Tuesday, February 28, 2017

From out of nowhere



June 16, 2015, Trump announced his run for the presidency, 18 moths later, he's the POTUS.
Parallels to Hitler's rise to power ... are eerily similar.

There are more ways of destroying a democracy than sending troops into the streets, storming the radio stations, and arresting the politicians, as Adolf Hitler discovered after the failure of his beer-hall putsch in 1923. Ten years later, on January 30, 1933, when he was appointed head of the German government, Hitler was the leader of the country’s largest political party, the National Socialists. Even five years earlier, in May of 1928, he’d been a political nobody, with the Nazis gaining less than 3 percent of the vote in national elections. But in the elections held in July 1932, they won 37 percent of the vote—and six months later, Hitler was in power. He seemed to have come from nowhere.

Any questions?

Enemy of the People


The Donald goes where others fear to tread, to whit:



Without question, we are entering dangerous territory, the likes of which has never been seen in this country. From environmental degradation through the proposed elimination of the EPA to the melding of religion to politics and education, the assault on our civil rights and the looting of our resources is accelerating at a rate as fast as global warming is impacting the planet.

The question to ask is, when do we take our country back?




We all know what happened next, right?

Monday, February 27, 2017

Bizarro World


Bizarro World, the imperfect environment of an alternative universe filled with alternate superman comic characters, was a favorite of yours truly as the wrongheadedness of BW was curiously refreshing from the all American superhero who could do no wrong. As per BRT, this is not about Bizarro World but about the Trump Administration as said entity is doing virtually everything wrong starting with:
  1. Doing an about face on foreign policy to back the deep state.
  2. Deep sixing the environment by killing the EPA.
  3. Gaming the system to unequaled heights for WS, corporations and the upper 1/10 of 1%.
  4. Pushing education toward vouchers and jesus.
  5. Moving ever forward into dead and polluting industries like coal and oil instead of renewables.
  6. Turning HC into an even greater disaster that what has happened with Obama Care. 
Any questions?


Had to add another. 

Similarities & Differences


BRT's not in love with Putin, a very smart, ruthless guy who runs an economically challenged mafia state equipped with extremely powerful weapons. With that being said, the similarities & differences  of Putin to Trump is most enlightening to say the least, particularly regarding how democracy can be subverted if one is very lucky and intelligent at the same time.

Similarities

[Laughs.] Right. Right. On Trump’s part. You know, and again, I don’t want to sort of overstate their similarities, but there are things we know, not just from Putin’s Russia but from autocracies in general. … There’s this weird dynamic that they delegitimize government, basically, and delegitimize democratic institutions. The only legitimacy becomes sort of domination and extremely high popularity. An autocrat actually needs, weirdly enough, much higher popularity numbers and much clearer expressions of popular support than a democratically elected leader, right? Because for a democratically elected leader, you know, there’s always the legitimate mechanisms that keep him or her in power, and also a legitimate mechanism of peaceful transition of power once that’s over. For an autocrat or an authoritarian autocrat, that’s delegitimized, so they need extreme popularity. Trump has expressed very clearly that that’s how he understands power. His expressions of support for Putin have centered around Putin’s extremely high popularity and Putin’s tight control of government.

And so you think Trump may want to wage war, to ensure popularity?

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, and the war can be at home or it can be abroad. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he has planned a war, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that he will need a war abroad. The war on immigrants may keep him going for a while, but there’s a really high danger that there will be a war abroad, because that’s the way to get popularity.

Differences

It gives me hope. That’s not the biggest thing that gives me hope. The biggest thing that gives me hope is actually two things that are really truly different between Putin and Trump. One is just how fast Trump has moved. This is true of most of the autocrats in the last couple of decades: They set in motion a sort of autocratic creep. They don’t come in and, like, smash everything to bits. Putin was very careful to gradually sort of rotate people in and out of power, to make sure that he had competent bureaucrats by his side at all times, to keep the machine running. The way that Trump has acted, like a bull in a china shop, is actually something I’ve never seen before, and I’m not sure that anyone has described this kind of process, of just smashing everything to bits, except for the Bolshevik revolution 100 years ago.

He’s high-energy, Masha.

