Ruminations – 5jan17 (updated 6jan17)

Not the village constable. There are men of evil mind, who would make of everything a crime, and not because of passion, but just naturally.  Gracian #109

George Rebane

WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker contributes a worthy analysis and commentary in his ‘Trump, Lies and Honest Journalism’.  Therein he touches on and corroborates a RR piece (here) on the nature of lies.  His bottom line is that journalists should be careful in labeling any false statement, say, by a politician, as a ‘lie’ since that implies intent to deceive – which intent is hard to prove.  Better present the fact along with the erroneous statement and let the reader determine intent.

My toes curl the wrong way every time I see the now accepted punctuation for communicating a list of things.   An example of that is seen in the above title to Baker’s WSJ piece.  Apparent from the article, what the author sought to taxonomize was the discussion of three separate notions – Trump, Lies, Honest Journalism.  Yet the title, by omitting the comma between ‘Lies’ and ‘and’ ambiguates the intended taxonomy by confusing the reader to think that ‘Lies and Honest Journalism’ are on par with ‘Trump’.  In previous times we were taught to express a list of three or more equivalent things as ‘X, Y, and Z’ which allowed the inclusion of compound objects in the list as ‘X, Y1 and Y2, and Z’.  With the modern omission of the comma before the final ‘and’ such clarity is no longer possible, and contributes one more lexicographic factor to reduce the information carrying capacity of English.  You will not see that omission on RR posts lest they snuck in as a typo.  (I’m sure I’ve vented on this before and will again.)

On the road to super-AI (aka Singularity)  BEIJING—A mysterious character named “Master” has swept through China, defeating many of the world’s top players in the ancient strategy game of Go. … Master played with inhuman speed, barely pausing to think. With a wide-eyed cartoon fox as an avatar, Master made moves that seemed foolish but inevitably led to victory this week over the world’s reigning Go champion, Ke Jie of China. (more here)

[update] According to the Left and their lamestream, obstructionism is now the highest virtue, both in and out of government across the land.  It was not so long ago we were told that obstructionism was contemptible and anti-American – remember that it was the dastardly Republicans who shut down government all by themselves.  To man the barricades the NYT is hiring ‘journalists’ with a public record of having been very unjournalistically in the tank for Hillary (even to the editing of their journalistic content).  The chasm grows.

Sen John McCain concluded that “we are in a state of war with Russia” after conducting an a hearing of the Armed Services Committee on Russia’s role in the attempt to influence last November’s election.  The key finding to come out of this morning’s hearing on the Hill is that ‘Espionage is an act of war’.  This immediately implicates most of the world’s nations as being in a continuous state of war with each other.  However, we are assured that this is a “new kind of war” that doesn’t involve shooting (yet).

The St Louis Fed summarizes the Obama years – short and sweet (H/T to correspondent)

[6jan17 update]  From the looks of the invigorating Trump bashing conversations going on in the comment stream of the last 'Scattershots', it appears I may have to start a new regular feature similar to 'Sandbox' that can serve as repositories for all the Trump bashing that we are promised for the next four years.  Such repositories would invite comments not related to then current policy issues or actions of the federal government, but focus on spine tingling arguments like the 497th recounting of Trump's crotch grabbing braggadocio, or making fun of disabled reporters, and similar awkward bagatelles.  Our readers would then know exactly where to go to get the latest barn circling on the President's escapades of yesteryear.  This would be a public service for those whose motto and exhortations will be to 'Never Forget!'

Comments

[Russ]

We have been in cyber war for over ten years with multiple nation states and McCain just discovered that Russia is one of those nation states. Wow1 Those political hacks in Washinton DC are really on top of the technology threat. The cyber war intensified after those very same Washington political hacks leaked what our hacker had done to the Iranian centrifuges when Iran failed to change the admin code on the centrifuge's controller. We are governed by idiots.

[Gregory]

If poking around a private system (Podesta was no more a Fed than I was during the campaign) protected by incompetent passwords like "password" is an act of war, what do you call tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone for several years, on the OK of Barack H. Obama?

Assholes who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Time will tell, there is no fire outside of the need for partisans to derail the Trump succession. Maybe get Podesta to use better passwords... hell, when I started at Cisco anyone using a notebook computer remotely had to use a password generator so that a high quality very random password got generated *every* time, but that was to protect the Cisco codebase, not Podesta's correspondence with West African princesses trying to spirit cash out of the country.

