Seinfeld and Obama talk

It's one of Seinfeld's "Comedians Getting Coffee" shows. There are some ads, but you might slightly modify your opinion of the President as he seems quite relaxed.

Click here. 

So, who are we supporting?

Dancing at his daughter's wedding

What is a retrocession?

Webster's defines it as a going back. The Financial Times defines it as “kickbacks, trailer or finders fees.” The SEC says that JPMorgan Chase received retrocessions from hedge funds in which it had invested money from its wealthy private-banking clients and did not tell these clients that the bank was getting a kickback.

It cost JP $307 million. Plus it must tell its clients.

Politics Today

Wages and Productivity

Taxes decreasing for the Top 400

An expert witness?

Capital One and debt collection

The company brings more of its cardholders to court than any other credit card company, even for as small an amount as $1,000, an amount which is about a third of what other issuers sue for. In one year the company brought more than 500,000 suits, although the company is only the fourth largest credit card company. It's fairly obvious why. It is the country’s largest subprime lender as their market is those with poor credit.

Capital One offers cards with a credit line often as low as a few hundred dollars to customers with poor credit. On the bank’s website, the cards carry annual interest rates as high as 25 percent. 

We fought a war for this

Man of the Year

Words That Change The World

That's the title of a 400-page book of "prophetic" quotes by Vladimir Putin. It includes 19 speeches by Putin, and highlights key quotes in bold that the introduction says "predicted and preordained" world events. It was given as a gift to about 1000 insiders.

You can't be too sure

In the 21st century American colleges have begun using criminal background checks as another way to evaluate applicants. In fact, 66% of colleges and universities conduct background checks as part of the admissions process. I guess I can understand why, in our age of over-sensitivity to crime, colleges want their campuses to be safe. However, the people doing the checking often have no idea as to how such a background check should be done or interpreted.In fact, 40%  of the schools doing checks do not train their staffs on how to conduct the checks. So, are some applicants unfairly rejected?

Want to live longer?

Okay, so it's 2000+ pages

That's the length of the spending bill passed by our leaders last week. You can't expect them to read the whole thing. How could they possibly catch the fact that the legislation bars the IRS from making new rules relative to 501(c)(4) organizations, the so-called Super PACS which have become a secret treasure trove for politicians and their friends.

61 years later

From McClatchy

Police Killings Year to Date

It doesn't sound real

A school district that operates homeless shelters for their students, runs food banks, has a system in place to provide whatever clothes kids need, offers regular access to pediatricians and mental health counselors, makes washers and dryers available to families desperate to get clean. That's whats happened in Jennings, MO, since Tiffany Anderson became superintendent in 2012.

She did it by getting the people of the area to become truly involved in the process of making it possible for poor kids to eliminate the barriers that seemed endemic. As a result the district has gone from one of  the lowest-performing school districts in Missouri to reached full accreditation for the first time in more than a decade as academic achievement, attendance and high school graduation rates have improved since Anderson’s arrival.

Some of Anderson's innovations:

Saturday school, a college-prep program that offers an accelerated curriculum beginning in sixth grade, and a commitment to paying for college courses so students can earn an associate’s degree before they leave high school.
Restored music, dance and drama programs that had been cut.
Obtained new grants and many philanthropic contributions.
Went from a deficit of $2 million to a balanced budget.
Teachers are expected to give weekly assessments to measure student progress, and principals meet monthly with Anderson to discuss whether their schools are on track to meet goals for academic achievement and attendance. 

Adding up time

Close the schools. The kids may become Muslims.

That was one way of interpreting the decision to close all the schools in Augusta County in Virginia. The decision was made by the Superintendent when a brouhaha broke out because high school students in a geography class had an assignment of copying calligraphy which read “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God”.

This class is part of a geography-class unit on world religions, which also includes Hinduism and Buddhism. And it was not the first time this task was done; it is part of a teacher workbook. Granted it was truly stupid to ask students to write the basic creed of any religion. But it's just another indication that we live in fear.

Want to buy an Earthship house?

Masters of the Photograph in 2015

Truth or Fiction?

Feeding the kids

Lead in the water

Earlier this year I wrote about problems Flint, MI was having with its water supply. The problems have gotten worse. The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014. The mayor has declared a state of emergency. The problems are caused by lead in the water, which according to the World Health Organization, “affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible."

