Supreme Court: Marriage is between ‘two persons’

From WorldMag.com (June 26):

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court today legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in a sweeping, moralizing opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. He delivered the ruling softly and without much expression, but outside the courtroom, huge crowds swarmed the Supreme Court plaza in celebration, singing the national anthem.

As anticipated since the high court first took up the case, the ruling was 5-4, with Kennedy joining the court’s liberals: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The dissenters—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—each penned separate dissents, an expression of profound frustration. Scalia opened his apoplectic dissent, concurring with Roberts’ dissent, by saying, “I write separately to call attention to this court’s threat to American democracy.”

“Just who do we think we are?” Roberts asked in the courtroom. “This is a court, not a legislature.”  [read more]

Is this what Obama meant by radically transforming the country?

Here are a couple more questions I have:

Do all religions institutions (like Islam) have to marry gay couples if it is against their religious beliefs? Or is this only for Christian churches?

What about group marriage, triads, polygamy (which devote Muslims like), and polyandry? If you redefine what marriage is then basically any kind of adult relationship can be made legal. The Supreme Court didn’t exempt any of the above groups. I wouldn’t be surprised if the above groups don’t start making their case. After all triads just love each other too and want to be happy.  And if you don’t believe in these alternative forms of marriage then you are a bigot.

If this age where a white woman can identify as a black woman and be considered normal why don’t one of the gay partners identify as a member of the opposite sex. Problem solved. The gay couple then can identify as a male-female marriage. Okay, that was a joke.

Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you if it means saving more strangers?

From ScienceDaily.com (June 15):

Imagine you are in charge of the switch on a trolley track. The express is due any minute; but as you glance down the line you see a school bus, filled with children, stalled at the level crossing. No problem; that's why you have this switch. But on the alternate track there's more trouble: Your child, who has come to work with you, has fallen down on the rails and can't get up. That switch can save your child or a bus-full of others, but not both. What do you do?

Death in the driver's seat

So should your self-driving car be programmed to kill you in order to save others? There are two philosophical approaches to this type of question, Barghi says. "Utilitarianism tells us that we should always do what will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people," he explained. In other words, if it comes down to a choice between sending you into a concrete wall or swerving into the path of an oncoming bus, your car should be programmed to do the former.

Deontology, on the other hand, argues that "some values are simply categorically always true," Barghi continued. "For example, murder is always wrong, and we should never do it." Going back to the trolley problem, "even if shifting the trolley will save five lives, we shouldn't do it because we would be actively killing one," Barghi said. And, despite the odds, a self-driving car shouldn't be programmed to choose to sacrifice its driver to keep others out of harm's way.

Every variation of the trolley problem -- and there are many: What if the one person is your child? Your only child? What if the five people are murderers? -- simply "asks the user to pick whether he has chosen to stick with deontology or utilitarianism," Barghi continued. If the answer is utilitarianism, then there is another decision to be made, Barghi adds: rule or act utilitarianism.  [read more]

Something to think about. Keep in mind with self-driving cars the “driver” (I put driver in quotes because is he/she actually driving if the car is self-autonomous? Isn’t the person actually a passenger? Anyway…) isn’t making the decisions. It’s the programmer who wrote the code who works for the car manufacturer that makes the decisions. It’s his/her ethics the car will follow. And if the programmer has to follow gov’t regulations from National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. then who knows what will happen.

6 things you need to know about virtual reality (from the guy who’s doing it right)

From Ideas.Ted.com (June 12):

For all the hoo-hah and fanfare around next-generation technologies like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard, it’s still early days for virtual reality. Sure, we’ve come a long way from clunky simulators (even ones with wind machines that blew back your hair), but the field is still pretty much open for all comers. Filmmaker Chris Milk (TED Talk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine) is bullish about the possibilities. Here, the man who melted the Internet with “have you seen it yet?” projects blending technology and music for the likes of Arcade Fire and Johnny Cash mulls the possibilities of the medium he’s betting on in a big way.

The key to VR? It’s the sound. When you think of virtual reality, you probably picture it: a 360-degree environment full of immersive vistas. But it’s the sound that makes it real, Milk says. He first grasped this while watching Hunger in Los Angeles, an early VR film by Nonny de la Peña, which places the audience in the middle of a street scene. It grabbed him immediately, but not for the reasons he expected: “The visuals were not photorealistic; she’d recreated the scene with blocky CGI characters,” he says. “But what really affected me the most was the audio, because it was real. Basically, she’d recorded a food bank line where somebody had a diabetic seizure and everybody was talking. You could walk around the characters and the scene, and it was really affecting.”