[BradC]

Russ sort of touches on the Trump, Lies, and Honest Journalism thread with his comment that we are governed by idiots. Without the intent to deceive, Trump's secret is out - he is an idiot.

[George Rebane]

BradC 549pm - And your logic thread connecting the dots??

[Account Deleted]

I'm so glad they have uncovered the true source of those who have unmasked corruption in the US government and the Dem party. I would have thought we should thank them. Instead, McCain wants to declare war.
Strange times.

[Todd Juvinall]

Sure BradC, and you are a real genius. Funny how those that are not successful can attack those that are and feel smug about themselves. I judge success by results. Libs by feelings. That is evident in your opinion.

[Don Bessee]

How does BC take Russ's observations on the lame ass 0 admins. cyber attack responses to mean he is referring to Trump? Lefty newspeak it be BC. China is far and away the biggest cyber attacker that has had 0 0 reactions. Now as the lamest of ducks 0 postures as tough HAHAHAHAHA!

It is no surprise PE does not want to have a conversation about the charts reflecting 0's damage to the nation. Was that cool that 0 gave himself a medal this week. What a joke. ;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Re: Update
"– remember that it was the dastardly Republicans who shut down government all by themselves."
Have to disagree there good Doc. Every time a little snow flurry hits D.C., the public servants in the government close up shop and head on home. Today was one of those days. Ghost town as soon as 3 snowflakes fell from sky. Yes, the Republicans have shut down the government all by their lonesome, but not nearly as much as Al Gore's Global Warming has.....just saying.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, that explains why Loretta Lynch, the whole Civil Rights Divison, 50 FBI agents, and Al Sharpton did not show up today in Chicago to investigate the shocking hate crime put on Facebook that spread like wildfire across social media and the national news. I thought for sure Obama would have rushed to the cameras to denounce this horrendous act of hate and racism. The government closed up shop today, duh. Silly me.
Now, if some rube had pulled a young lady's jihab, that would have been got them rushing to Chicago.....

[Russ]

DNC rejected FBI request to examine hacked email server, law enforcement official says

The FBI “repeatedly stressed” the importance of accessing the hacked email server of the Democratic National Committee. But one senior law enforcement official now tells TheBlaze that DNC officials rejected its requests.

The news comes just hours after it was reported the FBI never examined the DNC server, which the bureau and multiple other U.S. intelligence agencies say was hacked by the Russian government, leading to the release of thousands of damning emails by WikiLeaks that some argue helped President-elect Donald Trump win the election.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier,” the senior law enforcement official said Thursday night in an email.

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/01/05/dnc-rejected-fbi-request-to-examine-hacked-email-server-law-enforcement-official-says/

If the FBI never had access to the DNC Server how could they tell who hacked it? Pointing at the Russian's is just a head fake. The intelligence community is only guessing who hacked the DNC servers.

[Russ]

Not all cybersecurity experts believe U.S. allegations of Russian hacking

WASHINGTON
Experts on the malicious computer codes commonly used by Russian hackers are far from united behind the Obama administration’s accusations against Moscow, with a few echoing President-elect Donald Trump’s mistrust and asking for more information.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article124846589.html#storylink=cpy

[Russ]

Not all cybersecurity experts believe U.S. allegations of Russian hacking

WASHINGTON
Experts on the malicious computer codes commonly used by Russian hackers are far from united behind the Obama administration’s accusations against Moscow, with a few echoing President-elect Donald Trump’s mistrust and asking for more information.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article124846589.html#storylink=cpy

[Walt]

Funny thing about Progs. They say they hate walls." They are useless and don't work.".
Yet the first thing those that can afford it BUILD, when they buy any real estate.
Zuckerberg build a huge wall on his new property in Hawaii, now "O" is building one around his new house.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/06/tmz-obama-building-wall-around-new-home/

Come on Leftys ,, nothing says "stay off my lawn" like a 12 gauge.

[George Rebane]

Russ 856am - How come none of this gets out on the lamestream? Here evidence of that is given by our left-leaning commenters who never hear of any dissenting voices from Huffpost, MSNBC, NYT, Daily Kos, ..., those paragons of comprehensive news coverage. They don't even known there is a debate and continue believing its Team Trump against the entire civilized world on this issue.

I don't thing that informed readers miss these blatant one-sided deficits in these comment streams.

[Bill Tozer]

The science is settled, the Russians did it, and the dog ate my homework. Trust me, it's the Patriotic thing to do.