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  • Art Stone 1:28 pm on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    The EAS system’s flaw – since everything needs a “point”, the point behind the series of EAS polls is that other than for local emergencies (like tornados), the EAS serves no useful purpose, and even then it is of limited value. The only mandatory activation of the EAS is by the White House for a national emergency.

    On September 11th 2001, the EAS system was not activated in the circumstances most relevant to why it was created – there was a national attack of unknown size against governmental and economic targets in the United States, during which timely action could have saved lives.

    There are two main problems – first is that making a determination that an emergency exists and formulating a coherent message and what to do about it is very hard to do. The people with the most accurate information were busy reacting to the threat (i.e. ordering an unprecedented order to the FAA to force all airplanes to immediately land), not communicating to civilians to do things like evacuate the South Tower of the WTC. It has been said that another reason was that people making EAS type decisions were watching TV coverage to learn what was going on, and activating national EAS would have cut off their access to see that live information.

    The second bigger problem is – would notifying the public (and the related panic) create more damage than keeping the public in the dark? In my most extreme hypothetical – a nuclear weapon found that might explode – that would create mass panic. The roads would clog with civilians trying to “escape” to a safe place when there probably is no such thing…. the clogged roads, instinct to pick up the phone and call people, and rush for emergency supplies would impair the ability of people with an ability to prevent or mitigate the disaster (response teams, local government officials, doctors, military) from being able to get where they need to go or communicate effectiveely as phone lines jam.

    If we can’t define a scenario where EAS would actually be used and be useful, why is it such a high priority of the Federal government?

     

  • Art Stone 12:18 pm on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Understanding Social Justice – the United Nations’ International Labour Organization explains the role of World Day for Social Justice (February 20th)

     

  • Art Stone 12:02 pm on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    An example of how directly the Socialist Workers Party talks about their goals and who is behind them. Note that they are saying the same history I posted last night – that Blacks moving North following WW1 looking for work created conflict within the Communist movement because of the racism of White liberal Northerners… it took pressure from their Soviet Union backers to slowly change those attitudes.

     

  • Art Stone 11:25 am on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    The Costa Rica stupidity continues – Bloombama News Service has now joined the chorus of media stupidity.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=as29boo9FyVQ

    On the positive side, at least they did some original research about Costa Rica’s medical system, and attempted to contact Rush.

    First the probable background of why Rush pulled Costa Rica out of the air:
    Insurance company caller talking about sending people to Costa Rica for treatement (November 2009)

    Regarding the purpose of their story and Rush’s response, they quote Rush saying “stupid people in the media who cannot trouble themselves to read my transcripts or listen to this program.” ”

    but they didn’t apparently bother to look at the transcript. Let me help out:

    http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030810/content/01125111.guest.html

    RUSH: Yes! It’s going to be the only people providing insurance.

    CALLER: Where, then, would you go for health care?

    RUSH: Where would I go for health care?

    CALLER: Yeah, if the private doctors have to go into the federal program.

    RUSH: My guess is even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. They can’t see anybody, Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer, and it’s going to be a very small practice. I don’t know if that has been outlawed in the Senate bill.

    CALLER: Okay.

    RUSH: I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this. If this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented, I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

    No reasonable person can read that in context and think anything other than Rush is talking about going to Costa Rica for medical treatment, not moving to Costa Rica. Rush has said multiple times that the problem with Health Care IS insurance – that if people paid their own bills for cash (as he does) that we wouldn’t have the problems with high costs.

    Rush is not talking about Costa Rica’s socialized medical system – it is a growing industry of medical tourism being used more and more by people trying to save costs.

     

  • Art Stone 10:00 am on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Barry Soetoro in Indonesia. The UK’s Daily Mail adds in more details about Barack Obama’s childhood in Indonesia. One little detail it mentions is that his mother did work for the U.S. Embassy, teaching English. Probably appropiate at this point to note that one of the core beliefs of the John Birch Society is that the U.S. State Department is full of commies.

     

  • Art Stone 8:42 am on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    “Marxism in Christian clothing” – no, that’s not Glenn Beck, it’s the phrase used by Rick Warren back in 2008. Unless you’ve read his books (Purpose Driven Life) or attend his Saddleback Church, you’re most likely to remember him as the man who hosted the Obama vs McCain face to face discussion.

