Patterico's Pontifications

4/13/2017

Open Thread Musings

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:30 am



Yeah, I don’t have anything. After a week of vacation my “blog about whatever is going on even if it seems stupid” muscles are atrophied.

Looks like we killed some allies in Syria. Trump just learned that North Korea is not a simple issue from a ten-minute talk with the leader of China. I hope you weren’t too wedded to his positions on China as a currency manipulator, or replacing Janet Yellin, or the Ex-Im bank, or the importance of NATO, because he just flip-flopped on all that in one day (yesterday).

None of this really inspires me. There’s an erratic clown in the Oval Office, but you either already knew that or already refused to accept it, and in either case there’s nothing I can do about it.

What else? I had a nice trip last week. My parents’ second date was seeing “La Traviata” at the Metropolitan Opera. (I used to think it was their first date but then learned that after they had agreed to go as their first date, they went to dinner once beforehand.) Last week my family saw the same opera with my mom in New York, so that was neat. We looked at schools for our daughter, who says she wants to move away from California for school.

We visited Cornell, and while touring the music building we ran into the man who, when I sang in the Sage Chapel Choir, had been the associate conductor. He told me that the choir disbanded 12 years ago. Nobody was coming to services any more. I denounced the godless campus to my family.

Colleges renovate everything — with all the money they are swimming in, from robbing hardworking parents of their savings (don’t talk to me about paying for college; it makes me angry) — meaning nothing looks like it did when you attended.

Also it was cold.

Anyway, talk about whatever. If anyone was on spring break last week with kids or whatever, tell us what you did. Tell us a lawyer joke, or any joke. You can talk about politics of course, but today it bores me.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

159 Responses to “Open Thread Musings”

  1. Greetings:

    Me, I’m thinking that with them Eye-ties, what isn’t an opera is a vendetta.

    11B40 (6abb5c)

  2. So Ben Carson is taking bids for a new HUD housing project. There are three bidders — a Chinese builder, a Mexican builder, and Eric Trump. The Chinese builder says he can do the job for $12 million. The Mexican builder says he can do it for $10 million. Eric Trump bids $20 million. Carson says, “Eric, are you serious? What are you thinking, bidding $20 million?” Eric says, “I’m thinking $5 million for me, $5 million for you, and we get the Mexican to do the job.”

    nk (dbc370)

  3. Cornell has one conservative, previously it was Rabkin now at George mason, Jacobsen is the other.

    narciso (48eaef)

  4. You have my sympathy and empathy; my daughter is leaving for college as well. No U.S. school accepted her, although she had very good grades and a very high SAT score. She’ll study in Scotland instead. I guess the nine schools she applied to were too selective. She’s half-Korean as well, so that made it harder. The UK schools (other than Oxford and Cambridge) accepted her solely on her test scores. We’ll pay more than the subsidized UK students, but college only takes three years.

    Like your daughter, she has perfect pitch. She plays viola, piano, and also sings. She’ll study chemistry in hopes of making a living. She’ll be fine. I tell myself that this period of difficulty will inoculate her against snowflake pathologies.

    Golden Eagle (460b5b)

  5. Wonderful, golden eagle

    David Limbaugh book on the new testament is very good.

    narciso (d1f714)

  6. Spring break road trip – headed south for warmer, dryer weather. Visited Hearst Castle, Cambria, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. Toured Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

    ThOR (c9324e)

  7. Let’s talk about chocolate cake.

    I’ll start: it can be really tasty, but it’s not particularly important in the context of international politics.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  8. You know they don’t really speak English in Scotland.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  9. The kids went to Disney for spring break. My spring break was having the house to myself for a week. Glorious peace and quiet in a house free of dirty socks littering the living room, half-eaten bowls of cereal shoved under the couch, endless circuits of the house turning off lights and closing doors and putting stuff back where it belongs.

    Jerryskids (3308c1)

  10. disney vacation is so good they have fresh popcorn there and once you force your terrified children to go through the radiation machine you can go anywhere in the whole park and have many adventures

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  11. I, for one, would like to see the reactions of an experienced prosecutor to the absurd courtroom practices exhibited in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series.
    The only thing they got right is the prosecutors’ dress code; we all know Patterico always dresses like Miles Edgeworth.

    CayleyGraph (353727)

  12. I’ll start: it can be really tasty, but it’s not particularly important in the context of international politics.

    Maybe not any more, but it used to be the way the spice trade was. Chocolate was the “black gold” before oil. Besides colonization of suitable climates around the globe for the plantations, it also demanded slavery because cultivation of the cocoa bean was, and still is, very labor intensive.

    In the context of the meeting between Trump and Xi Jiping, it was a reminder to Xi that chocolate is one area in which China could not hope to compete against Mexico or the Ivory Coast, and maybe make him think of other Chinese limitations. Subliminal persuasion?

    nk (dbc370)

  13. First, explain the economic realities of ‘in-state’ tuition to your daughter, then, determine which California college (UC, Stanford, USC, etc.) your daughter wants to attend, then make a list of the ‘required courses’ that school demands for transfer applicants.

    Next, enroll her in a local community college where she can complete all the required courses at minimum expense while living at home. Her reward for diligence will be the gratitude of loving parents.

    Once the transfer requirements are completed, she can apply to the California school of choice as an advanced placement student. Good grades will guarantee acceptance.

    It’s the smart way to go.

    ropelight (194a2b)

  14. “Subliminal persuasion?”

    – nk

    3-D CHESS!!!1!!

    Leviticus (efada1)

  15. And I don’t think the “economic realities of in-state tuition” are going to matter much at USC or Stanford, ropelight.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  16. On the other point, mulvaney is still omb, navarro is still trade negotiator,

    narciso (d1f714)

  17. Seriously (no, not seriously). It is not important whether Trump is a subtle person, if Xi Jinping is. He would read into it any number of messages that Trump never intended to convey.

    nk (dbc370)

  18. My favorite line this week from an article on Harvard port-grads forming a ‘Resistance School’ to thwart Trump:

    “McCarthy cited two documents during the session, including the Declaration of Independence, of which he “hoped” the graduate students had heard before, and a “brilliant” essay on “reciprocal solidarity” of Black and Palestinian queer people.”

    http://freebeacon.com/culture/harvard-grad-students-faced-existential-crisis-sadness-despair-election/

    harkin (9803a7)

  19. Patterico,
    When in need of inspiration, just read the LA Times.

    AZ Bob (18baf1)

  20. Re #13:
    You’re right–financially that is much the best way. However, my daughter wanted to leave the state, and she DEFINITELY wanted to leave home. Fortunately, her English great-aunt left her some UK assets that will help defray the costs; she won’t have to pay to have the money turned into dollars. A further benefit is the fact that I have dual citizenship; the may be able to inherit that if she resides in the UK for some years.

    However, college is an irrational, prestige-item purchase. My wife wanted to get the prestige. despite the fact that you can get a deal with tuition waivers if you forsake the prestige. I had to maneuver among the desires of wife and daughter and the realities of my pocketbook. Estrogen resists rational economic reckoning.

    I just hope the bubble of the hikes in tuition pops by the time my younger is ready to leave.

    I reckon college served a sociological function as immersion in a desirable pool of potential mates; yet that function has waned as people wed at ever older ages. I know my own degree (German) didn’t help me in my career–but that’s my fault for my pretentious tastes and talents! The money would have been better spent on a down payment for a home.

    Golden Eagle (460b5b)

  21. Every year we go on The Old’s Cool Tour – Rally Around The Ivy League, a gorgeous 1,000 mile top-down journey, visiting each of the 8 colleges in vintage automobiles – the only rule is that your car must be as old as your graduation year, or 25 minimum. Come along with your daughter this year, Patterico – it’s a cool, fun hoot – and she’ll learn more than she would if she actually attended one of those fine, but cracked institutions. On the way to Cornell last year I did the Mt. Equinox hillclimb in a Citroen 2CV with my teenage son – he got enough life lessons with a broken pushrod on an uphill switchback in the rain than he could ever imagine, especially since my swearing drowned most of them out. Seriously, as the ad I have hanging in my office for Moss Motors says: “Want to prepare a young person for life in the real world? Get them an old sports car that needs work. And then take them on a road trip.”

    Johnny Mustard (b996d4)

  22. US drops MOAB in Afghanistan, against ISIS targets. North Koreans slow to comment.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  23. Back when I was going to college there was a significant state scholarship available, but only for schools in CA. IIRC, it was $1500 on a $5K/year private school tuition (the school is now $60K/y).

    They seem to have discontinued this, except maybe for illegals, but it was enough to give a California school the edge for me.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  24. Didn’t formally take the week off, but had no client meetings. So I went flyfishing for a couple days and shot a pistol match yesterday. Skunked both.

    SPQR (a3a747)

  25. I hope you weren’t too wedded to his positions on China as a currency manipulator, or replacing Janet Yellin, or the Ex-Im bank, or the importance of NATO, because he just flip-flopped on all that in one day (yesterday).

    Trump’s been giving out a lot of interviews. The New York Post. The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal.

    The New York Daily News didn’t get one.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  26. I like his reversal on Janet Yellin, which isn’t really much of a reversal, since he never really said anything in particular about her anyway, but what I like is he said “I do like a low interest rate policy” although I didn’t like that he gave as his reason that he didn’t want the dollar to get too strong. But maybe that’ll work. So maybe he won’t be another Andrew Jackson, creating a depression after a number of years.

    Higher interest rates only harm the economy, and it doesn’t fight inflation – it causes
    inflation. So, when inflatioon almost immediately follows, all these interest rate hawks think they acted just a tiny bit too late. Amazing how it’s always only just a tad bit too late.

    I studied (or examined) month to month interest rate and inflaiton statistics many years ago. Economists generally think month to month figures don’t mean anything, and that it had to be caused by events that ocurred longer ago. That’s the problem.

    Higher interest rates are a tax, except that it’s a tax that nobody benefits from. It’s completely crazy. There is this impetus on the part of some people at the Fed to raise interest rates becaus they think they oould be waiting a bit too long.

