Brigid's new book is out

Brigid is not only my friend and sister-from-another-mister, she's the best writer that I know.  She has a way of crafting sentences that quite frankly makes me quite envious.  There's no doubt that my writing has improved under her influence, but more importantly I've gotten many, many hours of pleasure from reading her blog and her books.

Now she has a new book out.

Head on over there and get you some of that.

Heh

HAHAHAHAHA!

Shamelessly stolen from Chris Lynch.

Leon Russell with Ray Charles and Willie Nelson - A Song For You

Leon Russell was a prolific songwriter in the course of his 60 year career.  This is probably his most famous song, recorded by over 100 artists including the Carpenters, Willie Nelson, and Ray Charles.  Ray won a Grammy for his recording in 1993.    He recorded 33 albums and playedFrank Sinatra to  with basically everybody, from Jan & Dean to George Harrison and Elton John.

He passed away at the beginning of this week.



Rest in peace, Leon.

A Song For You (Songwriter: Leon Russell)

I've been so many places in my life and time
I've sung a lot of songs I've made some bad rhyme
I've acted out my love in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you 

I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I've treated you unkindly but darlin' can't you see
There's no one more important to me
Darlin' can't you please see through me
Cause we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you 

You taught me precious secrets of the truth witholding nothing
You came out in front and I was hiding
But now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together
Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding 

I love you in a place where there's no space or time
I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song for you 

You taught me precious secrets of the truth witholding nothing
You came out in front and I was hiding
But now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together
Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding

I love you in a place where there's no space or time
I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song for you
We were alone and I was singing this song for you

George Carlin on why "It's important not to give a shit"

There's a lot in this about Donald Trump, if you listen with ears that will hear.



He walked his own path, as has Trump.  He started as more of a punk, but he became a success by becoming himself, and remaining himself.

"News"

Unbiased.  Yup.

Suuuure.

Software Development as child's play

One of the blogs that I most miss is Aretae - that dude really made me think.  He hasn't been blogging for a couple years now, for a reason.

Agile programming is the new software development hotness, but my experience is that a lot of organizations do it wrong.  When done right, it keeps teams focused like a laser on what's important and lets them crank code out crazy fast.  When done wrong, it frustrates everyone, wastes a huge about of everyone's time, and results in the same bloated code as before, taking as long to write as before.

Aretae's book gives a narrative on what the deal is with Agile, which may be the best way to avoid the pitfalls of sloppy implementation.  If you do Agile, you should probably check this out.  Like I said, he's one scary smart dude.

Slow Joe Biden meme

It seems like it's a thing:

Biden: I think if we just leave a small-
Obama: No
Biden: Just a small Mouse Trap inspired-
Obama: No booby traps, Joe pic.twitter.com/qttZspBQDI

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) November 12, 2016

A hilarious thing.  You can see a bunch here.

Of course, you can see co-blogger ASM826's version here.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds - What I Say

With Stevie Ray Vaughan.  You're welcome.

The Left needs to stop crying "Wolf"

This is so smart that it no doubt will be ignored by those who most need to read it:

There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.

This is a long read that is heavy on evidence and logic, so (again) no doubt will be ignored by those who most need to read it.  I can't recommend it more highly, especially the ending:

Stop making people suicidal. Stop telling people they’re going to be killed. Stop terrifying children. Stop giving racism free advertising. Stop trying to convince Americans that all the other Americans hate them. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Send this to your leftist family and friends.  There's plenty to be skeptical about with Mr. Trump.  I've been saying for a year that I don't know whether he will make a good President or not, but we're fixin' to find out.  But I've had these doubts for reasons more, well, reasonable than ZOMG teh racis!!!eleventy!!!

They will have doubts as well, and that's A Very Good Thing Indeed.  We need to avoid the Savior On The White Horse syndrome.  A healthy skepticism of the government and its leaders is, well, healthy - not to mention American as Apple Pie.  But that skepticism should be founded in reality, rather than bug-eyed insanity.  If you like your lefty family and friends (I do), then you'll do them a favor by sending this to them.

Why the Left loses

Offered for your consideration:

Nice, huh?  Two things jump out:

1. Manners cost you nothing, but does @ElleBee really think that calling 50% of the country names will bring them around to voting for her side?  Srlsy?

