant – identified as “SA-163” – to make controlled heroin buys each week, “like clockwork.”
“We would meet someone who was bringing the drugs across the border, and we made the purchases in a parking lot or hotel,” DeSantis attests. “Most of the time, we were just buying the drugs, and every once in a while, we would arrest a [low-level] mule.”
Informant SA-163, as it turned out, “was getting paid by law enforcement and getting street value for his drugs with no risk,” continues DeSantis. The drug dealer enjoyed protected profits, in addition to pay-offs drawn from multiple federal funding sources. His collaborators in the HIDTA were inflating their statistics and building career security – and embezzling federal funds to pay for drinking binges at “training” seminars.
DeSantis blew the whistle, and was promptly fired. The HIDTA continues to be a subsidized blight on New Mexico’s border region, where it helps cultivate a law enforcement culture in which sexual torture of an innocent man is regarded as an appropriate “protocol.”"

Thanks to the war on drugs.

Federal Reserve

Apparently this Fed guy doesn't see the irony in his quote:

"Although some of the enthusiasm for bitcoin is driven by a distrust of state-issued currency, it is hard to imagine a world where the main currency is based on an extremely complex code understood by only a few and controlled by even fewer, without accountability, arbitration, or recourse."

Funny.

The dollar may be doomed, but this guy likes Mexico and the euro.

"Most analysts do not understand the dynamics driving the Euro. They mistakenly assume that if growth is weak, unemployment is high and banks are insolvent that the currency must we weak also. This is not true. The strength of a currency is not driven by the current state of the economy. It is driven by interest rates and capital flows. Right now, Europe has high interest rates compared to the U.S. and Japan and it is receiving huge capital inflows from China."
"Germany benefits more from the Euro than any other country because it facilitates the purchase of German exports by its European trading partners. Citizens throughout Europe favor the Euro because it protects them from the devaluations they routinely experienced under their former currencies. No countries will leave the Euro. New members will be added every year. Germany will do whatever it takes to defend the Euro and the European Monetary System. Based on all of these developments, the Euro will get much stronger."

But if the ECB keeps printing, if it lowers interest rates to nearly zero, if Europe's economy stays in the tank, why would this continue?

Global Warming and Energy

EPA effectively bans most wood burning stoves.

Frauds trying to capitalize on Typhoon Haiyan despite the lowest hurricane energy since the 1970s.

Police State

Britain's equivalent of the NSA, the GCHQ spoofed slashdot and LinkedIn to serve malware to computers. Talk about betraying the internet and its users.

Google's claims its street view vehicles no longer collect information from Wi-Fi. No longer?

Local

Just like everywhere else, cuts to police in Oakwood produced a decrease in crime.

Health Care

Infographic illustrates some reasons people shouldn't eat grains. It misses the insulin response problem.

Mexican coke is replacing cane sugar with HFCS. That's too bad. Another poison US export.

I'm doubt running an electric current through your brain is really a good idea. How do they know there's no memory loss?

In a divorce proceeding, government shrink claims man is bad parent for refusing to take his child to McDonalds after a temper tantrum. Our government is nuts, not this man.

Police State

American convicted of child porn for owning Japanese animation magazine. It doesn't look like he was pardoned either.

Global Warming and Energy

The government is dragging civilization backwards to the point power plants are burning wood for fuel.

The supposed super-typhoon that hit the Philippines was extremely over-hyped.

Health Care

Government hypocrisy on trans-fats.

Foreign Policy

Saudi Arabia joins Israel in attempts to derail US-Iran negotiations.

Local

Power out in Franklin.

Sports

Judge says its OK for college players to seek payment. Isn't that nice of him.

Health Care

Obama says Obamacare created more competition in the health insurance market, but he's wrong.

Obamacare is exacerbating a doctor shortage.

Foreign Policy

The CIA pays AT&T $10 million annually for international call data which AT&T hands over voluntarily. This is another good example illustrating corporations are agents of the government.

Police State

Ohio House passes bill banning red light and speeding cameras.

Federal Reserve

ECB cuts interest rates from nearly zero to even closer to zero.

Tax and Spend

S&P downgrades French bonds.

Politics

Ultra-corrupt Democrat McAuliffe narrowly wins governorship in Virginia. The commentary on this race cracks me up. The people on the left are concerned because his opponent, a supposedly libertarian, almost won despite McAuliffe's corrupt record and support from corrupt Bill Clinton and Pharaoh Obama. People on the right are concerned because their candidate lost despite running against corrupt McAuliffe supported by corrupt Bill Clinton and Pharaoh Obama. Talk about everybody being on the same page and lying about it.

Health Care

Great Pharaoh apologized to people who lost their health care programs after he promised that wouldn't happen. He didn't apologize for lying though.

Global Warming and Energy

The next thing we're supposed to be scared of is jellyfish taking over the oceans.

I'm sure that this year's strongest typhoon so far is dangerous, but every year's strongest typhoon is dangerous.

Police State

The definition of a police state is a state in which the victim has no recourse against the state aggressor. That's the national security US state.

