It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
Two days later, the weather North of Hawaii, spun by the Hawaiian Pineapple express, sends
California a whole lotta wet.
And it's looking like another 7 straight days of wonderful wet weather. That's why they call this
the Pineapple Express. Notice the group of clouds Northeast of Hawaii, that's 4 or 5 days from now
weather. The strong band you see about 1000 miles east of Hawaii is going to spin everything just
north of
Hawaii over into California, and then crash into California. The whole process can take 10 days
once it gets established over the Pacific waters just East of Hawaii.
Now just in case you didn't see the expected inches of rainfall in the graphic above. Adding
Saturday and Sunday alone, you get 3.5 inches of rain. The rest of the week looks to spill out
another 2 plus inches of rain. That's 5.5 in one week in a part of the world that averages 23.6 per
YEAR !!! Which is almost 25% of the yearly total in just 7 days, 1.9% of the year.
Honestly, Obama is surprising me about both his recent actions and his post-Presidential attempts to
get involved in the various state anti-democratic actions, in particular "Gerry-Mandering" voting
districts. Which is older than the KKK by the way -- hey that rhymes :-). All the way since
BEFORE the America revolt against Britain in the 1770 to 1780 time frame, as far back at the later
1600's in fact.
Obama's 9 year
Attorney General, Eric Holder -- who could not hold Wall Street financiers accountable for a single
offence -- has been recently hired by California Jerry Brown to represent the state in any and all
probable law suits the state takes against the incoming Federal administration. This is the same
guy who made a big to-do against various California pot medical dispensaries -- but unable to
prosecute a single Wall Street or big-bank criminal -- during Obama's first term. Nevertheless, I
look at his with an open mind, because I trust Jerry Brown.
Boy am I so glad to be a Californian at this point in American history.
Full disclosure. I have met and have spoken with governor Jerry Brown's brother infrequently. He is a
law professor at USF. Interesting person and mind. The entire family, all the way back to the
father, ex-governor Edmund "Pat" Brown from 1959 to 1967. Responsible for the state water project,
"Pat" Brown is the reason why California is great today.
Even though I am usually skeptical of Wikipedia, Wikipedia is fair on this matter.
Opposition to the State Water Project was immediate, especially with Sacramento River Delta users
worrying about saltwater intrusion which had already been a concern without factoring in redirection
of outward freshwater flow. Residents of the Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California were
concerned about the increase in water draw the South might demand as populations expanded. While
Southern support for the project was clear, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
worried that the project did not ensure permanent rights to Northern water. This lead the
legislature to amend the plan, prohibiting the state's southern water rights from being rescinded,
clearing any remaining reservations from the state's southern water authorities.
Governor Brown was a staunch supporter of the plan, energetically opposing critics and seeking
solutions. He lobbied Congress to exempt California from the 160 acre rule, lauding the benefit of
employment and progress to the state's northern and southern residents, calling for an end to the
north-south rivalry. Brown also reduced his introductory bond issuance from $11 billion to $1.75
billion, beginning a television campaign to appeal to residents. Governor Brown insisted on the
Burns-Porter Act which sent the bond issue to a referendum; the 1960 vote saw Butte County as the
sole Northern California county not voting against the measure. However, the growth in Southern
California's population lead to the plan's adoption.
Thom Hartmann :"Why aren't the Democrats doing anything about this?"
Hello, that was my question, spoken loudly on this blog fucking one month ago. Thanks Thom.
And would you look at that queer
scowl on James Clapper's face (current head of CIA) ? Almost like he's ashamed that his asshole is
where his mouth is located, and hopes no one realizes it during the brief duration when he has to
speak in front of cameras and video recording devices. Creepy.
Mike Papantonio :"The Corporate-controlled media won't touch issues like [this] because
they're
not sensational enough, uh, they can't make the story appealing enough to an audience with a 30
second attention span so they feed us absurd fake news about Russia hacking the election or [what]
Donald
Trump ... tweeted this morning.
Right now you see the new DNC [Democratic National Committee] ... It's outrageous. The 'new' DNC
Leadership -- which is nothing more than the Hilary camp -- is now making the Russian hacking story
their number one attention. This is the number one story they are paying attention to rather than
voter suppression that probably killed them in the last election. We know that Republican trolled
states have been systematically purging Democratic voters for at least 16 years. And these methods
keep evolving."