The old rules don’t apply. Like many VR pioneers, Milk has brought years of filmmaking experience to his work inside the goggles — and now he’s setting it all aside. “As a director, the main tools I use are framing, performance and editing,” Milk explains. “Through framing I show you exactly what I want you to see in the screen; I capture the performances using different angles of framing, and then I edit it all together into something. Those tools go completely out the window with virtual reality.” One by one, all the long-held rules of filmmaking fall away. “Everything’s a total experiment,” he says.  [read more]

Interesting article.

The New Congressional Plan to Repeal and Replace Obamacare

From Daily Signal.com (June 5):

A group of House Republicans unveiled a 192-page health care plan that fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with “patient-centered reforms” and “free-market solutions.”

Lawmakers released the plan Thursday as the GOP-led Congress prepares to attack the Affordable Care Act. Both houses of Congress have already signaled their intentions to repeal Obamacare by a simple majority vote using the reconciliation process—just as the law was passed in 2010.

The new GOP plan, American Health Care Reform Act, was written by Reps. Phil Roe of Tennessee and Austin Scott of Georgia. It has the backing of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus made up of nearly 170 members of the House of Representatives.

The American Health Care Reform Act covers four broad areas:

1. Encouraging Competition in the Health Care Market. The proposed legislation addresses this issue by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance products across state lines. Small businesses also are permitted to merge together to coordinate better rates.
2. Improving Access for Vulnerable Americans. Under the bill, premiums would be capped at 200 percent of the state’s premium average. Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions can alternate between health insurance markets, provided they maintain “continuous coverage.”
3. Supporting Medical Breakthroughs. The bill provides funding for an eight-year, $15 billion Medical Breakthrough Fund at the National Institutes of Health to develop cures for the top five causes of death in the United States: heart disease, cancer, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. These conditions kill more than 1.5 million people each year.
4. Reforming Medical Liability Laws. Solutions include requiring review by an independent panel prior to malpractice discovery and a “voluntary right of removal to federal court so long as there is a federal payer or a federal statute.” Barr said that this reform increases the quality of care by establishing national guidelines for physicians to follow and helps reduce “frivolous lawsuits.”

[read more]

Well, it’s a good start. The lawmakers could add that if a person wants he/she can pay out-of-pocket their medical bills. Especially if the patient is rich, then they don’t need to or even want to purchase insurance. 

Buy why 192 pages? That’s still less than the 1,000 page boondoggle knows as Obamacare. Couldn’t the lawmakers get it down to 20 – 50 pages?

The question is if the bill passes Congress will Obama veto it? Probably. Obamacare is his baby and he doesn’t want his baby to go away. That’s why we really need a president that will sign into law this bill or a bill similar to it.

By the way, the pdf  link on the Daily Signal website is just a 9-page summary of the bill. The pdf link on this page is the full text.

The Coming of the Islamic State was Foretold 10 Years Ago. And No One Listened.

From The Blaze.com (June 8):

Although the birth of the Islamic State and the herald of the caliphate are often regarded as some of 2014’s “big shockers,” they were foretold in striking detail and with an accurate timeline by an Al Qaeda insider nearly one decade ago.

On August 12, 2005, Spiegel Online International published an article titled “The Future of Terrorism: What Al Qaeda Really Wants.” Written by Yassin Musharbash, the article was essentially a review of a book written by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist with close access to Al Qaeda and its affiliates, including the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pioneered the videotaping of beheadings “to strike terror into the hearts” of infidels (Koran 3:151).

As Hussein explained in the introduction of his book “Al Zarqawi: Al Qaeda’s Second Generation”: “I interviewed a whole range of Al Qaeda members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future.”

In what follows, I [Raymond Ibrahim] reproduce the seven phases of Al Qaeda’s master plan as presented in Musharbash’s nearly 10-year-old article, (emphasis added in bold) with my commentary interspersed for context. Phases four and five are of particular importance as they describe the goals for recent times, much of which have come to fruition according to plan.

The First Phase. Known as “the awakening”—this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the U.S. into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby “awakening” Muslims. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaeda as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”

The Second Phase. “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in [writing in 2005] and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the “Islamic community.” Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaeda wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

The Third Phase. This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. “There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and—even more explosive— in Israel are predicted. Al Qaeda’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.

