The Trump Transition “TT” at minus 8 weeks.
November has 1 week left, then December has 4, and 3 more in January. Sporadically I’ll put up additional TT posts as any one gets too full to load quickly, or as some event causes me to desire to put a head post up on the topic. On some thread I can’t find now, IIRC Larry requested a posting for the Transition. As I’d been thinking about it too, not so hard to convince me ;-)
Prior similar threads are:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/hillary-trump-the-election-and-aftermath/
and
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/democrats-lords-of-chaos-choose-defiance/
For this one, the big ‘burr under my saddle’ is the whole business with NATO.
Larry linked to an interesting article here:
http://observer.com/2016/11/why-vladimir-putin-hates-us/
It is interesting, but IMHO has way too much of an US vs THEM bias. It does correctly point out that to understand your opponent (NOT enemy. Russia is NOT our enemy. We are not shooting them nor are they bombing us.) you need to see things from their point of view; then it promptly runs off to look at things from OUR point of view. Sigh.
Still, it has some good things in it and is worth the read. I’ll start off with one of them:
Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us
Western inability to grasp what motivates our enemies is nothing new
By John R. Schindler • 11/22/16 4:00pm
[…]
Of course, why Putin is doing all this, playing dangerous games which could provoke a major war, looms as a big question here, albeit one that Western foreign policy gurus have trouble answering. Our academic international relations experts, who indulge in silliness like game-theory or realist fantasies to explain Putin’s increasingly aggressive policies, have difficulty explaining why the Kremlin—which after all in military or economic terms is vastly weaker than NATO—is acting so brazenly.
[…]
The bit I’ve bolded is the ‘good thing’. The lead in 1/2 paragraph is just painting it into a corner of irrationality and being the work of an out of control Putin. But let’s just take a moment before going further to ask: “How much bigger?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia
Population
• 2016 estimate 146,544,710
[…]
GDP (PPP) 2016 estimate
• Total $3.685 trillion
• Per capita $25,185
GDP (nominal) 2016 estimate
• Total $1.133 trillion
• Per capita $7,742
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
Population
• 2016 estimate 324,720,797 (3rd)
• 2010 census 309,349,689[ (3rd)
[…]
GDP (PPP) 2016 estimate
• Total $18.558 trillion (2nd)
• Per capita $57,220 (10th)
GDP (nominal) 2016 estimate
• Total $18.558 trillion (1st)
• Per capita $57,220 (6th)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
(Yes, I know that NATO is not the same as the EU, for example, Canada is not counted…nor is Turkey that’s the 2nd largest chunk of NATO military IIRC, but the EU is the big lump outside the USA)
Population
• 2016 estimate 510,056,011
[…]
GDP (PPP) 2017 estimate
• Total $20.75 trillion
• Per capita $40,600
GDP (nominal) 2017 estimate
• Total $16.97 trillion
• Per capita $33,300
So the EU has about 185 Million more people than the USA, and the USA + EU has about 834.8-146.5=688.3 Million more people in them than in Russia. Or Russia is about 17.5% of the population of the USA & EU combined. Call it about 3/16 the size.
In terms of money, We’ll use Purchase Power Parity numbers (nominal is more fudged, IMHO). The USA + EU is $20.8 + 18.6 = 39.4 TRILLION per year economy. Russia is $3.69 Trillion. Call it about 1/10 the size.
So a whole lot fewer people, with darned little money to spare. Now look on a global map, preferably from the north pole. Russia is 100 % surrounded from their far eastern Pacific coast (Japan a USA base and ally NOT in the above population and money numbers) to Alaska, across the Arctic Ocean with Canada (NATO member) on to Greenland, Iceland, the European continent. Essentially ALL of anywhere it looks to the North, East, and West. South it has generally “western hostile” Muslims to try to placate for neutrality, and China a historical “Frenemy” with sporadic wars and tense peace alternating, some of it buffered by landlocked Mongolia. Just FYI, China has about 10 x the population of Russia and about a $20 Trillion economy too…
So from a Russian perspective, they are entirely surrounded by historically or currently hostile actors with a history of invasion by them and a recent history of “Color Revolutions” instigated by Soros and his fellow travelers in the EU having taken down a series of Slavic Countries to the west. (Czech Republic, Slovakia, the various parts of the old Yugoslavia, Ukraine, etc. etc.) with Russia as “on the menu”. Thus Putin tossing Soros out and banning his “Non-governmental” Organizations…
Now, one more little item to remember: When Eastern Germany was allowed to merge with West Germany, Gorbachev was given an iron clad guarantee that NATO would not extend “one thumbs width” further East. Now Nato borders Russia in several areas.
From the Russian POV, NATO has violated all agreements, expanded into Slavic lands, often via politically manipulative “color revolutions” and then insists on imposing “European Values” by which is usually meant the Soros Selected set of anti-Nation and anti-tradition and anti-Church and anti-European Culture destructive ideologies. Then we go and put anti-missile missiles in Poland (that shares a border with the part of Russia named Kaliningrad) where NATO was promised not to be.
Just how would the USA react if Russia had just put a missile battery in Mexico as part of the Warsaw Pact? Hmmm? Or perhaps put some in Syria? How about when Turkey shifts from NATO to a Russian alliance and then lets Russia base in Turkey, think NATO and the USA would be just fine with that? And we out man and out money them about 6:1 and 10:1 respectively.
http://www.businessinsider.com/turkey-russia-china-shanghai-cooperation-organization-2016-11
NATO’s second-largest military power is threatening a dramatic pivot to Russia and China
Natasha Bertrand
Nov. 22, 2016, 9:10 AM
Turkey is looking into joining a Chinese- and Russian-led alliance known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on Sunday at the end of his official tour of Pakistan and Uzbekistan.
Erdogan said he met with SCO leaders over the weekend and expressed his interest in joining the Eurasian political, economic, and military alliance as an alternative to joining the European Union, which has not been receptive to Turkey’s repeated bids for membership that began in 1963.
France, Germany, and Belgium — home to Brussels, where the EU is headquartered — have long opposed Turkey’s accession into the EU. Erdogan’s reluctance to sign on to certain membership requirements and his increasingly authoritarian leadership over Turkey have also sparked concern among European leaders that he is not committed to a Western conception of human rights and civil liberties.
Perhaps the EU will learn that forcing their brand of “Secular Humanism with Corporatism and non-Democracy” on folks is driving them away… Especially those that like their “guns and religion” and their “crude nationalism”…
Other than that one bit of “Wha?”, the Observer article is pretty good. It does point out the strength of the Russian Orthodox church in shaping the Russian culture (Communism never could quite erase it). It does point out how adroitly Russia has used what little non-nuclear military it has to place NATO on notice “This far, and no further”:
He’s done it again. The honey badger in the Kremlin just moved more advanced missiles into position on Russia’s most westerly fringe to own the Baltic Sea. This week Moscow admitted it has deployed cutting-edge Bastion anti-ship missiles to the Kaliningrad exclave, north of Poland, plus equally advanced S-400 air defense systems to shoot down aircraft and missiles as far as 250 miles out.
With this move, the Kremlin has established control over the Baltic Sea, most of Poland and the Baltic republics—NATO members all. Russia now can exert anti-access and area denial—what the Pentagon calls A2AD for short—at will, meaning that any NATO aircraft or ships entering the region can be hit long before they get close to Kaliningrad. For Western military planners, this is nothing short of a nightmare, since Moscow can now block NATO reinforcements headed east to counter, say, Russian military moves on the vulnerable Baltic republics.
That scenario, wherein Moscow’s forces overrun a Baltic republic or two before NATO can meaningfully respond, is judged alarmingly plausible by Alliance planners, yet nobody should be surprised that Vladimir Putin has done this. One month ago, when he moved nuclear-capable Iskander-M ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad last month, initiating a Baltic version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Obama’s response was…nothing.
