Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Bartman
- BoM
- Awan
- RAISE
- Trolls
- CTE
- Purge?
- Bartman. Steve Bartman was a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan who ended up shouldering much of the blame for a Cubs collapse in a 2003 series against the Florida Marlins. At the time, the Cubs held a 3 – 2 lead in a 7-game series. In the eighth inning, the Cubs were up 3 – 0. Bartman was a fan who reached out to intercept a foul ball, taking it away from the Cubs outfielder who had a chance to grab it. Had the ball been caught, it would have been the second out, giving the Cubs an opportunity to win the game and their first NL pennant since 1945. After the event, the Cubbies collapsed completely, giving up 8 runs, losing the game 8 – 3. They went on to lose the next game and the series. Bartman was blamed by Cubs fans for the loss, and the anger aimed his way was white hot for years. He was hounded unmercifully and became a recluse. Last year after the Cubs finally won a World Series for the first time in 108 years, the team made the decision to give Steve Bartman a championship ring. Team spokesman said
“We hope this provides closure on an unfortunate chapter of the story that has perpetuated throughout our quest to win a long-awaited World Series. While no gesture can fully lift the public burden he has endured for more than a decade, we felt it was important Steve knows he has been and continues to be fully embraced by this organization”
Most of us wear our sports affiliations on our sleeves. Steve Bartman did too and was blamed for a team collapse as complete as any in recent memory. I could not be more impressed with the kindness of the Chicago Cubs organization including Steve Bartman in their victory celebration. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/sports/baseball/steve-bartman-chicago-cubs-world-series-ring.html
- BoM. A series of articles out of Jo Nova demonstrates the utter fraud perpetrated on the general public by government employees all in the name of propping up the myth of manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions. The Oz Bureau of Meteorology in an attempt to prop up the swiftly collapsing myth has been caught with its collective hand in the cookie jar. Not only has it modified its temperature collecting equipment with a new smart card that automatically filters out extreme cold temperatures, but it has routinely been destroying source data, historical written records of temperatures. The smart card was programmed to round up temperatures below -10.0 C to -10.0 C. This was discovered after a record low of -10.4 C was measured at the Goulburn Airport and recorded as -10.0 C. There is no similar correction programmed in for high temperatures. The excuse for the rounding is that it is a correction for anomalous readings on the cold side. What it does in reality is to ensure that record cold like this winter in Oz is not recorded as a record cold winter. The second article is more troubling, as the BoM actively destroys what are called field books 12 months after the temperatures are recorded. I expect they are loaded into a database where they can be manipulated and massaged at will. Wanton destruction of this data ensures that researchers will not be able to figure out what the temperature readings actually were and provides top cover for BoM employees to do whatever they are told to do reporting temperature increases due to CO2 emissions. It is the functional equivalent of destroying your paper records 12 months after you file your tax return or destroying paper ballots 12 months after the election. It makes it all but impossible to prove fraud. And it is fraud upon the general public in Oz that these government employees are perpetrating. http://joannenova.com.au/2017/08/another-bom-scandal-australian-climate-data-is-being-destroyed-as-routine-practice/
- Awan. One of the real head scratchers about the Debbie Wasserman – Schultz – Awan scandal is her steadfast defense of the Pakistanis. Given their near global access to e-mail, other electronic communications, and their internal files from democrat congress critters, some are starting to wonder if the brothers were running a blackmail operation against house democrats. The thing that tends to support this is the near-silence from democrats, their media cheerleaders, and the other usual suspects on something that has been going on for years. Awans were first hired in 2005 by DWS. They include Awan, his brother’s wife, and another pair of his brothers. They eventually supported the IT systems in the offices of 20 democrats, all of whom are currently very supportive of the group; all of whom are very, very quiet about the scandal. http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/21/house-it-aides-fear-suspects-in-hill-breach-are-blackmailing-members-with-their-own-data/
- RAISE. Senators Tom Cotton (R, AR) and David Perdue (R, GA) introduced their RAISE Act last week. President Trump strongly and heartily endorsed it. Essentially the Act recognizes that the American people are the primary stakeholders in our immigration system. Since the Ted Kennedy immigration reform of 1965, US immigration policy has valued nepotism, extended family relationships over skills, the ability to speak English, and a willingness to embrace America as a new American. Today, the US hands out 1.1 million new green cards per year with two thirds going to immigrants who have a family member in the country. There is no requirement that the new immigrant assimilate and contribute to the economy. We have been flooding the low-paying, entry level workforce with new people for half a century. Over 50% of all immigrant-headed households rely on at least one taxpayer funded welfare program, compared with 30% of native households. At least they all vote for democrats (/sarc). The RAISE Act breaks chain migration by limiting family-based green cards to the nuclear family, spouses, and children. It is expected to reduce overall immigration by 50%, down to 550,000 per year including refugees. These provisions echo a Barbara Jordan Commission proposal made 20 years ago. The usual suspects called Cotton and Purdue the usual names. The usual suspects dismissed it out of hand, claiming it will never pass. We will see. We will see. One of the things the Swamp People need to remember is immigration is one of the primary reasons Trump was elected. This will be wildly popular among voters. Illegal voters, democrats, the Chamber of Commerce types, and other swamp denizens, not so much. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/345145-the-cotton-perdue-raise-act-is-a-refreshing-effort-to-help
