reddit Gallery CCCLXVII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Forest Fox

In from the Cold

Dangerous Ride

Dinner in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

Texas Hill Country

Ignoble Laureate

I know ... I know ... Donald Trump is a scumbag and he fleeced hundreds of students who wanted to become real-estate moguls like The Donald ... and he is being sued by some of them. And Trump has accused the judge in this case of being biased.

However, did you know that, not to be outdone, the Clintons also had their own pedagogical slippery scam going ... making Trump's grift seem like penny ante? In exchange for about a $55 million gift from Hellery's State Department, Laureate International University kicked back to Bill Clinton $4 million a year for the position as Honorary Chancellor ... plus a donation to the Clinton Foundation ... all for a total of $16.5+ million of soap-suds covered lucre.

Rather then ship you now off to this revealing news story, I've decided to quote most of this heretofore under-reported blockbuster New York Post story here:

For all the hundreds of stories on Trump University, nothing’s been written about the huge payments over 2010-2014 to the potential future first gentleman to serve as “honorary chancellor” of the vast for-profit education firm. 

Nor about the $55 million that Hillary Clinton’s State Department sent the way of groups run by Laureate founder Douglas Becker — who happens to be a major donor to Clinton campaigns and the Clinton Foundation.

One Laureate component, mostly-online Walden University, even faced its own class-action lawsuit. In that, as Turley notes, “Students alleged that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they tried to secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt.”

Perhaps it was all on the up and up — though “honorary” jobs rarely pay $4 million a year, and Bill did quit just before Hillary began her latest presidential run.

Now I am sure that the Clintons will have their riposte talking points mimeographed and distributed to their Praetorian guards by this weekend. Watch and learn how the Aegean stables can be cleaned and sanitized in short order. (If the Clintons bother to respond to this story at all since the media usually has their backs). To read the full original Jonathan Turley scoop see: NY Post Story.

But I won't let this story go. Watch for more on this miasma in the future.

Afterthought: One more instance of the lesser of two evils ... Trump

Stones

Suddenly the Republicans have gotten a set of stones ... not that they are going to stand up to Obummer's many outrages. No, they are ready and willing to sue President Trump (assuming he wins ... which is made more difficult given the likes of Ryan) if he wants to stop temporarily the immigration of Muslims from countries where terrorists are active ... see: Talking Points Memo. Has Ryan done anything to stop President Obummer's open-borders policy? No! In fact, last Fall, as one of his first acts as Speaker of the House, he quickly put on the blinders and passed all of Obummer's rich budget requests including immigration resettlement and TPP funding.

Donald Trump is increasingly accused of being impolitic ... particularly since becoming the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. But Ryan is giving him a run for his money. If Trump does prevail despite his increasing opposition within the Republican Party, it will be very interesting to see how he might get anything done given the recalcitrance of the likes of RINO Ryan as Speaker.

Of course, this was before his little Republican pebbles turned into stones.

Abetting Voter Fraud

Sample (not connected to blog text)

Illegal aliens now can get driver's licenses in California ... see: LA Times Article. Moreover, this road-to-hell state is allowing those with driver's licenses to be automatically registered to vote, see: LA Times Article. Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown, might just as well declare that Democrats should forever rule California ... for this extralegal move effectively does just that ... by swelling their party roles with another 2 million voters.

This reminds me of how kings once held lifetime power ... by saying from the throne that God had decreed it.

Afterthought: I've suggested the before ... maybe we should just give California back to Mexico and let it try to fix things there?

Blood on Our Hands

The Senate Democrats are in high dudgeon ... they just had a 15 hour filibuster demanding that our government should get tougher on our immigration enforcement so that Muslim  terrorists cannot slip into our country among the thousands of unvetted migrants from the strife-ridden Middle East ... and kill dozens of innocent Americans.