It is also very important to note that Russia DOES have enough nukes to make the EU and USA “historical artifacts” (but between France, Britain, and the USA, little would remain of a post nuclear war Russia either, and most of that would be speaking Chinese shortly…)
So yes, read the article, and then ponder those relative sizes of NATO and the USA and the EU and Russia.
Finally, just please tell me again why the EU needs the USA to “protect” it? On our dime?
They have way more people than we do.
They have a larger economy on PPP basis and about the same on nominal.
They have two nuclear powers (Britain and France) at least until Brexit is finished, and most of the EU countries have what it takes to build a nuke if they wanted to. (It isn’t hard, really, and France has all the tech hardware needed).
So bigger than the USA, with more money and more people and in some ways more skill (think language ability and spy craft).
Tell me again why it’s MY wallet that needs to pay for their protection?
In short, I’m of the opinion that President Trump has it quite right. You want the USA in this game with you on your side, pony up your share of the bucks, beans, and bodies. I make that at least 1/2.
Finally, just what is NATO for these days? To protect a larger, non-Democratic dictatorial EU Empire against a much smaller Russia that has been in retreat and on the ropes for 30 years? To fund “Regime Change” and “Color Revolutions” as Soros dictates? To expand the EU Cultural Diktats and EU Economic Hegemony ever further East?
I’m dead serious on that. I can’t see a darned thing that NATO is needed to achieve. The EU has all the “stuff” and money needed to protect itself from Russia, and I’m tired of the Europeans saying “Here, we’ll hold your coat while you go fight them for us.” for all sorts of pointless conflicts from Ukraine to Syria to Iran. (Admittedly, we in the USA lead the hoard into that one, but frankly I’d rather we’d not had as many folks urging it on…)
IMHO, it’s time for Europe to put on their Big Boy Pants and start humping their own water to the front. On their Euro.
Then there is this rich bit:
http://www.euronews.com/2016/11/23/eu-passes-anti-propaganda-resolution-angers-russia-s-putin
Russia and Islamist terrorist groups are increasingly targeting the EU with propaganda – the warning in a resolution approved by MEPs, which aims to combat anti-Europe campaigns.
It says Moscow spreads propaganda through media and other means – seeking to incite fear and divide.
“What this report is trying to do (is) pointing (point) a finger to (in) at least one direction or let’s say one-and-a-half directions, to Russia and to ISIS,” said Eugen Freund, an Austrian centre-left MEP.
“And to explain how various Russian entities, Russia TVs, Sputnik and so on are trying to influence the audience in Europe. They are trying to split Europe and the United States, they are trying to belittle what the United States, what the European Union is doing.”
The resolution says propaganda aims to discredit EU institutions.
Moscow’s been quick to react, with President Vladimir Putin claiming the move says a lot about democracy in the West.
“We are observing some – totally obvious – degradation – in the political sense of this word – of the perception of democracy in Western society. In this case, at the level of the European parliament,” he said.
MEPs say Russia has stepped up its anti-EU propaganda since annexing Crimea. They are now suggesting more awareness raising, education and investigative journalism.
Note no mention of the fact that Crimea WAS Russia until Khrushchev (a quasi-Ukrainian) gifted it to Ukraine (likely illegally). That was during my lifetime, BTW, so not a long time ago. Add in that Ukraine was being moved onto a NATO track and, well, having a chunk of your own Russian Population occupied by a major enemy is, er, a bit of an issue. Pointing out those historical and cultural facts is now “propaganda” to the EU. The same EU that wants to destroy European nationality and the US American Nationality as well (thanks to Soros and his fellow travelers in the Club Of Rome).
So the very UN-democratic, authoritarian Empire-in-the-making of the EU, who has tossed away security guarantees to Russia and, via NATO eastward expansion, thrust military presence right up to their border, all the time spouting hatred of Russia, that EU want’s to ban Russian media as “propaganda”… That’s just rich.
BTW, I’ve found RT Russia Today to be a better source of information about Europe than the USA media. Furthermore, since CNN, MSNBC, PBS, et. al. have been “outed” as All Globalist Democrat Propaganda All The Time, and near as I can tell, RT was more accurate on all things Trump and US Elections, I’m finding it just a wee bit hard to swallow the idea that DW and The BBC are pristine truth tellers…
From my POV, it looks far more like the EU is a creation of a Globalist Cabal with the intent of destruction of the nation state and ‘world domination’ with suppression of democratic ideals and liberties. Britain has managed to wiggle a nose out from under the smothering blanket of it, we’ll see if the escape can be completed. The USA has a bit of hope, what with getting the most ‘connected’ Soros banked globalists put out of power, IFF Trump can hang on and do what he says. Given that context, having a bit of a friendly talk-and-tea with Russia might be one of the best things Trump could do. I know that watching RT is far far better than the junk that passes for news on MSNBC and CNN.
Then maybe a statement that the USA will be paying at most 1/2 the NATO costs and 1/2 the staff of any NATO “thing” might be another nice touch. Be it standing army in Europe or an adventure in the Middle East. Who knows, faced with the cost reality in lives and treasure, peace might break out…
Musings from the Chiefio 
Dang straight. In a way, I’d like to have Russia as an ally. There isn’t any reason for us to be enemies (Soros, though, I see him as an enemy all right, an ideological one). Yeah, I get it that Putin is KGB, but Bush 41 was CIA. For all of the fuss about Bush 43, he and Putin did seem to have a mutual respect thing. We and Russia do have a common enemy.
In 1962 C. Northcote Parkinson (in East and West) predicted the breakup of the USSR, the rise of militant Islam and Russia acting as a western ally the bulwark for Europe against the horde of invaders from the Middle East. He didn’t forsee Merkel acting as a foot mat.
It is not true to claim that Putin has run rings around Obama, rather that he has stayed focussed and watched Obama wander around in circles. It is obvious that he was scared of Hilary winning the election as he regarded her as mentally unstable, and liable to cause a war.
Putin has reacted to EU policies by getting on good terms with his southern (and eastern) neighbours. He doesn’t want difficulties with China while time works in his favour. He has set up closer relations with Turkey than Russia has had for 250 years. Gas pipelines to Turkey will boost their economy (and get around some sanctions). Extending them into the south eastern portion of the EU (Greece, Bulgaria, Slovakia etc.) will bring benefits there as well, and should the EU breakup then a russian friendly Balkan block would be the outcome.
Though the UK has got a nose out of the EU there are various plots afoot to try to negate the referendum results. Despite the dire predictions of an instant recession after the vote if people voted to leave, and the naked threat by Obama that the UK would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal, the British (or at least the English and Welsh) put a couple of fingers up and voted for freedom rather than the dictatorship that the EU is slipping towards. Maybe the voting split (more older people wanted out, more younger people wanted in) reflects the time it takes to understand that politicians’ promises change with the weather, and that the freebies they give out have to be paid for. I’m actually pretty proud of the result, since I thought we’d gotten too dependent on the nanny state and that the threats would tip the balance towards keeping the status quo.
The EU could be great if they adopted something like the checks and balances that the USA did, but then even the US constitution has been diluted a bit over the years and no legal document is immune from creative interpretation.
I have a hope that Trump in the States and May in the UK will both drag their respective countries back to both fiscal responsibility and higher wealth creation. May will also be cutting Corporation Tax (and it seems has been told by the EU that that isn’t legal despite Ireland and Luxembourg using the same strategy). Funny thing, really, in that when people want to reduce the consumption of “bad stuff” like sugary drinks, alcohol, or tobacco they put the taxes on them up and the consumption is reduced, but they think that putting taxes on industry and jobs will give you more jobs and competitive businesses. It does seem to me that the two new governments are thinking along much the same lines – reduce taxes to encourage productivity (and thus have a bigger tax-take), invest in infrastructure and in training local talent rather than outsourcing, and putting their country first. The future looks a bit brighter.