    Higher interest rates would also blow a hole in the federal budget that you couldn’t get out of without a lot of inflation. You can’t undo the borrowing Obama did.

    Sammy Finkelman (9a87c5)

  27. The Syrian dictator is now claiming it never happened.

    Here’s the original version of the lie for reference.

    Assad forces struck a “large terrorist warehouse” near the scene of the chemical attack where terrorists were making bombs “with toxic substances,” which resulted in a chemical spill, Russia said Tuesday. Moscow did not clarify whether they believe the air strike on the warehouse was deliberate or an accident, but obviously intended to avert blame on Assad for using chemical weapons.

    From that hyper partisan USA rooting newspaper the UK Guardian we get this.

    There was no evidence of any building being hit in recent days or weeks near where so many people were killed and wounded by a nerve agent. The homes across the street appeared undamaged from the outside. There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road

    Opposition confirmation of what really happened is always volunteered, so beyond dispute.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  28. Re. Trump being a clown, I assumed going in that everything the man touches is going to be a disaster, so anything that turns out not a disaster is a win. Makes life far more pleasant.

    Soronel Haetir (86a46e)

  29. Looks like we killed some allies in Syria.

    This happens all the time, and it’s probably the result of disinformation. Someone who knew who they were wanted them targeted. This has been going on for years. Some “ally” of the U.S. supplies wrong information.

    I don’t see proof of that here, that it wa son purpose, but I see the possibility:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/13/u-s-led-coalition-accidentally-bombs-syrian-allies-killing-18/

    The coalition said in a statement that the airstrike was requested by “partnered forces” near the town of Tabqa who accidentally targeted a group of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. The partnered forces believed that the SDF’s position belonged to the Islamic State, the statement said.

    Yeah, yeah, sure.

    The article doesn’t say what country did the actual bombing, but it could have been Turkey bombing Kurdish forces they don’t like. The wording suggests it wasn’t actually the United States that did the bombing.

    For several days beforee air strikes aaginst ISIS were sharply reduced because “Russia suspend the communication line the American and Russian militaries use to notify each other about air operations in Syria.” (New York Times)

    Sammy Finkelman (9a87c5)

  30. This just in:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/middleeast/assad-syria-video-faked.html

    Assad Says Videos of Dead Children in Syria Chemical Attack Were Faked

    Sammy Finkelman (9a87c5)

  31. Trump just learned that North Korea is not a simple issue from a ten-minute talk with the leader of China.

    Just the opposite. He “learned” that it might be a simple issue. China said it was willing to c-operate and recognizes a tipping point has been reached. Trump said he might give Chna a better trade deal if they took care of the North Korean prpblem. .

    Sammy Finkelman (9a87c5)

  32. Mother of All Bombs GBU-43/B [YouTube]

    Ideal for smashing Dr. Evil’s subterranean lair, and other tunnel networks.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  33. ropelight (194a2b) — 4/13/2017 @ 9:05 am

    , enroll her in a local community college where she can complete all the required courses at minimum expense while living at home.

    What’s the need to do that for? Just take the CLEP tests, or similar tests.\\

    If she doesn’t know something, she can take or audit a probably free online course.

    Or take half of the required courses as CLEP, ACT or other credit by examinaton tests. Maybe take one course at a college just to get access to the library.

    Sammy Finkelman (9a87c5)

  34. Tall dead-eyed stranger
    comin’ ’round folks are scart? no
    it’s only Kramer

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  35. Bookend for reports early this morning that the Norks plan a sixth nuclear test in Dr Evil’s subterranean lair.

    Foreign journalists inside North Korea were told to prepare for a “big and important event” Thursday, Reuters reported.

    The analysts added that there was movement around one of the portals and in the main administrative area of the site as well as personnel seen at the command center.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  36. The big event was just a big demonstration of support for Kim Jong Un. It’s the fifth aniersary of Kim Jong Un’s assumption of power coronation, and the Party Congress of he Workers’ Party of Korea is meeting.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  37. Colleges renovate everything — with all the money they are swimming in, from robbing hardworking parents of their savings (don’t talk to me about paying for college; it makes me angry) — meaning nothing looks like it did when you attended.

    Not only the money from hardworking parents, but the low interest rates have convinced colleges to borrow heavily to build new dorms, academic buildings, etc. I read a really interesting article about that a couple of years back, how colleges have put themselves in a position where if enrollments ever plunge they are in a world of financial hurt.

    Speaking of all that, I am hoping to spin up a blog post later tonight or this weekend about New York’s decision to provide free tuition to all state residents at SUNY and CUNY schools. Naturally, this is being hailed by the left as a long-overdue move. Equally naturally, there are a number of caveats to the program that suggest it is being grossly over-hyped. And most naturally of all, there are a whole lot of unanswered questions and unintended consequences that make me wonder if this is a particularly good idea.

    Patterico, some large state universities are making an effort to recruit out-of-state students, sometimes going as far as offering tuition waivers to qualified students. My cousin’s daughter is attending the University of Alabama, paying only room & board along with incidentals. You might see what your daughter thinks about something like that. Schools like Alabama, Ole Miss, and others now have nearly 2/3 of their students come from out of state.

    JVW (dadb0c)

  38. China, very impressed by Trump’s negotiating skills
    https://twitter.com/tepingchen/status/852357160776290304

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  39. Assad forces struck a “large terrorist warehouse” near the scene of the chemical attack where terrorists were making bombs “with toxic substances,” which resulted in a chemical spill, Russia said Tuesday.

    This makes no sense as bombing the “warehouse” would have incinerated the Sarin. I can imagine no scenario in which the containers holding the Sarin could have been breached by the bombing yet the Sarin itself wouldn’t have been destroyed.

    Since the subject of Syria has been brought up, a lot of people have been expounding on the the subject of the unconstitutionality of Trump’s action. I think the men who wrote the Constitution knew best whether or not a President has inherent authority to take military action without a declaration of war from Congress. And the President most certainly did. The first war the US fought following independence was the Quasi War with France. The second was the First Barbary War with Tripoli.

    Both were undeclared wars. Arguably the case can be made that the President did consult Congress. In 1798 French privateers began seizing U.S. merchant vessels because the Americans refused to pay it’s debt from our own revolution. The rationale was that we owed the debt to the previous regime, not the First Republic.

    The Americans were by and large not big fans of the French Revolution and by that time disgusted with its excesses and didn’t want to keep paying it.

    The problem was we had no Navy and had sold our last warship in 1795 so we had no way of protecting American merchant vessels. All we had were a few lightly armed revenue cutters and some scattered coastal forts. So the US had to reconstitute the Navy. That took money, and that required Congressional authorization.

    But they never declared war on France. The Quasi War ended by treaty in 1800.

    The Tripolitans declared war on us in May 1801 after President Jefferson refused their demands for tribute money. Congress never declared war. Nobody at the time thought they had to, as a de facto state of war already existed. Congress did authorize the President to instruct the Captains of armed US ships to seize all vessels and goods belonging to the Pasha of Tripoli. itu

    I am not arguing that the missile strike was a wise move, It sounds like it was a wasted effort and did nothing to damage Assad’s chemical or biological warfare capability. But it was unquestionably constitutional.

    We sign up to do a lot of stupid things. I’ve never seen the Safwan Accords; as far as I know it remains classified. But the expert opinion is that the provisions of the Safwan Accords were incorporated into the various UN resolutions condemning Saddam Hussein through the 1990s. And then later into the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

    Not to relitegate the idea that Bush “lied” us into war (there were two places in the world where no President could have “lied” us into war at the time, Iraq and Korea, because if you’re enforcing a cease fire it means a de facto and de jure state of war already exists and will continue to exist until the cease fire agreement is replaced by a peace treaty). But it is painfully obvious we larded up the ceasefire agreement with conditions that we had no intention of being serious about. I don’t know why we would do that. If we don’t want to fight over something because it’s really not important to us if, say, Iraq never returned the Kuwaiti property as we demanded or he’s in violation of the cease fire, don’t put it in there.

    Frankly, I don’t think it was any of our business that Iraq invaded Kuwait at all. We will never unf*** the Middle East as long as it’s Islamic. If it weren’t for oil every single Muslim majority country that isn’t third world.

    Muslims have strange ideas about what constitutes rational argumentation. It’s quite clear that whoever wrote the Quran had no idea what was actually in Jewish and Christian scripture. Why does that matter? Because Islam purports to be a revelation that continues in the same line as Judaism and Christianity. There are several verses in the Quran that tells Christians and Jews to judge the truth of Islam by reading their own scripture, the Torah and the Gospel. In fact, there’s one verse that commands “the prophet” that if he doubts the Quran is divine revelation to go the the “people who have been reading the book before you” and ask them. Whoever wrote the Quran was clearly under the impression that the Quran was in complete agreement with the Torah and Quran. The Quran several times affirms that the Torah and Gospel were divinely inspired and vouches for their preservation and authority. And the Quran says that Muhammad was actually prophesied in both the Torah and Quran.

    Muhammad didn’t get many Jewish and Christian converts they did read their scripture, and the Quran not only gets much of it wrong it flat contradicts the earlier scripture. In fact, not only is Muhammad not predicted by name (Achmed, his birth name) but he meets the definition of a false prophet in both the Torah and the Gospel.

    The Quran clearly borrowed a great deal from Jewish apocryphal stories and Christian heretical sects who had been expelled from the Roman Empire. About 70% of the Quran is taken from these stories, which were popular in Arabia but both Jews and orthodox Christians new they weren’t true. One of the main stories about Abraham is actually the result of a translation error. A first century Rabbi was translating the Torah from Hebrew into Aramaic. He didn’t speak Babylonian though. The Torah uses the Babylonian word Ur, which means city and as in fact the proper name of the Babylonian city which Abraham left for later became Israel. But ur means fire in Hebrew, and this Rabbi mistranslated it as if Yahweh took Abraham out of the fire of the Chaldeans, instead of how it should have read; out of the city of the Chaldeans. The Jews and Christians knew this was just a mistake, but there wasn’t much available in the way of entertainment in 7th century Arabia so they would basically sit around the campfire and make ups stories about this and many other things they didn’t at all believe to be true. Like for instance how Allah saved Abraham from the fire that the Chaldeans threw him into after he had desecrated statues of their gods by having all the animals come and try to blow it out (Muhammad ordered to kill all the house lizards they could catch because that was the one critter who refused to help). They thought it was wildly hilarious when these stories made it into the Quran. Even the pagans thought it was funny.