Yikes, Mike really tears apart the corporatist Democratic establishment. Awesome skewering. The
"Pap" attack is spot on, and really shows his feisty fearless intellect for those of you who may not
be familiar with this fellow Southern Italian. (I admit to being a fan)
We got Trump largely because Kris Kobach got 28 state Republican Secretary’s of State to send him
their voter registration lists so that he could run a computer program called “cross check” that
removed loosely associated names under the pretense that these were persons who were double
registered. Hence Michael Eugene Jackson of Georgia was matched with Michael Lebrun Jackson of
Virginia, and Donald Alexander Webster Jr. of Ohio was matched with Donald Eugene Webster Sr. of
Virginia. Over 7 million persons were paired in this way, and had their names removed off the
voting rolls. When they showed up to vote, they had to vote on provisional ballots, most of which
were never counted. 75,355 ballots in Michigan alone were not counted, in a state where Donald
Trump won by only 10,704 votes. And those votes largely came from Detroit and Flint, majority-Black
cities that vote Democratic.
This happened in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and all throughout the 28 states who sent
their registration lists to Mr. Kobach. This was why the Republican establishment stonewalled Jill
Stein’s recount efforts, otherwise why would they deny democracy if they were not afraid of their
anti-democratic actions? Instead, Jill Stein and Democrats are called “sore-losers” or “cry babies”
who “waste tax payers dollars” when really it’s as simple as Jill Stein standing up for democracy
and the right of citizens to have their votes counted.
Kris Kobach’s state of Kansas was the only state out of 50 states not to respond to a recent New
York Times survey of actual voter fraud, of which less than 100 incidents were actually legally
acted upon, 65 of which were in the combined total of Georgia and Tennessee. According to the New
York Times: "The findings unambiguously debunk repeated statements by President-elect Donald J.
Trump that millions of illegal voters backed his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.”
Thursday, 5 January 2017 at 1h 38m 0s
Modern Weather
This is how I discern the weather nowadays. I go look at Intellicast.com and see the West Coast
Pacific Satellite imaging.
Notice that counter-clockwise weather system spinning rain out of the Pacific that is just North of
Hawaii. That's called the "Pineapple Express". It usually means rain for the next four or five days.
Then I check out Wunderground.com for San Francisco, and look at the following panorama of weather
data displayed graphically
Yikes, looks like this weekend is gonna be rain, rain, and more rain. Confirmed by the satellite
imagery.
Back in the day, people actually watched the weatherman on a regular basis, or listen to the radio
to get weather information. The National Weather Service nationalized the collection of weather
information so that citizens would not have to pay a premium to get less than reliable weather.
During the 1980's and 1990's the Weather Channel developed a way to provide radar information from
the National Weather Service. Every 10 or 15 minutes, you got to see a radar of the region where
you lived -- Pacific, Northwest, Southwest, California, Southeast, Mountain-central, Mid-South,
Mid-west, Northeast, and so on.
Once the internet came, people got access to the raw data from those
who set up graphical imaging and data displays, like Intellicast and Wunderground. A lot of people
get their weather from cell phone app nowadays, but all of these sources are using data obtained by
the National Weather Service. If these businesses had to include the cost of collecting such data
themselves, these companies would have a lot more overhead, and more than likely eventually skimp on
certain data analysis. Or if not, the cost of the service would be prohibitive, just like many
hi-end university data and library collection systems (like Lexus-Nexus) -- sometimes costing $600
or more per year. The result would inevitably be a secondary market of substandard or stripped
services controlled by the data collection agents.
Which is a perfect example of what government does well. Governments invest the tax collections into
developing basic or necessary infrastructure so that other businesses can take advantage of the cost
or service savings and not distort the market into oligarchical funnels. If every single thing that
is needed by or necessary for society gets outsourced to private firms, than what happens is the gradual
devolution into those firms who control the necessary check points in the distribution system of
goods and
services, and those firms who do not. The market becomes oligarchical and the quality of service
becomes fractured or
stratified into rent-seeking tiers.
Government not only needs to be a functioning part of every economic order for capitalism to
properly function, but also to ensure that the needs of the community and society will inhibit the
inherent bent
of mankind to evolve into aristocracy, irrationality, and authoritarian regimes.
Sunday, 1 January 2017 at 21h 33m 45s
Global Trade Visualized
Sunday, 1 January 2017 at 19h 21m 22s
REM Michael Stipe on the Colbert Show
REM (1980-2011) did this song when I was in college. Michael Stipe was the lead singer -- he's the
guy with the gray-white beard in the above video. I loved REM
at the time, and this song in particular. "It's the End of the World" from 1987, which is the year I
started Freshmen year in college at Tulane University. My roomate, Tim Conley, introduced me to
REM, and this song was my favorite when I heard it in the Fall of 1987. THANKS TIM :-)
David Brooks' "opinion" is often contrived,
highly compromised with obvious biased agenda, and is even comical with its pathetic bloviating
ability to
ramble on trying to weave a nonsensical argument. Driftglass is incessant in a long term attempt to point out how David Brooks is
full of shit.