- Trolls. When you spend a lot of time on the message boards and other internet hangouts, you cross paths with the fantabulous internet troll. Generally, the way to deal with a troll is to ignore him or her, though trolls are for the most part self-selected “its”. The rule of thumb is to not feed a troll. Unfortunately, trolls these days can get themselves lawyers and venue shop to the extent they end up before an O’Bama judge who has no problem seeing things their way. In a case brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, a group of people who had been blocked by President Trump on Twitter for generating enough trolling spam claimed blocking them was a violation of their freedom of speech rights may have found a vehicle to reverse the blockage. A VA Board of Supervisors Chairman blocked a constituent who had been trolling and went as far as to delete a post which had a troll comment in it. The lawsuit went to federal court and the judge found that the Twitter feed was constitutionally protected political speech, and blocking that speech was an unconstitutional limitation on political speech. To be fair, the Chairman did invite constituents to comment on social media before she decided she didn’t like what they were saying about her. http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/29/oh-great-federal-court-rules-officials-cant-block-trolls-social-media/
- CTE. The assault on the NFL and football continued last week with release of a study of brains of deceased football players. The study looked at the brains of 202 men who played football at all levels. CTE was diagnosed in 177. Breakdown was worrisome with 110 of 111 former NFL players with it; 48 of 53 athletes who played all four years in college; and 3 of 14 former high school players. Our friends at E$PN took a few minutes away from trying to get former SF 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick a job and trumpeted the results. CTE is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. It first showed up in the brains of boxers and was called “punch drunk syndrome” in 1928. Over the next 75 years, researchers reported similar findings with boxers and victims of brain trauma. But there were fewer than 50 cases confirmed. A pathologist published evidence of CTE in former Steelers center Mike Webster in 2005, the first report of CTE in football players. Since then CTE has been identified in five eighths of the 400 donated brains since then. Best available evidence is that CTE is caused by repetitive hits to the head over a period of years, with the best available evidence pointing to sub-concussive impacts as the biggest factor. CTE has been found in boxers (50+ cases, punches to the head), tackle football players (200+ cases, hits to the helmet), soccer players (10+ cases, headers and collisions), ice hockey players (20+ cases, fighting, checking), military veterans (25+ cases, blast injuries, combat), and pro wrestling (5+ cases). Other causes include baseball, basketball, intimate partner violence, and developmentally disabled with head banging behaviors (or any of the rest of us who bang our head on a desk or a wall from time to time in frustration). CTE is clearly a problem, but the scope of which is currently undefined. Need to get a real handle on how much of the general population has it, what caused it, and how to treat it before banning football (and yes, the nanny staters have that precisely in mind). It may well be that football, like active combat for military is inherently dangerous. Unfortunately for the nanny staters, we can still choose to expose ourselves to the dangers those lifestyle choices include (at least for a while). There is much work to be done to mitigate the danger, at least with football. I expect the mitigation routine will include some combination of helmet redesign, coaching to no longer use the helmet as a weapon, and similar piecemeal strategies, much to the dismay of the sports media. What I do not understand is why Disney employees (ESPN) are so hell-bent in taking down the sport that carries their corporate water. https://concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/what-is-CTE
- Purge? The long knives are out for NSC Chairman General HR McMaster and as of this writing, I cannot tell if this is a left wing or right-wing affair. I do know many of the media on the TEA Party right are after him, claiming he is running a purge of Trump loyalists from the NSC and other deep intelligence agencies. The NSA was the source of last week’s telephone transcripts of Trump phone calls to the Mexican and Australian Presidents shortly after being sworn in. The calls were contentious and blunt. The leaks were intended to embarrass Trump, though they may end up embarrassing the NSA deep imbeds who leaked them, as they show Trump informed, engaged, and active. The problem with these leaks is that they undermine the ability of the President to have open, frank discussions with other heads of state. As head of the NSC, McMaster is ultimately in charge of the deep state leakers. Jack Kelly has another viewpoint based on the amount of anti-McMaster information hitting the extended media. This holds that McMaster is doing just fine and this is another anti-Trump takedown attempt. At this point, I can’t tell whether McMaster is a good guy or not. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that this is another bright shiny Trump is tossing out there for the media to chase for a while. Keep your powder dry on this one for the time being. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/mcmaster-warpath-purges-key-trump-allies-white-house-nsc/
More later –
– AG