    Consequently Muslims who try to defend the idea that Islam is true are forced into comical, often cognitively dissonant arguments on its behalf. One of those comical arguments is that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and therefore it must be true. It would never occur to most other people to argue that their religion must be true on this basis. No Christians argue that since Christianity (all sects together) is the world’s largest religion and therefore it must be true.

    But it’s also laughably ineffective. It fails on its own merits. True, Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. But why? Because of high birthrates. High birthrates are one of the characteristics of third world countries. Islam discriminates against women. They have very few educational prospects and even fewer career prospects. They are seen as a burden by their families, because Islam is an “honor” society (actually it’s better described as a shame society). Families worry that their daughters will “dishonor” them as they approach puberty. So if they marry them off before they have that chance then their daughters are somebody else’s problem.

    So they start pumping out babies when they’re thirteen. There’s just nothing else for them to do. And those babies are born Muslim and can never leave the religion because the penalty for apostatizing is the death penalty. Not all Muslim majority countries are completely Sharia compliant, so the in the less Sharia compliant countries that may be reduced to a long prison sentence.

    Since in all Muslim majority countries that I’m aware of it is illegal for anybody of another faith to try and proselytize to Muslims they never hear another point of view. But they do know that they will be killed, probably by their own family, if they try to leave Islam. And apostacy in Islam doesn’t merely consist of leaving Islam to become either atheists or adherents of another religion. Even asking too many questions about Islam can be considered apostacy. The Quran tells Muslims not to ask too many questions because that leads to unbelief. I know ex-Muslims who asked too many questions, and were told by their Imams to stop. And their Imams told them that if they had asked so many questions in the old country they would already have been killed.

    The Quran tells Muslims they must have blind faith in Islam, with not even internal reservations once Allah or Muhammad have decided a matter. And Allah and Muhammad have already decided just about every matter you can think of. This is why both Kemal Ataturk anhd Winston Churchill recognized that Islam is a retrograde force in society. There have been only two Muslim scientists to win the Nobel prize in there fields, and both of them had to leave the Islamic world to do so. Per Islam everything happens because of Allah wills it, and actually studying western science is a form of apostacy. Orthodox Islam even denies that that the universe operates according to natural laws, and we were given the ability to reason and therefore can discover and understand these laws.

    So essentially Islam produces societies that are miserable places to live in. The more Islamic the country, the more authoritarian it is, and the worse place it is to live in. That sums up the Muslim argument that since it’s the world’s fastest growing religion it must be true. What they’re really saying is that Islam is the fastest growing religion because it oppresses women and gives them little choice except to become baby factories at a very young age, it is intolerant of other religions, it commands Muslims to kill anyone who tries to leave, and one of the reasons is’s growing like wildfire in Europe, the US, Canada, etc., is because Muslims can’t leave their own countries fast enough.

    So if we start taking in millions of Syrians, it’ll have no end. Muslims have been oppressing and killing each other since just after Muhammad died. The reason why the Islamic state is quintessentially Islamic is because he’s killing “bad” Muslims. It’s what the Quran commands. He chose the name Abu Bakr because that’s the name of the first “rightly guided caliph.” Muhammad died without designating a successor. Many Muslims had only become Muslims because they didn’t want to get killed. Others didn’t stop being Muslims, at least not as we would think of it. They just didn’t recognized Abu Bakr’s authority. Abu Bakr considered them all apostates, which is why he’s best known for fighting what are called the Wars of Apostasy. You either returned to fold right quick and start paying taxes to him as they paid to Muhammad or he actually threatened, and carried out his threats, to burn people alive.

    The most popular sport in the Islamic world is Takfir; the practice of declaring other Muslims non-Muslims and then killing them. The Sunni-Shia split is the well known split. I don’t believe the Islamic historical narrative has any basis in fact (indeed, the later accounts keep getting more and more detailed than the earlier accounts, and there are no sources earlier than 200 years after Muhammad is supposed to have died, so if you know anything about the historical method that right there is the tip-off that these sources can not be trusted). The Shia and Sunni initially split over who could legitimately lead the ummah after Muhammad died. The Shia considered the first three rightly guided Caliphs usurpers. The Sunni believe anyone who rejects any of the four rightly guided Caliphs to be heretics. Over the years both sects developed a theology centered on declaring the other heretics and apostates. There are other splits as well.

    We need to stay out of all of it. I don’t worry about the Muslims taking over the world as they’ve been at each other’s throats since Islam’s inception, so they’re going to be too busy killing each other to do the job. Why do you think none of the Gulf states are taking in any “refugees?” They know better. If we have to do something we can help twelve Syrians over there for the cost of bringing one “refugee” in. The world will never run out of Muslim refugees as that is the one thing they’re really good at making.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  40. JVW (dadb0c) — 4/13/2017 @ 12:41 pm

    New York’s decision to provide free tuition to all state residents at SUNY and CUNY schools. Naturally, this is being hailed by the left as a long-overdue move. Equally naturally, there are a number of caveats to the program that suggest it is being grossly over-hyped.

    It’s been said this was reverse engineered for the headline, (and that probably means that all the catches were factored into the budget projection.)

    The New York Post made a headline about one of them – that a recipient has to stay in New York State for four years or else it becomes a loan.

    That part actually is probably less severe than it looks. There’s probably a catch to the catch.

    What they probably would look at for determing residence is if someone files a New York State income tax return and puts New York Sate address on it. There’s also registering to vote and driver’s license. Military service is an exception (but it always would be!) or graduate school out of state.

    Upstaters supposedly wanted to keep people there, but the requirement is only to live in New York State so they could stll move to the New York City Metropolitan area (except for the northern counties of New Jersey) and southwestern Connecticut.

    And most naturally of all, there are a whole lot of unanswered questions and unintended consequences that make me wonder if this is a particularly good idea.

    The biggest catch is if someone fails a course they owe the money. These are the people who most have trouble with student loans! They have to maintain a certain grade average. Or else it becomes loan.

    Now what I would do is make it so that the college can’t charge anything unless the student completes and passes the course, except that in that case there’d be a lot of pressure on instructors to pass everyone. Grading has got to be separated from teaching – probably in elementary school, too.

    Ths program also doesn’t pay for living expenses, and books, unlike guaranteed student loans, which gives people a kickback. Senator Schumer arranged to pass a law some years ago stopping people under 21 from getting credit cards in their own names. Credit card debt (except for the interest, but 0% or low rates can be nursed along for years) is much better than student loan debt and student loan debt can be used for everything a credit card will pay for, but that’s the kind of unreality they work under in Washington.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  41. Assad forces struck a “large terrorist warehouse” near the scene of the chemical attack where terrorists were making bombs “with toxic substances,” which resulted in a chemical spill, Russia said Tuesday.

    42. Steve57 (0b1dac) — 4/13/2017 @ 1:45 pm

    This makes no sense as bombing the “warehouse” would have incinerated the Sarin.

    That makes no sense to a chemist, but this Russian propaganda isn’t aimed at people who took graduate courses in chemistry, or who know anything about this.

    Bashar Assad said now the video is fake, and ALSO American planes bombed a terrorist warehouse full of poison gases, killing hundreds of people. (Assad doesn’t mean ISIS. He calls practically all his opponents terrorists)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/middleeast/assad-syria-video-faked.html

    “We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhoun,” Mr. Assad told Agence France-Presse in the television interview from Damascus, which was recorded on Wednesday. “Were they dead at all?”

    …Medical examiners in Turkey, many of the Khan Sheikhoun victims were taken, have said that autopsies showed they had been attacked with sarin, a lethal nerve agent and a banned chemical weapon that Syria had claimed to have eradicated.

    Russia, of course, vetoed an attempt to have the Security Council have this investigated.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/world/middleeast/united-nations-resolution-syria-russia-united-states.html

    The United States, France and Britain had sponsored a draft resolution that would have strengthened the ability of international investigators to look into the details of a chemical attack in Syria on April 4. The resolution won 10 votes, but Russia vetoed it. China abstained….

    …The measure condemned the chemical weapons attack, urged international investigators who were already authorized by the Security Council to look into it, and specifically reminded the Syrian government to cooperate, including by turning over all flight logs, flight plans and the names of commanders in charge of air operations on the day of the strike.

    Russia objected to the draft when it was first brought up last week, and on Wednesday it dismissed the resolution as a political tool. Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said his government wanted what it called “an honest investigation.” Russia drafted an alternate resolution but did not put it up for a vote.

    When Donald Trump told Xi, he asked for it to be re-ranslated. That gave him a little time to think, (Trump is not familiar with this ploy) and he said that he understood, so of course China couldn’t veto that. Trump had put China on the spot.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/world/middleeast/trump-syria-russia.html

    Mr. Trump said Mr. Xi had asked his interpreter to repeat what he had said about the airstrike, and then said that he approved of the move.

    “Anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it’s O.K.,” Mr. Trump said, describing Mr. Xi’s reaction. “He was O.K. with it.”

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  42. Since the subject of Syria has been brought up, a lot of people have been expounding on the the subject of the unconstitutionality of Trump’s action. I think the men who wrote the Constitution knew best whether or not a President has inherent authority to take military action without a declaration of war from Congress. And the President most certainly did. The first war the US fought following independence was the Quasi War with France. The second was the First Barbary War with Tripoli.

    This all comes from a misunderstanding of what a “Declaration of War” is. It’s a legal act. At the time of the debate on the second Iraq war, former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo took the position that even an Authorization for the Use of Military Force
    wasn’t enough – it had to be a “Declaration of War” So said Mario Cuomo.

    I am not arguing that the missile strike was a wise move, It sounds like it was a wasted effort and did nothing to damage Assad’s chemical or biological warfare capability.