Shades of 2007?

Pam Martens thinks so. This month has seen a junk bond mutual fund, The Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, and a hedge fund, Stone Lion Capital Partners, suspend withdrawals of investors’ money. Another hedge fund,  LionEye Capital is going out of business at the end of December.

A German supermarket at Christmas

Outsourcing

Attack of the turkeys

Good News

On Saturday by chance I watched CNN, something I hadn't done in ages. The show playing was called "CNN Heroes. I thought it would another canonization of war veterans. I was about to change the channel when the story of one of the heroes began. She was not a war veteran or a soldier of any kind; she was simply using her life to help others. And she was not the only hero that night; there were a total of ten, men and women, young and old. Here are some of them:

• a former babysitter from New Jersey fell in love with a country halfway around the world, Nepal, and used her babysitting savings to start a home and school for women and children.
• Dr. Jim Withers has taken his medical practice to the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offering free, quality health care to the homeless.
• Monique Pool has dedicated herself to helping wild animals in the South American country of Suriname. Pool has rescued, rehabilitated and released hundreds of sloths and other mammals back to the rainforest.
• In rural Conetoe, North Carolina, Richard Joyner has brought a bounty of food to what was a nutritional desert. Joyner, a local pastor, started a community garden after watching many of his parishioners die from preventable diseases. "Diabetes, high blood pressure -- when we first got started, we counted 30 funerals in one year," Joyner said.
• Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran Sean Gobin's nonprofit, Warrior Hike, has a unique way to help combat vets process their troubling war experiences. Gobin calls it, "walking off the war."
• His nonprofit, Sustainable Innovations, created a rainwater harvesting system that now provides life-changing, safe drinking water to more than 10,000 people across six villages in the driest region of India.

It would be nice if some of the media reported on some of these people.

Goodbye, Red Cross?

I've been writing about the Red Cross for almost ten years. ProPublica just released an article entitled "The Corporate Takeover of the Red Cross". It documents the decline of the organization under the woman who has been CEO since 2008, Gail McGovern. Basically, it seems as though she has decimated many of the local chapters and alienated many of the volunteers. An internal survey of Red Cross employees found just 35 percent responded favorably to the statement, “I trust the senior leadership of the American Red Cross.”

Like any modern corporation, McGovern has set goals to secure the organization’s financial future and improve its delivery of disaster services. Yet, these goals have seldom, if ever, been met. 

Experiencing death

The president of a Korean company had an idea, "Our company has always encouraged employees to change their old ways of thinking, but it was hard to bring about any real difference. I thought going inside a coffin would be such a shocking experience it would completely reset their minds for a completely fresh start in their attitudes." So, that's what the employees do.

They dress in white robes, sit at desks and write final letters to their loved ones. Some cry. They are shown videos of people in adversity - a cancer sufferer making the most of her final days, someone born without all her limbs who learned to swim. All this is designed to help people come to terms with their own problems, which must be accepted as part of life. Finally, they rise and stand over the wooden coffins laid out beside them, pause, get in and lie down. They each hug a picture of themselves, draped in black ribbon.

Micheal Lewis discusses the bank bailout

Towed into port in less than a month

The USS Milwaukee was commissioned in Milwaukee on November 21. Over the weekend it was towed into port for repairs as it had a “complete loss of propulsion.” Being a ship of the future it only cost us $362,000,000.

Raising the perfect child

I think parenting in the U.S. is different today from what it was in the 1960s and '70s when we were raising kids. Today, there seems to be the belief that one's children can be perfect or damn close to it. We never expected our kids to be perfect athletes for example, but today parents spend thousands of dollars to perfect their kid's athletic abilities. We didn't hire tutors for our kids unless they needed them; today people hire tutors for their B students in prestigious private schools. And the story goes on.

The latest chapter is about kids being given drugs for adults, mainly those for psychosis, depression and adhd. None of these drugs have been studied for use by kids. Many doctors worry that these drugs, designed for adults and only warily accepted for certain school-age youngsters, are being used to treat children still in cribs despite no published research into their effectiveness and potential health risks for children so young. It seems certain that the brains of children less than one year old have brains that are still developing and in unknown ways; using these drugs can profoundly influence the child's growth. 

Breeding dogs

Return of the Great Depression?

