BETHESDA, Md. — A spokesman for Lockheed Martin today denied that there is any reason to be alarmed about possible shortcomings of the military’s newest and most expensive fighter plane after reports surfaced this weekend that an F-35, piloted by a crack Air Force fighter pilot, lost a mock dogfight with a Fokker Dr. I Triplane […]
Subject: Argentina
What happened in Argentina is happening in America.
Please view this video.
| Chilling. Could never happen here right? |
By Todd Starnes
A man shows his support for the Brandon High School band in Mississippi. (Courtesy: Brittany Mann)
There was no halftime show under the Friday night lights at Mississippi’s Brandon High School — the marching band had been benched.
The band was ordered off the field because the Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art” was a part of their halftime show — in violation of a federal court order.
“The Rankin County School Board and District Office are very saddened students will not be able to perform their halftime show they have worked so hard on this summer,” the district wrote in a statement to the Clarion Ledger newspaper.
In 2013 a student sued the district over a series of Christian meetings that had been held on school property, the newspaper reported. The district later settled the lawsuit and acknowledged they had violated the student’s First Amendment rights.
In July, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled the district had violated the agreement after a Christian minister delivered a prayer at an awards ceremony.
Judge Reeves, who was appointed to the bench by President Obama, came down hard on the school district — ordering them to pay thousands of dollars in fines. He also warned the district that future violations would cost them $10,000.
“Defendants are permanently enjoined from including prayer, religious sermons or activities in any school sponsored event including but not limited to assemblies, graduations, award ceremonies, athletic events and any other school event,” the order reads.
Word about the band getting benched spread across the town quicker than kudzu. I must have received emails and Facebook messages from nearly the entire state – from Desoto County to Yazoo City.
Something must be done to right this wrong, people said. A message had to be sent to the likes of Judge Reeves. Locals gathered in coffee shops and garages to devise their plan.
And what they did — would become known as the musical shot heard around the world.
During halftime of Friday night’s game – a lone voice began to sing the forbidden song.
“Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,” the singer sang.
Brittany Mann was there and she witnessed the entire moment of defiance.
“We were just sitting there and then one by one people started to stand,” she told me. “At first, it started out as a hum but the sound got louder and louder.”
She said it was a “truly incredible” moment to watch hundreds of people singing together in the stadium.
“At that moment I was so proud of my town – coming together and taking a stand for something we believe in,” she said. “It breaks my heart to see where our country is going — getting farther and farther away from the Christian beliefs that our country was founded on.”
Stop backing down, resist. Fight. This isn’t going to be fixed at the ballot box.
Posted August 19th, 2015 @ 9:46am in #trump #immigration #mexico
by Scott Adams
The presidential campaign is being covered by political reporters, for the most part. That makes perfect sense because the subjects of the reporting are mostly politicians.
But Donald Trump is a business person. If you apply a political filter to a business person, you get nonsense. Likewise, if you have a goal-oriented view of the world, as politicians typically do, a business person with a “systems” approach would appear crazy.
That brings me to Trump’s newly-published immigration policy. For our purposes here, you don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is that it sounds totally impractical and draconian.
If you apply a political filter to his proposal, it is pure nonsense mixed with evil and flavored with crazy. That’s how the media is reporting it all over the Internet. Just like Trump planned.
If Trump were a goal-oriented thinker, or even a real politician, the reporters would be interpreting this situation correctly. They would report that Trump’s plan is ridiculously impractical and even inhumane. And they would be right.
But reset your filter for a minute. Remember that Trump is a business person who promises to bring a deal-maker to the job of President. Now look at his crazy plan again but use your business filter this time.
Trump sees immigration as a negotiation. His opening offer is an anchor. This is how world-class negotiators work. The first offer has no purpose except to create contrast to whatever you eventually agree.
For example, Trump’s plan has two ridiculous ideas that will never happen. One involves a change of the constitution to remove the right of citizenship for people born in this country. The other involves rounding up 11 million aliens and shipping them home.
Not going to happen.
If Trump were a goal-oriented thinker, or a politician, he would be setting himself up for failure. His plan has zero chance of success as it stands.
But Trump is a systems thinker. He plays the long game. Every move is a negotiation.
Trump wants a wall on the border, and he wants Mexico to pay for it. That is such a big ask that few people think it possible. I can only imagine one way a wizard with Trump’s skills could convince TWO countries to do this thing that is amazingly hard to get done.
You start with an opening offer that anchors people’s minds to the most outrageous parts of the plan and then you trade those things away until you get the only thing you wanted: the fence. Negotiators (Congress in this case) will feel that a negotiation happened and all parties met in the middle.
