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

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

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.

First Drucker Now Gamers?

Twitter / @larrydunbar/ooda.

I have read some of the report Michael Gerald Moore is outlining in his tweets here. It could be that Japan has found a way to harness the power (OODA loop) of the Next Generation Gamers.

Gamers are deep rooted experts that have little culture, but know how to tear down structure until it’s theirs. Gamers are good a learning the rules of the game and taking advantage of the rules to the dis-advantage of the designer of the game, until they own the game more than the designer.

In this case, it is the customer’s game, and corporate culture be damned, and the gamers play to win.

I could be wrong, but I think managers at Toyota are giving these people (Gamers) time to learn the rules, before crossing the gap between Decision and Action. Perhaps in another way, Toyota is py-passing orientation and pouncing between Observation and Decision, because Orientation is where much of the culture forms.

These Gamers would not be as suseptiable to integration of Toyota’s corporate culture and freer of bias, but they would eventually “own” the game.

I think there is more going on here, or I should say there at Toyota, but I have been wrong before, at least not mostly right.

Of course if I am mostly right, this could mean a big break for Japan, and a possible bounce back to number two, depending on if and where they are going with the meme.

Chart of the day: Why GM and SAIC naturally decided to pair up

Pretty obvious, actually.

Far short of merger, but the same logic holds:  you are weak where I am strong and vice versa.  Why not ally and crush all opposition on global basis.

This would-be globally integrated enterprise as a preview of globalization’s coming attractions.

From an Economist story on Chinese carmakers.

via Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – Blog – Chart of the day: Why GM and SAIC naturally decided to pair up.

What Tom is describing is called a  “Cheap Trick” (Tempo, Venkatesh Rao).

Cheap Trick: In the Double Freytag model, the moment when a key insight turns around the trajectory of increasing entropy in a deep story. A cheap trick follows the exploration phase. The notion of cheap trick is essentially identical to Clausewitz’ notion of coup d’oeil (strike of the eye). Cheap tricks provide elegant, organizing insights that allow a decision-maker to make temporary and local sense of a high-entropy mental model. Cheap tricks also provide a window of opportunity for high-leverage decision-making.

The cheap trick in the deep story between GM and the Chinese corporation is defined in these words: “…you are weak where I am strong and vice versa.” In the exploration of the automobile market in both economies (east and west) have become so complex and the increase in what is not known is so great that the relationships in the narrative within the market has begun to spike into a Cheap Trick, to release both complexity and that what is not known.

A Cheap Trick is strategy, and in Tom’s example, the way (logic, of  the strategy) is defined in the words, “Why not ally and crush all opposition on a global basis.”

A cheap trick is strategy, but not the final strategy, so what is known about this Cheap Trick is that it is flawed. As Venkatesh says on page 77 in his book Tempo, “Every such insight is flawed, since it is based on excluding some part of reality as noise.”

What GM is excluding from some part of reality as noise is the fact that China is monopolizing the market around a benevolent leadership that is centralized. The reality is that the east (China) moves to a different tempo than the west (USA).

While the cheap trick and the logic behind it might be the same, GM and China (if one can distingush one as western and the other eastern anymore) have completely different Liminal Passages.

With different liminal passages, but with a need to achieve the same tempo (if harmony is desired between the east and west) the liminal passages have to merge. To merge the liminal passages, the separation event need to need to happen at a time that gives retrospection a chance to reach the same level in the deep story.

Once the same level has been reached in the deep story, the relationship between the east and west can grow deep together, if not close. Otherwise the east and west need to orient themselves within the same OODA loop, which is not easy if the relationship is not close in mind nor deep in heart.

The centralization of an authoritarian benevolent leadership that is represented in the phrase: “Why not ally and crush all opposition on a global basis” seems to be what is dividing most of the customers in the American market, and what both sides divided seem to not want.

The Tea Party (TP) and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) both seem to agree we need less centralization and neither are acting in a benevolent manner. While most Americans are not either TP nor OWS, the logic that binds these two is distintive American, i.e. they want freedom to act and freedom to decide.

It may prove hard to sell cars in such a divided market that is together on this one issue, the decentralization of the market into one deep passage that benefits only themselves.

It could be that the Cheap Trick that GM and China are using isn’t flawed in its logic, it is flawed in the end that both GM and China are equally moving towards, as they combine the means (resources) to that end.

As we are living within the “valley” of that Cheap Trick (we are obviously past the “sense making” of that trick) it may be that GM’s decision to centralize into one monopoly to rule the market together with a  benevolent China, will give the US customers cars that we need (cars that will not destroy the economies of the world) instead of what we want (cars that give us freedom).

However, giving us choices only of what we need has never worked out that well in America. It is going to be hard for GM and China to build cars China needs and the US wants, when considering the resources (means) used.

I Tied My Shoes Today

The title of this post should say that I tied my shoes correctly today. Shoes that are tied correctly not only look good, but resist failure. Failure,in this context, means the the shoe no longer fits snug on the foot and the laces can become tripping hazards if they become untied (the knot fails).

Shoes that are tied correctly look good, because the bow, created by the knot, stays in-line with the shoe openings from both sides of the shoe laces. Shoes that are not tied correctly look less apealing, because the bow turns perpendicular to the shoe laces.

Yesterday, I watched a TED video in which a very smart guy explained that perpendicular forces do knot (sorry about the pun) remain as “tight” when they are aligned perpendicular to each other, as they would, if all the forces in the system were aligned in the same direction, attractive and repulsive.

After watching the video, I had to wonder if any testing has been done that tells us if a shoe that “looks good” has a knot which is more resilient than a shoe whose looks are less than to be desired. Resilience in this context means the knot can “fail”, but the knot that is most resilient resists breakage of the laces when tied.

As societies are created with perpendicular forces to their culture, because of the tempo they function at, perhaps a society that is structured to look like the less desirable knot has an advantage of greater resilience.

Let’s say we are looking at a bow-tie, with the Do’ers in the center and the rich and poor class fanning-out in both directions, along the liminal narrative of the decision making of the society.

It would appear that you would want this society aligned as the knot that looks good, i.e. aligned with “time” (“time” being the shoe laces) goes. But forces aligned that “looks good” might not always be the most resilient. It could be that the “slippage” you are experiencing with shoe laces that are aligned perpendicular with the knot is the resilience of the society.

If the “slippage” is the resilience, (and maybe it’s not), I don’t care if the knot slips or not, I always double-knot my shoelaces, to keep them tight, unless the dog has chewed the laces into halves (and perhaps halves knots).