They didn't do this? ... What? They instead were jumping and screaming about what these terrorists were using to kill Americans ... the so-called  Rambo-style weapons ... or the weapons of war ... or the assault rifles ... or "guns designed to kill people". (Don't liberals really manipulate language well?) See: New York Times Story. Now assault rifles are semi-automatic (each shot takes a finger-pull) but both Bernie Sanders and The View's Joy Behar have called them "automatic" weapons or machine guns (a single finger pull dispenses dozens of bullets). And, according to our professed American Indian Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, if we don't outlaw these evil guns, we "will have blood on our hands."

This anger is clearly misplaced ... it's like blaming the big scary automobile if its drunk driver kills someone.

OK ... but  if the media won't stop exorcising and Democrat Senators won't listen to reason, Therefore, I think that Republicans should bend and pass this Democrat's feel-good legislation. However, there should be a number of Republican provisos attached to this Second Amendment stricture. They are:

- The guns to be outlawed MUST be actual military weapons of war using military ammunition which are actually designed to kill people.

- All current gun laws MUST be fully enforced. Obummer and Hellery cannot wave away any statute that offends them or for their political advantage. And absolutely no existing compulsory gun charges can be plea-bargained out of any felony prosecution.

- If any government lists are used to exclude the purchase of any such firearms, such persons excluded MUST have the right of judicial appeal of their placement on such a list. This due process MUST be concluded within 30 days.

- The vetting process for Muslim immigrants MUST be at least as vigorous as the vetting process for such gun purchasers ... and any BS statements by Obummer about how this process now takes six months needs to be independently verified. If this turns out not to be the case, then this law is automatically null and void.

Then, if another Islamic terrorist finds it necessary in Allah's name to kill multiple Americans, I would hope that the main stream media will point out those who really have blood on THEIR hands ... Obummer and Hellery.

The Worm Turns Again

Using an oft-repeated liberal media strategy,  MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show was very supportive of Donald Trump UNTIL he became the presumptive Republican candidate for president. Then what happened? Why this show turned on him like a pack of jackals ... and that includes the token Republican on this program, Joe Scarborough ... to see this worm turning go to: Politico Video.

For the early months of his campaign both Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were very supportive of Trump, usually welcoming his call-ins almost every morning. Now, just a few short months later, you can see the venom falling from their and their guests' lips as they magnify any assumed Trump failing into a disqualifying lapse. This 180-degree turn isn't even subtle. It is too obvious to be caused just by circumstances.

I say "oft repeated" because this very same scenario occurred in the last two presidential elections. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney thought that they were media darlings until they became the Republican nominees. Then the media worms performed their traditional pirouettes and started running hit piece after hit piece on them ... many of them obviously fictionalized. So Joe and Mika are following this same script. Trump has got to be a little taken aback by the swiftness of this u-turn ... as am I. For some reason I thought that these two were sincere in their early warm reception of The Donald. I was wrong.

To me, "Morning Joe" has become as biased as most of the rest of MSNBC's programming ... so toxic that I find it difficult to watch this show anymore.

Now, let us shift to the overarching issue ... should Trump "pivot" and become the personality that the liberal media and the Republican establishment wants him to become? Trump certainly doesn't seem to want to morph into this pablum persona, I believe, because he thinks that he got this far being who he is ... and he feels that this will see him through. I have no idea if this will be the case. But I think one thing for sure ... if he adopts this pablum persona, he will most certainly lose in a landslide. In investment terms, this is called being whipsawed. Voters may not vote for a blowhard ... but they clearly will not vote for a pasty, rehearsed cardboard image ... except, of course, if she is a woman.

Magic Words

No, they're not "hocus pocus" nor "abracadabra" ... they're "radical Islam." Now, both Hellery and Obummer have coordinated their message, sarcastically saying that the phrase that the president was forever loath to utter was somehow magical and, if said, would solve our terrorist problem. "Is there a military strategy that is served by this [phrase]?" Very clever ... very political ... very Clintonian ... to take a long-standing negative and turn it against Trump and the Republicans (myself included) ... see: The Hill Video.