Pam Martens thinks that bank regulators are doing virtually nothing to prevent the return of the Great Depression. The chart below shows that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) sees credit risks today even lesser than before the Great Depression and issued a warning yesterday that credit risks are rising at banks.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) – the coalition of all the bank and Wall Street regulators that huddle together regularly in secret – said the following in its annual report

“Thirty percent of commercial loan products reflected increased credit risk, compared with 27 percent in 2014. Over the next 12 months, examiners expect credit risk to increase in 50 percent of commercial loan products, and examiners expressed concern with this anticipated level of risk in 73 percent of the products.” 

In a recent survey, the OCC found that only 32 percent of the banks in its survey (which includes the largest 19 banks in the U.S.) are considered to have “conservative” underwriting standards" .

And what is being done by the regulators?

Handicapped?

EDITORS' PICKS

Suspension from school

It seems as though suspending students from school occurs quite often. A February 2015 report from UCLA's Civil Rights Project found nearly 3.5 million children—about six out of every 100 public school students—were suspended at least once during the 2011-12 school year, with close to half of those (1.55 million) suspended multiple times.

We even suspend preschoolers. Nearly 8,000 preschoolers were suspended from school in the same year, often for relatively minor disruptions and misbehaviors. 
Black children accounted for 18 percent of preschool enrollment but almost half (48 percent) of the children suspended more than once; in contrast, white children were 43 percent of preschoolers, but only 26 percent were subjected to repeated suspensions. Likewise, boys comprised 54 percent of children in preschool programs, yet represented the vast majority of pre-K students suspended either once or multiple times.

Melting Glaciers: Urban Flooding

China may have more glaciers than any other country. In one region alone it has 46,000. But the glaciers are melting and causing flooding. From 2008 to 2010, 62 percent of Chinese cities had floods; 173 had three or more. The glaciers are vital to more than a billion people in China, Vietnam, Myanmar and Bangladesh. But they are receding at a faster pace than ever. For example, from 2005 to 2014, the Mengke Glacier retreated an average of 54 feet a year, while from 1993 to 2005, it retreated 26 feet a year.

Red Alert

Beijing declared a "red alert" yesterday because the smog was so bad. he municipal air quality index read 308, rated “hazardous” by United States standards — a level at which people should not set foot outdoors. The red alert resulted in the closing of schools, banning driving and shutting down factories. Here's how the city looked at 4 p.m.

Supporting 9/11 First Responders

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Get More: The Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,The Daily Show Video Archive

Killed by a gun

Being killed with a gun here:	Is about as likely as Dying of ________ in the U.S.	Deaths per mil.
El Salvador	Heart attack	446.3
Mexico	Pancreatic cancer	121.7
United States	Car accident*	31.2
Chile	Motorcycle accident	14.3
Israel	Building fire	7.5
Canada	Alcohol poisoning	5.6
Ireland	Drowning in a lake, river or ocean	4.8
Netherlands	Accidental gas poisoning	2.3
Germany	Contact with a thrown or falling object	2.1
France	Hypothermia	2.0
Austria	Drowning in a swimming pool	1.9
Australia	Falling from a building or structure	1.7
China	Plane crash	1.6
Spain	Exposure to excessive natural heat	1.6
New Zealand	Falling from a ladder	1.5
Poland	Bicycle-car crash	1.1
England	Contact with agricultural machinery	0.9
Norway	Accidental hanging or strangulation	0.9
Iceland	Electrocution	0.6
Scotland	Cataclysmic storms	0.5
South Korea	Being crushed or pinched between objects	0.4
Japan	Lightning strike	0.1

Note: Rates are 2007-12 averages; car accidents includes car occupants only; not van, truck, motorcycle or bus accidents

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Small Arms Survey

More wise words from Andrew Bacevich

I think Mr. Bacevich has been saying truths for several years.  Here's an excerpt from his latest.

For at least the past 35 years -- that is, since well before 9/11 -- the United States has been "at war" in various quarters of the Islamic world. At no point has it demonstrated the will or the ability to finish the job. Washington's approach has been akin to treating cancer with a little bit of chemo one year and a one-shot course of radiation the next. Such gross malpractice aptly describes US military policy throughout the Greater Middle East across several decades. While there may be many reasons why the Iraq War of 2003 to 2011 and the still longer Afghanistan War yielded such disappointing results, Washington's timidity in conducting those campaigns deserves pride of place. That most Americans might bridle at the term "timidity" reflects the extent to which they have deluded themselves regarding the reality of war.

