Kevin's home of interesting stuff: April 2017

Sunday 30 April 2017

Solving The News Bubble Problem

Scott Adams' Blog

The technology for delivering news to consumers is too good now. Facebook, for example, can serve up only the types of content they already know will interest you. The problem with that model is that each political group ends up in an information bubble where they only see the stuff with which they already agree. That doesn’t make for a healthy republic.

So how do you solve that?

I would like to see special URLs (like Bitly shortened links) that automatically bring the best counter-points with every political story. And let’s say the selected story plus the best counterpoints pop up in a split-screen format, so you can’t miss the opposing views.

CA Sheriff Hits Back at "Sanctuary State" Rhetoric by Showing Just Who Would be Protected

Town Hall - Jennifer Van Laar

Much attention has been given to the antics of crazy California politicians like Kamala Harris, Kevin de Leon, and Nancy Pelosi, who all advocate for sanctuary city/state policies and call anyone opposed to their view racist or "white supremacist" - and can somehow say with a straight face that this policy doesn't put Americans at risk.

But, there are elected officials and law enforcement officers in the state who strongly oppose these policies and, in particular, Senate Bill 54, which would prohibit law enforcement agencies in the state from using "agency or department moneys, facilities, property, equipment, or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes."

Cont....

Summer Soldiers

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
–Some old white guy

Street protests and street theater are largely useless as political tactics in the modern age. A century ago, a gaggle of prim-faced scolds marching through the middle of town, demanding the end of alcohol, not only got people’s attention, it changed their minds about the issue. The street protests projected strength and suggested that the numbers on the side of the marchers were larger than assumed. The men in charge responded by giving women the franchise and banning alcohol. The downward spiral started soon after.

Today, people know that the street protest is a made for TV event and that the “protesters” are often paid to show up and make noise. Alternatively, it is assumed that the true believers are batshit crazy and best ignored. In other words, it’s just another TV show in an age where we are awash in TV shows. For the most part, the street protest is for weak losers desperate for attention. The only impact they have on the larger public is to confirm that the “movement” is impotent and can be ignored.

The Wright Women: “Loving Frank”, an Architect of Modernity

TheTollOnline.com

In a search for the quintessential American pioneer and archetype of twentieth-century capitalism, it would be hard to find a better representation than Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959). An architect and builder par excellence, Wright designed more than 1,100 buildings during his lifetime, of which 532 were completed. He was acclaimed as “the world’s greatest living architect” by the American historian and architectural critic, Lewis Mumford; and after Wright’s death; Mumford declared him as “the Fujiyama of American architecture, at once a lofty mountain and a national shrine.”

At an early age, Wright entered into a seven year apprenticeship with the innovative American architect Louis Henry Sullivan, who is known today as the “father of modernism” and the “father of skyscrapers”. Sullivan entirely rejected the muddled embellishment of European architectural design including the opulent ornamentation of Gothic Revival, French Empire, and Italianate designs which permeated the streets of America’s nineteenth-century cities. Instead, Sullivan favored cleaner engineering more in line with the maxim he personally coined: “form follows function”.

The Corporatocracy

Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

cartoon-regulatory-octopus

The interests of Washington and large corporations have merged so completely they are now inseparable.

America’s large corporations and its government have merged. Or was it an acquisition? If the latter, who acquired whom? Unfortunately, the labels affixed to purely corporate combinations lose their analytical usefulness here. While the two retain their own distinct legal structures and managements, so to speak, such a close community of interest has evolved that it’s no longer possible to separate them or delineate their individual contours. Political labels are no help; the ones most often used have become hopelessly imprecise. The Wikipedia definition of “fascism” is over 8,000 words, with 43 notes and 16 references.

PANDORA’S NEEDLE

Via Ben Garrison

Regional Lender Loan Crash: Nearly Every Major Regional Bank Missed Lending Estimate

In addition to a miserable performance in the auto sector and a very poor GDP report, the Trump Era Brings Rare Drop in Loans at America’s Regional Banks.

Bank stocks have climbed since Donald Trump was elected president as investors bet his pro-growth agenda and rising interest rates would help lenders generate huge profits. But this month, executives at some of the country’s largest regional banks said customers, especially corporations and small businesses, are instead waiting for details on the new administration’s proposals and results before seeking financing for expansion.

The Relentless Push Towards War

Peak Prosperity

The only real constant to be found in both European and US politics is war. A steady feature of both regions for the past 20+ years has been small, lucrative conflicts waged against countries unable to effectively defend themselves.

It doesn’t seem to matter who’s in office in the US -- Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal -- there’s a war machine constantly running. My concern is that there's a building risk that one day that war machine is going to bust apart. And when it does, the long relative peace that the US and Europe have enjoyed (even as they’ve visited a lot of death and destruction elsewhere) will be shattered.