The Fourth Phase. Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that Al Qaeda will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within Al Qaeda.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.

The Fifth Phase. This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al Qaeda hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order. [read more]

Yea, all of the stages are pretty prophetic. The last two stages doesn’t get any better.

ISIS and the Sykes-Picot Agreement

From Glenn Beck.com (Sept. 9, 2014):

“I think this hour will change your perspective. It will also help you understand what’s really happening with ISIS and ISIL… What is the real objective,” Glenn said. “Out of all of the peace accords and the cease-fires and the nonviolent pledges, none of them ever get to the root of the problem, and that is the ‘why.’ Until the why is addressed, the cycle of violence and hate is just going to continue.”

So how do get to the root of the why? Glenn started with a timeline that many have probably seen before. It included the 2014 Israeli/Hamas conflict, the 2012 Gaza conflict, the Second Intifada (2000), the First Intifada, the 1968 Six Day War, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. While most timelines documented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would end there, Glenn took it a step further – all the way to the beginning of World War I.

“The world is at war for the first time, and it is divided,” Glenn said. “You have the Allied Powers… and then you have in the purple the Central Powers. The Allies: U.S., Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Serbia. And then the Central Powers, the bad guys, if you will, of World War I: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.”

“This is the last time the Arab world had a united Islamic state led by a religious leader, the Ottoman Empire, the caliphate,” he explained. “The Allies knew the Ottoman Empire could shut down key shipping routes effectively and then cripple Britain’s economy, France. So they knew the Ottoman Empire was going to be a problem. They had to neutralize it.”

Neutralizing the power of the Ottoman Empire was at the center of western strategy at this point in time. Great Britain sent an army officer by the name of T.E. Lawrence to the Middle East to convince Arab leaders to fight against the Ottomans.  [read more]

Lawrence promised the Arab leaders the moon and the stars including rule over a new united Arab kingdom of Greater Syria.

But Lawrence never kept his promise. He never intended to keep it.  Then enter the Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and Russia which divided up the area. Ever heard the strategy divide-and-conquer? That’s exactly what this agreement did that the Arabs agreed to.

Here the key points when considering the history of the conflict:

1. The Sykes-Picot agreement
2. The desire for a united Arab kingdom
3. The western desire to maintain economic control of the Middle East
4. The quest to regain control of ‘Greater Syria’
5. The Jewish and Palestinian people are nothing more than pawns in this larger game

The Arab leaders new the only way to consolidate power (read: caliphate) once again was to unite around a common enemy, and that enemy was the Jews.

And to kill off the leaders of the countries in the region and have a Islamic revolution is also part of the strategy. Which is what ISIS is trying to do.  They know about the promise even if Americans including Obama don’t

So, what is President Obama doing about this crisis? Nothing. And what’s worse he admits he doesn’t have a strategy. Which is what he said back in 2014. He is either incompetent or doesn’t care. Maybe both.

In other news: Islamic State Working to Develop Chemical Weapons.

So, we have ISIS committing acts against humanity. And there is Russia acting aggressive. Can you say WWIII? Add China into the mix…

Russia’s Internet Research Agency

From The New York Times.com (June 2):

Around 8 :30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. “Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM,” the message read. “Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com.”

St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthur’s job. But he hadn’t heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadn’t even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But he’d heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?

If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. “A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals,” a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick black smoke rose in the distance.  [read more]

To cut to the chase all of what you just read was a hoax perpetrated by Russia. Specifically, by their Internet Research Agency to try to destabilize America. To try to make anyone who uses the internet not to trust what they read.

What did you expect? Putin is ex-KGB. What this agency is doing is similar to what the KGB has done in the past.

Immigration Interview for America

Maybe America should have an immigration interview similar to job interviews. For instance these questions could be asked for all potential citizens:

• Why do you (the immigrant) want to come to this country? 
• What value can you can add to the country?
• What do you think of capitalism?
• What do you think of the concept of liberty?

When an employer interviews a job applicant one of the things the person is looking for how is the potential employee is going to fit into the culture of the company. Maybe we should look at how immigrants can fit into America. Like following the laws of the land. Not being anti-American.

