Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Group Think to protect from violence. Doesn't the government already conduct that training for employees?

Students are great at working in groups. They practice fire drills. Would it be advisable for children to be trained for a violence attack? It is such a horrible thought. What would it do to their 'innocence' as young people?

My older son is interesting. He lives an interesting life. He and wife decided they wanted to be trained for handguns. They also, along the way, found out it was fun for them to compete. The point is, THEY ARE ADULTS, he learned to think differently when it came to personal safety and the concern for his home. He and she have changed their point of view and attitude about safety. They are interesting to talk to about it. 

They are today, what could be said as tough minded. They have a clearer understanding of "us and them." My son took more lessons than his wife and he enjoys his guns now. They are more than simply a protection factor. He has a machine in his workroom to make his own bullets. He is quite good at it. So, for him it has become a hobby as well as an education in self-protection.

But, thinking of him and her, how does that translate into students in a high school or college classroom?  

I realize children learn to use guns and even hunt with parents and family, but, that isn't acceptable in all households. So, it would be a real challenge to find a way to educate young people and their teachers about safety for their classrooms.

In college the students change classrooms. It would be more difficult to find a way for all those folks to work together unless there was a specific education they had learn to work together.

My reservation to all is this. 

If we are educating children to act as a group to defeat a gunman aren't we also educating the gunman?

I think I'll leave it there.

I need to temper this a little bit because no one is identifying the reason the FBI is taking this seriously.


There has been concern about the server, however, I doubt the FBI is very worried about the former Secretary's use. That isn't their specialty. It is why the emails are going through the State Departments review.

The issues that have come up, which is no surprise to the FBI, is that there is a potential hackers, possibly Russian. If there was any hackers into a reasonably secure server, then it is the hackers and what they did the FBI would be most interested in finding. 

The USA needs to know if the former Secretary was compromised. That is about the country and not the Secretary. This is why I said, currently the House leadership doesn't know how to handle power. There are Congressional members involved in the Oversight Committee, the mother of all oversight commitees, that are running their mouths about the campaign of Hillary Clinton and how she must be wanted in a dozen states of the USA. 

October 7, 2015


A technology subcontractor (click here) that has worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail setup expressed concerns over the summer that the system was inadequately protected and vulnerable to hackers, a company official said Wednesday.

But the concerns were rebuffed by the company managing the Clinton account, Platte River Networks, which said it had been instructed by the FBI not to make changes. The FBI has been reviewing the security of the e-mail system.

The subcontractor, Datto, which specializes in backing up data, had not been aware that it was handling Clinton e-mails until media reports in August noted Platte River Networks’ involvement with the controversy surrounding the former secretary of state’s e-mails....

This entire mess is blown out of proportion and the Republicans can't wait to get in front of a camera to defame Hillary Clinton regardless the subject. Now, the mother of all oversight committees have created a special committee to investigation Planned Parenthood and abortion.

The Republicans are out of control, they do not have vast many years of experience and they are running government investigations for the purpose of politics. You've got to be joking to say otherwise. Abortion? Republicans? It is all politics all the time. They don't know how to handle power. 

This is Iowa and the animals at the Cricket Hallow Zoo are only contained because they think they can't break out.



...The lawsuit began to unfold in Cedar Rapids federal court (click here) about two months after government inspectors wrote that the Sellners “have not shown good faith” in correcting violations documented in earlier U.S. Department of Agriculture visits. The couple three times in 2014 and 2015 “failed to provide” inspectors with access to facilities, animals and records, the USDA wrote.
Cricket Hollow Zoo, its owners wrote on Facebook, is a private zoo exhibiting birds and animals alongside a dairy farm in Manchester.
“We house a large number of big cats, monkeys, bears, wolves and many other exotic animals that families in our area don’t get to see every day,” the page reads.
The Sellners told supporters on Facebook about their legal plight and encouraged supporters to attend the hearing.
“We are doing our best to fight back against a powerful animal rights group with almost unlimited funding,” a post by Pam Sellner said. “ ... We have personally received hate mail, death threats, private detectives taking illegal photos, aerial photos, trespassing, slanders and lies, much of it by people who have never even been here.
The ALDF asserts three violations of the Endangered Species Act — unlawful “take” of a protected species, unlawful possession of protected species and unlawful trafficking of protected species in commerce....

A no fly zone over Syria is unrealistic.

The United Nations Security Council will have to pass a resolution. Russia will veto it. So when Republicans talk about Syria they need to be realistic and not proposing methods that absolutely won't work.