2. Note that the inhabitants of the red regions are "Dumb", per Ms. ElleBee.  Also note that Ms. ElleBee seems not to know that Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin both voted for Trump, and should be red, not blue.  She has also insulted the voters of Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, who voted for Ms. Clinton.  All in all, a quite impressive display of her, err, intellectual ability.

We shall leave it as an exercise for the open minded progressive to ponder the twin attractions of "smart uber alles" when combined with a demonstrated below average IQ, and a propensity to insult your opponent, rather than offering reasoned argument.  Also left as an exercise is whether in four years their preferred strategy of "do it again, only harder!" will offer a more congenial outcome.

Congratulations to DiveMedic

On his recent marriage.  Go leave him some comment congratulations.

It seems like this sort of day

It's what's for dinner

Seen on Twitter (yes, I went there.  Strange place).

You'll never take me alive, Copper!

Europe stirs

Maybe.

One of the gentlest rants I've ever put up on this blog was from quite some time ago:

But the Revolution was indeed a revolution, and blood was spilled.  People were killed, killed dead.  The Declaration explains - offers facts to a candid world - why the founders felt obligated to spill blut onto the boden. 

I've wondered what it might take to make me feel willing to do this - to declare that I and my fellows are, and of Right ought to be, free of the political bands that connected us with the old order.  It might be something very like this:

The Belgians have ramped up their organ harvesting campaign from euthanasia cases in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology (15: 38-48, 2011) to discuss the harvesting of lungs.  I reported on this before, but there is more to add.

Note that one of the four killed and harvested had a mental illness, described in the paper as self mutilation.

When I read this, my first thought was this cannot be true.  But the magic of blogosphere linkage led me to the source, an article by Dr. D. Van Raemdonck et al. in the journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology:

The highlighted line is the epitaph for a mentally ill woman who was killed by the Belgian Government for her organs.  Like an animal put to death so that her body parts could sustain some other creature, she was disturbed enough to hurt herself and so was condemned to death.  She was just about exactly my age.

And Belgium, that historical exemplar of humanity, sent doctors to dissect her.  All for the greater good of society, don't you know.

There's quite a lot more, so click through if you want a rant without a lot of, well, ranting.  But this story is back in the news, as a basic human decency may be stirring in Europe:

Once prohibited — indeed, unthinkable — the euthanasia of people with mental illnesses or cognitive disorders, including dementia, is now a common occurrence in Belgium and the Netherlands. 

This profoundly troubling fact of modern European life is confirmed by the latest biennial report from Belgium’s Federal Commission on the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia, presented to Parliament on Oct. 7.

Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002 for patients suffering “unbearably” from any “untreatable” medical condition, terminal or non-terminal, including psychiatric ones.  In the 2014-2015 period, the report says, 124 of the 3,950 euthanasia cases in Belgium involved persons diagnosed with a “mental and behavioral disorder,” four more than in the previous two years. Tiny Belgium’s population is 11.4 million; 124 euthanasias over two years there is the equivalent of about 3,500 in the United States. 

...

Recent newspaper articles and documentaries focused on cases in which psychiatrists euthanized or offered to euthanize people with mental illnesses, some still in their 20s or 30s, under dubious circumstances. 

In December, 65 Belgian mental-health professionals, ethicists and physicians published a call to ban euthanasia of the mentally ill.

Sigh.  Europe may be having an outbreak of basic human decency.  Or maybe not.  Perhaps the rant is still current, although if there's only a single lesson from this recent election it is a rejection of the guiding hand by an isolated and insular intellectual ruling class.  As I wrote then:

And so maybe the people who will say that this sort of atrocity could never, never, never, ever happen here actually know what they're talking about.  Maybe they're not just a bunch of Statist Pricks drunk on their ideology of control.  Maybe they are, as they tell us, nicer than we are.

But here's the sticking point for me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Life.  My credo tells me that it's an unalienable right.  That means that any contract I might make that would terminate that is null and void, just like any contract I might make to sell myself into slavery is null and void.  Unenforceable, by the terms of our credo.

And so I watch with nauseated fascination as the Europeans once again tread on forbidden soil.  Blut-soaked boden, you might say, but that would describe the better part of that unhappy continent.  So much for Belgium, and for a Europe that would not look twice at this.

Maybe they are looking at it twice, but maybe not.  The Post article is full of quotes from the Powers That Be justifying everything.  All is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

And so the lesson remains that America has little of substance to learn from Europe, morally speaking.  At least for now.