In comparison to Vietnam, for example, Washington's approach to waging its two principal post-9/11 campaigns was positively half-hearted. With the nation as a whole adhering to peacetime routines, Washington neither sent enough troops nor stayed anywhere near long enough to finish the job. Yes, we killed many tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, but if winning World War IV requires, as Cohen writes, that we "break the back" of the enemy, then we obviously didn't kill nearly enough. Nor were Americans sufficiently willing to die for the cause. In South Vietnam, 58,000 G.I.s died in a futile effort to enable that country to survive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stakes were presumably much higher, we pulled the plug after fewer than 7,000 deaths.

In other words, waging World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the US Army -- and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls -- this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.

here's the ultimate irony: even without the name, the United States has already embarked upon something akin to a world war, which now extends into the far reaches of the Islamic world and spreads further year by year. Incrementally, bit by bit, this nameless war has already expanded the scope and reach of the national security apparatus. It is diverting vast quantities of wealth to nonproductive purposes even as it normalizes the continuing militarization of the American way of life. By sowing fear and fostering impossible expectations of perfect security, it is undermining American freedom in the name of protecting it, and doing so right before our eyes.For a rich and powerful nation to conclude that it has no choice but to engage in quasi-permanent armed conflict in the far reaches of the planet represents the height of folly. Power confers choice. As citizens, we must resist with all our might arguments that deny the existence of choice. Whether advanced forthrightly by Cohen or fecklessly by the militarily ignorant, such claims will only perpetuate the folly that has already lasted far too long.

Attacks against American Muslims

From Wall Street on Parade: 

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), mosques in 31 states in America have been the targets of firebombs, arson, acid attacks, gunfire, hate speech or other forms of religious intolerance since 2005. In Joplin, Missouri, a mosque’s sign was torched in 2008. Four years later, its roof was set on fire with the perpetrator caught on a surveillance video. One month later, in August 2012, the mosque was burned to the ground.
 In 2008, Chris Rodda, reporting for the Huffington Post, wrote about Muslim babies and children being gassed in an attack on a mosque in Dayton, Ohio during the same week that a DVD of the race-baiting, anti-Muslim documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West was mailed to thousands of households in Ohio and inserted into newspapers around the state. 

21st century American government

From McClatchy

Transplanting everything

Within a year surgeons from Johns Hopkins expect to transplant a penis. It will   be taken from a deceased donor and put into the body of a wounded soldier. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused genital wounds in about 1,500 soldiers. The doctors expect it to start working in a matter of months, developing urinary function, sensation and, eventually, the ability to have sex.

This will be the first penis transplant performed in this country. It has been attempted twice before; it failed in China but succeeded in South Africa.

Amateur Theatrics

Last night I saw Fiddler on the Roof at the Mandell Community Center in West Hartford. I was pleasantly surprised in that it was really not an amateur production although the cast was made up of amateurs. And it was a complete performance - singing, dancing, acting. Of the cast of about thirty only three were not up to snuff. Tevye was quite good. 

What are the real numbers?

The headlines have blared that there have been 355 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Clearly,there have been more than 300 shootings so far in 2015. But how are mass shootings defined? 

It seems as though the media thinks that shootingtracker.com, a website built by members of a Reddit forum supporting gun control called GunsAreCool, has the answer, as this is where the 355 number comes from. However, the site aggregates news stories about shooting incidents — of any kind — in which four or more people are reported to have been either injured or killed. In my mind not every shooting in which four people are injured qualifies as a mass shooting.

Mother Jones seems to define the issue better. It does define a mass shooting as one where four or more are killed in public attacks, but it excludes mass murders that stemmed from robbery, gang violence or domestic abuse in private homes.It concludes that there have been four mass shootings here thus far.

Now it's the TFBSO

In 2006 the Defense Department established the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) to help revive the post-invasion economy of Iraq. In 2009 TFBSO moved into Afghanistan. Well, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) has some questions about the task force's work in Afghanistan. I wrote about some of these back in November. Here are some new issues.