The ONLY productive conversation about Russia and Syria lies along human rights abuse. If Russia was so interested in stabilizing Syria why did it take so long? The deaths and the mass movement of people out of Syria is because Russian abandoned their ally. And why?

Because Russia is scared of the USA and when Ukraine presented itself as a threat to Russia's eastern border Syria was abandoned. The Russian ships in Syrian's port left and didn't at all leave behind a force to stabilize the country AT LEAST on the coast where the Alawites call home.

Russia abandoned Syria and Assad was then focused on eastern Syria where the Alawites were. Assad didn't take up the fight against Deash. It was the Arab Coalition that took up the fight against Daesh. 

And, by every measure that is still the case today. There needs to be a great of communication between Russia and the USA regarding Syria. There needs to be a resolution brought to the UN Security Council ASSIGNING longitude and latitude to the territories the Arab Coalition is carrying out destabilization of Syria and the longitude and latitude of the Russian support of the Assad government. Quite frankly the UN Security Council needs to be meeting daily because there are issues with Syria and there are enormous problems burgeoning in Europe with the invasion of young men into Germany.

DAILY.
The former Secretary Clinton has changed her mind about the TPP because she finally knows what it looks like. I have yet seen an official and final draft of this disaster.
Semolina flour in the health food stores makes grits if there is no other source. Recipe online.
Anthea Butler, (click here) a black professor at the University of Pennsylvania, called Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson a "coon" for saying he has no problem with people flying a Confederate flag on their private property, reported Campus Reform.

I am Caucasian. Irish to be exact.  However, it has been my experience that African Americans can be very loose with their descriptors. The community is the community. She may want to apologize and find different words to express herself.

I would never get away with this. Neither would any other Caucasian, but, the communities are different. 

Ms. Butler should reflect on her standing and realize she is looked to or criticism. The criticism would reach more people without the colloquialism. The words that are definitively racial catches people off guard and causes them to focus on the anger rather than the message.

She should try again.
Hillary Clinton carries a great deal of hope within the Democratic party. She is the best qualified person to be president. 

Republican pundits want to point a finger at her as if she caused complete compromise of the USA national security. They need to measure their own before they take issue with Hillary Clinton. 

The reason the Republicans like to pick on Democratic candidates is because they are blind to their own issues. I would think the surprise candidate this year that wants to 'Make America Great Again," would cause a great deal of reflection actually. 

But, that is asking way too much from Republican pundits that believed the results of 2012 for Romney was incorrect. Talk about living in denial.
The GREAT ROVE was bit in the butt. Ah, to be a fly on the wall during the subsequent meetings.


If there is one thing Hillary Clinton doesn't have is an over inflated ego.

I trust C-Span. 

Lucky ducks, they don't have to protest or take the petroleum industry to court.

How does anyone get billions out of that? Dollars, maybe, during the $100 per barrel days. 

October 7, 2015

(AP) - A new study plays (click here) down the fracking potential of California's vast Monterey Shale oil deposits.
Federal energy experts in 2011 estimated the Monterey Shale formation overall to hold a staggering 14 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
A study out Tuesday by the U.S. Geological Survey is the latest to deflate those boom estimates. The new study says that the most productive part of the giant Monterey formation has just 21 million barrels of oil recoverable by fracking. That's in addition to 393 million barrels recoverable by conventional drilling.
The Monterey Shale not long ago was regarded as a game-changer in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted calls from environmentalists to ban fracking.

I would not expect Elizabeth Warren to run. She likes her work. She is also interested in serving Massachusetts. If her constituents wanted to see her run, she might. But, there is a lot of work to do, to protect Americans and raise their fiscal esteem. I just don't see her running for President.

I am quite confident she feels about Massachusetts the same way the late Senator Ted Kennedy did. He did a great deal of work from the Senate. I am quite sure he was asked to be Vice President or a member of the President's Cabinet many times, but, he never did. 

Massachusetts is a really great state. It is an honor to serve those people. They are full of heart for each other. I would think it is very difficult to leave that service to them as a Senator or otherwise. It is the kind of thing no one wants to leave. They are great people.
 
White House Summit on Worker Voice (click here)

Union leaders are not simply people elected to head up a collective bargaining. They know what they are talking about. They are also backed up by advisers and attorneys if needed. That is what collective bargaining does. Collective bargaining brings the interest of the union to power. Collective bargaining can do what one person can't.

Collective bargaining isn't about anarchy or exploitation of a company, it is about fairness and supporting the ability of the American worker to be a consumer that supports companies AND stockholders.

GMC fell apart when it abandoned the American worker. There isn't any economic magic to know. We know how important American labor is and vital it is to the American economy. 

Drip - Trickle is a pipe dream. 

