Fractured Definition

Syntax -- a monetary duty collected from all visitors as they enter Las Vegas.

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Tillerson is fiddling with PowerPoint while the world burns

Conyers reluctantly leaves House Judiciary Committee

Franken embarrassed, ashamed and back to work ...

Court documents: Roy Moore accuser has 'violent nature,' history of criminal fraud against own family

Thune predicts the tax-cut bill will change on the Senate floor, but pass

A third Las Vegas survivor has been killed, this time in a hit-and-run

Report: Israel vows to destroy Iranian positions within Syria ...

Real fake news: Morning Joe caught pretending pre-taped show was live

Graham, Durbin disagree on new CFPB director

France set to make gender-based insults illegal

Surge in migrants creates abysmal conditions on Greek islands ...

Bannon: Macron and Merkel 'Ken and Barbie' of globalism

What Happens in Vegas ...

The mystery surrounding the recent Las Vegas massacre of 58 and injuring of over 500 country and western concert goers from rooms on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel is getting curiouser and curiouser. In particular, there are growing questions about the timeline of events inside the hotel and the response to these events ... see: LA Times Article. I, myself, have given up on trying to unravel these things.

This sewing of confusion by both the hotel and Las Vegas law enforcement is quite understandable to me for one simple reason -- money. The potential monetary liability to the hotel and the city from the hundreds or possibly thousands of plaintiffs in this case is beyond enormous ... which means that shrouding of derrieres is taking place to a fair-thee-well ... and will continue until such time as some unaffected thitd party steps in and runs things ... say the FBI or even Congress.

Las Vegas is riddled with sweetheart dealing and corruption which, IMHO, is why things surrounding this massacre are so roiled. I expect we will never know the true story there as long as these shady players keep things, that happen Vegas, staying in Vegas.

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which comes from Politico?

Corker mocks Trump in escalating Twitter fued

Dallas Cowboy owner will bench players who disrespect the flag

California hepatitis outbreak on verge of statewide epidemic ...

Rush Limbaugh: Steve Bannon is 'taking over the role of the Republican party'

Pence leaves NFL game after players kneel during anthem

Trump seeks border wall, crackdown on unaccompanied minors in 'Dreamer' deal

Federal government jobs down 13,000 under Trump ...

ICE promises raids of homes, businesses in sanctuary California

No law would have stopped Las Vegas shooter, Feinstein says

Tensions between US, Turkey worsen as both capitals suspend visa services

B'way crazy: $1,000 to see Bette Midler's '[Hello] Dolly' ...

Gun crime surges in gun-controlled London

A Few Observations

- Global-warming alarmists point to our recent hurricanes as evidence of their religion ... saying that warmer waters makes for more powerful storms. However, there is another factor that seems to be neglected ... the speed of such hurricanes over water. Both hurricanes Irma and Maria were very slow moving and thus could pick up more energy independent of the actual water temperature. Hurricane Nate is fast moving and would seem to be far less dangerous.

- Why was Harvey Weinstein finally outed after decades of his well-known boorish behavior? Malia Obama has been an intern of his for some months and she has been seen recently bundled up in a parka when around Weinstein (a well-known local protection against his groping hands). Perhaps Harvey had earlier made a move on Obama's number one ... and the NYT is in payback mode?

- The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, owned several airplanes and was a licensed pilot. He could have loaded up one of his planes with ammonium nitrate and flown it into the same crowd he shot up (it was right near the Las Vegas airport) ... and killed multiples more country-music fans than he did.

- The U.S.stock market is currently extended and overbought. Just about everyone expects at least a 10% correction ... but we don't know when. I believe that all stocks will suffer then ... but the ones which will be most punished will be the high multiple tech stocks typified by the FANG group (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). Staying with multinational companies with price-earnings multiples below 15 and dividend yields above 3% should offer a modicum of safety. And don't forget that, after the bloodbath, to be a buyer.

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Key GOP senators open to 'bump stock' ban

Las Vegas gunman may have been aiming at tanks filled with jet fuel

San Diego hepatitis outbreak continues to grow: 481 cases ...

WSJ: Federal Reserve needs an outsider as chairman

3 U.S. commandos killed [by ambush] in Niger

Jobless future: Shake Shack's humans out, robots in

CIA predicts NKorea action on Columbus Day ...

EU orders Amazon to pay nearly $300M for 'illegal tax advantage'

Senate investigators: No conclusion about collusion with Russia in 2016

Warren Buffet bets AGAINST self-driving trucks

Quake swarm at Yellowstone supervolcano now longest ever recorded...

Study: 12 Texas counties have more registered voters than adults

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Trump prepares to wound Iran deal -- then save it

Sheriff: Las Vegas shooter Paddock may have been 'RADICALIZED'

Catalonia to split from Spain within days ...

Michelle Obama: 'People don't trust politics' because GOP is 'all white, all men'

IRS awards multi-million fraud-prevention deal to Equifax

DHS backtracks claim Trump supports pat to citizenship for illegal immigrants

French Parliament approves sweeping new antiterrorism law ...

President Trump stands up for people with Down Syndrome, no excuse to 'discard human life'

Trump seeking $29 billion more in disaster assistance

Only three Democrats voted for the 20-week abortion ban

Bruce Springsteen: I won't write anti-Trump songs ...

Tech companies freak over Trump Admin plan to tax foreign profits

Why?

The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, had to have had a motive for his horrendous act ... even if it has not yet become uncovered. He has lived a very unorthodox, itinerant life ... leaping from ice floe to ice floe ... but leaving not a lot of obvious clues. Still, searching for his motivation,  it is helpful to understand what he has been up to. Here follows a reasonably good piece of random journalism ... what reporters have so far uncovered about Paddock ... see: Washington Post Profile. He was pretty much of a successful loner ... very organized in his disorganized way. He was a high-stakes gambler, a property manager, an accountant, a real estate speculator, and, at the end, a mass murderer. So what was behind this evil act?