But only Trump decided where the middle is. The debate is already over and Trump won. We’re getting a wall. But my guess is that America will create some sort of a path to citizenship for current illegals after the wall gets built. That will make both sides feel like they won something.
Trump can’t say he will give illegal immigrants a free pass while at the same time trying to get a wall built. That would trigger a wave of immigrants trying to beat the wall construction.
There was exactly one path available for Trump to get his wall. He had to set an anchor in the negotiations that inspires his core anti-immigration crowd to vote for him while setting the stage to negotiate away the crazy parts of the plan and keep the fence.
Another way to look at Trump’s immigration plan is that he’s working on America’s branding. That’s Trump’s area of expertise. If you want your brand to have value, the first thing you do is make sure no one can get if for free. You need a sense of exclusivity. Tightening immigration does that.
Keep in mind that trump is open to legal immigration for people who bring technical skill to the country. He wants more of that and less of the criminal element. That’s hard to argue against in principle. And if he succeeds in branding America as the only place you want to work if you have tech skills, imagine what that does to the economy over time.
Bonus Thought 1: When Trump stuck an anchor in the immigration problem by calling the Mexican immigrants rapists, he also established himself as the only Republican who is talking about violence to women. Name the other Republican candidate who is out front on a gender issue. You can’t.
Bonus Thought 2: On the question of abortion, if Trump says he doesn’t understand why men even get a vote on the question of abortion he would take that issue off the table while keeping his personal views intact.
Bonus Thought 3: Much has been reported about Trump’s bankruptcies. If you view Trump as a goal-oriented thinker, those are examples of failures. If you view him as a systems-oriented thinker, he built a diversified portfolio of holdings and kept the bad ones from infecting the others by creating separate entities that could fail by themselves.
Bonus Thought 4: In all likelihood, Donald Trump will pick our next president. If he runs as a Republican, he will be picking himself, and winning, assuming he keeps going this way. If he runs as an independent he will be picking Clinton as president. There’s your republic: One guy gets to vote for President this year.
Here I’ll remind new readers that I have no idea if Trump would be a good president. In my view, all the candidates are within the realm of competence. How they might perform as president depends on what future they are paired with. For example, the best president for winning a war might be the worst one for fixing a recession. You can’t know who will be good on the job if you don’t know what the job will entail.
Scott (Adams: creator of Dilbert)
FORT BENNING, Ga. — After completing one of the most grueling training programs the United States military has to offer, sources confirmed today that the first order of business for the two female graduates of Army Ranger school is to “crush tons of fucking pussy” this weekend.
First Lts. Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver — the first-ever women to graduate Ranger School — plan to attack the Fort Benning bar scene in similar fashion to their approach for each phase of Ranger School.
“With no fucking mercy,” said Griest, who sources say plans to pull at least one hat trick per day starting Friday and into infinity. “These motherfuckers better watch out. I haven’t been laid in over four months.”
It’s all bullshit of course. No male candidate is allowed TWO do-overs and as ably pointed out over at InstaPundit soldiers passing this course are just starting their training. And it all gets rougher from this point on.
It is impossible to succeed without enough testosterone…
Remember! Next month 50,000 experienced and trained American Males will be redacted from the ranks which will bring our armed forces to a level below Pre-WWI levels. But…What difference does it make?
LA ‘black ball’ reservoir rollout potential ‘disaster’ in the making, say experts: Experts differed over the best color for the tiny plastic balls, with one saying they should have been white
My little engineers mind perked up when I read the original story about the announcement of the “Black Balls”. “That’s wrong”, I thought. My second thought was that if I lived in that water district I’d run a little home experiment and chart the increases in the temperature of tap water over the next few weeks, and stock up on bottled water.
I sure hope that someone in LA is stepping up the testing for bacteria in the pipes, the holding tanks and anywhere the water is drawn off. Followup stories indicate that reducing evaparation wasn’t the prime reason for the project, but an EPA mandate (there’s that word again) to cover water storage and holding tanks from contamination. Even for that purpose the little round balls are wrong, they spin. Bird shits on top, ball is no longer in balance, ball rotates to fecal matter downwards into the warm water now shielded from the UV rays that tend to sanitize.
When there are better ecological disasters made, the EPA will be behind scenes with a mandate.
For those who will not read to the end of the ongoing post I’ve been updating since I allowed the notebook to “UPDATE” to Windows 10 last week. My suggestion at this time?
(After rereading these updates I realized I needed to identify which PC I’m talking about; the updated Notebook on Windows 10 or the PC Tower still blissfully at Windows 7. )
Update on Sunday August 23d
Final Update on Sept 5th.