Right. That gets me to the second difference, which is just the strength of American civil society. That’s not just different from Russia. That’s different from any country in the world ever in history, right? America has the most independent, the most robust civil society ever—for some not such great reasons. European civil society is intertwined with the state because the NGOs get state funding, and they don’t see anything wrong with it. Americans have had such a deep distrust of the government throughout their history that they’ve had this church-state separation between civil society and the state, which is part of what explains not just the outpouring, but the high level of organization that we saw with the Muslim ban. The entire spectrum of civil society, from protesters to ACLU to professional civil society, just stepped out in a way that looked and felt almost orchestrated, like everybody was doing their thing. That’s the kind of pushback that no autocrat has ever seen. There’s a question about how sustainable that is, but I actually have a lot of hope.

Yes indeed.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Sweet Tooth Equivalences


Housekeeping 101 :)


The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming




The Dems are doing a McCarthy regarding the Russians, due primarily to the fact the dems chose a really bad candidate over Bernie to run against Trump, which allowed the orange yam to take power. Because of this humiliating and stupid defeat, due in large part, to gaming the system for Hillary, the dems, along with the NYTimes, the Washington Post and mainline nooze, bloviate about this horrible circumstance while generating a witch hunt along the lines of Tail-Gunner Joe as to just who is talking to the Russians. To add fuel to the fire is the US version of Minitrue, courtesy Barack Obama, under the rubric of the National Defense Authorization Act, to counteract Russian propaganda (this is just a start) according to State Department guidelines. 

The problem with all of this is, the Russians are not a threat unless, of course you threaten them, which the Deep State is doing in order to keep the money flowing into Boeing, General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas, among significant others, as never ending war is good for business while peace never is.

The silliness over Russia is, obviously, part of the Establishment’s drive to get rid of Trump. Yes, the man is erratic, contradictory, shoots before he aims, backs off much of what he has promised, and may be unqualified as President–but that is not why Washington and New York want to get rid of him. It is about money and power, as is everything in the United States. Wall Street, the Pentagon, the Neocons, and the Empire run America. Trump has threatened their rice bowls.

Consider:

He has threatened to cut the F-35, a huge blow to Lockheed-Martin and hundreds of subcontractors; to pull US troops out of South Korea, a blow to the Empire; to end the wars, a blow both to the Empire and the military industry getting rich from them; to pull troops out of Okinawa, crippling the Empire in the Pacific; to start a trade war with China with a forty-five percent tariff on Chinese goods, threatening American corporations with factories there; and to chase out illegal immigrants, an important source of cheap labor to businesses.  He has called NATO “obsolete,” when leaving it would be the death knell of the Empire; and threatened to establish good relations with Russia, when the lack of a European enemy would leave NATO even more obviously unnecessary.

Thus New York and its branch operation in Washington resuscitate Russia as a bugbear to terrify the rubes, meaning most of the public. Money. Power. Empire.

What sense does this make–apart from money and power? Russia is an economically challenged nation of 145 million, less than half of Europe’s population and much less than half of America’s. Its economy is a small fraction of the combined economies of Europe and America. It is not on a war footing. It is not moving forces into position for an invasion. It is not mobilizing. To satellite photography, to NSA these things would be as obvious as leprosy on a prom queen. The Establishment would be screaming to high heaven if there were the slightest trace of preparation for war. The whole business is manufactured.

Click here to see BRT's take on the Military/Industrial.Complex, AKA the Deep State. Interesting without question.

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. - George Orwell/1984 

Channeling Tolken


Spying on the world is lucrative if you have the contacts to the players who have the capital to make it happen. As you, my loyal readers know, it's all about the money and the Military/Industrial/Complex, the real owner of the country that uses surveillance as a primary way to maintain control





Friday, February 24, 2017

74%


74%, an interesting stat as per man's contribution to global warming as stated by Scientific American, something EPA head Scott Pruitt already knows about but refuses to acknowledge given the support he has given to big oil and other fossil fuel producers and users.




Any questions?

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Terraforming ... in a good way



Checks & balances, dynamic equilibrium, chaos and all things related to biodiversity is in play with this terrific clip showing how, this case, How Wolves Change Rivers. :)

Houston ...



Even though American photographer James Balog specializes in nature photography, for a long time, he didn't believe in climate change.

In fact, for nearly 20 years, he taunted scientists about global warming.