Like a previous mass killer, did he have a brain tumor?

Was he an anti-Trumper?

Had he really become a soldier of ISIS?

Did he lose all his millions gambling?

Was he on anti-depressants?

Did his girlfriend jilt him for a country music star?

Did his suicide note, giving his reasons, blow out the open window?

Or just maybe he was inspired by Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism and had no motive? And 59 people gave up their lives because of a gratuitous act?

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Trump's Puerto Rico response tests the limits of his fondness for grudges

'The Ferguson Effect' not a myth, according to FBI data

Mandalay massacre, 58 dead, 515 injured at Vegas concert

NFL backlash: 'Sunday Night Football' ratings tank -- again

Trump is undercutting Tillerson's efforts on North Korea

Kasich: If 'anti-immigrant' GOP can't be 'fixed,' then I'm out

Muslim refugees opting to settle in Mexico rather than US ...

China's Xi expects 'wonderful' Trump visit in November

Catalan separatists claim victory in independence vote

Sanders won't say if Menendez should resign

Britain being buried by Islam ...

Canada terrorist was Somali refugee on police watchlist

Talking Barbie Doll

Remember those late 1960's toys, the Talking Barbie Dolls, where, when you pulled a cord on their neck backs, they replied with a series of pre-recorded Pablums such as "I love you" or "I have a date tonight." These crypto-robots anticipated our current Democrat candidate for president, Hellary Clinton. This "nasty women" delivered a litany of her repetitious focus-group tested answers yesterday at the Las Vegas presidential debate ... continually looking down at her podium as though she was recollecting her answers from notes (which were not supposed to be there). Isn't it funny that she can remember so little when being interrogated by the FBI, yet can spew these crime-family answers glibly and verbatim?

Did someone secretly pull a cord on her neck back when it was her turn to speak?

Perhaps it was the person who had put the crib notes on her podium?

Whopper

In the Las Vegas presidential debate last night a question was asked about how the two candidates would grow the U.S. economy. In the ensuing give and take the following whopper caught my ear:

"I will not add a penny to our national debt" -- Hillary Clinton (thrice said)

Clearly, if this woman can make this impossible claim ... it is difficult to place a scintilla of credence in any of her other campaign promises.

My Cat

Norah is really my wife's and my cat, but she tends to favor me ... to my wife's eternal chagrin. When we first got this shelter kitten, she would sleep between our pillows in bed. But now that we, because of my recent back surgery, are sleeping in separate beds, the much older Norah bunks in with me. My wife, for a while, tried to alter this arrangement by kidnapping her and closing doors to preserve this nocturnal separation, but has since given up ... and now Norah is with me the whole night. (In case you are wondering, Norah was named for Norah Jones who was singing on the radio when our new kitten was being brought home.)

Anyhow there is a reason for this blog post ... and that is to try to understand the idiosyncrasies of life. One of the reasons Norah favors me is that I scratch under her chin and between her ears where she obviously can't groom herself. So multiple times a night I perform this ritual to a crescendo of her purring. However, occasionally, for reasons I have never been able to decipher, Norah will resist this favor and bite me. Not drawing blood, but a bite nevertheless ... which pisses me off to the point where I won't pet her again for quite a while. I also think that I am using Pavlovian conditioning to stop this annoying trait ... but no ... even after all these years she still occasionally does it.

I also equate this idiosyncrasy to that incident in Las Vegas where, after years of performing on stage, one of the tigers in Siegfred and Roy's act attacked and almost killed Roy.Why did this tiger do this? It is just one of the mysteries of life ... like why did a mother strap her two children inside a car and push it into a South Carolina lake? Perhaps this is all because civilization has not totally tamed the feral past of all animals ... even humans. This is certainly evident in some of the gruesome events seen daily in the Middle East.

So, back to Norah ... will she some night suddenly decide to rip my face off? This possibility keeps me on my toes.

Three-Card Monte

President Obama has pulled another fast one ... saying he was signing an executive order recently in Las Vegas allowing up to five million illegal immigrants to avoid deportation ... amnesty if you will ... when he really didn't. Of course this would not have be the first time that he lied to the American people. In fact, his telling the truth would be a bigger news story than his pathological mendacity. If you said that you "changed the law" by signing an executive order, you would think that you would sign an executive order ... not just an ersatz memorandum and a proclamation to make it look like you are doing what you claimed. Can we ever rely on this man not to perform another three-card monte "now you see it now you don't" switcheroo ... see: WND Story.

So Obama didn't sign an executive order, he just grifted the American people and the Republican Party with another sham scam. He actually is relying on his head on Homeland Security to play along with this bunko game as though he had done what he said. Jeh Johnson actually issued a memorandum propounding "prosecutorial discretion" without official presidential authorization which supposedly implements the amnesty that Obama had promised. This way, if Obama is found to have exceeded his executive authority, he can turn over the card and show that it is not the ace. "Ha, ha, fooled ya,!" In other words this executive amnesty is even more unconstitutional than at first blush. Obama has his flunky, Johnson, deflect any future blame ... Johnson is kind of like the shill in the three-card monte crowd.

Of course one result of this misdirection is that possibly millions more Latinos will now make their way into the United States hoping to slip in under this new sham order. Is it possible to have a sleazier, more slippery, less patriotic lowlife as our president? I hope I never see another one so vile, base and corrupt.

Afterward: Here is a follow-up story with more details and verifying the original charge: WND Article.

Unfiltered