November 13th…
December 11th…
February 26th Loss of DVD movie playback.
(Tower on Win7): Microsoft does not want to give you a choice on upgrading to Windows 10. This is what I’ve found.
A Windows process GWX (stands for Get Windows 10, cute isn’t it?) is labeled as an important update while in Win7 and is loaded onto your machine (…of course MS doesn’t really believe that it’s your machine, at least that is the way they behave. )
This process does several things; it can download (without asking permission, no matter what your update permissions are set to) the 6Gig Windows Ten upgrade onto a hidden folder on your hard drive, it downloads update KB3035583 onto your computer (which is the process that places a Windows 10 icon on your taskbar and splashes a Nag Window on top of whatever you are doing to nag you into upgrading.), and if you uninstall the KB3035583 process (as some sites suggest) to remove the annoying nagging then the GWX.exe process immediately downloads it again and it pops up the next time you reboot.
I finally got rid of all of it (I think.) but it took me over two hours of my time. One little thing that made it difficult was a program called Trusted Installer. This process ‘owned’ the folder C:\windows\System32\GWX and stopped me from deleting it. Even though I have Administrator Access on my machine and network. On the bright side, I’ve learned a lot more about windows security features and operation than I ever knew before.
Since the notebook with Win10 on it is still experiencing issues, mostly a continuing failure to connect to the WiFi network in the house (even with SSID turned off on), I’m even less interested in ‘upgrading’ to Windows 10 anytime soon (or in my lifetime, the way I’m feeling this morning.)
One last thing, this debacle has caused me to change the update option on my machine from auto-daily to ‘no download’ and notify me first for permission. My box will no longer be installing the latest MS security updates automatically. Because that is how they slipped this into my system in the first place. Is this what MS really wants? To encourage users to stop updating? It seems MS never learns because this is the same thing that happened to me with Windows XP many years ago, some penurious bit of software that was very hard to get rid of and afterwards I stopped trusting MS updates and turned it off.
December 11th
(Notebook Win10): Windows update stopped working, apparently this is a common problem. This means no security or driver updates. Attempting to get answers on Windows ‘Answers’ page is like talking to Skynet. After trying (and wasting more time) every suggestion they had it still doesn’t work. How about holding back some of that money Billy Gates is sending to Africa and hire some actual human beings who know how to communicate with other human beings? Oh, and hire some engineers and FIX THIS SHIT!
December 23d
(Notebook Win10): I fixed the no update issue. (Point of interest, I could not find the answer at MicroSoft’s ‘Knowledge Base’.) Go to Settings; Devices; Printers & Scanners (of all places!). As the window comes up but (on this screen) below the fold are two new fields; ‘Let Windows manage my default printer’ and (Bingo!) ‘Download over a metered connection’.
What’s a metered connection? If I were on a cell phone data plan with only a few Gig of data monthly, that might qualify. But on most devices if on a WiFi connection there is no effective limit. So this idiotic field is treating all data connections on the PC (or whatever you are running Windows 10 on, a tablet perhaps?) as ‘metered’ and with the default setting of ‘ON’ the updates stop downloading. So change the setting to ‘OFF’.
So I did that and then allowed the notebook to restart to complete the updates. And that was it for the notebook for the next hour and a quarter. The last fifteen minutes was enlivened with some of the stupidest screens I’ve ever read on a computer;
Hi!
(This for a minute or two)
All your files are exactly where you left them!
(That’s nice. Why wouldn’t they be still there? That was actually in question when I allowed the update to proceed?)
We’ve got new features to get excited about!
(Who do I look like? Mr Data?)
Don’t turn off your PC!
(Why not, I’m not getting to use it very much today.)
Merry Fucking Christmas and Ho, Ho, Ho!
February 26th: Loss of ability to play DVD disks, (Yes, really!) Some people will notice this (depending on upgrade path) some won’t. But the handwriting is on the wall, Microsoft does not want to support playing movies on DVD anymore.
The latest chapter in Amazon’s ruthless war on Main Street and more hits too close to home.
Amazon has launched its own (uglier) version of The Grommet, an earnest Somerville startup that provides a sales platform for independent product makers and then helps small businesses to connect with those undiscovered products at wholesale rates.
The Grommet calls itself the birthplace of Citizen Commerce — whereas Amazon’s new platform, dubbed Launchpad, aims to be its death knell.
Now I’m sorry I helped fund Amazon for eighteen years. But for the last 9 weeks I’ve been Amazon free! It’s been that long since I attempted to buy an Confederate Flag on Amazon and (though I could buy a ISIS banner, Che Flag or T-shirt or bedsheets…) found out that Amazon had already snapped to in abeyance to the howls of the SJW mob. So I’m finished with Amazon, listed below are the steps by which I got to this point.