Brexit Negotiations: Why Bother?

I keep asking the same question on Brexit and keep coming up with the same answer: Why bother?

There is absolutely no reason the UK should start a negotiation given the repeated EU demands. Once again, on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated the EU’s “not reversible” position.

Please consider German Chancellor Rules Out Talk of Future EU-UK Relationship Before Clarified Brexit Conditions.

The Man of Steel and the Man of Plastic

Cassandra's Legacy:

We are wearily trying to understand the question of the relation of our times with those of the "Age of Steel" and its remarkable disappearance. Konstantin Aleksejevic Vasiliev was a Soviet artist who died at 34 in 1976.

Above, you see how he painted the departure of the Soviet soldiers for the Great Patriotic War against the Nazi invaders, in 1941.

The three figures are the men, the woman, and the young girl (but in many similar paintings we find a young boy). It is a triplet that has a specific birthdate: the French Revolution, when the Nation takes the place of God and of the King as Sovereign.

Cont....

The Confidence Game – The Next Crisis

Armstrong Economics

QUESTION: Martin, I started following your models shortly after college in 2000 when I entered the financial advisor world. I soon realized how clueless this industry was and formed a hedge fund in Tampa in March 2007 to short retail and housing, largely based on your models & my understanding of cycles. I reached the top 1% in Morningstar through Sept of 2008 right up until the government banned shorting. I could not receive quotes from my Goldman Sachs trading platform and I lost a lot of money in a few short hours. I eventually had to shut down the fund and my investors took losses. It was this period where I learned the error in my thought process, I underestimated the length to which the Government & politicians would go to kick the can further down the road and underestimated the big banks inside influence on the “free markets”.

Cont....

Path to Le Pen Victory: What Would It Take? Ni-Ni?

Recent opinion polls for round two of the French election on May 7 show Emanuel Macron with 59-60% and Marine Le Pen 40-41%.

Le Pen is trending up from April 24 results that were as low as 36-37%.

Still, Le Pen has a long way to go. Can she close the gap? How?

AMERIPHOBIA

The 'Taxation Is Theft' Meme Has Officially Gone Mainstream

The month of April is a nightmare for anyone with a conscience, as we only have until “tax day” — which usually falls on April 15 — to give the taxman what he says he deserves. So if you pay taxes to Uncle Sam and you’re also aware you’re paying for mass murder in the Middle East and in U.S. streets due to the drug war, you should also feel sick to your stomach as you write that check.

To a restaurant customer, this may have served as enough incentive to remind his server that taxation is always immoral — but he didn’t stop there.

All The Plenary's Men

Via BestEvidence,

“The King can do no wrong.”
—William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
—Ex-President Richard Nixon, interview with David Frost

The question at bar is why the U.S. Department of Justice has failed to prosecute any too-big-to-fail banks or - more importantly - their bankers, even for admitted crimes.

It’s a crucial question, because after eight straight years of unremitting prosecutorial failure, it looks very much as if a select group of top banks can, in fact, do no wrong. If that’s the case, then our constitutional republic isn’t merely in trouble. It's dead.

A person or group of people who satisfy Blackstone’s criterion for ultimate sovereign power—the power to commit crimes with impunity—can’t exist in a nation where the law reigns supreme. And yet here we are a decade after the financial crisis began in earnest, and not one TBTF bank executive has gone to jail.

Has the Globalist Establishment Defeated the Populist-Nationalist Revolt?

Strategic Culture

Last year, when the people of the United Kingdom voted in favor of leaving the European Union, the Establishment in Europe and the United States was stunned. All the polls had predicted a win for the Remain camp. Everyone who counted, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, made it clear that staying within the increasingly dysfunctional EU was the only acceptable option.

The friendly advice of global elites, from all the smart, beautiful, and rich people on both sides of the Pond, was rejected by the people of Britain – or by the people of England and Wales, anyway. What was considered unlikely or even impossible nonetheless happened. Britain, it seemed, was not dead yet.

Damn the Deficits, Huge Tax Cuts Ahead!

Euro Pacific Capital

Donald Trump has made good on one of his most audacious campaign promises by submitting what he describes as the biggest tax cut in U.S. History. For once, at least, this does not appear to be Trumpian braggadocio. It really may be the mother of all tax cuts. But if passed, what may this bunker buster do to the economy? While I have rarely met a tax cut I didn’t like, this one just may be more likely to send the economy into a downward spiral than it is to send up to orbit.

