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feds setup fake university, arrest students
https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/11/30/understanding-the-bizarre-ice-fake-university-sting-operation/
Even after RTFA, I'm not sure what the point of this stunt was supposed to be. Did DHS/ICE get kickbacks from the prisons or something?
Only 3 Ways To Stop Trump 2020
An outsider's opinion:
Guest Post by Thaisleeze
Living on the opposite side of the world to the USA I am obliged to follow American politics as a stone thrown into the Washington swamp sends ripples that reach this far. With less than a year to go until the next presidential election it is time to assess the current political landscape.
Trump of course is the focus of massive media noise. This must be ignored if a rational analysis is to be produced. 2016 proved that opinion polls must also be ignored. As things stand today Trump holds the following chips in his stack:
*He is the incumbent
*The official employment numbers are in his favor
*The official economic numbers are in his favor
*His Republican approval is over 90%
*His Hispanic/black approval ratings are at record levels for a Republican
*He has made a dent in the illegal immigration problem
*He has not started any new wars
*Both Trump and the RNC are raking in record amounts of campaign cash
*He will have the vote of most people with a 401(k) account
*He will have the vote of most people in the military
*He is in control of the social media narrative
*He pushed the concept of the deep state and fake news into the mainstream
*Democrat controlled cities are clearly in serious decline
*He forced the DNC to defend their lunatic far left fringe and embrace their views
*He forced the Democrats into the farcical impeachment process
*The Democrats have little cash on hand
*The Democrats do not have a viable policy platform
*The Democrats do not currently have a viable contender for the nomination
Probably the most important fact we have learned since the election of Trump is that the deep state does exist in America and that it is a massively powerful hand on the tiller of American policy. It has also become abundantly clear that this faction was strongly opposed to the policies Trump ran on in 2016 and that they have tried to impede him ever since he announced his candidacy. It is not unreasonable to conclude that this faction does not wish Trump to win re-election. The question then becomes how far are they prepared to go in stopping him.
The most obvious way to stop Trump would be at the the ballot box. However, given the factors outlined above this is a long shot bet. None of the declared Democrat candidates can beat him. Hillary Clinton would fail again. A Republican cannot unseat him. Obama has been keeping a very low profile, it is possible that his wife Michelle could win, if she could be persuaded to run. Oprah?
What would turn the world of Trump upside down would be a financial crisis of a similar magnitude to 2008, or a major dollar collapse (Putin said last week the dollar would collapse soon). If there were a consensus among the deep state to take such action it would be incredibly easy for them to achieve given the highly unstable fabric of markets today.
The corporate credit markets could be pushed into panic by Jamie Dimon alone if he wished such an outcome and had the blessing of his buddies. Indeed, the cynic might argue that the groundwork has been laid since the start of the repo problem in mid September and the launching of QE4. Last time around the patsie was Lehman, has Deutsche Bank been singled out to take the fall this time? Time is running short for this to be an option, a crisis must be in play by spring next year to stymie the Orange Man.
The third way Trump could be stopped does not bare thinking about but it happened before to JFK 56 years ago.
Epstein did not kill himself.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/only-3-ways-stop-trump-2020
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/11/29/only-3-ways-to-stop-trump-2020/
Polls that matter.
Well, we now have a new poll.
Hong Kong's opposition pro-democracy movement has made unprecedented gains in the Chinese territory's district council elections, early results show.
According to local media counts, 17 of the 18 councils are now controlled by pro-democracy councillors.
From the Wikipedia article on the election, "pro-Beijing" parties lost massive shares of the seats with the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (or DAB) going from 117 seats to 21 (out of 479).
I can't say what this all means, but it does strike me as a strong indication that there's a lot more support for the protests than the AC presented above.
[Edited one of the first two links to show a post from a different story.]
Consensus Views of the Interagency
Suddenly and unexpectedly, today I have hit an article by Ron Paul:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/real-bombshell-impeachment-hearings/5695984
I was not disappointed, I really like the ingenuous wording by Colonel Vindman. It illustrates well all the mechanics behind current political processes.