According to Discover The Networks.org Mexico has similar guidelines for its country:

• Foreigners are admitted into Mexico "according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress."
• Immigration officials must "ensure" that immigrants will not only be useful additions to Mexico, but that they have the necessary funds to sustain themselves and their dependents.
• Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets "the equilibrium of the national demographics"; if they are deemed to be detrimental to "economic or national interests"; if they have broken Mexican laws; and if they are not found to be “physically or mentally healthy."

Evidently the Mexican gov’t  is not for open borders.

Under Canadian immigration laws if a person wants to be a permanent citizen he/she under what’s called the Independent class. The class is defined as a  “professional class or skilled worker class and the application is assessed based on a point system. An individual should make an application under this class if he/she wishes to come to Canada based on his/her qualification, work experience and knowledge of English or French language.” There is also the Entrepreneur class, investor class or self employed class if a person wants to start a business in Canada or just wants to invest in Canada without starting a business in Canada. Finally, there is the Family class where a person can immigrant if he/she has a close relative in Canada.

The immigration forms asked about your knowledge of English and French. Your education and jobs you have in the past 10 years. It even asks about your spouses employment history. The form also asks about net worth and any debt. Evidently Canada only wants the wealthy to come. Hmmm.

United Kingdom has similar classes but they call them “tiers.” “ Tier 1 (General) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Investor) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) Migrant, a highly skilled migrant, a Businessperson, an Innovator, an Investor, a self-employed lawyer or a writer, composer or artist, the applicant must have been employed in the UK continuously throughout the five years…” Tier 1 is the highest tier. It’s what UK calls the “high value immigrants.” No kidding. It’s interesting that they had to go into such detail about the Exceptional Talent. Was composer or artist really necessary?

Under UK’s point system you get more points: if you have a Ph. D., make a lot of money previously, and are under the age of 28. So, UK’s motto is: give us your intelligent, your rich and your young. Interesting.

Here’s France’s immigration policy: “[F]oreign-born persons may request to be naturalized if such persons have resided continuously in France for five years prior to filing of the request. French nationality in this case is given in the discretion of the French High Administrative Authority (Conseil d'Etat) if the French speaking person can show that his acts in France have been meritorious and contributing to French prosperity. The above-mentioned five-year period may be reduced to two years if the foreign-born person successfully performed two years of higher education in France. “

A Sample of The Savage Manifesto

Here is a sample of his manifesto I found interesting:

1. Make English the official language of the U.S.
2. Use illegal aliens to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and then, repatriate them. Pay them a one-time worker fee.
3. Pull the troops out of Germany and S. Korea and put them on our southern border.
4. Mexico should pay one barrel of oil per month per illegal alien that sneaks into our country.
5. Strike down the anchor babies law.
6. Export jailed illegal aliens.
7. Use profiling to prevent terror attacks.
8. 10% pay raise for the military personnel.
9. Deny Ahmadinejad to enter our country. Implement strong sanctions against this rogue nation.
10. Impose tariffs on China.
11. Institute a flat tax.
12. Keep the estate tax at zero.
13. Reduce pay and premiums for civil servants.
14. Defend the defense of marriage act.
15. Create a marriage incentive through lower taxes for married heterosexual couples and a tax credit for each child conceived and carried to birth. Increase the subsidies for each year the couple remains married.
16. Make abortions illegal.
17. Require a gov’t-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license at the ballot box when voting.
18. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
19. End the practice of short selling.
20. Privatize the regulation of Wall Street.

Source: Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security (2010) by Michael Savage

Pretty good ideas and most are specific. The most original ones are 3, 4, 15, & 20. Not sure if 15 is a good idea. I am kind of against any kind of subsidy at all especially when the country is in debt.

Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance

From Judicial Watch.com (May 18):

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.

A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.”  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council.  The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).”  The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.”  The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons.  Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock.  They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.” [read more]

Ten days is plenty of time to beef up security for the embassy or even to evacuate the people in it. So, why didn’t the Obama administration do either choice? Well, either Obama didn’t care about the people’s safety in the embassy and cared only for his re-election, Obama didn’t believe the report (after all Obama is loved by the terrorists and they only hated Bush—or so Obama and most on the far-Left believes), or he is just plain incompetent. The reader can choose.

Another question is since Hillary knew about the threat will she be questioned about the report by the press that adores her? I think I just answered my own question.

Self-Driving Cars Are Already Getting Into Accidents

From Chicago Tribune.com (May 11):

Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads.

