At U.N., Haley says U.S. is ‘prepared to do more’ in Syria

“It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons,” Haley said, echoing similar comments made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Thursday. “Or it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools. Telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases.”

It seems to me that these are the kinds of questions Trump’s State Department should have been asking, and getting answers for, before a strike than after. If these are important questions, if they had actually asked them, why couldn’t they have waited for an answer, and would they have still bombed if these question had been answered?

Obviously, while they are asking these question, which may determine the appropriate US response, more people may have been gassed, but it might also mean there would have been a possibility that Russia would take action against Assad after realizing they have been fooled or Russia’s personnel are incompetent.

Of course if Assad’s story is correct, i.e. the sarin gas was produced by the insurgents and released when Assad bombed, there most likely would have been no more people dying from a sarin gas leak, unless there were many manufacturing areas that had remained hidden from the Russians and everyone else.

But asking these question and receiving answers to them is now pretty much a waste of time. The world now knows that the US will be willing to commit thousands of troops and trillions of dollars, without any answers to these, or perhaps any, questions.

But thanks U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. Your questions may be  a dollar short (59 million) and a day late, but they should count for something, as Trump, although not very presidential, has shown he is a man of action, which is something.

Source: At U.N., Haley says U.S. is ‘prepared to do more’ in Syria

The F-35 Stealth Fighter May Never Be Ready for Combat

Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the declaration was wildly premature.

It might be that the Air Force is fighting a different war than the one the Pentagon is fighting. So the rules of Orientation are different in each battlespace. A fighter jet like the one the Pentagon wants most likely positions and postures itself differently than the one the Air Force wants

I mean the F 35 has shown the ability to shoot down rockets. It is basically what makes it a 5th Generation fighter. This ability comes from the fact that the F 35 is similar to a flying saucer (except when the Pentagon attaches ordinates outside the mass of its symmetrical planes) and the Air Force has a plan to use them as such. How you fight rockets with an Airplane, you can’t, as I am sure the Pentagon knows well. How you fight rockets with an F 35 is anyone’s guess.

Of course to use them properly they must position them as close to the target (the target the F 35 wants to hit) as possible. Incoming rockets move at something like 22,000 mph, so the F 35 would need some time to do some real maneuvering to swat them out of the sky before they reach the target.

Just guessing. I could be wrong.

Source: The F-35 Stealth Fighter May Never Be Ready for Combat

Trump’s new attack against Clinton uses ‘short-circuited’ line against her

“Unstable Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “You saw where she basically short-circuited? She short-circuited. She used the term. I think that the people of this country don’t want somebody that’s going to short-circuit up there.”

And saying 7/11 when you meant 9/11 isn’t short circuiting? Does Trump really want to get into a war with Hillary, on the assumption that one candidate seems to be unstable? I am afraid Trump is beginning to see much of himself in Hillary, and there is no one around him who could tell him to stop it.

But it could be that he has hired some apprentices, and they might have ties to the other side. If any “rigging” going on it will be inside the Trump structure, so I assume this must keep Trump up nights, thinking this shit up, while at the same time keeping control of his own campaign.

Steelworkers do the best rigging! Maybe he should have them build the wall for him?

On the other hand, considering the party that he has around him, he should stick to writing his own stuff. After all, when one observes the image of wheels turning around inside one’s head like some cartoon, I don’t think that image looks anything like Hillary.

Source: Trump’s new attack against Clinton uses ‘short-circuited’ line against her

Pentagon moving to increase US troop numbers in Iraq soon

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Friday it was moving to increase the number of American forces in Iraq and announced that U.S. forces have killed the Islamic State’s finance minister. “We are systematically eliminating ISIL’s cabinet,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

I think Trump will have a mandate to make those in the Arab world take care of their own, or pay us to do it for you. I wonder if Trump knows how quickly relationships can change? I mean he had to maintain his image to keep people coming back to his buildings with his name on it. Is he going to keep that image, or become a leader.

In other words, is Trump going to put his name on this country or not? Would a leader?

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recommendations on ways to increase U.S. support for Iraq’s ground fight against IS are going to be discussed with President Barack Obama soon.

So muster up some cash Congress, if you got some kind of war to fight, or not. But let’s face it, this election might be the most important one you let happen–you need to commit yourself to something more than throw Obama out of the WH.