Sales Tax “Crony Capitalism” and backing an Internet Sales Tax.
Dirty warehouse has my stuff.
Shipping as a double-edged sword so I stopped buying directly from Amazon.
Che’ works at a Amazon help desk and “Don’t speaka the Engasle”.
Amazon has become a evil influence in the world, Amazon must be destroyed! But ignored will have to do. (That means Boycott!)
There was a time (called employment time) when I spent over 10k a year buying directly from Amazon. Last year still spent over 3K, small potatoes. But if you put all your potatoes in a bag and hit someone in the head with it… but I think Amazon is to far gone to notice. But at least we can stop funding it’s spread. Boycott!
Since I have a notebook in the living room I decided to “Try” Windows 10. The free upgrade became available this week and I I’ve heard good things about it, so let’s explore!
In the Beginning.
Big download, long download time. Set it and go out; visit the Mom at the home, do a little grocery shopping, stop for a beer. Get home and hit “Continue”. Go outside and water the plants, pick some tomatoes and the last of the blueberries, come inside eat lunch then take a nap. Hit Enter. Wait some more. Free, and worth every penny.
SETUP.
Setup is mostly saying no; use default Microsoft settings (No), allow Microsoft to track you and sell to you or report on you (No, No, No!). Why does Microsoft think you should commit to using and trusting all these new programs? Oops! Sorry the new word is Apps. There are no programs. All is Apps. Free, and worth every penny.
(This is probably going to be an ongoing post that I’ll add to as I see and find different stuff of interest, LiveBlogging in other words.)
First Problem, (and it’s a doozy!)
Windows 10 lost my Wifi adapter. Didn’t see the device so couldn’t connect to a network, also flushed my Homegroup settings but that I expected. Easy fix, I don’t need to dial an toll-free number to know to power off and restart. Adapter popped up, lost the access code of course. First wasted ten minutes. Free, and worth every penny.
“Kid, I’ve got a bad feeling about this!”Second problem.
Few hours later came back and restarted the Notebook. Took F O R E V E R to start. Then it “forgot” the home network. Appears to have a problem with the hidden SSID of my network even though it had already connected previously. Free, and worth every penny.
Another minor problem, another half hour lost.
The WiFi printer connection was disabled and contradictory information was displayed. Again, not surprising. But the printer and device box looked the same but didn’t work the same. In this case I didn’t actually “fix” it, it seems as if it this just started working. Oh, and the WiFi connection to the notebook was gone again. I suspect that problem isn’t going to go away until I give up my practice of hiding the SSID of the home network. It’s a minor security benefit but I like to leave no stone unturned. What annoys me is that the connection dropped in the middle, not when starting.
Can’t say that I’ve seen any improvement in performance with Windows 10 yet, Free and worth every penny.
Week later. The Blue Screen of Death. Happened after I flipped up the screen on the hibernating notebook and found that it had forgotten my WiFi access, Again. Went to connections and had to re-enter everything (definitely doesn’t like hidden SSID router names) instead of making the connection it went to the blue screen and hint that this was a kernal error in very, small font ( I actually know what that is, more or less).
OK, it automatically rebooted. I started the stopwatch on my wristwatch. Windows 10 decided to download updates, which is against the “notify me first” setting I thought was active. After seven minutes and forty-nine seconds I got a screen. I stopped the clock. But then I realized that it had gone back to not seeing my Wireless Adapter at all. I rebooted the notebook, Again. I re-started the stopwatch.
When the notebook became active again I had the adapter but it (again) didn’t connect to the router. I manually connected, Again. I got an Ad for MS-Office 365 that popped up and blocked everything until I figured out how to clear it. I started Mozilla and stopped the clock again. At twelve minutes and fifty seconds. During that time I had found the information I was looking for using the Android tablet. Window 10, Free and worth every penny. No.
Windows 10, too expensive even when free. To whom do I send the bill for the use of my notebook as a test site for a unready piece of software?
So…The very next day. Opened my notebook (which should have been hibernating) and it’s completely locked up…Tight! Held the power button down until the notebook shut down. Waited a little (cursed to pass the time) and restarted. Four minutes later it’s back up and yes it forgot the WiFi router again. I hate to be forced to change the hidden SSID setting. But I may get tired of this.
I read an article in the WSJ on Firefox, a new version is out just to work with Windows 10. Also the queer loving geeks at Mozilla are miffed that Windows 10 defaults to using the MS browser at install/upgrade. Really? What else did you expect?