The FBI investigated Isaac Asimov as a Soviet spy. Other than enthralling millions of readers, I doubt there's any higher honor a writer can achieve. I bet William Gibson has reached a similar stature.

Obama exposes the true nature of government and the motive behind spying.

"The Obama administration is considering steps to quiet the uproar over U.S. spy programs, including curbs on foreign surveillance while allowing the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records to continue. "

The foreign surveillance claim was always an excuse. The real target is and always has been the American people.

Snowden was not alone. He reportedly convinced 20 to 25 sympathetic souls to give up their passwords.

Britain's spies appear before MPs in unprecedented appearance on TV. This is a quarter will buy you a couple minutes of parking.

Education

Not to be outdone by outrageously ignorant US government schools, a Canadian school bans elementary school students from touching each other during recess. This edict uses coercion to break down the fundamental cooperative natures of people when they are children, making it more likely they will become sociopaths or psychopaths when they grow up. While this story focuses on tag and other such games, it doesn't mention the more important part of growing up of boys and girls interacting with each other. I bet the latter was the impetus for the ban.

Misc

After nearly 20 years, critics come to understand Starship Troopers. This is why nobody should ever listen to critics. The movie hit people over the head with its satire, but critics are so stupid, they it took them nearly 20 years to get it.

NASA scientists are clueless about an asteroid because it exhibits electrical properties.

Economy

Google is tracking shopping habits of android customers. If Google is doing it, so is Apple, and Microsoft wishes it was doing it and will catch up in a couple of years after screwing it up a couple of times.

Health Care

Several years after the market all but banished trans-fats, the government wades in with its jackboots to threaten violence against their use.

Local

Oakwood cuts police and crime falls. The same would happen everywhere.

Foreign Policy

More on Yaser Arafat's assassination via polonium 210 poisoning.

NSA uses wiretaps on foreign presidents to spy on the US president. Nice.

War

Backstory behind US drone strike that killed Pakistani Taliban commander the day before he was to engage in peace talks.

WWI was the hidden impetus behind the income tax.

The Pentagon admits to a 46 percent increase in sexual assaults this year which is guaranteed to be a lowball number.

Politics

Retires Secret Service agents says Obama is worse than people think. I think he's thoroughly evil and very successful, so I doubt I would be surprised at anything he's heard.

"You give the government information and it will be abused. It is not a matter of if it’ll be abused, it’s only a matter of when…
When the line between the personal self and the public self… when that line is determined by the government that keeps your information in a trove for release any time they need it, how are you free?
..the bottom line is, having worked inside the government, it will be abused. It is only a matter of time."

But Obama is no different than any other president in that regard. The NSA has been using every means available to it to spy on Americans since it was created. The programs Obama is using were started under Bush or earlier.

Regulation

Microsoft makes $2 billion annually from Android patent royalties. This is a $2 billion transfer of wealth from consumers to Microsoft's owners for nothing. This is how billionaires get made.

Claim that voters raised minimum wage in Sea-Tac to $15.

"And voters in some municipalities aren’t waiting for state lawmakers to play catchup. In the Seattle suburb of SeaTac, voters on Tuesday approved a measure to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. That's currently the highest minimum wage in the nation and it will affect workers at SeaTac International Airport, which serves Seattle and Tacoma. "

Claim all the votes haven't been counted yet.

"Washington state already has a higher minimum wage than any other U.S. state, at $9.19 an hour, and the SeaTac wage would be among the nation's highest, just below a $15.38 rate mandated for city workers and contractors in Sonoma, California."

It's such a small number of workers in SeaTac, and it's a relatively inelastic market, so these companies may be able to just raise prices to cover the additional costs. This should be used for a model for the country, that's for sure. But I wonder how Sonoma is doing. I can't find a single article on the consequences in Sonoma.

Global Warming and Energy

Battling theories: cosmic rays linked to global warming or not.

Judith Curry's paper on unreliable models makes mainstream news.

Local

Money stolen from taxpayers pays for babysitting services called pre-school for others. The advantage to the state is it gets a jump-start on brainwashing the children.

Federal Reserve

Insight into Yellen's philosophy.

Top New York cop to take over security at JPMorgan Chase.

"Kelly has a great rapport with JPMorgan’s senior leaders, in particular Chief Executive Jamie Dimon."

I'm sure he does.

China pushes yuan to replace dollar as world's reserve currency. Yuan goes global.

War

More on Pentagon faking arrival ceremonies for bodies of returned MIA servicemen.

Tax and Spend

Italian government sells property to pay off debt. The US should do the same.

Socialism

120 year old criticism of creeping socialism is relevant today.

Police State

TSA to build invasive database to pre-screen travelers.

NSA makes people less free and less safe.

Former NSA codebreaker blew the whistle on NSA spying on Americans a decade ago, but nobody listened.

Misc

Claim that Chinese workers used slick, ice roads to haul 133 ton stone blocks.

This description of the breakup of the asteroid over Russia sounds like fantasy. It includes pure speculation masquerading as science.