As I mentioned in my January commentary, Donald Trump’s big-spending, tax-cutting campaign rhetoric threatened to make him the biggest borrower in presidential history. He comes to office at a particularly vulnerable time for budget dynamics. After contracting by nearly two thirds from 2010 to 2015 (from the mind-bending $1.3 trillion to the merely enormous $438 billion), the Federal deficit started expanding again in 2016, moving up to $587 billion (Govt. Publishing Office, Office of Management & Budget (OMB). Current projections have it going up nearly every year over the next two decades. The Congressional Budget Office expects it to permanently surpass $1 trillion annually by 2021 or 2022. But these ominous forecasts were made well before anyone thought Trump had a snowball’s chance of ever becoming president. Now that he is in the office, those projections will be the floor. The ceiling is anyone’s guess.

Portland Rose Parade Cancelled Amid THREATS OF VIOLENCE From Anti-Fascists: "You Have Seen How Much Power We Have... Police Can't Stop Us"

SHTFplan

For a bunch of peace loving, tolerance spewing social justice warriors, it sure does appear that the new “progressive” movement in America is rapidly turning to Bolshevik tactics to force their will upon a free and non-violent people.

The latest example of a society on the brink of civil war comes to us from Portland, Oregon, where every year the 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association kicks of the city’s annual Rose Festival with a family-friendly parade.

Except this year, there will be no parade. Organizers have cancelled the event amid threats of violence from groups referring to themselves as “Anti-Fascist.” According to The Washington Post, the reasoning behind the threats is reportedly outrage over the fact that the county’s Republican Party was given one of the nearly 100 spots in the parade.

Cont....

MISOC: The U.S. Military’s Secret Brand of Fake News

PSYOP/MISOC targets foreign governments, groups, and individuals. The government program is similar to journalism, a mode of communication that spreads information, but often spins the narrative, according to Colonel Curtis D. Boyd, Chief of Staff of the JFK Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, who gave a lecture on “The MISTRY* of PSYOP: Putting MISO in Perspective” in 2011.

The mission of the Military Information Support Operations Command (MISOC) is to influence enemy, neutral, and friendly nations and forces into holding favorable opinions and/or taking complementary actions regarding ongoing operations by the United States and its allies.

Will Trump Release the Missing JFK Files?

POLITICO Magazine

The nation’s conspiracy-theorist-in-chief is facing a momentous decision. Will President Donald Trump allow the public to see a trove of thousands of long-secret government files about the event that, more than any other in modern American history, has fueled conspiracy theories – the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy?

The answer must come within months. And, according to a new timeline offered by the National Archives, it could come within weeks.

Cont...

Here's Who NATO Will Probably Be Fighting If There's a World War III

Russia recently said it would support Iran’s bid to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an emerging economic and political alliance led by China. This Shanghai Bloc was originally formed in 1996 before it was rebranded in 2001. Its membership includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Last year, India and Pakistan also signed the memorandum of obligations and are expected to become full members sometime this year. The bloc has expanded into a military organization over the last few years and has run joint military exercises in the past.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran now fully fits the criteria for membership and that discussions on its bid to join will take place this summer.

These Are The 10 Worst (And Best) Jobs In America

The latest annual survey of the best and worst jobs in the country has again found that being a newspaper reporter (blogger may or may not fall under the umbrella) is the worst career one can be pursue.

Careercast.com has released its annual job rankings, where they rank 200 jobs from best to worst. At the very bottom, the survey put the annual median salary of a print reporter at $37,820, barely changed from one year ago. Not surprisingly for an industry in its twilight days, it is the fourth year in a row that a newspaper reporter ranked as the worst job. Being a broadcaster didn't fare much better, coming in second worst on the list and earning just $1,000 more.

Land Of The Free-ish

Source: Townhall.com

Friday 28 April 2017

Tesla's Musk Aspires to Create "Counter for Skynet"

News and views from a different angle

We can't help but note the lower Tesla Stock goes, the more brilliant and long term Elon Musk's ideas become. We have made our opinion clear several times on Musk's corporate shell game. But we are not naive. To short Tesla is like shorting the Government. TBTF as pet projects go. His new one is NeuraLink . The company was created to battle the Terminator of sorts. Don't believe us? Here's Musk from futuism.com's interview.

Cont....

The Rise of the Generals

Patrick J. Buchanan

Has President Donald Trump outsourced foreign policy to the generals?

So it would seem. Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to smash ISIS.

He spoke of getting out and staying out of the misbegotten Middle East wars into which Presidents Bush II and Obama had plunged the country.

The Place of Christianity in History: A View from Without

Fred On Everything

In today’s irreligious and indeed antireligious climate the fashion is to dismiss Christianity as crude superstition, and to babble wisely about the separation of church and state. This is unfortunate, and stupid, since Christianity was the heart and soul of as yet the greatest civilization the world has seen. Those who know nothing of it cannot understand the last two thousand years and how our world came to be.

