It's Sunday Night

October 22, 2015
By Sharon Chisvin

They were billed (click here)as Ambassadors from Mars, Ecuadorian Cannibals and Sheep-Headed Men, but to Harriet Muse, the two freak-show attractions known in the circus world as Ito and Eko were simply her sons.

George and Willie Muse were genetic anomalies. They were albinos born to black parents and in 1899, when they were just six and nine years old, they were kidnapped from the tobacco fields of Truevine, rural Virginia, and forced to join the circus, according to family lore. Harriet, a poor laundress a generation removed from slavery, spent the next three decades seeking justice for herself and her sons, and trying to bring them home....

"Soul To Squeeze" by Red Hot Chili Peppers (click here for official website - thank you)

I got a bad disease,
Up from my brain is where I bleed.
In sanity it seems,
Is got me by my soul to squeeze.
Well all the love from me,
With all these dying trees I scream.
The Angels in my dreams,
have turned to demons of greed,
That's me.

Where I go I just don't know,
I got to, got to, gotta take it slow.
When I find my piece of mind,
I'm gonna give you some of my good time.

Today loves smile on me,
It took away my pain, said please
All that you ride is free,
You gotta let it be,
Oh ya.

Where I go I just don't know,
I got to, gotta, gotta take it slow.
When I find my piece of mind,
I'm gonna give you some of my good time.

You're so polite indeed,
Well I got everything I need.
Oh make my days a breeze,
And take away my self destruction.

It's bitter baby,
And it's very sweet.
I'm on a rollercoaster,
but I'm on my feet.
Take me to the river,
Let me on your shore.
I be coming back baby,
I be coming back for more.

Doo doo doo doo dingle zing a dong bone,
ba-di ba-da ba-zumba crunga cong gone bad,
like an apple gift but i went out and never said my pleasures
I'm much better but I won't regret it never

Where I go I just dont't know,
I got to, got to, gotta take it slow.
When I find my piece of mind,
I'm gonna give you some of my good time.

Where I go I just don't know,
I might end up somewhere in Mexico.
When I find my piece of mind,
I'm gonna keep for the end of time!

I sure all the soldiers involved made it home alive. It isn't their mistake.

Sign on bonuses occur all of this country in the private sector. These soldiers should never be asked to return monies when they have served their country. The enlistment bonuses have to stand. Find the money!




October 22, 2016
By AP

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) — Nearly 10,000 California National Guard soldiers (click here) have been ordered to repay huge enlistment bonuses a decade after signing up to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The Pentagon demanded the money back after audits revealed overpayments by the California Guard under pressure to fill ranks and hit enlistment goals. If soldiers refuse, they could face interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens, the Los Angeles Times said.

Faced with a shortage of troops at the height of the two wars, California Guard officials offered bonuses of $15,000 or more for soldiers to reenlist.

A federal investigation in 2010 found thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were improperly doled out to California Guard soldiers. About 9,700 current and retired soldiers received notices to repay some or all of their bonuses with more than $22 million recovered so far.

Soldiers said they feel betrayed at having to repay the money....

There was no stopping the Chicago in 1945, but, the club has had their dry spells.

September 30, 1945
By Edward Burns

The Chicago Cubs (click here) this afternoon became champions of the National league for the 16th time, the fifth time in 17 years, the third time under Charley Grimm’s leadership, and the first time since 1938.

They won the pennant by beating the Pirates, 4 to 3, in the ninth inning of the first game of a double header. They triumphed the hard way after scorning the cooperation of the weathermen, who wanted to get into the act by clinching the pennant for the Chicagoans by raining out the day’s program.

The Cubs, by way of practicing relaxation for the Detroit Tigers or the Washington Senators in the world series beginning next Wednesday, also won the superfluous seven inning second game, 5 to 0....

Their standing in the league is impressive this year. There lead the teams in both the National and American Leagues with 103 wins. The club was impressive this year and if statistics ruled the trophy they would have won it already.

I subscribe to twitter, but, there is no app on my iphone. I don't remain signed in anywhere.

There is only one reason to shut down Twitter and that is the future attack. Twitter is a threat to many governments. Twitter began the Egyptian Edition of the Arab Spring.

There needs to be better security for the USA internet users. There really is no time to 'figure it out.' The next attack could come as soon as the next minute or hour.

October 21, 2016
Robinson Meyer and Adrienne LaFrance
 
For more than two hours on Friday morning, (click here) much of the web seemed to grind to a halt—or at least slow to dial-up speed—for many users in the United States.