    From what Donald Trump has said in interviews,it’s wasn’t intended to STOP Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons – it was intended to deter him from doing so. Donald Trump also had a bigger strike as an option, but decided this would probably be enough.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  43. Seve57:

    Muhammad didn’t get many Jewish and Christian converts they did read their scripture, and the Quran not only gets much of it wrong it flat contradicts the earlier scripture.

    He tells a somewhat different version of the Joseph story, in which Potiphar’s wife and Joseph were in love but refrained from consummating their relationship because she was married to Potiphar, and her name, Zulakeh, is one of the more common Islamic names for girls. And, twice, in passing, noted that which Haman lived during the time of Pharoah (probably confusing him with Balaam in a midrash in which Balaam, jethro and Job were adisers to Pharaoh.)

    The Quran clearly borrowed a great deal from Jewish apocryphal stories and Christian heretical sects who had been expelled from the Roman Empire.

    And the Talmud. Stories or maxims that people might repeat orally. Like about how is someone kills one person, he kills a world.

    About 70% of the Quran is taken from these stories, which were popular in Arabia but both Jews and orthodox Christians knew they weren’t true. One of the main stories about Abraham is actually the result of a translation error. A first century Rabbi was translating the Torah from Hebrew into Aramaic. He didn’t speak Babylonian though. The Torah uses the Babylonian word Ur, which means city and as in fact the proper name of the Babylonian city which Abraham left for later became Israel. But ur means fire in Hebrew, and this Rabbi mistranslated it as if Yahweh took Abraham out of the fire of the Chaldeans, instead of how it should have read; out of the city of the Chaldeans.

    I didn’t hear of this explnation. It sounds like something James Kugel might say. He doesn’t seem to say that in ‘the Bible as It was” but a lot of his explanatons is that many ideas came form attempting to understand the exact words of the Torah.

    The Jews and Christians knew this was just a mistake, but there wasn’t much available in the way of entertainment in 7th century Arabia so they would basically sit around the campfire and make ups stories about this and many other things they didn’t at all believe to be true.

    N they probably believed it to be true, or they wouldn’t have retold it.

    Like for instance how Allah saved Abraham from the fire that the Chaldeans threw him into after he had desecrated statues of their gods

    Up to this point this is a very very famous story
    and furthermore this is given as the explanation for the death of Haran, Abram’s brother – he saw that Abram survived the fire so he decided not to listen to the king and go into the fire too.

    It wasn’t that Abram desercrated statues. The story is like this: Abraham realized there was one God by himself. His father owned an idol store. One day he smashed all the idols except the biggest one, in whose hand he put a club, and when his father asked what happened he said the biggest idol attacked all the other ones, and then his father took him to the king, Nimrod. The part at least before going to the king is older than the 1st century.

    And this was taken as true by most commentators except maybe Maimonides, who omits it from the list of Abraham’s ten tests (Pirkei Avos – Ethics of the Father’s says there were ten tests, but doesn’t enumerate them)

    by having all the animals come and try to blow it out (Muhammad ordered to kill all the house lizards they could catch because that was the one critter who refused to help). They thought it was wildly hilarious when these stories made it into the Quran. Even the pagans thought it was funny.

    This part, about the animals, I don’t know where that comes from.

    Consequently Muslims who try to defend the idea that Islam is true are forced into comical, often cognitively dissonant arguments on its behalf.

    The standard claim is that the Jews altered their scriptures, and a lot of Bible criticism can be traced back attempts by Moslem theologians to argue that the current text of the Bible is wrong. Much of the stuff that Tom Paine and Voltaire said maybe goes back to the 9th century.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  44. One of those comical arguments is that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion and therefore it must be true.

    Of course at an earlier point in time, something else was.

    I suppose the idea is that God would want the majority of people to have the truth.

    There is danger to this kind of thinking too. It’s important also that the tallest building be Islamic. And therefore you get the attacks on the World Trade Center, and a couple of tall buildings inMalaysia and other places.

    And apostacy in Islam doesn’t merely consist of leaving Islam to become either atheists

    Actually atheists seem to be tolerated, much more so than adherents of another religion, maybe because what they are is unclear.

    Even asking too many questions about Islam can be considered apostacy.

    In the wrong country. This does not go on everywhere.

    Winston Churchill thought there was a lot of fatalism in Islam. But that’s not the problem we’re having now.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  45. So if we start taking in millions of Syrians, it’ll have no end.

    Syria was a very secular society till about 2011.

    Muslims have been oppressing and killing each other since just after Muhammad died. The reason why the Islamic state is quintessentially Islamic is because he’s killing “bad” Muslims.

    Actually, that’s a big no-no. There’s a word for people who say other Moslems aren’t real Moslems. Takfiris. Unfortunately the way to fight ISIS is to say precisely that about them – that they are takfiris. The latest new thing they discovered was a (command?) to kill Christians.

    Why do you think none of the Gulf states are taking in any “refugees?”

    Because they don’t want them to raise any claim of citizenship, even years from now, and because it is hard to get people loyal to the royal dynasty. If we have to do something we can help twelve Syrians over there for the cost of bringing one “refugee” in. Theer are or were some 22 million Syrians. One quarter have left the country. Another quarter – maybe about 2/7 have left the parts of Syria where they used to live. 2% are dead. So more than half are already not living anywhere near where they lived in 2011.

    The world will never run out of Muslim refugees as that is the one thing they’re really good at making.

    I think you could run out of them before you reached 100 million.

    Sammy Finkelman (db2a13)

  46. Ahhhh. College shopping.

    Brings back memories of the ride with my late father to his alma mater – which was to became my own.

    He purposely wheel up a special tree-lined street and braked to a dead stop in the middle of the road. Then uttered two words none of us have ever forgotten: “It’s gone.” That’s all he said. His beloved fraternity house had been leveled to make room for a new library and the chapter was moved to newer digs on campus.

    Flash forward 35 years. I’d joined the same frat -a legacy- made friends and memories at the new House, graduated and not gone back to visit the campus in over three decades. Then got a two-word email from an old frat bro who later said he remembered the story of my father’s lament: “It’s gone.” Did Google Earth which is as good as a visit these days and sure enough, the college had leveled my fraternity house to make room for a swimming pool and moved the chapter to newer digs. And so it goes- no incentive to ever go ‘back to the future.’ Because… “it’s gone.”

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  47. For all you history buffs, squids and those who generally understand what the term “American Exceptionalism” really means I offer this:

    https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QaFKdyfrlVk/WO7uz66OwKI/AAAAAAABIW4/LldJP7A_9isLlxIF9rYZmoEEU3EAgYrvACLcB/s1600/1ninetymilesarRok1uziccko1_1280.jpg

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  48. Have you considered Hillsdale?

    BobStewartatHome (c24491)

  49. @4 Golden Eagle

    #blacklivesmatterx100

    Pinandpuller (03373f)

  50. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/flaming_skull2a.gif

    Breaking news: House to file criminal charges against Lois Lerner.

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  51. From what Steve wrote, seems like we’d be doing them poor deluded desert dwellers a favor blowing Islam and it’s idols icons and holy places off the map.

    And with a minimal amount of pr we could sell it as Allah’s idea.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  52. NBC News reports Trump Administration plans to launch a strike into North Korea if NK goes ahead w/underground nuke test reportedly planned for this weekend.

    Who’ll be the Seoul survivor?

    Sleep well, America.

    “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” – General “Buck” Turgidson [George C. Scott] ‘Dr. Strangelove’ 1964

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  53. Syria was the umayyad dynasty which lasted three centuries, also ubl’s mother was from there

    narciso (d1f714)

  54. Q: Why are research laboratories replacing lab rats with lawyers?

    A: Three reasons: First, the lawyers are more plentiful. Second, the lab staff doesn’t get nearly as attached to them. And third and most important, there are some things a rat just can’t be persuaded to do.

    ***

    Q: When its founder/CEO died suddenly, a large company needed to bring in a new CEO from outside. Its board of directors narrowed their search to three people — an engineer, a pollster, and a lawyer. They asked each to come into the boardroom alone to answer a final question: “How much is two plus two?”

    They brought the engineer in first. He pulled out his cellphone and did some rapid calculations, then cross-checked them with a quick diagram he sketched out on a sheet of scratch paper to consider all possible contingencies. Then he said to the board of directors: “Two plus two is exactly 4.00, to three significant digits.”

    The board thanked him and brought in the pollster. She likewise pulled out her cellphone and did some rapid calculations on it, and then used it to access several online databases and to construct a 60-second flash online poll through Facebook. She then turned to the board members and announced: “Two plus two is four, but the margin of error is seven.”

    The board thanked her and brought in the lawyer. Upon hearing the question, he took out his cellphone, put it on the tabletop, and smashed it with his shoe. He grabbed the boardroom’s speaker phone and likewise smashed it into tiny bits of plastic, yanking the cord free of the wall. He rushed to the windows and pulled down the blinds, turned off all the lights, and beckoned all the board members to follow him into the most remote corner of the room, where he crouched down, looked up at them, and whispered, “How much do you want it to be?”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  55. Jennifer griffin says that report is bogus.

    narciso (d1f714)

  56. Glad you asked DCSCA.

    Binged up “China Warns North Korea”
    The Democrat news organs return a series of similar stories “China warns against force to ease North Korean tensions”> “China warns against force as North Korea prepares celebration”> “China warns against use of force on NK nuclear issue” along that line.

    It’s not until you get to the Chicoms media that you get the real story.

    China warns “if the North makes another provocative move this month, the Chinese society will be willing to adopt severe restrictive measures that have never been seen before…”

    The military-focused Global Times tabloid, owned and operated by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper, said that North Korea’s nuclear activities must not jeopardize northeastern China, and that if the North impacts China with its illicit nuclear tests through either “nuclear leakage or pollution”, then China will respond with force.

    “China has a bottom line that it will protect at all costs, that is, the security and stability of northeast China… If the bottom line is touched, China will employ all means available including the military means to strike back.

    The Chinese government issued the warning to its neighbor and ally through the Communist Party’s official newspaper.