Now, this phrase, which the president first used in this political turn-about, is no longer a refusal of our president to identify our enemy, it is now an indication of the pettiness of his opposition. How wily ... yet how very insidious. If the president now says these words, it will be to mock his and Hellery's opposition ... it will not be to take the first step toward rallying the country against our enemy.

How low we have sunk ... and how very dangerous things have become ... when our enemy is elevated by this political legerdemain by Trump's opposition. Such a snide identification of our mortal enemy as mere "magic words" says nothing more than we should not consider them as our enemy ... but as evidence of misguided paranoia on the part of those who would resist.

I realize that this logic is somewhat circuitous  ... and may not register with many (the reason why it as so diabolically clever) ... but nevertheless it is real ... and causes me more than a modicum of concern for our collective willingness to resist those forces which are clearly coming over the hill.

I agree with Trump ... when the president and presumptive Democrat candidate feel that they can belittle him for suggesting a first step in defeating the radical Islamists is to call them by name ... "there is something going on here." I also agree with Trump when he says that Obummer seems more angry toward him here than he is toward the Orlando shooter.

Afterward: See also: Powerline Comments.

Compare and Contrast

The presumptive candidates for president from both parties:

                                        Donald Trump          Hellery Clinton
Age                                          70                                68

Birthplace.                             NYC                          Chicago

Alcohol?                          Teetotaler                     Wine Lover

Immigration View           A Big Wall                 Open Borders

Colleges                     Fordham and UPenn   Wellesley and Yale

Legal Jeopardy                     Civil                          Criminal

Mideast Leanings                 Israel                         Palestine

Sexual Preference                Female                        Female

Net Worth.                           $5-$10 B.                Less than $1B

Number of Spouses                   3                                  1

Number of Children                   5                                  1

Political Position.                 Center Right                Far Left

Headlines

Judge refuses to change transgender man's name

Barney Frank: Orlando reinforces case for surveillance of 'Islamic Element'

San Fransisco battles epidemic of auto burglaries

London Muslim Mayor bans sexy women in advertisements

TX Walmart hostage taker, Mohammad Moghaddam, shot dead

2/3 of new illegal immigrants visa overstays

Children of immigrants most fruitful ground for jihad

Summer [movie] box office nightmare ... revenue -22%

Supreme Court: Puerto Rico can't restructure debt

[Orlando] killer visited club dozen times ... used gay dating app

Update: Over 100 Syrian refugees entering the U.S. -- per day!

High cholesterol does not cause heart disease'

Clinton State Department: Blocked probe into killer's mosque

How Generalization Works ...

in the liberal mind:

One "weapon of war" (the latest focus-group tested phrase that Hellery is now echoing) is used to kill people in Orlando and elsewhere ... therefore all such guns are evil and should be outlawed.

One Muslim goes on a killing rampage shouting "Allah hu Akbar" (actually multiple instances of this sad event) ... does not mean that such evilness can be attributed to the Islamic culture.

(This basic observation is not original to this blogger ... it came from a caller to a radio talk-show station today.)

The Answers

What is the solution to increased Islamic terrorist attacks inside the United States?


- Not being willing to identify the motivation of the terrorists?

- A mad dash to allow more unvetted Muslims to immigrate into the U.S.?

- Increasing the number of gun-free zones? (The Pulse nightclub was one ...)

- Running vanity shots of the killers on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine?

- Continuing to slow-walk the defeat of ISIS?

- Disrespecting Israel?

- Disallowing undercover surveillance inside Mosques?

- Closing Gitmo and sending many internees back to the Mideast?

- Giving Iran, the chief sponsor of world terrorism, $150 billion?

- Closing down "see something, say something" FBI investigations because of PC concerns?

- Increased government funding of CAIR and other such organizations?