In both countries the MSM also seem to be pretty much against these changes, and predicting dire consequences.
As regards Russia, Putin just seems to be putting Russia first (which includes areas that are ethnic Russian). The Ukraine used to get gas from Russia at a large discount, and when Russia wanted to charge somewhat closer to the market rate they were the bad guys. For sure Russia is still somewhat of an oligarchy, and Putin doesn’t have a free hand, but it seems to me that he’s doing a good job for his people and he has a high approval rating there. Countries don’t have friends but instead they have interests, but it does look like our interests should head in the same directions. I think he’s doing the right thing with Syria in supporting the elected government that was a major contributor to stability in the region (whether or not we like what methods that government uses in suppressing terrorist activity). Looking at what happened in Iraq and Libya, removing the Evil Bastard is not the ideal option. Arming terrorists to help take down a government you don’t agree with also seems to be a high-risk option.
I’ll be watching the Trump presidency with interest, and I hope he achieves his aims. He’s shown he can run businesses and can hire the right people to do the job whether they agree with him or not, so it looks like he’ll do a good job. I do have a supply of popcorn….
Legendary quote from crusty old British General when NATO was thinking about adding Russia after the Iron curtain fell:
“Gentlemen, remember the whole point of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.”
On that topic:
http://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2016/11/russia-empties-reserve-fund-makes-priority-defense-sector
Just a bit of historic background to add to what E.M. said.
Pascal Lamy is a French Socialist, who was the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, the European Commissioner for Trade, the chef de cabinet for Delors, President of the European Commission and is a European Council on Foreign Relations Member.
Lamy indicates that an European Union like super state has been the goal since the 1930s.
Lamy is quite blunt in stating national sovereignty is passe.
If you go back to the 1930s you find speeches by Congressman McFadden that reveal the USSR was created by the American and European bankers. linkYou also find FDR of course, the SOB that took privately owned gold and forced the exchange for banker script via an Executive Order and greatly expanded the federal government.
Luckily many people are finally waking up to the fact that our government’s goal, up til now, was the destruction of the USA and the philosophy underlying our US Constitution — the state exists to protect the rights of the individual. The elites goal is the installation of an unelected totalitarian global government similar to the EU with the philosophy, the individual exists to serve the state. Notice in BREXT The Movielink, the EU elected parliament is nothing but a feel good front with ZERO power. A hoax used to make the serfs think they are run democratically while things are actually run by a shadow government behind the scenes.
Because Putin is a nationalist, opposed to the EU’s grab for more land and power he was targeted by Soros. It is interesting that India also tossed out Greenpeace International.
Trumps Thanksgiving video to the nation, already being presidential.
Another organization to watch is the World Economic Forum, who meet in Davos and other resorts to decide “the future”. A visit to their homepage, http://www.weforum.org is at once stunning, depressing, and frightening. A bunch of “Bohemians” in a snow-covered grove. Pascal Lamy has been involved with them, too, although Klaus Schwab is the founder and driving force behind them.
A typical article headline reads: “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better”…
For GallopingCamel
Donald Trump Selects Betsy Devos as Education Secretary
For P.G. on Romney
#NeverRomney – Is There an Intended Audience…
OOOooooh SNEAKY….
It is also a signal that we need to keep our Congress Critters aware that we are STILL WATCHING THEM.
Interesting look at what happens in a modern technological society when government clamps down on internet accessibility.
http://www.dw.com/en/internet-blackout-forces-young-ethiopians-to-go-retro/a-36490982
Memo to self update phone number list.
I have to completely agree with “From my POV, it looks far more like the EU is a creation of a Globalist Cabal with the intent of destruction of the nation state and ‘world domination’ with suppression of democratic ideals and liberties.”
They are fully signed up to Agenda 21+ and openly state as much.
The UK “remainer” idiots, like Dems with HC, just either won’t read it or refuse to believe or think about it.
The EU are now working on their own army so that they can circumvent NATO.
To continue on the Trump – Romney for Sec of state issue older thread
Back in the Spring, Romney’s best bud, Speaker of the house Paul Ryan came up with the #BetterWay hashtag. It was an alternative to Trump’s Make America Great Again meant to derail Trump’s campaign.
http://www.speaker.gov/general/cnn-holds-townhall-speaker-ryan
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439290/paul-ryan-better-way-policy-agenda-republican-solutions-congress
Ryan is up for re-election as House Speaker and needs to be booted OUT! So call your Congress Critters.
Romney and Ryan on the run…
A little economic cheer for America regarding strength of the dollar.
Will make foreign products cheaper in US dollars although will cut back profits on exports as our products will get more expensive in foreign currency.
http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-dollar-idUSKBN13J222
I suspect we can legitimately consider this a secondary result of Trump’s election and his pronouncements that Europe no longer gets and open ended free ride on US taxpayers and NATO without their own fair share contribution.
The interesting aspect of this is that the resolution includes wording about acting when NATO is not willing to. This could be the first step toward cutting Turkey out of NATO. If the US chose to allie with the EU defense force they could act in concert without direct consultation with Turkey as she turns more Islamic and drifts toward Iran and other Islamic states counter to the interests of Europe.
@Gail – fantastic GIF of the turkeys! Best laugh of the day.
We have a lot of wild turkeys in our area and a very high percentage of licensed CCWs. This, of course, will be the inevitable result as the trends merge ;o)
What next; this?
@Gail,
I have been active in K-12 education reform for over 20 years yet I never heard of Betsy Devos.
That makes me an ignoramus but I will try to find what she has achieved.
@Graeme No. 3,
Thanks for mentioning C. Northcote Parkinson. Having spent many years managing projects I appreciate Parkinson’s First Law:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.
Well apparently by turning this meme inside out, she was home schooled or schooled in a charter school and is an advocate of school vouchers and home schooling (ie opposes almost everything the teachers unions support — good enough recommendation for me)
https://scontent.fapa1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15203120_1133101446758729_125302999098850788_n.jpg?oh=eee7fef28cd6f7447de54e0cc418c396&oe=58B0C428
@H.R.: Would that be Panda-ring to the animal-alt-rights movement? :)
Reminds me of this hilarious book, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”:
@Jeff: I think some things just don’t translate well from English to Chinese. The picture above is what happened when they tried to translate our 2nd Amendment and it came out as “the right to arm bears” ;o)
Article by Salina Zito on Trump and how a business approach differs from a typical politician.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/24/yes-trump-will-keep-on-changing-his-mind-heres-why/
@Larry Ledwick,
That poster shows It did not take the establishment long to pillory Betsy Devos. The more they attack her the better I will like her………………..by their friends ye will know them………..and by their enemies too!
I am really glad I had the catfish for dinner…
The GOPestablishment watching Romney this week.
Hey E.M., great post, and I think that more and more people are starting to realize that Russia is not the old USSR. Thanks especially for pointing out the broken promise to the Russians that NATO would not expand toward their borders.
It is almost impossible to determine just how much money the US spends on its military. After all, multiple federal departments spend portions of their budget on military activities; our military spending is not all shown in the Department of Defense. For example, how many people know that the Department of Energy is responsible for nuclear weapon refurbishment and maintenance? Most estimates of total US military budget place it somewhere in the neighborhood of being equal to all other national military budgets on the planet, combined. The Russian budget is tiny in comparison. And yet, and yet, to listen to MSM broadcasts, you would think that the Russians are ravening wolves intent on raping our sisters and goose-stepping up the Mississippi Valley.