Two accidents happened while the cars were in control; in the other two, the person who still must be behind the wheel was driving, a person familiar with the accident reports told The Associated Press.

Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop "autonomous driving," a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles.

Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.

Since September, any accident must be reported to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency said there have been four, but would not comment about fault or anything else, citing California law that collision reports are confidential.

The person familiar with the accident reports said the cars were in self-driving mode in two of the four accidents, all of which involved speeds of less than 10 mph. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the reports publicly. [read more]

Unless the self-driving cars have virtually no accidents a driver should still be able to control of the car if he/she needs to.

NASA Working on Something Straight Out of ‘Star Trek’

From The Blaze.com (May 1):

In March, NASA said the concept of “warp drive” was “impossible,” but news is swirling that it hasn’t stopped engineers from conducting tests that could someday allow for faster-than-the-speed-of-light travel.

Scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center tested an electromagnetic propulsion drive in a vacuum, according to NASASpaceFlight.com, an industry news website with a forum that it says is frequented by NASA and space industry professionals.

Nancy Smith Kilkenny with SGT Inc., an engineering firm with contracts for federal agencies, wrote on NASA’s website in March though that “warp drive” is currently “at the level of speculation.”

“The bulk of scientific knowledge concludes that it’s impossible, especially when considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,” she said. “There are certainly some credible concepts in scientific literature, however it’s too soon to know if they are viable.”

She said that NASA was working on ion propulsion for deep space missions, which she said was the “fastest and most efficient to date.”

“There are many ‘absurd’ theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research. But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream,” Kilkenny said. [read more]

Cool. If mankind is ever to travel the universe it will need near light speed velocity for its spaceships. Once that technology is tested and working NASA can next work on transporter devices like in Star Trek. One can only dream.

9 Reasons To Reject Hillary

From Dick Morris.com (Apr. 15):

Here are nine reasons why electing Hillary Clinton as president would be a mistake.

1. She is a hawk who will get us into another war.
2. She tends to follow certain advisers slavishly, almost to the exclusion of her own views.
3. She has no knowledge of economics, nor much interest in it. Economics has always been Bill Clinton’s turf.
4. She has no deep sense of who she is. Hillary Clinton is endlessly adaptable.
5. Her worldview is shaped by her grudges.
6. Her fundraising has totally compromised her freedom of action.
7. She is paranoid and suspicious.
8. She approved NSA wiretapping of foreign leaders.
9. Her contempt for the press is legendary and will lead to more and more secrets.

[read more]

Not a very good portrait of her but Dick Morris was with the Clinton admin. the last four years. The 2nd reason is particularly disturbing. A perfect cult follower. Reason seven is not better. That sounds like Nixon which the Left doesn’t want to hear. 

Report: ISIS camp just a stone's throw from U.S. border

From One News Now.com (April 16):

A public-interest group is very concerned about what's going on at a terrorist camp just inside Mexico, not far from a major U.S. Army installation. 

High-level sources in Mexico have confirmed to Judicial Watch that ISIS is operating a camp about eight miles from El Paso, Texas, which sits on the U.S.-Mexico border. The camp is located in an area (known as "Anapra") dominated by a drug cartel, making it an extremely dangerous and hostile operating environment for the Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tells OneNewsNow this ISIS cell represents a clear threat to the United States.

"We're very much concerned obviously about what's going on," he shares. "Our understanding also is the 'coyotes' – those engaged in human smuggling – have helped move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border in New Mexico." [read more]

It’s bad enough America has drug gangs wanted to cross the border now it looks like terrorists are threatening America’s border. The border really needs to be secured.

The Progressive Income Tax

Since today being tax day, I would like to share a Prager University video about the Progressive Income Tax:

Dick Morris did a video about how prohibition caused the income tax.

President Lincoln created the first progressive income tax during the Civil War. The Revenue Act of 1862 was created to fund the war. The two-tier system highest tax rate was 5% (which the Left now days calls too low). If you made less than $600 you were exempted from the tax. According to Wikipedia, the tax didn’t fulfill its purpose. Most progressive taxes don’t.

It’s kind of a shame Lincoln had to create such a tax system because the progressive tax system (especially a heavy progressive tax system) is a Marxist idea. Although, he wasn’t the first person to reference it. The early Romans had progressive income tax. The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% of property value, and could sometimes climb as high as 3% in situations such as war.