    “Not only [is] Washington brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria, but Trump is also willing to be regarded as a man who honors his promises,” wrote the People’s Daily.

    The paper implored Kim Jong Un to halt any further nuclear tests or missile development “for its own security,” adding the US refuses to “co-exist” with a nuclear North Korea.

    “The US is making up its mind to stop the North from conducting further nuclear tests. It doesn’t plan to co-exist with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang. Pyongyang should avoid making mistakes at this time,” said the newspaper.

    Time and the Huffington Post kind of mangled the message. Go figure huh?

    papertiger (c8116c)

  57. @59. NBC’s Cynthia MacFadden reports otherwise. Over at Fox they’re still waiting for Ohio to come in for Sir Willard of Romney Marsh.

    ‘The Moon’s A Balloon.’ – By David Niven, 1971

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  58. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-may-launch-strike-if-north-korea-reaches-nuclear-n746366

    Seoul sacrifice? [Apologies to Carlos Santana.]

    “Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer…” – The Mills Brothers, ‘Glow-Worm’ 1952

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  59. There’s an erratic clown in the Oval Office

    Just stopped by to see if sanity has returned.

    See you in six months when Trump and Xi have shut down the Norks.

    Mike K (f469ea)

  60. Talk about the reality challenged, displaying for the world how they’ve totally missed the plot,

    Los Angeles Times :” Donald Trump vs. Kim Jong-un is exactly why the world should rid itself of nukes’

    What can one say to that kind of concentrated and resolute stupidity?

    I’m forced to consult the comment section.

    there are no comments on this thread
    You have an opportunity to be the first.

    It says.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  61. One wonders if we had taken out the r 7 say in 1956,:
    http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.htmlhow much of the nuclear terror including sputnik paranoia might have been ameliorated

    narciso (31232b)

  62. Past hope. Past kindness or consideration. Past justice. Past satisfaction. Past warmth or cold or comfort. Past love.

    But past surprise?

    What an endlessly unfolding tedium life would then become.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  63. Mike K says:

    There’s an erratic clown in the Oval Office

    Just stopped by to see if sanity has returned.

    See you in six months when Trump and Xi have shut down the Norks.

    You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said:

    There’s an erratic clown in the Oval Office, but you either already knew that or already refused to accept it

    You have refused to accept it.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  64. Ooooh, Mike K criticized me for saying Trump is a clown, I guess I’ll stop!

    Not going to happen today, not going to happen ever. If that’s the plan, Mike K, the plan ain’t working.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  65. I’d really rather talk about something else, though.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  66. 69–Good reference.

    Wendy, darling, light of my life…

    Alan (b3ee7c)

  67. 69–Good reference.

    Wendy, darling, light of my life…

    I was thinking that, actually, but I didn’t think anyone would pick up on it.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  68. LIGHT of my LIFE

    Patterico (115b1f)

  69. I believe that there is an erratic clown in the white house. I knew that going in.

    I also believe this is nothing new, other than the previous clown didn’t have the good grace to be erratic — he was continuously bad.

    I am not upset that the erratic clown beat the terrible clowness, either. I AM upset that the GOPs nomination process was so FUBAR that the erratic clown won. There were several unclownlike possibilities. I am also upset that saner heads did not find a way to gang up on the clown before the convention.

    But they didn’t, and of the previous clown, the erratic clown and the terrible clowness, the erratic clown is the best of the bunch.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  70. Cry, the beloved country.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  71. From Checkmate by Gavin McInnes

    (2) OBAMA
    Few outside the political nerdosphere remember Obama’s line in the sand and how humiliating it was. In 2012, he said he was avoiding conflict in Syria but was drawing “a red line in the sand” at chemical weapons. Within months, it was reported Assad had killed 1,500 people using chemical weapons and Obama did nothing. Trump’s missiles are a series of middle fingers to Obama’s cowardice and dishonesty. While the former president took months, even years, to carry out his promises, Trump just says, “Hold my beer” and does it. Obama’s legacy was the only death on April 6, 2017.

    Please share this article by using the link below.
    http://takimag.com/article/checkmate_gavin_mcinnes/print#ixzz4eBevKrDD

    papertiger (c8116c)

  72. 75. That the clown was not ganged up on successfully or even soberly stood up to by a single candidate is possibly a byproduct of the all-volunteer post 1973 military.

    urbanleftbehind (1fe82b)

  73. While Kim Jong Un is scouting which tunnel to hide in after he touches off the next nuke, Trump deploys the tunnel crunching MOAB in an unrelated matter.

    Sleep tight there, Un.

    You call that a clown act? I call that thinking outside the box genius.
    Shock and awe the way it’s supposed to be done.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  74. I recommend The Swordmaster for people who like good swashbuckling movies with subtitles.

    As for lawyer jokes, I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: There are only three lawyer jokes. All the other stories are true.

    nk (dbc370)

  75. I’ll take advantage of your decision to make this an open thread.

    I know that price controls are unpopular on the ideological right–I myself oppose them in almost all circumstances–but I really think price caps should be imposed by government on universities, perhaps with exceptions for scientific and medical education, and maybe with other exceptions for other things that we actually need. (Just in case my idea has negative consequences, it’s best to limit that idea to the fields where we’re getting the smallest benefits anyway, e.g., literature and philosophy, or the fields where we’re getting no benefits, e.g., race and gender studies.)

    Universities have become sick jokes, so one of the usual effects of price controls (deterioration of quality) isn’t likely to be a serious factor. How could it be? That aside, how could universities realistically get worse just by virtue of no longer being free to charge unconscionable amounts of money for what little good they do?

    As for shortages, another common effect of price controls, I don’t see that as a realistic danger in this context, considering how much totally unnecessary spending universities engage in (e.g., setting up locations in other countries). There’s plenty of fat to cut off. And with the colossal number of universities, plenty of those places will be left even if lots of them do close up shop (which I think they won’t do anyway).

    Further, bearing in mind the rather limited benefits that modern universities provide, it would be far from calamitous if there genuinely were a shortage of universities. Even a good university education adds little or nothing to one’s ability to do most jobs.

    Finally, let’s just face it–universities simply don’t deserve the freedom to charge what they charge.

    Alan (b3ee7c)

  76. ISIS: Boom! Roasted!

    Pinandpuller (03373f)

  77. I should’ve explicitly mentioned that university education has become far more expensive over time while getting worse in quality. There’s just no reason to think that the prices now charged for education are any meaningful reflection of the cost of education, whereas prices in innumerable other industries *are* defensible in terms of what it costs to provide the goods and services we consume. Universities stand apart from most of the rest of the economic world, and thus should be treated differently.

    Alan (b3ee7c)

  78. Alan the way to do price controls wit colleges is to pass a law that no more than 33% of the tuition can be financed through loans. Problem solved.

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  79. Trump has started the ball rolling with cuts to research grants which are the bread and butter of universities. We’ll see where that goes.

    As for student loans, all that’s necessary is for the government to stop guaranteeing them. Let the banks decide if the student and his co-signing parents are good risks.

    The real villain, however, is the Supreme Court’s abuse of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. It used to be that employers would train and educate promising employees with a view to advancing them in the company. After Griggs, employers mostly stopped doing it because of accusations of racial discrimination. They shifted the responsibility to colleges and universities to garner the smart, hard-working ones and send them over with a diploma and transcript.

    And the bottom line is that two out of three college students should either be in vocational schools or doing unskilled/semi-skilled work (which is what they will end up doing anyway). A college education is really wasted on them.

    nk (dbc370)

  80. nk – ha ha ha

    mg (31009b)

  81. I am envious of all you moms and dads going out college shopping. I enjoyed those times with my daughters. Education and athletic scholarships along with local groups providing scholarship funding sure helps. God Bless those daughters of mine. Amazing how many beautiful campuses are in this country. Sorting through the liberal debris can be exhausting. Good luck to all of you college shoppers.

    mg (31009b)

  82. 26-SPQR
    Where were you flyfishing? For rainbows, browns or brookies?
    mices shrimp?

    mg (31009b)

  83. SPQR
    I always found these mices shrimp work well in the late winter early spring below the mountain reservoirs.
    http://www.ligasflies.com/mofcart/nymphs/Mices-Shrimp.html

    mg (31009b)

  84. A doctor, engineer and a lawyer cannot agree on what the oldest profession in the world is.

    The doctor says “when god created eve, he took a rib from adam to do it, so he was a surgeon first, a type of doctor.”

    The engineer says “hold on, in the original hebrew account there was chaos “To-hoo va-vo-hoo” that god organized into an ordered universe. So he was an engineer before that.”

    The lawyer says “But who do you think created the chaos?”

    Gil (0bf8a1)

  85. Alan the way to do price controls wit colleges is to pass a law that no more than 33% of the tuition can be financed through loans. Problem solved.

    Rev. Hoagie

    I love it.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  86. mg, I was flyfishing on the Eagle river just a few miles up from where it joins the Colorado, at the edge of the city of Gypsum. At that spot, its hatchery Rainbows and self-reproducing Browns. I like catching Browns. I was mostly fishing caddis imitations.

    SPQR (a3a747)

  87. awesome SPQR
    I lived in Breck for 20 years and was fortunate to fish in Colorado. I am envious of you.
    Caught a 6 lb. brown below the Dillon Res. one early spring blizzardly day.

    mg (31009b)

  88. We used to go down into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison for a few days at a time. One of my favorite places on earth. The trout were the most colorful Ive seen.
    http://www.58before18.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Black-Canyon-of-the-Gunnison-Best-Picture-1024×768.jpg

    mg (31009b)

  89. Why’s it gotta be black?

    Pinandpuller (484f88)

  90. Overpressure pushing down on me

    Bursting down on you, what we asked for

    Overpressure knocks a tunnel down

    Splits our cell in two

    Jihad on the streets

    It’s the terror of knowing Dar al Harb’s all around

    Watching good brothers scream, “Dig me out!”