- Inviting the Muslim Brotherhood back to the White House?

- Electing Ms. Benghazi, Hellery Clinton, as our next president?


In other words, more of the same is going to fix things ...

Turnip Truck

In his prepared remarks today about the terrorist's shootings in Orlando, President Obummer said that the reason that the patrons were dancing and drinking at the site of this slaughter, the Pulse gay nightclub, was because they had "come together to advocate for civil rights." What? Had his Teleprompter just had a politically-correct short circuit? Or he, a brain freeze?

Pleeease ... Barack baby ... there isn't a turnip truck still around for us folks to have just fallen off of ...

The Current President of the U.S.

Barack Hussein Obummer

"We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer [in Orlando]."

Weasel words from a horse's ass.

UH-OH

A suspected radical Islamic terrorist, wearing a suicide vest, killed at least 20 people in an Orlando, Florida nightclub called Pulse and wounded possibly 42 others late last night ... before he was shot dead himself by a police officer ... see: Daily Mail Story. The reason that this is an uh- oh moment is that this nightclub is the premier gay gathering spot in this area.

This event now pits the liberals's refusal to identify such terrorist acts to the Muslim faith, in particular Bathhouse Barry's refusal, and these same lefties' celebration of the gay lifestyle. Muslims consider homosexual activities to be sins punishable by death even though they are reported to be rife within Muslim countries ... in particular Afghanistan. Thus, this is the cognitive dissonance that now will have to be resolved by the Obummer administration.

Prediction -- any statements made by the White House about this Orlando slaughter will say that this was an act of domestic homophobic rage and, again, not refer to radical Islamic terrorism or the Muslim Faith's mortal denouncement of homosexuality.

Update: Now it is reported that 50 have been killed and 53 wounded ... not sure about the suicide vest.

Afterward: It is now 49 dead plus the shooter. Obummer surprisingly did mention terrorists in his comments but not Muslim nor Islamic radicals ... but, as many had predicted, guns were highlighted by our president as the true villian in this massacre. And, in another bizarre twist, Donald Trump has somehow been singled out as at fault by the lefties. This I haven't yet quite figured out.

Conservation of Energy

In physics there is a law that states that, "in a closed system, the total amount of energy is conserved," Apparently, this is also true in politics ... as recently exemplified by Mitt Romney's attack on fellow Republican and presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Since Romney could really not find the gumption or the traction to attack with force his Democrat opponent, Barack Obummer, during his run for this same post in 2012, Romney. therefore has plenty of energy leftover to vilify his follow-on Republican candidate ... see: NBC News Story.

It is really a shame that these recent brickbats could not have been used four years ago against his then Democrat opponent, Obummer. Romney might have saved our country a whole parcel of grief over this last leaderless term of our now child president.

And has Romney directed any of his current vitriol against Trump's presumptive opponent, Hellery Clinton? No? Strange!

Afterthought: Many of those voters, who didn't pull the lever for Romney in 2012, are now cheering him on ... so sad.

reddit Gallery CCCLXVI

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Great Horned Owl with a Fresh Catch

Winter in Japan

Hoya Wax Flowers

Sparrows in the Netherlands

Tadpoles under the Lilypads

Transomania

Elizabeth Warren

A blue-eyed female white Senator self-identifies as an American Indian. An obviously Caucasian woman claims she is black. A former male Olympic champion self-identifies as a woman. And on and on.

Is it possible that this current transomania (ability to self-identify as anything your very little heart desires) has opened the door to utter mayhem?

- Can I self-identify as a double PH.D. and become a professor emeritus at Harvard?

- Can I self-identify as impoverished and get an EBT card and an Obamaphone?

- Can I self-identify as a Medal of Honor winner and be buried in Arlington Cemetery?

- Can I self-identify as Meryl Streep and claim some Oscar statues?

- Can I self-identify as Sully Sullenberger and fly a 787?