When David comes on PBS and debates Mark Shields I was always able to point out Mr. Brooks
subtle deceptions and blatant incongruities. He has been a plant of respectable reason and has
betrayed that assumption more than half the time. His purpose is to appear reasonable sometimes,
only to suddenly turn on a dime and make proclamations that don't relate to whatever reasonable
opinion he most recently espoused. He is a dagger. Just when he starts to make to make sense, wham,
you get hit with the irrational statement that leaves his real intent bare. David Brooks is a hired
word assassin. He is sponsored by that segment of the corporate elite that rely on Mr. Brooks to
"gum-up-the-works" and provided a courtier role of justifying the corporate paradigm in a way that
might be palatable with the upper middle class and educated classes.
Thursday, 29 December 2016 at 1h 51m 23s
What schools cannot do alone
Fact: the correlation between student responses on multiple choice standardized tests against
various sociological parameters is very high. Above 90 percent R squared (Coefficient of
Determination) – which is the percentage of variation accounted for by only the two factors of data
being analyzed.
Scores versus Family yearly income.
Scores versus Parental Level of Education.
Scores versus amount of vocabulary attained by age 5 or 6.
Scores versus Zip Code.
All of these factors are so highly correlated that they are borderline predictive.
In many schools, the location of the school indicates the sociological factors of which that school
will have to become associated. These factors are independent of the school itself, because they
are based upon the sociological and economic background of the location -- not the ability or
functionality of the school. Hence separating the school from it’s inherent sociological
environment is very difficult to do. Not all failures are a result of the school system when the
resulting society ignores community and social investments which can make a palpable difference
beyond anything school personnel can do. After and before school programs, school lunch, breakfast
and dinner programs, parental education programs, subsidizing community sponsoring events, investing
in pre-K education, subsidizing child care, insuring a viable nationalized retirement system, and
single-payer nationalized health care would all go a long way towards alleviating the other factors
that cause issues with the scores of our pre-18 year old youth. When these other factors are not
addressed, or become exacerbated, the more relevant issues of why students do not achieve their
potential cannot really be separated from what is measurable at school.
Granted, correlation does not mean causation. This is precisely why statistics alone cannot
completely capture what it is that we call the phenomenon of prerequisite knowledge, because the
results are too dependent upon too many various factors and indicators to be indicative of anything
beyond the specific issues of the individual child upon which each individual assessment is taken.
We cannot average out these individual assessments to attain anything meaningful, other than what it
is that might be dominant characteristics of the overall population from which such individual
statistical slices come. However every average is always somewhere in between the maximum and
minimal values of the data set, and not representative of any individual in the group.
This is why charter schools in the same districts as the public school do not make a measureable
difference when the students come from the same population of students without separating the
population based on various beneficial statistics. The best charter schools actually separate the
better students using various tactics, often kicking out the lesser endowed, so their success rates
compared to the public school is more a result of these mechanisms of subtraction, a result that
comes from removing the students who are more difficult to teach. Schools who are said to be failing
are largely suffering from being overwhelmed by social factors not being addressed by the government
and the local community
Schools provide a service called education. This service involves a teacher who creates and
enhances whatever curriculum or spectra of topics are desired to whatever course a student becomes
attached. This teacher, under the most efficient and beneficial assumptions, gets to know each
student, adjusts and caters the overall curriculum design to meet the various needs of the incoming
students. Students who have less cognitive dissonance move far beyond their own expectations, while
at the same time students who are cognitively inhibited (for whatever reason) do not fall farther
beyond. At best it is assumed that these low-end students actually rise above their prior level, so
that we give credit to the best teachers those who rise the level of all their students across the
spectrum.
Under certain stable conditions, this is possible. The Bell curve of the classroom all shifts to
the right an equal amount. In practice however, this bell curve of the incoming students represents
not just one group, but many different groups; each of whom respond differently to different
situations and have their education affected by different factors throughout the measurable time
frame (semester, quarter, tri-mester, or year-to-year). These students have erratic learning
habits, and are highly affected by their non-school related events.
Students who live with single parents
Students going through a parental divorce
Students who live with step parents
Students who have had a history of mobililty over a five year period
Students who live in poverty
Students who have poor dietary habits
Students who come from a poor educational background.
