Shaky Danny

  I was put off by the choppy narrative of Unlikely Allies by Joel Richard Paul. But it confirmed my view of conspiracy. A conspiracy is just a group of people who agree. Usually, it’s just someone alone in their motel, sucking on whatever, watching CNN saying: -I guess that worked. The book also highlighted how common it is to have infiltrators, provocateurs and opposition. Ben Franklin and Silas Deane understood and accepted that and still accomplished their objectives. When Franklin finally arrived in Paris to support Deane he was wearing a fur hat. The narrative gives reasons but fails to mention that Franklin was also teasing the French about giving up Canada and its French citizens for Haiti after the Seven Years War. Franklin loved teasing and double entendre.   In the book Arthur Lee is painted as the villain who falsely accused Dean. But where was Franklin? To have a case there should be a shortfall. Deane is unable to give account but Franklin had to know ho...

Humans differentiate on location and association. We change location to meet association and change association to meet location. Two material conditions of the US constitution were taxing whiskey [i] and protecting slavery [ii] . The document is designed to frustrate popular will. Political parties are intended to ameliorate that frustration. We now have a small group of Republicans preventing the passage of a popular defense bill that contains appropriations for Ukraine and Israel. America has always been a nation of divided loyalties. Some Americans have loyalty to Mother Russia. That is an influence. There is also a material cause. Republicans focus on the border while ignoring immigration policy. Republicans like undocumented immigrants who know their place. Republicans terrorized the undocumented immigrant’s children when it looked like they may get status and eventually become voters. That’s when Mexicans got insulted and the fruit rotted on the ground and stores close on M...

  A ridiculous amount of effort is spent criticizing Hillary Clinton’s character. When elections are that close, every infraction is magnified. There is a much simpler material explanation. It is pathetic how cheap Congress is. Most of their time is spent on phone banks raising money. There was a moment when it looked like Chicago’s alderman Vrdolyak would be sent to Congress. Imagine: -This is a billion-dollar appropriation? I get more than this for a zoning variance. Occasionally money rains on Washington. World War II was cost plus. Johnson unleashed Taiwan. When Nixon made the China deal, they had so much cash they were shoving it into filing cabinets. Reaganauts were Nixon wannabes. Bush Sr. held up the Saudis for Kuwait. Hillary Clinton was queen. She shook down healthcare so hard their teeth rattled. Everyone in Washington should love Hillary Clinton. The Saudis had to sit down, and Ross Perot complained about the service. Insurance and Pharmacy were in a bidding war t...

  Anyone who says “peace in the Mideast” should be slapped. They are announcing that what follows is stupid. Peace never had anything to do with the Mideast. The statement is arrogant. How would you like to hear “peace in the US”? American policy in the Mideast should be mute. It is disgusting to hear Americans advise and excuse each group their atrocities. Americans are never short of advice. “Debate” in the US has circled around who’s better. It is not going to convince anyone that they should shut up and take it because their families had it coming.   No one has rounded up their criminals. Here is a quick review of America’s relationship, keeping an American eye for the man behind the curtain and the emperor’s clothes: Before World War II, the countries of the world refused Jewish refugees from Germany. Germans made that a big deal. During and after the war Churchill sent Jewish refugees to Palestine. British grabbed Palestine from the Ottomans. Some Pan Arabism is no...

Brandon Johnson has just been elected mayor of Chicago. Except Byrne we have always elected lawyers, even prosecutors, in the hope that they would avoid indictment. So far, they have. Johnson is the first schoolteacher. As a teacher Johnson is trying to approach crime from a Confucious perspective, systemically. Here are some obvious concerns: A court clerk just made the mistake of self-publishing a book about a recent case. In general police, prosecutors, judges and even clerks should be cautious publicly expressing opinions that could be thrown back at them, endangering testimony, and convictions. It is unfortunate that people closest to issues are precisely the ones constrained from public discussion. Police are not screened for clerical aptitude. Clerical tasks are a major part of police work, especially investigations. Back in the 90’s the federal government confronted domestic violence. Their solution was the development of a form that must be filed if the husband was not arr...