The Obama administration (click here) and the leaders of 11 other Pacific Rim nations—Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan—have been negotiating an ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement since 2010.
The AFL-CIO provided the Obama administration with ideas to improve U.S. trade positions so that they work for the 99%, not just the 1%. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear the TPP will not create jobs, protect the environment and ensure safe imports. Rather, it appears modeled after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a free trade agreement where the largest global corporations benefit and working families are left behind.
Negotiations for the TPP remain closed to the public and the text of the agreement remains classified. While the administration touts the TPP as a job-creating, wage-raising enterprise, it has not made public any employment or sectoral impacts study. The administration hasn't provided information as to how the TPP will promote manufacturing more effectively than current U.S. trade policy and the global corporate agenda continues to make demands for deregulation, privatization, tax breaks and other financial advantages for Big Business while shrinking the social safety net in the name of “labor flexibility.”...
Whole milk contains too much fat content for diabetics.
If the call for an airstrike was made into Kunduz, where was the pilot?

If it was a drone, the pilot would have no reality check as to what was happening on the ground. The drone pilots aren't in Afghanistan. 

An independent investigation has to go forward. The independent investigation will meet with difficulty in seeking all the information it needs because the technology is classified.

I don't think an independent investigation is going conclude anything for ten years or more. 

The climate prediction was incorrect.

Sure their engines stalled, but, why? Because it was taking on water in huge amounts.

South Carolina was never a part of the climate prediction. Never. The modeler has an incomplete picture of Earth's climate because it maintains models for the Atlantic. The climate crisis is global and not contained in the Atlantic Ocean. 

As a matter of fact more and more of the turbulence is taking place in the Pacific because the surface area is larger there. Coriolis has been lagging so much the turbulence was dragged over the Pacific.

It is my opinion Von Karman developed because of the enormous size of the heat distribution over the USA and the smaller size of the Atlantic. There was no place for the energy to go except to bend back on itself. Air masses have volume. The volume was huge. There was no room for it in the troposphere.

Imagine what was coined as a water hose or fire hose that was injecting water into South Carolina into a ship that big. Their pumps absolutely could not keep up with the deluge. Wind didn't have anything to do with it. The Captain grossly miscalculated because he never expected what was waiting for him. 

If the ship broke up it is because of the sea elevations of water called waves. He was overwhelmed in knowing what to do. His ship was failing in ways he never experienced before. Ships have to stay away from these storms by a large radius from the center. NO EXCUSES. New Rules. Large margins are needed when the promise of a storm threatens shipping lanes. 

I can only imagine the emotional turmoil the Captain was experiencing.  

This is what happens when government plays politics to demand a different reality. The safety of shipping lanes was never asked of the USA's elite agencies. Quite the contrary. The demands by America's Congress was oppressing every opportunity to learn what was occurring with Earth's climate. That is where the indictment should lie.

October 7, 2015
By Garrett Pelican

Jacksonville, Fla. -- The biggest clue for accident investigators (click here)working to find out how and why the El Faro sank is the vessel's voyage data recorder, the National Transportation Safety Board announced Tuesday night.
The voyage data recorder, or VDR, will tell investigators exactly what happened in the 12 hours leading up to the disaster, T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairman for the NTSB, told reporters at a 9 p.m. news briefing.
NTSB investigators, who arrived in Jacksonville Tuesday morning, expect to spend about 7-10 days on scene investigating the available information. Then they'll return to Washington to conduct the probable cause phase of that investigation that will determine exactly what led to the ship's demise.
"The voyage data recorder has a lot of information. It would give information about everything that happened in the 12 hours before it hit the water," said Dinh-Zarr....

What does Valerie Plame have to say about this. She worked with the CIA regarding exactly this.

In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, (click here) authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium - enough to contaminate several city blocks - and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.

Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found....

Sportsman health is coming into focus other than the American football.

I am waiting for hockey to take assessment of their members. There is room to be concerned. A number of sports qualifies for concern. I think the majority of sports for women are not contact sports, however, there are women's football and soccer as well. The event organizers have to think about the attendance of their sports and how their customers feel about it. The ticket holders are making these events happen along with the sponsors. This is a moral issue. I congratulate the NRL for taking the imitative.

October 8, 2015

For the first time, (click here) all players will reportedly undergo a heart scan next NRL season before they take the field.

Fairfax Media is reporting NRL and under-20s players will undergo electrocardiogram (ECG) screening ahead of the opening round, in a move funded by the governing body. Players might also undergo MRI scans in the pre-season and will be retested if they suffer a concussion as a way of tracking any brain damage.

