THIS WAS ALL A LOT LESS COMPLICATED WHEN “CONGRESS SHALL PASS NO LAW” MEANT CONGRESS PASSED NO LAWS: Obama Signs New Religious Freedom Act Protecting Atheists.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
December 22, 2016
THE MOST 21ST CENTURY HEADLINE EVER: The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is Building an Algorithmic Model of its Founder’s Brain.
Deep inside Bridgewater Associates LP, the world’s largest hedge-fund firm, software engineers are at work on a secret project that founder Ray Dalio has sometimes called “The Book of the Future.”
The goal is technology that would automate most of the firm’s management. It would represent a culmination of Mr. Dalio’s life work to build Bridgewater into an altar to radical openness—and a place that can endure without him.
At Bridgewater, most meetings are recorded, employees are expected to criticize one another continually, people are subject to frequent probes of their weaknesses, and personal performance is assessed on a host of data points, all under Mr. Dalio’s gaze.
The only way this could be any more 21st Century is if Dalio’s last name was Kardashian or Jenner.
OUT-VOXPLAINING THE VOXPLAINERS: Michael Walsh with an important election reminder.
TOUGH CHICKS RULE: This Female IDF Soldier Fights Off 23 Terrorists in Ambush Attack After Being Shot.
Captain Ben-Yehuda was in charge of the Caracal Battalion which was stationed near the Israeli / Egyptian border. Three suspicious vehicles quickly approached the battalion’s position and Captain Ben-Yehuda along with a driver went to check them out.
As they approached the first vehicle, nearly two dozen armed men opened fire on their position in an ambush attack. Both Captain Ben-Yehuda and her driver were immediately shot in the volley of gunfire.
Despite suffering from a gunshot wound, Captain Ben-Yehuda managed to get on the radio and call for backup, administer first aid to her driver and return several magazines worth of gunfire back at her attackers.
Backup, in the form of several vehicles full of IDF soldiers, arrived on scene, the wounded Captain commanded the responding soldiers and positioned her men to effectively fight back the terrorists.
At this point it was obvious the IDF was going to be able to push back the armed group, and medical personnel wanted to evacuate Captain Ben-Yehuda to treat her gunshot wounds. However, she was unwilling to leave the battlefield until all of the fighting was done.
For her actions and bravery, Captain Ben-Yehuda was awarded Israel’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor.
What a woman. But more importantly, what a soldier.
THIS DEAL KEEPS GETTING WORSE ALL THE TIME: Iran Seeking New Missiles, War Equipment.
Pentagon officials are downplaying declarations by Iran that it is spending some $1.7 billion provided by the United States on new advanced weapons systems, while also acknowledging that the Islamic Republic continues to build its military arsenal at an increasing rate, according to a Defense Department assessment obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in an unclassified communication last week that the Pentagon does not believe Iran has spent some $1.7 billion awarded by the United States as part of what many described as a “ransom” payment to purchase new military equipment.
However, Dunford said that Iran is boosting its war machine, causing “great concern” among regional allies and other groups, according to information provided to Congress that downplayed the impact of the $1.7 billion payment to Tehran.
It’s embarrassing that a full U.S. Marine Corps General needs reminding that money is fungible.
LIKE IN THAT SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Russia used Syria as live-fire training.
The US army’s commander in Europe has accused Russia of using its military campaign in Syria as a “live-fire training opportunity”.
Lt Gen Ben Hodges said Russia’s “disregard for civilian casualties… is not the conduct of a nation that wants to be treated like a superpower”.
Russia’s defence minister said on Thursday that its air force had killed 35,000 fighters in Syria.
But Russia has been accused of using heavy weapons in civilian areas.
The view from Moscow must look pretty good.
They have:
• Achieved the primary goal of taking the rebels’ last major stronghold
• Kept Assad safe in power
• Demonstrated the power of Russian arms and the utility of Russia’s friendship
• Humiliated the West/made political inroads against NATO’s southern flank (Turkey)
• All with an economy of force (making virtue out of logistical necessity)
By Putin’s cold logic, that’s probably worth almost any number of dead Syrian civilians.
2,900 EXPLOSIONS IN A DAY: Heavy artillery and tank fire returns to the front lines in Ukraine.
An early morning artillery barrage started the latest bloody scrap in eastern Ukraine Sunday as Russian-backed militants and government troops clashed near the town of Svitlodarsk.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military, Col. Andriy Lysenko, said that five soldiers were killed and 16 wounded during the day-long battle and that Russian-backed separatist forces had attempted to break through government lines. It was the largest single loss of life for Ukrainian troops in five months.