Renegade Jews founded Christianity (most Jews soon wished they had not), as a sort of heresy that got out of control, lost all resemblance to Judaism, and eventually stretched across Europe, Russia, North and South America, Australia, and the Byzantine Empire. In all of these it shaped the culture, art, philosophy, literature, the very framework of mind. Much of this was superb and remains unsurpassed.

Here's the Creepy New AI-Enhanced $15k Robot Tons of Lonely Dudes Are Going to Have Sex with Soon

The Daily Sheeple

2017-04-28_14-47-52

“Hey baby… stare into my passionless, plastic, mechanized eyes…”

People want to act like this will somehow be different from owning a slave and perhaps they are right… because the majority of slaves weren’t raped on a daily basis.

Meet Harmony 2.0, the AI-enhanced sexbot coming soon to a lonely dude’s house near you.

From the video below:

Antifa "Gun Club" Responds To Fake Gun Critics With Laughable "Range Day"

Free Market Shooter

In March of 2016, Free Market Shooter exposed the “Phoenix John Brown Gun Club”, which, according to many observers showed anti-Trump “counter protesters” showing up to a pro-Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona openly carrying what appeared to be fake firearms:

Cont....

Is Slower "Safer"?

EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk

The mantra is that Slow is Safe. But Slow is often also oblivious – and sloppy.

Which tends to be dangerous, the opposite of safe.

The priests – and priestesses, more often – of The Safety Cult have not noticed.

The other day, I rolled up behind a car descending a mountain pass. The speed limit is 55 – the car was moping along at about 38 MPH. No, moping isn’t exactly the right word. It was randomly sashaying left then right, onto the shoulder – then across the double yellow.

Cont....

Will High Taxes Force the Rich to Leave America?

The American Conservative

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is promising the “biggest tax cut” in U.S. history. A drop in the corporate rate from 35 to 15 percent would indeed be transformative. But for wealthy individuals, who foot the bill for America’s debt-fueled spending binge, Trump’s plan offers little relief.

The latest IRS data reveals that the top 1 percent of earners pay over 39 percent of total personal income tax revenues, while the top 5 percent pay 60 percent. Trump’s proposed reduction of the top personal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent—the same rate that prevailed as recently as 2012 when Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were in charge—would not fundamentally change this equation.

UK, France GDP Weaker Than Expected: Global Slowdown? IMF Early Warning Signal!

The UK and France also reported GDP today. Both were lower than expected. Is a global slowdown underway?

UK GDP Weaker Than Expected

Essential Knowledge: Part IX

A liberal education has always meant a deep knowledge of cultural history, which inevitably meant art and literature. Sadly, the humanities have taken a beating from the Cult-Marx crusaders in the last half century. Critical Theory and its various off-shoots have, as one would expect from the Germans, reduced art and literature to rubble. Just look at the state of poetry. It has been reduced to displays of childish vanity at scream sessions. You find more culturally enriching rhymes on a rest room wall.

The good news is it is easy to bypass the lunatics and go right to the primary texts, which are often available for a song as ebooks. The literary canon is enormous so we’ll focus on the English portion for now. A modern educated man in the English speaking world has to have a broad knowledge of English (and American) literature, but he should also be familiar with the great works of the West in general. There are good translations of the classics from every Western language so you can read Tolstoy without knowing Russian.

The Real Barack Obama is Finally Exposed to Everyone

Liberty Blitzkrieg

There is no reason for the Democratic Party to exist.– Jimmy Dore

I’ve been surprised by the number of people who lived in total denial about who Barack Obama actually was throughout his entire administration, suddenly pointing out the ethical and demoralizing implications of his recent decision to accept $400,000 for a speech to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

For myself and countless others, the writing was on the wall from virtually day one when he appointed Wall Street sycophants Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to senior positions within his administration. Then came the policies, which were even more generous to Wall Street than any cynic could imagine. I posted countless pieces on Obama’s cronyism throughout his Presidency, constantly referring to him as an oligarch-coddling fraud, which his record unquestionably confirms.

AT A CAMPUS NEAR YOU

"The CIA Has Been Deeply Humiliated" - Ron Paul Interviews Julian Assange

Having blasted the Trump administration for their hyprocritical flip-flop from "loving WikiLeaks" to "arrest Assange," Ron Paul made his feelings very clear on what this signals: "If we allow this president to declare war on those who tell the truth, we have only ourselves to blame." Today he sits down with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for a live interview...

"The CIA has been deeply humiliated as a result of our ongoing publications so this is a preemptive move by the CIA to try and discredit our publications and create a new category for Wikileaks and other national security reporters to strip them of First Amendment protections,"

Assange said in a preview clip from the interview below...:

TODAY at 12pm ET … Julian Assange joins me on The Liberty Report! https://t.co/ZpE9V7y7nX pic.twitter.com/gR9Y3VkktA
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) April 28, 2017

Full interview below...

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