There is a new word, apophenia, created by Klaus Conrad to describe false correlations. I propose a duality with gestalt. This isn’t fair to gestalt. Gestalt is intended to break you out of your current patterns and recognize more useful ones. Sometimes we recognize incorrectly. Let us apply this duality to the USA invasion of Grenada in 1983. When Thatcher remonstrated with Reagan over this breach of international law and convention, Reagan responded that he wanted some nutmeg for his eggnog. This was just after England had defended the Falklands. While this remark is appropriate within the history of the spice trade, in 1988 Grenada exported 2,230 tons of nutmeg and 256 tons of mace for a total export value of $15,761,107. This was a good year.   Let us find the street value. 2,486 tons is 87,691,069 ounces. I have a price of 6 ounces is $10 listed on the internet currently. Divided by 6 is 14,615,178. Times $10 gives a markup of more than 10 times the export value. Somewhere...

  I spent a year in Dallas one week. Southern Methodist University had volunteered as the crash test dummy for the beta release of our library software. Wandering down the hall, I noticed a PC. I got on and brought up our company’s web site. It was 1995. When I attempted to reach our mainframe, a firewall stopped me. I knew it was possible to reach it from the internet so I called up our hex support and told them: -The only people you are blocking are customers and employees. Support graciously allowed me in. Normally we come back from these jaunts with scraps of paper trying to remember what we did. This time I put my changes in our source base and had it reinstalled. Monday morning, I hit the office clean. Then I made it a habit to check SMU for their dumps each day and brought them across the web. The same situation is happening for privacy. Let us review phone surveillance. In the American Civil War, soldiers realized that rather than knocking over telegraph lines it was ...

Brexit makes me proud to be an American. We may see the unification of Ireland, the separation of Scotland and, most certainly, an English depression as a consequence. England will be left as a tax haven, tourist site and source for military mercenaries.   We have all been influenced by vaudeville. But the music hall is most deeply ingrained in English culture. Looking over London’s architecture, it is apparent that they are deeply silly and proud of it. Can silliness be the explanation for their ruin? Perhaps it is the return of Boudicca.   The British were so sick of the Romans that they revolted and laid waste to Romans and their sympathizers. They were defeated attacking a Roman army. The true cause of their defeat was that the British preferred trade even under the Romans. This lesson has been lost. Maybe it is the Greeks. English take Greeks seriously. The English classical education justifies the English empire as in the history of the empires that precede it....

Historical Materialism was once all the rage. Freakonomics is historical materialism without Marx. I am giving an overview and then showing how Marx and basic questions about material conditions can enlighten. Review of Marx Wading through the invective and gossip of three or four volumes of Marx’s Capital to find the nuggets is tedious: dictatorship of the proletariat labor theory of value class struggle money isn’t capital failure of colonialism Centralization of production leads to unions. business cycle Competition drives down margins in investment and production. Profit requires disaster and  disruption. You’re welcome. Sorry if I missed any. These ideas have been absorbed into common use. Occasionally an economist makes a living inveighing against or rediscovering one. Bernanke’s bad asset class or Tom Peter’s excellence, for instance. Here is a list of some other market issues:    Winners change the rules.   Pa...

Danley, Paddock’s girlfriend, appears to be receiving undue attention. Perhaps because she and Campos are the only ones involved who aren’t white. Vegas police haven’t presented well. I’m thinking that Reno 911 is more real than satire. Paddock seems to have given Danley the opportunity for a fat lawsuit. Maybe it’s just that all parties are concerned with liability but there is smoke. Did Paddock belong to somebody? Odd that Paddocks tax returns have not yet been released. I doubt that he was operational, those guys been there, done that. He could have been in a support function.  The only operational goofs I can think of are Oswald and McVeigh. Some of the smoke is Paddock as “professional gambler”. Supposedly, with comps, if you play big slots you can profit. This is why Vegas has so many rich gamblers and the casinos are broke. When gamblers play for comps they identify themselves to the casino. Everyone knows the machines are throttled. There is nothing illegal about ...

The slush piles are brimming with Trump stories. If I were a reader I would filter out anything with Trump in it, just as I do click bait. The premise for this one is that the Russians are disgusted with the lack of return on their investment. Envision Putin ranting. Not sure who to cast for Putin. Perhaps a computer generated image. He could sue but the argument is that his persona is in the public domain. Do the same thing with Trump. The lawsuit would be good publicity. If we can’t say Trump, say Stump, Putin; Putting. The joke is that Putin is speaking extremely vulgar Russian, or even breaking into heavily accented English but the sub titles are very proper. Maybe this will keep a PG rating. The title is rolling while Putin screams obscenities.  -We can’t even get his fucking briefing books. -There’s no actionable intelligence. -We have the briefing books. -You ugly ass wipe, that’s not the point. That fat shit can’t read. - What use is he, if he can’t rea...