    Four prayers today no higher

    Overpressure on jihad

    Jihad on streets

    Blown away from it all like a sand storm

    Sat on a pike like a Romanian

    Yi Yi Yi Yi Yi

    Yi Yi Yi Yi Yi

    Ackbar

    Feeling around for my brains on the ground

    This is the day when they won’t be found

    Jihad on streets

    Jihad on streets

    It’s the terror of knowing Dar al Harb’s all around

    Hearing good brothers scream,” Dig me out!”

    Keep grabbing at my guts but they’re so slashed and torn

    Why Why Why

    Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate

    Fuel Air bomb overpressure we’re exploding

    Can’t we get ourselves some more chants

    Why can’t we get some, get some more chants

    Get some get some get some get some

    Get some get some get some get some

    America’s an alt-fashioned whore

    Great Satan dares us come on

    Jihad on the blade of submission

    Allah tells us to change our way of

    Tearing ourselves

    This is our last thought

    This is our last thought

    This is ourselves overpressure

    Overpressure

    Overpressure

    Pinandpuller (484f88)

  91. @94 mg

    Do you mean Breckenridge in Summit County?

    Pinandpuller (484f88)

  92. @7 Leviticus

    German chocolate cake is best chocolate cake.

    Pinandpuller (484f88)

  93. Yes – Pindndpuller
    out of bounds skiing and flyfishing

    mg (31009b)

  94. Pinandpuller
    The canyon is steep, deep and only gets around 35 minutes of direct sunlight in a day.

    mg (31009b)

  95. nk,

    A college education is really wasted on them.

    It’s worse than that. They’ve wasted an important part of their lives on something that is essentially of no value. And it has become so self-evident that our universities have had to set up safe rooms where the snowflakes can be protected from outside stimuli that might trigger the realization that something is not quite right. Our educators even brag about the tender mercies they have bestowed upon their clients. One must cognate before cognitive dissonance can be experienced, and this above all else must be prevented lest the riots be directed at the source of oppression and not at designated victims.

    Progress will be made when the true victims of this fraud, the students majoring in one of the many permutations of faux multidisciplinary studies, finally wake up and just walk away from the ivy halls. Certainly, those who are struggling to pay six figure student loans must spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what on earth prompted them to make such a commitment. And worse yet, their partner in this loan is the all powerful regulatory state which offers no remedy other total submission. U. S. Marshalls are now acting as debt collectors from those who refuse to recognize this reality.

    BobStewartatHome (0cc3bb)

  96. … those who are struggling to pay six figure student loans must spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what on earth prompted them to make such a commitment.

    Not from what I’ve seen. Rather, they believe themselves to be completely enlightened due to their vast education (sarc) and think the cost is owed to them by a grateful working class.

    And worse yet, their partner in this loan is the all powerful regulatory state which offers no remedy other total submission.

    I think you’ve fallen for the bait. The object is to fill the job market with unqualified persons supporting enormous debt then the Democrats ride to save them by writing off said debt with the “Community Education Restoration Act” which will wipe clean these “debts” and transfer them to us plebs. Like what they did with the Community Reinvestment Act and poor homeowners. We ended up eating their debt.

    Result: millions of new and grateful Democrat voters. That’s what it’s always about. For example the idea of sanctuary cities and now states is to get as many “bodies” there as possible. Then when the census is taken guess which areas have a huge growth in population thereby getting more representatives and, surprise, electoral votes? Remember, the reps and electors are apportioned by number of people, not number of citizens. Again, the Democrats win.

    They are masters of using our own Constitution to bury us.

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  97. 60.

    The military-focused Global Times tabloid, owned and operated by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper, said that North Korea’s nuclear activities must not jeopardize northeastern China, and that if the North impacts China with its illicit nuclear tests through either “nuclear leakage or pollution”, then China will respond with force.

    This is a warning that North Korea had better make a nuclear test underground (as they have been doing ever since they started.)

    Also they should not test out an ICBM or smaller range missile to see if they can get an atomic bomb to go off. And not use it for real, by the way, at least anywhere near China.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  98. i’m hearing the creepy shriek like a girl doctor on that plane

    he’d already given away his seat

    they’d already booked him into a hotel

    then him and his wife changed their minds and ran onto the plane

    and when the cops came he was belligerent and spitting like a freak

    and you know what

    this tracks with the ceo’s initial assay of the situation in his email to United staff

    which is not to say the ceo isn’t an inept p.o.s.

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  99. “Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in the history books” – Gen. Buck Turgidson – ‘Dr. Strangelive’

    harkin (5243a2)

  100. Reverend, I did not “take the bait”. Progress need not be made, and there is no guarantee that our country will pull itself out of this mess. But the path to a better future is right before our eyes.

    You are, of course, correct, in your analysis if progress isn’t made. The six, heavily armed Federal Marshalls who seized Mr. Aker in Houston last year were deployed mainly to remind the snowflakes that that the government has them by the short hairs. And the cancellation of their debts by a benevolent Democrat Congress would no doubt be appreciated. It all works if you presume these people are satisfied with life on the dole.

    BobStewartatHome (0cc3bb)

  101. Turgidson (get it) was a parody of general lemay, at least from 1958 on, the Russians had trained their r7’s against us, how many they had was uncleAr because the u2 data was secret, hence ‘the missile gap’ much like the Russian fooferaw.

    narciso (a70589)

  102. 84. Rev. Hoagie® (785e38) — 4/13/2017 @ 8:11 pm

    Alan the way to do price controls wit colleges is to pass a law that no more than 33% of the tuition can be financed through loans. Problem solved.

    You can’t do that. Loans are fungible! Are you going to audit people and make sure they had no net benefit from loans? Many people could take out amortgage and spend the money for college tuition. How would you stop that?

    But you can impose some discipline by letting people get credit by examination, which could include submitting papers, and making the granting of credits separate from the teaching.

    Back to the loans. Anyone can get aguaranteed student loan, but otherwise people dffer in their access to credit, so you could reduce it. I would maybe have colleges not be allowed to charge for a course unless someone got a passing grade, and maybe even if someone passed it, they could decline to have it on their transcript, and not owe money. Up to a point.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  103. How about a very very low maximum charge per credit, like $35, or if you want, maybe $75, although colleges could also charge for teaching and books, and even rooom and board, but every person has the opportunity just to buy the credit, and everything else as well separately. And that has to be proven to be a realistic option by a minimum of 5% or so of the credits beibng obtained that way — with no additional charges. (now they could try charging for access to the textbook or videos or a movie, but it has to be possibl to get the credits without paying anything more.)

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  104. Now I’m reforming education as much as health care, and health care needs that kind of root and branch reform. The thing is, a lot of peoplel woudl lose out. A third thing are that needs this is the cost of housing, and there are some little things like tax preparation. I just read that in many countries the local IRS sends you prefilled forms, that is, an invoice, which can be disputed.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  105. College tuitions may be like weddings: People feel compelled to have them and to pay for them even though they can be very expensive and are largely useless.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  106. Sorry, BobStewartatHome, my intention was not to insult you. I was just saying the left plays the long game in everything. They began changing the American culture way back when they decided it was the federal governments job to “educate” kids rather than a local duty. It was and still is blatantly unconstitutional but here we are. Then once they moved the “government” into the class rooms it suddenly became illegal to pray, allow prayers or teach anything about God or religion because of the non-existent “wall of separation” between government and religion. So they effectively replaced God, religion and teaching of morality with government and set their government “educators” (read propagandists) to the ask of emasculating boys, liberating girls, celebrating gays and equalizing all cultures with Western Civilization.

    Their next natural step is to declare it a “right” to have someone else pay for their college.

    It all works if you presume these people are satisfied with life on the dole.

    I actually DO presume they want to live on the dole they just don’t see it as being on the dole. They see it as being owed to them because they’re special. Just like those “participation trophies” are. Besides, when all of your college professors are socialists or commies don’t you think they will be taught that being on the dole is the natural state of affairs? If nobody explains one must work for what one gets and is told daily that they are special we end up with safe spaces and trigger warnings.

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  107. There are extracuricullar benefits to college though and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are exampels of people who benefitted from that. But maybe you could have that without the college or without the high tuition.

    My reform plan, of separating grading from teachig, cold actually be implemented wth few changes in law. Just open up the possibilities.

    Now what happens when you put such pressure on prices that institutions collapse, I don’t know. Maybe you need a good bankruptcy law, too.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  108. if had a choice between more college and more tacos i’d go with the tacos

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  109. How many tacos do you need at a wedding. It’s one thing to have a festive meal, it’s another to scale up with al sorts of extras.

    Better than either of them is converting a dumpster into a spare bedroom.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4394438/Homeless-New-York-man-lives-disguised-dumpster.html

    http://nypost.com/2017/04/08/this-homeless-guy-lives-in-a-box-disguised-as-a-dumpster

    …later the two tracked down Cummings and told him the truth: They weren’t actually homeless. And they wanted to help.

    “We came back and said, ‘We’re grateful for what you did for us. We want to pay it forward,’ ” Duffy recalled. “Dean said, ‘What if you built something for me to live in?’”

    Duffy, who also works as a contractor, thought that was impossible until a stroll in the East Village provided a eureka moment. “I noticed all of the Dumpsters attached to buildings,” he recalled. “Then it dawned on me — what if the home was hidden” in plain sight?

    Duffy built the box at his contracting-business partner’s New Hyde Park, LI, shop for $1,500, splashing out on pressure-treated wood meant to withstand New York City’s winters…

    …restroom at Starbucks; at night, he urinates in a bottle inside the box. He showers at city churches where the needy can wash themselves and their clothes.

    Having a place to lock up his possessions — including his laptop and clothing — has changed his life.

    “Carrying your stuff around every day, even when you are looking for work, is ridiculous,” explained Cummings, who said he doesn’t panhandle or use drugs or alcohol. He earns cash by doing pick-up construction work or making occasional deliveries for local restaurants.

    Because he has a protected space to keep his things, he added, “I’m able to find more work. It’s changed my life immensely.”

    Of course, after this was printed, the police removed it, and then they returned it and then they removed it again. The offense: “Storing moveable property on the sidewalk,” for which he got a summons. But this might work at a private house, at least of nobody was told.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  110. dailycaller.com/2017/04/13/research-firm-behind-trump-dossier-is-refusing-to-answer-senate-committees-questionsQ

    narciso (d1f714)

  111. Of course they don’t want to answer it. Because they were really trying to help Hillary Clinton get elected.

    They claim they are protected by attorney-client privilege (?!!) and the First Amendment. (?)