Housing TFBSO personnel. About 20% of its budget was spent on private housing and private security guards for its U.S. government employees in Afghanistan, rather than live on U.S military bases.

Pretty fancy housing - specially furnished, privately owned “villas” and hired contractors providing 24-hour building security and food services. TFBSO personnel were supplied with queen size beds in certain rooms, a flat screen TV in each room that was 27 inches or larger, a DVD player in each room, a mini refrigerator in each room. 

Good food - “at least 3 stars” meals, with each meal containing at least two entrée choices and three side order choices, as well as three course meals for “Special Events.

Security. TFBSO leadership paid and housed bodyguards for TFBSO staff and visitors traveling in country. 

Why didn't these people live on army bases?

We need a break

And the Painted Bunting is giving New York City bird-watchers one.

Since the bird arrived on Sunday and is the first of its kind to visit Brooklyn it has been watched by many, many bird lovers.

2008-2009 Redux

Junk bonds were one of the major causes of the Great Recession. Pam Martens points out that things in the junk bond market are moving towards another Great Recession. The market is now approximately $1.8 trillion, about double the amount of junk bonds outstanding at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. Yields have skyrocketed. Downgrades to ratings are swamping the number of upgrades. According to the ratings agency, Moody’s, the ratio of upgrades to downgrades is at the worst level since the financial crash in 2008-2009. Junk bond investors have a negative return of 2.2 % – also the worst since the 2008 crisis. According to Standard and Poor’s, on a global basis, companies have defaulted on $95 billion worth of debt this year, making it the largest year of defaults since the height of the credit crisis in 2009.

Midday in China

Scaling the solar system

Certainly different

From our Glastonbury correspondent

Fear is becoming a way of life here

A Sensible View of ISIS

Michael Flynn certainly has a strong background in intelligence - director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director of national intelligence. He was also commander of the US special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he hunted down al-Zarqawi. This is an excerpt from an interview with Der Spiegel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How should the West fight this enemy?
Flynn: The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won't succeed against this enemy with air strikes alone. But a military solution is not the end all, be all. The overall strategy must be to take away Islamic State's territory, then bring security and stability to facilitate the return of the refugees. This won't be possible quickly. First, we need to hunt down and eliminate the complete leadership of IS, break apart their networks, stop their financing operations and stay until a sense of normality has been established. It's certainly not a question of months -- it will take years. Just look back at the mission we created in the Balkans as a model. We started there in the early 1990s to create some stability and we are still there today. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the Balkans mission a model for the current war?
Flynn: We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors. In addition, we would need a coalition military command structure and, on a political level, the United Nations must be involved. The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector. With this model, you would have opportunities -- Russia, for example, must use its influence on Iran to have Tehran back out of Syria and other proxy efforts in the region.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For that to happen, the West would have to cooperate fully with the Russians.
Flynn: We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there (in Syria) and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can't say Russia is bad, they have to go home. It's not going to happen. Get real. Look at what happened in the past few days: The president of France asked the US for help militarily (after the Paris attacks). That's really weird to me, as an American. We should have been there first and offered support. Now he is flying to Moscow and asking Putin for help. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A Western military intervention runs the risk of being seen as a new attempt to invade the region.
Flynn: That's why we need the Arabs as partners, they must be the face of the mission -- but, today, they are neither capable of conducting nor leading this type of operation, only the United States can do this. And we don't want to invade or even own Syria. Our message must be that we want to help and that we will leave once the problems have been solved. The Arab nations must be on our side. And if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that's when sanctions and other actions have to kick in. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In February 2004, you already had Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in your hands -- he was imprisoned in in a military camp, but got cleared later as harmless by a US military commission. How could that fatal mistake happen? Flynn: We were too dumb. We didn't understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, "Where did those bastards come from? Let's go kill them. Let's go get them." Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The US invaded Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Flynn: First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based. Then we went into Iraq. Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn't be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret ...
Flynn: ... yes, absolutely ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... the Iraq war?
Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.

Multi-tasking in the OR

The question is: should surgeons multi-task in the operating room. Multi-tasking in this case being defined as operating on two patients at the same time. This practice is known as concurrent surgery. To make it happen the chief surgeon relies on assistance from general surgeons or trainees.  The hospitals argue that it saves time and it is an efficient way to deploy the talents of their most in-demand specialists while reducing wasted operating room time.