The Democrats don't read Kipling

He's been out of fashion for decades with the "smart set", which is too bad - he could have given Obama some advice that would have helped stave off the last disastrous elections:

"My son," said the Norman Baron, "I am dying, and you will be heir

To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share

When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.

But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:--

"The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.

But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.

When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,

And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.

Norman and Saxon, written in 1911, ostensibly about the period in England around 1100 A.D. when the French Normans had conquered the Anglo-Saxons, but seemingly evergreen.

Get 'em while they're hot

Seen on eBay.  Lots for sale, running between $100 and $225 ...

For those of you who haven't been following along at home, it seems that Newsweek was a little over eager, suffering from (ahem) premature publication.  Not all of the issues were recalled and pulped.

Donald Trump and the self-destruction of the News Media

This seems right:

Trump took his “messaging” directly to the people. He bypassed “the media” by having huge rallies and by “tweets”. He indirectly leveraged an alternative path through the media by “guest appearances” and frankly, by “earned media”. He would say something that was able to gather ears and eyes on him, then deliver his message directly to the cameras. No editor need apply…

OTOH, the extraordinarily group think Journalism Majors who make up “news” and “media reporting” today, with 90%+ of them Democrats and all of them surrounded by a sea of reverberating group think “progressive” talking points; they see their job as to “frame” ideas and statements and to “message” (as a verb) to the unwashed masses. To “mold public opinion” by “creating a narrative”. I.e. to be an intermediary filter that shapes and changes the story to be what they think it ought to be.

The Public, having lots of direct access to the source material, saw this “framing” and “messaging” and “creating the narrative” as just what it was: Distortion to outright lying for effect.

The Public, having lots of direct access to the source material email of Hillary and Podesta and the DNC, saw their cozy relationship with “the media” as what it was: Collusion, fraud, and deception.

The result was massive disintermediation of information flow as folks flocked to ‘direct from the manufacturer’ delivery. Trump Rallies.  Rightside Broadcasting Network. Trump tweets.

And they know that they did it to themselves.  The New York Times seems to be in panic mode, publishing an editorial asking their readers to pretty please not cancel their subscriptions:

We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our readers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty.

Please, don't go. I get that they're saying that. But I don't get the argument why we should stay. I see a promise to keep doing something they haven't been doing. Or... a dishonest claim about what has been done and a promise to continue dishonestly.

Trump made it trivial to fact-check the news media.  That's one smart hombre.

Seems legit

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - theme to The Tonight Show

If you remember Johnny Carson, you'll remember this song.

It's shadenfreudalistic!

Paul Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia

On this day in 1940, Walt Disney released the film Fantasia.  It's a statement about how much more sophisticated those times were than ours, as the assumption behind the film was that the mass audience was up to an entire film about classical music.

The film, of course, is well known to everyone and has been a long running success - adjusted for inflation, it is the 22nd top grossing picture of all time.



Happy birthday, Fantasia!

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - I Love Lucy

Probably some of y'all have heard this one.

Caturday with the dog

Why no, I don't know where the cat is.  Why do you ask?

Toby Keith - American Ride

Lots of liberals are puzzled about why Donald Trump won the election.  They should listen to this.



American Ride (Songwriters: Dave Pahanish, Joe West)

Winter gettin' colder, summer gettin' warmer
Tidal wave comin' cross the Mexican border
Why buy a gallon, it's cheaper by the barrel
Just don't get busted singin' christmas carols

That's us, that's right
Gotta love this American ride
Both ends of the ozone burnin'
Funny how the world keeps turning
Look ma, no hands
I love...This American Ride
Gotta love this American ride

Momma gets her rocks off watchin' Desperate Housewives
Daddy works his ass off payin' for the good life
Kids on the youtube learnin' how to be cool
Livin' in a cruel world, it pays to be a mean girl

That's us, that's right
Gotta love this American ride
Both ends of the ozone burnin'
Funny how the world keeps turning
Look ma, no hands
I love...This American Ride
Gotta love this American ride

Poor little infa-Miss America's down
She gained five pounds and lost her crown
Quick fix plastic surgical antidote
Got herself a record deal, can't even sing a note

Plasma gettin' bigger, Jesus gettin' smaller
Spill a cup of coffee make a million dollars
Customs got a thug with an aerosol can
If the shoe don't fit...the fits gonna hit the shan

That's us
That's right
Gotta love this American Ride
Both ends of the ozone burnin'
Funny how the world keeps turning
Hot dog...hot damn
I love...this American ride

Make America great again ...