- Can I self-identify as a Puerto Rican and pay no personal federal income taxes?

- Can I self-identify as an illegal immigrant and not have to get a driver's license or car insurance?

This is fun ... perhaps I will claim them all ... and you can't stop me ... otherwise you are a bigot and transophobic! And, of course, Hellery and Oprah will denounce you and Bruce Springsteen will never play another concert in your state! So there!

When They Were Young #9

Ernest Hemingway

16 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger

Gandhi

Carrie Fisher and George Lucas

Stephen Colbert

All pictures sourced from reddit.

Annoying vs. Dangerous

Now that Hellery Clinton is the presumptive Democrat candidate, it seems an appropriate time to draw another comparison between her and The Donald:

Donald Trump, when he shoots from the lip, is annoying ... sometimes very annoying. And, if he really means some of the things he says, yes he could be dangerous. However, those of us who will hold our noses and vote for him, do expect that a lot of what he says is mere bluster.

Hellery Clinton, on the other hand, often says, with a few bizarre exceptions, only focus-group tested phrases that appeal to the widest audience. However, anyone who knows anything about her modus operandi knows that she is an extremely dangerous, self-serving woman. She absolutely always has and always will place her own priorities ahead of those of her country's ... us in the U.S.

How is it that the political system in this sophisticated  United States offers up such a puny choice of candidates for president?

Something else is bothering me ... a number of prominent principled Republicans have understandably condemned, even castigated Trump over his out-of-bounds comments about the judge in his Trump U. case. Yet I have not heard a single Democrat even deign to criticize Hellery for her dangerous me-first roles in the Clinton Foundation payoffs, her private e-mail server or her Benghazi failures. Why is this? Are most Democrats willing to elect this evil woman just because they are all Democrats? And actually, this dichotomy more than bothers me, it half frightens me. There seems to be no morally outraged Democrats anymore.

As Trump is currently pointing out, the system most certainly seems rigged.

reddit Gallery CCCLXV

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Driftwood Stags

Japanese Paradise Flycatcher

Amsterdam at Night

Rebel Sunflower

The Plecostomus.

Headlines

Michelle O: "I wake up in a house built by slaves"

Human organs grown in pig

FEC Commissioner: Obamaphones fraud approaching $500 million

Two  inches [of snow] forecast [in June] for Adirondacks

San Fran pushing for illegals to vote

Monkey knocks out Kenya's entire power grid

Latino support for Trump on rise at 37%

Bobby Brown claims he had sex ... with a ghost

Law firm and judge associated with Trump U. case both associated with La Raza

Claim: Robots will take HALF the world's jobs by 2045

Trans students beat girls in HS sports

Social media app usage falling significantly

PLAYBOY mansion sold

One-third of Vermont refugees test positive for TB

O.J. Simpson may confess to murders

Hillary Clinton wore a $12,495 Armani jacket to a speech about inequality

Pissing up a Rope

A scientist who is a true believer in global warming being caused by CO2 ... nevertheless confesses that the world is pissing up a rope (didn't quite say it that way) if we believe that we can cut carbon emissions anywhere near what was recently agreed to in the Paris COP21 conference ... See: CNBC Story. And even if the world does the best that it can do to meet this goal, this would cause mass starvation, huge quality of life impacts and ultimate world strife ... yet still at a cost of $15.4 trillion over the next 40 years ... no small change.

His name is M.J. Kelly, Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and he believes that, given the tremendous cost of meeting the Paris agreements ... both in monetary and human terms ... that the world needs to have a more vigorous debate about the merits and demerits of carbon dioxide in our environment.

I second and third his argument. The slavish, almost religious following of those scientist and politicians who are trying to panic the world into treating CO2 as a pollutant ... need to step back and look at things a little more soberly. If they just remembered their high school science classes indicating that CO2 is the basis of all life on Earth, they might calm down enough to have Professor Kelly's debate.