It seems the pivot person in this plot is Fiona Hill. With such a cute name and strange fate which could fit to an anime character, coming from modest background she was promoted to become one of the most influencing operators of the dark Empire, publicly known by euphemism deep state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Hill_(presidential_advisor)
Gun Control’s Godfather Is in
By Larry Keane
Michael Bloomberg made it official. Gun control godfather, financier of several anti-gun groups, is throwing his billions in to buy his way to the White House and forcing his radical anti-gun agenda on America.
It might have been the worst-kept secret in the history of presidential runs. The former New York city mayor has played an on-and-off again tease with his presidential ambitions. In October, the Nanny-in-Chief threatened a run, only to walk it back when he announced in March he wouldn’t. Then, he said, “I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination.”
It seems that the billionaire got a set of 2020 glasses where the future appears, at least to him, much clearer. Bloomberg’s vision for a gun control America is brighter, in his estimate, after he poured $2.5 million to flip Virginia blue for gun control through Everytown for Gun Safety, which he bankrolls, along with Moms Demand Action, Students Demand Action and March for Our Lives. Those groups are already setting their sights on the Second Amendment stronghold of Texas, aiming to knock out Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Colorado’s Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.
None of this comes at a surprise. Bloomberg said in February he was prepared to spend a half billion dollars to wrest control of the White House from President Donald Trump. He dumped $80 million to bolster gun control Democrats to Congress in the 2018 midterms. Now, he’s vowing off public funding, using his near endless reserves to launch a shot to be elected as nation’s top Gun Controller.
Welcome to the Race
His announcement, though, is already being widely panned, even by those who openly embrace even the most far-reaching gun control ideas he embraces. Democratic candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blasted the Republican-turned-Independent-turned Democrat. “Telling billionaires they can come and buy elections, that does not make democracy work,” she told reporters.Bloomberg got a similar chilly reception from Sen. Bernie Sander (I-Vt.) when he reacted to the announcement saying Bloomberg’s “not going to get very far in this election.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) panned his $34 million announcement media blitz, adding “I just don’t think people are going to buy it.”
More Obstacle Course than Race
The 77-year-old has hurdles to overcome. Aside from his less-then-warm reception by his fellow competitor candidates, he’s not inspiring a strong following from those who he funnels missions of dollars to peddle his gun control message. Buzzfeed polled 11 Moms Demand and Students Demand Action grassroots volunteers to see if their gun control funder-in-chief earned their vote. None committed to the billionaire. “I’m not super psyched about it, but I respect him enormously,” said Jessica Craven, 51, the legislative lead for her Moms Demand Action group in Northeast Los Angeles. The Wall Street Journal reported Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action reassured their followers they wouldn’t need to pledge their votes to the guy footing their bill.Adding to Bloomberg’s obstacles are two glaring facts he can’t ignore. Bloomberg’s own news organization refused to investigate their benefactor, a signal he might not be up for the media scrutiny. To be fair, they’ll extend that same courtesy to all other Democratic candidates, but not to President Donald Trump, whom Bloomberg has targeted. Former Bloomberg D.C. bureau chief editor Megan Murphy was astonished, saying “This is not journalism.”
Bloomberg’s also facing a dearth of public support. In the five national primary polls tracking the candidates, he’s hovering around 2 percent. That might explain why he’s skipping the early state tests of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and the debate stages where Americans get to hear directly on why he’s running.
Even the left-leaning Mother Jones begged Bloomberg to butt out. “Stop, please!” pleaded Michael Winchester of Cedar Rapids. “This is insane.”
That’s something we’ve been saying about Michael Bloomberg for years.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/gun-controls-godfather-is-in/
New Toy
An new epoch of smart spinners have arrived.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flynova-the-most-tricked-out-flying-spinner--2?#/
What now? Make it BIG! A slow-fall device may have wide spectrum of usage outside of entertainment: from bombs able to deploy mine fields to controllable parachutes for vehicles.
weather events
Thursday morning, the boss came in to work, and I met him outside, in the break area. His mouth was agape, looking at the sky. The sky was an eerie glowing green, with patches of gold where the sun was almost peeking through the cloud cover. (Bear in mind my color vision - maybe the green wasn't really green, but it's close enough.) Over the course of several minutes, it changed to a pretty solid slate green, without that glow. In my experience, that's one of the many different "snow" skies. I always loved these skies when I was driving, because all the wannabe truck drivers and all the timid 4-wheelers were searching for a warm den to hole up in. Which left the highways open to those of us more serious drivers, who would drive across several states before the wannabe's would venture back outside again.