WaPo Releases Report on Russian Propaganda Sites- List Includes: Drudge Report, Wikileaks, Zerohedge, Infowars…
Others are reporting the internet being ‘wonky’ aka censorship. I even had the simple word ‘test’ labeled as spam at Tony Heller’s today. (Could just be traffic but at 3:00 am??)
Google and Faceplant are reported to be working with China on censorship and of course we see gab.ai coming on line to replace twatter and I just stumble over this one
http://www.goodgopher.com/
to replace google.
I am going to go out on a limb here. General Flynn was appointed national security advisor to piss off the media and set an aggressive opening negotiation position with NATO and Europe. He also is pro Russia so his viewpoint would give insight into what it would take to establish mutual trust between Russia and the US. but he is known to be arrogant and not to listen well and a bit of a flake. He also has baggage in the form of taking money from Russian connections.
In a month or two he will be shown the door and KT McFarland will be moved up to become Trump’s National Security advisor.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/25/trump-names-k-t-mcfarland-as-deputy-national-security-adviser.html
When I first became aware of how completely out of touch with reality the millennial generation was it was when will discussing things on a performance car forum and the radicals kept referring to Noam Chomsky like he was some god of special knowledge. At the time I had never even heard of the man and had no clue where they were getting their really strange conclusions about America, politics the comparison of Capitalism (inherently evil and source of all social problems), and Socialism (inherently good, and magic will solve all social problems and make it easy to get girls – and give you whiter teeth). It turned out that time after time they kept coming back to Noam as some divine intelligence of special wisdom.
(if your position clashed with Noam C. you were by definition ignorant and stupid, or evil there was simply no debate about any topic that did not conform to his views)
Some recent items on his views about the current election (and by implication where many of the millennial generation is coming from) given his guru status in their minds.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/noam-chomsky-donald-trump_us_58385d81e4b000af95ee1fda?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/noam-chomsky-gop_us_56a66febe4b0d8cc109aec78
@Gail, re great Romney pic: It reminds me of a Far Side get well card, where a mother hen is giving her sick child a bowl of chicken soup:
“Quit complaining and eat it” …
“Number one, chicken soup is good for the flu,
and number two, it’s nobody we know.”
@Jeff:
I love your choice in cartoons! ;-)
@Larry:
If you can, find and watch Noam giving his talk about the necessity of “Manufacturing Concent”. He argues that it is not just the prerogative of nations to issue propaganda, but an absolutely essential function of theirs to do so.
While I admire the man’s intellectual abilities and his arguments are typically self consistent, he can also wander far from “common sense”… So, for example, yes it is essential for evil governments to “manufacture concent” but IMHO the American Experiment is all about having the government OBSERVE the will of the people and comply with it, not manufacture a 97% consensus…
This looks kind of like it, but is ‘1 of 9’:
@Gail:
Do remember that SPAM is a constant war. Along the way, many “tricks” are used, and so the system gets a tweak to counter that trick. Now one of the “tricks” is to send an innocuous message to see if posts go up automatically OR to get past the “need to be added to white filter” so then following posts get through. For a while, sending a “test” message was such a trick (though it’s been years since I’ve seen it)… but the filter never forgets…
A more recent example? About 5? years ago as the SPAM filters got better, ‘gratuitous compliments’ started showing up. “Hey, I really like your blog! Way to go!” and similar (one system tried copies of other comments, but wasn’t too smart, so you got comments about favorite cooked sausage on an article about forest fires since both had fire in the stories… that one seems dead now). I probably shit-can a dozen or two “gratuitous compliments” from people I’ve never heard of before (often with web sites like ‘sexkittens_for_you.com” or “buy_batteries cheap.org” or whatever in the address line – though the smarter ones now go with url shorteners… so I now toss shortened urls…)
So it does not surprise me AT ALL that a comment containing only “test” would be SPAM bucketed. IF I didn’t absolutely know the person was legit, I’d likely SPAM it just on sight if in moderation.
Is there a “push” to get non-left-propaganda sites flagged as false and blocked or demoted in the search results? Absolutely. Will it work? Nope. (At best it will make a market opportunity for replacement providers…) Already I’ve got google.com blocked in my DNS server and redirected to duckduckgo.com (and as soon as something better comes along, I’ll move to it). Similarly I refuse to use Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook. (Mostly for privacy and security reasons, but somewhat due to the strongly left leaning managment – Linkedin now owned by Microsoft… I don’t need to enrich them.)
I know you like the notion of a personal vendetta against you and your favorite sites, but it just doesn’t work that way. It is broad pushes to raise / lower ranks on scores, often by bots. Now, are Google and Twitter NOW marking sites like Drudge as “fake” and having the dice preloaded with a fail? Certainly. How long will it last? I’d give it a few weeks at most. Once the stock price starts to drop and the “chatter” is about lost sales, well, things happen… When roughly 1/2 the population is the folks you are offending, that can happen ‘right quick’…
E.M. I was just mentioning my experience and the fact others were also seeing this happen too…. On the same day on more than one site.
The ‘Wonky’ has been happening for about two years and I say a couple days ago something about ?Google? working on something new along the censorship line for China.
Getting a comment of five lines without any links tossed at Tony Heller’s is new and it was only the second comment in 24 hours. ‘test’ was a check a 1/2 hour later (per your last advice). The second ‘test’ was several hours later and went through without a problem. So I would call that wonky.
Also Tony had moved off WordPress because of ‘issues’ earlier this year.
More on the internet wars.
(I know internet =/= blog and Reddit is a blog.)
Seems Reddit is putting words into people’s mouths and then using it to ban.
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5em2y1/did_steve_huffman_learn_nothing_from_ellen_paos/
In the ‘you can make this stuff up’ category
Zerohedge CNN Accidentally Airs 30 Minutes Of Hard Core, Transsexual Porn “…On Thursday night, around the time families across the US were celebrating Thanksgiving dinner, CNN accidentally aired half an hour of hardcore pornography after……”
Related to Trump in that his campaign was the vehicle that ran over the major media with social media, and broke their back. By trying to spin the news they outed themselves as shills for the establishment rather than honest brokers of the news.
The world of media changed this year and will never be the same as it was.
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/03/16/the-media-battle-no-one-saw/
@Gail:
As the ‘ban it all’ folks push more, there will be more wonky, but a lot of the wonky comes just from the nature of SPAM getting more tricky and the filters to block it more marginal / guessing. It is ever harder to NOT catch folks ‘by accident’ for innocent things. Why I mentioned what I did…
For example, a perfectly innocent “Gee I really like your site” from someone who hasn’t posted before and just doesn’t have anything like a website to fill in on their comment and / or is shy about email so fills in a dummy one, would have ME marking it SPAM and tossing it. Just due to all the “gratuitous compliment SPAM” that I see every day (with things like sextoys.com in their name, email, or website name…)
Basically all I’m trying to say is that it is a war of subtle decisions and some of them (many of them?) will be wrong.
Now season THAT with Google and Facebook and Linkedin et. al. deliberately salting the ‘flag words mine’… and you get your wonky experiences…
Per CNN:
I’d be mighty suspicious of an employee sans gruntle… That kind of tape doesn’t just accidentally get into the site, or into the machine, at a news outfit. Either that, or someone was a bit drunk from the party and thought it would be fun…
E.M.
Check the picture
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/11/bills-wife-154.html#comments
From Twitter:
Flash back tweet from Trump 2013 – is this the key to when Trump made the decision to run for President?
Mike Cernovich
🇺🇸 Retweeted
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 11 Feb 2013
I don’t like bullies. I am not going to stand around and watch @KarlRove target the Tea Party. Karl Rove gave us Barack Obama. Loser.