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - I Dream Of Jeannie

Perhaps Trump didn't win, Clinton lost

Interesting analysis, although it's still early for having data to crunch:

Trump had roughly the same vote totals as Romney and McCain, and did relatively better with non-whites and Hispanics.   The difference in the election was not any particular enthusiasm for Trump, and certainly not any unique white enthusiasm, but a total lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.   Look at the numbers in Drum's post -- Hillary did worse with every group.  For god sakes, she did 5 points worse than Obama with unmarried women, the Lena Dunham crowd that theoretically should have been her core constituency.  She did 8 points worse than Obama with Latino women!

This is not a story of a Trump revolution.  This is a story of a loss by a really weak Clinton.  Obama would have dusted the floor with Trump.

As I said, I expect we'll see better data over the next couple months, but this is worth keeping in mind.

Internet Of Things - the biggest risk to the Internet?

Oh, goody:

Researchers from Dalhousie University (Canada) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) have published a working paper detailing a proof-of-concept attack on smart lightbulbs that allows them to wirelessly take over the bulbs from up to 400m, write a new operating system to them, and then cause the infected bulbs to spread the attack to all the vulnerable bulbs in reach, until an entire city is infected.

Note that the attack doesn't spread via the Internet.  Rather, it spreads by built-in wifi that bypasses your home firewall.  This is bad, bad juju:

First, the facts. Those websites went down because their domain name provider — a company named Dyn —­ was forced offline. We don't know who perpetrated that attack, but it could have easily been a lone hacker. Whoever it was launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against Dyn by exploiting a vulnerability in large numbers ­— possibly millions — of Internet-of-Things devices like webcams and digital video recorders, then recruiting them all into a single botnet. The botnet bombarded Dyn with traffic, so much that it went down. And when it went down, so did dozens of websites.

Your security on the Internet depends on the security of millions of Internet-enabled devices, designed and sold by companies you've never heard of to consumers who don't care about your security.

The technical reason these devices are insecure is complicated, but there is a market failure at work. The Internet of Things is bringing computerization and connectivity to many tens of millions of devices worldwide. These devices will affect every aspect of our lives, because they're things like cars, home appliances, thermostats, lightbulbs, fitness trackers, medical devices, smart streetlights and sidewalk squares. Many of these devices are low-cost, designed and built offshore, then rebranded and resold. The teams building these devices don't have the security expertise we've come to expect from the major computer and smartphone manufacturers, simply because the market won't stand for the additional costs that would require. These devices don't get security updates like our more expensive computers, and many don't even have a way to be patched. And, unlike our computers and phones, they stay around for years and decades.

An additional market failure illustrated by the Dyn attack is that neither the seller nor the buyer of those devices cares about fixing the vulnerability. The owners of those devices don't care. They wanted a webcam —­ or thermostat, or refrigerator ­— with nice features at a good price. Even after they were recruited into this botnet, they still work fine ­— you can't even tell they were used in the attack. The sellers of those devices don't care: They've already moved on to selling newer and better models. There is no market solution because the insecurity primarily affects other people. It's a form of invisible pollution.

Bruce Schneier says that we need government regulation to address this. I think that's a bad idea - any regulation seems unlikely to have enough security technical requirements to make much difference.  A better approach is to address the market failure - if the ISP were required to drop customers who had devices that were used in these attacks, the end customer would very quickly care rather a lot about whether their light bulbs were secure.

Veteran's Day

We honor veterans because of the sacrifices they make.  Shakespeare puts words to this as few can.



To all veterans, please accept this pale shadow of the Bard of Avon, thanking you for the sacrifices you have made for all of us.

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - Bonanza

Sung by Lorne Green hisself.

I'm so old ...

... that I remember how Chris Christie was the Worst Person Ever because a bridge got shut down and traffic was terrible:

In New York, crowds converged at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue at 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where the president-elect lives.

They chanted “Not our president” and “New York hates Trump” and carried signs that said, among other things, “Dump Trump.” Restaurant workers in their uniforms briefly left their posts to cheer on the demonstrators.

The demonstrations forced streets to be closed, snarled traffic and drew a large police presence. They started in separate waves from Union Square and Columbus Circle and snaked their way through Midtown.

Hat tip: The Queen Of The World.