If America had a flat tax rate with no income exemptions then Congress would be less likely to raise it and keep the tax rate low otherwise they would be sticking it to the poor and not just the rich. Then again that would make the poor keep more of their own money (as well as every other tax payer). This would mean that the poor could someday become independent from the progressive politicians and not keep them in power. We can’t have that can we?

Talking about low tax rates here an interesting and informative video about the Laffer Curve.

How America’s Next President Can Lead on Foreign Policy

From Daily Signal.com (April 5):

Talent matters. That holds true in foreign policy, as well as in sports. So there should be no surprise when a mediocre national-security squad suffers a string of foreign-policy setbacks. Top-rank talent may not guarantee any administration an unbroken winning streak in foreign policy, but it sure improves the odds.

So what should the nation’s next president be looking for when assembling his or her national-security team?

Start with Talent, Not Programs

Managing complicated foreign-policy conundrums requires talented people with insight and wisdom. They need to be skilled decision makers and effective leaders. Such people can be found in government. Unfortunately, government rarely empowers the right people at the right time.

If a president seeks to improve foreign-policy outcomes, simply rearranging the rusty chains that bind our national-security apparatus together does little to help. Jimmy Carter was one president who learned this lesson the hard way.

One of Carter’s campaign promises was that he would exercise better oversight of our foreign-policy machinery. In “Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House“ (1980), Betty Glad documents Carter’s belief that the National Security Council Staff was out of control—an all-powerful cabal undercutting leadership from the top, but at the same time bureaucratic, burdensome and slow moving. Once in the Oval Office, he scrapped existing NSC processes, reorganized and downsized.

For all the rearranging, the Carter “system” didn’t produce better policy outcomes. A string of foreign-affairs debacles, like the botched decision to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea, raised questions about the soundness of the president and his national-security team.

To manage mayhem, the first and most critical task for a new president is to pick the right people for his team.

The qualifications for any job are a mix of skills, knowledge and attributes. Being an effective strategic leader requires three core characteristics: character, competence and critical thinking. [read more]

So, true. Too bad Obama doesn’t have any of the core characteristics. Interesting essay.

How Self-Driving Cars Could Make You Sick

From The Blaze.com (April 10):

As self-driving cars become a more tangible reality for the future of road travel, their ability to let riders do something other than pay attention to the road is one of the main draws. But one detail might have been slightly overlooked on this front and that’s the factor of motion sickness, a new study says.

Anyone who has been a passenger on a road trip and has tried to read while riding has probably experienced some level of queasiness.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute surveyed more than 3,200 adults from six countries, including the U.S., about the types of activities they would do instead of driving in an autonomous car. More than a third said they would do things like read, text, watch movies, play games and work, a news release about the study stated. [read more]

Basically when cars drive themselves the driver becomes a passenger which allow him to look around and site see and not pay attention to the road. I am not sure it is a good idea to have the car totally autonomous though. Since self-driving cars are made by people and people are imperfect then self-driving cars will be too. A human should still be able to take control of the car if the cars goes out of control. What about ice, snow or even a downpour of rain? The car could hydroplane. I suppose a builder can put in sensors to handle that.  And what about driving around mountain roads? Can an owner trust a self-driving car to do that safely?

Then there is the issue of some malicious computer person hacking into the car’s program.  And then there are viruses and worms. The car owner would definitely want to keep your car’s software up to date.  If the car is going to use some sort of speech-to-text software to tell it its destination it better be really accurate or have someway for the user to input the destination.

Finally, Glenn Beck on his radio show brought up an interesting point. If self-driving cars become the norm will driver’s ed still be taught? And will the gov’t outlaw non-self-driving cars because they think self-driving cars are safer on the road? Surely race cars and demolition derby cars won’t be self-driving because that would be really boring.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 35