"At a height of just under 40 km, the intense pressure started to fragment the asteroid, cracking it into 11 large pieces. This breakup of the main mass was extremely violent, blasting the pieces outward at 400 meters per second (900 miles per hour), scattering them. By the time they dropped to 29 km further breakups had split the rocks into 20 boulder-sized pieces, each weighing about 10 tons, and these themselves broke up as they fell. One bigger piece, probably twice the mass of the others, completely broke up at a height of 22 km — amazingly, it disintegrating so thoroughly that the largest fragment left from it was only about 15 kilograms, smaller than a basketball!"

That's because it was almost certainly broken up by electricity. Since they researchers used energy to determine the mass but they neglected any electrical component of that energy, the mass they probably significantly overestimated the mass.

The twin plumes of smoke also suggest electrical activity.

"The hottest material in the dust trail was down the middle (like the lead in a pencil), so this stuff rose quickly, breaking out of the cooler dust around it. This drew in air from the sides, causing the outer part of the trail to spin horizontally, like two tornadoes on their sides (or like in cloud streets). This actually split the dust trail in two! I was particularly fascinated to read that; the videos and pictures clearly show two trails, and I wondered at the time why that was."

It's because that's how Birkland currents work. This is really good support for the electric universe theory.

"They found that if you were 100 km (62 miles) from the Chelyabinsk impact, at peak brightness — and this stuns me — the asteroid was 30 times brighter than the Sun!"

Kind of like an arc welder. More support for the electrical theory.

Foreign Policy

The US Treasury Department criticized Merkel because Germany runs a trade surplus, providing quality goods at low prices for their trading partners.

Israel is trying to derail nuclear talks between US and Iran.

Education

If 14 year old boys had been arrested for grabbing girls' butts when I was a kid, half of boys would have been in jail. This is another example of criminalizing normal, rude, boyhood behavior. A good slap is the best response. Detention would be OK too. Arrest is ridiculous.

"In the other incident, a 16-year-old student has been charged with a felony for making terroristic threats after social media comments got out of hand, Davis said. The teen posted on twitter.com, and other students pointed out something about the tweet that embarrassed the student. The student responded with threatening to get a rifle and shoot people, Davis said."

This is ridiculous too.

"The teen does not have the means to carry out the threat, according to police. He has been placed in a juvenile detention center.
“Our school resource officers were in place, and kids were willing to report this. It’s good that this (process) works,” Davis said. You have to teach kids they have to take things like this seriously and not to wait.”"

This isn't working.

Teen arrested for not getting out of bed and going to school.

The state's monopoly on education increases prices and lowers quality, and that's before accounting for ideology.

War on Drugs

Colorado's tax on marijuana is already so high that black market prices are lower, but residents vote to raise taxes on it anyway.

The Silk Road is back online. Black market drug sites can no longer be trusted.

After he rolled through a stop sign, police perform anal search of man eight times for drugs.

"When Eckert got out of his car, officers indicated that they believed he was in possession of drugs – in his anal cavity.
“They say when he stepped out of his car he was standing in a manner that looked as if he was clinching his buttocks,” Shannon Kennedy, Eckert’s attorney, told KOB-TV.
A judge granted a search warrant to perform an anal cavity search on Eckert shortly after he was taken into custody. KOB reports that a doctor refused to perform the anal cavity search at a Deming emergency room, saying it was “unethical.” Eckert was then transported to Gila Regional Medical Center, where his alleged trauma began."

First, the traffic stop was unwarranted. Second, the search warrant for supposedly standing with clenched buttocks was unwarranted. When at the mercy of government agents, who wouldn't stand with clenched buttocks? Good for the doctor who refused. Then it goes without saying the searches were unwarranted.

"Kennedy said her client has been “absolutely terrified” since the January incident.
“I mean it’s absolutely unimaginable that this could happen in America,” Kennedy told KOB."

Apparently Kennedy hasn't been paying attention. This is the new normal in the US. To add economic loss to injury, the victim was sent a bill for the procedures forced upon him too.

"It's unclear why the colonoscopy was necessary after enemas and x-rays did not reveal hidden drugs. Eckert was sent a $6,000 bill for the medical procedures he involuntarily underwent, his lawyer says."

Unclear for sure. He may have been targeted by Hispanic cops because he's white.

Economy

The government says there are three million more poor Americans than the government says.

"The government says there are about 3 million more poor people in the United States than its official count shows."

The government can't even agree with itself.

"But the bureau also has an alternative measure of poverty that factors in everyday costs, such as out-of-pocket medical expenses, that haven't been calculated as part of the official rate.
The alternative measure is intended to provide a more complete picture of poverty. It shows that 49.7 million people were in poverty last year."

This sounds like an admission that government is making people poorer. Obviously this is the first step in a campaign to expand the definition of poor, but government really is making us poorer.

Comparison of Iceland and Ireland shows Iceland's inflation did more damage that Ireland's deflation.

The five ways to create a monopoly all start with government interventions in the market.

Mercedes-Benz sales reach record, showing the rich are getting richer.