    He goes on to point out that it is the mainstream Protestant denominations which embraced Social Justice and have died as a result – there are “more Muslims in America now than Episcopalians”

     

  • Art Stone 4:33 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    USB 3.0 is here – it can theoretically transfer 5 Gb/sec if the device can keep up – that’s around 500 MB/sec… or using the old rule of thumb of 2kB=1 page of text… 250,000 printed pages per second. In an hour, you could transfer 1800 Gigabytes or 1.8 Terabyte… in 6 hours, the entire contents of the U.S. Library of Congress…… and this techology is now consumer level stuff – not NSA billion dollar super sekrit stuff. As a bonus, USB 3.0 can deliver close to 1 Amp of power, so making devices that don’t need an external power supply just got a lot easier.

     

    • phistar 9:14 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Now I need to wait for an affordable 2+TB external HD with USB 3.0 connection.

    • blsumner 9:33 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Damn, Now I will need to buy new computers :)

  • Art Stone 12:00 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Kansas City Star punks itself – the McClatchy owned newspaper published an article about Glenn Beck’s wife and the Census based largely on”her” paranoid writings on a Myspace page. Glenn pointed out today this is a fake Myspace account…

    A followup on an affiliated web site pointing out their mistake has been deleted (it showed up in my Google News feed). The online article now has a paragraph adding that Beck has stated it wasn’t written by his wife

    I had hope for McClatchy for boldly going after Goldman Sachs, but it looks like they have joined the Dan Rather school of Journalism – okay we didn’t fact check with a skeptical eye, we were told beyond a reasonable doubt that the source turned out to be fake – but we will not retract the story nor apologize because our story sounds like it could be true.

    2008 – the year journalism died.

     

    • ICCDude 2:21 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      You are so right – you hope they will do the right thing, but the Drive-by Media continues to disappoint.
      Kinda like a delinquent teenager.
      I think we can all agree they are a FAR cry from Journalists.

    • Art Stone 11:18 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Followup here

      Right on script, the “journalist” admits the myspace page was bogus, but doesn’t apologize and doesn’t withdraw his premise that Census paranoia is rampant among Right Wing nut cases.

      Now if he was actually a reporter and not just a political lemming, he would ask the Census Dept what the compliance rate is among African Americans and why it is necessary to target Special money within the Black Community to increase cooperation.

      Hint: IRS 1040 counts vs adults living in a census tract

  • Art Stone 9:51 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Federalism – it’s an argument as old as the country. Is the United States government a central government created by the several States to handle only those things that only a central government can do (protect the country, resolve disputes between the States, enter into treaties with other Countries) or is the United States government the only government, and the States are just departments that work on behalf of the people in Washington D.C.

    Some of the mileposts along the way to the journey to one central government…
    - “Revenue Sharing” – this was Richard Nixon’s idea… start providing funds to local towns to buy fire engines and pave roads and buy police cars – who could be opposed to that? But with money always comes strings and rules
    - The 17th amendment to the Constitution which changed the U.S. Senate from being appointed by the legislatures of the States to being elected by the voters. The U.S. Senate and its deliberately slow processes are there to prevent “Democracy” for empowering the central government to take away functions that are State responsibilities and usurp them in violation of the Constitution
    - Interstate Banking – prior to the late 1970s, banks were limited to operating only in a single state and could choose to be chartered by state governments (with oversight by the FDIC and the comptroller of the Currency) . The New York banks worried about things like sending money internationally – you didn’t have Bank of America branches in every state creating banks large enough to cause collapse of the entire system if one bank became insolvent
    - “No Child Left Behind” empowered the Federal Government to supervise Education, which had always been a state and local function. This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. No Child Left Behind was a Republican idea.
    - Insurance regulation – that’s what this health care debate is about at its core. Insurance is the last bastion of where state governments get political power (and campaign contributions). Insurance today (with the exception of Medicare) is something tied to and regulated by the State where you live. While there are Insurance “brands” (Allstate, Blue Cross, AIG), they operate through separate subsidiaries in each state, and have to segregate assets – so that should AIG fail, that central failure would not cascade into putting all 50 states into a financial crisis

    So that’s the fundamental “transformation” at play this week. Even the nice sounding compromise of just allowing insurance companies to offer insurance across state lines is about who will regulate insurance and protect its policy holders.

    There is significant evidence that in the United States, we like national things – TV networks, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, ATM cards that work everywhere, Interstate highway systems with more or less uniform traffic signals and laws… there is a lot of momentum on the side of letting Washington D.C. make all the rules.

     

    • jmyrlefuller 1:52 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      “This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. No Child Left Behind was a Republican idea.” If Ted Kennedy was a Republican, then I’m a monkey’s uncle. (Note: this is not an excusal of George W. Bush for going along with it, but the point stands.)

      • Art Stone 4:52 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        President Bush did not just “go along” with it. In 2001, the Republicans controlled the House, They controlled the Senate unitl the Senator from Vermont switched parties.