The Constitution has done that part for you, so who are you fighting? Not a big fan of the Constitution, eh?

“The secretary and I both believe that there will be an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in coming weeks, but that decision hasn’t been made,” Dunford told Pentagon reporters during a briefing. He did not say how big that increase might be.

Yes Republicans, Obama hasn’t made that decision yet. Do you want Trump to do it? The answer maybe something voters need to listen to before the Middle East explodes, and not after, when it is out of our control.

One may say that we never had control in the first place. The difference between Shia and Sunni Arabs have been deemed unsolvable according to Islam, and, from what I have heard, climate change is taking away their water, neither which the Republican’s base believe we have control of.

I am just not sure Trump is saying that. That is the problem when living inside a bubble.

Source: Pentagon moving to increase US troop numbers in Iraq soon – Yahoo News

Iran’s leader says never trusted the West, seeks closer ties with China

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for closer economic and security ties with China, saying Iran had never trusted the West, as the two countries agreed to increase bilateral trade more than 10-fold to $600 billion in the next decade.

Truly a relationship made in heaven. The USA would have had to create this relationship, if it didn’t just all happen by itself. 🙂

The reason is this:

It sounds to me like

China is the epicenter of the looming crisis. China in today’s cycle is what US housing was during the financial crisis in 2008. In 2008, China reacted quickly, resorted to fiscal stimulus, which saved the boom and even amplified it. In addition, however, the liquidity from the QE-program in the US flooded into the country, which even accelerated the uptrend – in terms of credit growth and investment, the boom in China grew into the biggest excess in the history of mankind.

and Iran could use all the excessive commodities it can now buy, as sanctions are lifted, and its economy becomes a player in the developing market.

It’s a relationship made in heaven, because China’s relationship with Turkey is strong enough that they hold combined military exercises and strong enough with Russia that there is much in integration at their border regions, and Iran is basically at war with the Arab Sunni kingdom.

Whither that “Kingdom” is heaven, has yet to be seen.

 

Source: Iran’s leader says never trusted the West, seeks closer ties with China – Yahoo News

Ft.^4=G; Mystery Solved

Statics is the center of gravity around which any course in engineering is created. It was in my statics class that I was first introduced to the units of measure feet to the fourth power. This is the units for a moment of inertia. But what does it look like?

This was the question I asked my instructor. What does ft^4 look like? I mean in my life, which at the time was going on 50 years, I was able to  see in my mind what ft.^2 (area) looks like. I also could “see” what ft.^3 (volume) looks like, but ft^4 was a mystery to me. So I asked my instructor.

He couldn’t help me. I told him that it must be similar to a sphere, and settled on a sphere at a radius as my mental image of ft^4. I don’t know how helpful it was to have this picture, but I ended up receiving an A- in the class, which I was real satisfied with.

But really, if you are able to hold a mental image of gravity, gravity has the units of measure ft^4. If you can’t hold that image, gravity is probably unitless.

Maybe if my statics class had been calculus based I would have come to this image as gravity sooner, as calculus, I was told, enables you to understand infinity better, which seems to me would have made the understanding of gravity better, but I am not sure.

I haven’t worked out the math for gravity yet, but then math was never my greatest advantage, in engineering class. I understood math, but I had the same ability in the maneuvering of numbers as I did in maneuvering letters for spelling, poor.

That said, gravity is basically acceleration at zero velocity, which, unlike acceleration where at zero velocity there is a change in time but not distance, in gravity there is a change in distance, but no change in time. The units of measure for acceleration is second^2 and the units for gravity is ft^4. I suppose ft^4 is a quantum.

Time is a position, as is space a distance (or a bunch of distances). That is why the speed of light is a constant. Once you reach the speed of light, you have positioned yourself in the same position as all time in all the moments in 3 dimensions. The only thing left in the fourth dimension is the change in distance, and that change is the same in all our solar system and beyond. So, upon reaching the speed of light, acceleration becomes constant, but velocity stops, and what you have left is ft^4 power.

As gravity is energy and not force, I guess I can start by writing: E=ft^4, which has zero meaning to me and probably everyone else. You got a moment? 🙂

 

Ranchers who inspired Oregon occupation report to prison – Yahoo News

But others said from a tactical standpoint, the government’s cautious response would make sense no matter who was holed up in the government building in the reserve.