Health Care

Washington state votes for GMO labeling. This regulation will be captured by Monsanto, Dow and other GM companies to the detriment of the people.

Benefits of saturated fat.

Government doctors in France increase death rate in critically ill patents by giving them statins.

"My first thought was, “Who in their right mind would think that critically ill patients would get better by poisoning a crucial enzyme?”  Statin drugs poison the crucial enzyme HMG CoA Reductase."

Government.

Antibiotic resistance has spread through the wild.

How to get a great night's sleep.

Call for Republicans to rework Obamacare to their advantage. That's already their goal.

Obamacare policies also restricts facilities and doctors policyholders can use.

Government's top Obamcare tech guy resigns. I'm sure he's highly coveted by the private sector, but not for any tech skills.

Obamacare incentivizes married couples to divorce. This must be by design. This fits right in with government's war on marriage and families.

Pharaoh Obama to exempt unions from some Obamacare taxes.

How the FDA drives up the cost of medicine.

Breakthrough enables researchers to modify human genes. All the promise will be overwhelmed by eugenics and evil control schemes like changing the genes of students diagnoses with ADHD to make them more docile.

War

Three trucks carrying chemicals seized trying to run through the Turkish border. This sounds like it was staged by the rebels to keep Syrian chemicals in the news.

How Obama managed to make things worse in the Middle East.

Tax and Spend

People don't want to believe they've been duped about Social Security, Medicare or anything else, but government will teach them economic reality when the checks stop coming.

Federal Reserve

The six major western central banks agree to permanent liquidity swaps, and the Chinese central bank agrees for three years. This means the banks can inflate faster and more synchronized than ever, more effectively stealing people's money and funneling into the hands of our new feudal overlords.

Global Warming and Energy

New study finds pause and previous global warming due to natural climate cycles. Judith Curry is not even a skeptic, but she'll be kicked out of the climate establishment club after this.

Climate models are worse than frauds thought. Duh.

It's probably true that children today grow up with fear of global warming like my generation grew up with fear of nuclear attack. The difference is the potential for nuclear attack, small as it is, is non-zero because some lunatic could launch a bomb. The potential for catastrophic global warming is zero, for all intents and purposes, is zero.

Global temperatures fall significantly in October.

Regulation

Let's hope this town votes to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour so everybody in the US can see the resulting destruction.

Police State

TSA union calls for arming TSA agents. That didn't take long.

In a publicity stunt, the FBI obtains a warrant to search the TSA shooter's government views.

"The FBI got a warrant Monday to search the cellphone of alleged gunman Paul Ciancia for materials reflecting his "views on the legitimacy or activities of the United States government, including the existence of a plot to impose a New World Order," according to court documents."

They don't need a warrant for that. They can write their own warrant under the Patriot Act. Besides which, NSA already has the information available to them. They've probably already seen it which is why they staged this stunt to look for it.

Google's hypocritical CEO, who helps NSA spy on people every way he can, calls NSA spying outrageous.

Dutch use computer program that simulates 10 year old Filipino girl to catch sex offenders. Apparently they have no concept of entrapment, and neither does anybody else any more.

Apple claims to publish report of government demands for user information, but the US government makes it illegal to report many such demands - think Lavabit - so this information is worthless. Here's a more honest article:

"Although the report sheds some light on the topic, it also demonstrates the futility of such disclosure efforts, particularly when it comes to information related to requests from the U.S. government.
As Apple notes in the report:
"The U.S. government has given us permission to share only a limited amount of information about these orders, with the requirement that we combine national security orders with account-based law enforcement requests and report only a consolidated range in increments of 1000.""

This is all propaganda to make it look like corporations are resisting their government gods. They are not.

The secret police - FBI - refuses to answer questions about Boston Marathon bombing.

"Secrecy has become the rule. In Boston, the prosecutor of accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has asked the judge to withhold filings from the media. The FBI won’t even identify the agent who shot and killed a key witness in the investigation in Orlando, Florida, let alone clear up the muddy circumstances around the shooting. And the Bureau has ordered the sealing of a county coroner’s completed autopsy report of that killing."

"The information blackout of the past six months stands in stark contrast to the FBI’s river of leaks to pet reporters during the week following the April 15 bombing.
This tactic of handing out selective “scoops” gave the FBI control of the narrative as it steered public opinion toward viewing the Boston Bombing as an open-and-shut case against the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar.
As part of the quid pro quo for these scoops, favored journalists are not likely to press the government for answers to discomfiting questions."

This the new normal Americans have allowed.

Education

Florida school district backs off zero tolerance to reduce arrests of students.

"The move is designed to cut down on what has become known as the "school-to-prison pipeline," where students accused of offenses like disrupting class or loitering are suspended, arrested and charged with crimes."

While this sounds reasonable, it's only because government has made our world so insane.

Middle school coach fired for planning to take team to Hooters. Why? Boys cannot be allowed to be boys.

Misc

Chinese professor uses LEDs for wireless network.

Foreign Policy

Hypocritical Brazilians admit spying on US.

The one thing NSA should spy on is foreign heads of state, but Feinstein supports those heads of state over the American people. Of course she does. They're rulers. We're serfs.