A resident in a nearby separatist-controlled town, who asked not to be identified for personal security reasons, dismissed the idea that any separatist troops had attempted to attack and said the fighting was merely “rocket-tennis” between the two sides.
Svitlodarsk lies on the main road between Russian-held areas in the Donbas, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
UPDATE: Canberra explosion not religiously motivated.
An explosion outside the Australian Christian Lobby’s headquarters in Canberra was not politically, religiously or ideologically motivated, police say.
The 35-year-old driver of a white van that exploded around 9.35pm on Wednesday night is in a critical condition at Canberra Hospital.
Police believe the driver ignited gas cylinders within the vehicle, causing an explosion which damaged the vehicle and Eternity House on Campion Street in Deakin.
ACT Policing commander Mark Walters said police had spoken to the driver and did not believe the attack was motivated by politics, religion or ideology.
Nor was there any ongoing threat to the community, he said.
The time of day suggested an accident rather than an attempt to murder infidels.
AND SO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE DRAWS TO A CLOSE: Homicides Rose in Most Big Cities This Year.
Homicides rose in most big American cities in 2016, continuing a worrisome trend for police and criminologists that began last year, even as murder rates in most cities are nowhere near the levels of two decades ago.
Sixteen of the 20 largest police departments reported a year-over-year rise in homicides as of mid-December, a Wall Street Journal survey found. Some notched minor increases, while Chicago has experienced one of the most dramatic jumps, with more than 720 murders—up 56% from 2015.
Chicago’s homicide count, greater than the considerably larger cities of Los Angeles and New York combined, marks a grim tally not seen since the violent drug wars of the 1990s. As the bodies in Chicago pile up—including that of Nykea Aldridge, cousin of basketball star Dwyane Wade, shot while walking with her baby in broad daylight—police are struggling to solve the killings, clearing only one in five homicides so far this year.
The biggest increases were seen in San Antonio, Chicago, Phoenix, Suffolk County, NY, and Memphis — all run by Democrats.
SALENA ZITO: Why Hillary Clinton is still losing supporters.
Audrey and Robert, a Virginia couple, were heading to Montana to visit their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren; Edward of Lancaster, Pa., was traveling to see his mother and brothers and sisters in Fort Wayne, Ind. All had voted for Trump — and all had noticed the way they were still being portrayed by the losing side.
“On Nov. 8 I went from a responsible, hard-working, upstanding citizen to an uninformed bigot who gleefully supports Russian interference in our elections and the destruction of our republic,” Robert said. “At least that’s what I have read in the newspaper or seen on television, so it must be true, right?”
Edward smiled, paused, and then said, “It is refreshing to hear your candor, it’s gotten to the point where you are afraid to not only express your opinion, but to stand by your opinion. Yes, I supported him and yes, I would do it again.”
“They’ve thrown everything at everyone who voted for Trump to deteriorate or place doubt in his supporters’ minds,” said Audrey.
“It astounds me that the press still doesn’t get it, that my party (Democrats) are blaming everyone but themselves for a poor message, poor messenger and the responsibility she bears for placing her email security in jeopardy . . . it’s not Comey’s fault. It’s hers,” said Elizabeth who was sitting in the booth across the aisle.
Elizabeth voted for Clinton, but wasn’t sure she’d do so again. “The way everyone is acting now post-election shows that no one, no one, has learned anything. She is just proving she deserved to lose,” she said.
Nobody likes a sore loser.
TECH: Uber pulls self-driving cars from California roads.
The move comes after a week of talks between the ride-sharing company and state regulators failed.
Hours after Uber launched the service in its hometown of San Francisco, the DMV threatened legal action if the company did not stop. The cars need the same special permit as the 20 other companies testing self-driving technology in California, regulators argued.
Uber maintains it does not need a permit because the cars are not sophisticated enough to continuously drive themselves, although the company promotes them as “self-driving.”
The DMV said the registrations for the vehicles were improperly issued for because they were not properly marked as test vehicles. It invited Uber to seek a permit so their vehicles could operate legally in California — an offer the company said it did not plan to accept.
Why are Democrat-run states such enemies of progress?
CHAUNCEY GARDNER COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Clinton Loss Shows the Importance of “Being There”
Addressing donors in Manhattan recently, Hillary Clinton said that she lost because of two “unprecedented” events: FBI Director James Comey announcing the reopening of an investigation into her use of a private email server, and the “unprecedented Russian plot to swing this election.”
Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta, who in the immediate aftermath of the election claimed that Clinton lost because the media gave Trump a pass, has more recently complained that the hacking of his personal email and emails of the Democratic National Committee by Russians had “distorted” the election outcome.