The World turned upside down

I spoke and emailed with several people yesterday, people who were very worried that Clinton would win.  My argument to them was this: We live surrounded by countless lies.  Most of what we are told is a lie.  Instead of listening to that noise, believe what you see with your own two eyes.

That can be tricky, too.  Here's a picture of a city in the clouds.

We're surrounded by countless lies.  We're used to photoshop - smart people always question whether what they see in a picture is legit.  To paraphrase the old commercial: is it real, or is it photoshop?

This is real.  It's from NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day, and it shows the shadows from the Chicago skyline cast onto Lake Michigan.  When you see something unusual, it's very often that you can figure out what is going on.

Like this election: the polls almost all showed her ahead, but the eyes reported something different.  Trump got more GOP primary votes than anyone in history.  Clinton had to rig the primaries to beat a dottering old socialist that nobody had heard of, and who had no accomplishments during a lifetime in office.  Trump rallies were like rock concerts, full of people, noise, and energy.  Clinton's gatherings were small, and often stuffed with paid campaign workers.

And most of all, the Queen Of The World and I went to Ohio and back several times during her Dad's final illness.  No Clinton signs anywhere, Trump signs everywhere.  And we went through Columbus each time - the true blue heart of Democrat Ohio.

The eyes don't lie, but you just need to connect the dots to make the picture make sense sometimes.  I've been saying for months that Trump would win - this is why.

I don't know what Trump will do as President, or whether he will be a good one or not.  But if there's just one thing that comes from his time in office, let it be an end to the lies we hear from the Press, from the Universities, from our "betters".  That would be refreshing, and the outcome of last night's contest would hopefully provide a moment for them to reflect.

But if not, remember to trust your eyes, even if it sometimes seems upside down.

Trump wins

Final count is not yet in, but I just don't see how Clinton wins this.  It will boil down to Wisconsin and Michigan - if Trump wins either of these then he is over 270 Electoral votes.  He's ahead in both as 0f 11:00 PM EST.

And it looks like Trump is within striking distance in Pennsylvania.  At this time, full panic should be sweeping the Clinton camp.

Final score for Trump: 274 (Wisconsin), Trump 280 (Michigan), or Trump 290 (both Michigan and Wisconsin).  If Trump draws to an inside straight and wins Pennsylvania too he gets 310.

And the Republicans keep control of Congress.

UPDATE 8 November 2016 21:30: Wisconsin just called for Trump.  It's over.

5 Million views

Google tells me that the odometer here has just rolled over 5 million page views (since July 2010).  You can probably add in a couple hundred thousand more from the days before that, based on old Sitemeter readings.

Thanks to everyone who keeps coming by!

A gun too expensive to shoot

Of course, it comes from the Defense Department.

The new 155mm projectiles for the USS Zumwalt's main battery are too expensive to fire.  Cost overruns increased the price tag by a factor of 10, so that each round was $800,000 and the contract was canceled.

The Navy is looking to replace it with either the Army's Excalibur system or a rail gun.  No word on whether everyone in the Navy's Project Management Office has been reassigned to deck swabbing duty.

Bernie Sanders is right

I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 5, 2016

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - Bewitched

Sung by Steve Lawrence.



Full credit: The Queen Of The World found these.  This song in particular is apropos for us!

How to search 650,000 emails in 4 days

It's easier than you think:

Reading Wiener's own emails, those unrelated to his wife Huma or Hillary, is unlikely to be productive. Therefore, the FBI is going to filter those 650,000 Wiener emails to get at those emails that were also sent to/from Hillary and Huma.

That's easy for automated tools to do. Just search the From: and To: fields for email addresses known to be used by Hillary and associates. For example, search for hdr29@hrcoffice.com (Hillary's current email address) and ha16@hillaryclinton.com(Huma Abedin's current email).

...

This is likely to filter down the emails to a manageable few thousand.

Next, filter the emails for ones already in the FBI's possession. The easiest way is using the Message-ID: header. It's a random value created for every email. If a Weiner email has the same Message-ID as an email already retrieved from Huma and Hillary, then the FBI can ignore it.

This is then like to reduce the number of emails need for review to less than a thousand, or less than 100, or even all the way down to zero. And indeed, that's what NBC news is reporting

This doesn't mean that there's not something interesting (or even evidence of a crime) in the emails.  However, it does mean that the emails that got found weren't to or from Clinton.

Google changes privacy policy to track you more - how to opt out

This was the change:

When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.”

And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.