The weather forecast for Thanksgiving promises lots of snow and/or rain, pretty much everywhere in the US and Canada. It makes me wish I were back out on the road again - except, it's a holiday week. That makes for lots of crashes, and lots of wrecks.
23 photos of truly beautiful nature
Eric Meola became interested in storms during a 1977 road trip across Nevada to photograph an album cover for the musician Bruce Springsteen.
While driving in the desert they encountered a violent storm, and Springsteen wrote a song about the experience called “The Promised Land”, saying later of those photographs: “Eric caught some great pictures but what he really captured was something in the sky and in the lay of the land that deeply revealed the grandeur and character of the country.”
Meola was transfixed as well by the display of nature’s fury, stating: “I always wanted to go back to that day when we drove up on a hilltop and watched as lightning revealed the valley floor.”
He began to photograph the tornadic storms of the Great Plains – the area in America’s heartland. Driving through the area known as Tornado Alley – from the Rio Grande in southern Texas, north to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan – he photographed a forbidding landscape where atmospheric instability collides with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and spectacular cumulonimbus clouds form at twilight.
Over a period of several years he documented a landscape of elemental forces, where immense storms percolate miles above the ground, rotating with energy until tornadoes spin on the horizon.
He discovered a country of haunting beauty where the wail of coyotes and the glow of constellations fill the prairie’s void with simple graces.
“This book extends that narrative and reaches something profound,” says Bruce Springsteen of these new photographs.
I suppose I could write my own book. The night I sat on top of the mountain above Las Cruces, and watched a violent thunderstorm sweep in from the desert, envelope the town below, then move on toward El Paso, and not a single drop of rain landed on my truck. Or racing a blizzard out of the Yakima Valley, to Kansas City, where the blizzard smashed into a major rain storm that had developed over San Diego. Random photos of hurricanes crashing ashore.
Major weather events have always excited me - they get the heart pumping, and make me want to get out in it.
If you're traveling this week, take a little time, and admire the weather. Maybe you can find a place to get some great photos. Don't be one of the miserable drudges, cursing Mother Nature for ruining your holiday. Look up, and admire the beauty. Look around you, get some photos of vegetation bowing to the forces of nature.
There seems to be lots of opportunity for you to play Storm Chaser!!
https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/2019-11-22-thanksgiving-weather-forecast-travel-2019
Me? I'm going to do what is expected of me. Sit at home, and let the kids come to me.
Why I Code/Admin
I just spent all day running AC duct in the New Debar Fellowship Hall (what I've decided the remodeled church shall unofficially be named) with another day of it to look forward to tomorrow. That's what I did shortly before I got on at a computer repair shop/ISP back in the late 90s. I now completely remember why I enjoy sitting on my ass and poking at a keyboard.
chiptunes
I was checking out some tracker music that someone gave me (I'm guessing they got it from modarchive.org) when I got to a file called montyii.xm and it reminded me of a moonblaster tune I'd heard.
Moonblaster is of course an old music composition program for MSX computers ('80s Z80-based lineup from Japan). While the MSX generally only came with a YM2149 (a.k.a. PSG or SSG) there was also something called MSX-AUDIO proposed as part of the standard which rolled a Yamaha OPL FM synthesizer and an ADPCM source into one chip. As a cheaper alternative, some makers opted for a YM2413 synthesizer instead. (YM2413 is a cute little 18-pin DIP which is still available on ebay.) Both were available as add-on cartridges. Some dudes from northern Europe created Moonblaster to take advantage of these dual synthesizers.
The XM format on the other hand originated with FastTracker2 which was DOS tracker program also from the '90s. Montyii.xm contained this in the comments field:
by jogeir liljedahl
N-o-i-s-e-L-e-s-s
--------------------
Hubbard's A.W. Monty
converted in '92.
Finished by request
03.02.97.
Despite not having been a C64 user I have nevertheless heard of Rob Hubbard. So it seems that montyii.xm and the moonblaster tune (actually there are two of them, one credited to DANDAN) are both recreations of a C64 tune. (No surprise, since many moonblaster tunes floating around are derivative of something eg. Laserdance.) A web search (eventually, after getting past all the irrelevant results about a law firm) confirmed this, and yielded this interesting article:
Rob Hubbard's Music: Disassembled, Commented and Explained
The music is originally from the game Monty on the Run from Dec. '85.