Adolescent Psychology
Students responding to computer programs that are meant to address their individual needs cannot
address the eight issues above. Removing the teacher-student relationship alone is not an effective
means of addressing the education phenomenon that appears to be “broken” and in need of “reform”.
Assuming the reason why students lack success only relates to their pace of learning, is it a
good idea to place impressionable, possible highly ignorant young people responding to a computer
program with little or no interference from a teacher or any other human being? Learning is not a
passive experience, involving mere pressing of buttons on a keyboard, quietly answering questions
using simple words without interacting with other persons during the experience. Students watch
videos and then respond or click boxes based upon how much they remembered (this is called a Quiz).
Students do not interact based upon watching the same video. Students do not analyze their opinions
or reflections of the video. Students do not get differing viewpoints about the video from other
students, or even feedback from the teacher. The experience is solitary. The answers to such
questions are thusnot referencing a dynamic involving various reactions with the learning
environment, but responses to a script.
Hence the phrase “catering to the individual needs” of the student is really a means of
disconnecting the individual from the group and from the peers where the learning environment is
organic. The method
doesn’t guarantee long-term or developmental memory because it depends upon inferential solitary
integration with the dissemination of knowledge. Most people need to be engaged with the learning
experience. Discussing and sharing knowledge also enhances an individual’s understanding. Linkages
are created whenever there is some sort of group socialization or attempt to form a socialization
around knowledge that do not occur when knowledge acquisition is solitary.
Think of this like reading a book. Reading a book is solitary knowledge acquisition. You learned
something by reading the book. When you discuss the book with someone else, you attach your
information to what you have already learned in the past, in addition to reflecting on what it means
in relation
to what you have already learned. If you then write a paper explaining the book -- or speak to a
group -- on what you have
gained by reading the book, you are suddenly not only regurgitating that information but putting it in a
context that you feel expresses the knowledge that you have. All of which creates a deeper, longer
lasting learning experience. You would not get the same development or understanding if you just
skimmed a few chapters of the book, watched a five minute video that summarized the book, or just
looked up references on Google that gave you some solid paragraphs – after which you answered ten
multiple choice questions that assessed your learning. That is called learning by proxy.
The idea that we can rescue dysfuctional communities by removing qualifying students to different
schools is just another way of ignoring and not investing in the issues that affect dysfunctional
communities. Syphoning these funds to a private or for-profit institution at the behest of the
individual assumes the individual alone can be plucked away from the community as a way of “saving”
the community. But what merely happens is that such individuals who are “saved” eventually leave
the community, leaving the community unchanged, a community that continues to languish because it
never got any benefit from the investment that “elevated” the student and moved the individual
somewhere else to become more successful. The coasts and urban cities are filled with migrants who
relocated, without making a difference at all in the communities from where they left.
Tuesday, 27 December 2016 at 22h 30m 17s
Why is this necessary
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has asked two Cabinet departments for the names
of government officials working on programs to counter violent extremism, according to a document
seen by Reuters and U.S. officials.
The requests to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security involve a set of
programs that seek to prevent violence by extremists of any stripe, including recruitment by
militant Islamist groups within the United States and abroad.
Reuters could not determine why the Trump team asked for these names. The Trump team did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
SOURCE:Warren Strobel & Arshad
Mohammed | Reuters | 23 December 2016
Why would an incoming presidential administration make a formal request to ask for these names so
soon? Why would this be a priority given the overall success over the last 8 years? Why would this
even be leaked to the press?
Monday, 26 December 2016 at 19h 50m 11s
Why You Cannot Run Government Like A Business
These are some sources to read, but the answer is quite simple. People run a business to earn a
profit. Thus the desire to control costs and maximize revenue serves as the governing protocol for
everyday situations and decision making processes. Obtaining loans to finance operations or making
capital investments are always secondary to the need to make a profit, hence decisions on what to
finance and where to invest are determined by short-term revenue potential and a desire to form a
monopolistic or at least dominant position versus any competitors.
Government however is not a
competitive industry. Whatever competition that exists should be about ideas, upon which voters are
suppose to choose based on the strength and legitimacy of various ideas. Government investments and
revenue practices also have longer term goals, that mostly are not profitable in the monetary
measurable quantity of revenue and profit alone. Social and community goals are highly
beneficial to society but cannot be quantified by money. Other social organizations and investments
save the overall society money, but these savings are so diffuse that they cannot be separately
aggregated to any one individual or group.
But read the following links for a more poignant analysis:
[SOURCE:Georgie Bishop | Excellence In
Goverment | 6 April 2016]
[SOURCE:Mike Sabo | The Federalist
Papers | 8 January 2016]