That is not true. If it was Occupy Wallstreet occupying the government building, they would have won the first round against corporate America.

As it was: the strategy of the militia was such that the fact the ranchers reported to prison made the militia’s strategy one of loosing, instead of winning.

The Militia is against the government of the USA, but pro-corporate America.

Oregon and the local ranchers won this round.

Source: Ranchers who inspired Oregon occupation report to prison – Yahoo News

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (the mahdi’s arrival)

The greatest thing about a fiction narrative is that truth can be told without a lot of facts running around and distracting us. So in the movie “Lucy” and when actor Morgan Freeman tells us there are only two outcomes for the OODA loop of a cell,  because it is fiction, we can take those facts presented in the fictional movie as truths and run with it.

I already fictionalized what he said by asking you to think of the cell’s life as an OODA loop. If you don’t know what an OODA loop is, then you might as well move on or Google, because I’m not going to get into that discussion here. What I will say is that it sounds to me like cancer starts when, like Lucy, when one cell in your body gives up. There are two option at the end of every OODA loop. Option 1: a human cell becomes immortal and is called a cancer and becomes immortal or Option 2: dying and letting the next generation takeover.

In other words, for a human battling cancer and in a moment of time for one of their cells at the center of its environment, the cell sees no future for other generations of its kind and position. Within the confines of the cells position it becomes immortal and is called cancer. Through the consequences of this decision, the cell’s loop is literally broken by the magnitude of the inertia of that decision and the outcome of this revelation (through the cell’s decision process) and the cell stops evolving and the cell becomes cancer.

A friend of ours, who we have loved since she was 3-years-old, recently died of brain-cancer. I have a hard time believing there was any cell in her body that had given-up, but I have no clue as to what the environment was like when the cell did give-up.

I have said once that cellphones are the cigarettes of her generation, and she loved the cell phone, and selfies, and Facebook, and all that connecting they represent. In a word, she lived inside her connected generation, so it is hard to blame either her or her cellphone. She basically ended her last 60 days of life expressing herself with the one finger that could still move, and thanking the doctors who kept cutting on her brain (de-massing) down to the last finger. So she was not a quitter in any sense of the word.

But just because one cell might have given-up, it doesn’t mean we should overlook the objects and those connections that might have produced such a toxic environment and made a cell simply give up on evolution and go immortal.

What it does mean is that we have to observe the narrative from a distance and the magnitude of the narrative is by distance square. In other words, that distance our friend had to travel in battling cancer is very hard to remember, because, I, for one, think about that little girl everyday, and remaining positive is still good medicine.

Still,  that movie did produce a powerful image as the “mahdi” Lucy sees no future and becomes immortal. What’s that mean? Is the mahdi a form of cancer, or vice versa?

Pattern Recognition: Entryways

Eventually Washington realized that a road that could be used to speed troops’ journey north could be used equally to speed troops’ journey south.

I am not a military person, so I am not sure what Washington’s strategy for invading Canada turned out to be, but I imagine that he decentralized his expeditionary forces along the border, and made every effort to win the hearts and minds of the locals. This strategy is also what I think the people on Thoughtfaucet are recommending Zillow implement.

Zillow, the real estate portal, purchased Diverse Solutions.

A portal is an entryway, but, in this case, I don’t think Zillow is local. It may be that the portal is located between two markets, one local one foreign, and the foreign investors behind global players such as U.S. Bank, the bank I tried to go through in mortgaging my property, are view by the locals as taking over.

As a global player, U.S. Bank wanted nothing to do with me, even when we offered a CD that would cover the mortgage. I was only “saved” by a local financial entity.

But the banks, such as U.S. Bank, did go for the high valued property, as that which we had to sell to settle my wife’s estate. And I think they got most of the high-valued property for a song.

From that song and dance my wife had to go through in selling her mother’s house, it sounds to me like the locals used the portal as a “Bayley Hazen Military Road” for quick access into the money market of a foreign country, but now the locals are angstiest. They didn’t learn from Washington, and now the flow has reversed.

So, if my assessment of Washington’s action to implement his strategy for invading Canada was correct, Thoughtfaucet are calling on Zillow to decentralize, and win the hearts and minds of the locals (real estate sales force). Once they win the hearts and minds of the local, Zillow won’t be viewed as an existential threat.