    If they took care to create a claim of attorney client privilege, they are surely connected to the Clinton machine.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  112. Burger King defeats Google in the rubber match:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/business/burger-king-tv-ad-google-home.html

    A video from a Burger King marketing agency showed the plan in action: “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich,” the actor in the commercial said. “But I got an idea. O.K. Google, what is the Whopper burger?”

    Prompted by the phrase “O.K. Google,” the Google Home device beside the TV in the video lit up, searched the phrase on Wikipedia and stated the ingredients.

    But within hours of the ad’s release — and humorous edits to the Whopper Wikipedia page by mischievous users — tests from The Verge and BuzzFeed showed that the commercial had stopped activating the device.

    http://nypost.com/2017/04/12/google-hijacks-burger-kings-whopper-ploy/

    But Google got wind of the gimmick and disabled the command less than three hours after Burger King introduced the spot on YouTube.

    The short-circuited marketing effort also opened up a battle on a second front — Wikipedia.

    Trolls had a field day editing entries — one erroneously saying the burger contains cyanide and consists of a “medium-sized child” while another smeared the company, saying the Whopper is made from “100% rat and toenail clippings.”

    Burger King restored the entry to its original Wiki content — but then the trolls struck again, with the following “Whopper,” decrying it as “the worst hamburger product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King.”

    By late Wednesday, Wikipedia’s Whopper entry appeared normal, and included a report on the dustup, saying it had “semi-protected” the article to prevent overt promotional descriptions and vandalism.

    http://nypost.com/2017/04/13/burger-king-wins-in-battle-with-google-over-sneaky-ad/

    Burger King and Google battled for hours on Wednesday, with the tech titan angling to short-circuit the edgy ad.

    At first the search giant seemed to gain the advantage when it reprogrammed its digital assistant to ignore the “Hey, Google” comment.

    But then Burger King changed up the voice in three different versions and scored what appears to be a clear win.

    The follow-up spot managed to “100 percent trigger the smart speaker technology,” said a Burger King spokeswoman. The “Hey Google, what is a Whopper sandwich” question in the commercial triggered the Google Assistant to read Burger King’s Wikipedia page.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  113. The uses of lotteries:

    https://aeon.co/ideas/science-funding-is-a-gamble-so-lets-give-out-money-by-lottery

    Science is expensive, and since we can’t fund every scientist, we need some way of deciding whose research deserves a chance. So, how do we pick? At the moment, expert reviewers spend a lot of time allocating grant money by trying to identify the best work. But the truth is that they’re not very good at it, and that the process is a huge waste of time. It would be better to do away with the search for excellence, and to fund science by lottery.

    See also:

    http://www.conallboyle.com/ExsCurrent.html

    Sammy Finkelman (6f9f42)

  114. mg

    You really went from God’s Country to east of Eden.

    Pinandpuller (03373f)

  115. Rush Limbaugh said (I don’t know on what basis) that Elizabeth Warren is not likely to win re-election to the Senate next year.

    Sammy Finkelman (c0fa89)

  116. After a delicious lunch at the Ponte winery in Temecula, Ca., I’m sitting on a couch at my son and DIL’s house watching our 5 month old grandson rolling on the carpet from one location to another and each time he rights himself he looks at me and gives a big smile. I feel so very blessed and thankful at times like these.

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  117. Sammy, Warren hasn’t polled very well in MA for quite a while. You’d think she was all-loved given the way the internet treats her. Also a Kennedy in the House has made it clear he wants her to give up her seat so he can slide in to the Senate.

    given all the attack helicopters they have named after Warren’s grandparents we have to at least entertain her credibility for higher office, right?

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  118. Nice article on Britain’s elites taking Remain for granted:

    “It is disconcerting for the citizen to be faced so starkly by the fact that ambitious mediocrity is now the main characteristic of those who rule him.”

    http://www.libertylawsite.org/2017/04/13/unleashing-arrogance-complacency-and-mediocrity/

    harkin (5243a2)

  119. Two alligators were sitting at the side of the swamp near the lake. The smaller one turned to the bigger one and said, “I don’t understand how you can be so much bigger than me. We’re the same age, we were the same size as kids. I just don’t get it.”

    “Well,” said the big gator, “what have you been eating?” “Politicians, same as you,” replied the small gator.

    “Hmm….Well, where do you catch them?”

    “Down the other side of the swamp near the parking lot by the Capitol.”

    “Same here. Hmm…. How do you catch them?”

    “Well, I crawl up under one of their Lexus cars and wait for one to unlock the car door. Then I jump out, grab them by the leg, shake the sh1t out of them and eat’em!”

    “Same here.” says the big gator. “Do you eat Democrats or Republicans?”

    “I eat the Democrats” says the little guy.

    “Ah!” says the big gator. “I think I see your problem. You’re not getting any real nourishment. You see, by the time you finish shaking the sh1t out of a Democrat, there’s nothing left but an asshole and a briefcase.”

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  120. So true Pinandpuller.

    mg (31009b)

  121. 122 Col.
    Congrats – it must be wonderful.

    mg (31009b)

  122. How is that winery Col.
    Next time I’m in San Clemente should I take the family for lunch?

    mg (31009b)

  123. It definitely is, mg. Everything about it is.

    The winery is great, not a drinker, but the wine tasting looks to be very popular and the accommodations and food at the restaurant are top notch. Beautiful area there, too.

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  124. My wife would love it. She is a wine lover, me no drink.
    I will go next outing to San Clemente.
    thanks, Col.

    mg (31009b)

  125. JOHN HINDERAKER: How Many Countries Were Spying On Trump?

    So just about every Western intelligence service was collaborating with the Obama administration in trying to elect Hillary Clinton. Yet, amazingly enough, they failed.

    The blindingly obvious point that the Guardian tries to obscure is that the combined assets of all of these agencies failed to find any evidence of collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. We know this, because the Democrats have pulled out all the stops. Both before the election, and especially after the election, they have leaked furiously to try to discredit President Trump. If there were any evidence of collusion between Trump (or even obscure, minor “advisers” like Carter Page) and Russia, there would have been nothing else in the Washington Post or the New York Times for the past five months. But they have nothing.

    What was really going on seems clear. Everyone involved in this story thought that Hillary Clinton was sure to win the election. Why? Because they read the Washington Post and the New York Times. Plus Real Clear Politics and 538. The suggestion that the Russian government tried to swing the election to Donald Trump is ridiculous. The Russians thought that Hillary was the certain winner, and if–a big if–they carried out a primitive phishing expedition into Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s email account, and subsequently sent the DNC emails to Wikileaks, it was to cause trouble for Clinton after she became president.

    Likewise, British intelligence and the other agencies mentioned by the Guardian thought there was no doubt but that Hillary would win. How could they curry favor with the new administration, expected to be Obama’s third term? By feeding negative information about the opponent who was sure to lose, even though there was no real significance to the intelligence provided.

    That’s what happened. The fact that liberals still try to push the “Russia” story, even when it is obvious that they are out of ammo, is pathetic.

    Well, no. The story about Trump/Russia collaboration was, I’ve hypothesized, created as a cover once he was elected and it was clear the reality that he’d been spied on would come out.”

    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/262521/

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  126. Subjects from England can kiss my buttocks.

    mg (31009b)

  127. Trump needs tog get rid of the rules of engagement for our warriors.
    Let them be free to protect themselves.

    mg (31009b)

  128. Buttocks or bollocks, they can and frequently.

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  129. Breaking “news”

    The next actor to play Doctor Who will apparently be Kris Marshall, and not Olivia Coleman or Tilda Swinton as had been rumoured.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  130. Tilda Swinton would have been very interesting to me, although, perhaps she is lacking in comedic timing.

    felipe (023cc9)

  131. Dustin (ba94b2) — 4/14/2017 @ 4:36 pm

    Sammy, Warren hasn’t polled very well in MA for quite a while.

    That is actually surprising news to me. She should poll badly, but this is Massachusetts. Why did she get elected in the first place? Scott Brown was a bad candidate?

    You’d think she was all-loved given the way the internet treats her.

    She’s treated as an important Democrat, so you;d think she had a solid base. What do they know about her in Massachusetts that’s not getting through? The Indian fraud was known then, too.

    Also a Kennedy in the House has made it clear he wants her to give up her seat so he can slide in to the Senate.

    Are the polls in which she is doing badly, primary election polls? I thought there were no more members of the Kennedy family running for office.

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  132. Good for the goose was thought good for the 70 year old gander too…

    “It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual — it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent. And it is equally clear that the nonsensical post-election tale that Russia colluded with Trump so that he could beat Hillary Clinton was a coverup tale to justify the unmasking and leaking of some of the information — particularly about General Flynn — which has taken place. The prior administration was so confident Hillary would win that they left their tracks uncovered and afterward were desperate to hide the truth so they projected and whispered the Russians were colluding with Trump.”

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/in_her_majestys_disservice.html

    Colonel Haiku (3bf827)

  133. Correction:

    * 31. 4/13/2017 @ 11:04 am

    The article doesn’t say what country did the actual bombing, but it could have been Turkey bombing Kurdish forces they don’t like. The wording suggests it wasn’t actually the United States that did the bombing.

    It was an Arab Air force, but they are not to blame. The aeirstrike was called by the Syrian Democratic Forces against anotehr Syrian Democratic Forces position closer to Raqqa.

    But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on purpose, although you cold also see this by accident. The Syrian Democratic Forces is a coalition of different gropups, some Kurdish, some Sunni including Jihadist. The people killed were Kurds.

    Now it could be there simply wasn’t co-ordinaton, because they probably have different chains of command, and it could sabotage too. I don’t think anyone (and that includes the U.S. military) should automatically assume this was an error, although it could have been.