Larry,
If I recall correctly, his son said the clincher was the Iran nuclear deal.
@Larry & Gail:
I saw an interview with a small guy from one of his schools, perhaps the Military School? who said that Trump was a great guy and always #1 at things – i.e. just the Big Man On Campus type… except then he said ~”other guys tried to push me arround and Trump put out the word “Don’t Mess With {his name}” and nobody ever bothered me again.” and they became friends for some very long time.
That, to me, was a golden insite. Trump is NOT a bully, he’s the Tough Guy who learned to Growld Down the bullies and keep them in line. More the Tough Cop than pushy bully. The MSM folks trying to paint him as a ‘bully type’ and dissing Melania for being anti-cyber-bully as a theme just don’t get that.
@Another Ian:
I’m wondering if several dictatorial national leaders from unsavory countries are going to be asking for a refund on their bribes… Maybe some places the Clintons will not want to visit…
Love the picture though ;-)
I was thinking the same thing about HRC she might be on the hook to a lot of folks for donations already given to the foundation and either be in pay back is required mode or let’s go hide somewhere mode. Unfortunately with secret service for Bill they are probably safe from a visit from somebody’s henchmen.
I also read Trump the same way sort of a John Wayne type who won’t tolerate little guys getting bullied.
The contrast between his Castro is Dead message and that of Obama could not be more striking.
http://ijr.com/wildfire/2016/11/743659-president-obamas-and-trumps-statements-on-the-death-of-castro-couldnt-be-any-more-different/
Comments from Judicial watch regarding the mine field Trump will have to negotiate with his business interests as he takes office, and charges of corruption from the left. It will be interesting what he does. He might through them a complete inside curve slider and name some trustee to sell his empire. It will be interesting to watch as this issue develops.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/bulletins/drowning-in-the-swamp/
Here is VPE Pence’s tweet on Castro
Mike Pence Verified account
@mike_pence
The tyrant #Castro is dead. New hope dawns. We will stand with the oppressed Cuban people for a free and democratic Cuba. Viva Cuba Libre!
“…Unfortunately with secret service for Bill they are probably safe from a visit from somebody’s henchmen….”
With Pizzagate and the great dislike of the Clintons by SS, I wonder about that…
I imagine the attempted Election Steal has a lot to do with Clinton/Elite desperation at this point.
The old Chinese Curse “May you live in interesting times” comes to mind. Cornered Rats are very dangerous.
Lest we forget the price the Cuban people have paid for Castro.
http://cubaarchive.org/wordpress/case-profiles/
@Larry
“He might through them a complete inside curve slider and name some trustee to sell his empire.”
One problem is that real estate is not a particularly liquid asset. Some of his properties would take a while to sell,particularly if the trustee was not obligated to liquidate at any price but rather sell them at a reasonable profit. OTOH, if they all sell during his term(s), he would have a nice little stash to go bargain hunting with the kids after he’s out of office.
Gotta like that Pence… I like a nice tall Cuba Libre too!
http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/recipes/a3769/cuba-libre-drink-recipe/
BTW, when asked about conflicts of interest, Trump pointed out that the law exempts the President (and it does) so he only has the “emoluments’ clause of the constitution to deal with. I think he has smart lawyers and likely talked to them years ago…
Since that clause only applies to foreign governments gifts and payments, there is a very limited set of properties where a Foreign Government makes the payment or takes the payment. Those he can chuck in a trust and give to his kids as an inheritance (since they will get them in a decade or so anyway…) where they get all the proceeds and the property on his passing.
Simple enough I think even I could set it up… ( I have a trust for my kids and IMHO we paid the lawyer way too much for it, it isn’t that hard a contract to read… then the spouses parents properties are in a non-revocable generation skipping trust. All this stuff is boiler plate asset management, really, even for folks with only one house as big assets.) So he could do a blind trust, kids and grandkids are benificiaries, and with HIS trusted lawyer as trustee, and HIS company as “management company” (remember it is a separate legal person…) and it’s a done deal. He gains nothing from the properties (the trust and his heirs do) so no ’emoluments’, and any ‘conflict of interest’ via his kids running the management company are gone either as they are the heirs for the foriegn government involved lot, or he is exempt via the law for the non-trust properties.
I’m not seeing the problem.
Larry, on Trump’s billions:
First there is the Blind Trust for any and all stocks not connected to his physical assets. He can easily sell the less profitable businesses and put the money in other stocks to go into the blind trust. This would be Barron’s heritage.
For his physical assets he can turn everything over to his adult children and then be VERY careful NOT to mention or use any of his former properties in any way except for private residences. The Trump name might have to be removed from the buildings though and he may have to keep contact with his adult kids at a minimum.
The biggest problem is the DC Post Office Hotel. If I were he, I would GIVE that to all my long time (five or ten years +) permanent corporate people as stock shares and cut it completely loose. That would be a major black eye to the lefties.
Trump has very, very, very, good legal help and has been planing this move for two decades. I am sure he has a very good handle on the situation and as usual is letting the MSM blather on making donkey’s rears of themselves.
People keep forgetting Trump is 71. At the end of the first term he will be 75 and the second, if he runs 79. I also keep thinking of that friend of his who sold his company, then bought it back after the idiotic new owners ran it into the ground only to find he had lost his edge and bankrupted. Trump brought that story up in either a rally or in one of his books, but I think it was a rally. Obviously it impressed Trump so I can not see him going back into business.
A great poster on te election results:
Another:
On the voting issues EM you will find this interesting, a detailed discussion of “fractional voting”
As we commented at the time the video came out, there is literally no rational reason other than to facilitate cheating that a vote processing system should ever process votes as anything but integer or Long values. (conversion to floating point numbers should only occur at the point final vote tallies are summarized as percent of the whole). They have a whole series of papers on this but this presentation talks about the actual source code used.
http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-3/
Statement From President-Elect Donald J. Trump on the Ridiculous Green Party Recount Request
November 26, 2016 • Making News
For Immediate Release
November 26, 2016
Media Contact: Media@ptt.gov
“The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We must accept this result and then look to the future.’
“It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day – the most of any Republican since 1988 – and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide – the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes.
“This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing.”
https://www.greatagain.gov/news/statement-president-elect-donald-j-trump-ridiculous-green-party-recount-request.html
Free health care in Cuba under Castro
An interesting take on the recount mess from the point of view of the Uni-party and putting a leash on Trump. This makes more sense than trying to over turn three states and risking a civil war with people gunning for certain individual elites.
Lin Rei says:
A bit more…
bobsunshine says:
What I read in the PA rules is that it would take a Judge to order a recount based on some “facts” otherwise, they can’t have one. See the article about the madness of a PA recount scenario per the BullyPenn news: Link here:
[further down]
On thing to note per the WI Recount rules – once the recount is completed, all the other candidates have 5 business days to file a petition against the results. I would think Trump would do this if the results are different than the original. Also, note the timing. They complete by 12-13. Then add five days which would put it past 12-19 if someone filed a complaint. I can see this happening to exclude WI from the EV tally.
So yes this looks like what the move is all about. Completely remove states from the Electoral College.
To steal the election on a recount not completed in time technicality:
Michigan = 32 electoral votes
Pennsylvania = 40 electoral votes
Wisconsin = 40 electoral votes
If all states are counted:
538 members of the Electoral College
270 electoral votes needed to win
Present Count
Trump 306 electoral votes
Hillary 232 electoral votes
……………..
For Hillary to win, both Michigan and Wisconsin have to be taken out of the Electoral College or either of those plus Pennsylvania and 3 Trump electors swap to Hillary.
So yes that is a decent strategy.
Weird, I am not sure where those numbers came from on the WIKI site since they are doubled and they are no longer there….
