CO2 Travelogue

Carbon dioxide plays a significant role in trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere. The gas is released from human activities like burning fossil fuels, and the concentration of carbon dioxide moves and changes through the seasons. Using observations from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, scientists developed a model of the behavior of carbon in the atmosphere from Sept. 1, 2014, to Aug. 31, 2015. Scientists can use models like this one to better understand and predict where concentrations of carbon dioxide could be especially high or low, based on activity on the ground.

NASA strikes yet again with this amazing 3D video showing how CO2 travels around the globe.

Question, why does the Donald want to eliminate the earth sciences part of NASA as this research looks pretty important to yours truly without question.

Debt Relief 101

Two years after legalizing the use of marijuana in the state, Colorado’s cannabis shops hit a new milestone. In the first 10 months of 2016, weed stores in the state have reached $1 billion in legal, regulated sales of the drug.

According to the October data from the Colorado’s Department of Revenue, the state, which was the first in the country to have legalized cannabis use, has sold nearly $1.1 billion worth of marijuana and marijuana-related products.

Debt Relief 101 don't you think?

Update, MA just pull the legalize trigger on weed so, how about it CT, don't you think it's a good idea to get out of debt while making us rubes a little bit more mellow? :)

Despicable Me

Despicable Me is a delightful comedy with a bad guy, aided and abetted by minions, becoming good after adopting 3 little girls who melt his steely heart after a career of doing nefarious things like stealing the moon. Funny, insightful and pretty damn cool, it's an animation that works but, as per BRT, this blurb isn't about Gru but rather about the Russians and their alleged effort to give the election to Trump by compromising the election process, Needless to say, this is serious business that needs full disclosure now before disaster strikes in the way of diplomatic relations with an extremely powerful adversary. As prelude, here is a rant by yours truly regarding this rather amazing story.

He said, they said. Where is the conclusive proof.? Is it a leak or a hack? A very big difference as to what these two concepts mean, something the mainline "press" and brain dead politicians conveniently have not defined. 

To whit. 

A leak is where someone physically takes data and distributes to outside parties. Think Snowden and a thumb drive. 

A hack is a remote controlled process requiring breaking into networks and servers. Phishing is a really good way to do that. 

Question, if it was a hack, the NSA would know who did it and how it was done. With a leak, it's an inside job. Thus far, no arrests, nothing in terms of definitive evidence of Russian government involvement in trying to game the US election.

We Need the Real Evidence, Right Now

It must be stated plainly: The U.S. intelligence community must make its evidence against Russia public if they want us to believe their claims. The integrity of our presidential elections is vital to the country’s survival; blind trust in the CIA is not. A governmental disclosure like this is also not entirely without precedent: In 2014, the Department of Justice produced a 56-page indictment detailing their exact evidence against a team of Chinese hackers working for the People’s Liberation Army, accused of stealing American trade secrets; each member was accused by name. The 2014 trade secret theft was a crime of much lower magnitude than election meddling, but what the DOJ furnished is what we should demand today from our country’s spies.

If the CIA does show its hand, we should demand to see the evidence that matters (which, according to Edward Snowden, the government probably has, if it exists). I asked Jeffrey Carr what he would consider undeniable evidence of Russian governmental involvement: “Captured communications between a Russian government employee and the hackers,” adding that attribution “should solely be handled by government agencies because they have the legal authorization to do what it takes to get hard evidence.”

It's time to put this to bed and now, before it's too late.

Had to add this bon bon. Phishing anyone?

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

Addendum - The betting pool favors a leak as seen by guys who know the intel drill from the get go.

As for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Triad

NYC @ a distance

Glissando

Dark Star/Dark Moon

The Dark Moon

The Dark Moon resides in both background and foreground in this short clip showing the environs of Greenwich, CT and various other haunts residing in Fairfield County and near LI Sound. Sadly,  December's DM is the last of 2016's super moon triad, an event that will not happen again until Jan 2, 2018. Enjoy.

Chatter

James Clapper - Director, NSA

Chatter - Chatter is a signals intelligence term, referring to the volume (quantity) of intercepted communications. Intelligence officials, not having better metrics, monitor the volume of communication, to or from suspected parties such as terrorists or spies, to determine whether there is cause for alarm. They refer to the electronic communication as "chatter".[1]

Yours truly is not a fan of James Clapper due to his insistence the NSA does not spy on us citizens but aside from that, the guy knows intel just as William Binney does so, to get to the bottom of the endless bloviating about the "Ruskies" and their alleged hacking into the election from hell, the august Electoral College members have sent an open letter to Clapper asking for the definitive answer as to who hacked the election and did the hacking in question favor Trump. To whit ...

Open Letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

We are Electors who were selected by the voters of our states to represent them in the Electoral College on December 19, 2016. We intend to discharge our duties as Electors by ensuring that we select a candidate for president who, as our Founding Fathers envisioned, would be “endowed with the requisite qualifications.” As Electors, we also believe that deliberation is at the heart of democracy itself, not an empty or formalistic task. We do not understand our sole function to be to convene in mid-December, several weeks after Election Day, and summarily cast our votes. To the contrary, the Constitution envisions the Electoral College as a deliberative body that plays a critical role in our system of government — ensuring that the American people elect a president who is constitutionally qualified and fit to serve. Accordingly, to fulfill our role as Electors, we seek an informed and unrestrained opportunity to fulfill our constitutional role leading up to December 19th — that is, the ability to investigate, discuss, and deliberate with our colleagues about whom to vote for in the Electoral College.