More than a dozen major websites experienced outages and other technical problems, according to user reports and the web-tracking site downdetector.com. They included The New York Times, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, Tumblr, Spotify, PayPal, Verizon, Comcast, EA, the Playstation network, and others.

How was it possible to take down all those sites at once?

Someone attacked the architecture that held them together—the domain-name system, or DNS, the technical network that redirects users from easy-to-remember addresses like theatlantic.com to a company’s actual web servers....
Perhaps there needs to be two internets; one within the USA borders and one that is metered and connected to the USA infrastructure. 

October 22, 2016
By Elizabeth Weise

San Francisco — Technology experts (click here) warned for years that the millions of Internet-connected "smart" devices we use every day are weak, easily hijacked and could be turned against us.
The massive siege on Dyn, a New Hampshire-based company that monitors and routes Internet traffic, shows those ominous predictions are now a reality.
An unknown attacker intermittently knocked many popular websites offline for hours Friday, from Amazon to Twitter and Netflix to Etsy. How the breach occurred is a cautionary tale of the how the rush to make humdrum devices “smart” while sometimes leaving out crucial security can have major consequences.
Dyn, a provider of Internet management for multiple companies, was hit with a large-scale distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), in which its servers were flooded with millions of fake requests for information, so many that they could no longer respond to real ones and crashed under the weight....

DNS for Dummies (click here)

Vigilance is always needed.

It doesn't matter if the storm isn't defined as tropical or sub-tropical, super storms begin in incidious ways.

October 21, 2016
2130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor GOES East Satellite (click here for 12 hour loop - thank you) 

Pre-Otto has increased it's central circulation to a higher velocity. That velocity is now drawing water vapor off the equatorial region.

The ITCZ is being depopulated by the Pre-Otto vortex.

October 21, 2016
2130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor north and west hemisphere satellite (click here for 12 hour loop - thank you)   

What time of day is it on the east coast of the USA? 

6:40 PM EST. What happens in the evening in October? The sun goes down. What was drawing the water vapor to latitudes nearer the equator? The direct rays of the sun. Where are the direct sun's rays at sunset?

As the world turns the direct sun's rays move with it.

October 21, 2016
2130.19z
UNISYS Visual satellite of the north and west hemisphere (click here)

WATER VAPOR GENERATION is done by the direct rays of the sun. What happens when the sun moves across Earth and a hemisphere becomes dark? 

When the sun travels and dark takes over a hemisphere the air cools. Where is the heat sustained? The velocity of the insidious super storm now dominates the air movement and NOT the sun. The insidious super storm Pre-Otto now has no competition for the water vapor. The velocity of the Pre-Otto increases as it draws the hot water vapor off the equator.

Pre-Otto may achieve a higher velocity, but, it may not be enough to produce a hurricane. Maybe the velocity will dissipate tomorrow when the sun comes up and Pre-Otto will move north and lose the hot water vapor off the equator. But, tomorrow, even in competition with the sun for water vapor, Pre-Otto will survive only to have it's way with equatorial water vapor when the sun no longer robs the storm of it's water vapor. By this time tomorrow, if Pre-Otto sustains and builds, it will become a far higher velocity and become a tropical storm threat.

Currently, coastal North Carolina is shadowed in complete darkness and very heavy rain is occurring. A front is moving through. Pre-Otto will not move north.

Nasty? Isn't it pot calling the kettle nasty?

Someone had to know the comments by Trump would catch fire. It is what he intended. What no one counted on was the opportunistic economy that came with it.

Women don't like to be attacked. We have all been there.

October 21, 2016
By Madeline Berg

...In a way (click here) that might be aggravating to Trump, the proof of this “nasty” movement can be seen by the measure he seems to care about the most: the money.

In the day following the debate, when Swanky Press introduced its Nasty Woman merchandise, sales jumped 350% from the site’s daily average. Sales at Raygun—a mini-chain based in Des Moines that Clinton has visited and that describes itself as A Prairie Home Companion meets The Onion meets Urban Outfitters—says its sales doubled after making “America Needs Nasty Women” T shirts available Thursday.

And then there’s Janet Jackson. The singer didn’t have to make anything new to benefit from the nasty trend. Her 1986 “Nasty” got new love after the debate; Spotify streams of the song increased 250% after the debate....

Coastal North Carolina is not effected.

The net has been fine all day. Dyn needs to set up a 'felt quake' reporting by telephone. But, it might take a land line phone.

This type of attack may be carrying really lousey additions to the computer net in the USA. Not so much a virus, but, an agenda of adding software undetected to sabotage in the future.