Actual electoral votes are:
Michigan = 16
Pennsylvania = 20
Wisconsin = 10
Total = 46
Trump = 306 minus 46 = 260 compared to Hillary 232. So off by 28 electoral votes.
Therefore Hillary has to flip two states, Michigan and Pennsylvania onto her side and cause Wisconsin to either flip or not be recounted in time.
Looking more and more like flogging the useful idiots and less and less like actually being able to steal the election.
I think it is a money laundering scheme, using lots of small donations below the threshold to require reporting or something like that, the donations to her recount fund were mostly by a bot at 160K per hour. Somebody with deep pockets is dumping money in her fund but for what purpose?
Being able to raise lots of money is one way for a candidate to gain crediblity, perhaps it is a long game play to position her for future elections, or she is going to “donate” funds not used for the recount to some other purpose.
It would be interesting to find out where that money was coming from because that pattern of payments coming from real grass roots support for the recount is essentially impossible.
Agreed, Larry The whole situation stinks to high heaven.
The question becomes WHAT is Stein actually getting paid for and by who.
Given $Billions deep pockets, a couple of $Million to cause trouble for Trump is ‘worth it’ to someone, and who knows, with the right people doing the count and challenging they can maybe make a narrative that the whole vote is flawed and it needs to go to Congress… and dump the electoral college as a ‘long game’ strategy so the Democrats can lock up the President in perpetuity using just Bos-Wash / NYC + California…
I’ve seen too many folks coming out of the woodwork on the DNC News (CNN / MSNBC/etc.) saying the electoral college needs “reform” for it to be an accidental outbreak of Constitutional Scholarship…
Stein wants a recount in order to determine if there is an irregularity.
This is contrary to Wisconsin law.
Stein has presented no factual basis for a recount. Essentially it is a nuisance suit and should be tossed.
The reddit kids and others have dug out the Soros connection:
link
That sounds about right FM
Thank goodness it takes a Constitutional Amendment. Of course that could be the long game. The Uni-party wants a Constitutional Convention (not an Amendment) and most people do not realize a Constitutional Convention means the ENTIRE Constitution can be re-written.
Publius-Huldah on a Constitutional Convention
This gets the Tea Party repubs clamoring for a Constitutional Convention to set term limits and the Progressives clamoring for a Constitutional Convention to change the electoral college. Neither understanding the difference between an Amendment and a Constitutional Convention because civics was removed from education.
By the way just hitting facebook etc. folks on the left are ranting about how Trump failed his first test of international relations by his short response to Castro’s death.
They strongly implied that the entirety of his response is his original tweet when the news broke was a four word statement:
As anyone who has been paying attention has noticed he put out a much more complete official response shortly after:
What I found very interesting is when I tried to google search for the “official source” of his announcement it did not appear among any of the search results. Lots of newspaper and media stories about how it differed from the Obama statement but not a single hit from an authoritative Trump source for the actual announcement.
I find that interesting in a curious sort of way as if official Trump sources are being filtered out of search queries to keep people from finding Trump’s official web and Facebook links.
In addition to being bought, it appears that Stein is a green hypocrite (or a Watermelon):
https://thegodofrage.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/the-truth-about-jill-stein-and-the-green-party/
Larry,
I found none of Trump’s stuff shows in searches. You have to have his URL to get the original source.
@Gail
Sneaky, cheeky, b@st@rds, they are. If you do a Bing search on “greatagain” the Trump transition website is the top result returned. But who in blue blazes would ever search on that?!?
But as you said, any search on Trump announcements seems to bring up cnn, msnbc,wapo, etc. to get eyeballs on filtered views first.
Yep same for me, thanks for the tip on the magic search key, in case that gets filtered too, the link for his site is:
https://www.greatagain.gov/
I appears the search engines are pushing the “approved” left leaning media to the top of the search results. I use a search aggregator like duckduckgo, called Startpage and see the same behavior.
Their order using the search key:
Donald Trump’s announcement on Castro’s death
is for the first 4 pages
Washingtonpost
cnn
usatoday
heavy(dot)com <- – never heard of this one before so went to their about page
About Heavy Heavy is a New York-based digital media company that owns and operates Heavy.com and Ahoramismo.com. Heavy.com is a real-time news and information portal reaching 35 million unique visitors per month. Ahoramismo.com is Heavy’s Spanish language real-time news and information portal reaching 2 million unique visitors per month.theblaze
nypost
complex(dot)com <- – – never heard of this one before the about page is not functional
huffingtonpost
telegraph(co)(uk)
theguardian
businessinsider
nytimes
mashable
romper(dot)com
The donalds twitter account
hollywoodreporter
politico
dallasnews
dailymail(co)(uk)
hawaiinewsnow
thehill
theatlantic
itv(com)
wlox(com)
kcbd(com) <- – – miami media
bloomberg
youtube anouncement by Raul Castro
yahoo
thestate(com)
kwwl(com) <- – – miami media
nbcmiami(com)
wrcbtv(com)
wkow(com)
usmagazine
uproxx(com)
miamiherald(com)
nbclosangeles(com)
wgem(com)
Just did the same test on Yahho (now an AT&T property) and even ixquick. Looks like ALL of them have put a heavy thumb on the scale for “legitimate” news orgs. Not even RT or other international news breaking through to the top.
(IMHO, it isn’t supression of others, it is promoting the approved. Why? Because the same cohort of USA centric MSM is on top. Just supression would have the top lot more variable.)
Sigh. Time to do a dig on variety search engines…
Wonder if there is a DIY Open Source search engine kit… With a TB of storage about $10 on bulk disk …. hmmmm
This site claims open source. They do give different results, but seem to just do a “match any word” without context or relevance filter or match most words first. Well, it’s a start… https://gigablast.com/search?c=main&index=search&q=Trump+castro+
https://gigablast.com/
Open Source!
Gigablast is now available as
an open source search engine
on github.com. Download it
today. Finally a robust,
scalable search solution in
C/C++ that has been in
development and used
commercially since 2000.
This one looks interesting too… says you can config your own search strategies:
http://www.opensearchserver.com/
This article is a pdf download that claims to do a comparison of options
Click to access Middleton-Baeza.pdf
Here’s another article:
https://www.wired.com/2012/12/solar-elasticsearch-google/
Ok looks to me like options exist that could be run on a cloud cluster somewhere so no hardware startup lag. Just apply money and “a small matter of programming” :-)
If this defacto search censorship doesn’t end soon, it looks technically quick and easy to bring up an open source “rightsearch” if someone wants to apply money. I have no idea if ad revenue would cover cloud costs.
Fascinating… searching on “right wing search engine” has interesting results. One is a “Christian friendly” search: http://seekfind.org/
Heavy on Biblical connections, but has more recent stuff too.
Looks like a large field to dig in… this article
http://www.meetup.com/VFP-TeaParty09/messages/boards/thread/9283548/
Points to yippy.com as a conservative search engine
http://www.yippy.com/search?v%3Aproject=clusty-new&query=Trump+castro+announcement
Has a lot of MSM, but also a Trump direct twitter and Breitbart in the top search results page or two.
I think I have a new default search engine 8-)
Hmmm you might have found a good application for a cluster of pi systems – run a web crawler to index the major conservative sources like drudge, brietbart etc. to create a non-mainstream media index for searching. Maybe something suitable for a gofundme project.
@Larry:
Likely so.
My personal bias, though, would be to make it Onion or Bittorent like, where everyone contributes a patch of disk and Midnight Computes and the massively distributed system can not be taken down nor blocked. (Internal communication via encrypted channels like bittorent, distributed redundant copies like bittorent, shared net like Tor, what you want finds you like magnet links, systems can come and go like BOINC contributors… yet each site can tune how THEY want to bias their own searches on the collective datastore) But somehow I doubt many folks would want to go that way.