Valley Talk

I know ... I know ... I am a curmudgeon. But I just watched an English professor from Yale discussing  its curriculum choices there and she spoke in what is increasingly infecting the women of this nation ... and an occasional pajama boy (Tucker Carlson comes to mind) ... and that is "valley talk." This is where, when speaking a declarative sentence, the speaker emphasizes the last syllable of the last word in each sentence as though she/he is unsure of the point being made ... and turns everything into a half-question. This zika-like plague is now seen on cable TV where more of the female "pundits" under the age of 40 are clearly smitten with this guttural way of communicating. They think it is eliciting sympathy for their viewpoint. To me, it does just the opposite.

This verbal tic apparently started years ago with the teeny-bopper girls in the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles and traveled east for whatever reason ... perhaps because we have a national inferiority complex. But, when it reaches into the ivied halls of Yale and into its English department no less, we know that our spoken language is slip-sliding away. I am not a linguist but I do understand how spoken language patterns take hold ...  as, when the king of Spain had a lisp, it then became fashionable for everyone to lisp (still persists to this day). But why gum-chewing valley girls? Why are they to be emulated?

(If I were speaking this last sentence my voice would go up on the "ed.")

reddit Gallery CCCLXIV

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Patriotic Sunset

Ocelot

Iran in the 1960's

Tanzanite

Bonsai Forrest

The Greatest

"The Greatest" is no more. Muhammad Ali (née, Cassius Clay) has died at age 74 from Parkinson's disease complications. Yes, he is receiving kudos from across the land ... most of which are deserved. He was a unparalleled boxer and a macho media magnet who taunted his opponents and his audience with imaginative insults. Who does this remind you of? Why, bigger than life Donald Trump of course ... just substitute business acumen for athletic prowess.

I won't recall all of Muhammad Ali's ups and downs here because most know them better than I, but he did do and say some outrageous things ... for which he was unapologetic. The price he paid for his hubris and grandstanding was years of declining health. Yet he also received many awards ... including the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush ... another American of a similar age who never had to endure the rigors of Vietnam ... justly or unjustly.

I suppose that many with great natural talents carry their resulting successes differently ... some with humility, some with indifference and some with arrogance, but "The Louisville Lip" clearly fell in the latter category. His early conversion to Islam and his refusal to be drafted alienated him from many of his countrymen ... including myself. But I never hated him. I just didn't fully understand him ... and seeing him shake his way through his later life softened these feelings. But, like Ted Williams, Ty Cobb and Donal Trump, today I see his greatness with some scudding shadows.

Yet, for all time, I can't help but acknowledge Muhammad Ali's overall luminosity.

Aunt Bee

Remember when Opie Taylor's Aunt Bee (Madeleine Notatalbright) was Secretary of State under Slick Willie ... perhaps I should rephrase that? Well anyway, she did vouch for her predator boss when he was accuses of sex crimes ... and she did recently say that there is a "special place in hell" for a woman who doesn't vote for this sex criminal's enabler, Hellery Clinton. And now this once diplomatic czar has said a very undiplomatic thing ... that e-mails never killed anyone. What? This pin-wearing pin-head said that "nobody is going to die because of what happened on e-mails"? See: Daily Caller Video.

Yes, Aunt Bee, just like books never killed anyone ... say like Mein Kampf or Das Kapital?

Culture of Corrumpion

Today's unemployment numbers were a shock! Estimates were for 150,00 to 200,000 new jobs to be created ... the actual reported number was 38,000 ... quite a miss ... see: New York Times Article. Still the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.8% ... a big drop considering the paltry new jobs being created. This was because the US workforce participation shrank by an almost unprecedented 500,000 after months of steady gains ... very suspicious.These mostly poor "statistics" could not have been better news for Hellery Clinton for a number of reasons:

1) They should keep the Federal Reserve Bank from raising interest rates this or next month or maybe not until December ... auguring well for the incumbent party in an election year