But analysis of final results in the three Rust Belt states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that cost Clinton the election suggests a less dramatic reason for her defeat than the machinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin. She may have lost simply because she failed to show up in crucial counties where she might have made a difference.
No doubt about it, Clinton was a terrible candidate with worse judgement. Here’s a reminder from last month of just how bad:
In the closing weeks of the presidential race, Hillary Clinton’s campaign — and the outside groups that supported it — aired more television advertisements in Omaha than in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin combined. The Omaha ads were in pursuit of a single electoral vote in a Nebraska congressional district, which Clinton did not ultimately win.
And this short video ought to go in everyone’s playbook of Exactly What Not to Do or Say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T8tMk-ZOx8
Trump looked and sounded like he was having fun — and I suspect he was and still is. Clinton came across as annoyed that there was all of this campaigning to be done before her inevitable coronation.
DON’T BE EVIL — WHENEVER THE PRICE IS RIGHT: How to bump Holocaust deniers off Google’s top spot? Pay Google.
The Holocaust did not happen. At least not in the world of Google, it seems. One week ago, I typed “did the hol” into a Google search box and clicked on its autocomplete suggestion, “Did the Holocaust happen?” And there, at the top of the list, was a link to Stormfront, a neo-Nazi white supremacist website and an article entitled “Top 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen”.
On Monday, Google confirmed it would not remove the result: “We are saddened to see that hate organisations still exist. The fact that hate sites appear in search results does not mean that Google endorses these views.”
The Independent ran the story. As did Fortune. And the Daily Mail. And the Jerusalem Post. And the Drudge Report. But Google held firm. David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, tweeted his support for the decision. And over on Stormfront – the website where Anders Breivik nurtured his ideas – members celebrated.
And still, anyone searching for information about the Holocaust – if it was real, if it happened, if it was a hoax, if it was fake – was being served up neo-Nazi propaganda as the top result.
Until Friday. When I gamed Google’s algorithm. I succeeded in doing what Google said was impossible. I, a journalist with almost zero computer knowhow, succeeded in changing the search order of Google’s results for “did the Holocaust happen” and “was the Holocaust a hoax”. I knocked Stormfront off the top of the list. I inserted Wikipedia’s entry on the Holocaust as the number one result. I displaced a lie with a fact.
How did I achieve this impossible feat? Not through writing articles. Or shaming the company into action. I did it with the only language that Google understands: money.
Read the whole thing.
For what it’s worth, I usually get good search results using DuckDuckGo, and lean on Bing the other 5-10% of the time.
SUSAN PAGE: There’s a clear Democratic front-runner for 2020.
On the theory that it’s never too early to launch the next campaign, the new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll has identified an overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
It’s someone entirely new.
Literally. Not an identifiable person. Just “someone entirely new.” When that description was included on a list of possible contenders, 66% of Democrats and independents said they would be “excited” to see such a person jump in the race; just 9% thought he or she shouldn’t run. That’s an overwhelming yes-please-run score of 57 percentage points for, you know, whomever.
That seems wise.
TRUMP’S GENERALS: Mike Flynn vs. Al-Qaeda.
At the DIA, Flynn’s perception of the growing threat posed by Islamist extremists put him at odds with the triumphalist narrative coming out of the White House. With the death of Osama bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants in 2011, the Obama administration argued that Al Qaeda “core” was “decimated,” and the threat from terrorism rapidly diminishing. In 2012, the National Intelligence Council had even crafted a draft National Intelligence Estimate — a document supposed to represent the consensus view of the US intelligence community — which reportedly concluded that Al Qaeda was no longer a threat to the United States.
Flynn and a number of other senior intelligence officials had successfully pushed back hard against that conclusion as premature. Flynn had DIA analysts distill that intelligence into a PowerPoint slide that showed that the number of radical Islamist terrorist groups had nearly doubled between 2004 and 2013, and that they occupied a far larger global footprint than before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Flynn believes that his disagreement with the White House over the nature of the terrorist threat is a major reason he was forced out a year early as head of the DIA. “The intelligence I saw as director of the DIA made it very clear that Al Qaeda and its affiliates were not on the run, but were in fact rapidly expanding,” Flynn said in our recent interview. “The number of terrorist attacks were on the rise, and Iraq was starting to burn again. So that was Obama’s big lie: that the enemy was on the run, and we were beating these guys.”
Read the whole thing.
PERSONNEL IS POLICY: Trump taps Conway as senior counselor.
Conway, who joined Trump’s team as campaign manager in August, announced earlier this week on Fox News she was moving from her New Jersey home to Washington, signaling a pending position in the incoming Trump administration. Thursday’s announcement from the transition team laid out her new role.
“Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory,” Trump said in a statement released Thursday mornig. “She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message. I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing.”
Conway will work with senior administration officials to communicate and execute Trump’s legislative priorities and action, the statement said.
There was an improvement in consistency, tone, and overall competence to Trump’s presidential campaign almost from the moment Kellyanne Conway was brought on board. She deserves a spot like this at the White House, and will likely excel in the role.
COINCIDENCE? I WONDER… Fake Hate Crime Epidemic Peaks Just Days Before Christmas.
GROWTH:
Fastest-growing populations in America:
1. Utah
2. Nevada
3. Idaho
4. Florida
5. Washingtonhttps://t.co/jWJ1cYi7oR pic.twitter.com/LoZl51SDs3— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) December 21, 2016
One of only three reliably blue growth states isn’t a state at all — it’s Washington, D.C., which once was a swamp and someday could be again.
CLEAN GOVERNMENT: N.Y. Pay-to-Play Plot Fueled by Bribes, U.S. Says.
A senior investment manager for New York’s state pension fund accepted bribes including drugs, prostitutes and tickets to a Paul McCartney concert from two brokers in exchange for millions of dollars in fixed-income business from the fund, prosecutors said.
Navnoor Kang, who served as the New York State Common Retirement Fund’s director of fixed income and head of portfolio security, was charged along with the two brokers, Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn, according to court documents filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
The case exposes the seamy side of the management of pension money, where investment professionals sometimes engage in so-called pay-to-play tactics to win lucrative commissions. Along with cash and prostitutes, their alleged bribes included ski trips to Utah, a long weekend in New Orleans and cocaine for a pension fund official overseeing tens of billions of dollars in assets held on behalf of more than 1 million state employees.
The allegations are the latest to rock the state pension fund, the nation’s third largest with $184 billion in assets.
Why are Democrat-run states such cesspits of prostitution, drugs, and white-collar crime?
BLUE STATE BLUES: Illinois’ population has shrunk by 78,000 in three years.
In fact, the Census reports that 114,144 residents fled Illinois last year — the equivalent of the entire city of Peoria, the state’s seventh largest municipality. When offset with local births, deaths, and others moving in, it comes to a net loss of 37,508 residents in just one year. And the Tribune report adds that this is not just a rural or downstate problem, as some might have expected previously — Chicago has been losing population as well.
And then there’s this, which makes the idea behind Donald Trump’s clumsy and patronizing pitch for black votes seem a bit less crazy, and in fact possibly even something potent if ever made competently:
Leading the exodus to warmer states is the black population, in search of more stable incomes, safe neighborhoods and prosperity. Between 2014 and 2015, more than 9,000 black residents left Cook County.
The overall number of residents that Illinois has lost is alarming in historical terms. It was about 12,000 in 2014, 28,000 in 2015, and nearly 40,000 this year, for a net loss of nearly 80,000 residents over three years. That represents the equivalent of Bloomington — Illinois’ twelfth largest city. The shrinkage is so acute that Pennsylvania could soon overtake Illinois as the nation’s sixth-largest state, even though it lost (a mere) 8,000 residents on net last year.
But where are they going, and are they bringing their failed voting habits with them?
STRONG HORSE: NATO’s 2nd-largest military is ‘bending’ to Russia — and leaving the US out in the cold.
“This is Turkey bending to Russia,” Aaron Stein, an expert on Turkey and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The New York Times on Wednesday. “This is putting a fine point on Turkey’s policy of ‘Assad must go’ no longer being the policy.”
The Turkish-Russian rapprochement — which has been ongoing since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for Turkey’s shooting down a Russian warplane in November 2015 — is likely to continue after the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, in Ankara on Monday.
Statements released by Russian and Turkish officials in the aftermath of Karlov’s death suggested the countries were determined not to let the incident derail their renewed friendship, while Erdogan and Putin said the assassination had only strengthened their resolve to jointly fight terrorism.
Officials and lawmakers in both countries, meanwhile, have implied that the US may have played a role in Karlov’s assassination, an insinuation the US State Department has vehemently denied.
If we’re not the strong horse we might as well play the scapegoat.
December 21, 2016
HEALTH: Processed meat ‘could be bad for asthma’
They can have my secchi salami when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.
FAKE NEWS:
Before you send an outraged tweet: Adam Saleh creates hoax videos for a living:https://t.co/rBpij4Bze0https://t.co/hZUm3eix0K pic.twitter.com/tM5KQkaWAa
— James Cook (@JamesLiamCook) December 21, 2016
I waited for hours to post this so you could have a chance to see how many in the media reported it as real news.