But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand – literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.

There's a lot of background at the article, but this is how you opt out:

To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account.

The Queen Of The World scolds a bunch of idjits

She posted this on the Book of Face:

I worry that people who believe ugly words spoken 11 yrs ago by a private citizen are more important than national security, our economy, and our future. I worry who will watch out for these people who seem to have no sense of reality. I worry about the values of those who are willing to completely overlook multiple criminal acts and lies instead of realize the impact of those actions on their own futures and what's at stake. I worry about those who can't see a vote for that criminal will result in her running mate becoming president when its all said and done. Its a scary thing to know there are so many people in this country willing to overlook so much wrong doing by one with a proven track record of lies and criminal acts because someone else said bad things about women 11 years ago.

REALLY???? Are they really THAT offended? I don't think so. I think they're either that uninformed or that incapable of taking a realistic look at the whole picture and using a little common sense. Or both. How can anyone possibly justify voting for someone who shouldn't even be able to run? Someone soon to be brought up on very serious criminal charges? Someone who may soon lose their own voting privileges? Yeah....I worry. I guess I always believed Americans were smarter than that.

All y'all can now go back to your regularly scheduled stuff.

Lost Theme Song Lyrics - The The Andy Griffith Show

I've run across some TV show theme songs that have lyrics that most people have never heard (certain I had not).  I'll post these over the next few days.  The first is Andy Griffith singing the theme to his 1960s TV show.  On the show the lyrics were replaced by whistling.

Joseph Joachim Raff, Symphony No. 10, "To Autumn Time"

Everyone remembered to turn back their clocks, right?  There's a classical music piece for that.

The German-Swiss composer Joseph Joachim Raff was quite famous  in his day, but is almost entirely forgotten today.  His family fled to Switzerland in 1810 to keep the French from drafting his father into the Grand Armee which would be wiped out in Russia two years later.  You might say that his father was saved by a switch in time.

Raff was a prolific composer, perhaps best compared to Brahams (at least with this piece which was written around the same time as Brahams' works).  His last four symphonies were each titled after a season, including this one here.

Extra credit for determination

But there are better tools for the jab.

Ronnie Dunn - Cost Of Living

This election isn't about whether Donald Trump is mean.  It's not about whether Hillary Clinton is corrupt.  They both are, but that's not the issue facing the electorate.

Nearly a year ago, the Queen Of The World and I got married.  We got the marriage license at the court house in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.  It's a charming old court house in a spectacular seeing location.  The people there are incredibly nice, honest, and hardworking.

And they're poor.  The court house is charming because the county can't afford a new one, and so they carry on with the existing 1890s era building.  It's a little grand for what the town has become, as the mines have shut down and jobs have fled.

Marlington, West Virginia is in good company.  If you're outside Silicon Valley, Manhattan, or Washington D.C., the economy has been stalled for a couple decades or more.  We've been told that globalization is inevitable, and that it's good for the economy.  We've been told that a rising tide floats all boats, that the wealth inevitably trickles down.

We've been told this by both political parties.  And we've gradually watched as our neighbors have lost their jobs, their houses, and their dreams.

This election is not about whether Donald Trump is mean.  It's not about whether Hillary Clinton is crooked.  They both are, but that's getting lost in minutia.  This election is about honest people who want jobs and can't find them.  It is about our neighbors and their hopes for their children's futures - a hope that the American Dream isn't yet extinct, and a desperate hope that their children can have a better living than they had.

Donald Trump is, quite frankly, the only person talking about this.  I have no idea at all whether his ideas will work or not, but nobody but him has the guts to look the Auto executives in the eye and tell them that if they close American plants and move them to Mexico, he'll slap a 35% tariff on their products.  Maybe that won't work, but after 20 or 30 years of watching globalization fatten Wall Street bottom lines, the voters of Marlinsburg, WV and Union City, TN may have finally tired of lectures from their "betters".

We shall see next Tuesday.  In the mean time, Ronnie Dunn sang this dynamic; sang it well enough to get two Grammy nominations.



The plant in this video was the Goodyear Tire Plant in Union City, TN.  It closed in 2011.

Cost of Living (Songwriters: Phillip Coleman, Ronnie Dunn)

Everything to know about me
Is written on this page
The number you can reach me
My social and my age
Yes I served in the army
Its where I learned to shoot
Eighteen months in the desert
Pourin sand out of my boots
No Ive never been convicted of a crime
I could start this job at any time.