2) Like what was hinted at on CNBC this morning, if the true employment numbers were actually higher, they can be put in the bank and pulled out this coming November ... right before the presidential election

3) The Obummer administration can still brag about this (phony) low unemployment rate caused by this suspiciously large workforce shrinkage

Am I suggesting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has become politicized and fiddles its reporting to help Democrats? Yes I am. And it is at least the third time that I think this has happened there in the last four years ... see: my Parboiled blog entry and the hyperlinks contained therein for the sad details. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, once a proud purveyor of the best data available, now seems to be engaging in subterfuge ... making up data to suit the political needs of its Washington bosses. And, it also seems that the stock market is beginning to discount these shenanigans ... for it is not down nearly as much as one might expect given today's dismal unemployment report. Perhaps Wall Street is rooting for Hellery?

If, as I suspect, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been corrupted by this Obummer administration ... can we then add it to this administration's culture of corrupted ... the corrupt IRS (remember the Tea Party denials), the corrupted Justice Department (remember Fast and Furious), the corrupted State Department (remember Benghazi), the corrupted EPA (remember the killing of the coal industry), the corrupted Secret Service, the corrupted Department of Education (remember Common Core), the emasculated Defense Department, the corrupted Veterans Administration, the corrupted NOAA (remember climate change data "adjustments"), the corrupted Health and Human Services Department (remember Obamacare), the corrupt Energy Department (remember Solyndra, etc), among many others?

Doozy Headlines

Sea levels declining on [US] East Coast

US Govt. issues summer terror travel alert for Europe

Judge presiding in [Trump] University case is La Raza member

[Elon] Musk: We're living in [a] computer simulation

Saudi Arabia gives Uber $3.5 billion cash infusion

Lawsuit: McDonald's drive-thru discriminates against the blind

Students look for 'sugar daddies' to pay for college

UCLA shooter entered US on foreign student visa in 2001

Research: Use of many OTC cold medications linked to dementia

Measles outbreak traced to illegals

Hundreds of thousands disfigured in Middle-East [refugee camps] by flesh-eating bug

Erdogan [of Turkey] says no birth control for Muslims

Congressman marries woman running to replace him

The Twilight Zone

The CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk, believes that it is highly likely that we all are but bit players in a simulated virtual-reality game that exist inside some gigantic computer of some far advanced civilization ... see: Vox Article and Video ... for his discussion of this and other either prescience or loopy Ideas ,,, I haven't decided which yet. Watch for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Clearly this idea of our being part of a computer game is Twilight Zone stuff and, if Musk hadn't created a beautifully engineered electric car and sent rockets into orbit and back, he would have been laughed off the stage. But he has and so he wasn't.

His most interesting thought has to do with extrapolating the pace of our current computer technology out a few thousand years and concluding that we easily could develop this form of cyber god ... and he worries that the controlling levers of this cognitive almighty could easily be so concentrated as to threaten civilization. (According to my speculations in The Cultural Entropy of the Liberal Mind, this form of centralization phobia suggests that Musk might be a conservative and not yet know it.)

Now comes the paradox ... if we all are but bit players in some futuristic computer game, then the controlling force or forces of this game must be benign ... otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to continue our current passion play. In a very real sense Musk's notions parallel many constructs of a Christian God ... an abstract and all-knowing controller who lives in a reality one dimension above ours ... and whose motivations and existence can only be imagined. So science and religion come full circle.

Enter Rod Serling ...

Visionaries

Nikola Tesla

It must be in the California water ... the little of which is still around, that is ... but the Golden State seems to breed Golden Boys, such as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs ... visionaries who grab technology by the throat and make it bend to their will. Add the Evergreen State's Jeff Bezos to this cadre and you have the Three Musketeers who are changing our lives ... much faster than many of us can cotton to.