Club doctors and the NRL's chief medical officer Paul Bloomfield met for five hours on Saturday at league headquarters, with topics including concussion and prescription drugs being discussed.

The ECG screenings will cost the NRL about $32,000 and the proposal will go to the Australian Rugby League Commission soon for final approval....

Get rid of the stereotypes for men.

If Botox was bad for masculinity and that feel good feeling it would not be so popular. 

Look, the Cougars are out there.  If a man is starting to look more like their wife's father than husband because she hasn't ignored her feel good feeling then he needs to match her dedication to the marriage.

Besides all that esteem for the social realm actually translates to a contribution to the economy.  

Ya know, women like Viagra, but, there is so much more to it. 

All that gold that is in the vault isn't happiness, it is dental fillings. 

7 October 2015
By Anna Duff

What would you think if your man told you he was considering Botox? (click here)

It might sound a little bizarre, but it's becoming more and more common. In fact, the trend for guys visiting the surgeon has become so popular that it now has its very own name.

According to the American Society Of Plastic Surgeons, over 400,000 men received Botox injections in 2014. This marks a 337% increase since 2000.

As well as this, over 90,000 men received fillers, an 86% increase since 2000. Wowzers.

Oh, why did Russia switch to surface missles?

Turkey was complaining about Russian jets over it's border. It was a burgeoning war for Russia with NATO. No one wants that except Turkey maybe.

Turkey has ignored what has been going on Syria for the better of four years, now it wants to complain about Russia inside Syria? Really?

I don't think so. The surface missiles came out of the Caspian Sea most probably over Iran air space. Russia has a right to do it. You know what occurred to me, is the distance of Daesh in relation to Iran. The proximity is close enough. I can understand how Russia was called on, because, the USA would not defend Iran. The USA is Israel. It is perfectly obvious why Russia became involved.

The surface missiles are more proof Russia is really an ally of ill reputation. I knew a few girls in high school like that. And guess what, they were always great friends.

Enough of this mess. Russia's Gazprom is still fueling Europe.

This mess started with the invasion of the USA into Iraq. It is just that difficult to end these hideous militias.

Russia is doing fine and they are even ending the complaints of Turkey.

I think this is a different missle from the joint project. I think these are anti-ship missiles, right?

1 December 2011
By ITAR-TASS

The purpose of the test (click here) conducted aboard the Indian frigate Teg was to check how its missile systems operate. A missile fired from the ship’s bow flew along the preset trajectory and reached the destination in the target area. Telemetric data indicated that all of its systems worked properly.
The missile was launched from the first of the three frigates being built by the Kaliningrad-based shipyard Yantar for the Indian Navy.
BrahMos Aerospace Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Sivathanu Pillai said earlier that the company was ready for the testing, but was waiting for the frigate to undergo sea and dockside trials....

Iraq wants a permanent mercenary force.

The American people are not going to sponsor an Iraqi military forever. The Russians will lose their interest as soon as the Iraq war becomes a profound drag on their economy. Iraq needs to develop a funding mechanism to pay for their mercenary force.

7 October 2015
Baghdad, (click here) Russia’s ally in its fight against ISIS, wants Russia to have a bigger role in the anti-terrorist campaign in Iraq than the US and may soon officially request to start airstrikes on its soil, the chairman of Iraqi parliament’s defense committee said.

By all means be forced to ask Russia. I didn't see a mention as to what missiles the Russians were using. Is this the one from the India-Russia joint operation?
 
"We might be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes in Iraq soon. I think in the upcoming few days or weeks Iraq will be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes and that depends on their success in Syria," said Hakim al-Zamili, Reuters reported.
"We are seeking to see Russia having a bigger role in Iraq... Yes, definitely a bigger role than the Americans," Zamili said.
The Iraqi official told RIA Novosti that the decision would depend on how efficient the Russian campaign in Syria proved to be....

I have a suggestion. Iraq should recruit the Houthis from Yemen and Hezbollah from Lebanon for their military. I think it is a real plan. Sort of a coming home for the crescent.

Bye, Iraq, Bye.

Everyone wave Bye, bye to Iraq. 

It is a really magestic ship.

The US United States. (click here) 

Are there any jobs today or in the future? That might turn the corner on restoration. It would be a great project and one of pride for the USA.

The problem with Benghazi is DOD, not State.

The problem was, how does the USA inject a military presence without a war. I think the DOD really dropped the ball on this. The USA had just dissolved the dictator government of Libya. The USA recognized government that replaced Gaddafi had no military itself. It would have been appropriate for the USA to replace the military in the country for it's foreign service commitment. 