This has become a major issue at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the country's leading hospitals. A cadre of MGH's surgeons assert that it jeopardizes patient safety and prevents patients from getting the best medical care possible. But perhaps a bigger concern is this practice is known by the doctors and the nurses and the anesthesiologists and the billing clerks and everyone else. That is, everybody but the patient.

Can Germany teach us something about the future?

Melting glacier equals more water?

2 inches deeper every month

That's what's happening to the ground in California's Central Valley, which happens to produce about 40% of the country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. As the land sinks, it destroys roads, bridges and farmland,  collapses levees, buckles irrigation canals, and the water rises up over bridges and sloshes over roads.  

Octogenarian women talk sex and marriage

The Secrecy Administration

That's what the Obama Administration may be known as in the future. It seems committed to negating the power of the Inspectors General, which was the result of Watergate. The 1978 law which established IGs in most government agencies has served America well. But Obama thinks that many of the IG investigations have resulted in the release of secret information. 

Currently there are twenty investigations that are stymied because if Obama's policy. "The bottom line is that we’re no longer independent,” Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in an interview. 

Ice speaks

It's a fearful country

The Senior Center

I found this sad. You may not.

Do you drink bottled water?

California is a funny place

The entire state is experiencing drought conditions. Yet, some who use 178 gallons per person each day are being fined. While others who use 30,000 gallons of water each day are not fined. This is due to the fact that the state has 411 separate water districts which make their own rules. Some districts are mainly middle or lower class, some in the 1%. In Bel Air one person used more than 11 million gallons of water in the year that ended April 1. The top 10 users in LA totaled over 80 million gallons a year. 

I think California should adopt the Israeli practice of just one water authority. 

Gifting

Some intelligent words about dealing with ISIS

From Boaz Ganor, the director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. 

The American and Western approach is not to relate to the religious element behind ISIS, to refer only to violent extremism. That’s a grave mistake, in my view. One of the greatest enemies of the war on terror is political correctness. In this war, we need to agree on who is the enemy, on the instrumental causes, on what goals they are trying to achieve. 

That doesn’t mean that Islam is the problem. We are talking about a small group within Islam — the Salafi jihadists — who are seeking to hijack the religion. But to deal with ISIS, you cannot disconnect from the religious aspect. It cannot be done with winks and hints. So the Muslims themselves have to come out against the jihadis. We, the Western world, are here to help. But it is the Muslims’ problem first and foremost.”

An Open Door Policy

Pope Francis thinks the Church should have an open door policy. His comments:

“Please, no armored doors in the church, everything open”. There are places in the world where doors should not be locked with a key. There are still some but there are also many where armored doors have become the norm.

We must not surrender to the idea that we must apply this way of thinking to every aspect of our lives. To do so to the Church would be terrible.”

The AMA and drug ads

Eight years ago the American Medical Association voted to allow drugs to be advertised on television. And drugs are advertised; the revenue for the tv people from the ads in 2014 was about $4.5 billion. The ads do include the potential negative side effects of the drugs but they are recited when the scene is very placid and are difficult to understand. Only two countries in the world allow drug companies to engage in direct-to-consumer advertising that includes product claims - the U.S. and New Zealand.

Now the association has had second thoughts and want to ban advertising as it makes patients seek out expensive treatments and artificially inflates demand for the drugs.

Words from the Dalai Lama

People want to lead a peaceful lives. The terrorists are short-sighted, and this is one of the causes of rampant suicide bombings. We cannot solve this problem only through prayers. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.

We need a systematic approach to foster humanistic values, of oneness and harmony. If we start doing it now, there is hope that this century will be different from the previous one. It is in everybody's interest. So let us work for peace within our families and society, and not expect help from God, Buddha or the governments.

$50,000,000 reward

Russia has determined that the plane that exploded over Egypt was the work of terrorists. A home-made bomb was placed on the plane. 

Russia has announced a $50,000,000 (that's dollars) reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

Another addition to the Fear of Terrorists list.

Almost human

Courtesy of our Arlington correspondent

Total Face Transplant

Comments on our medical care

Sunset at Scottsdale, Az, in October

Courtesy of The Peak

Fearing Fear Itself

That's the title of Paul Krugman's op-ed about the Paris attacks. Yes, the attacks were frightening but we need to remember that the purpose of these attacks is to scare us, to make us panic.  We must also remember that we live in a world where nothing is perfect. There are many dangers in the world. Terrorism is not the only one and not the worst one. It won't destroy the world physically, climate change will. Krugman concludes, "Again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear."