A semi-related story: Recently I was thinking about software Mod music players. This basically involves converting the sample rate of instruments at a specified pitch into the playback rate. Some players use interpolation, while another strategy is to simply repeat or skip samples as needed but apply a low-pass filter to the output to hide artifacts. The latter is likely less computationally intensive and perhaps truer to the implementation of the Amiga audio hardware. As testament to my newb amateur-ness, I wasn't sure how to code a low-pass filter. Wikipedia articles on subjects like this tend to be geared toward general mathematical theory and therefore offer no hints to a non-math-major on how to apply it to a specific purpose. Eventually I was able to think back to a simple resistor+capacitor electronic circuit implementation of a low-pass filter and how that could be translated to code. It seems to boil down to an embarrasingly simple output=(newsample-oldsample)/X+oldsample where X would correspond to the capacitor charge rate.
For a time I had also considered a speaker cone with a certain mass, maximum acceleration, and maybe a maximum velocity. So what if I put caps on the derivative and/or second derivative of a PCM stream? I tried it, but it wasn't really the sound I was looking for. I think it was a good simulation of old rubbish speakers one might find in a junkyard car, with rotting paper, corroded wiring, and weak voice coils. That's how it sounded :)
take no prisoners
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2019/09/26/watch-rep-elise-stefanik-shades-chairman-schiff-at-dni-hearing-n2553774
On Thursday, as the chairman was kicking off an Intelligence Committee hearing with Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, he decided to improvise some parts of the phone transcript.
Rep. Schiff re-writes the call transcript for added drama: "I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good, I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that, I’m going to put you in touch with people" pic.twitter.com/1rV7BpEN6o
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 26, 2019Schiff later explained that his version of events was simply a "summary of the president's call was meant to be, at least part, in parody."
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was having none of it. She didn't wait to call the chairman out until their proceedings had finished. She took him to task right there.
Today’s @HouseIntel hearing with Acting DNI Maguire is extremely important for Americans to hear. I focused on the whistleblower complaint itself & did not recklessly improvise a fake dialogue for parody purposes like Adam Schiff—the head of this committee—did. Watch part 1 ?? pic.twitter.com/5MBeV7XNCd
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) September 26, 2019"On page one - and I'm not going to improvise for parody purposes, like the chairman of this committee did," Stefanik said when she began to read the whistleblower complaint. "I'm going to quote it directly."
She went on to read the whistleblower's confession that he or she "was not a direct witness to most of the events described." Still, officials concluded that even though the complainant was relying on secondhand knowledge, it was "credible" enough to investigate.
So, Schifty Schiff pretty much admits he's full of schitz, and making stuff up? Bolding is mine - but we're going to impeach the president in parody!
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Impeachment-hearing-uncovers-new-evidence-from-14831773.php
Near the start of Tuesday’s hearing, Stefanik pushed Schiff to respond to a list of several witnesses Republicans want to call. Republicans submitted their list of witnesses on Nov. 9 to Democrats, who are reviewing their requests.
On Fox News last week, she said she wanted to call Schiff as the Republicans’ first witness in the impeachment inquiry. She has also supported a resolution to censure Schiff for his comments in an earlier public hearing.
Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, asked for a resolution Wednesday to question the whistle-blower, whose complaint sparked the inquiry, in a closed-door session. Democrats voted down that resolution at the close of the public hearing.
NO NO NO!! YOU CAN'T QUESTION THE WITNESSES!!!!!
WATCH: Rep. Elise Stefanik’s full questioning of Volker and Morrison | Trump impeachment hearings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yZJs5iHLB0
IF YOU QUESTION ANY MORE WITNESSES OUR ENTIRE NARRATIVE FALLS APART!!
Rep. Stefanik Makes Schiff Squirm, Exposes His Hypocrisy on Whistleblower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eip14ZOLro
Oh yeah - Stefanik 2024. She's better looking than Trump, she's smarter, and she has better fashion sense. Not to mention that she looks a good bit like my nieces.
See? Not all millenials are vacuous bubbleheads!