But maybe… I’ll think on it a bit. A rapid prototype could be done easy at small scale and reduced features… wget to crawl & copy a small sample of sites (say 10 TB) then the open source search SW to index it and handle requests, bittorent hack to distribute slices of the index (redundantly) over 4 cards on the lan, and then something like distcc to hand off search request slices to them, and collect results… Only if happy, take on the work of encryption and scheduler and security and all. Likely about a year project. But it would be fun…
That no one but you would own your bias settings, all searches would be private, and the system can’t be taken down without killing all internet communications would be cool features. (You can’t block the crawler when it comes from a mutating list of all IPs.. and the peer to peer sharing of data and process is inside encrypted tunnels, so invisible. Biggest issue I see is a question of performance in network lag and load.)
This is starting to grow on me :-)
For a starting point, have participants submit a list of the sites that they want to have crawled, that the major search engines are down voting. Those sites with high interest levels (multiple contributors submit them) would be your starting point for sites to index.
I like the idea of a BOINC like system that distributes work units to a network of independent users each contributing spare cycles to make a huge virtual super computer to manage the crawling and indexing.
Just like SETI and other BOINC projects the total computes available would be astronomical.
I bet once you prove concept you would see a self forming open source project started. Then you would have a widely distributed group of contributors coding and Beta testing the project. Like Linux, a self motivated core of developers would take on the project if it served a need.
Say you had a list of 100 URLs that were of interest to those who are not fans of the shill media news sources. Have multiple people indexing each of the URLs so you have cross checking on what they see (helps deal with dynamic page loading where different users might see different features). It would also inherently mirror the results across thousands of servers. Then perhaps a DNS like system where the index is propagated (or at least bits of it) across all the participating systems. Take one host down and you have a multitude of other servers able to pick up the queries in real time just like DNS propagates information across all the authoritative and local non-authoritative servers.
You would have to be careful not to accidentally run a DDOS on the target URL’s by having too many hosts trying to index their content though.
But I really like the idea of a non-corporate search engine that cannot be taken off line. I would happily wait 10 – 20 seconds for the page load of hits from such a system if it was returning hits from pages the major search engines were ignoring. Especially if it was good at doing highly targeted searches for key phrases and like google advanced search allowed you to filter out returns from totally unrelated topics who accidentally match part of your search query.
I would especially like the ability of doing time range searches with finer granularity than the common search engines. Last 24 hours is too long on a hot breaking story. Or if a hot breaking story is blowing up the results returned the ability to only get pages that existed more than x minutes or hours ago.
The ability to do finely tailored time windows (between x and y dates or times) for example would greatly assist trying to find links to something that you know happened on a specific date or at a specific time.
Gail
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/11/weekend-unthreaded-144/#comment-1861546
Another Ian, Thanks
I tossed a few comments into the thread at Jos.
@Larry & E.M.
“But I really like the idea of a non-corporate search engine that cannot be taken off line. I would happily wait 10 – 20 seconds for the page load of hits from such a system if it was returning hits from pages the major search engines were ignoring.”
Absolutely! Classic case of “find a need and fill it.”
It really hit home to me how manipulated search results are when I went to check on Gail’s observation regarding “Trump” searches.
It is Time…pg
The Question is, now, of those that comment and those that lurk, how many will put up time and money [tvis] to make this happen…pg
[Reply: I marked what seems to be typo bits with []. -E.M.Smith]
GEE, we are not paranoid, they really are out to brainwash us!
PG, it has to go much wider than just here. I already put a pointer to the discussion up at Tony. Heller’s.
Contact with the ConservativeTreeHouse and the /r/The_Donald subreddit, Breitbart, Pam Geller, and other sites, maybe even a GOfund….
Another reason to spread this is we need the buy-in of a lot of people so they know about it.
Unfortunately the google/Disqus ban prevents me from spreading this.
As a devil’s advocate here I thought of something last night. It is possible that the skewing of search results is not malicious interference with search rankings but due to a secondary effect of some other part of the ranking algorithm such as frequency of clicks on links. As an example searcher A gets served a page of links and immediately clicks on cnn and then huffington post, then goes on to other things. Searcher B gets fed a similar (although not identical page) and also clicks on both cnn and huffington then USA today etc. etc.
If the search ranking algorithm sees those clicks as up votes then the mass media that the average person most often chooses get up voted to the top of the search results and the links like Freebeacon and conservative tree house that are less popular to the masses get by comparison down voted by lack of clicks.
As a partial test of this and the idea that the search engine might also be serving hits based on your cookies I deleted all of my cookies except twitter, facebook, wordpress, chiefio, and the conservativetreehouse
I still had to go 7 pages into the search result before I see a link to breitbart(com) page 8 of results before I see a link to teaparty.org then page 9 for a link to the weeklystandard, page 12 for a reddit link.
So it appears that your cookies (at least on the startpage search engine which aggregates results from several search engines) does not depend on cookies as even after 12+ pages of listings I still have no links to the conservative tree house.
The links were similar to last nights but not the same so there does not appear to be a golden list of preferred sites which always pop up on the first 3 pages (most users will not go past about the first 2-3 pages of search results. The character of the links however were similar with more local news outlets showing up today than the first night when it was hot breaking news only on the major feed.
As I have thought of this more it would also be nice if you could establish a filter of preferred web sources that like sponsored links would get pushed to the top of the page.
For example except for when you want to see what sort of nonsense the left is pushing I would never intentionally click on a link to the dailybeast or some similar outlets like huffington as my first few choices of news sources on breaking news. I would want to be able to see them later when I wanted the opposition view but would rather first see a select group of maybe 10 – 15 sources whom I trust (or have a known non-mainstream bias).
When I am not depending on search results I usually scan about 5-8 primary links and only after checking those range farther afield.
I indirectly get a curated viewing list through twitter as I see tweets/links to other sites I would never even know existed as sources I choose to follow retweet what they find interesting. This uses the power of crowd sourcing to cull out interesting items from the dross.
Before we run off half cocked….
Is E.M./ Larry committed to coming up with this new search engine if it can be financed?
@Larry:
The easy way to do that is a .search.conf file where you can store an up/down vote preference. So something like “cnn.com -12” and “breitbart.com +5”. either as long hand entered, or via a “right click reject” click to select… process where your choices update your preference list. The key bit here being that what is learned about preference is on your machine and can be adjusted at will. Having two config files lets you swap preferences (or you could just have an “invert preferences” button for opposition research…)
FWIW, part of why I have a few Live Linux CDs and USB dongles is because it always starts fresh with no cookies. Easy clean tests of things… and faster than sorting cookies into keepers and tossers…
@Gail:
With funding, I’d be willing to manage it, but for the coding, a more current web oriented programmer would be better. I’m more a “good enough at 50 things” Systems Guy sort, where I can install a web server and Java, but have never written Java code. (I’ve managed Java programmers, though, so talk of jar files and beans doesn’t throw me…)
The cost would likely be a lot higher than expected. I’d guess about $2 million to first release for a commercial quality product. (Manager also doing QA and design participation, 2 web oriented programmers, one support person / web site operator, for a year, with full burden rate about double market salary rate, including hardware, communications, insurance, etc. plus promotion, package, ship stuff…)
It would likely work better as an open source volunteer program if you can get the volunteers, but would take longer.
IFF the folks who did bittorent, BOINC, and or Tor were involved, it would go faster as they know how to do this kind of thing and where there be dragons, but might not endorse the pov…
I think, for now, it needs another day or two of ponder about goals, design, and phases of build (could one start with a custom meta search using another search engine and data backend, then add features then build backend? or “Is yippy.com already good enough?”)