Right now I’m trying to find out what effect enabling/disabling the checkbox for MS Network Adapter Multiplexor Protocol would be. At least I’m keeping my brain active with something that doesn’t involve titties.
Mozilla’s Firefox on the fritz…
OK, does losing the printing function rate a mention? As I attempted to print something from the Notebook on the way out the door, I discovered that Mozillas Firefox couldn’t print to the network printer anymore. Anymore, Anymore!
Now understand that I have installed the new Firefox for Windows 10 and there is another regret. But while Chrome and Edge could print, Firefox was Nyet!. Meaning I couldn’t print from Firefox. When I got home and tired to fix the problem I then discovered that Mozilla was on the bandwagon with simplifying (dumbing down) and moving control functions off the menu bar. [Print has no sub-field in Firefox version 40] I had to delve into the troubleshooting files on Mozillas site to discover the solution.
(Go to the location bar, input about config; ignore the warning that the warrantry will be broken [Really!?] ;then go the search bar and type print_printer; on the line that appears then [in my case] change the name of the printer to the name of the printer that you found in the Devices:printer.
EPSON696F8F (Epson Stylus NX620) is what Windows 10 renamed the network printer to, that is from Upstairs Printer is Epson. Simple! No? (The question is, whose fault is this? Microsoft or Mozilla?)
There goes another 40 minutes. (Don’t forget to restart Firefox)
These functions used to be located in the File:Print tab on the Firefox menu, until they improved it.
But it’s FREE!
First Major Windows 10 Update.
Five days later, Windows rather politely requested my acquiescence in downloading and installing an Complete Win10 update. (The politeness came from my unchecking “Download whenever it bloody well wanted to!” Not quite the exact wording but that’s how I read it.) Figuring that it would take a while I clicked Download and picked up my book, an hour later it was ready to restart.
More time passed, when finally I was able to log back in I wasn’t surprised to see that the WiFi was down and again the presence of the adapter was transparent to Windows 10. But this time a restart didn’t restore the device. Neither a power off reboot. I had to drill down into the Device Manager (Basement Level Three, last stop!) which thought that the Broadcom adapter was in service, disabled & re-enabled. The adapter popped back up on the task bar and immediately connected to the router. No need to re-enter the site ID and passcode since I turned SSID on within the WiFi Router. But I don’t like being forced to do so.
I’m still finding where all the new locations for everything is, and I can’t say that I’ve noticed any improvement in performance or function. I won’t be doing this on the big machine, no thank you.
September. If I turn the SSID off on my WiFi router this damn machine has to be manually logged back in every time. Windows 10 definitely does not work as well with SSID as did Windows 7. Otherwise I’ve got everything working, but I can’t find a single area in which Windows 10 is superior or adds much of anything. I’d just as soon not have installed it and will not be installing it on any other machines I have.
Final verdict, to expensive at Free.
November.
Microsoft does not want to give you a choice on upgrading to Windows 10. This is what I’ve found.
A Windows process GWX (stands for Get Windows 10, cute isn’t it?) is labeled as an important update while in Win7 and is loaded onto your machine (…of course MS doesn’t really believe that it’s your machine, at least that is the way they behave. )
This process does several things; it can download (without asking permission, no matter what your update permissions are set to) the 6Gig Windows Ten upgrade onto a hidden folder on your hard drive, it downloads update KB3035583 onto your computer (which is the process that places a Windows 10 icon on your taskbar and splashes a Nag Window on top of whatever you are doing to nag you into upgrading.), and if you uninstall the KB3035583 process (as some sites suggest) to remove the annoying nagging then the GWX.exe process immediately downloads it again and it pops up the next time you reboot.
I finally got rid of all of it (I think.) but it took me over two hours of my time. One little thing that made it difficult was a program called Trusted Installer. This process ‘owned’ the folder C:\windows\System32\GWX and stopped me from deleting it. Even though I have Administrator Access on my machine and network. On the bright side, I’ve learned a lot more about windows security features and operation than I ever knew before.
Since the notebook with Win10 on it is still experiencing issues, mostly a continuing failure to connect to the WiFi network in the house (even with SSID turned off), I’m even less interested in ‘upgrading’ to Windows 10 anytime soon (or in my lifetime, the way I’m feeling this morning.) (November 2016: the non-connect to WiFi issue seems to have gone away on it’s own on the Win10 Notebook, go figure?)
New final comment, hey Microsoft! You pay ME!
Marine Beaches in Massachusetts
“The energy needed to refute BS is of an order of magnitude greater than the effort needed to produce the BS in the first place. ”
Brandolini’s law
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