"I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible," Balog says.

It wasn't until 2005 that Balog realized something was amiss while taking a close-up look at how climate changes affect nature.

During a National Geographic-commissioned photo expedition to the Arctic, he saw the enormous damage firsthand.

Exactly 10 years later, Balogs' film "Chasing Ice" premiered, and he decided to document the melting of glaciers with an army of cameras.

And it was in this context that Balog caught one of the most spectacular scenes ever filmed.

In less than an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his team and saw a piece of glacier the size of the Lower Manhattan fall into the ocean.

Houston ... We have a problem.


As an aside, this is the weather forecast for Redding CT. See any anomalies here?


The MIC/AKA The Deep State





It's all about the money. - Robert E.

Read Ike's address to see why Greenwald's warning rings true.









































Any questions? Forgot to add Congress to the MIC but they are but minions to the real owners of the country.

Process Visual



An experimental foray into infrared is the focus of this short clip. Enjoy.

Monday, February 20, 2017

Science done right



Persistence, vision and intuition, awesome without question. Cassini, I will miss you big time.

Friday, February 17, 2017

In Today's Nooze


Deliverance



Space cadet or wish upon a star


The art of Doublethink

Incredulity


Entangled alliances, as brilliantly articulated by George Washington, is detrimental to America as no foreign nation should ever have undue influence in how America conducts foreign policy. Pat Buchanan's take on this crucial issue is correct without question as are other writers like Glenn Greenwald, Robert Perry, Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader. Entangled alliances conducted with people with NO EXPERTISE is something else all together as seen with Trump and Netanyahu getting together without SOS Tillison and/or other State Department officials, individuals that have a vested interest in insuring that US policy be consistent, no matter what country the US is dealing with.

Not a single State Department official was included in the White House meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner - who has  no regional expertise or diplomatic experience -  had a greater role in the meeting than the Senate-confirmed secretary of State. 

Rex Tillerson was absent Wednesday but did join Kushner and Netanyahu for dinner the night before. Acting Deputy Secretary of State Tom Shannon was on the official schedule to take his place but was then shut out of the White House meeting.

In an emailed statement to CBS News, a State Department official explained that the decision to modify the meeting was made at the White House to “allow for a more personal discussion.” That presumably is a reference to the long-standing friendship between Trump, Kushner, and Netanyahu. 

That particular incident was disheartening to many State Department officials who hope that Mr. Tillerson - who had a long career as Exxon Mobil’s CEO -  will bring his worldly experience and management to a building that has been demoralized by the Trump administration’s antipathy toward multilateralism and cavalier approach to diplomacy.

Disheartening does not begin to describe the gross ineptness of an administration that screws the pooch in ways that truly boggle the mind.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Winter Light



A short clip combining a potpourri of CT imagery with an improv music score to liven up the experience. Enjoy.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

RIP to a once great nation


Security is one thing, stupid security and stepping on the 4th Amendment is quite another, something an unfortunate JPL/NASA engineer had to endure when coming back to the states after participating in a solar race in Chile. Note that Sidd Bikkannavar was born in the US and is obviously a vetted citizen to the max who happens to work on the James Webb Telescope, a rather important project for America without question. 











RIP to a once great nation.


Where Bikkannavar works

Monday, February 13, 2017

Saving our Data


BRT posted a blurb titled Endangered Data showing how the Trump Administration is systematically putting the public's information into a memory hole in order to create complete operational opacity of the government, something rather disquieting to say the least but there is hope as people are fighting back, not only in preserving EPA content but also with NASA's invaluable earth science data, research paid for by us, not the repugs and not by the cabinet trolls this awful administration has foisted on us when Trump took over as president.

Like similar groups across the country—in more than 20 cities—they believe that the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole. So these hackers, scientists, and students are collecting it to save outside government servers.

But now they’re going even further. Groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASA’s earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And they’re keeping track of what’s already been removed—because yes, the pruning has already begun.

Saving our data is key because, as per 1984 ...

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Go with the Flow


BRT has long championed sustainables, particularly solar as price points for said tech are dropping like a stone but the problem of storing the energy produced was a hassle, until now. 





The question now is, can Trump and his oil buddies actually realize the end is near for coal, oil and NG. From this perspective, it's rather obvious don't you think?