• America went off the gold standard. Hope we don’t go off the God standard.
• Obama said “No religion is responsible for violence and terrorism.” I beg to differ. The Aztecs, Satanists, and other pagan religions offer human sacrifices to their gods. He should have said peaceful religions don’t commit violence.
• A movie that should never be made: Indiana Jones and the Lost Golden Accordion.
• Someone should invent a computer mouse that goes to sleep when the computer turns off. That way the battery in the mouse is conserved.
• Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s three powers of willpower (I will, I won't, and I want) sound like Freud’s three parts of the psyche (ego, super-ego, and id).
• You can be a rich sob. You can be a poor sob. It doesn’t matter what your financial situation is—you’re still a sob. The only thing that matter in the end is your character and how you treat your fellow man. In the end that’s what really matters to God.
• Instead of chanting “no justice, no peace” maybe Al Sharpton and his henchmen should be chanting “no truth, no justice.” After all isn’t that why witnesses take an oath to tell truth during a trial? Then again the truth doesn’t matter to the far Left.
• If minorities according to the Left are always tolerant then what does that say about a Muslim baker not making a wedding cake for a gay couple getting married? Both are minorities. That actually happened. The lame-stream press yawned.
• The real reason why the Left didn’t trust the Tea-Party getting together was because it was spontaneous. It wasn’t planned by a community organizer. They don’t trust anything that isn’t planned.
• A prediction: Bill O’Reilly’s next book will be called Killing MLK or Killing King.

20 Reasons Why Hillary Would Wipe Her Server Clean

From The Hillary Daily.com:

Hillary is a hoarder. So is Bill. So if she actually removed everything from her server, she had to be convinced that it would be more dangerous to keep the emails than to ride through a scandal, no matter how rough.

This scandal isn’t about Hillary’s privacy, it’s about her self-preservation. So here’s what would make her do it:

1. The emails contained damaging information about Benghazi that conflicted with her testimony and statements.

2. The emails — and those of her closest aides — showed her improper use of her position to benefit the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Teneo, and herself.

3. If she gave the Benghazi Committee electronic access to the emails, they could easily determine whether any had been edited or altered. It would have been extremely difficult to delete just some of the information in the emails. If she tried to doctor them, the system would likely show when it was last edited. Any edits after she left the State Department would be highly suspicious and the earlier versions could probably be retrieved anyway. So, it would be much easier to give out only hard copies, which can be easily doctored without detection and which would be difficult to search electronically.

4. The emails would show the improper coordination with the Clinton Global Initiative and U.S. corporations. Huma Abedin worked for the State Department as Clinton’s right hand person, Teneo, and the Clinton Global Initiative all at once. She used one of Hillary’s private email accounts on Hillary’s server. Were her emails deleted too? [read more]

Can you imagine Richard Nixon erasing all of his tapes? What are you hiding Hillary? God help this country if she ever gets elected president. I guess she is just following Obama’s lead by not being transparent.

Life in the USSR

The officials were still rounding up people on Saturday and Sunday to perform “friendly labor” in order to help out our “new government,” which by now was beginning to take over all the businesses and factories—it was to become the “power” to all the poor. It was also a time when new rules were being issued against all religions and all believers. Most of the young people were being watched, and the children in school were being taught that there is no God. Most of the churches were closed, except for two or three of the big Orthodox churches, which remained open. But only a few of the older people attended the services. The schoolchildren were instructed to tell on their parents if they practiced religion at home. The people were watched closely, especially at Christmas and at Easter time. I remember Mama and Papa hiding our small Christmas tree in the pantry, and on Easter the colored eggs were not displayed but were kept hidden from the neighbors. It was also a time when many people of intellect and affluence were being picked up and would never be seen again by their families.

It was a time when we children were taught to be silent and not to tell—outside of our home—about our family background or anything that we knew about our families. We were instructed to never talk about anything that happened or was said in our own home. I remember so well that Mama and Papa would tell us that the “walls have ears” and that we should whisper and never talk loudly. I didn’t understand what they meant. I would imagine that our walls could hear us and that there was something very strange about our home and its walls. When I would want to talk, I would look at the walls and ask Mama if I should whisper or if I could speak out.

Source: The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (2011) by Nonna Bannister.

It should be mentioned Nonna (the author) was describing her experience when Joseph Stalin was the leader. According to Henry Kissinger in his World Order book  Stalin “eliminated all of the other original revolutionary leaders in a decade of purges, and deployed a largely conscripted labor force to build up Russia’s industrial capacity.” A real nice guy. He did this to consolidate “socialism in one country.”

Also, according to Kissinger, Stalin also thought that the capitalist system inevitably produced wars; hence the end of World War II would at best be an armistice.

Franklin Roosevelt felt the USSR was ‘good guy’ who will respond properly and decently if you treat him right. Does that sound familiar? Apply that thinking to radical Islam. Then again most people back then thought this way about the USSR. After all they were America’s allies during WWII. Only a few like General George Patton didn’t trust the Soviet Union. He was proved right in the end.