Local

Horizon Science Academy students are so dumb that three overdosed on blood pressure medicine. Another tremendous failure of government schools and the war on drugs. Apparently they took over the counter cold medicine. In Dayton, morons get to special treatment and go to special schools.

Police are inspecting people's homes to determine if they're safe for children. You have to be kidding me.

Water main break closes Main Street.

The bomb squad scrambles again.

War on Drugs

Some states have laws that imprison pregnant women if the state believes they are doing drugs.

Health Care

Drugs fed cattle in CAFOs can make you unhealthy.

Robot surgery problems going unreported.

86 year old woman kills herself by running New York Marathon.

"“At least she was running, the way she wanted to go,” Miss Johnson’s daughter, Diana Boydston, of San Jose, Calif., told theNew York Daily News."

Somehow I doubt she would have said the same thing if her mother had blown her brains out. Hypocrite.

Obama lies about previously lying about Obamacare.

Obamacare is a new package of an old program.

You are stronger than you think. Your mind lies to you about how strong you are to protect you.

Foreign Policy

Hope for a deal between the US and Iran.

War on Drugs

I guess the flurry of DDN war on drug articles is because the growth of the DEA's budget has been slightly slowed.

Tax and Spend

French government is inadvertently teaching economics.

"More than 70 per cent of the French feel taxes are “excessive”, and 80 per cent believe the president’s economic policy is “misguided” and “inefficient”. This goes far beyond the tax exiles such as Gérard Depardieu, members of the Peugeot family or Chanel’s owners. Worse, after decades of living in one of the most redistributive systems in western Europe, 54 per cent of the French believe that taxes – of which there have been 84 new ones in the past two years, rising from 42 per cent of GDP in 2009 to 46.3 per cent this year – now widen social inequalities instead of reducing them. "

Too bad Americans haven't figured this out yet.

"Take last year’s famous 75 per cent supertax, on individuals earning over one million euros a month. This has still not been implemented. First, it got struck down by France’s Constitutional Council on a technicality. Leaks suggested the rate would fall to 66 per cent. They were confirmed, then denied. Hollande eventually vowed that the tax would be paid by the targeted individuals’ employers, for daring to offer such “obscenely” high salaries. This has just been approved by the National Assembly, and must still pass the Senate. So far, it is only supposed to apply to 2013 and 2014 income, but no one knows if the bill will be prolonged, killed or transformed.
What we do know is that this non-existent (so far) tax has been the clincher that sent hundreds, possibly thousands of French citizens abroad: not just “the rich”, whom Hollande, during his victorious campaign, said he personally “disliked”, and who now are pushing up house prices in South Kensington and fighting bitterly over the Lycée Charles de Gaulle’s 1,200 new places; but also the ambitious young, who feel that their own country will turn on them the minute they achieve any measure of personal success."

They'll erect capital controls soon.

Police State

Withholding passwords on your employers equipment is stealing. People who get caught stealing tend to go to jail.

Police lock down Central Connecticut State University because of a guy in a Halloween costume carrying a sword.

Let's hope for a thorough, public investigation of NSA and CIA, but I'm not sure such a thing is possible given all NSA's blackmail material.

Economy

Evidence the tech bubble is about to burst.

Misc

I've yet to hear of the discovery of one planet like the earth, but this study claims such planets have been found around 22 percent of sun-like stars. This sounds like wishful thinking or more likely propaganda to gain more funding.

Global Warming and Energy

The 17 year pause doesn't make headlines because it's boring.

"We (the world) didn’t have an unusual number of floods, we don’t seem to have any major droughts going on, total polar ice is unremarkable, arctic ice bottomed out well within the tolerances slowly being established by its absurdly short baseline, antarctic ice set a maximum record (but just barely, hardly newsworthy) in ITS absurdly short baseline, the LTT temperatures were downright boring, and in spite of the absurdly large spikes in GASTA in GISS vs HADCRUT4 on a so-called “temperature anomaly” relative to a GAST baseline nobody can measure to within a whole degree centigrade, neither one of them did more than bounce around in near-neutral, however much the “trend” in GISS is amplified every second or third month by its extra-high endpoint."

Happily boring.

Sunspots for solar cycle 24 jump in October, finally meeting NASA's projection.

War

Claim that DoD and CIA doctors allowed and enabled torture of prisoners.

Contractors used prostitutes to enable over-charging for services by millions of dollars. Why is the contractor the bad guy? It sounds like the Navy people are the bad guys to me.

Western Muslims including Americans are fighting in jihadists wars in the Middle East. This guy predicts they will bring those wars back to the west including the US.

Terrorist threats against our socialist water supply.

As Iraq spirals into another civil war, Petraeus tries to influence history into believing he won the war in Iraq.

Local

More whooping cough cases. More info on whooping cough in general.

Dayton's homicide rate out-pacing last year, but the DDN wants to focus on guns.

Former professor previously convicted of child porn found with child porn again.

Aquarius nightclub seems to be the latest target for Dayton's supreme predators.