E.M. wrote in part:
“The cost would likely be a lot higher than expected. I’d guess about $2 million to first release for a commercial quality product.”
OUCH!
Don’t kid yourself – closer to $5 million US.
Only 2 Mik. sounds low to me…pg
As noted above, I am not anywhere near competent enough in coding to contribute to that side of the process, but often times the key development step in software is the concept and target phase where you define the objective. What do you want the software product to do (why – design philosophy), what you specifically want to avoid (code bloat and government corporate control).
Having worked in IT for many years I can sketch out a block diagram of some of the aspects that would be nice to have in a requirements document. Then you shop that RFC out to interested open source coders and see if you can get them to participate.
Given the recent concern about internet security, having a search engine intentionally designed so there is no one entity that can be served a court order for search history because it by design never resides in a PII form (personally identifiable form) on any one system might have great attraction to some (and be equally strongly opposed by others). Also being able to configure your own preferences (I like the config file or a web interface pull down of domains and your rank of them – click and drag to top – or click and drag to bottom of list).
I see it as a specialty application a customization search utility could use to enhance the commercial search engines. You would not need to crawl all the worlds domains but could set a list of high ranking domains that you want to be able to quickly search to see if they have any item that matches your search query. For example a search profile that would allow you to quickly and easily search Chiefio’s or the climate blogs for specific posts using complex queries. Things like on Chiefio domain, search for a list of all posts in chronological order that refer to Raspberry Pi and Linux and include the key word “dns” and “Tor”. Almost like a mysql query in its power and flexibility.
A search engine query language that allows AND, OR, NOR, NOT, PHRASE (key words grouped closely together), EXACT PHRASE (key words in the exact order as a phrase), TIME WINDOW, BEFORE, AFTER, BETWEEN, MOST RECENT, MUST-INCLUDE (The google + or – ), etc.
E.M.
Check the cartoon in the “Images” section at
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
Larry/E.M.
Sounds like the best bet is to blockout the idea and then toss it at the Reddit/4chan kids and let them run with it as open source. With what Reddit management did to the comments (changing the comments so they could then ban) I think there is enough ‘interest’ at this time to blacken the elite’s eyes.
EM on the search engine and local config file issue.
If you had a search engine that you submitted a query to and it simply shipped back to you a list of links and a numerical score for their relevance to your query (perhaps several relevance scores like content, time window relevance, specific words relevance, phrasing relevance etc.) Then locally you walk that list and use the local config file values to vote up or down those links based on your own query bias model you will still have access to all the results returned, but could in effect take a search hit that google would show on page 20 and push it to page one of your results by up voting the hit based on your own personal criteria profile.
Then instead or doing multiple searches you could take the raw search ranking provided by the original query and mine it for data with subsequent local queries which manipulate the ranking scores.
Right now for topics which bury you under pages of useless results you have to plod through maybe 15 to 20 pages of results to get past some topic which accidentally matches your query.
Using local manipulation of the raw scores sort of like a chain of grep statements you modify until you get what you want on a unix query, you could quickly suppress the links for the irrelevant hits or push up the relevance of a select set of domains so that they always appear on the first page.
You could have config files like cron.allow and cron.deny that can be applied to the raw search results that completely screen out all hits from a source you do not trust, or only allow hits from a select set of sources, such as:
source.allow
source.deny
source.suppress (ie a down vote score attached to a source)
source.enhance (ie an up vote score to attach to a source)
By they way while we are on the subject a link regarding the relative merits of startpage, ixquick and duckduckgo search engines.
Trump picks so far:
Another Ian:
This one?
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/bddf8891483e61cbf70d38214f0d716e?width=1024
E.M.
Yep
great thread, too bad I missed it in progress :}
love the idea of another search engine EM
and here, let me contribute just one little bit
@Glenn999:
Who says it isn’t still in progress? ;-)
FWIW, I spent the morning “digging in” to search engine tech. There’s already hundreds of them, AND already Peer-to-peer ones! So once again I’ve re-invented something just a bit too late ;-)
There’s a lot came before this link, but it is the “money shot”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines#P2P_search_engines
Also lots of source code “in the wild” and there are “metasearch” engines that use other engines as back end, then re-prioritize and sort the results.
Now I’ve had a couple of votes for “way to low” and a vote for “WOW” on the price guess. I think that means I’m close to right ;-) Especially given that some of the work is already done and public.
OTOH, given that there already exits a P2P search engine with custom tuning, I don’t see why it ought to be duplicated (unless it was horrid or horridly biased in the searches…) and certainly not before testing it. For that reason, I’ll be looking at those three prior to doing anything to push forward a duplicate / parallel effort.
Starting with YaCy that is “free and fully decentralized”… Likely a project for later in the week.
@Glenn:
Oh that was fun! (reading the Pepe / KEK link…) Being fond of ancient Egypt didn’t hurt ;-)
BTW, Thoth is my favored deity… (Pronounced “Thought”, the God of Science and Knowing…)
AGAIN it is official Trump won:
It’s Official – Michigan Certifies Election Result: Donald Trump Wins By 10,704 Votes…
Pennsylvania State Department says Stein missed recount deadline
E.M. FYI
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/11/trump-has-broken-the-mainstream-media-a-president-so-powerful-he-tells-them-off-to-their-faces/
Glen, Loved the Pepe the frog link.
My cats are named after ancient gods.
Trump announces his new Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a lot of people will be watching this one closely.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/steven-mnuchin-trump-treasury-secretary-rumored-bank-banker-goldman-sachs-financial-crisis-house-foreclose-lawsuit-film-producer/
Timing of Trump’s cabinet appointments is not a problem although a few days ago the talking points of a lot of liberals is that he was not getting after it as he should, tweeting rather than working.
Oops minor problem – the only other president to be as effective as Trump in Cabinet appointments was another Republican.
http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/22/we-looked-at-cabinet-picks-over-the-last-40-years-heres-how-trump-stacks-up-so-far/
The MSM has really lost their minds.
THIS IS CNN. During a conversation about yesterday’s OSU terrorist attack carried out by a Somali refugee using a machete to attack students, CNN suggests that American women wear hijabs to show their solidarity with Somali Muslim terrorists.
And here I though we American women should take to carrying machetes or at least concealed carry….
Sniffing the wind?
BREAKING: Look Who Just Claimed Responsibility For OSU Attack
Here’s a brainfart. What about Mitt Romney for HUD. The PDF that Larry linked to in Tips shows that the place is an absolute cesspit, and this article over at American Thinker shows Romney to be very good at asset stripping, perfect for the task in hand. We haven’t heard a peep from Dr Ben Carson about whether he’s going to take the role, and anyway, I think he’s just too “nice” to do it or to be truly effective there.
If only half of what was in that PDF is true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t all true, it would be a major contribution to draining the swamp, freeing up money for other programs, and sorting out the inner cities so that they are vibrant, safe places to go to, providing local jobs for the forgotten minorities.
Dr Carson was offered HUD.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/22/doctor-is-in-trump-tweets-hes-considering-carson-for-top-hud-job.html
Nobody has mentioned this yet. From Twitter:
I find it interesting that I am not seeing much about this in the media even as a rumor.
This will leave the folks complaining about possible conflict of interests out in the cold but they will probably think up some other reason that it offends them.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 10 hours ago
I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my …
2,276 replies 9,130 retweets 33,095 likes
great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to ….
1,943 replies 8,655 retweets 33,597 likes
do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses..
2,986 replies 8,994 retweets 36,852 likes
Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!
6,678 replies 13,695 retweets 54,949 likes
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 10 hours ago
It was on Fox News this morning (a bit after 8am est)…
E.M. FYI
Selina Zito on the media and this election cycle.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/30/how-the-us-media-can-escape-its-information-deficit/
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