I don't believe this is a one time issue. I think there will be an infrastructure installed with each wave of attack that carries with it future rendering of the USA helpless.

This is a government attack and I know of only one government with global reach of it's freight infrastructure.

The downloaded infrastructure is probably equipped to be a crawler when called up.

October 21, 2016
By Eli Blumenthal and Elizabeth Weise

...Effects felt nationwide (click here)

Dyn first reported issues at around 11:10 a.m. UTC, or roughly 7:10 a.m. ET, posting on its website that it "began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure."

In an update posted at 8:45 a.m. ET, the company confirmed the attack, noting that "this attack is mainly impacting US East and is impacting Managed DNS customers in this region. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue."

By 2:52 p.m. ET, Dyn posted that the service monitoring issues had been resolved and that its engineers continued to investigate and mitigate the attacks on its infrastructure.

Amazon, whose web service AWS hosts many of the web's popular destinations including Netflix, also reported East Coast issues around the same time. In an update posted at 9:36 a.m. ET it said that it had "been resolved and the service is operating normally."...

Will the Chicago Cubs make history this year?!?!?

Addison Russell (click here for statistics)

October 21, 2016

The National League Championship Series (click here) between the Cubs and Dodgers has been as good as advertised, even if critic-at-large John Lackey isn't crazy about the coverage.

"You guys dramatize everything," the Cubs starter complained Wednesday after their Game 4 victory.

In order to make Lackey happy, it's probably best to downplay all the drama in the Cubs' 8-4 win in Game 5, the one that gave them a 3-2 series lead and sends them back to Wrigley Field on Saturday with a chance to clinch their first pennant since 1945. 

Jon Lester may have pitched seven brilliant, fist-pumping innings to put the Cubs one win from nirvana. Or, in less dramatic terms, perhaps he was just doing the job he's paid to do.

Addison Russell may have cranked a two-run, go-ahead home run to center while wearing Matt Szczur's leggings, one day after Anthony Rizzo homered and had three hits with Szczur's bat. Or maybe the Cubs just like borrowing Szczur's stuff.

Javier Baez may have saved the day with a couple magician-like plays at second. Or maybe he's just in the right place at the right time....

The Flint River Water Project

There is ongoing research, but, I had to pause today because someone is taking Friday off for a long weekend.

I will pursue other sources of information today.

Thank you.

This Halloween a horror film based in the Iran-Iraq war with subtitles. See it.

October 21, 2016
 
If Shideh (click here) wasn't already feeling demonised enough. She's a liberal-minded woman living in Tehran during the final years of the 1980s Iraq-Iran war.
She's lost her chance at becoming a medical doctor due to her previous political activism, having put aside her studies to raise her daughter Dorsa.
Now she is facing a cloistered life as a dutiful homemaker. Her doctor husband Iraj has been recalled to the army. He wants her to evacuate the city because of missile attacks. But she would rather stick it out, making regular trips to the basement with her neighbours when the air-raid sirens sound.
It turns out, though, that a missile through the roof is the least of Shideh's worries.
Something wicked this way comes. The pervading sense of fear seems to have conjured up something supernatural in the building....

There is no increased danger at this point, but, the circulation center east of Florida is sustaining.

October 21, 2016
1230.28z
UNISYS Water Vapor GOES East Satellite (click here)

The water vapor transport into the circulation center is not as intense as with Matthew. As the circulation center/vortex increases it's water vapor content, the source is drying up rather than infusing as with Matthew. The sun's direct rays are heading south and the water vapor is following. 

Vigilance is still important. The heat in the troposphere is far too intense. The traditional hurricane season ends on November 1st, however, in recent years we have witnessed storms in December and January.

There are humanitarian pauses. The UN needs to maintain the window presented by Russia and the Syrian government.

October 21, 2016
By Voice of America

The United Nations (click here) was forced to postpone planned medical evacuations in east Aleppo Friday because security assurances were not given by groups fighting in the city.
"Medical evacuations of sick and injured could unfortunately not begin this morning as planned because the necessary conditions were not in place," said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian office.
Laerke didn’t specify which groups failed to honor the humanitarian pause ordered by Russia a day earlier, saying only that the U.N. and the people of Aleppo were in an “astronomically difficult situation.”
Russia on Thursday ordered that a humanitarian pause in Aleppo be extended for another 24 hours.
Syria and Russia stopped airstrikes on Aleppo Tuesday and the pause in fighting had been due to end at 7 p.m. local time Thursday....

The issue of humanitarian 'time' in Syria was turned into a nightmare when the UN diplomats and non-profits pushed their presence past the end of the humanitarian time period provided. This humanitarian time element in Syria was maintained. Those are reasonable actions by Russia and Syria. Their cooperation should be respected without placing people's lives in danger in trying to force a permanent ceasefire. 