"The Aquarius nightclub could be on the way out of business after police and fire crews ordered "at least 400 people" out of the building last weekend because the occupancy was supposed to be capped at 49."

How in the world can their occupancy be capped at 49, and who are these oppressors to cap it anyway? The owner should be the only person with that power.

"A fire department inspector, contacted during the weekend, said the club had been issued a temporary order from the fire department to limit the occupancy because of outstanding violations."

So it was punitive, designed to put the club out of business.

"Last April, News Center 7 went inside the club when the city tried to pull the liquor license because city officials learned Kelley was leasing the building to the former owners of the A-List Lounge."

And the city's rulers have a vendetta against those guys.

Health Care

Editorial in major British health magazine calls for eating more saturated fat.

"As of 2010, recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture¹ (USDA) call for reducing your saturated fat intake to a mere 10 percent of your total calories or less. This is astounding, considering the fact that many health experts now believe you likely need anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of healthful fats for optimal health! "

They're making us sick on purpose. Government's My plate guidelines completely removed fats.

Government's failed war on cancer turns 40.

The dangers of gene patents.

Misc

The lost history of the Revolutionary War.

"Throughout the book, Jensen describes a key philosophical divide between two factions of revolutionaries – and it is the divide that played out throughout the period of the Confederation, to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and through the first half of the nineteenth century – finally culminating in complete victory for one side.
On one side, the revolutionaries consisted of true federalists (wrongly labeled “anti-federalists”) – those who looked to independence from England as a means to independence for each of the several states.  It is this group that Jensen refers to as the more radical throughout the book and it is this group that aligned more with the idea of self-government (or state sovereignty).  Jensen places Thomson in this camp – just as he does Sam Adams, to whom Thomson is favorably compared.
On the other side were the nationalists (popularly, but incorrectly, labeled “federalists”) – those that wanted a strong, coercive central government.  They wanted independence from England because they wanted to keep the fruits of coercive central government to accrue to themselves.  This group ultimately prevailed – through incremental steps such as the Constitution, larger steps such as Lincoln’s war, and ultimately at the turn of the twentieth century with empire, central banking and war as key foundations."

Like Jefferson versus Hamilton in Hamilton's Curse.

War

Obama told his aides he's "really good at killing people".

Military hospitals are hooking veterans on opiates.

"The treatment has led to the growing number of crimes committed by veterans, says RBC. Once a patient feels that the prescribed opiates are not enough for them, they try to get he meds for themselves illegally. In some cities, where hospitals are located, courts have to provide a special day in their schedule for those veterans, who broke the law.
Many of addicted veterans, one in every three of them, to be more precise, either die from a drug overdose, a lethal combination of various potent drugs or commit suicide. One out of five dies in car accidents. Among those who were diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the numbers are even worse: up to 80 percent of patients die from the above-mentioned reasons."

That's nuts.

Back when government started the war on terror, libertarians claimed that the definition of terror would be broadened to oppress anybody who didn't support the government. The UK proved that to be true when it detained Glenn Greenwald's partner for terrorism.

Iraq is spiraling down into another civil war.

Israel to cement annexation of West Bank by building a security wall between it and Jordan.

More skepticism about US motives for killing Taliban leader the day before he was to meet with Pakistani officials in peace talks.

Local

Fourteen school levies in the area, nine asking for new funds.

Bomb squad blows up a backpack for propaganda purposes.

Health Care

It's nice to see the healthy, high fat diet going mainstream.

"Experts say the belief that high-fat diets are bad for arteries is based on faulty interpretation of scientific studies and has led to millions being ‘over-medicated’ with statin drugs.
Doctors insist it is time to bust the myth of the role of saturated fat in heart disease.
Some western nations, such as Sweden, are now adopting dietary guidelines that encourage foods high in fat but low in carbs."

This is really good news.

Men's wellbeing depends on meeting up with friends at least twice a week.

Federal Reserve

Andrew Jackson ended the Second Bank of the United States with a veto.

"You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."

That would be a wonderful response to critics who resist cutting any government program.

How to take your money out of the bank without going to prison.

"Although personally, I think we have some time to prepare before the currency is collapsed, the dates which have me most concerned are November 13th and 14th which are the dates coinciding with Grid Ex II in which a simulated continental power grid failure will be rehearsed."

They rehearse these things because they plan for them to happen.

Global Warming and Energy

US tornado count on pace to set record low by a large margin.

"US Tornadoes are currently on pace for a record low annual tornado count, which has penetrated deep into the legend in the graph above and is relevant globally, as the US represents about 75 percent of the world’s recorded tornadoes. Last week I pointed out that the Atlantic Hurricane Season was the Quietest in 45 Years and the week before that I showed that Antarctic Sea Ice Didn’t Get The Memo That It Was Supposed To Melt. It is amazing how easy alarmist scare forecasts/predictions  can be falsified with readily available data..."

So much for that extreme weather, but when winter gets bitter cold, alarmists will blame climate change again.

RSS temperatures officially show a downward trend, basically flat, for the last 17 years.