        Legislative history

        An overhaul of Federal education policy was a centerpiece of President Bush’s 2000 election campaign and a top legislative priority for his first year in office. The core of his plan was to force improvements in the Nation’s schools by measuring students’ progress through annual tests and penalizing States and schools if low test scores did not improve.

        On March 22, 2001, Representative John Boehner (R-OH) introduced H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. House committee hearings were held in March, and multiple amendments were considered and adopted throughout May. On May 23, 2001, the House passed H.R. 1 and filed House Report 107-63. The Senate passed H.R. 1, as amended, on June 14 and filed Senate Report 107-7. Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, many doubted that this legislation would pass in 2001, but a conference committee that had met in July and August continued to meet in October and November. On December 13, 2001, the House adopted Conference Report-House Report 107-334, and the Senate passed the Conference Report on December 18, 2001. The measure was presented to the President on January 4, 2002, and it was signed into law on January 8, 2002.

      • Art Stone 5:00 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Of if that isn’t strong enough, how about Bush’s Secretary of Education?
        Congressional Testimony

        Testimony by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige on No Child Left Behind — A Blueprint for Education Reform

        March 13, 2001 before the House Budget Committee, Jim Nussle, Chairman

        Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

        Thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s plan to strengthen our elementary and secondary schools and close the achievement gap, and to discuss the President’s 2002 budget for education.

    • foyle 6:22 am on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      It almost sounds like somebody had a plan to take us down from within. Oh, wait they did…

      Direct quote from former Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev:

      “We will take America without firing a shot…….We will BURY YOU! We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.”
      (From an address to Western Ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18, 1956.)

      • Art Stone 8:09 am on March 18, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        If you browse around various Socialist and Communist web sites and publications, they are very clear that they own the leadership in Congress. They don’t hide what they are doing – they don’t view what they are doing as wrong or even debateable. Nobody in a major news outlet is going to point out the connections, and with the possible exception of Reagan, no Republican was/is working to turn back the tide. (while Reagan wanted to cut back the role of the Federal government, he also wanted a 1000 ship Navy and lots of spending to keep the US military capable of intervening in other people’s wars)

  • Art Stone 9:14 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Do non-Hawaiians have a “tangible interest” in seeing President Obama’s birth certificate?

    The state legislature is considering passing a law telling “birthers” to just give it up
    http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100317/D9EG7MBO0.html

    which of course just reinforces that someone is hiding something.

     

    • Art Stone 11:28 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Here is a totally off the wall prediction. At some point, President Obama will propose allowing Hawaii to regain its independence as a nation and apologize for occupying the country.

  • Art Stone 1:11 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Blockbuster considering filing Chapter 11 – between NetFlix, Satellite TV and movies on demand, the quaint idea of going to a physical store to rent a DVD has run its course – not to mention that movies are an obvious place to cut a family’s budget in these times.

     

  • Art Stone 12:21 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    It’s March Madness…. stations will be carrying basketball games for the rest of the month – stations that didn’t carry regular season games. If a stream seems to be down in the evening or the weekends, and is also down if you try to play it from the station web site – more than likely, that’s the cause. Stations can’t stream NCAA basketball games (generally….) Spring training for baseball is also active….

     

    • blsumner 11:46 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      AAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Why can’t the “News-Talk” stations stay on format and let the “Sports-Talk” and sports stations play that junk? Some people think that the condtion of the country is a little more important than people playing with thier balls.

      • Art Stone 12:31 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        You might notice that corporations that are scared to advertise on Rush or Beck have no problem dumping money into advertising on basketball games. I’ve heard (but don’t know for sure) that many news/talk stations only are viable because of the revenue from the sports….

    • Robrrt 2:37 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Well, to keep the news/talk stations on topic, PrezBO has submitted his bracket:
      http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/en/entry?entryID=3288143 :)

  • Art Stone 11:45 am on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    All 57 states will save 3000% on health care.

    Someone should ask President Obama to speel potatoe.

     

    • Art Stone 11:51 am on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Nothing in Obama’s TV shows is by accident. Every person in the picture is hand selected and placed there for a reason.

      Notice there is only one black person in his amen chorus, and he is hidden behind Obama’s head.

      • WesternMA 12:19 pm on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Rush is talking about this right now…I wonder if that was on his teleprompter…what a dumb comment.

        • WesternMA 12:20 pm on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Just noticed the “all 57 states” comment…good one!