Of these three, the one who seems the most outré to me is Musk. Some of his pronouncements sound a lot like those kooks who used to be pushing cold fusion ... only he delivers often enough to keep us skeptics from saying "ah ha" ! (Example ... recently landing his returning spent SpaceX rocket on a barge.) And Musk just predicted to an enthralled audience that humans would start populating Mars in nine years (shades of JFK) ... see: CNN Article. A little nutty, no? But this guru has been saying and doing nutty things for a number of years now and ... delivering! This keeps us skeptics back on our heels.

Will Musk's auto company, Tesla, manufacture one million electric cars by 2019? Many skeptics, like myself, believe that this is a pipe dream ... particularly if our federal government doesn't keep the subsidy tax rebate tap wide open. And, I suspect that, if the Republicans win the presidency in November, some fiscal sanity might interject itself into this "evil carbon" debate ... after all, as a few sane heads recognize, it is burning carbon that produces most of the electricity that recharges Tesla's sexy status-provoking cars.

Of the other two visionaries, Jobs and Bezos, I think Bezos might have the largest long-term effect on our lives ... if, of course he can keep getting the financial markets to supply the funds to keep his Amazon enterprise going ... and he avoids having a cage match with Trump were he to become president. If Steve Jobs were still alive, I think that he might have used Apple's huge cash reserves to pull another rabbit out of his hat ... something that I doubt that the current CEO, Tim Cook, will be able to do.

MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is a difficult subject because it is so relatively new. Clearly, if we are to heve any real productivity improvements in education, they will need to come from some type of automation. However, there are still those who disparage this on-line learning movement toward automating higher education primarily because it eliminates the classroom experience. For one such cynical argument, see: Dartblog Reader Response to President Phil Hanlon. If you actually want to see what Dartmouth's Prexy Hanlon said to elicit this response go to  Phil's Own Words: Education.

I myself have previously dealt with this MOOC subject in a previous blog post ... see: A Pedagogical Prediction. Having used some current software with students in on-line Internet courses during my recent gigs as a high school tutor, I can testify to its disappointingly poor quality ... thus I can understand the reader response referenced above. But believe me, when this technology of MOOC catches up to its potential, it will make what we are using today seem like a Model-T Ford relative to a BMW i8. In 5 or 10 years, the eventual MOOCs will meld the best of a 3-D classroom reconstruction with personal interaction with the artificial intelligence of a virtual professor.

Then, if student loans have not already sunk our economy, the next generations of our children will have it a lot easier (and cheaper) time of higher learning.

Tending Trump

When Donald Trump skipped the Iowa Republican debate, he held a rally which collected money pledged to support our veterans ... something like $6 million. These pledges went into a Trump personal foundation and were slowly distributed to various veterans' groups. I have said I was going to monitor the progress of these donations previously in this post: Unvetting. Now it seems all of these contributions have been properly dispersed with the addition of an extra one million dollar personal donation from Trump ... but it took a fine follow-up story by the AP for this to be done ... see: AP Story.

Now Donald Trump is a fast and loose operator and doesn't always cross the "T" in Trump. But the good news is that, with media follow-up, he does what he promises ... as opposed to that pretender in the pink pants suit. If Trump is elected president, will he still be so diligent? Hopefully, but clearly only if our national media keeps him honest through good reporting ... which would be out of character for them. As Ben Rhodes recently pointed out in his disclosures of how he hoodwinked the media about the Iran nuclear deal, our media tends toward lassitude and often just copies White House press releases. They are, in essence, just stenographers (as Rush Limbaugh used to say.)

So, given that Trump might be elected in the Fall, our national media will have their work cut out for them. They will have to tend Trump's promises to make sure he delivers ... and, given their natural animosity for The Donald, this might just energize them to the point where they will do their jobs. Of course this will be an adversarial relationship and Trump will do a lot of griping ... but it might just work for getting more of the right things done.

If Hellery is elected, the media would obviously be a lot happier. Then they could go back to sleep.