"Nick Stokes’ program provides much tighter error bars and therefore his times for a 95% significance are less than that of SkS. In my previous post on August 25, I said: On six different data sets, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 18 and 23 years. That statement was based on the trend from the SkS page. However based on the trend from Nick Stokes’ page, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 16 and 20 years on several different data sets."

I bet it gets cold soon.

Police State

More on the Dark Mail Alliance encrypted email project of Silent Circle and Lavabit. They plan to launch it in early 2014.

Der Spiegel published an article written by Edward Snowden.

TSA union calls for armed guards at every checkpoint. That's the first step to arming TSA agents.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

EPA shuts down only US lead producer, seriously reducing lead supply for ammo.

"With no more lead being processed in America, we are now completely dependent on our largest creditor, China, to supply the necessary base metals for ammunition production."

Lovely.

Politics

Political murders in Greece.

Hillary makes big bucks speaking at private equity firms.

Tax and Spend

Anti-tax riots in France.

Food bank volunteers panicking because of food stamp cuts.

How the military spending scam works.

"So they over promise what it can do; they under promise what it’s going to cost.  And then you figure, all right, this will come to light and it will all come to an end.  But by then, they’ve done the second scam, which is political engineering, where they make sure that all the jobs associated with this particular program are spread out among so many congressional districts that it becomes politically impossible, once the taxpayer spigot has been turned on for this program, ever to turn if off again, no matter how absurd the program is, no matter how obviously unworkable it is, no matter whether the enemy it was designed for even exists any more.  And this is just one aspect.  And then I just talk about how it hurts firms that have the Pentagon as a client because they become weirdly unable to complete in the normal economy anymore because of the perverse incentives of the Pentagon, and just on and on."

And we all lose.

Media

I still don't understand why Glenn Greenwald sent his partner through British security with Snowden's leaked documents.

"British authorities claimed the domestic partner of reporter Glenn Greenwald was involved in "terrorism" when he tried to carry documents from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden through a London airport in August, according to police and intelligence documents. Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was detained and questioned for nine hours by British authorities at Heathrow on August 18, when he landed there from Berlin to change planes for a flight to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
After his release and return to Rio, Miranda filed a legal action against the British government, seeking the return of materials seized from him by British authorities and a judicial review of the legality of his detention."

While the terrorism charge is ridiculous, Greenwald had to know this would happen. It sounds like he planned it.

Police State

Playfully pointing a toy gun at a cop is stupid, but it shouldn't be a crime.

"Preciado faces charges of attempted robbery and felony menacing."

These charges are ridiculous.

Police electrocute man three times to keep him from entering his burning house to save his three year old son.

TSA blowback.

"… a law enforcement official told The Times that a note was found on the gunman expressing “disappointment in the government” and noting that he had no interest in hurting “innocent people.” Ciancia also sent a sibling a text message last week suggesting that he was prepared to die, officials said.
It appears the gunman targeted Transportation Security Administration agents, who are not armed. Authorities said he approached several people cowering in the airport terminal, pointed his gun at them, asked if they “were TSA” and then moved on without pulling the trigger if the answer was no. A witness said the gunman cursed the TSA repeatedly as he moved through the terminal."

"Who are not armed." The plan to arm TSA moves forward. Shooter's motive:

"Investigators recovered a rambling note from the bag the shooter allegedly was carrying, which detailed an intent to "kill" TSA officers, said two federal law enforcement officials familiar with the message's contents.
Bowdich said the handwritten note made it clear that the suspect intended to kill "multiple" TSA employees and to "instill fear into their traitorous minds.""

It sounds like this guy was recruited. His recruiter probably expected and hoped he'd be killed.

Even the New York Times slams NSA with this headline:

"No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A."

Nice.

Interactive NSA summary article in the Guardian. 

US spy agencies were out of control in 1975 too.

Foreign Policy

New Snowden leaks show all of Europe's security agencies cooperate on mass surveillance. So much for the hypocritical European rulers.

"The files also make clear that GCHQ played a leading role in advising its European counterparts how to work around national laws intended to restrict the surveillance power of intelligence agencies."

Laws are for serfs, not rulers.

Japan and Russia teaming up to check power of China and North Korea.

Health Care

Deeper technical problems with healthcare.gov.

Millions have insurance canceled and are forced to buy significantly more expensive plans.

Obamacare is making people lose their insurance.

"George Schwab of North Carolina was “’perfectly happy” to continue paying Blue Cross Blue Shield a premium of $228 a month to insure himself and his wife.
President Obama wasn’t having any of it. By legislative fiat, he stopped what was a mutually beneficial arrangement between the two consenting parties.
On Oct. 30, Big Brother Obama claimed that Mr. Schwab and millions of happy customers like him were “underinsured.” So Obama ensured that for “underinsuring” themselves, these Americans would lose their insurance.
Mr. Schwab and his ilk are now without insurance."