The USA foreign service counts on the sponsoring country to protect their missions. That was absent in Libya at the time. There was no ability to respond to any attacks on the embassy or the consulate in Libya by regional USA forces. That is the truth of the situation. The "normal" embassy environment didn't exist. Body guards were already present and when do innumerable bodyguards become a militia within a country. 

It really comes down to lack of intelligence post Gaddafi. That is what this is. The USA was only learning of the after math of the attacks to end the killing of the people in east Libya. The USA didn't count on militias dotting the landscape or them being hostile toward a USA presence at the time.

The Vanity Fair article posts to the fact most other embassy missions had left post Gaddafi. The USA perceived an environment where opportunity existed to advance democracy. That obviously was far more optimistic than reality.

I'd like to lay blame somewhere, but, the sincere problem was the lack of current intelligence. I think the agencies were doing all they could, but, it was post war. It needed more muscle than we estimated.

There was a successful CIA site which entered the picture at Benghazi. With a stable CIA presence there was no real reason to believe a consulate would be attacked. It was a vacuum of information and the damnable devotion of the USA to instilling democracy. I really think the people making the decisions were convinced they were correct. There is no intentional or incompetency involved here. The CIA was there. They were not having problems.

It is not a Hillary Clinton problem and further investigations is sincerely a witch hunt.

The USA was operating on the FACT it needed to intervene to end the killing in east Libya. No militia could defeat Gaddafi. The USA and France had to carry out bombing runs to end the aggression in east Libya, in particular Benghazi. The role of The West in Libya didn't invite the idea there were strong militias that could cause a problem for the USA. There was a fire fight in Benghazi. It wasn't as though the USA didn't have muscle. It did. What was not known to the USA was the fact militias were building at a faster rate than estimated. That is all this is. The base of knowledge was new and incomplete.

I might point out, the consulate grounds is where the gasoline was found to start the fires. The early assessment never considered barrels of gasoline as a danger to the consulate. The gasoline was there to power the vehicles. The ambassador died of smoke inhalation. If the fires were never set to create a hostile environment the four dead might still be alive. 

"Hind sight is 20/20." The Benghazi Commission does not have a consensus for it's continued witch hunt. The email issue is a political side show. There is no "E-mail Committee" YET.

August 2013
By Fred Burton

...But Libya was a target-rich environment (click here) for American political, economic, and military interests, and the United States was determined to retain its diplomatic and intelligence presence in the country—including an embassy in Tripoli and a mission in Benghazi, which was a linchpin of American concerns and opportunities in the summer of the Arab Spring. Tunisia had been swept by revolution, and so had Egypt. “The United States was typically optimistic in its hope for Libya,” an insider with boots on the ground commented, smiling. “The hope was that all would work out even though the reality of an Islamic force in the strong revolutionary winds hinted otherwise.”...

I can't help but wonder what type of hurdles they face after they are released.

It started with Eric Holder when he cancelled mandatory minimums. I liked Eric Holder. I always got the feeling as though he cared about the people of the country. His prosecutions of Wall Street were record fines, but, even those were pathetic to the crimes against Americans by the financial sector.

7 October 2015

The release is the biggest of its kind in US history, (click here) the Washington Post reported.
The inmates being released early were all convicted of drug-related charges.
An additional 8,500 inmates will be eligible for release starting in November.
The US Sentencing Commission unanimously approved the reductions to the jail terms of inmates last year.
Up to 46,000 of the nation's about 100,000 drug offenders could qualify for early release under the commission recommendations.
These 6,000 prisoners are the first wave of early releases. Most of the those released will see about two years trimmed from their original prison terms.
"Even with the Sentencing Commission's reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told the Post.
About one-third of the inmates up for release are foreign citizens. They will be quickly deported, officials said....

Over 1.5 million people in our prison system of which 51% serving for non-violent offenses. This is just the federal system. There are still jails through the country that leaves me wondering what is being done about them. The jails in Los Angeles is one with revolving doors. The recidivism rate is hideous and the jail is as much a piece of the gangland as the street. 

I suppose as a judge one is faced with a way to bring justice, but, at some point the establishment has to ask if there is a better way.

Any form of recidivism is not about the person, it is about the society. What type of society do inmates face when they leave jail or prison. Where are the avenues to work and rewards of life? Where do they go if addiction continues to call to them?

Any of the prisoners released today will face a country far different than the one they left when imprisoned. Any drug issue will find completely different dynamics including what is legal, I worry about that. They'll no doubt realize quickly the sincere and profound unjust incarceration they were sentenced to while the country was finding new paths to defining crime.

I hope we are the nation of people that knows the injustice and find ways to make their lives better and successful.