The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations. We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.

This is why the EC's open letter makes such sense.

In one of his last appearances on Capitol Hill, Clapper defended the administration’s response to allegations that intelligence officials at the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, pressured analysts to discard information that reflected poorly on the war effort in Iraq and Syria.

He also predicted that the information warfare that Russia has conducted since the Soviet era would likely continue beyond the U.S. election cycle.

Hacked emails from Democratic Party officials were released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign, revealing details embarrassing to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Clapper and the Department of Homeland Security said in October that based on the “scope and sensitivity” of the hacking efforts, only Russia’s “senior-most officials” could have authorized the hacking. Russia has denied involvement.

“After the issuance of the statement and the communication that I know took place between our government and Russian government, it seemed to have curtailed the cyberactivity that the Russians were previously engaged in,” Clapper said.

He said he was specifically referring to the “cyber-reconnaissance” that had been observed prior to the statement. “That sort of activity seemed to have curtailed,” he said.

He said intelligence agencies don’t have good insight on when or how Wikileaks obtained the hacked emails.

The Electoral College letter speaks truth to power. Let's hope Clapper's agency defines what "is " is to us rubes before Dec 19, the day the EC gives the election to Trump.

Recommendation ...

HERE ARE TWO of political history’s great constants: first, countries meddling in the internal affairs of others (both enemies and “friends”); and, second, bogus charges from a faction in one country that foreigners are meddling in its internal affairs to help another faction.

Both are poison for any country that wishes to rule itself.

So if we’re serious about being a self-governing republic, we have to demand that President Obama declassify as much intelligence as possible that Russia may have intervened in the 2016 presidential election.

Taking Donald Trump’s position — that we should just ignore the question of Russian hacking and “move on” — would be a disaster.

Relying on a hazy war of leaks from the CIA, FBI, various politicians, and their staff is an equally terrible idea.

Yet another take from intel pros who know the drill on hacking vs. leaks.

We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:

Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.

Hack: When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data.

All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient.

In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.

Evidence, not innuendo, bloviation and name calling is in order here but knowing the sorry state of our so called leaders and mainline nooze, this is too much to ask, without question.

3 Agencies of Government ...

Dumb & Dumber, n'est pas?

President-elect Donald Trump may nominate former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lead the Department of Energy—the agency Perry wanted to abolish but infamously forgot to name during a 2011 presidential debate.

“It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone—Commerce, Education and the, um, what’s the third one there? Let’s see,” Perry said during a Republican presidential debate in November 2011.

As Perry stumbled to think of the answer, Mitt Romney chimed in to suggest the Environmental Protection Agency, while Ron Paul suggested he actually meant to cut five agencies.

“But you can’t name the third one?” CNBC moderator John Harwood asked.

“The third agency of government I would do away with—the education, uh, the, uh, commerce and let’s see. I can’t—the third one. Sorry. Oops,” Perry said.

He later identified the Department of Energy as the agency he had been trying to name.

“From time to time, you may forget about an agency that you are gonna zero out,” Perry said in an interview following the debate, according to ABC News. “Everybody tomorrow will understand the Energy Department is one of those that needs to be done away with.”

Am I missing something here?

Idiocracy - Prescient to a fault

Idiocracy, it's already here.

Eight years ago, with the publication of Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason, our country had a debate about whether its citizens were becoming less intelligent. This year, we had a debate about how big Donald Trump’s penis is. While we have not resolved the latter, we have answered the former. Former means first, and latter means second.

Two years before Jacoby’s book came out, Mike Judge set his sci-fi comedy Idiocracy 500 years in the future, when President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, a former champion professional wrestler, peppers his speeches with curses. Trump, who is in the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, has used a curse or two when a facial expression could not fully convey his policy points. He has also used his candidacy to hawk products with his name far more effectively than Camacho did with Mountain Dew.

Nearly everything predicted in Idiocracy has come true, and more

Prescient to a fault.

Witch Hunt/Phase 1

This picture is painful to see, an emaciated polar bear dying because of the loss of sea ice, the absolute necessity for these magnificent creatures to survive, something Trump seems not to understand in picking cabinet heads hostile to climate change, the 900 lb gorilla facing mankind if we do nothing about it. To this end, a witch hunt seems to be starting regarding the energy department and the people who work there. To whit 

President-elect Donald Trump's Energy Department transition team sent the agency a memo this week asking for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers, alarming employees and advisors.

The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and seen by Reuters on Friday, contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years.

It asked for a list of all department employees or contractors who have attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and benefits of new energy and environment regulations. It also asked for all publications written by employees at the department's 17 national laboratories for the past three years.

"This feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies list," said a Department of Energy employee, who asked not to be identified because he feared a reprisal by the Trump transition team.

"When Donald Trump said he wanted to drain the swamp it apparently was just to make room for witch hunts and it's starting here at the DOE and our 17 national labs," the employee said.

Any questions?

Click here to see the transition document.

Pushback - Congrats to ED for saying NO!!!

Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the department will not comply.

"Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people," Burnham-Snyder said.

"We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department," he added. "We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team."

He added that the request "left many in our workforce unsettled."

Awesome.

Recent Pix :)

Fungi on the march

1/2 Moon

Xmas @ Nite :)