Berlin, July 1945

Courtesy of The Peak

A new containment policy

That's what Andrew Basevich proposes with regard to the Middle East. He recognizes that Russia failed in Afghanistan and we failed in Iraq. Maybe it's time for the Middle East to try to solve its problems. Basevich's summary:

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain.

Such an approach posits that, confronted with the responsibility to do so, the peoples of the Greater Middle East will prove better equipped to solve their problems than are policy makers back in Washington, London, or Paris. It rejects as presumptuous any claim that the West can untangle problems of vast historical and religious complexity to which Western folly contributed. It rests on this core principle: Do no (further) harm.

What about the 44 in Beirut?

The day before Paris was attacked by ISIS Beirut was attacked. Forty-four were killed and two hundred forty-nine injured. Yet, we heard nothing about this attack until the Paris story broke. And the Beirut story considered it an attack on a "Hezbollah stronghold".  Truth in media?

GJ 1132b

That's the name of a newly discovered exoplanet that has astronomers salivating. It's about the size of Earth and lives in a solar system roughly 39 light-years from Earth. But that's close enough for it to be studied for signs of life, although it's unlikely that life exists there as the temperature is 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why not Firemen's Day?

When I was a kid in the 1940s, it was pretty obvious that this nation was at war.  Everyone was involved in some activity to help the war effort. I and my friends collected aluminum foil.  My sisters knitted.  We went to the market with ration book in hand.  Every so often we prepared for an air raid.  My brothers served in the Battle of the Bulge and other combat.  All of my male cousins and most of the men I knew were drafted.  I learned to read via the headlines and the lead stories of the war that the newspapers carried every day.  I practiced my writing by writing letters to my brothers.  All of the men in East Cambridge were drafted.  It was pretty obvious why we should celebrate their efforts.  Hardly anyone was against the GI Bill.  I can fully understand why in the '50s and '60s Armistice Day was a big deal.  And, I can readily understand why Eisenhower renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day in 1954.

However, I find it very hard to understand the brouhaha that is now made of Veterans Day.  When Nixon abolished the draft in 1973, people now had a choice as to whether they wanted to join the military or not, as they always had a choice whether they should join the police, become a teacher, practice medicine, fight fires, etc.  There are many professions where the goal is not making a dollar.  Soldiers are not the only ones risking their lives.  Police and firefighters also risk their lives.  The military is not the only important profession that keeps this country whole.  Where would we be without teachers or policemen?  Why don't we have a teacher's day or a policemen's day?

The fact of a volunteer army makes us more susceptible to go to war, especially because we know so few of the volunteers. As I said above, many of the people I knew in the '40s were drafted and risked their lives defending this country.  Some of my relatives served in Korea.  Friends served in Vietnam or moved to Canada.  Coffins landed in the military base in Bedford, MA almost every night.  We were all involved in these wars and realized their cost.  The President didn't tell us to avoid the fact that we were at war, we were all helping the war effort.  That was our duty as citizens, no matter our age or circumstances.

It is interesting that most of the politicians that will be speaking on Veterans Day have not served in any capacity in the military.  I'll end with a comment from Aaron O'Connell, a professor at Annapolis, "Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war."

Corruption by State

The Center for Public Integrity has released a study on corruption in states. A summary of their findings is shown below. Note that only three states scored higher than D+.

Compare a Chinese and an American grammar school

Jocelyn Reckford is a high school student in China. She attended grammar schools in both China (Beijing) and North Carolina (Chapel Hill). She has built a web site that compares and contrasts the two. It is fascinating. Click here to investigate.

A voting machine primer

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
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Interesting

A new Stingray

I don't mean a Corvette Stingray, which was the first car I bought. While the car is still being built, another form of Stingray simulates a cell tower and has become quite popular with government agencies for surveillance of cell phones. The Stingray, which is about the size of a briefcase, can strip metadata and sometimes content from your cell phone. What really excises people like the ACLU is that the agencies do not need a typical court order to use a Stingray.They require only a low-level court order called a PEN register, also known as a “trap and trace”.