          • Art Stone 11:19 pm on March 16, 2010 Permalink

            Rush has to be careful – he’s numerically challenged and knows he is, but still tries to do math in his head – just like Dr Laura has been told 100 times not to try to sing :)

          • Art Stone 12:34 pm on March 17, 2010 Permalink

            If you want to be very un-PC, we could play a game of the picture like “Where’s Waldo”… see if you can spot the
            1) Gay man
            2) Hispanic woman
            3) Lesbian(s)
            4) Nurse union organizer
            5) Native American
            6) Deaf person
            7) SEIU member
            8.) College Professor
            9) Trial lawyer

            etc….

  • Art Stone 9:12 pm on March 15, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Was Woody (Woodrow Wilson) Guthrie a Marxist or maybe even a Communist? Or is Glenn Beck an out of control paranoid McCarthy wannabe?

    Let’s check in with PBS
    PBS Profile on Woody Guthrie

    The most direct mention is that Woody submitted articles to The Daily Worker, the official Newspaper of the Communist Party USA. PBS doesn’t even blink at the mention, since there is philosophically nothing significant to a person being a Marxist or a Communist.

     

    • phistar 9:59 pm on March 15, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Nothing philosophically significant at all. It’s like Coke and Pepsi. Or Patriots and Rams. My kids are taught that marketing = propaganda. It’s all semantics.
      Wait. What was that?
      Oh, it’s just us circling the bowl a little faster…

    • blsumner 11:22 am on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Yes, Guthrie was a Communist.
      No, Beck is NOT paranoid
      And finally, I think that McCarthy was on to something back then but we did not have the “INDEPENDANT” news and information sources that we have today so the Communist controlled media of the 50’s was able to discredit and excoriate him.
      If the truth had been able to be brought to light, McCarthy would have gone down in history as a great patriot ,on the same level as Paul Revere. Just my opinion :)

    • dsrtwillow 1:14 pm on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I thought this was common knowledge There were a bazillion people (by actual count) in his generation who really believed that the Great Depression was proof of the failure of the capitalist “experiment.” Most of them wised up over time..

      • Art Stone 11:34 pm on March 16, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        It’s partly a generational thing. Glenn is a couple years younger than me, and much of his life he was boozing and hanging with FM dopers…. It’s interesting watching him learn all this stuff I knew as a teenager…. the one major thing he educated me about was Woodrow Wilson. My dad (born 1905) talked more about FDR and the things he did in the 30s and during the war, not so much about Wilson.

        Glenn mentioned in passing that he’s starting to read about Reconstruction following the Civil War and the evil that was done in the South (by Republicans). For 100 years after that, the Democrats owned the South (and still largely do in local races) because of the lingering anger about Reconstruction. Students in the North learn very little about this topic and than a general “well, they probably deserved it”…

        Just before Ken Hamblin vanished from the radio, he was really getting vocal about the subject of blacks in the South fighting in the military for the Confederate army – a historical fact which people in the North reject as impossible based on their simple understanding of truth.

        People in the North also tend to not know that the KKK’s center of operations was in Indiana, not the South. It was a response to the Great Northern Migration when blacks moved from the south to the North to take jobs following World War 1. The labor unions were just trying to organize the factories and the folks like Henry Ford would recruit in the South to get Southerners to move North to push out the attempts of the labor unions to organize his plants. The areas where the unions were in conflict with the blacks migrating to the north is where the KKK flourished. The senority system and preferential hiring of union members’ relatives were (and still largely are) about keeping blacks out of labor unions – at least the high paying jobs (SEIU being an exception).

        As Glenn is realizing (slowly), so much of what he learned about U.S. History in school is so wrong….

        I’m also glad he has picked up on the Eugenics – Margaret Sanger – Planned Parenthood – Abortion connections. My Grandfather was active in th Eugenics movement in the 1930s – he was a doctor and set up his office about 2 blocks away from the area with the densely black neighborhood in his city. There is no doubt that he viewed (and I heard it from my mother’s siblings) that Eugenics was about getting rid of blacks. It’s not an abstract concept. Sanger created the Harlem Project with the clear intent to urge blacks to not reproduce, and used the ministers in Harlem to spread that message.

        • phistar 11:31 am on March 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Last week, Beck mentioned a law that was authored by Charlie Rangel that involves taxing US citizens who renounce their citizenship. According to Beck, the government taxes both past and future earnings to the tune of about 50%. Is anyone familiar with that one? Which “runaway bride” was the MSM feature story while that piece of…legislation was passed?

  • Art Stone 3:40 pm on March 15, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    When Cable TV companies want to carry TV stations, they have to pay TV stations to use their intellectual property. If the NAB opposes paying “taxes” on using music, why do they support cable TV paying a “tax” to carry TV stations?

    Yes, that’s a rhetorical question….

    Discussion of Must Carry and Retransmission Consent

     

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