Web technologies such as that provided by Diverse Solutions and others, can very easily become a means for real estate agents to submit data directly to Zillow should trouble ensue with more formal access to the various MLS databases. In some ways, it might turn out to be more efficient for Zillow for this to occur anyway.

So in the end (a narrative to get from here to there using the ways and means outlined in the quote above) Zillow hires a gatekeeper, such as those on Thoughtfaucet, to open or close the portal like a faucet and, according to the magnitude of the perceived threat (small), everyone lives happily ever after.

The foreign object is now local (at least next to the border), and the locals could take advantage of the foreign object’s position in the world, a position that is getting stronger as the square foot of living space gets smaller due to climate change.

There is so much movement in the world, due to climate change, that the locals could ask, why not let at least some of that movement land here (local)?

Maybe because “here” is where politics and diplomacy starts, and our area might not be ready for either.

Nice!

Wait! Invade Canada????

via Pattern Recognition: Entryways – Thoughtfaucet.

A Good Business Model Builds Barriers Not Fences

People power, Russia style: Small-town lessons about Russian democracy – Yahoo News

“The local amber operators live in the Baltiysk area, they know the place and the people, and in a variety of ways they take the local population’s interests and needs into account. They ran the district council, but nobody claims they were doing a bad job of it,” says Vladimir Abramov, an independent political expert. “They were mostly members of United Russia and big supporters of Putin.”

So the businessmen put the military structure (which had basically dissolved) to work manufacturing a product positioned in the world’s market, and Putin’s culture followed those businessmen back to their town and voted. It voted to make a decision, but not to change a position. In other words, they are still with Putin and the system seems to be working.

But did the businessmen create barriers that controls the velocity between those in the town and those in the global market, or did they try to build a fence around the town and whose gate only opens to the few?

For me a gate, which is what every good fence needs, is no good unless it’s there as an ornament. Those in the know (know how to open gates) seem to build close to the gate, and, in a way, those building close to the gate are in charge of the structure. I am just saying, I think those living close to the gate can become barriers too easily jumped over and too limiting in letting the few move around the barrier that represents, in this case, those voting. On the other hand, the town is dealing with a natural resource similar to oil, so maybe a closed system is not too bad, as long as the gate is well guarded. As we have seen in the Ukraine, if those guarding the gate are weak, the system doesn’t last long.

If including the military culture within a Capitalistic system creates fences or barriers, I don’t know the answer. The system inside the Russian town maybe Communistic or not, but the financial advantage in the world goes (so far) to the Capitalists.

But this business model the Russian businessmen of the town used is very similar in structure as what the Chinese used in Pakistan. In the Chinese system it seemed to be a winning strategy, but since I last looked, I don’t know if the Chinese model built barriers or fences.

In the Chinese model, they hired all ex-military higher-ups to run their manufacturing and the Chinese kept their economy going by keeping their people working. The business model had, what is called, a Cheap Trick. A Cheap Trick is basically a structure-building narrative with an advantage. The advantage in this case was that the military leaders took charge of the Chinese (I am thinking mostly Chinese workers) manufacturing facilities after serving in the Pakistani military as generals. Normally such a thing would raise some eyebrows with thoughts of nationalizing the manufacturing in Pakistan.

But the move in hiring these ex-generals were thought to be on the up and up. There was no pretext to hide this fact locally, nationally, and globally, and the global Capitalist responded favorably.

Perhaps in the successful Chinese model some events could give us clues as to what kind of structure we are dealing with inside the model’s environment. Maybe one event,  The Red Mosque Massacre, could show us either barrier or fence building.

After the inhabitants of The Red Mosque made a violent attack on a Chinese massage parlor (Who knew massage parlors were even available in Pakistan?), the Pakistan Government responded to the Chinese request, to protect Chinese citizens, by making the inhabitants of the mosque, who were mostly the women who perpetrated the attack on the massage parlor, a target to be massacred.

So in that instant, there was mostly fence building going on, as the Pakistani Army, in effect, isolate the Chinese from the people inside the mosque and surrounding environment.

On the other hand, as the article points out, nobody seems to be jumping over the Putin barrier, so maybe the Town’s model will be just as successful, as that used by the Chinese in Pakistan, but at a smaller magnitude per event.

via People power, Russia style: Small-town lessons about Russian democracy – Yahoo News.