"He discovered that Barack Obama’s command-and-control, nationalized “marketplace” would be charging him $948 a month for a plan that met the president’s requirements, one of which was that everybody must “contribute.” Everyone must “take some measure of responsibility,” preached Obama.
A monthly premium hike of more than 400 percent is to be Mr. Schwab’s “contribution” to the un-Affordable Care Act’s collective kitty. …"

Thanks, government.

Right on cue, government propagandists are blaming insurance companies, not the government regulations, for canceling plans.

"An MSNBC reporter is confident that Kathleen “Sebelius survived [the] Obamacare grilling” on Capitol Hill. But then the Obama lickspittles at the network also believe that “the insurance companies and not the law” are to blame for the loss of medical coverage by a million Americans, so far. "

This is playing out exactly as Democrats planned when they passed Obamacare. More blame for insurance companies.

Why government health care can never work. This is an excellent article.

Misc

Google ships QuickOffice, a suite to edit Microsoft Office documents, for free with latest Android release. The market to the rescue again.

Education

I'm not surprise that the Common Core math test funded by Bill Gates is stupid. Look at Windows.

Local

Bomb threat at Vandalia business.

Moraine is stealing $750,000 from taxpayers and giving it to some big business plutocrats in more obscene cronyism.

"The project, codenamed “Project Southbound”, will require funding by ED/GE, the city of Moraine and JobsOhio, the state’s private development arm, Moraine’s application said.
The work would involve advanced materials and manufacturing, as well as logistics and distribution. Jobs to be created would yield a $25 million annual payroll at an average annual salary of $32,000 to $35,000, the application said."

That's a lot of tax money for low-paying jobs.

"Moraine put the expected income tax boost from the company’s presence at the plant at $450,000 to $500,000 a year."

It's always about the loot.

War

Man claims he told the FBI that Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2003, but the FBI won't pay him the $25 million reward. This is more evidence the US knew where he was the whole time. Here's his problem:

"The al-Qaida leader was killed in May 2011 during a Navy SEAL raid on the three-story compound. U.S. officials have said the house wasn't built until 2005, and Pakistani officials have said they believe he moved there in the summer of that year."

He may have been in Abbottabad before the compound was built.

Two French journalists kidnapped and killed in Mali.

Gulf nations increase aid to Syrian terrorists.

1983 NATO war game was so realistic, the Soviet Union almost launched nuclear missiles. Provoking a nuclear power doesn't make much sense, but the US still does it to North Korea.

Numbers support case that Pakistan government secretly condones US drone strikes.

"But Pakistan’s ministry of defense told parliament Oct. 31 that only 67 civilians were among 2,227 people killed in 317 drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) since 2008. Pakistan had recently told the UN that at least 400 civilians had been killed in drone attacks since 2004.
The Pakistani defense ministry statement endorses the U.S. position that these attacks have killed only a few civilians. The government had been blaming the US for breach of its sovereignty.
Bashir says the attacks don’t do any good, and only increase the number of US enemies. Many people know relatives of drone victims, he says."

I find it hard to believe that only 67 civilians were killed.

Education

Even private-public schools, in response to government schools, invite perverts to work for them.

Police State

Gunman kills TSA agent at LAX. I bet this starts a movement to arm TSA agents. I wonder if this was a false flag intended to do just that. I bet Congress's most authoritarian stooge introduces a bill to arm TSA soon. I won't be surprised if Feinstein introduces a bill she had already written to arm TSA. Daily Mail reports.

More on the heroic Dark Mail Alliance of Silent Circle and Lavabit.

Global Warming and Energy

Obama signs executive order making it easier for state and local governments to respond to weather disasters, admitting the US government makes it harder for that to happen. This is done in the name fighting climate change.

The fundamental needs of humans are air, water, and shelter. Nobody can control air, but the world's greatest predators already control water to their benefit and our detriment.

War

Syria completes destruction of chemical weapons facilities.

The official story behind Israel's attack on Syria is it was to prevent weapons from reaching Hezbollah. Maybe, or maybe Israel is just helping to overthrow Assad.

Compare Syria's lawfulness to Israel's lawlessness.

As Taliban leaders in Pakistan meet to discuss making peace, the US attacks them with a drone strike.

A few weirdos claim the Iraq war was a success. Based on its published goals, it's a failure, but government programs are never really about their published goals. They're always about looting. This story kills Petraeus.

Sr-72 to fly twice as fast as SR-71. I'm skeptical.

US to blow up another lovely island for training.

Regulation

Apple-Microsoft+ consortium files patent suit against Google and android. Maybe that's because android makes up 81 percent of all smart phone shipments. Google also owns 67 percent of the search market share. Again, this is what government is all about.

Politcs

Comcast donates heavily to defeat mayor who wants to lay fiber that would compete with Comcast. That's what government's all about.

Misc

Malware seems to use ultrasonic communication to spread even when disconnected from a network.

Teens are rapidly abandoning Facebook for alternative social networking sites. Teens aren't that dumb despite government schools.

This woman from Monsters and Men is going to be a star.

Local

Power outages after storms. Out of state crews respond.

Whooping cough was big around here last year, and many cases have already been reported in Clark County.

Huber Heights resists re-valuing property because of tax revenue it would lose.