Maximizing the humanitarian time in Syria needs as much pre-planning as possible. Russia and Syria should provide the time period for pre-planning. The time period should remain secured from media and those that not directly involved in the efforts. The non-profits should maintain a readiness to move immediately when the fighting is lifted. 

This is the reality of the Syrian Civil War. Protecting life is the goal. 

ISIS has raised it's head in Kirkuk. It is called "Wack A Mole." We have been here before and ISIS was called insurgents by Bush.

There is a death of an American soldier that should not have been in battle in the first place and here comes the talking head generals.

Patraeus says the assault on Iraq is coming from the politics as well. Petraeus has come forward to the media on behalf of the USA military machine to invest far more in Iraq and the Middle East.

October 20, 2016
The battle for Mosul (click here) is the most important of the two-year campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq. Judy Woodruff speaks with retired Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, about the current combat mission, as well as what he says is the greater challenge of governance of the region after ISIS has been dislodged.

We have been here before and even the Russians in Syria is now an enemy. Petraeus must be hard up for money. I don't know about women though.

We don't belong in Iraq.

We never did.

This is a cute twist of fate. Petraeus speaks out of both sides of his mouth. What else is new?

He promotes death in Iraq while he is promoting anti-gun politics in the USA. Does he care about human life? Evidently, only when it is within the USA's borders.

To the Veterans Coalition, the money being paid to Petreaus isn't worth it. Actions speak louder than words. He backs death by the USA military in foreign lands where it doesn't belong. 

The Veterans Coalition for Common Sense launched on Friday with the goal of pushing US lawmakers to enact more legislation to prevent gun tragedies

Former CIA director David Petraeus (click here) and retired US army Gen Stanley McChrystal are part of a new veterans initiative to reduce gun violence.
The Veterans Coalition for Common Sense launched on Friday at an event in Washington DC. The group’s goal is to push lawmakers to enact more legislation to prevent gun tragedies while adhering to the gun ownership rights protected by the second amendment.
The coalition’s advisory committee includes 23 veterans from every branch of the military, including Petraeus, McChrystal and former NSA director Michael Hayden.
“This is a group of leaders who support the second amendment and who believe in the rights of responsible people, law-abiding people, to own guns,” said Mark Prentice, communications director of Americans for Responsible Solutions, the parent group of the initiative... 

The USA media and it's CEOs thinks it is great to have propaganda rule the day again. More viewers make the sponsors happy.

Boycott Wall Street. There is no other answer. Support the local economy and boycott Wall Street. They don't belong in our economy when they participate with venues of propaganda and killing.  

Another monster looks to be brewing in the Atlantic off Florida.

October 20, 2016
2130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor GOES East Satellite (click here for 12 hour loop)

The next six hours will tell. The next name begins with an "O." I think OMG is a good name, too.

Close. The next name is "Otto." 

There is also water vapor west of Africa that is menacing as well.

The only reason I brought it to the attention of the community is because the energy is consolidating close to the USA coast. 

I thought Hillary Clinton was masterful. Her poise, smile and the voice of authority made her preparedness for President obvious.

October 19, 2016
By the LA Times

Debate scorecard 

We divided the 90-minute debate into six rounds. Check the scoreboard to see what our judges thought of the candidates' performances. 

View previous scorecards: (click here) 

There are accusations against Donald Trump regarding sexual assault and harassment still outstanding. I found the statements of accomplished women (beauty queens are accomplished women) alarming. I also found the fact he would tour back stage while women were changing into their clothing even more alarming. There is no decency in that. He could have accomplished as much or more success for his pageants if he respected the women and their attendants and waited to speak to them after their preparations were complete and ready for the stage. 

I realize morale is as much a part of any beauty pageant as contestants, but, there is no reason to violate a woman's sense of privacy. I think it is alarming. 

October 19, 2016
By Melanie Mason

Donald Trump, (click here) asked in the debate on Wednesday about the multiple women who have accused him in the last week of unwanted sexual advances and inappropriate touching, dismissed such allegations as “all fiction” and said their stories have “largely been debunked.”
But while the Trump campaign has offered some rebuttals to a few of the allegations, the allegations — some of which center on events that occurred decades ago — have hardly been settled.
The women’s stories came in the wake of a leaked recording from 2005 in which Trump, then starring on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” boasted about groping women. He apologized for those comments, labeling them “locker-room talk,” but said in the second presidential debate he never acted in such a manner....