I got a strong back
Steel toes
I rarely call in sick
A good truck
What I dont know
I catch on real quick
I work weekends
If I have to
Nights and holidays
Give you 40
And then some
Whatever it takes
Three dollars and change at the pump
Cost of livins high and goin up.

I put Robert down as a reference
He's known me all my life
We attend the same church
He introduced me to my wife
Gave my last job everything
Before it headed south
Took the shoes off of my children's feet
The food out of their mouths
Yesterday my folks offered to help
But theyre barely getting by themselves

I got a strong back
Steel toes
I rarely call in sick
A good truck
What I dont know
I catch on real quick
I work weekends
If I have to
Nights and holidays
Give you 40
And then some
Whatever it takes
Three dollars and change at the pump
Cost of livins high and goin up.

I'm sure a hundred others have applied
Rumor has it you're only takin' five

I got a strong back
Steel toes
I'm handy with a wrench
There's nothing I can't drive
Nothing I can't fix
I work sun-up to sun-down
Ain't too proud to sweep the floors
Bank has started calling
And the wolves are at my door
Four dollars and change at the pump
Cost of livins high and goin up.

Joe Bonamassa - Boogie Woogie Woman

So what news drops today?

It's friday before election day. Some dirty news will drop.

Emergency security patch for Adobe Flash

This is rated "critical" as it is being exploited in the wild and allows an attacker to completely take over your computer.  Everything is vulnerable - Windows (Edge and Internet Explorer), Mac, ChromeOS, and Linux.  Strangely, the listed for "Priority" for Linux is lower than for the others, although there's no explanation why.  My recommendation to those of y'all on Linux is to upgrade.

Patch is available here.

It may just be better to remove Flash (uninstall it).  Most of the major Internet video sites such as Youtube do not use it, and Flash is a sewer of security fail.  Uninstalling it will prevent you from having to install the next critical emergency patch.

That man is going to frame this

So what happens after Trump wins the election?

He's going to.  I'll quickly run down the reasons so we can get to the interesting question: what next?

Trump will win because:

• The polls pervasively understate his support (the "shy Trump voter").
• Enthusiasm for Clinton is low, enthusiasm for Trump is high.  Early voting is showing a pattern closer to 2008 than 2012 (high turnout).  Given the enthusiasm gap, this is bad news for Clinton and supports the Shy Trump Voter hypothesis.
• This (like 2008) is a "Change Election".  Three quarters or more of voters think that the country is on the wrong track.  Clinton is the insider, Trump is the outsider.  Advantage: Trump.
• The Clinton camp is paralyzed by the emerging scandals.  It's been 5 days and there's no coherent reply to the FBI reopening the email investigation.  The paralysis says that Clinton's inner circle is divided on what to do, and she has poor leadership skills - and so the campaign twists in the wind.  This is a very, very bad sign for her.
• The Marc Rich announcement today is almost inexplicable.  There's no reason that a FOIA request announcement couldn't wait until after the election.  Instead, it came out 4 days after the previous FBI announcement.  My take is that Obama has polling showing that she's going to lose, and lose big.  It's no secret that the Obamas and the Clintons despise each other - this is his chance to dismantle the Clinton machine in the Democratic party (and hill the resulting power vacuum with his people).
• The UK betting markets are showing the same pattern as before the Brexit vote - a few big money bets on Clinton (as with Remain), but a huge number of small bets on Trump (Leave).
• Independents are leaving Gary Johnson and breaking hard for Trump.  The latest poll from North Carolina has Johnson down 5 and Trump up 5.  This feels like more confirmation of the Shy Trump Voter hypothesis.
• There is very little or no equivalent data pointing to a strengthening by Clinton.  If she were actually as far ahead as we've been told, there would be evidence dropping from the trees.  There isn't.

All in all, it's safe to say that the Preference Cascade has begun.  And so a week from today we shall be looking at President-elect Trump.  I have no idea whether he will be a good President or not.  We'll see.  And so on to January.  What happens?