    This is maybe the best available update, r maybe it’s just a report published later:

    http://www.thebaghdadpost.com/en/story/9419/Search-for-answers-after-coalition-strike-kills-US-allies-in-Syria

    For several days beforee air strikes aaginst ISIS were sharply reduced because “Russia suspend the communication line the American and Russian militaries use to notify each other about air operations in Syria.” (New York Times)

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  134. ““It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual — it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent.”

    There was no wiretapping, or eavesdropping on Trump at all, or on his campaign, certainly not admitted.

    And nobody has said anything about doing it for political information, or obtaining any.

    A leak to the New York Times claims that the FISA warrant on Carter Page was on;y okayed after they

    had determined that he was no longer connected to the campaign.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/us/politics/carter-page-fisa-warrant-russia-trump.html

    The Justice Department obtained a secret court-approved wiretap last summer on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, based on evidence that he was operating as a Russian agent, a government official said Wednesday.

    The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the warrant, the official said, after investigators determined that Mr. Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign, which began distancing itself from him in early August. Mr. Page is one of several Trump associates under scrutiny in a federal investigation.

    The Justice Department considered direct surveillance of anyone tied to a political campaign as a line it did not want to cross, the official added. But its decision to seek a wiretap once it was clear that Mr. Page had left the campaign was the latest indication that, as Mr. Trump built his insurgent run for the White House, the F.B.I. was deeply concerned about whether any of his associates were colluding with Russia…

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  135. This DOJ policy was probably genuine and probably the reason the Justice Department had that policy was because taht way they could avoid any kind of warrant on anyone in the Clinton campaign – the kind of immunity that Rod Blagojevich might have wished he had..

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  136. The NY Times saying something doesn’t make it true.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  137. Sad turning point for humanity:

    What was possibly the last person born in the 1800s died yesterday at the age of 117.

    Her doctor saw her on Friday. As time was going on she was sleeping more and speaking less. Probably she lost the recueperative ability of sleep. (It is known that of rates are kept awake, and not allowed to sleep, even though they get food, they die, and there also adisease in which people lose the ability to sleep. There is something that needs to happen, and can only happen during sleep, during which body temperature, or blood ooxygen level, or sugar is lower I think it is needed for cell division.)

    Emma Morano — born on Nov. 29, 1899 was in love with a man who died during World War I.

    Instead, at the age of 26, she married an abusive husband (he told her “Either you agree to marry me or I will kill you,” ) but left him in 1938 (divorce was not legal in Italy until 1970)

    She apparently did not have any children but was close to two now elderly nieces and a lived with them and a caretaker. Her dctor, who had treated her for about 25 years, lived a few blocks away.

    She truly died of old age,

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Personal-doctor-says-Emma-Morano-at-117-the-11075474.php

    Dr. Carlo Bava told The Associated Press by phone that Morano’s caretaker had called him to say she had stopped breathing in the afternoon while sitting in an armchair at her home in Verbania, a town on Italy’s Lake Maggiore.

    Bava said he had last seen his patient on Friday when “she thanked me and held my hand,” as she did every time he called on her. While Morano had been increasingly spending more time sleeping and less time speaking in recent weeks, she had still eaten her daily raw egg and biscuits that day, he said.

    http://nypost.com/2016/11/29/oldest-person-in-the-world-celebrates-another-birthday.

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  138. Kevin M (25bbee) — 4/16/2017 @ 2:22 pm

    The NY Times saying something doesn’t make it true.

    It makes sense, and the leakers have to live with what will come out later. That doesn’t always limit leakers to the truth or something close to the truth. Now they’ve made a statement: No one was the target of a FISA warrant (and probably any otehr kind of warrant) unless it was claimed he had no more affiliaton with the campaign. And this sounds like a rule that would have been drawn up to protect Hillary Clinton.

    None of the reports of sppying on Trump have ever claimed that any political spying. or what could be political spying, took place.

    The one thing I can say that if they were looking for contacts between people in the Trump campaign and the Russian government they obviously weren’t going to find it that way, by avoiding anybody actually connected to the campaign.

    And another thing is the hacking was done by Russia and theer’d be no reson to consult anybody, and good reason not to. There could have been, in fact there was, passing on of propaganda, one way or another. to people affiliated with the campaign. like Mike Flynn Jr. There are only a few people of whom you can think theer’s some truth being hidden.

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  139. One possible disputable point is was Carter Page in fact no longer affiliated with the campaign in any way at the time when a FISA warrant concerning him was issued.

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  140. “There was no wiretapping, or eavesdropping on Trump at all, or on his campaign, certainly not admitted.

    And nobody has said anything about doing it for political information, or obtaining any.

    A leak to the New York Times claims that the FISA warrant on Carter Page was on;y okayed after they

    had determined that he was no longer connected to the campaign.”

    No, not “wiretapping” in the classic interpretation, but definitely thorough analysis of the Trump campaign. There’s probably no need to “wiretap” as every conversation is recorded, it’s simply a case of listening to recordings. That you don’t seem to understand – either willfully or through ignorance – how technologies have completely changed the environment is interesting, Sammy. There is a record of virtually EVERYTHING now and it can be readily accessed by the intelligence agencies.

    Colonel Haiku (d62236)

  141. That seems the most unlikely, coronello

    narciso (1be593)

  142. The New York Times ran an editrial against (or lets’s asay with a jaundiced eye and an asterisk) against what Governor Andrew Cuomo did with the college scholarships/free tuition, and in the process even managed to critixize Hillary Clion alittle bit.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/mr-cuomos-free-college-plan.html

    Mr. Cuomo’s Free* College Plan

    …He went to a community college in Queens and, with Hillary Clinton at his side, pulled out all the adverbs. He declared victory for a plan he called “outrageously ambitious” and “irrefutably smart.”

    “FIRST-IN-NATION TUITION-FREE COLLEGE FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS” said a placard placed front and center on Mr. Cuomo’s lectern.

    Yes, the lectern was driving home Mr. Cuomo’s talking point.

    Mrs. Clinton was there because she had pushed the idea after borrowing much of it from Bernie Sanders. Mr. Cuomo got the idea from both of them. It’s not as if free tuition for the middle class was a dream that has been burning in the governor’s heart since he was growing up in middle-class Queens. It was, as he said on Wednesday, a bolt of insight from watching the presidential race.

    And so, a few months later, it came to pass: the Excelsior Scholarship, for students from families making up to $125,000 a year (by 2019) who attend the State University of New York or the City University of New York. This is how things can work in Albany, when a single-minded executive controls an opaque budget process, when wheeling and dealing occur behind closed doors. A big, ugly package of legislation emerges in the spring, with policies and surprises aplenty, and lawmakers approve it, lining up first and asking questions later.

    The questions on free college have begun to multiply. We are not the only ones to notice that Mr. Cuomo didn’t seem to think his new scholarship through. How could he have, in the time allotted?

    This was not the product of extensive hearings or long study; there was no sense that it emerged because public-policy or higher-education experts — never mind students! — had told the governor, let’s examine what is keeping young New Yorkers out of college, and figure out how to get them in and keep them there.

    Their criticisms ilude that it may just shift students from rivate colleges to public colleges, that the income limits are too rigid, that’s it is not for part time students, and does not pay any other expenses, and not for poor people ebecause they get grants anyway, It doesn’t have what the New York Post fiused on – the money turning into a loan.

    There was alsp a op-ed piece.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/the-cuomo-college-fiasco.html

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)

  143. They would have no pretext to surveil, manafort as well.

    narciso (1be593)

  144. Just finished reading Dog Company, We are the luckiest nation on earth to have these brave warriors do what they do under b.s. from the higher command and their d.c. lawyers.

    mg (31009b)

  145. 149… use of key words, narciso, is the 🔑 .

    Colonel Haiku (d62236)

  146. Since they seem to have used enemy of the state as a how to guide:

    https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2017/04/
    16/trumps-first-hundred-days/

    narciso (1be593)

  147. Are the polls in which she is doing badly, primary election polls? I thought there were no more members of the Kennedy family running for office.

    Sammy Finkelman

    They are simply state approval rating polls. Who knows if they are accurate?

    This is the Kennedy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy_III

    RFK’s grandson I believe.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  148. Colonel Haiku (d62236) — 4/16/2017 @ 3:44 pm

    There’s probably no need to “wiretap” as every conversation is recorded, it’s simply a case of listening to recordings. That you don’t seem to understand – either willfully or through ignorance – how technologies have completely changed the environment is interesting, Sammy. There is a record of virtually EVERYTHING now and it can be readily accessed by the intelligence agencies.

    No, that’s not true, or everybody’s lying. They were recording and preserving data – that is e-mail and text messages (but almost never looking at them – they wouldn’t let the DEA look at that.) There was a lawsuit. They were building agiant database in Utah. That may have been destroyed. There was a whole controversy about doing that.

    https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

    I think the decision was made to have only the companies have the data, which they would keep for whatever length of time, and they could turn it over in response to a court order.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html

    When the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of records about Americans’ emails came to light in 2013, the government conceded the program’s existence but said it had shut down the effort in December 2011 for “operational and resource reasons.”

    While that particular secret program stopped, newly disclosed documents show that the N.S.A. had found a way to create a functional equivalent. The shift has permitted the agency to continue analyzing social links revealed by Americans’ email patterns, but without collecting the data in bulk from American telecommunications companies — and with less oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

    The disclosure comes as a sister program that collects Americans’ phone records in bulk is set to end this month. Under a law enacted in June, known as the U.S.A. Freedom Act, the program will be replaced with a system in which the N.S.A. can still gain access to the data to hunt for associates of terrorism suspects, but the bulk logs will stay in the hands of phone companies.

    It never contained any voice recordings, unless they had been transformed by the telecocmmunications company into data. This doesn’t happen most of the time. Voice communications, which never were in data form, and need many more bytes to store, were never recorded except in special cases.

    The conversations that Mike Flynn had with the Russian Ambassador were such a special case – recorded, and maybe noted who was talking to whom, but listened to only when somebody got interested.

    When passed along, the name of any American would ordinarily be “masked” that is, replaced by somethinbg like A or 1, like in grand jury indictments.

    Sammy Finkelman (0c3646)


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