The Establishment despises him, and will even more come January.  The Federal Government is staffed by a disproportionate number of Democrats - they will not be in his camp, either.  Washington D.C. is littered by the bleached bones of politicians who thought that they could "change the system".  So what are some of the things that the Establishment can do to throw a monkey wrench into the works of the new Trump Administration?  Here are some possibilities:

• The Federal Reserve could raise interest rates, several times over the course of 2017, with guidance that they will do more.  This will tank the stock market and  (officially) put the country into recession.
• A significant minority of the GOP could refuse to vote for his proposals (e.g. Obamacare repeal).  This is probably suicidal for them after the last few election cycles and the increasing anger among the rank and file GOP voters, but they're not called the Stupid Party for nothing.
• The Federal Agencies can basically do a sit down strike, slow rolling Trump Administration initiatives.  It's the stubborn mule syndrome.

There are a bunch more scenarios, but you get the drift.  There will be no honeymoon - it will be trench warfare from day 1.

But what we've seen clearly during the last year is that Trump is no quitter - instead he has an intense focus on what his goal is.  He also doesn't take an attack sitting down, he hits back.  I expect a Trump response to the scenarios described above would look something like this:

• Audit the Federal Reserve.  Who got a bail out, who didn't, and why.  Publish the results (because the whole situation reeks of the insider, smoke filled room).
• Prosecute banksters for the financial crisis of 2008.  The Obama administration owed too much to them to do this, but if the Fed declares war on Trump then there's no reason to think that the gloves won't come off.  I don't know what the statute of limitations are, but simply releasing a list of who did what and who decided not to prosecute them will inflame many voters (many of them Democrats).
• Set up a fund to primary every GOP incumbent who refused to vote to repeal ObamaCare.  Find credible candidates to run against them.  Start with the weakest 10 or 20 incumbents who are up for reelection in 2018 and make an example of them for the others.  Keep bringing up their names as "Dead Men Walking".
• Prosecute whole offices in selected agencies for violation of 18 USC § 242 - Deprivation of Rights under color of law.  A good place to start is at the Veteran's Administration, where a bunch of vets are showing up as Prohibited Persons in the FBI firearms background check database.  The IRS is another place to start, with the office that seemingly continues to deny tax exempt status to Tea Party groups.  A couple thousand perp walks will focus the bureaucracy's attention - as Dr. Johnson said, the idea of being hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully.

What do all of these have in common?  They are all aggressive counter punches, which is Trump's style.  More importantly, they all underline that the system is corrupt and rigged.  All of these target unpopular groups (banksters, incumbent politicians, bureaucrats) and are seen as being the system.

Would Trump do this?  Almost certainly not.  But Trump is unpredictable - he'll do something.  And that something will be aimed at establishment types who he will paint as part of a corrupt system.  And it will hurt them, maybe ruin them.

Just ask Jeb Bush.

The only thing certain is that the Establishment will be at war with Trump's administration from November 9.

The kids will never come back for trick or treat

Somehow, he didn't give them all away last night.

About Trump's "secret" email server

The Clinton campaign and the Press (redundancy alert!) are breathlessly hammering the line that Trump has a "secret email server to talk to Putin".  Guess how reliable these accusations are:

This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain "trump-email.com", nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump's hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philidelphia.


...

When you view this "secret" server in context, surrounded by the other email servers operated by Listrak on behalf of Cendyn, it becomes more obvious what's going on. In the same Internet address range of Trump's servers you see a bunch of similar servers, many named [client]-email.com. In other words, trump-email.com is not intended as a normal email server you and I are familiar with, but as a server used for marketing/promotional campaigns.

This is a detailed breakdown of what is known about the server, and it puts an end to any (technically accurate) description of this as a "secret server".  It's a marketing server, for email promotions (i.e. Spam).  Now you may not like Spam, but that's part of the Internet that we live with, and a normal business practice for, well, businesses (like Trump's).

What is interesting is the way you have to do a Clintonian parsing of the allegations and the "confirmation by security experts":

But the article quotes several experts confirming the story, so how does that jibe with this blog post. The answer is that none of the experts confirmed the story.

Read more carefully. None of the identified experts confirmed the story. Instead, the experts looked at pieces, and confirmed part of the story. Vixie rightly confirmed that the pattern of DNS requests came from humans, and not automated systems. Chris Davis rightly confirmed the server doesn't look like a normal email server.

Neither of them, however, confirmed that Trump has a secret server for communicating with the Russians. Both of their statements are consistent with what I describe above -- that's it's a Cendyn operated server for marketing campaigns independent of the Trump Organization.

I'm shocked - shocked! - to find the Clinton campaign and the Press (redundancy alert!) providing sneaky we didn't quite lie stories to smear an opponent.  Who'd have believed it from that group of people?